Trump’s latest visit to Europe shows his world view has matured since taking office
What is Donald Trump’s foreign policy trying to achieve? His second trip to Europe has left some observers confused. Does he hate Putin, or love Putin? Has he healed the rift with Europe, or exacerbated it? Is the UK at the front of the queue for a free trade deal, as he implied yesterday, or not?
We can be certain that Mr Trump is genuine in his enthusiasm to secure an agreement with Britain once it has left the EU. The UK and the US are both advanced economies, and the president has made no secret of his admiration for Brexit. It is another question whether the UK should want that deal to be completed “very, very quickly”, rather than carefully and comprehensively, but Theresa May can consider this good news.
It is even better that Mr Trump’s remarks were made on a trip that provided further evidence that he is not in the business of governing by soundbite, but rather through serious statements of intent. In fact, there is nothing particularly confusing about his foreign policy. Simply put, after eight years of American abdication from its global responsibilities, and a presumption by many that he personally spells the end of Western civilisation, the president has a balancing act to perform and he is learning on the job how to do it.
President Trump is not an instinctive Atlanticist. He has felt no compunction in ruffling European feathers (nor have they felt any compunction in squawking back). His previous speeches on Nato, for instance, showed a man aggravated with an alliance which he perceived to be a bad deal for America. His concerns about an aggressive Russia are far from absolute. Trump has little patience for the intrinsic value of anything, and a refusal to accept the status quo “because it’s always been that way” was one of his most attractive features to American voters.
This makes his speech in Warsaw on Thursday all the more remarkable. He gave a rousing defence of free people and markets in a nation intimately familiar with the fragility of those concepts. He also condemned Russian incursions into Ukraine and reiterated America’s commitment to Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which guarantees mutual defence among the Nato allies. He has finally discovered that his role as an apologist for God and country is compatible with his role as commander-in-chief of the United States and defender of the free world.
This is a positive change, indicative of how Mr Trump has matured on the job, and we should take him at his word. His transition from the blackand-white stump speeches of the campaign to a more nuanced understanding of governance is not unprecedented. Obama promised to close Guantanamo on his first day in office; yet it remains open today, a reminder that, once in the Situation Room, national security comes before rhetoric. Those on the other side of the aisle should not crow about this reversal. A Europe free and prosperous is in the interests of America. This prosperity cannot exist without peace, and Nato (backed by American troops
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Friday’s meeting with Putin should not be understood as a contradiction to all this. It would have been foolhardy to snub the Russian president, who presides over half a continent and enjoys extraordinary influence in the Middle East. Trump’s foreign policy can be boiled down to a fairly brutalist form of realpolitik. While it may offend the Left, it is tremendously predictable: as long as Mr Putin is relevant to the broad interests of the American people, Mr Trump will engage with him. In any other place and time, this would be called diplomacy, not indecision.
Where does this leave Britain? In the year since the referendum, the UK has faced a similar charge sheet to America since Trump’s election: a nation of parochialists retreating from the world. Beating the rap is simple enough. One simply has to engage.
The British government is actively engaged in preventing economic isolationism; negotiations on new trading arrangements with the EU and other countries have begun, and as Trump indicated, there is every chance that they will be successful. But similar seriousness of purpose now needs to be brought to bear on geopolitical matters. Further investment in Nato would be a good start. It is investment in one’s own security, but it is also investment in the defence of democratic principles and free markets.
But Britain has another role to play, too: as a bridge between the United States and Europe. In a post-Brexit world, long after Mr Trump is out of office, it will be to Britain’s advantage to have these two bastions of liberal democracy on speaking terms.
Strip out the bribes, and it’s only delusion fuelling young people’s cult-like support for Jeremy Corbyn. His anti-growth economics won’t make us richer. His proappeasement foreign policy won’t make us safer. His “kinder, gentler politics”, exposed as dangerous nonsense by the Left’s hounding of moderate Labour MPs, won’t make Britain nicer. He’s not even pro-EU.
But the young’s delusions run deeper than these superficial fantasies, which should fall away as soon as they make contact with tax, family responsibility and two-day hangovers.
First is the widespread assumption that having an education is in itself sufficient to expect a good life. This manifests itself in an extraordinary sense of entitlement, particularly in the public sector, that three years of university should necessarily deliver a healthy wage. This may have been true 40 years ago, when the number of middle-class jobs was rising, so a grammar school kid could easily segue into a profession via university. But the structure of the economy is changing: even lawyers are being made obsolete by algorithms. Some young people, recognising these shifts, start their own firms or retrain. Others merely nurture their own disappointment.
In any case, the education system is only now being turned around by a renewed focus on excellence. Some universities are world-class; many are not. Tuition fees may push students
‘The UK has faced a similar charge sheet to America since Trump’s election: a nation of parochialists retreating from the world’
‘Amazing innovations are free, technology is advancing, choice has expanded. It’s baffling anyone would want to destroy the system that’s created all this’
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