International Organizations And Multilateral Agreements
The Trump administration pursued unilateralist policies abroad in alignment with the “America First” policy.
Trump was more adversarial to the European Union than his predecessors, regarding the union more as an economic competitor than a partner in foreign affairs. During his 2016 election campaign, Trump said of the EU, “the reason that it got together was like a consortium so that it could compete with the United States.” U.S. foreign policy experts such as Strobe Talbott and Amie Kreppel regarded this assertion as incorrect, emphasizing that though the EU was established in part to rebuild the European economies after World War II, it was not created specifically to compete with the United States and that, in fact, the U.S. government initially approved of the EU’s creation.
In May 2017, Angela Merkel met with Trump. Trump’s nationalist sentiments had already strained relations with several EU countries and other American allies, to the point where after a NATO summit, Merkel said that Europeans cannot rely on United States’ help anymore. This came after Trump had said the Germans were “bad, very bad” and threatened to stop all car trade with Germany.
The Best Offence Is More Offence
On 3 October, the Trump presidency was already swept up in an impeachment inquiry. The probe stemmed from an alleged effort to use US foreign aid to force the government of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden. But, as Trump knows, the best offence is more offence and so he had an idea. He marched out to the White House lawn and told the assembled fake news horde there that, beyond Ukraine, China should also investigate Biden. Given that trade negotiators from China were headed to Washington a week later for high-level talks aimed at ending US-China trade war, this move might seem to offer China some welcome leverage in a difficult negotiation. That notion gained traction when it emerged, only a few hours later, that Trump had discussed Biden and another Democratic presidential contender, Elizabeth Warren, in a June phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping, while also agreeing not to bring up the anti-government protests in Hong Kong. The normally reliable Senator Lindsay Graham noted that asking China to look into Biden, that was stupid. Nobody believes that China would be fair to Biden, Trump, me or you, or anybody. Bad idea. Also, crazy.
A Look Back At Four Years Of Big Ambitions A Handful Of Successesand Many More Failures
Stephen M. WaltForeign Policy
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A lifetime agoJanuary 2017I sat down to assess outgoing U.S. President Barack Obamas foreign-policy performance. Obama inherited a global financial panic and two unsuccessful wars, behaved with exemplary poise and dignity throughout his two terms as president, and achieved several clear foreign-policy successes. Yet despite having voted for him twice, I concluded that in foreign policy Obamas record was mostly one of failure.
Now, as President Donald Trumps single term staggers to a chaotic and undignified close, its time to perform a similar evaluation. Having run for office calling U.S. foreign policy a complete and total disaster, was Trump able to right the ship of state and chart a better course? Compared to other countries, did Americas power, prestige, and global influence rise on his watch? Or does Trumps handling of foreign policy call to mind his bankrupt casinos, the Trump Shuttle, Trump University, or other failed business ventures?
So how did this all work out? Although Trump can claim a few foreign-policy successes, his overall record is dismal. Americas adversaries are more dangerous than they were in 2016, the United States is weaker, sicker, and more divided, relations with many U.S. allies are worse, and any aspirations to moral leadership that Americans might have harbored have been badly tarnished.
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Trumps Foreign Policy Doctrine Of Uncertainty
Donald Trumps foreign policy is a matter of continuous controversy and intense scrutiny. This interest stems from the fact that the arena of international relations and the field of American foreign policy are witnessing significant alterations as a consequence of the actions of the Trump administration. The objectives of this article are to identify the defining characteristics of Trumps foreign policy and to assess their faithfulness to traditional and modern-era foreign policy schools. The analysis puts the nature of Pax-Americana and US exceptionalism face to face with the assumption of a post-American world. It also examines the Trump Doctrine as what Trump himself described as a brand new foreign policy . Thus, this article reflects on the extent to which Trump is establishing a new school of American foreign policy.
Major Foreign Policy Doctrines and Schools
A presidential doctrine is a constant practice of a particular political ideology which can be defined as,
a set of ideas, beliefs, values, and opinions, exhibiting a recurring pattern, that competes deliberately as well as unintentionally over providing plans of action for public policy making, in an attempt to justify, explain, contest, or change the social and political arrangements and processes of a political community .
