A third into his presidency, Donald J. Trump may be on his way to becoming the most consequential US president in modern history. But it may be for the wrong reasons. Never a dull moment on that Twitter feed dictating foreign policy. Yet, the presidential broadcast looks more like a runaway bull in a china shop. As Trump continues to trample upon interests of even America’s close allies, can the West, increasingly under turmoil, wait him out?
In the end, Trump’s legacy might not be about his own accomplishments; rather, he might be remembered for tearing down the legacy of Obama administration. At home, he has cracked down on immigration programs, rolled back financial regulations, nixed Obamacare, and enacted massive tax-cuts to help billionaires. Abroad, Trump has quit the Paris Climate Accord and taken the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty negotiations.
But those were mainly partisan issues, on which Trump sided with the Republicans, the party he gate-crashed in 2016. There is a chance that under a different, more rational administration few years from now, America’s two-party system can reverse some of the damage. But the way the current administration is handling the Middle East looks set to cause lasting damage to the wider world.
Trump’s pullout from the Iran deal, which was negotiated in 2015 by major world powers to curb Iran’s nuclear programme, has dismayed the international community. There are at least two major implications of this inexplicable display of diplomatic immaturity.
One, by withdrawing unilaterally and without citing proof that Iran was in violation of the deal; the US itself has essentially become the violator of a major multilateral accord. Trump’s justification doesn’t wash with chief allies: France, Germany and the United Kingdom. American credibility, when it comes to negotiating and adhering to international agreements, has been severely undermined. Noticing all this is North Korea, which has now begun showing its reservations over a possible deal with the Trump administration.
And two, it may be déjà vu all over ala Iraq 2003. The European Union is rightly concerned over the fallout; it cannot do much against the reach of American sanctions that will be re-imposed in next six months, affecting European companies that had started dealing with the isolated nation post 2015. But the EU – and other Iran-deal authors like China and Russia – should be worried even more because the Trump administration is now in the hands of those who advocate the idea of a regime change in Iran.
Chaos erupting on foreign lands may not concern Trump (e.g. bloody aftermath of US embassy relocation to Jerusalem). But securing the trust of his populist base does matter to him. Therefore, Trump’s threats of a trade war with China and other major US trading partners carry little substance, for Americans will also pay the price of retaliatory tariffs. But the threat of another war overseas is now real. If the US is indeed preparing the ground to go after Tehran, it is playing with fire. Let’s see how eager are its Iran-phobic allies in the Middle East, coughing up billions for US military hardware, to swing this wrecking ball.
Comments
Comments are closed.