TRUMP POLITICKING BLAMED FOR MIXED US FOREIGN POLICY

▶ Speakers at Abu Dhabi Strategic Debate say that linking foreign affairs to domestic issues divides voters

US strategy in the Middle East has become increasingly muddled under President Donald Trump and contributed to polarisation on Middle East foreign policy, analysts said.

Danielle Pletka, a leading analyst at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, said extreme reactions to the Trump administration’s policies were leading to a dangerous domestic environment in the US.

“Over the past two years, I find my Democrat friends associating themselves in the Middle East with Iran and my Republican friends associating themselves with Saudi Arabia, Israel and the UAE. That is not a good way for us to conduct foreign policy,” Ms Pletka said at the Fifth Abu Dhabi Strategic Debate yesterday.

Creating political camps based on foreign countries’ endorsement of certain policy patterns in domestic US politics is a huge risk as the idea grows that each side of the political system has a different set of “global allies”, she said.

The transfer of power between Democrats and Republicans also prompted Mr Trump to implement unilateral decisions cannibalising his predecessor’s policies, creating what Robert Malley, president of the International Crisis Group, called antibodies, in the political system.

Mr Malley said Mr Trump’s attempt to erase former president Barack Obama’s work created an environment in which his support for a certain country prompted Democrats to support that country’s enemies.

Ms Pletka said US presidents, although each with their own set of foreign policies, needed to return to a set of principles upon which to base their decision-making.

This would require them to break away from the recent trend of the president campaigning on promises of disengagement from the rest of the world to prioritise domestic politics.

“When presidents ignore foreign policy, foreign policy will come to find them,” she said.

But Mr Trump is unique in the unpredictability of what he claims are his foreign policies, she said.

This lack of coherence left countries around the world incapable of assessing US reactions to their regional politics – something which then went on to create even more unpredictability.

But even in decisions that rarely have global or regional ramifications, policymakers in Washington have begun to politicise issues abroad as ammunition for use in domestic political battles.

“If we are standing against Iran – and that, in fact, is US policy – then we do need to be less confused about how we move forward.

“The fact that we keep stepping here, and stepping there and stepping all over the place is an indication of that confusion,” Ms Pletka said.

Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said that although Mr Trump was often outspoken, his words rarely reflected realities found in the US and abroad.

“While it is true that the president is a lightning rod of controversy, one of the things that differentiates the United States is that President Trump alone cannot make foreign policy.”

Mr Rubin said the Trump administration had changed the perception of how the president functions in the US political system and could set a dangerous precedent for leaders in the future.

That we keep stepping here, and stepping there and stepping all over the place is an indication of that confusion DANIELLE PLETKA American Enterprise Institute