There’s a lot to worry about these days—a pandemic, economic recession, shifting balances of power, resurgent nationalism, a potentially contested election in the United States, and so on—and then President Donald Trump was infected with the virus he once promised would disappear “like magic” and taken to Walter Reed Hospital. To make sure we were maximally worried, the Washington Post offered a click-baity headline: “National Security Experts Describe a Distracted and Potentially Vulnerable Country.”
The implication was that Trump’s illness had created new national security dangers for the United States. Perhaps an adversary (or conceivably, a restless ally like Turkey) might see Trump’s weakened condition as an ideal moment to challenge the status quo in some fundamental way. Would China put the screws on Taiwan, or would President Vladimir Putin throw an elbow in the Baltic? Might the always-unpredictable North Korean leader Kim Jong Un decide that this was the perfect time to test a long-range missile, or would Iran see this as an opportune moment to repay the United States for the assassination of General Suleimani?