Last but not least, Mead shifts his focus to the realist and isolationist Jacksonian School. It is,
Detecting Trumps Foreign Policy Doctrine
A Trumpian World of Uncertainty
Back To The Jacksonian Tradition
In his classical book Special providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World, first published in 2001, Mead distinguishes four principal schools of thought that have shaped the American foreign policy debate from the 18th century to the 21st century, and identifies them with four Founding fathers or US presidents Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson. According to Meads typology, Hamiltonians regard a strong alliance between the national government and big business as the key both to domestic stability and to effective action abroad. Hence, the Hamiltonian school considers that US foreign policy should be driven by commercial realism and free-trade. Wilsonians believe that Americas mission of spreading democratic and social values throughout the world is a moral obligation and should therefore be at the core of US foreign policy. Opposing both the Hamiltonian and the Wilsonian policies of involving the US in costly economic or political alliances, Jeffersonians seek to replace commercial engagement and democracy promotion with nation-building at home. Their main purpose is thus to reduce the costs and risks of foreign policy and to advance US foreign policy interests in the safest and most economical ways.
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Im Not A Freshman Therefore The Freshman 15 Doesnt Exist
Also wrong. Just because you are not longer a freshman, unfortunately doesnt make you immune to packing on the lbs your second year at school. Some people are so psyched that they didnt gain the obligatory 15 pounds freshman year that they just assume theyre in the clear for the rest of their time at college. Sophomore year might even be an even more difficult to keep your health in check. If you now live in an apartment with your own kitchen you might have to pay for your own groceries and skip the meal plan. This could be either a blessing or a curse when it comes to eating healthy depending on how much time/money youre willing to spend. Cooking healthy meals takes a lot of time and it is expensive! Meanwhile fast food is dirt cheap and very quick. So dont be fooled by the catchy saying, you can most definitely still gain weight even if you have been spared the freshman 15.
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What Is Donald Trumps Foreign Policy
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By Max Fisher
WASHINGTON President-elect Donald J. Trump will enter the White House having promised to radically alter United States foreign policy, with ramifications for Americans and the world.
But its not yet clear how. Mr. Trump offered vague and sometimes contradictory proposals during his campaign, with few of the typical details or white papers. Voters, foreign policy professionals and the countrys allies are all, to a real extent, left guessing.
Here, then, is a rundown of what we know about Mr. Trumps foreign policy ideas and what some experts say about their feasibility and likely ramifications.
How We Got To Great Power Competition
In foreign policy, slogans can be important. In the final years of Obamas second term, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and his deputy Robert Work popularized the idea of great power competition that China had become a rival to the US. The next global conflict would not be against non-state actors, like the terrorist group al-Qaeda of the past era, but rather a massive country that has an economy perhaps bigger than the USs and has kept pace with, or even exceeded in some arenas, the USs advanced military technologies.
At the time, Jackson was doing policy work at the Defense Department. Starting in 2015, great power competition was the bumper-sticker framework that we were operating within in the Pentagon, he told me. But the White House didnt like that, for very obvious reasons. It went against the spirit of detente. It went against the policy of engage and hedge it was kind of like the opposite of engage. At one point, the White House told the Navy to stop talking about great power competition, in part because it presupposed conflict with China.
But the bumper sticker had already taken off, and soon the think tank community in Washington started to rally around it as the emerging central organizing idea of US foreign policy.
But for all that Democrats criticized Trumps trade war as reckless and ineffective early on, many of the partys foreign policy elites came to embrace the underlying premise that the US needed to be tougher on China.
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Withdrawal From Paris Agreement On Climate Change
On June 1, 2017, Trump announced the US withdrawal from the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, a 196-country agreement signed in December 2015 that aimed to limit global average temperature rise to two degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial averages.
In Trumps decision, the US became one of the largest major carbon emitters to eschew the agreement, which requires countries to set standards to reduce emissions and regularly report on their progress.
In his speech, Trump said the agreement disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries and leaves US workers and taxpayers to absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories and vastly diminished economic production.
Due to the provisions of the agreement, the US withdrawal, which also reduced overall funding of the Green Climate fund, only went into effect on November 4, a day after the presidential election.
Biden has said he will rejoin the agreement on his first day in office.
Foreign Relations Of Donald Trump
A major theme of Trumps presidential campaign was his view that the United States had long been treated unfairly or taken advantage of by other countries, including by some traditional U.S. allies, and that under Obamas leadership the United States had ceased to be respected in world affairs. In numerous speeches, tweets, and interviews, he threatened to impose tariffs on countries that engaged in what he deemed unfair trade practices harshly criticized the World Trade Organization and promised to renegotiate NAFTA , which he called the worst trade deal the United States had ever signed. He also criticized NATO , dismissing the alliance as obsolete but also insisting that other NATO countries devote more of their budgets to defense spending. In January 2017 he withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a regional trade agreement between 12 Pacific Rim countries that had been a major foreign policy achievement of the Obama administration.
