Trump has long been suspicious of allies
U.S. president views crucial relationships as transactions to be won
WASHINGTON— When U.S. President Donald Trump hit Canada, Mexico and the European Union with steel and aluminum tariffs last week, the response from his critics was unanimous: this is no way to act toward your allies.
“This is dumb,” said Republican Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, summing up the prevailing sentiment in Congress. “Europe, Canada and Mexico are not China, and you don’t treat allies the same way you treat opponents.”
Trump disagrees with such arguments. Because he thinks allies are also opponents.
It’s not that he hasn’t thought about America’s ally relationships. It’s that he has a different view of those relationships than almost everybody else in Washington.
He views them as a series of zero-sum economic transactions, in which one country must win and the other must lose, rather than as mutually beneficial long-term partnerships to be nurtured.
And, contrary to the overwhelming view of economists and scholars of international relations, he thinks America has consistently been the loser.
Trump has changed his positions on numerous political issues, but his view that allied countries are “taking advantage” of the U.S. has been consistent for decades. In a 1990 interview with Playboy, he said, “Our ‘allies’ are making billions screwing us.” He referred to Japan, West Germany, Saudi Arabia and South Korea as “socalled allies” by which the U.S. was being “ripped off so badly.”
“They have no respect for us, because they’re getting a free ride,” he said of Japan. “Of course, it’s not just the Japanese or the Europeans — the Saudis, the Kuwaitis walk all over us.”
Trump has used the same language this year. In February, talking about “countries that take advantage of the United States,” he said, “Some of them are our so-called allies, but they’re not allies on trade.” He went further in March, accusing allies of hurting the U.S. more than its enemies have.
“Even our friends took advantage. Our friends are friends. They’re wonderful people, but we said, ‘You can’t do that anymore. Those days are over.’ Frankly, our friends did more damage to us than our enemies. Because we didn’t deal with our enemies, we dealt with our friends, and we dealt incompetently,” he said.
Heather Conley, deputy assistant secretary of state dealing with northern and central Europe during the George W. Bush administration, said Trump’s unusual view of alliances may have come from his business experience.
“There are no long-term allies in business, just temporary business transactions that must be won until something different is needed,” said Conley, now director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Typically,” Conley said in an email, U.S. foreign policy views an alliance “as an amplification of American power and strength. President Trump believes it ‘rips off’ America and reduces U.S. power. It is a very different world view from previous U.S. leaders in the postWorld War II era.”
Trump’s words and acts are expected to make for an awk- ward G7 summit Friday and Saturday in Quebec. The other six members are dismayed with him over the tariffs, and their finance ministers issued a weekend statement of condemnation.
It’s not only G7 allies that have been alarmed by Trump’s money-centric view of U.S. alliances. Last year, he set off a furor in South Korea by declaring that the country needed to cover the $1-billion cost of a missile defence system the U.S. was installing in the country. His national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, quickly announced that the U.S. would keep its promise to pay.
Trump has broken with allies on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, on the Paris climate accord and on the Iran nuclear deal. His latest ally-alienating decisions on trade have come as he has offered praise for the leaders of some traditional adversaries, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. (Trump has also criticized both in sharp terms.) He announced the tariffs the day before he held a friendly White House meeting with a top North Korean official.
“It is indeed head-exploding that many of America’s longtime democratic allies are in crisis mode (with the U.S.) on the same day Trump announces a summit with world’s last totalitarian,” Aaron David Miller, a former veteran State Department adviser on the Middle East, said on Twitter.
Approval of U.S. leadership has plummeted under Trump in almost every allied country except for Israel, according to Pew Research global polling. Ben Rhodes, a former foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama, warned on Twitter of “severe and lasting damage to America’s standing,” saying the U.S. is acting “for no reason other than Trump’s ego and impulses.”
Other Trump critics suspect the direct or indirect influence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose interests are served by discord between the U.S. and allies. Trump’s campaign is under investigation over its relationships with Putin’s government, which is widely thought to have intervened in the 2016 U.S. election on Trump’s behalf.
“Two years ago, when I wrote about Putin wanting Trump to win, never could Putin have imagined that a President Trump would be declaring our closest allies national security threats. Trump delivering well beyond what Putin had ever hoped for,” Michael McFaul, a U.S. ambassador to Russia un- der Obama, said on Twitter.
Trump supporters, though, see a president taking necessary stands his predecessors were too feeble to attempt.
Randall Schweller, a rare international relations scholar who supports Trump, said the death of the Soviet Union and the decline of Daesh (also known as ISIS) mean “the U.S. doesn’t need its allies like it used to.” Now, he said, the president is free to stop allies from coasting on the benefits provided at a cost by a dominant America.
“Simply put, Trump no longer sees the necessity of keeping allies happy at the expense of the American people, so he’s trying to solve the free-rider problem,” Schweller, a political science professor at Ohio State University, said in an email. “The bumper-sticker line to U.S. allies: No more Uncle Sugar.”
Allies do not appear to have figured out an effective way to deal with such a president. The Playboy interview suggests he will test them to the end.
“I will demand anything I can get,” he said 28 years ago. “When you’re doing business, you take people to the brink of breaking them without having them break, to the maximum point their heads can handle — without breaking them.”