John Feeley launches stinging critique of US president’s bully-boy approach to Latin America

The former US ambassador to Panama has launched a stinging critique of Donald Trump’s approach towards Latin America, comparing his conduct to that of the ruthless and egotistical fictional mob boss Tony Soprano.

In the first month of his presidency, the US president has shocked some observers with his aggressive focus on a region many expected him to largely ignore. Early steps have included threatening to “take back” the Panama Canal, accusing Mexico’s government of being in cahoots with narco-traffickers, sending an envoy to meet the Venezuelan dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and clashing with Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, over deportation flights.

John Feeley, who was regarded as one of the state department’s top Latin America experts until he resigned from his job in Panama during Trump’s first term, said he was horrified but not surprised by Trump’s moves.

“If you use as your psychological paradigm [for Trump] a combination of Tony Soprano and Thucydides … it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that he’s going to go to the Americas first,” the ex-ambassador said, referring to the ancient historian who chronicled the fifth-century BC struggle between Athens and Sparta.

  • AnIndefiniteArticle
    0•13 hours ago

    If you use as your psychological paradigm [for Trump] a combination of Tony Soprano and Thucydides

    Thucydides has been dubbed the father of “scientific history” by those who accept his claims to have applied strict standards of impartiality and evidence-gathering and analysis of cause and effect, without reference to intervention by the gods, as outlined in his introduction to his work.

    How is Donald Trump anything like the guy whose biggest contribution to the field of history was to be the first to rigorously outline and (arguably) apply the standard of “make sure you gather evidence before making a historical claim”.

    Even leaving aside that Tony Soprano is not the right mobster for comparison (and it’s been too long since I’ve seen the show to propose another with confidence), the other half of the asserted psychological profile for Trump makes absolutely no sense.

    This is the former ambassador to Panama? Yikes.

    • AnIndefiniteArticle
      3•13 hours ago

      Feeley believed the most famous line from Thucydides’s account of that war – “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” – explained Trump’s bully-boy worldview.
      “[He’s doing it] because he can – because the asymmetry of American commercial and military power is so incalculable in relationship to Mexico, Central America, Panama, even Brazil, Argentina. They can’t really do much other than suffer the consequences. And so I think, in a sort of mafioso way, he is very adept at reading relative power,” said the former diplomat, who attributed his 2018 resignation to how Trump had “warped and betrayed … the traditional core values of the United States”.

      So he’s not Thucydides, he’s the kind of politicians that Thucydides was describing…

      “He’s a velociraptor … He kills anything he perceives as a threat.”

      We know nothing about velociraptor hunting / social / behavioural habits. Maybe they were friendly and social and trusting which enabled them to hunt in packs?

      I’m sorry but everything this guy says just smells like bullshit.