As we look back at the last three years of Donald Trump’s occupation of the White House it would be so easy to concentrate solely on the damage he has done internally in this country. However, I believe that to a great extent that damage can repaired if he isn’t given another four years to make it permanent. However, it is in our dealings with other countries that the damage he has inflicted will take many years of hard work by future presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, to repair.
And the situation is getting worse. When Trump was new to the job, he was a businessman with no governmental and little international experience who had conned enough voters to get himself elected to the most powerful job in the world. Initially he relied, at least to some extent, on those in his administration with foreign affairs experience, including three Generals, Mattis, Kelly, and McMaster, and Rex Tillison, the former CEO of Exxon. They were often able to talk out his more dangerous impulses or simply didn’t carry through with his orders. Once Trump was comfortable in the job he replaced those senior advisors with “yes men” who only sought to do his bidding making him all the more dangerous.
However, even for from the start Trump showed a special affinity for dictators and authoritative leaders around the world. This is not something new with Trump. As a private citizen he praised the 1989 Tienanmen Square crackdown by the Chinese Communist leadership, so it is little wonder that he has refused to come out in support of the Hong Kong protestors. Trump helped to cover up the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi ordered by Prince Salman of Saudi Arabia. He betrayed our Kurdish allies in Syria in order to please Recep Erdogan, the would be dictator of Turkey. He has spoken of his love affair with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and his ongoing bromance with Vladimir Putin has caused many to strongly suspect ulterior motives.
At the same time Trump has gone out of his way to destroy our relations with our best allies around the world. Abroad his America First campaign is widely understood to mean “screw everybody else”. He has weakened NATO which has deterred Soviet and Russian aggression and keep the peace in Europe for over 70 years. he implied that its basic tenant that “an attack against one member is an attack against all” might not be honored by the United State in the future. He has supported Boris Johnson’s Brexit ambitions, the first crack in the solidarity of the European Union. The leaders of Canada, Mexico, France, Germany and many of our other European allies have come to the conclusion that Trump is both a joke and a danger to democracy around the globe. Leaders around the free world now view the United States as undependable ally at best.
Much of Trump’s bumbling of foreign affairs stems from his projection of his deep seated insecurity and sense of victim hood to our country at large. And it is by governed by his fixation on assuring his selfish self-interests at the expense of everything else.
After the destruction of World War II American leaders helped the rest of the world to rebuild and in the process remade many of our former enemies into our best allies. In administration after administration foreign policy was built around the belief that when the rest of the world does well, so does our country.
Well before he went into politics, Trump was broadcasting his belief that the foreign policies practiced by both Democrats and Republicans over those many years was naïve. He preached that the US should only look after its own selfish interests, and if those interest didn’t align with the interests of our best allies and friends, that was just too bad.
In essence he believed that we as a nation should behave in a totally selfish manner as he had done throughout his entire business career. His method of operation didn’t change in the White House. If anything, because of the power of his office he was able to demonstrate that he was fully capable of putting the security of the entire nation at risk to further his political objectives. I suspect that his attempt to shake down the president of the Ukraine by withholding critical military aid was only one of many of such actions that just happen to bubble up to the surface. Others will probably only see the light of day after he leaves office.
Trump also has so oversold his ability to negotiate. In the process he has conned himself into believing the that he is the best negotiator of all time. This mind set is a result of his narcissistic personality; he truly believes that he can manipulate anyone he encounters.
Early in his administration he pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership which included Asian, North American, and South American countries located around the Pacific rim, but specifically excluded China. The deal was not only aimed in expanding U.S. trade, spurring economic growth, creating new jobs, and lowing consumer costs. It was also key to promoting US strategic interests and limiting China’s push to expand its power and influence in the Pacific basin. After exiting the agreement Trump chose to use tariffs as a negotiating tool to try to brow beat the world’s second largest economy into submission. It hasn’t worked.
Compared to Xi Jinping’s savvy on the world stage, Trump is a rank amateur. While the tariff war has hurt both countries, Xi controls the media throughout his nation and has been proclaimed China’s leader for life. Unlike Trump he therefore faces littler internal opposition to his decisions and doesn’t have face reelection. Not surprisingly he has no intention of capitulating to Trump’s demands; he knows he can simply wait him out. The so called “Phase 1 agreement” on trade is little more than an accord to stop further escalations of the tariff war.
