The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Trump embraces pillars of Obama’s strategy
White House warns Israel to not expand Jewish settlements.
President Donald Trump, after promising a radical break with the foreign policy of Barack Obama, is embracing key pillars of the former administration’s strategy, including warning Israel to curb construction of settlements, demanding that Russia withdraw from Crimea and threatening Iran with sanctions for ballistic missile tests.
In the most startling shift, the Trump White House issued an unexpected statement appealing to the Israeli government not to expand the construction of Jewish settlements beyond their current borders in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Such expansion, it said, “may not be helpful in achieving” the goal of peace.
At the United Nations, Ambassador Nikki Haley declared that the U.S. would not lift sanctions against Russia until it stopped destabilizing Ukraine and pulled its troops out of Crimea.
On Iran, the administration is preparing a set of economic sanctions that are similar to those the Obama administration imposed just over a year ago. The White House has also shown no indication that it plans to rip up Obama’s landmark nuclear deal, despite Trump’s withering criticism of it during the presidential campaign.
New administrations often fail to change the foreign policies of their predecessors as radically as they promised, in large part because statecraft is so different from campaigning. But the Trump administration’s reversals were particularly stark because they came after days of tempestuous phone calls between Trump and foreign leaders, in which he gleefully challenged diplomatic orthodoxy and appeared to jeopardize one relationship after another.
Trump, for example, made warmer relations with Russia the centerpiece of his foreign policy during the campaign, and European leaders were steeling themselves for him to lift the sanctions that they and Obama imposed on President Vladimir Putin after he annexed Crimea. But on Thursday, Haley sounded a lot like her predecessor at the U.N., Samantha Power.
“We do want to better our relations with Russia,” Haley said in her first remarks to an open session of the U.N. Security Council. “However, the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions.”
Similarly, Trump presented himself during the campaign as a stalwart supporter of Israel and sharply criticized the Obama administration for allowing the passage of a resolution last month at the Security Council that condemned Israel for its expansion of settlements.
“While we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement, “the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.’’
The statement noted that the president “has not taken an official position on settlement activity.” It said Trump would discuss the issue with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when they meet Feb. 15, in effect telling him to wait until then.
Emboldened by Trump’s support, Israel had announced more than 5,000 new homes in the West Bank since his inauguration.
Trump’s shift came after he met briefly with King Abdullah II of Jordan on the sidelines of the National Prayer Breakfast — an encounter that put the king, one of the most respected leaders of the Arab world, ahead of Netanyahu in seeing the new president. Jordan, with its large Palestinian population, has been steadfastly critical of settlements.
The administration’s abrupt shift also coincided with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s first day at the State Department, and the arrival of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in South Korea on his first trip. Both men are viewed as potentially exerting a moderating influence on the president and his cadre of White House advisers, though it was unclear how much they had to do with the policy shifts.
With Iran, the administration has indisputably taken a harder line than its predecessor. While the Obama administration often looked for reasons to avoid confrontation with Iran in its last year in office, Trump seems equally eager to challenge what he has said is an Iranian expansion across the region, especially in Iraq and Yemen.
In an early morning tweet on Friday, Trump was bombastic on Iran.
“Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile,” he wrote. “Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!” In the second tweet, he said wrongly that “Iran was on its last legs and ready to collapse until the U.S. came along and gave it a life-line in the form of the Iran Deal: $150 billion.”
Still, the administration has been careful not to specify what it meant when the national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, said Wednesday that Iran had been put “on notice” for its missile test and for the arming and training of the Houthi rebels in Yemen.