Trump’s Foreign Policy Is A Failure
President Trump's foreign policy has largely been a failure, and there are specific reasons why.
Jennifer Rubin catalogs the reasons why President Trump’s foreign policy has by and large been an utter failure:
First, Trump imagines all foreign leaders are narcissistic patsies like he is. He tries to flatter those immune to flattery. He ignores egregious human rights behavior in North Korea and China for fear of poisoning a personal relationship that exists only in his head. Strongmen, as a result, see him as gullible and weak.
That leads to Trump’s second major failing: He gives too much away for free without any demand for reciprocity, thereby emboldening opponents. He gives Kim Jong Un passive PR wins. He lets China’s ZTE off the hook and slow-walks sanctions against China. He gives Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman a free pass on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, with no promise of any changed behavior domestically or in Yemen.
Third, Trump and his advisers set unrealistic goals, reinforce them with exaggerated rhetoric and then lack a backup plan. Whether it is Venezuela or Iran, he envisions regime change but lacks a viable road to achieving such a dramatic result. As a result, friends and foes no longer take him seriously.
Fourth, he mistakes gestures for policy. Pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a.k.a. the Iran deal, doesn’t make us safer. Pulling out of the Paris accord doesn’t create an alternative plan for fighting climate change. Agreeing to move our embassy to Jerusalem doesn’t bring us an inch closer to a deal, even an intermediary one, between Israel and the Palestinians. The administration and Trump in particular never seem to be prepared to answer the logical question “And then what?”In fact, these are moves for domestic policy consumption and without an overarching strategy to achieve desired results. In addition, they fray relationships with allies who are essential to our long-term interests.
Finally, under two secretaries, the State Department has been hollowed out and left with absent or “acting” officials, in addition to facing massive proposed budget cuts, which Congress has fortunately rejected. A demoralized, disrespected State Department bleeding away officials with decades of experience is no way to beef up American influence and stature.
Essentially, as Rubin goes on to correctly point out, Trump thinks that he can run foreign policy the same way he ran his businesses and the same way he has implemented domestic policy, with a combination of what Rubin calls “lies, bluster and secrecy.” Additionally, while he initially started out with a foreign policy team that was made up for the most part by professionals capable of providing both good and cautionary advice when necessary, he has since gotten rid of the vast majority of those people in favor of toadies, yes-men, and people who seem to have been selected more due to their loyalty to Trump and to the Republican Party than their actual competence. This can be seen in his selection of people such as John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and Patrick Shanahan, whose chief qualification for the position of Secretary of Defense appears to be that he’s been a Trump loyalist. Given that this is the way he operated his business for more than 40 years, it’s hardly surprising, but given the impact it is likely to have on the long-term national interests of the United States, it is rather disconcerting.
In addition to the five elements that Rubin notes, I would also add that Trump’s foreign policy has consisted largely of spitting in the face of long-standing allies while coddling up to dictatorships and adversarial regimes in Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea. For the better part of the past two years, President Trump has spent a considerable amount of time driving a wedge between the United States and its traditional allies in Europe and also calling into question the integrity and resolve of the American commitment to the NATO alliance. He has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accords, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the nuclear deal with Iran, and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, one of the hallmarks of the end of the Cold War. In doing so, the President has helped Russian President Vladimir Putin achieve a goal that the leaders of the former Soviet Union could only have dreamed of accomplishing.
In addition to the fact that all of these moves and miscues clearly benefit only one man and one motion, they have already sent a message to America’s allies that the United States can’t necessarily be trusted on to stand by its allies. It’s only natural, then, that those same allies would suddenly become less eager to go along with requests from the United States that, in an earlier era. In other words, reactions like this from the Europeans are only natural given the past two years and yet another example of how the United States is already paying the price for the President’s foolish abandonment of traditional allies and cozying up to dictators.
To be fair, Rubin and I likely disagree on what specific policies the Administration should be pursuing. Based at least on her writing during the Obama years, Rubin is most certainly more of an interventionist than I would tend to be. That being said, her assessment of Trump’s foreign policy is, as I said above, largely correct. The evidence for this can be seen everywhere we look. The Russians and Chinese do not appear at all to be intimidated by anything this President has done and instead appear to be taking advantage of the power vacuums that they are helping to create around the world. North Korea has pulled back from its previously conciliatory tone and, just this weekend, resumed testing of short-range missiles that are a clear and present danger to our allies in South Korea and Japan. The Iranians aren’t at all intimidated by his decision to withdraw from the JCPOA or the recent military moves the United States. Our friends in Saudi Arabia are continuing their genocide in Yemen and still have not paid a price for their decision to murder a Saudi-American journalist in their consulate in Istanbul. While the world has avoided a serious foreign policy crisis over the past two years, the history of the past two years has not gone well for the United States and we have Donald Trump and his foreign policy team to thank for that.
