North Korea, Iran. ‘Imperial’ Trump is out of his depth
FAR team Trump on foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster. Rarely in modern times has there been a US administration so totally at sea in terms of handling international diplomacy.
Over the last few days and weeks we have seen Washington pull out of the Iran nuclear deal. We have witnessed it open a US embassy in Jerusalem, a move that flies in the face of international concern and condemnation, and now we have seen Mr Trump’s historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, kicked into touch.
The best Team Trump could come up with in response to the North Korean fiasco was for a White House official to complain of a “trail of broken promises” and that the North Koreans “stood us up” on proposed meetings in Singapore to discuss the logistics of the summit. What did team Trump think the meeting with Mr Kim was going to be?
According to Mickey Bergman, the vice president of the diplomacy thinktank Richardson Centre for Global Engagement, and someone who has been engaged in the back channel or Track II talks between the two sides, the latest developments in the North Korean negotiations is “a classic Trump move”.
In cancelling, Mr Trump, he believes, might be hoping Kim will come begging for a summit, making the terms more favourable for Washington. But, as Mr Bergman says, such tactics might work in real estate but are a far cry from what is required in diplomatic real politik.
In the early stages of his presidency Mr Trump’s unpredictability might have been something of an asset, keeping other countries guessing as to what his next move might be. Since then it has done nothing but add to a growing list of foreign policy failures.
But the president’s unpredictability in itself cannot explain the dire state of US foreign policy. So just what are the other factors that have led to it being at best the embarrassment it is and at worst a potentially dangerous loose cannon?
First, there is no escaping the man himself. As former George W Bush speechwriter David Frum said in The Atlantic magazine a few days ago: “The ‘bark orders, impose punishments, and bully friends and enemies into surrender to the mighty, imperial me’ approach to foreign policy is unlikely enough to work, even when applied to relatively weak states like North Korea and Iran.”
When you apply this approach to the entire planet, allies, adversaries alike, Mr Frum continued, then it “produces only rapidly accelerating failure”.
But if Mr Trump himself is a diplomatic liability, then those he has chosen to have around him lately have compounded the problem. To begin with he has “wrecking ball” John Bolton, his National Security Adviser – a man who could make enemies in a hippie love in.
Mr Bolton has a history of provocative, often bellicose pronouncements. Typically these come in the form of calls to bomb countries, notably Iran and North Korea. This is a man who gave his unwavering support, before and after, for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. These past weeks Mr Bolton has resorted to past form, working to set impossibly high expectations for the North Korean summit.
For Mr Bolton, to “war-war” has always been better than to jaw-jaw.
As far as North Korea is concerned he seems willing to settle for nothing other than Mr Kim’s men showing up to Singapore to turn over the keys to Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.
As if Mr Bolton was not trouble enough for US foreign policy in the eyes of the world, alongside him is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. This too is a man who, not content with Washington tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, insisted recently the US would aim to “crush” Iran with economic and military pressure unless it changes its behaviour in the Middle East – in effect the announcement of a policy of regime change in everything but name.
With men like Mr Bolton and Mr Pompeo calling the shots it’s hardly surprising US foreign policy has reached the chaotic and bellicose place it has.
In his scathing article Mr Frum makes the point that US presidents are normally surrounded by elaborate staff systems to help them. They have people, advisers, experts there to help them think through their words and deeds. Team Trump does not engage is such things, because Mr Trump does not like or cannot cope with this way of working.
Far from being the great deal maker he professes to be, Mr Trump has no grasp of how the diplomatic world operates. On purely practical terms alone his team have been seriously found wanting.
So often the key to successful diplomatic negotiations start before getting in the room, with preparation that gets the team talking from the same page. This is something team Trump seem incapable of or unwilling to do.
Then there is the ensuring there are no leaks of sensitive positions, something near impossible with a president on social media and Twitter.
Last but far from least, as Ilan Goldenberg who served as chief of staff to the special envoy for Israelipalestinian negotiations recently said, high-stakes diplomatic negotiations are already hard. It makes no sense to make them harder as the team Trump does by failing to get simple, basic things right.
Iran, North Korea, Syria, Israelipalestine – the only thing certain is that the mistakes will not end there.
Team Trump is far from finished yet in making the world a more volatile and dangerous place.
Trump is far from finished making the world more volatile