Trump legacy
He has undermined the prestige of his country and damaged international cooperation. A global threat.
World wars and great depressions don't just come out of nowhere; They occur because old restrictions on bad behavior are weakened. (…) In relatively stable times, the world can cope with problematic leaders without lasting damage. It is when a series of disruptive factors converge that those in power can unleash the perfect storm.
These words are from a recent essay by Margaret MacMillan, one of the world's leading authorities on the history of international relations. MacMillan warns us that the largest conflagrations between countries sometimes arise as the result of stumbling, negligence, rhetorical excesses and misinterpretations. Preparing for the worst can heighten tensions and lead to precisely what you want to avoid, but turning a deaf ear to red flags can lead to the same dramatic end. The art of international politics often lies in finding the right point between the two extremes. This is where the great statesmen differ from the dangerously mediocre.
In our age, however, the most powerful leader in the world is oblivious to these dilemmas. Sitting behind the imposing Resolute desk in the Oval Office, President Trump has much more immediate concerns. His gaze is fixed on his navel. His shoulders are immune to the weight of history. His hands wrap around the mobile phone from which he is preparing to launch his next incendiary tweet. And in the meantime, the echoes of those naive predictions that will soon be four years old are still heard: "he will moderate when he gets to the White House", "he will leave behind the divisive rhetoric", "he will end up adopting a presidential behavior". Nothing is further from reality.
Trump has not adapted to the presidency, but has adapted the presidency to him. The so-called "adults in the room" have been leaving their close circle, finding themselves replaced by yes-men who are dedicated to singing his praises, rather than tempering his instincts. On his side, the military power began to view its commander-in-chief with greater suspicion, to whom disparaging comments about those killed in combat are now attributed. Just 12 years ago, the Republican Party was led by John McCain, a Vietnam veteran who was a prisoner of war for more than five years. Today, the same party is totally turned on a tycoon and celebrity who despised McCain for being captured, and who apparently was reluctant to honor him after his death in 2018. Of course, Trump managed in his youth not to serve in the Army not once.
A president of the United States does not have to be a staunch militarist (in fact, it is preferable that he is not), but he does have to understand that there are causes to serve that are greater than oneself. It soon became clear that he did not meet even this basic requirement. In his conception of his power there are no conditions or restrictions. Any triumph or praise is always legitimate, while any defeat or criticism always stems from a conspiracy against you. It is not surprising, then, that Trump has not made an unequivocal commitment to respect the outcome of the impending elections; if he loses them, of course he is.
His presidency has been as toxic internationally as it has been domestically. It is true that he has not started any war, but he has peered over numerous cliffs, creating new cracks and widening others that have long been brewing on the global stage. In this sense, the president represents the prototype of "troubled leader" to which MacMillan refers, and a potential second term would carry a high risk of forming that dreaded "perfect storm." Drawing on some excerpts from his inauguration speech in 2017, let us proceed to examine the main vectors of his reckless and extravagant foreign policy, as well as domestic priorities that relate to it.
Having identified significant pockets of resentment in the United States, Trump has set himself up as the standard bearer for "the losers of globalization" and "the forgotten people," promising to revitalize sectors of the US economy - such as manufacturing - that have suffered the impact. of offshoring. It is estimated that, between 1996 and 2004, the income of white men without a college education in the United States fell by 9%. Some of them have been seduced by the nativist instincts of the Republican president.
Rhetoric aside, the tangible results during Trump's tenure have been rather poor, even before the US economy was seriously affected by the COVID-19 crisis. And it is that he has not managed to counteract other structural factors that are behind the destruction of manufacturing jobs in the United States, such as automation. His fiscal policy has not been particularly beneficial to the working classes either, while the richest 1% have enjoyed sizable tax cuts. Add to that recent revelations from The New York Times about the meager tax returns he has filed over the years. In order to hide the multiple contradictions between his populist discourse and his plutocratic tendencies, the president has sought scapegoats abroad. On the one hand, he has proposed to stop immigration from what he contemptuously classified as "shitty countries" and to open the door only to those who, in his opinion, can contribute to American society. The call to build a wall with Mexico was one of his workhorses during the 2016 campaign, although in practice progress has been modest.
On the other hand, Trump has embraced the "economic nationalism" sponsored by Peter Navarro, one of his main advisers. The greatest obsession of his Administration has been to eliminate the US trade deficit and the large national debt. The failure of the company has been absolute: both the deficit and the debt of the United States have increased since 2016, and the prospects for the end of this turbulent year 2020 are even worse. The protectionist policies that the government began to implement in early 2018 - through major tariff booms - have fallen on deaf ears, also impacting on American businesses and consumers. Of all the bilateral trade deficits the United States has, the largest — by far — is the one it has with China. The "trade war" that the United States started has done little to reduce the deficit with China in the exchange of goods, which is the specific fact that irritates Trump the most. Instead of repatriating value chains that passed through the Asian giant, tariffs have generally done nothing more than displace them to other countries with low production costs.
