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Trump’s Exaggerated Opportunity
Donald Trump’s embrace of “America First” represents a dramatic U-turn from the liberal internationalism that Democratic and Republican presidents alike adopted as a foreign policy framework. Free trade and economic globalization, active participation in international organizations, security coalitions, support of human rights and international law—these were standard US positions.
“National security,” in short, was a bipartisan enterprise, though too often a justification for foreign crusades. Trump has never felt bound by these positions; to him, they impose obligations—too costly, too limiting, and not very effective.
Better to have a self-interested foreign policy that uses American power to persuade or punish those who get in our way. He operates on a non-traditional cost-benefit calculus—zero-sum, in short. His first few months in office make that apparent: his tariff wars, his resetting of relations with Russia, his evisceration of USAID, and his withdrawal of the US from the World Health Organization and the Paris Accord.
In the March-April issue of Foreign Affairs, two analysts acknowledge the potentially serious flaws in Trump’s America First foreign policy but suggest that he has the opportunity to use it to serve America and the world. Hal Brands writes that Trump has no interest in international order and does not value alliances. “Yet,” he writes, “Trump intuitively understands something that many liberal internationalists forget: order flows from power and can hardly be preserved without it.”
Thus: “If Trump can harness his most constructive impulses, he has a chance to pressure adversaries, coax more out of allies, and reinforce resistance to the Eurasian [meaning Russian, Chinese, North Korean, and Iranian] assault.”
Michael Kimmage has a similar idea: “A combination of workmanlike U.S. relations with Beijing and Moscow, a nimble approach to diplomacy in Washington, and a bit of strategic luck . . . [to] produce a better status quo.” That agenda would translate into a reduction in the fighting in Ukraine, détente with Iran, and greater flexibility with Russia and China in search of areas of agreement.
Destructive Impulses
But therein lies the problem: What constructive impulses? What flexible diplomacy? Even as these articles were being published, Trump was acting in ways contrary to these authors’ policy ideas.
Trump wasn’t pressuring the Russians or searching for common ground, he was talking like a Kremlin propagandist. He wasn’t coaxing NATO and the European Union, he was badgering them and causing a crisis in relations that will surely spread mistrust of US security commitments in Asia and elsewhere.
Trump was also threatening to return to regime change in Iran and a full-out trade war with China. And as for relying more on US power, which Brands proposes needs to be backed by “a major military buildup,” Trump is increasing the military budget in nuclear weapon modernization and border control, neither of which has much relevance to real security needs.
With help from Elon Musk, Trump has authorized steps that are hurting military morale and weakening its capabilities, such as removing top officers in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, barring trans soldiers, and reducing Pentagon personnel. There is every expectation that a number of US bases abroad will be closed down.
Trump’s resort to his most destructive impulses in foreign affairs is only part of the problem. The other part, which Brands and Kimmage barely mention, is his destructive actions at home, which are key to implementing America First abroad. Unless Trump can clean house and get rid of all the sources of opposition, in line with the aims of Project 2025, he will not be able to sustain his foreign policy revisionism.
Trump’s Aims, and His Potential Undoing
Since returning to the White House, Trump has been bent on dismantling the “deep state” and expanding executive power, in keeping with the recommendations of Project 2025. The required attention to domestic affairs probably accounts for his bringing in Elon Musk to do the dirty work of improving government “efficiency,” which has turned out to mean a purge that would make any authoritarian leader envious.
Trump has issued 80 executive orders and Musk’s edicts have so far removed numerous Biden- and Obama-era appointees, reduced or eliminated agencies hostile to his agenda (such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Protection Bureau), and forced the resignations of all officials who had investigated his January 6, 2021 attempt to cancel the election results.
The aim of Trump’s domestic agenda is clear: make the presidency all-powerful while diminishing the influence of Congress and slashing the bureaucracy’s personnel and capacity; ride roughshod over the Constitution and federal regulations when the impinge on presidential authority; ensure that wealth and political power always drifts upward while liberals and progressives are marginalized; assert firm control over social media; use the law, especially as interpreted by the conservative majority in the Supreme Court, to narrow voting rights and other potential sources of opposition; and ensure that his agenda will be carried out by people who above all are absolutely loyal to him.
Unless Trump can shift all power to himself, however, and retain the absolute loyalty of subordinates, I don’t believe he will be able to accomplish a transformation of foreign policy and national security. Specifically, his adoption of the Kremlin line on foreign affairs will not have popular support.
He will not be able to make the US a nonparticipant in NATO, or weaken alliances with Japan and South Korea, or even conduct a trade war with China. He’ll be thwarted at every turn, not by his own appointees as in his first term, but by some Republicans in the Senate, international business leaders, people in the intelligence community, and others who voted for Trump but who also value stability and predictability in US foreign policy.
The post The Destructiveness of “America First” Begins at Home appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Mel Gurtov.