Trump’s foreign policy isn’t unprincipled

“He [Donald Trump] sees American leadership as merely a series of real estate transactions.” That was the verdict of the Democratic senator Elissa Slotkin following the President’s address to Congress.

Trump 2.0 does, admittedly, have the appearance of a political version of The Art of the Deal, in which the Donald is prepared to leverage a bilateral compact with every country in the world — so long as the price is right. There are no friends in The Art of the Deal, no permanent friends anyway, only prospective business associates. Ukraine wants the flow of armaments to resume? Sign over the rights to half your natural resources.

Trump’s rendition of the Pax Americana, if it amounts to nothing more than an unending series of “real estate transactions,” looks a cold and calculating one. None of Uncle Sam’s traditional allies, not Canada or the United Kingdom or Australia, can be certain now of America’s automatic friendship. Not Japan or South Korea, and certainly not members of Nato. The bottom-line of the Trump Doctrine, apparently, is a credo without compassion: bluntly put, stop freeloading on the USA because the enemy of my enemy is not my friend. 

America’s hard-headed foreign policy initiatives, according to Senator Slotkin, results from Trump’s disdain for democracy and devotion to tyrants: “He believes in cozying up to dictators like Vladimir Putin and kicking our friends, like Canada, in the teeth.” The tenor of Slotkin’s slur goes all the way back to actor George Clooney’s assertion in March 2016 that Trump was a “xenophobic fascist.” Fast forward to two weeks before the 2024 election and John Kelly was claiming his former boss believed “Hitler did some good things.”

History, nevertheless, does not corroborate the Trump-is-a-tyrannophile thesis, let alone the conspiracy theory that Trump is a Russian asset. Mike Pompeo’s Never Give an Inch (2023) shows Trump 1.0 repeatedly taking a hardline against Russian adventurism.

In the 2018 Battle of Khasham, for instance, Trump ordered MQ-9 Reaper drones and F-22 stealth fighter jets to wipe out Assad’s fighters and Wagner troops approaching the US base at Khasham in Syria. According to Pompeo’s account, “[d]ozens if not hundreds of Russians were killed,” sending a message to the Kremlin to never again threaten American interests in the region.

Only a hyper-partisan is going to ignore Trump’s current attempt to leverage Russia. Everybody knows about Trump’s exasperation with Zelensky, and yet the Democrats and the legacy media are wrong-sided every time Trump threatens Russia. One clueless NPR journalist wondered out loud why Trump, after raising the possibility of sanctions on Russia, would make things difficult for Putin when he has an “affinity for the Russian leader”?

The overlooked component of the Trump Doctrine might be hiding in plain sight — Trump’s resolve to outmaneuver the People’s Republic of China. Washington’s determination to thwart Beijing at every turn, I would argue, is shaping up to be the 21st century’s version of the Great Game, a rivalry which originally played out in the nineteenth century between the British Empire and Tsarist Russia — and, in the twentieth century, between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Once the Beijing Syndrome is factored into Trump’s “series of real estate deals,” such as those with Panama, India and Ukraine, all manner of moral, ethical, and ideological considerations suddenly attach themselves to Trump’s foreign policy initiatives. In the case of Panama, firstly, an American-led consortium has now bought control of the key ports adjacent to the Panama Canal from a Hong Kong/China-based conglomerate.

Meanwhile, India’s Narendra Modi has signaled his interest in co-operating with America to develop the India-Middle East-Europe-Economic Corridor (IMEC), an economic infrastructure project that would undermine Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Thirdly, an end to the Russian-Ukraine War — if achieved through the framework of a Trump-style “real estate deal” — would see America compensated for the billions it has bequeathed to Kyiv, Ukraine safeguarded from further Russian aggression, and Putin less dependent on the munificence of Chairman Xi. 

Trump’s mantra, then, ought to be Make America Great Again to Save the World from Communist China, as problematic as that would be to reproduce on a MAGA hat. In the case of Taiwan, for example, Trump will do everything in his power to maintain its independence and simultaneously avoid World War III. As he declared on the campaign trail: “I would say: if you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you at 150 percent to 200 percent.”

That said, America cannot be expected to act as Taiwan’s “insurance” — Trump’s word — without financial compensation. And so, surprise, surprise, Taiwan’s largest semi-conductor business, TSMC, has now agreed to invest $100 billion in five new fabrication plants throughout the USA.

None of this is to suggest that America will necessarily win the Great Game against China. After all, Beijing has a more deadly creed than The Art of the Deal — that is, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. For Chairman Xi and his coterie, as the fate of Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and now the South China Sea demonstrates, the enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

The Taiwanese have been asked the toughest of questions: how much is too much to save us from the Pax Sinica? It is exactly the same query the Trump administration putting to everyone from Panama and Ukraine to Nato countries: quae attributa accipientur.

The Don, of course, might express it a little more colorfully, as in the Godfather III: “I have always believed helping your fellow man is profitable in every sense, personally and bottom-line.”