The Trump Foreign Policy Apocalypse: We’re Still Waiting

A year into the Trump presidency, in article after article, those who predicted catastrophe declared themselves to have been proved right.

I voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and endured the shrill, keening lamentation of those who feared, with a Trump presidency, the collapse of U.S. foreign policy, ensuing international chaos, and even a nuclear holocaust. A year into the Trump presidency, in article after article, those who predicted catastrophe declared themselves to have been proved right.

An article on the website of American Progress, for example, set out to summarize the full indictment of Trump’s record. There were dozens of items. For example: rejected the Paris climate accords, never criticizes Russian Premier Vladimir Putin, moved the U.S embassy to Jerusalem without forcing Israel closer to a “two-state solution,” enriched himself with gifts from foreign potentates, criticized U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials, and so on—and on.

The conclusion was that it took Trump only a year to devalue America’s reputation abroad, upset and alienate allies, demoralize the State Department, encourage autocrats worldwide, and cripple the American representation of “liberal values” abroad—to name but a few charges.

The same kinds of indictments could be found in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Atlantic, and dozens of other high-profile publications.

And yet, I cannot persuade myself that this is what Democratic politicians, left-liberal media commentators, and panicked American voters were talking about back in 2016. For example, New York Times columnist Paul Kruger predicted more or less permanent worldwide recession under Trump. Many dark comparisons were made to German National Socialism under Adolf Hitler. War with Iran was predicted. And the terror of nuclear was (not very successfully) revived.

But where is the beef? After almost three years of a Trump presidency, the overwhelming majority of the criticisms are of how Trump has conducted policy, his failure to uphold “liberal values” (like encouraging the “Arab spring”), his decision on the Paris accords and Iran treaty, and his supposed lack of dignity and absence of a “coherent vision” of foreign affairs. That was not the stuff of Democratic voter nightmares in 2016.

In many ways, our era’s prime arena of conflict—successive wars, bloody ethnic clashes, local terrorist activity, terrorism like 9/11 exported to the United States and Europe, the rise of murderous political and religious ideologies in places like Iran and the ISIS “caliphate”—is the Middle East.

What does the Middle East look like, today, to a Trump supporter or a victim of Trump trauma?

So where are we today, almost three years into the Trump administration, in the Middle East? I don’t mean where are we in terms of fine-grained geo-political analysis that now passes for the “Trump foreign policy disaster.” No, I mean what does the Middle East look like, today, to a Trump supporter or a victim of Trump trauma? How do things look in one cauldron of conflict vital to U.S. foreign policy?

ISIS, Turkey, and the Kurds

Well, five years ago the world watched appalled as a new entity, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) swept out of Syria and across Iraq, conquering a huge swathe of territory by terror and murder, raping women and girls and taking sex slaves, looting banks (and whole cities), and declaring a new “caliphate” (that is, a  transnational Islamic Empire under the strictest Medieval Islamic laws and practices).

By Donald Trump’s election, the policy under President Obama had halted and begun to reverse the thrust of ISIS. During the election, Mr. Trump vowed to continue until the eradication of the organization.

Today, what do we read about ISIS? Actually, we read only about what will be done with ISIS prisoners of war in the hands of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a predominantly Kurdish group in Syria that also includes some Arabs and foreign volunteers. A sister group, the Women’s Protection Units, fights alongside the SDF. These groups led the decisive 2015 Siege of Kobani against ISIS. It was there that the Kurds of the YPG began to receive air and ground support from the United States and allied nations—an Obama initiative. Since then, under Trump, the YPG has continued forward to defeat and eliminate ISIS as an active movement.

Headlines today are that the United States has reached an agreement with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for a temporary ceasefire by Turkey in its incursion into northern Syria. What is going on? Turkey’s prolonged foreign policy nightmare is that the approximately 20 percent of its population that is ethnically Kurdish, centered mostly in eastern Turkey near the Syrian border, will be tempted to embrace the long-time aspirations of the YPG, which is the armed wing of the leftist Democratic Union Party struggling for an independent Kurdish state.

This decades-long festering conflict between Turkey and the national aspirations of the Kurds, including Kurds in Turkey, has been exacerbated by the military triumphs of the Kurds just across the border in Syria. Turkey sought to create a buffer between this conflict and its Kurdish population by declaring a Northern Syria Buffer Zone as recently as August 2019—a demilitarized zone so that Kurdish fighters in Syria could not get too close to Turkey’s border (and Kurdish population).

The idea frankly was to reassure Turkey, dissuading it from invading Syria to attack the Kurdish fighters. Those fighters are to Turkey the militant partisans of Kurdish nationalism. To the United States (and the rest of the world), of course, they are the forces that defeated ISIS and now have thousands of ISIS prisoners of war. One pressing question is what the Kurdish forces will do with their ISIS prisoners if attacked by the Turkish Armed Forces.

At first, the Trump administration appeared to sanction the incursion by Turkey, seemingly uncaring about the agreement to protect Kurdish forces and Kurdish civilians. Trump agreed to withdraw the few thousand remaining U.S. armed forces in the Buffer Zone. There was widespread alarm that Turkey now would launch a genocidal slaughter of the Kurds. [Many Kurds were killed, and a Kurdish politician was executed after being pulled from her car].

President Trump in a diplomatic note warned President Erdogan against any attack on Kurdish civilians or fighters and bluntly—to the horror of the left-liberal press—said that Erdogan would “be a fool” to engage in such attacks and that the United States would retaliate by crushing Turkey with economic sanctions.

