America’s clout has waned during Trump’s first year
One year ago this weekend, Donald Trump used his inaugural presidential speech to issue what he called “a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital and in every hall of power”. “From this day forward, it’s going to be only America First,” he declared. “America First.” The world winced and waited with bated breath. What would this blunt assertion of US self-interest mean?
Twelve months on, some of the biggest shoes have yet to drop. The president has not launched the trade war with China that he had threatened, for example. Nor has he retreated into isolationism; there are more US troops in Afghanistan now than a year ago, and Trump has kept up the fight against Daesh.
But his mistrust and rejection of international agreements and institutions, from Nato to multilateral trade deals, from an accord to limit greenhouse gas emissions to a pact to check Iran’s nuclear programme, has transformed America’s status. Historically a global leader, Washington today is an outlier on many key issues. And only 22 per cent of the foreign public trusts the US president to do the right thing in international affairs, the Pew Research Center has found.
“Trump is eroding institutions, trust, and alliances,” says Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting firm. “The US role in the world will be dramatically lessened, and some of that will never come back.”
And with no other player strong enough to step up to America’s traditional responsibility for overseeing the international order, nation states large and small may be tempted to follow Washington’s example and pursue their own narrow interests, regardless of the costs to others.
That could be dangerous. “Competing individual national security policies do not create international security,” worries Manuel Lafont Rapnouil, who runs the Paris office of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
In many parts of the world, the daily practice of US foreign policy has changed little over the past year. In East Asia, Washington’s alliances with Japan and South Korea are still strong. The US still seems intent on maintaining its hegemony in the Pacific — drawing India and Australia into its strategy to contain China. And though Trump pulled America out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership — the regional trade deal that was the economic pillar for that strategy — US trade with Asia-Pacific countries is still vigorous.
On North Korea, while Trump indulged in noisy, provocative tweets about “rocket man” Kim Jong-un and the size of his nuclear button, Washington followed the orthodox diplomatic playbook. The US went to the United Nations, won approval for stiffer sanctions, and leaned on Beijing to influence its ally, just as previous administrations have done.
In Africa, the US has little clear policy beyond stepping up the Obama administration’s moves to increase Washington’s engagement in counter-terrorism operations in Mali and the Sahel region. In Syria, Trump has maintained Obama’s policy of fighting Daesh, but not on the ground. In Afghanistan, he has boosted US troop numbers. And the new US national security and national defense strategies merely sharpen the previous administration’s view of China and Russia as strategic rivals whose threats need to be countered.
Trump has also seemed to be at odds with America’s longest standing allies on many issues — including the Paris climate accord; the Iran nuclear program deal, on which he has threatened to renege in the teeth of opposition from every other signatory; and moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a policy rejected by almost every other country in the world.
On none of these controversial issues has the US president sought to build a supportive international coalition, or even an understanding with his partners. His “take it or leave it” style displays few traditional elements of leadership.
Trump’s lack of appetite for global leadership, some say, has left the field open to US rivals. “The president’s single biggest impact on the world is the extraordinary opportunity he has given China to gain economic influence” in the world, says Bremmer. “The US has been losing credibility for some time; Trump has taken that and run with it.”
Washington’s shrinking role in the world and Trump’s tolerance for autocrats has been welcome to others besides China; and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte won the US president’s blessing for a deadly extra-judicial campaign against alleged drug dealers.
Historically a global leader, Washington today is an outlier on many key issues. Only 22 per cent of the foreign public trusts the US president to do the right thing
In the long term, this trend could have far reaching implications, suggests Xenia Wickett, head of the US and Americas programme at Chatham House, a London-based think tank. The growing complexity of world affairs — and former President Barack Obama’s policy of “leading from behind” — as one of his officials put it, meant that “America was a necessary but not a sufficient actor” in world affairs, says Wickett.
“By the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, America may end up not being a necessary partner either, as other countries step up,” she predicts.
This trend has undercut not only US standing in the world, but Western soft power generally, Wickett adds. “Trump’s pursuit of American interests to the exclusion of others’ interests has had a long-term impact on those who had looked to the West as something to emulate.”
US allies “have got rough waters ahead for the next few years,” says Wickett. “We’ll find it very, very difficult to make progress together. But the fundamentals of the transatlantic relationship are very strong; it is not breaking down.”
That relationship will survive, she says. “And what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” — The Christian Science Monitor