Dave Clark -
Donald Trump came to office threatening to tear up trade deals, extort payment from US military allies, end the Iran nuclear accord and build a wall on America’s southern border.
He ended his first year still contemplating a strike on North Korea, angrily cancelling a planned visit to old ally Britain and reportedly using a vulgar term to refer to African countries.
From day one until day 365, much of Washington’s foreign policy community has been aghast and international supporters of rules-based multilateral diplomacy dismayed.
But one year on from Trump’s inauguration, the liberal international order remains more or less intact — though Trump’s antagonistic style certainly has not travelled well.
According to a Gallup poll, since Trump took office on January 20 last year world approval of US leadership has plummeted from 48 to a new low of 30 per cent.
But Trump was not elected to impress foreigners: his slogan was “America First” and he hired oil executive Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State to build a foreign policy around it.
Many of the more exotic planks on his programme have been forgotten or cut down to size, but there has been forward movement on some key dossiers left open by his predecessor Barack Obama.
The IS group has been driven from its last urban strongholds, a strategy on Iran has been launched and Washington is turning up the pressure on North Korea. Could it all turn to disaster, as many experts fear?
Of course — but so far so good, says Jim Jeffrey, a former senior diplomat and adviser to George W Bush’s White House. “The basic problem with this guy in terms of his foreign policy is that his behaviour is unorthodox,” Jeffrey, now a fellow at the Washington Institute, said.
“It’s the unpredictability,” he argued. “It’s not a minor thing if you’re running a global security system based on credibility. But, so far, he hasn’t done much damage to the international order.”
It was on climate change that Trump came closest to disappointing the entire world.
He left the door open, just a crack, to return to the Paris Accord — under which 190 countries agreed measures to limit global warming — but only if America gets a looser deal.
Still, Trump’s move remains symbolic of what observers now call the “withdrawal doctrine,” under which the US president ceded his country’s leadership or even membership in several multilateral projects.
For America’s allies, for former Obama officials and for a good chunk of the Washington foreign policy establishment, the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is a landmark of modern diplomacy. For Trump, it is the “worst deal ever negotiated.”
Hawkish voices in lobby groups and Congress encouraged him to “decertify” the deal, but his own top advisers persuaded him not to reimpose sanctions and torpedo it altogether.
Another Trump campaign promise that sent shivers through the world’s foreign ministries was his boast that he would move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Many expected him to abandon the idea once he was in office and aware of the likely furious reaction in foreign capitals to a move that could kill hopes of Israeli-Palestinian peace.
In fact, to general consternation, Trump went ahead and ordered Tillerson’s State Department to start looking out for land on which to build a new mission in the divided city.
After a few days of protest, world reaction was relatively muted, but US-Palestinian relations have plunged to new depths and a renewed peace process appears unlikely.
Trump’s approach to Kim Jong-Un’s isolated North Korean regime has also proved hair-raising, even as Pyongyang has demonstrated a more impressive nuclear arsenal.
Trump’s apparently warm golfing relations with China’s Xi Jinping helped soothe great power rivalry, and Tillerson now hopes to force Kim to negotiate disarmament.
But here again, Trump’s unpredictable and highly-personalised outbursts have kept the world on edge.
Overblown and violent rhetoric is perhaps the only domain in which North Korea can rival the United States, but Trump nevertheless chose it as his battlefield. But Tillerson has worked on keeping the sanctions coalition together. — AFP
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