Trump foreign policy is spinning into chaos
No one is in charge, and we’re in a scary free-fall
If we take a moment to pull ourselves away from President Donald Trump’s efforts to suppress a report that he claims exonerates him, we might notice that U.S. foreign policy has spiraled completely out of control.
Our trade war with China continues, for no other reason than that the president does not understand how the international economy works. After two splashy but vacuous summits that never should have happened, the North Koreans continue to press ahead with their nuclear program. Meanwhile, Trump’s clumsy ditching of the Iran deal has achieved the miracle of making a terror-supporting regime seem like the aggrieved party. The Iranians are now threatening to resume parts of their nuclear program that would put them closer to potentially making a bomb — as the White House stares dumbfounded, though anyone who can think more than 10 seconds ahead would have seen this coming.
After a promise to restore U.S. standing in the world, Trump has blundered into conflict with our competitors, insulted our allies, and generally made America a laughingstock. Why is this happening? Who’s in charge?
The easy answer is to blame it all on national security adviser John Bolton. But this is unfair. Bolton doesn’t know what he’s doing, either. From Iran to Venezuela, he is indulging a set of atavistic reflexes — a predilection for confrontation, a belief in the utility of intervention, a disdain for negotiated solutions, and a hatred of treaties and international institutions. There is no more a “Bolton Doctrine” than there is a “Trump Doctrine.”
The more frightening answer is that no one is in charge. The president has no obvious interest in national security and foreign affairs. Even if he wanted to direct a more coherent policy, there’s not much of a team left to direct. In those few times when Trump gets involved, it is mostly to contradict his own administration, whether on intervention in Venezuela, forces in Syria or sanctions on Russia.
Russia is a particularly galling example of the free-fall. When Trump inexplicably felt the need to call Russian President Vladimir Putin and discuss the Mueller report, Putin — in a kind of reverse Monroe Doctrine — made sure to remind the president of the United States to keep his nose out of Venezuela. (This from the man who, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, persuaded Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro to stick around just as he was about to leave for Cuba.)
Any other U.S. president would have then reminded Putin that his country has a gross domestic product somewhere between Florida and Brazil, that Venezuela is in Latin America, and that maybe the Russians should think about ceasing their aggression against their neighbors. Instead, Putin made clear he wants the incoming president of Ukraine pressured to honor agreements with Russia — a brazen act of chutzpah with Russian troops occupying Ukrainian territory. The message to Trump: “Tell that guy that I want him to observe the accord I am violating.”
Meanwhile, the USS Abraham Lincoln is heading for the Persian Gulf. And while North Korea hasn’t tested a long-range missile capable of hitting the United States since 2017, it is firing off the type of short-range missiles “that will start the war,” as weapons expert Melissa Hanham told Reuters.
Trump has avoided a major conflict through luck and the opportunism of our enemies. The Russians, Chinese, Iranians and others have not yet forced us into a crisis, remaining content instead to see the United States floundering about on its own. There is no need, after all, to destroy American power and prestige if the White House is willing to do all the same damage by itself.
But this will not last. The United States, and the international system it helped create, cannot continue indefinitely along a path of incoherence and ignorance. Trump might not even be in office when the reckoning comes. The question is whether we will be ready.