“In addition to the five elements that Rubin notes, I would also add that Trump’s foreign policy has consisted largely of spitting in the face of long-standing allies while coddling up to dictatorships and adversarial regimes”
In other words, exactly what Republicans accused Obama’s foreign policy of being. Showing once again that the best way to understand Republican rhetoric is as a form of projection.
Particularly funny given that we now see that Trump is an amazingly bad businessman. For all his noise he vastly underperforms simple mutual funds. As I pointed out in a bit of snark, he turned 400 million in daddy’s money and various tax cheating schemes into repeated business failure, finally reaching the point where only Deutschebank – official bank to the Russian mob’s money-launderers – would touch him, while little old me turned the white shirt and black pants my daddy gave me into a business that’s generated millions in profits. And I, admittedly, have the money-managing skills of a sailor on leave.
Of course he can’t handle foreign policy, he’s an idiot. He’s an idiot dealing with foreign leaders who are either smarter or more strategic than he is, or most often, both. He is intellectually outclassed, the dunce of world leaders. He gets played like a violin.
I have to disagree. I fail to see anything that could possibly be called a “foreign policy”, just the incoherent whims and babblings of a man baby having an extended tantrum and trying to undo everything his predecessor accomplished because said predecessor said some mean things about him at a dinner in 2011, and even worse, people laughed. Everything trump does is simply to own the libtards, so his base can say a great big “Fuck You!!!”, which while aimed at a domestic audience is not a domestic policy either, it’s campaigning to his base’s lowest mores.
You may see some semblance of Republican foreign policy in some things this admin does but trump has very little to do with it. Those instances are just Bolton and/or Pompeo filling the void inside trump’s head with the usual GOP bogeymen and even then there is very little coherence in it beyond “Do what we tell you or we will beat you up!”
Just to echo the above, has anyone attempted to define Trump’s foreign policy? I haven’t seen anyone really make much of an attempt at it. It looks to me like he responds to activities in other countries based upon the applause he gets at rallies or what he hears on Fox or what his latest advisor tells him.
Steve
Trump’s foreign policy aim has been to create as many profitable opportunities for the Trump Organization, family and friends overseas as is possible, and he’s been a raging success at it, I’m thinking.
He’s closed down the State Department because they are all in a position to do something else, such as think about what’s good for the country and all that boring stuff.
@steve:
Trump’s foreign policy is: Look at me! Look at me talking to important people! Look at me being tough and manly! The details are filled in by Fox and Friends and whoever was in the oval office three minutes ago. Look at me doing stuff with my power! He has the same policy is your average poorly-raised six year-old in a room full of grown-ups: Look at meeee!
Worth noting that they were Russian missiles. Kim and Putin are laughing their asses off at the clown in the White House. They are getting all kinds of stuff that they want from the US, and paying absolutely nothing for it. World’s best negotiator…pfffft.
Also….right now the Dow is off over 700 points due to the Trump trade tariffs.
So Mexico is going to pay for that wall, and China is going to pay for the tariffs.
Wharton called, Donnie; they want their degree back.
@michael reynolds:
That’s not really a policy in any sense of the word.
Which is not to say you’re wrong.
The Orange Caligula’s. Foreign policy is attacking our Christian immigrants. Taking Christian babies from their heart broken mothers and throwing both into wire camp’s. He’s referring to our Christian neighbors that all speak European languages, celebrate Christmas and Easter, go to church every Sunday as aliens. What the hell? The very definition of anti christ. Trump and pence need an exorcism!!!!!
Ms. Rubin is making the mistake of measuring success by her standards rather than Trump’s.
Trump is ok with murdering journalists, and has no objection to the war in Yemen.
It’s a step towards creating a crisis that justified invasion.
He doesn’t believe in climate change.
It makes Bibi happy, and his voters happy. It’s not meant for anything more. Oh, it also pisses off liberals.
Half of the “failures” are just terrible goals being successful.
@Gustopher:
You’re leaving out the crucial factor of Trump’s evangelical base, who actually matter to him a lot more than the Jooz. It’s not an accident that the ceremony was led by John Hagee and Robert Jeffress.
@michael reynolds: nailed it