Trump’s chaos diplomacy is a lesson for the PM
His abrasive style gets results. So what might happen if the US president was in charge of Brexit?
There must be times when Theresa May looks at Donald Trump with something like envy. As she struggles to thread a way through the tangles and technicalities of Brexit, the American president appears to negotiate a trade agreement with Jean-claude Juncker in a matter of hours.
In talking to the EU, Trump never ceded his strategic advantage. His steel and aluminium tariffs, which gave him leverage over Juncker, remain in place. But the trade war has been called off, at least for now, with Juncker and Trump agreeing to work toward “zero tariffs” on industrial goods. The EU will even buy more liquid natural gas from America.
Britain may not have all the coercive means that the US can bring to bear against the EU, but what Trump has shown is that where there’s sufficient will, there’s a way to tame the Eurocrats.
The president even tweeted a photograph of Juncker giving him a kiss.
Trump’s approach is effective in so many of his diplomatic gambits because it is as direct as it is insouciant – as Juncker himself said after their White House meeting, “he doesn’t like those who beat about the bush”. He does not let the details tie him down like Gulliver. Instead, he thinks only of his own strength. This attitude has been exemplified by his steps toward, then away from, a global trade war. He announces tariffs, offers some unsystematic exemptions, then plots his next move based on the chaotic new circumstances he has created. If a rival such as China retaliates, he is always prepared to escalate. In trade negotiations, as in nuclear diplomacy with North Korea, Trump combines aggression, strength and a surprising degree of flexibility to remake the terms of debate.
The Prime Minister would not dream of trusting so much to instinct and luck. If Donald Trump were in charge of Brexit, he might well leave the EU before the questions that vex May and her Cabinet were settled. The Irish border? It might wind up as much of a mess as America’s airports after Trump’s sudden ban on travel from certain Muslim countries early last year. A Trump-style approach to the negotiations would probably see British exporters in much the same predicament as American agriculture is now, in need of assistance from the government to weather the troubles trade skirmishes have created.
But such agonies can be palliated until they can be cured, and they are in any case the price that must be paid for acting on the voters’ mandate. From tariffs to the Iran deal, whatever the consequences, Trump has done exactly what he promised to do (though he has not been as reckless as his critics charge – on Iran, for example, he stuck with the agreement for a good 15 months and gave Tehran a chance to be heard).
Theresa May, on the other hand, hesitates and dodges. She relies on avoidance and finesse, which does not mean she will come up with any better answers in the end. Her record so far indicates quite the opposite.
Trump views the world in terms of power and determination, not law or morality. He is not interested in textbook theories of free trade. He is only concerned with what cheap, predominantly Chinese goods mean for America’s workers and industrial base. China pursues its self-interest in trade, and America must do likewise if it is to remain a great manufacturing power.
Europe is not the primary target of Trump’s ire, but to the extent that the EU has accepted and exploited the unhealthy dynamic that America’s free-trade policies created, it has not behaved as an ally. Thus, Trump was willing to be as tough on Europe as on China, but now that the EU has shown a willingness to cooperate, he is quick to restore comity. Trump bends hostility to the service of stronger friendship, and he makes the chaos he creates serve as the basis for a better order.
He applies the same point of view to foreign policy. He has made clear that he has no intentions of engaging in the kind of wars for regime change that Obama or Bush waged. He is not a dove, and he has no qualms about using force, but he uses it without the idealism that leads to debacles like those in Iraq and Libya. And arguably, his brand of diplomacy backed by force holds more promise of breakthroughs – like the one achieved on the Korean peninsula.
Theresa May, alas, does not have at her disposal the power that Trump takes for granted. Nor does she have the courage in her convictions, or, some might say, the blind faith that Trump has in his instincts. She was herself a Remainer, after all, and is left to lead a great change that she herself would never have brought about.
In this, she is not just different from Trump, she is the anti-trump. That makes Brexit far more difficult than it has to be, and it means Britain will not have a smoother course than Trump’s America but instead may be on course to experience another populist revolt.