Trump, the unilateralist
We will strengthen old alliances and form new ones, and we will unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will completely eradicate from the face of the earth.
In the late 1960s, President Richard Nixon coined the madman theory: intimidate your adversary into believing that you are an irrational leader willing to do anything and you will get the concessions you seek. Where is the downside? In that it is practically impossible to cultivate alliances with this type of approach, and more so if you use it indiscriminately. Trump has fallen into this error in his clumsy attempt to emulate Nixon, and the result has been as expected. His "America First" has become more of an "America by itself."
His first foreign policy decision was to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Agreement (TPP), which was in the ratification phase. This treaty was promoted by his predecessor, Barack Obama, with the aim of forging commercial alliances on both sides of the Pacific and putting pressure on a China that was left out of it. Trump's withdrawal pointed to the paths his foreign action would follow: the United States would only pursue bilateral agreements and try to deal with the burgeoning China on its own.
Its effort to distance itself from agreements promoted by Obama has been systematic. The two most notable achievements of the former president in the international arena - the Paris Agreement on climate change and the nuclear deal with Iran - are now in serious trouble, after the United States turned its back on them. Democratic candidate Joe Biden has promised that, if elected, the United States will immediately return to the Paris Agreement, and will comply with the nuclear agreement as long as Iran does the same. It would be two excellent news, although it would not mask the fact that Donald Trump has dealt a serious blow to the credibility of the United States.
International organizations have also been in the crosshairs of the current president, from the WTO - whose rules and mechanisms he has undermined in his trade crusade - to the UN and its agencies. In 2018, the president appointed John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the United Nations, as his national security adviser, who once proclaimed that the UN offices in New York had 10 plants to spare. Bolton gave the final push for the United States to abandon the agreement with Iran, ignoring a unanimous resolution of the Security Council, and exploiting the hegemony of the dollar to impose abusive secondary sanctions on third countries for complying with that resolution. Bolton was also one of the instigators of the American withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council. The former ambassador's trajectory in the Trump Administration was turbulent and relatively short. His tendencies were even too extreme for the president's taste. However, he had already orchestrated the US withdrawal from UNESCO before Bolton arrived, and announced the withdrawal from WHO after he left.
Trump has reinforced some of America's traditional alliances, as he promised in his inauguration speech. Israel is the most obvious example. On the contrary, transatlantic relations were muddied as soon as Trump entered the presidency, as a result of his reluctance to sign the NATO mutual defense clause. He insists that both the Atlantic Alliance and the European Union serve for European countries to take advantage of the United States, which represents a real insult to the history of both organizations. Not content with this, he has led sounded rudeness to his allies in the framework of the G7, and has done very little on his part to safeguard the relevance of the G20. Today, in the midst of a global pandemic, we miss the time when these intergovernmental forums were operating at full capacity.
Most of the supposed international successes that he has been boasting have come from unilateral and effective actions. These include the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in early 2020 and the operation that ended a year ago with the life of the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. Neither one nor the other offer lasting solutions to the threat of radical Islamism, although it is true that the Islamic State has not only lost its founder, but also the territories it controlled in Syria and Iraq. Instead of rewarding the decisive role of the Kurdish militias in the fight against the Islamic State, the president proceeded to abandon them to his fate.
An effective foreign policy requires consistency, patience and strategic vision. This is how the United States forged, for example, the great arms treaties of the Cold War, and those that followed. True to his desire to break the deck, Trump has been dismantling these agreements one by one, without proposing viable alternatives.
Trump, the illiberal
We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather let it shine as an example for everyone to follow.
The image he projects is tarnishing the prestige of the United States as a whole. Much of it has to do with the choice of him itself, interpreted as a symptom of the deep social fractures that run through the country. But Trump is both a consequence and a cause. His willingness to mold the Government in his image and likeness - which has suffered not only the State Department, but also others such as the Justice Department - has damaged the reputation of the country's institutional model. In addition, his constant attacks on the media have undermined one of the characteristics historically associated with the United States, such as freedom of the press.
He has also shown himself willing to ignore the outrages of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It all started with Russian interference in the 2016 elections, on which the Trump Administration has not stopped questioning or misrepresenting the conclusions of the CIA (again) and special counsel Robert Mueller, trying to divert attention at all costs. . It would be wrong to think that Trump entered the presidency on the mere whim of Putin, but it is also wrong to underestimate the democratic risks associated with growing exposure to hacking and misinformation. There are signs that the pattern is repeating itself in 2020, and it is not surprising: Trump has not even raised his voice about the recent poisoning of Russian opponent Alexei Navalni, using a nerve agent whose nature points to Kremlin involvement.
