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The former president was less isolationist and more of a diplomatic success than most observers admit.
With the U.S. presidential election less than two months away, and a 50/50 chance that Donald Trump will return to the White House, many observers around the world want to know what to expect from a second Trump administration when it comes to foreign policy. As the author of a recent book on Republican foreign policy and a leader at a Washington-based think tank, I field questions almost every day from diplomats, journalists, and business executives looking for insights into a Trump 2.0 administration.
Here is what I tell them.
Dismiss scare stories about an isolationist administration staffed with unqualified loyalists determined to abandon allies, start trade wars, and sell Ukraine down the river. An evenhanded assessment of the record shows that Trump was an effective foreign-policy president, presiding over a period of relative global stability and prosperity, and a second Trump administration promises improved performance based on the lessons learned in the first term.
You can expect a capable foreign-policy team that will bring back an “America First” foreign-policy agenda with a focus on peace through strength, fair and reciprocal trade, alliance burden-sharing, ending the war in Ukraine, getting tougher on China and Iran, securing the southern border, and unleashing U.S. domestic energy potential.
Personnel is policy, and there are many accomplished candidates rumored to be in the running for top foreign-policy posts in a second Trump administration, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Tom Cotton, former ambassador to Japan and current Sen. Bill Hagerty, former director of national intelligence and former Rep. John Ratcliffe, and others.
These are seasoned professionals who have worked with Trump over the years and are more trusted than the so-called adults in the room from the first term. As another former national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, explains in a new book, Trump was burned by previous cabinet officials, such as former Defense Secretary James Mattis and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who thought they knew better than the president and wrongly worked to obstruct his agenda. Trump rightly wants to avoid that problem this time around.
After all, presidents consider loyalty when hiring staff. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for example, are President Joe Biden loyalists who worked with him for years before being tapped for top posts.
With a like-minded team in place, the world can expect more policy consistency from Trump 2.0 than in the first term.
Contrary to charges of “isolationism,” the first Trump administration pursued a globally engaged foreign policy, including the projection of military force and diplomatic energy into the Middle East and Trump’s personal diplomacy with the leaders of all major allies and adversaries in both Europe and Asia.
He developed close relationships with some allies, such as then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The Abraham Accords were a transformative step forward for Arab-Israeli peace. The summits with Kim Jong Un led to a cessation of North Korean long-range missile tests for the remainder of Trump’s presidency. To be sure, not all of the diplomatic outreach, such as the trade negotiations with Chinese President Xi Jinping, led to lasting breakthroughs, but this extensive personal international engagement belies the notion that Trump’s inclinations are somehow isolationist.
His withdrawal from prominent treaties, such as the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, were not evidence of isolationism as some wrongly claim, but rather pragmatic judgments that these agreements were not in America’s interest. All the 2016 GOP presidential candidates promised to pull out of the JCPOA due to its flaws, and it would have been foolish to remain in the INF Treaty when Russia had been cheating on the agreement for years.
In defense policy, you can expect a philosophy of “peace through strength,” making America so strong that no adversary dare challenge it, with a willingness to punch back hard when threatened. In his first term, Trump presided over the largest defense budget in U.S. history at the time; successfully prosecuted the war against the Islamic State; bombed Syria after Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against his own people; and killed the coordinator of Iran’s terror and proxy networks, Gen. Qassem Suleimani.
A major increase in defense spending will be necessary for the United States and its allies to counter the new axis of autocracies (China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea) at the same time, but the Biden administration defense budgets have not kept up with inflation. Under Trump, expect an increase in defense spending (perhaps proposing the first $1 trillion U.S. defense budget) and a concerted effort to revive the defense industrial base, including a focus on the Trump priority of a homeland missile defense system, an “iron dome,” for the United States. As the bipartisan Strategic Posture Commission recently recommended, Washington should build a missile defense system to defend itself from North Korea, China, and Russia.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have restrained U.S. and allied militaries to avoid “escalation” in ongoing conflicts; a Trump 2.0 administration should be more willing to use force decisively when U.S. interests are threatened.
In international economics, Trump will prioritize fair and reciprocal trade that benefits the American people. He will impose tariffs to counter unfair trading practices and to generate leverage for negotiations. His threat of a 10 percent across-the-board tariff is the opening bid in the next round of talks. Trump was criticized for imposing sweeping tariffs on China, but now everyone follows his lead. Biden maintained and added to Trump’s restrictions on trade with China, and even Europe and Brazil have recently imposed high tariffs to counter the oversupply of Chinese-made electric vehicles. A Trump 2.0 administration will accelerate global efforts to secure supply chains and achieve strategic independence from China.
