Trump’s Foreign Policy and the Certainty of Uncertainty
On November 8, in a startling political upset, businessman and former reality television star Donald J. Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States of America, ushered to victory on the back of right-wing populism. Having never held elected office or served in the military, and so by most metrics the singularly most underqualified individual to ever shoulder the mantle of the American presidency, Trump doesn’t take office until 20 January 2017, giving the world plenty of time to speculate over what his tenure will mean for the global order.
While it’s difficult to ascertain exactly where on the foreign policy spectrum this president will situate his policies, or even whether he will have a coherent doctrine, extrapolation from his campaign remarks point to some stances and outcomes that are highly likely to materialize– outcomes beyond the obvious concern that a Trump presidency will usher in an era of instability not seen since the end of the second world war and do away with the liberal world order.
First, a Trump presidency will be predicated on uncertainty. In the postwar period, predictability has been a central tenet of US foreign policy, particularly in the arena of alliances and quasi-alliances. President Lyndon Johnson, in his address to the nation before America entered the Vietnam war, stated unequivocally that “Our power, therefore, is a very vital shield. If we are driven from the field in Viet-Nam, then no nation can ever again have the same confidence in American promise or in American protection.” This promise of predictable action has been vital to preserving the US’ role as global hegemon and guardian of the free world, and no president has attempted or even professed the desire to pivot away from this role, until Donald Trump.
The European Union is caught in the middle of this unprecedented quagmire. For one, the president-elect has repeatedly questioned the wisdom of using US resources to come to the aid of NATO members, especially in Eastern Europe, if they come under attack. The US’ promises likely will not reassure the Union anymore, which will be a dangerous loss for the US, since the EU has long been its go-to partner when undertaking international action. While Trump ostensibly does not want to wage wars to, say, plant the seeds of democracy and instead seeks to put “America first”, he does want to emphatically destroy the Islamic State, an endeavour that no doubt would benefit from multilateralism and European support.
Further, Trump has been stoking separatist fires even across the Atlantic, and vehemently supported Brexit and his far-right friends Nigel Farage of the UKIP party and Foreign Minister Boris Johnson. His win will boost far-right movements throughout the continent by illuminating by example a path to victory; a victory that, if won, will be a hit to US-Europe economic relations and which will lead to a fragmented and disunited Europe, ripe for Russian aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin is cognizant of this, and has been attempting to cut the EU off at its knees by steadily pumping funds into the campaigns of separatist leaders in Europe, including a 27 million euro loan to Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France.
Outside the EU, he has shown his indifference to the plight of strong allies like Japan and South Korea by suggesting the US would cease its commitment to provide protection in the case of an attack unless they pay more, and that they should arm themselves with nuclear weapons, saying, “they have to protect themselves or they have to pay us.” While early signs– such as his victory speech– do point to a more tempered Donald Trump than we saw during the campaign, and while he may recant his comments on increased proliferation, it is highly likely that the damage is already done, and Japan and South Korea’s threat-assessments regarding China and North Korea could lead to the world entering a period of renewed nuclearization and deterrence-spiral based instability. On the point of payment, both from these East Asian nations and from NATO: Trump could very well use demands of reimbursement that these countries cannot meet as a pretext for withdrawing from these alliances altogether– a drastic move and perhaps a radical proposition, but a possibility, given his longstanding disdain for a US alliance system predicated on guardianship.
Having alienated even the US’ (arguably) strongest ally, Saudi Arabia, by stating that, again, it should have to pay for US protection, Trump will have to reassure friends of the US– including Asian players such as Vietnam and Myanmar– of its continued commitment to them, lest they begin to seek increasingly stronger ties with the US’ great power competitors, China and Russia (a lá Philippines), or forego weighted blocs altogether.
Second, Donald Trump’s support and admiration for authoritarianism may destabilise the already meagre checks on human rights violations. The president-elect seems to put a premium on machismo, on those he views to be “strong leaders”, those who act unilaterally and project hard power, and so has said many a complimentary thing about Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Saddam Hussain, all leaders with a decidedly authoritarian bent. His lack of criticism for the state of human rights and humanitarian affairs in these leaders’ countries, unlike is customary for presidential candidates to dole out, points to a disturbing future trend. This fondness for authoritarianism, coupled with his advocacy for isolationist “America first” policies, could mean that Trump’s administration may not be the least bit interested in calling out aggression in Ukraine, or even aggression by China in the South China Sea, Taiwan, Xinjiang, and a number of other places. Further, he himself may undermine human rights in international law by legitimising torture. He has said that he “would support and endorse the use of enhanced interrogation techniques if the use of these methods would enhance the protection and safety of the nation.”
Not only have Trump’s views and his subsequent election destroyed the US’ prima facie credibility and sent disturbingly positive signals to authoritarian regimes, they have also dealt a major blow to American soft power. Coined by Harvard scholar Joseph Nye in 1990, the term ‘soft power’ connotes a nation’s potential to get what it wants through attraction derived from its culture, values, and policies. The US has, for the past few decades, stood for egalitarian and democratic values, shelter in the face of humanitarian tragedies, and the great American Dream of opportunity and innovation. It is the attractiveness of these principles and the life they represent that allows it to entice other countries or individuals to fall in line with its goals, often instead of using hard power– military and economic might– to do the same. However, the populist ire upon the shoulders of which Trump sailed to victory has shattered this perception. It has dimmed the illusion of unalloyed liberalism and equality that the US projected and instead uncovered to the eyes of a shocked world racism, xenophobia, and sexism. The hypocrisy inherent in an American leader threatening to refuse to accept the results of a democratic election– when the US has taken it upon itself to advocate for democracy the world over– has been exposed. The belief that anyone had the opportunity to be successful has been repeatedly crushed by Trump, the system characterised as rigged for the elites. The United States of America, and everything it has stood for in the last seventy years, has been blighted, and the world will never look upon it the same.
Another contributor to international instability under the Trump presidency will be the damage done to any diplomatic progress made by the international community in recent years. Perhaps the only three examples of such progress are the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Iran nuclear deal, and the Paris climate agreement, all of which Trump wants to make disappear. Not only is his rise an emblem of attack on domestic liberalism across the globe, his policies will undermine international cooperation, which is the bedrock of any functional and relatively peaceful global order.
Of course, the question that is preliminary to any analysis of Trump’s foreign policy is this– how much of it will really be determined by the man himself? Will there be a cohort of career politicians guiding the wheel instead? Well, for one, a now-disturbing amount of power to direct foreign policy is vested in the White House via the National Security Council and its head, the national security advisor, who runs the NSC on behalf of the president. John Podesta, most recently the chairperson of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, outlined the near-obscene power of the NSC in a 2008 memo sent to then president-elect Barack Obama, recently revealed by WikiLeaks. The positions of the secretary of state and defense can often be less influential than that of the national security advisor, as Henry Kissinger demonstrated during the Nixon administration. To further concentrate power in his own hands, Trump is looking at longtime supporters to fill the aforementioned secretary positions, and the Republican-majority Congress will be loath to obstruct Trump’s foreign policy maneuvers for fear of losing favour in his gargantuan support base– a lesson individual Republicans learned the hard way this past year.
In short, Donald Trump will have significant leeway to issue foreign policy directives and set the tone for international interactions, and to assume that he will not be able to deviate from traditional lines due to flimsy and largely theoretical institutional checks is a mistake. If there’s anything this election has taught us, it’s to never underestimate that which seems improbable.