Trade wars are scary, but they pale in comparison to potential military conflicts. Trump thought he could charm Kim Jung Un into abandoning his nuclear weapons with his negotiating skills and his offers of personal friendship. Instead it was the young, inexperienced North Korean leader who took Trump for a ride. Kim never intended give up his nuclear weapons program which he and other Korean leaders view as their only guarantee that their regime will not be deposed and their lives forfeited. He was only hoping to reduce the sanctions on his country by playing along with Trump. From the start, everyone knowledgeable of the situation knew that Trump was deluding himself and vastly overestimating his ability to influence Kim. Currently North Korea’s nuclear and long range rocket delivery programs are more advanced than when Trump started his “love affair” with Kim and Korean denuclearization is still a fairy tale.
The results of Trump inserting himself forcefully into our relationship with Iran is even more dangerous. When Trump took office there was world-wide agreement that the Iranian situation was at least “manageable”. The Iranian government was still a bad actor seeking to expand its influence throughout the Middle East through its proxies which were known to operate as terrorists. However, at least they were a bad actor causing fairly minimal problems without the possibility of obtaining nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future. There was wide consensus by inspection agencies and the US intelligence services that the Iranians were scrupulously in compliance with the nuclear treaty which they had signed with Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the United States.
However, Trump thought he could negotiate a better deal. (No surprise there.) To the distress of every other country involved he pulled the United States out of agreement, reestablished the US sanctions which had been lifted as part of the treaty, and ultimately applied additional sanctions as well in what he called his “maximum pressure” strategy. The other counties that signed of the agreement tried to keep the it in place, but their companies that dealt with Iran are afraid of being sanctioned as well by the US. Consequently, the American sanctions have hit the Iranian economy hard.
However, If Trump thought the Iranians would come crawling to him with their tails between their legs begging to negotiate a new deal, he was sadly mistaken. Instead Iran responded to the Trump’s pressure by exerting their pressure of their own throughout the Middle East without directly confronting US forces. They attached mines to tankers navigating the narrow Strait of Hormuz, used drones to attack two oil refineries in Saudi Arabia, shot down a very expensive US drone which they claimed had violated their airspace, and seized a British oil tanker off of their coast. Then a rocket attacks by Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia in Iraq, killed a US contractor and wounded several US servicemen.
Throughout this entire time period Trump’s administration reacted by ratcheting up the sanctions on Iran and on high placed individuals within the Iranian government. Two days after the rocket attacks in Iraq, the US launched air strikes on Hezbollah targets in Iraq and Syria in retaliation. In response, protesters from Iraqi paramilitary groups broke into the outer perimeter of our embassy compound in Baghdad and set a number of fires. Four days later, under the direct orders from Trump, a US drone fired rockets into a small convoy on the outskirts of the Baghdad airport killing Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Republican Guard forces, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed Popular Mobilisation Forces militia in Iraq.
The angry Iranian government has vowed to seek “harsh vengeance” for the death of their top general and arguably the second most powerful man in their government. Their Republican Guard forces and their proxy militias throughout the Middle East are fully capable of exacting that revenge.
Just a few weeks ago there were large anti-government protest in Iran which the government put down by brutal means. Now the death of Soleimani appears to have united Iranian moderates and government supporters against the US. Iran then completely scrapped the 2015 nuclear treaty and is again committed to develop nuclear weapons. We lost over 4,000 American lives and spent $1.1 Trillion in Iraq only to see this assassination result in American military forces on the brink of being told to leave the country, leaving Iraq under Iranian influence.
Now we anxiously await to see what form the Iranian revenge for the death of Soleimani will take and, perhaps more importantly, how the Trump administration will respond. Many around the world fear that the situation will escalate out of control into an all-out war between Iran and the US. Such a conflict would spread throughout the Middle East, would send oil prices sky high, and would threaten economies around the world. Of course, the most disastrous result would be the loss of hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives including the deaths of members of our military. Civilian causalities, both in Iran, around the Middle East, and on oil tankers and other cargo ships in the Persian Gulf would be inevitable.
To date Trump’s foreign blunderings have been harmful to both to this country’s status around the globe and to the existing world order. This damage will be difficult to repair. However, Trump’s mistakes in dealing with Iran could have disastrous consequences. But what else could we possibly expect from a man who knew next to nothing about dealing with the rest of the world when he took the job, whose the attention span is that of 5 year old child, who refuses to spend the effort to educate himself, who fired everyone one of his staff who had the potential to protect him from his own worst impulses, and who’s mental disorders lead him to believe he and only he is the master of every situation.
Cajun 1/7/2020