PRESIDENT KEPT WORLD ON EDGE
FOREIGN APPROVAL OF U.S. LEADERSHIP PLUMMETED FROM 48% TO 30% IN 2017
Donald Trump came to office threatening to tear up trade deals, extort payment from US military allies, end the Iran nuclear accord and build a wall on America’s southern border.
He ended his first year still contemplating a strike on North Korea, angrily cancelling a planned visit to old ally Britain and reportedly using a vulgar term to refer to African countries.
From day one until day 365, much of Washington’s foreign policy community has been aghast and international supporters of rules-based multilateral diplomacy dismayed.
But one year on from Trump’s inauguration, the liberal international order remains more or less intact — though Trump’s antagonistic style certainly has not travelled well.
According to a Gallup poll released on Thursday, since Trump took office on January 20 last year world approval of US leadership has plummeted from 48 to a new low of 30 per cent.
But Trump was not elected to impress foreigners: his slogan was ‘America First’ and he hired oil executive Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State to build a foreign policy around it.
Many of the more exotic planks on his programme have been forgotten or cut down to size, but there has been forward movement on some key dossiers left open by his predecessor Barack Obama.
The terrorist group Daesh has been driven from its last urban strongholds, a strategy to confront Iran has been launched and Washington is turning up the pressure on North Korea.
Could it all turn to disaster, as many experts fear?
Of course — but so far so good, says Jim Jeffrey, a former senior diplomat and adviser to George W. Bush’s White House.
“The basic problem with this guy in terms of his foreign policy is that his behaviour is unorthodox,” Jeffrey, now a fellow at the Washington Institute, said. “It’s the unpredictability,” he argued.
“It’s not a minor thing if you’re running a global security system based on credibility. But, so far, he hasn’t done much damage to the international order.”
It was on climate change that Trump came closest to disappointing the entire world. He left the door open, just a crack, to return to the Paris Accord — under which 190 countries agreed measures to limit global warming — but only if America gets a looser deal.
Still, Trump’s move remains symbolic of what observers now call the “withdrawal doctrine,” under which the US president ceded his country’s leadership or even membership in several multilateral projects.
For America’s allies, for former Obama officials and for a good chunk of the Washington foreign policy establishment, the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is a landmark of modern diplomacy.
For Trump, it is the “worst deal ever negotiated.”
Under the accord, Iran gave up or placed under UN inspection much of its nuclear programme — lengthening the “breakout” time it would take to quickly develop an atomic weapon.
Many in Washington — and in France, Saudi Arabia and Israel — agree it was a mistake to leave Iran’s ballistic missiles and regional interference out of the deal.
Hawkish voices in lobby groups and Congress encouraged him to “decertify” the deal, but his advisers persuaded him not to reimpose sanctions and torpedo it altogether.
Another Trump campaign promise that sent shivers through the world’s foreign ministries was his boast that he would move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Occupied Jerusalem.
Many expected him to abandon the idea once he was in office and aware of the likely furious reaction in foreign capitals to a move that could kill hopes of Israeli-Palestinian peace.
In fact, to general consternation, Trump went ahead and ordered Tillerson’s State Department to start looking out for land on which to build a new mission in the divided city.
After a few days of protest, reaction in the Arab world was relatively muted, but US-Palestinian relations have plunged to new depths and a renewed peace process appears unlikely. —
this president’s different, and so everybody had to understand that this is going to be different. now that we’re a year into it, i think most of foreign leaders have become rather accustomed to it