It might reshape the global order and be horrifying. Or it can be bluster rather than substance. However, the second term of US President-elect Donald Trump will undoubtedly be turbulent. Furthermore, major change is likely to be heralded by even the most extreme American isolationism—the greatest degree of doing little.
The extent of our knowledge regarding Trump’s foreign strategy is just astounding. He claims that’s how he loves it. We are aware that he opposes conflicts that drag on in America. He seems to like strongmen, or at least tyrants. He destroys what he perceives to be terrible agreements and enjoys what he perceives to be excellent ones. He disapproves of American friends who, in his opinion, exploit them.
But the president-elect is unique also in how little he’s had to articulate his foreign policy positions. Recall the horror that met George W. Bush being unable to name Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in a 1999 campaign interview? Trump would never be asked such a “gotcha” question.
The mainstream media is chewing glass over how it got this election so wrong. A similar exercise in assessing Trump’s likely foreign policy is perhaps in order. To be clear: Trump does not inherit a world at peace, where America’s unquestioning role as a beacon of freedom and moral superiority has brought enduring calm.
The incumbent Biden administration leaves a series of global crises at best unsolved – at worst raging. The current White House may have done the very best anyone could have in meager circumstances. But is it possible that some disruption could be fruitful? Could a chaotic rethink work? At risk of toadying towards an incoming administration, let’s develop that thought for a moment.Trump’s first term was of itself relatively uneventful compared with the four years that followed. The end of ISIS; immigration bans and odd insults; leaving the Iran deal while making another one with the Taliban; letting Turkey invade northern Syria; and all that weird coziness with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Biden term encompassed a comparative deluge: the sudden yet inevitable collapse of America’s longest war in Afghanistan; the Russian invasion of Ukraine; and then October 7 in Israel, then the spiral of Gaza, Iran and Lebanon. Trump may have set some of that in motion, but undoubtedly Biden had the busier watch.
Did Trump have any hand in his own calm first term? If you’re looking for a bright spot in 2017 to 2021 – where erratic, angry gestures might have paid off – the assassination of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 is a glaring case in point. I recall hearing the news that Soleimani – not just the commander of the Quds force in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, but at that time the region’s most eminent military personality – had been killed by a US drone strike in Baghdad.
Even one US official involved in the operation expressed surprise to me about the move’s audacity. It felt like the wheels might come off the region, if Iran went to the mattresses to seek revenge. But, in the end, remarkably little happened. And the limits of Iranian power – fanned by years of its role in fighting Syrian rebels and then ISIS – became evident. The US could suddenly kill Iran’s most prominent commander whenever it wanted, without major comeback.
Did that lead to Iran’s growing sponsorship of proxies who slowly walked the region into the crises that followed October 7? Possibly. Or did the strike simply curtail Iranian ambitions? We won’t ever know; but it was the first of many occasions in the years to come when Iran looked weak.
Trump’s clear alliance with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looks set to benefit the Israeli incumbent. Yet the president-elect’s broader instincts may limit Israel’s options. The endless funding and arming of Israel’s multiple conflicts is anathema to Trump’s wider goal of reducing US global involvement.
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