Reality show? Trump’s hair-raising foreign policy proposals,
When it comes to international relations, the Republican candidate’s ‘promises’ seem dangerous but doomed. So what happens if he’s in the White House?
The U.S. presidential candidate’s foreign policy proposals are hair-raising. Olivia Ward on what might really happen if Donald Trump gets elected, IN6-7
It’s no secret: Donald Trump doesn’t like Mexico. And China is a giant bloodsucking monetary squid. Europeans are military freeloaders. Muslims make him reach for his (lawfully concealed) gun. As for North Korea, maybe he and Kim Jong Un will talk — or he’ll make sure the dumpy dictator “disappears.”
Foreigners of all sorts seem to be anathema to Trump. He has declared NATO obsolete and called for cuts in American funding. At the same time, he’s all for flexing U.S. military muscles against China and Iran and any other country that gets in the way of Making America Great Again.
So bizarre are Trump’s foreign-policy pronouncements that even many supporters dismiss them as just another reality performance aimed at winning the ratings that will deliver the keys to the White House. His foes are less confident.
“Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit to be president and commander-in-chief,” said presumed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Sen. Angus King of the Armed Services committee agrees. With “one person deciding the fate of civilization” in minutes in the event of a nuclear crisis, he told Bloomberg, that person shouldn’t be The Donald.
But in politics, as in life, you can’t always get what you want — even if you’re Donald Trump. And when the blare and blather die down, he will be up against the harsh realities of passing policies that will have vigorous opposition both in the United States and beyond.
The U.S. system of checks and balances, the power of America’s oligarchs and lobbyists, the fickleness of public opinion and the Twittersphere could militate against some of his more outlandish declarations.
Nevertheless, Trump’s reliance only on his own “gut feeling” is especially worrying to his critics, including queasy Republicans.
“Trump has no foreign policy history and few clearly stated plans,” says Ian Brem- mer, whose firm, the Eurasia Group, publishes an annual list of top geopolitical risks. (“Unpredictable leaders” is No. 7.) Trump has also alienated the Republican foreign-policy establishment and appears to have no experienced policy guides.
That’s made worse by Trump’s switchbacks on countries and leaders, from bile to bromance. And by his dizzying spin from embracing “unpredictability” in international relations, to emphasizing the “stability” of U.S. policy.
“The biggest risk comes from a crisis that no one saw coming,” says Bremmer in Politico Magazine, “whether from China, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, North Korea, a cyberattack, terrorists or something else.” Even without a crisis, an “improvised foreign policy based on the element of surprise” could increase the risks of miscalculations on all sides, along with the chances that the U.S. will be provoked.
In The Nation, Heather Hurlburt of the New America think tank says that Trump has only three core diplomatic principles: to “squeeze more out of other countries”; to adhere to international law and military discipline only if it suits his purposes; and that “most alarmingly, large swathes of humanity are essentially subhuman.”
Is it all smoke and mirrors? Does Trump really view international relations as a series of zero-sum deals? Would he bring in any cooler heads to dial down the temperature on his foreign-policy rhetoric if he gained the presidency?
They are questions that will keep world leaders chewing their knuckles until the November election, and possibly beyond. A U.S. president can be reined in by Congress and the Supreme Court. But he or she also has wide powers of diplomacy, trade, immigration policy and military action.
“It’s hard to relate a lot of Trump’s statements to reality,” says William Hartung, director of the Washington-based Center for International Policy.
“But it’s the sort of risk you don’t want to take.”