In Europe, those focused only on rhetoric claim that Trump was tough on allies and deferential to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The underlying policy tells a different story. Trump broke from the Obama administration in providing lethal aid to Ukraine for the first time. He also bolstered U.S. military forces on NATO’s eastern flank. He privately warned Putin not to invade Ukraine. He built two new nuclear weapons to deter Russia and killed hundreds of Russian mercenaries on the ground in Syria. His administration brought new countries, Montenegro and North Macedonia, into NATO. Trump increased American spending on European defense, and his stern words on burden-sharing helped prompt European defense spending increases that strengthened the alliance.
In a second term, he will continue to demand that allies step up, saying recently that NATO should increase its defense-spending target from 2 percent to 3 percent of GDP. This is a necessary and important step as European defense officials tell me that it will take a target closer to 3.6 percent to actually provide the capabilities needed to implement NATO’s new regional defense plans.
On Ukraine, he has been clear that he wants to end the war quickly. He plans to use promises to provide or withdraw U.S. military assistance to Ukraine as leverage. He said he will tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to negotiate or else he’ll cut off military assistance. Trump also said, “I would tell Putin, if you don’t make a deal, we’re going to give [Zelensky] a lot. We’re going to give [Ukraine] more than they ever got if we have to.” If Putin refuses to negotiate, Trump could conceivably provide Ukraine with more advanced weapons with fewer restrictions on their use. If he is successful in forcing a negotiation, his strategy could force a near-term cease-fire roughly along the current lines.
Critics of this strategy would need to explain why they believe the current Western approach is superior. Given the White House’s fears of Russian escalation and heavy restrictions on types of U.S. weapons provided and how they are used, it is unlikely that Ukraine is going to reconquer the rest of its territory any time soon. The current Biden administration approach will also likely end, therefore, with a cease-fire roughly along the current lines; it will just take more time, blood, and treasure to get there.
In the Middle East, Washington’s current approach of both defending and constraining Israel is prolonging the war in Gaza and risks leaving Hamas, a terrorist organization, in power. The Biden administration had hoped to seal a revised nuclear deal with Iran, but when those negotiations failed, the West was left without a backup plan for stopping Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump, in contrast, wants Israel to “finish what they started” in Gaza and “get it over with fast.” A Trump administration would also likely view Iran as the primary source of terrorism and instability in the Middle East and reinstate a “maximum pressure” campaign of economic warfare and diplomatic isolation. As a last resort to keep Tehran from the bomb, Trump would be more likely to hit Iran’s nuclear facilities, an option he considered in the waning days of his first term.
There is a bipartisan consensus that China is the greatest state-based threat to the United States, but there has also been bipartisan criticism of a prevailing say-do gap, talking tough about being ready to fight a war with China but not building a military capable of following through. Expect a major defense buildup prioritizing Asia under a Trump 2.0 administration.
Contrary to the Biden administration approach of diplomacy on problems like climate, arms control, and public health, a second Trump administration would recognize that Beijing is not a cooperative player in these areas and that the U.S.-China relationship is increasingly defined by its most confrontational elements. They could seek to win, not just manage, the confrontation with China.
Trump plans to secure the U.S. southern border and will likely continue proposed reforms to legal immigration to recruit immigrants based on merit to the United States. He will prioritize energy security over climate change, which most conservatives now believe is a problem to be managed, not “the existential threat of our time.”
For those panicked about a Trump 2.0 administration, it’s worth remembering that past administrations have had their accomplishments, but they have also made major mistakes.
Biden has presided over a weakening of global deterrence with major wars breaking out in Europe and the Middle East and increased Chinese aggression in Asia. When the Obama administration tried to pull the United States back from the perceived overreach of the Bush years, the resulting vacuum was filled by Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine, China’s seizure and building up of contested islands in the South China Sea, and the rise of the Islamic State. The George W. Bush administration launched two large-scale wars of choice without a clear strategy for victory.
The Clinton administration slept on the al Qaeda threat, and its military intervention in Somalia resulted in the “Blackhawk Down” tragedy. Results matter, and the relative peace and prosperity that prevailed during Trump’s first term may make him the most effective U.S. foreign-policy president in the post-Cold War era.
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