e_Paper, Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Mood swing diplomacy
Trump’s foreign policy goes every which way
Opinion 15
DT
WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 2017
• John Lloyd
Donald Trump doesn’t
practice traditional
diplomacy. As in
domestic policy, but with
a thicker fog of ignorance, Trump
treats each issue of foreign policy
or engagement as a separate event,
and reacts to it according to his
mood.
This behaviour is unlikely to
change. If it does not and Trump’s
presidency continues, the world,
including the important parts of
it he governs, will become more
dangerous. The considerable good
that Americans do abroad will
shrink.
And the rule-based systems
which the United States seeks
to police will decay and be
replaced with more regional and
national confrontations and more
failed states.
The double switch
Trump’s shifting moods have
produced several notable flipflops.
Most prominent has been
that on Russia, in part because he
praised President Vladimir Putin
again and again from mid-2013 to
February this year.
That stopped after the Syrian
government’s chemical weapons
attack in early April, at which point
Trump promised retaliation and
switched from admiration to
distrust of Russia, Syria’s main
ally.
It was a double switch -- on
Russia, but also on intervention.
Trump ordered a missile strike on
the base from which the Syrian
planes staged their attack. He
had vowed not to intervene in
foreign quarrels, and had appeared
indifferent about Assad remaining
in power.
After criticising China for
manipulating its currency and
destroying US industry with cheap
imports for much of his campaign,
Trump changed his tone after
an apparently friendly weekend
with Chinese President Xi Jinping
at Trump’s Florida resort.
He had grumbled before
meeting Xi that relations between
the two countries had to be
radically adjusted.
After the meeting, and after
receiving some encouragement
for his view that China would
put pressure on a North Korea
threatening nuclear war, Trump
shifted once more, asking
rhetorically why he would be rude
to China on currency manipulation
when it was assisting him on North
Korea.
For some in the foreign policy
The flip-flopping president
establishment, hostility toward
Russia and cautious overtures to
China was a return to the natural
order of things, underpinned by
the president’s discovery that
NATO was not obsolete after all.
There’s something in that view:
Russia was never going to remain
a favoured nation of America for
long, and as early as his January
meeting with British Prime
Minister Theresa May, Trump had
appeared to agree when she told
journalists that he was “100%”
behind NATO. But to say he’s
become a “normal” foreign policy
president is a stretch.
The basis of mainstream US
diplomacy has historically been a
warm attitude toward traditional
close allies, cool-to-aggressive
toward opponents, and sometimes
critical of authoritarian states with
which business can or must be
done.
These postures are full of moral
gulches and vast hypocrisies
-- many were exposed in
Wikipedia’s publication of US State
Department cables -- but everyone
knows how the game is played.
Baseless accusations
Trump isn’t like that. He makes
no secret of his dislike of some
close allies and appears to admire,
rather than tolerate, authoritarian
leaders.
In their first White House
meeting, Trump pressed German
Chancellor Angela Merkel, the US’s
most important European ally, to
meet NATO’s military spending
target, and in an awkward quip
repeated his claim that he had
been wiretapped by the Obama
administration.
He abruptly terminated his call
with Australian Prime Minister
Malcolm Turnbull after Turnbull
asked Trump to honour the Obama
era commitment to take over
1,000 migrants from an Australian
detention camp.
Trump received Canadian
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
more politely, but a few weeks
later blamed Canada for trade
violations.
He held Theresa May’s hand as
they walked through the White
House Colonnade, but soon after
criticised her secret services for
spying on him, with no proof
on which to base such a colossal
charge.
With friends like these
By contrast, the president
appeared to relish the first round
success of French presidential
candidate Marine Le Pen,
This is not mainstream diplomacy. It is, to
adapt the president’s customary designation
of the press, ‘lamestream’ diplomacy
whose political lineage is racist,
anti- Semitic, contemptuous of
Muslims, and intent on isolating
France from both the European
Union and the global economy.
He congratulated Turkish
President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan on the narrow and
possibly manipulated victory
in a referendum on increasing
his power -- which will likely
lead to the newly empowered
Erdogan arresting and detaining
more government officials,
military officers, journalists, and
academics.
Trump treated Egyptian
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi,
much more brutal with internal
enemies than his predecessor
Hosni Mubarak, whom he helped
remove, like a long lost friend.
Trump’s attitude to his
southern neighbour, Mexico,
has alienated the country’s
political class. President Enrique
Pena Nieto cancelled a visit to
REUTERS
Washington as Trump repeated
his campaign promise to build a
wall between the two countries
and deport millions of Mexicans
deemed to be illegal immigrants.
This is not mainstream
diplomacy. It is, to adapt the
president’s customary designation
of the press, “lamestream”
diplomacy: Lamed by lack
of strategy, experience, and
often, common politeness, his
preferences proceeding from a
world-view which prizes displays
of strength and is contemptuous of
liberal allies.
Will this change? Of course --
and in every which way. Flip-flops,
switches, and change make up the
one unchanging theme of Trump’s
diplomacy. •
John Lloyd co-founded the Reuters
Institute for the Study of Journalism at
the University of Oxford, where he is
senior research fellow. This article first
appeared on Reuters.