Trumpism, Foreign Policy, and a World on Fire.

Trumpism — a phrase coined to define, describe, and thereby institutionalize the policies and leadership positions of the 45th President — is severely lacking, most clearly, in the area of foreign policy. This fact is underlined by the open letter authored by over one hundred Republic foreign policy experts condemning Trump’s foreign policy proposals during the 2016 Republican primary. It is, in fact, very difficult to define Trumpism as foreign policy, though it could be characterized as a mix of isolationist-bilateral-protectionist-jingoism. There is no mastery of soft power in this administration, only a disdain for alliance organizations, a heavy reliance on personal relationships with leaders and international power brokers (Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, etc.), and a retreat to populism when all else fails. Simply put, the world is much more dangerous than at any point in modern history, and Trump’s foreign policy seems ill-suited to the alleviation of those dangers.

This also seems to be the opinion of career diplomats resigning their posts at the U.S. Department of State while voicing serious concern and frustration over the Trump administration’s approach to diplomacy, the damage it is doing to America’s influence in the world, and the impotence of Trumpist foreign policy to “avert global disaster.” Middle East policy is an easy place to being a critique of a President’s foreign policy. While Trump’s floundering Middle East policy presents the clearest example of the failure of Trumpism as foreign policy, the primary issues that Trump must confront are 1) a fragmenting Europe, driven by Russian antagonism and an emergent nationalism; and 2) the emergence of China as the solitary global power. Rather than advancing American interests on the international stage, Trumpism seems to fuel these potentially devastating realities.

Today, Europe is fragmented, divided primarily between supporters of the European Union as a political institution and those who hate the E.U. and see it as a threat to Europe itself. A critical driver of anti-Eurozone sentiment is the emergence of far-right wing neo-nationalist movements. European fragmentation is further exacerbated by Trump’s disdainful comments against NATO, which parallel the anti-Eurozone positions of many European nationalist movements, as well as Trump’s reluctance to penalize Russia — the very reason for the existence of the NATO alliance.

Trump’s anti-NATO position fits perfectly into a contemporary Russian foreign policy strategy: as NATO seeks to limit the conventional military threat Russia poses to the continent, Trump undermines the alliance and stokes Russia’s renewed military ambitions. The Russian military threat is limited from a global standpoint, but devastatingly significant regionally, as evidenced by Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Further, as U.S. intelligence agencies reporting on Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election show, Russia is waging nonmilitary warfare using mass disinformation campaigns designed to undermine vulnerable nation-states in its sphere of influence and ultimately erode the NATO alliance, which it views as the primary hindrance to a new Russian empire. As Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti stated in testimony before the U.S. Senate Armed Forces Committee: “Russia seeks to change the international order, fracture NATO, and undermine U.S. leadership in order to protect its regime, reassert its dominance over its neighbors, and achiever greater influence around the globe.”

Instead of understanding this new Russian aggression and NATO’s role in curbing it, Trump has dismissed NATO as a drain on the U.S. defense budget, though this position is belied by the fact that U.S. defense spending in Eastern Europe has tripled during his administration. Apart from advancing the anti-Eurozone sentiment, Trump’s anti-NATO position could result in a new nationalist militarism throughout Europe, especially on the Eastern front — the Russian sphere of influence — where military readiness will be increased as a result of an assumed decline in U.S. military presence on the continent. To Trump’s credit, the United States should seek improved relations with Russia, an invaluable partner in Central Asia and the Middle East, but this Russo-American relationship cannot be improved through deteriorated relations with other Eurasian allies.

The wave of populist nationalism sweeping Europe is driven by decade-long experiments in austerity and immigration reforms. An early sign of the growing nationalist sentiment came in 2010, when German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who many see as Europe’s moderate leader, told members of her Christian Democratic Union party that Germany’s multicultural society had “utterly failed”; a statement about the future of German immigration policy, offered by one of Europe’s “moderate” leaders, that sounds more conservative and xenophobic than progressive and modern. Though the majority of Europe has resisted the nationalist trend, the continent has grown more polarized as classical liberalism grows older and neo-nationalism gets younger, and now these movements cannot be ignored. In places like Austria where the Prime Minister, Sebastian Kurz, formed a coalition government with the Freedom Party, started by former Nazis over half a century ago, which gained twenty-six percent of the vote in the most recent elections, it is clear that nationalism in on the rise. The success of Trump’s American nationalism legitimizes the emergence of far right-wing European political movements — like the Freedom Party in Austria, Swiss People’s Party in Switzerland, Fidesz in Hungary, or the National Front in France — which have been clear about the new apartheid(s) they intend to establish, the xenophobic domestic programs they will impose, and the neo-imperialist foreign policy agendas they will pursue should they gain more political power and broader social acceptance. And these nationalist sentiments, in Europe and the U.S., are ripe for exploitation by the new Russian warfare.