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What Are Mr Trumps Proposed Policies
Mr. Trump has repeatedly emphasized a set of ideas that would reduce Americas role in the world. He said he would take unilateral action, move away from traditional allies and move closer to adversaries.
He said during the campaign that he would diminish or possibly abandon American commitments to security alliances. That includes NATO and defense treaties with Japan and South Korea.
He has threatened to pull out of the World Trade Organization and called the North American Free Trade Agreement the single worst trade deal ever signed in this country. And he said he would cancel the international agreement on combating climate change, reached last year in Paris.
Mr. Trump has suggested that more countries should acquire nuclear weapons, to protect themselves without Washingtons help. He has said allies like Saudi Arabia must pay for American support.
He has voiced admiration for Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, and said the United States should work with him and align with his Syrian ally, President Bashar al-Assad, in that countrys civil war.
But Mr. Trump, not a dove, has indicated a willingness to use force and promised to reinstate waterboarding, a form of torture.
Somebody hits us within ISIS, you wouldnt fight back with a nuke? Mr. Trump asked rhetorically in an MSNBC interview this spring.
He supports imposing punitive economic measures on China, threatening high tariffs that would devastate trade between the worlds two largest economies.
Troop Withdrawals Taliban Deal
In his final months in office, Trump has overseen continued withdrawal of US troops from foreign countries, most recently withdrawing an estimated 700 US troops the entire force in Somalia by a January 15 deadline.
As of that date, the number of US troops in Afghanistan had been further reduced to 2,500, down from about 13,000 when the US in February 2020 inked a deal with the Afghan Taliban that sought to end US involvement in the South Asian nation while encouraging the armed group to begin peace talks with the Afghan government.
Intra-Afghan negotiations remain underway in Doha, Qatar, but there have been no significant breakthroughs. Critics have said the deal favours the Taliban without adequately defining their commitments.
Trump also drew down US troops by about 500 to 2,500 in Iraq by January 15.
Trump had previously, and abruptly, withdrawn several hundred US troops from northern Syria in October 2019, earning a rebuke from within his party for leaving Kurdish allies vulnerable to an advancement by the Turkish military.
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How Donald Trump Shook Up Us Foreign Policy
Four years in office saw withdrawal from Iran nuclear deal, Israeli-Arab normalisation agreements, and threats to NATO.
President Donald Trump laid out his vision for an America First foreign policy during his inaugural speech on the steps of the US Capitol on January 20, 2017.
From this moment on, its going to be America First, he vowed.
Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families, he said.
We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first, he added.
Four years later, critics say Trump leaves a scattershot legacy that despite some breakthroughs, has left international organisations weakened and the US increasingly isolated from its closest allies as President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office on Wednesday.
America first, but really America alone, Joel Rubin, the deputy assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs under President Barack Obama and policy volunteer on the Biden campaign, told Al Jazeera.
Here are key points in Trumps foreign policy.
What Would Happen If President Trump Instituted These Policies
In most cases, it is nearly impossible to say.
Because Mr. Trumps policies are so unusual and his election victory so unexpected, foreign nations have not indicated how they might respond. So it is difficult to judge even the first-order effect of, say, a NATO withdrawal or a partnership with Mr. Assad in Syria, much less any ripple effects.
In practice, much of foreign policy is responding to crises. Mr. Trumps lack of experience or clear proposals make it difficult to predict how he would handle, for example, a major breakthrough in North Koreas nuclear program or a major Russian cyberattack.
Some proposals, though, are easier to study.
An analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a nonpartisan think tank, found that Mr. Trumps potential imposition of double-digit tariffs on China and Mexico would, by decimating international trade, set off a recession in the United States and cost 4.8 million jobs.
Should he unravel the Iran nuclear deal, most analysts believe that Tehran would renew nuclear development but that the deals other parties Russia, China and several from Europe would blame the United States and decline to reimpose sanctions.
Beyond that, Mr. Trumps likely impact on the world is difficult to predict. As Mr. Shapiro wrote in his policy brief, The essence of Trumps foreign policy will be its unpredictability.
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