When he has seen fit, however, he has not hesitated to raise the banner of human rights. The president has denounced the abuses that occur routinely in countries that he has in his sights, such as Iran, Venezuela and China. Of course, these abuses deserve unequivocal and strong international condemnation. But invoking human rights selectively - something that, to tell the truth, is not entirely new - detracts from the credibility of the United States, especially when the president lavishes lavish praise on such reprehensible leaders as North Korea's Kim Jong-un.
During these four years, the Trump Administration has been carried away by blind obsessions, has set unaffordable goals and has deviated from logical patterns. In addition, the values that are often attributed to the United States have been extremely diluted, if not directly demolished. In appearing for the second time before the UN General Assembly, Trump dubbed his foreign policy doctrine "principled realism." The verdict is clear: it was neither one thing nor the other.
Trump, the transactional
America will start winning again; to win like never before.
Running a business is not the same as running a country. However, the president makes no distinctions. His peculiar way of understanding politics corresponds perfectly with his peculiar way of understanding business. According to him, agreements in the private sphere always have winners and losers, and that has led him to also interpret international relations as a zero-sum game.
Driven by an indestructible confidence in his negotiating talent, and supported by the economic weight of the United States, he has sought to raise the temperature to bend the will of other countries. However, he has ended up coming face to face with reality: the first is always easier than the second. In the case of North Korea, Trump's volcanic threats, followed by unusual friendships with Kim Jong-un, yielded no tangible results. In the case of NAFTA (the trade agreement with Mexico and Canada), the renegotiation that he forced led to very modest tweaks, until Democrats demanded a broader review in exchange for the ratification of the new agreement in Congress. In the case of Israel and Palestine, the strategy of tightening the screws only on the Palestinians, and tempting them with economic incentives, made it impossible for the "deal of the century" to take hold. A month ago, the Trump Administration found a consolation prize in establishing diplomatic relations between Israel, on the one hand, and Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, on the other.
The case of NATO deserves a separate paragraph, as it perfectly illustrates the transactional nature of Donald Trump. The president is not the first to demand that the other countries of the Atlantic Alliance spend more money on defense. But it does in ensuring that countries whose spending does not reach 2% of their GDP "owe money" to the United States. This fallacious reading suggests that he is less concerned with NATO's health than with one of its enduring ambitions: increasing sales of US military equipment. Any initiative by the EU aimed at strengthening its strategic autonomy and sharing resources - something much more useful than fetishizing spending figures - has been rejected by the Trump Administration.
Certain international agreements, on the other hand, are considered by the president of the United States as transactions from which he hopes to obtain a direct personal profit, as confirmed by the scandal with Ukraine that provoked his impeachment. The transcripts that came to light reveal that Trump proposed an illicit quid pro quo to President Zelenski: unlocking a military aid package in exchange for Ukraine investigating, among other things, the activities in the country of Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Trump was finally acquitted by the Republican-majority Senate.
While accusing others of conflicts of interest, and claiming to strive to root out corruption in Washington, he has expressly refused to disengage his presidency from his private interests. According to a recent investigation by The New York Times, his properties in the United States and abroad have become nodes in an apparent network of influence peddling.
Trump, the ephemeral?
In many ways, Donald Trump's has been an unprecedented presidency in American history. For those of us who have been fortunate enough to experience the country's many virtues first-hand, and to deal with his extraordinary diplomats, it is shocking to see how much of his international credibility is crumbling. The shock wave from this collapse has washed away any hint of strategic trust among great powers, and has bruised our global governance structures.
An electoral victory for Biden would help the United States recover abandoned commitments, reconnect with its Western allies, and rediscover a more rational policy. However, expecting a return to the world of yesterday would be as naive as it was to expect Trump to moderate. Even if he ends up a single-term president, many trends that have been sharpening since 2016 - such as the increased emphasis on protecting domestic industries, and trade and technology tensions with China - are here to stay. And neither should you romanticize the past: polarization had been ingrained in the United States for decades, and the world led by Washington was never as orderly as it is now claimed.
However, Biden would not delve into any of the main facets that have characterized President Trump's policies. On the contrary, a reelection of the latter would inflict likely irreversible damage to American democracy and international cooperation, at a time when we face enormous global challenges such as the current pandemic, climate change and emerging multipolarity. The only advantage would be that his outdated ideas and his personal excesses would no longer take us by surprise. After all, Donald Trump doesn't need anyone to portray him. During these four years, he has done it alone.
