Trump’s Foreign Policy Was a Failure

One of the most maddening things about this year's presidential election is how  many Americans have amnesia when it comes to Donald Trump's four years in the White House.  They cling to lower prices before the Covid-19 pandemic to claim things were better under Trump, yet ignore that inflation was a global problem, ignore the shocking corporate greed that fueled energy and grocery prices, and, worse yet, ignore what Trump's economic proposals would mean in terms of reigniting inflation.  Tariffs will be paid by American consumers, not foreign governments, and mass deportations of migrants and immigrants would drive up prices by decimating workers in many industries, not least agriculture prices.  Similarly, they ignore the adverse impacts of more massive tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations that Trump promises. Seemingly, these people ignore all these things simply because Trump continues to legitimize their racial and religious hatreds.  I continue to be shocked by "friends" who back Trump and have tossed morality on the trash heap.  And then there is the likely serious damage a second Trump regime would inflict on America's standing in the world and its basic security.  A piece in Politico by a career foreign service officer lays out the failures of Trump's time in the White House and the danger a second Trump regime poses to the nation.  Here are excerpts:

Former officials of the Trump presidency appear to be on a campaign to whitewash his administration’s foreign policy record.

In recent weeks and months, there’s been a flood of articles and interviews from them that present versions of the same argument: Donald Trump’s foreign policy legacy is better than you think. The most prominent are by Robert O’Brien, Trump’s last national security adviser, and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, but there have been others . . . .

The common purpose appears to be twofold: reassure a broader audience that a second Trump presidency would be more mainstream than many fear, and, by extension, to present his first administration as one of successes which restored American leadership on the international stage.

Having served almost three years in the Trump administration as ambassador and senior adviser to the secretary of State, I can say that both contentions are wrong.

The promise is that a now-experienced “Trump the Realist” will be even better for America. O’Brien, using Orwellian doublespeak, suggests we could see “a Trumpian restoration of peace through strength” and seeks to recast in glowing terms a dark period for American foreign policy that did lasting damage to global stability and America’s leadership in it.

[I]it’s important to remember the reality of what Trump’s foreign policy actually was and actually did. And to recognize that nothing in the interim has changed for the better in his worldview. In a vastly more complex global landscape than when he was first president, a second Trump term could do real harm to America’s international economic, diplomatic and security interests.

At least initially, the Trump administration’s approach to foreign policy wasn’t just the product of an unorthodox president, it was also a response to an unsettled period of American history. As I have written elsewhere, by the time he was elected in 2016, the U.S. had spent 15 years consumed by the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the country was also undergoing significant political, economic and social polarization exacerbated by the lingering effects of the 2008 recession. Globally, U.S. dominance was being challenged by emerging middle powers as well as Russia and China.

[H]owever, there were the serious negative consequences of the policies the Trump administration pursued.

On the economic front, the decision to drop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, which was the strategic counterweight to China’s expansion in the Asia-Pacific region, shook the confidence of our East Asian allies and reduced our influence in the region; the TPP’s successor excludes the United States as does the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which includes East Asia, Australia — and China. It is not surprising that Chinese exports to the region have soared. Trade frictions with some of our closest partners arose over the arbitrary imposition of tariffs. Negotiations on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union came to an end as concerns about protectionist America deepened, concerns which are very much alive about a second Trump presidency.

Trump administration policies also undermined our strategic rationale for working inside broader security collectives. This weakened commitments to the alliances that had kept the United States secure. Trump’s transactional approach to NATO and open questioning of the alliance’s Article 5 commitment to mutual defense lessened faith in America’s steadfastness. In East Asia, Trump’s insistence on greater burden-sharing with South Korea and Japan pushed the bilateral relationships near the breaking point. Allied concerns have been resurrected by the prospect of a second Trump administration.

The list goes on. A complex relationship with Mexico was reduced to one issue: immigration. Trump’s exploitation of Ukraine for domestic political gain in the U.S., and pulling out of arms control agreements with Russia, may have helped give Putin the impression that there would be no consequences for an invasion of Ukraine — which he subsequently launched. Abandoning the nuclear agreement with Iran in 2018 corroded any leverage the U.S. might have in Tehran . . . In Afghanistan, Trump’s order to accelerate the complete withdrawal of all U.S. forces after he lost the 2020 election was not implemented by his military commanders. But it surprised allies, and almost certainly emboldened the Taliban as they prepared to take Kabul in 2021.

Key allies in Europe and East Asia began to re-think whether close ties with the U.S. could be sustained and, with the possibility of Trump’s reelection, are adopting a wait-and-see approach. African and Latin American nations increasingly realized they factored even less in American foreign policy calculations than they had in prior administrations. The withdrawals from multilateral institutions diminished U.S. influence on climate change, human rights, nuclear proliferation, trade, and in mobilizing a response to Covid-19. Jan. 6 cast doubts on America’s status as the standard-bearer for world democracy.

At the end of his four years in office, Trump had frayed both America’s alliances and the international rules-based order that was still largely in place when he took office. Rather than look to the U.S. as the ultimate arbiter of a fairer global order, Washington was now seen by many countries as another great power to be balanced against its rivals. And, critically, America’s strategic adversaries saw opportunities they could now exploit.

On the economy, Lighthizer proposes to build on Trump’s first administration by weakening the dollar and imposing a 10 percent tariff on all imports into the United States, which could have serious ramifications for both the American and global economies. On China, Trump’s advocates, including O’Brien and former State Department special representative Dan Negrea, pocket Biden’s already robust policies on China, and propose, among other things, cutting off all commercial ties with China, preparing for war in the Taiwan Strait, pursuing regime change in China and resuming nuclear tests.

Given the record of his first term, there is no need for a crystal ball to discern what a reelected President Trump’s priorities would be. He would return to the destructive, nationalist, inward-looking, transactional policy of his first administration — except he is far readier now to pursue it. A second Trump administration would also seek to completely politicize the security and foreign affairs agencies and departments, a process that was well underway in the time I served as senior adviser to Pompeo.

To be fair, O’Brien and company may genuinely believe the former president they served achieved great things — but we can’t let them fool the rest of us in this most consequential of presidential election years.