Oct. 16, 2019
The art of the deal and U.S.
foreign policy
Political observers and world leaders are
at a loss when it comes to determining what the Trump doctrine in foreign
affairs is. Thomas Friedman, in an article on the subject, summarizes the
doctrine as anti-Obama: “Obama built it. I broke it. You fix it,” he wrote.
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, asked many of the close
associates of Trump about his doctrine and received vague answers such as
“permanent destabilization creates American advantages” and “No Friends, No
Enemies.” One scholar considered that the threat of immigration as a main
aspect of the doctrine, but Trump is not against immigration in general, only
against immigrants coming from Africa and other nonwhite “shithole countries”
and wants more people coming from places like Norway.
The reality is that
Trump has no doctrine. He is a businessman dealmaker who falsely claims that he
wrote a book on “the Art of the Deal.” He believes that personal relationships
are essential to dealmaking. “A lot of great triumphs have been based on
relationships,” he once said. He believes that it is to his advantage in
negotiations to be unpredictable. Call it a doctrine of unpredictability,” he
once said. Most importantly, he believes that one should deprive one’s
adversary of most of his negotiating advantage before making the deal. These
three rules have been the cornerstones of his negotiating style, and ultimately
the core of his foreign policy.
During the first
year of his term, Trump needed advisers who would give his presidency some
respectability and credibility. The two main characters he hired in the area of
foreign policy were Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, and H.R. McMaster,
the national security adviser. These two followed a classical approach to
international relations and did not respect the three tenants of Trump’s
radical negotiating style or foreign policy. On almost every foreign policy
issue he was overruled by the advisers (appropriately called the “adults in the
room”), and so a growing gap developed between the president’s radical rhetoric
and the actual policy that was followed by his administration.
At the end of the
first year Trump felt sure of himself to a point where he could now apply the
three tenants of his foreign policy. The radical rhetoric could now be merged
with actual policy. But this needed a change in advisers. Tillerson and
McMaster were fired in March 2017 and replaced by two radicals: Mike Pompeo as
secretary of state and John Bolton as national security adviser. Regarding
Iran, for example, the archenemy of the United States, they both favored
America’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. Both had advocated regime
change in Iran, but differed on the method of achieving it: Pompeo wanted to
use the CIA, as was done in 1953 with the removal of Iran’s Prime Minister
Mohammad Mosaddegh, while Bolton advocated the use of force.
As the second half
of 2019 arrived, Trump started feeling the pressure of the coming presidential
elections scheduled for November of the following year. Polls indicated that
practically any of the leading Democratic candidates was likely to beat him by
a significant margin. Trump, who is already under the threat of impeachment,
does not only want to win, he needs to win. Citizen Trump, stripped of his
presidential immunity, will very likely be subject to civil prosecution.
Already, legal investigations are underway regarding alleged tax fraud, illegal
campaign contributions, improper foreign funding by his inaugural committee, in
addition to issues arising from the report of the special counsel Robert
Mueller, most importantly obstruction of justice.
As a result, Trump
is using the power of the White House for the purpose of getting re-elected
like no other president before him. The economy that began to grow under
President Obama continued to grow under him, aided by a fiscal stimulus, but
signs of a slowdown are creating doubts that it may turn into a recession in
2020, at the height of the election year. So Trump has used the moral influence
of the White House to repeatedly nudge Jay Powell, the head of the Federal
Reserve to lower interest rates and is now considering a “temporary payroll tax
cut” to stimulate an economy, not for sound economic reasons, but for the
personal purpose of getting re-elected.
This attitude is
even more apparent in foreign policy. Pressuring the Ukrainians by allegedly
withholding much needed assistance approved by Congress in a quid pro quo to collect
dirt about Joe Biden, who might be Democratic Party presidential candidate in
the coming elections, earned him an impeachment investigation by the Congress.
In Syria, Trump
already withdrew U.S. troops stationed in the northeast of the country leaving
the Kurds, the traditional allies of America in the fight against Daesh (ISIS),
at the mercy of the Turks. In Afghanistan, Trump was willing to withdraw the
14,000 American troops there for just a promise by the Taliban to fight
terrorism, leaving his local allies and the semi-liberated women there to face
them. He is now desperate to arrange a meeting with Iranian President Hassan
Rouhani “without preconditions,” while early last year, Mike Pompeo had listed
12 conditions for beginning such negotiations. At his last meeting with the
North Korean leader in Vietnam earlier this year he reportedly came close to
signing an agreement that would not require North Korea to denuclearize. In the
meantime, North Korea has resumed the expansion of its nuclear program and
tested more missiles.
If the coming period
for Trump is one of compromises and concessions not confrontation, then the
foreign policy advisers chosen for their confrontational skills need to be
changed. Bolton was the first to go and was replaced by a solid Trump supporter
and admirer, Robert C. O’Brien. Others will probably be replaced later.
But compromises and
withdrawals at any price to help the president in his re-election bid are not
going to pass easily. They will face internal and external barriers that are
difficult to overcome. In the case of Syria, for example, a bipartisan majority
in both houses of Congress has banded together to oppose this move, forcing him
to admit, albeit too late, that it may have been a mistake. In Afghanistan, not
all Taliban are in a rush for an agreement, which might explain the killing of
the American soldier that interrupted the yearlong negotiations. The Iranians
are playing hard to get in spite of the great and increasing economic
difficulties they are facing. None of America’s adversaries seems to be in a
rush for a deal.
The real problem
facing the American negotiators is actually that these adversaries know how
desperate Trump is for an “achievement” in foreign policy and that this
desperation, hence the concessions, will intensify as the election date nears.
So why not wait until the negotiating power of the U.S. is at its lowest before
concluding an agreement with it. Isn’t this what “the Art of the Deal” says you
should do?
Riad Tabbarah is a
former ambassador of Lebanon to the United States.
A version of this
article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on October 16, 2019, on
page 4.
