What will Trump II do for foreign policy?

What will foreign policy be like under Trump II?

Biden-Harris conveys a weakened global deterrence, with major wars in the heart of Europe and in flashpoints in the Middle East, including an Israeli attack on southern Lebanon for the first time since 2006. Iran is getting closer to becoming a nuclear threshold state, and no one has spoken to North Korea for four long years. American troops are in Israel.

Chinese provocations in Asia are intensifying. However, Joe Biden’s China policy is unnecessarily hostile, impractical and dangerous. China was artificially turned into an “enemy in a box” when the terrorist wars stopped. Biden views China as an autocratic opponent of democracy that must be fought globally. “Under my leadership,” Joe said, “China will not achieve its goal of becoming the leading country in the world, the richest country in the world, and the most powerful country in the world.” (As if they asked.) Biden went on to say that the world is at a tipping point to determine “whether democracy can function in the 21st century.” From Biden’s neo-Churchillian perspective, the US and, hell, the entire free world of which he considers himself president, are in a mortal battle with China for the hearts and minds of the world.

What about Obama? His administration saw Russia’s successful invasion of Crimea with little U.S. response, as well as a continued U.S. military presence in the Middle East, including an expansion of Americans fighting in Libya, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere. Despite this, the world has suffered from the rise of the Islamic State and chaotic immigration into Europe. The George W. Bush administration launched two full-fledged wars of choice without any strategy for victory, destroying America’s credibility after the devastation of 9/11, which it failed to stop. Millions died.

On the other hand, Trump’s foreign policy has led to greater cost-sharing within NATO, albeit at the cost of false criticism to this day for threatening to leave the alliance. The United States has withdrawn most of its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan as Trump takes steps to fulfill his campaign promise to end the neoconservatives’ endless wars. More importantly, Trump did not initiate any new conflicts in the region, as Clinton did in Somalia, Obama and Bush did everywhere else.

The Doha agreement with the Taliban provided a US exit strategy from Afghanistan, but it was poorly implemented by the Biden administration. The Abraham Accords, a series of normalization agreements, reduced tensions in the Middle East, and the ISIS Caliphate was eliminated in Iraq, ironically, largely thanks to unofficial help from the Iranians. For the first time in decades, there was little prospect of progress with North Korea as Trump became the first sitting president to meet with its leader (and was ridiculed by Democrats for doing so).

“Results matter,” says Foreign policy“And the relative peace and prosperity that prevailed during Trump’s first term may make him the most effective US foreign policy president in the post-Cold War era.”

As for his second term, Trump has made it clear that ending the war in Ukraine is a top priority, going so far as to promise to end the war in the months between his re-election in November and Inauguration Day in January. While this timeline may not be possible (since, among other things, Citizen Trump would be violating the Logan Act by conducting diplomacy on behalf of the United States), it makes clear that Trump will not continue to feed weapons and money to the meat grinder outside Kiev that appears to be does not give positive results.

Whether he has any special relationship with Putin or not, Trump will radically change policy by launching a round of diplomacy with Russia. For now, Russia appears ripe for debate as its efforts to make progress inside Ukraine are going nowhere. As with most inconclusive wars, the resulting “peace” agreement will be a mess. There is no reason for Russia to leave the battlefield empty-handed, and Ukraine will undoubtedly have to cede territory, perhaps under the guise of a “Russian-controlled buffer zone” or some other clever excuse. No one today can say what price each side paid in men and dollars, but it was significant and, therefore, free of the Biden administration’s nationalist pornography of the “free people of Ukraine”, some kind of deal will be likely. A Republican-controlled Congress will force things to move even faster.

In the case of China, Trump may choose to frame the fight more as a competition, primarily economic, between near-peers, rather than as World War III lite. Between 1991 and 2022, Taiwan invested $200 billion in China, even more than China’s investment in the United States. China remains Taiwan’s largest trading partner. “One country, two systems” not only kept the peace for decades, but it also turned out to be damn good for all parties. As Deng Xiao Ping said about this guy lifestyle“What difference does it make what color a cat is if it catches mice?” China might try one day buy Taiwan, but until then, why drop bombs on one of his best clients? They even invited Taiwan to the Olympic Games in Beijing and participated with them in Paris.

Any cross-strait violence will also impact US-China relations, providing further incentive against war. Total Chinese investment in the US exceeds $145 billion, and American investment in China has exceeded $220 billion. When Covid shut down global logistics, everyone realized that the American economy was dependent on Chinese manufacturing, and vice versa. China is the second largest foreign holder of US government debt. If something got in the way of all this trade, China would have to find a way to eat half-baked iPhones. Occasional saber-rattling aside, the Chinese are literally betting on continued American economic cooperation rather than going to war over some measly little islands in the South China Sea.

In recognition of the economic struggle, expect Trump to maintain or expand his tariffs on China and for Joe Biden to rise. America will continue to build up its navy in the Pacific through strategic cooperation with Japan, South Korea, Australia and possibly India (US Pacific Command has renamed itself US Indo-Pacific Command). Indeed, if Trump really wanted to put pressure on China, he would expand relations with India, the world’s largest democracy. In East Asia, Trump’s insistence on greater burden-sharing with South Korea and Japan has not “pushed bilateral relations to a breaking point,” as POLITICO worried at the time. Instead it worked.

It is not surprising that Trump will try to renew relations with North Korea. His nascent efforts came very close to a Nobel Peace Prize nomination, and Trump was clearly thinking about it. Reducing the nuclear threat against Japan and South Korea, as well as reducing the value of North Korea as a buffer state for China in East Asia, are all goals worth striving for. The North has objected to nuclear weapons testing during Biden’s four “absence years” (North Korea last tested a nuclear weapon in 2017), perhaps as a signal that it is still willing to negotiate with a challenger if it has the courage to come knocking. door.

Trump, by moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, has shown that he is willing to take diplomatic steps against Tel Aviv’s wishes, and he may do something similar with the Gaza Strip. Trump telegraphed his strategy to Netanyahu: Do what you need to do in Gaza, but do it quickly and declare victory. It is difficult to say what role the hostages, including American citizens, will play in all of this, other than as accomplices. Biden has, in fact, disgracefully led one to believe that Americans are not involved in removing the United States from any effective role. Trump could have gone the other way, demanding behind closed doors the release of American hostages. If the hostages remain, he will free the IDF from American diplomatic pressure. In the Middle East in general and Israeli-Arab relations in particular, there is rarely a “win-win” scenario; this is no exception.

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That leaves Iran, another strategic tender that has been largely untouched by the Biden administration, despite its growing role in the region and influence globally. The Biden administration had hoped to reach a renegotiated nuclear deal with Iran, Foreign Policy reports, but when those talks collapsed early on, the West was left without a backup plan to end Iran’s nuclear program. Trump in 2018 withdrew from the nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration, leaving a policy vacuum that must be effectively filled in a second term.

Trump’s first term focused on isolating Iran, which he calls “the leading state sponsor of terrorism.” On the other hand, Trump, speaking to reporters in New York, did not go into detail about what he would seek in any agreement if re-elected, but said negotiations were necessary because of the threat posed by Iran’s desire to creation of nuclear weapons. weapons: “We have to make a deal because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal.” Iran’s reformist new president says he, too, wants to revive the nuclear deal.

Failure with Iran will continue to drag the entire Middle East further down the path to nuclear brinksmanship, a bad legacy for a second term. Trump would do well to remember the old diplomatic adage: If you don’t talk to your opponents, you will.