A fragmented, more isolated, nationalist Europe is also not in the interest of the United States given the emergence of China, and its attempt to assert itself as the sole international superpower. To understand how China has positioned itself to take on this mantle, one need only examine the history of the United States during the second decade of the last century. The U.S. emerged as a superpower during the interregnum between two world wars because of its position as a creditor nation, with most of war-torn Europe as its debtors. The Dawes, Young, and Marshall plans were critical to advancing the dominance of the U.S. post-war political-military regime, a regime based on foreign debt holdings and technological advancement. Today, the United States’ primary creditor is China; the Chinese currently hold $1.2 trillion in U.S. debt or one-fifth of the U.S. debt owned by foreign nations.

China is perhaps the one place where Trump’s foreign policy is hardest to define, its interests and goals unclear, and its capacity to achieve goals in America’s national security interest uncertain. Despite criticizing China as a currency manipulator on the campaign trail (a position he has since reversed), Trump continues to lavish praises on the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping(who manages to be more nationalist than Trump) and highlight their “special” and “very good” relationship. Perhaps this is due to China’s role in the U.S.’s attempt to engage the North Korean regime on the sensitive issue of nuclear armament. Trump, while cozying up to Jinping, has been very vocal about his feelings with regard to Chinese culpability on the Korean matter and a softer diplomatic tone toward China was primarily the position and strategy of outgoing Secretary of State Tillerson, who, before a trip to Asia noted: “The Chinese have been very clear with us that we share the same objective, a denuclearized Korean Peninsula…”

Chinese ownership of U.S. debt is not necessarily a bad thing for the United States, though it provides China with economic and political leverage, which could be used to shift the balance of power in China’s favor. As Trump ratchets up an international trade war through tariffs on steel and aluminum imports and new tariffs specifically aimed at China, he may ultimately be sealing the fate of the U.S. economy and U.S. leadership in the world. As trading partners move away from the U.S., as a consequence of tariff impositions, the value of the dollar could decrease. A decreased, devalued dollar could result in a decreased value of U.S. debt held by creditors, including and especially China. That devalued debt could either be called-in or trashed in a sell-off which would further decrease the dollar’s value and send the U.S. economy spinning out of control. News of Trump’s proposal to impose $60 billion in tariffs on China makes this scenario one to monitor closely.

Trump’s firing of Tillerson, the shift of Mike Pompeo from the CIA to the State Department, and his nomination of conservative hardliner John Bolton for National Security Director are not a mere departure from a softer diplomatic position, but an embrace of a more bellicose and militant approach to Foreign Policy. Should Trump shift course and embrace a more hostile position toward China he could very well jeopardize any progress being made on the North Korean issue and encourage China to use the leverage it has due to its holdings of U.S. debt, which would only confirm China’s power regionally and internationally.

With the United States in decline, China is strongly positioned to take up space in the global power vacuum, partly due to a role it would play in American decline, partially because of its geopolitical relation to the emergent Asian economies the U.S. abandoned in its withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. China’s role in the ouster of Zimbabwe’s former President Robert Mugabe and increased activity on the African continent is a sign of China’s own sense of its importance as a global player. Nonetheless, China remains an indispensable partner in the ongoing conflict on the Korean peninsula and a threat to U.S. economic and political competitiveness. The Trump-Jinping relationship may be very special, but, like Trumpist foreign policy, it is not necessarily good at all for the U.S. economy or its standing in the global community.

The firing of Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, by President Trump adds to the drama and media intrigue of the 45th president’s administration. The recent firing signals significant policy disagreements between the White House and State Department, and perhaps a White House in greater disarray than previously assumed. One thing is clear, the leadership transition at Foggy Bottom indicates an unwillingness on the part of the president to come to terms with the harsh nature of the current global order or his own complicity, the impotence of Trumpism as foreign policy, in advancing the conditions which stand to dismantle that order.