As the now unquestioned leader of the most powerful country and the richest economy in the world, how does President Trump see America’s role in global affairs? US allies in the East and West are all wondering.
A recent European Council on Foreign Relations policy memo provides an interesting analysis. It states that there are three major pillars to Trump’s foreign-policy thinking.
The first is that America is getting the short end of its deals with allies—such as with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato), where the US shoulders as much as 80 percent of the cost of US deployment throughout the European theater. The second is that the US’s approach to free trade has impoverished many American workers and, hence, weakened the US. The third is that with Trump’s apparent fascination—even admiration—of authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin, better relations with these leaders may be fostered and preferred over relations with allies.
Those insights are capsulized in Trump’s July campaign speech: “Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo”—pointing to an “America First” policy, and to the rest of the world, a downsizing of the US’s major role on the global stage.
In a recent New York Times op-ed, Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference, wrote that, while Europe must call for stronger transatlantic relations, it must hedge against “a possible shift in American grand strategy”—in part, by investing more in civilian and military capabilities and starting to pool and share defense assets.
Lindsey Ford, advisor to senior Defense Department officials, forewarns in a recent interview with Foreign Policy magazine, US allies in East and Southeast Asia may have to turn to themselves and each other for regional stability and security. Such assessment is more benign than the reality on the ground. Virtually all of the Asean countries are peeling away and veering toward China.
In the West, eastern European countries once under the Soviet Union, such as the Ukraine, the Baltic States, Georgia, etc., and now under the European Union, are fearing for their independent survival.
In the bloody civil war in Syria—where the worst act of inhumanity of man against man is committed daily—Russia’s Putin and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad resumed their deadly bombings. And that was reportedly a few hours after Trump and Putin talked over the phone.
Trump is turning the present world order on its head. He has rattled allies as he tries to discard historic security pacts, such as Nato and South Korea’s. Indeed, we cannot tell yet at this time what Trump’s foreign policy really is. It’s still largely a work in progress, without any centralizing theme or ideology. In the meantime, consequential activities and movements on the ground are taking place in Syria and elsewhere. The world’s order is in turmoil. And there is a heavy fog of uncertainty hanging over the planet.
E-mail: angara.ed@gmail.com.