After Trump’s dogged imposition of sanctions against Iran and China, the threat probably seemed credible. Almost immediately, Turkey reached a 120-hour ceasefire agreement with the United States to enable Kurdish forces and civilians to evacuate the demilitarized zone. Kurdish forces probably have gotten the message that operations on the border of Turkey, related more to Turkish Kurds than to ISIS or Syria, are off limits.

It remains to be seen how this works out, but, for now, this represents a kind of cleaning up after crushing ISIS.

Israel and the Palestinian forces

Have you read much about Israel, lately? During the Obama years, it seemed as though conflict in Israel never was out of the headlines. Israeli forces battled attacks by the Islamic militant group, Hezbollah, based in Gaza. Not once, but repeatedly. New Israeli settlements in the West Bank (a Palestinian area) were stirring worldwide protests and condemnation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The movement to boycott Israel economically was in full swing in U.S. universities and colleges.

What was happening? The Palestinians, both extremist (Hezbollah) and “moderate” (the Palestine Liberation Organization), which had split in a popular vote and claimed governance of different Palestinian sectors of Israel, were playing to the Western media and the Obama administration, which were condemning or reproaching Israel almost daily. The kaleidoscopic display of Palestinian protest worked relentlessly on the media. The impression sustained daily by the  media in the United States and Europe was that Israel was a seething sea of discontent by oppressed Palestinians.

When Donald Trump came to office, he declared and demonstrated unequivocal support for the Israeli state and Prime Minister Netanyahu. In an historic and dramatic gesture of affirmation of United States-Israeli convergence of values, he moved the United States embassy to Jerusalem—a move hailed by the Western press as the opening salvo in a new war between Israel and the Palestinians. Indeed, with all of Islam.

Absence of ambiguity, of any dissonance, in the American embrace of its alliance with Israel seemed to send the message—so different from the Obama administration—that on Israeli’s right to exist, its security, and its borders the United States simply was not biddable.

Absence of ambiguity, of any dissonance, in the American embrace of its alliance with Israel seemed to send the message—so different from the Obama administration—that on Israeli’s right to exist, its security, and its borders the United States simply was not biddable. Not susceptible to storms of indignation in the West Bank and Gaza or the United Nations. And not deterred by lamentations on the Times editorial page.

Although there were early references to hopes and plans for a “two-state solution,” dividing Israel into Jewish and Palestinian entities—a long-term explicit policy of U.S. administrations—we have heard nothing of that plan for more than a year, now. In fact, the impression is that Israel is simply not in the news. Life goes on with none of the political fireworks of earlier years. Again, we shall see.

Iran

Toward the Islamic Republic of Iran, Trump policy can be characterized as blunt, simplistic—and consistent. Trump said in the 2016 election debates that the hard-won deal with Iran reached by the Obama administration and our European allies was a fatal capitulation to Iran’s determination to develop nuclear weapons. Elected, President Trump promptly withdrew from the 2015 deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA—and reinstated tight economic sanctions on Tehran.

There were quavering predictions of the bitter alternative, without the treaty, of Iranian nuclear armament or war. Of course, the European signatories to the JCPOA have stuck with it. What we have not seen in the three years since 2016 has been any sign of Iranian progress toward creating nuclear weapons. In fact, apart from some recent interference with the shipping of oil through the Persian Gulf, the almost daily sturm and drang of Iranian relations during the Obama years have disappeared. Certainly, what had seemed during the Obama administration as a perilous slide toward war, involving Israel and United States, or a “deal,” has dropped from the daily news round up.

Still, make no mistake. Iran is perhaps the top Middle Eastern policy concern of the Trump administration. The reason is unambiguous: President Trump views Iran as an enemy of the United States and of Western culture and values. The 2017 U.S. National Security Strategy not only refers to Iran 17 times; it lists—as a top priority in the region—preventing the rise of “any power hostile to the United States.” That means Tehran.

In May 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the Trump administration was prepared to restore diplomatic and economic ties with Iran—complete “normalization”—in exchange for complete ‘denuclearization,’ cessation of Iran’s ballistic missile program, the release of all U.S. citizens or citizens of allied nations now prisoners in Iran, and an immediate halt to Iranian efforts to influence politics in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan—and, for good measure, an end to cyberattacks by Iran. Apparently, that was a non-starter. And anyway, the other signatories to the JCPOA undercut the offer by assuring Iran they would abide by the agreement and oppose the Trump sanctions.

Trump, in sharp contrast to Obama, has improved U.S. relations with Riyadh.

The proactive strategy of the Trump administration has been transparent. The president has fostered consistently positive relations with the major powers in the Middle East that unequivocally oppose Iran and are ready to stand up to it: Saudi Arabia and Israel. Trump, in sharp contrast to Obama, has improved U.S. relations with Riyadh. During the Obama years, the United States and Saudi governments were at loggerheads. In the same way, Trump embraced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which came under constant criticism and pressure during Obama’s tenure.

In a sense, this goes back to a distinctly earlier, enormously successful American strategy in foreign relations. The Trump administration is contemplating a Middle East Strategic Alliance—billed as an “Arab NATO”—to boost overall security and economic cooperation among America’s allies in the region. The strategy includes a regional anti-missile defense shield. The confrontation with Iran would assume a principal role on the new alliance’s agenda. Although it had been scheduled to be announced in October of last year, the plan appears to be on hold, so far.

Waiting for the End of the World

Left-liberals lament that a Trump government has evinced no interest in promoting political reform or bolstering democratic norms in the Middle East. They point to the fact that as soon as he took office, he instituted the so-called Muslim travel ban. But it is difficult to discern “democratic norms” in the Middle East. When the United States withdrew its support from the Shah of Iran, it was in the name of supposed popular demand for return of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Popular opposition to Syrian autocratic rule spawned the birth of ISIS. Certainly, U.S. college students and faculty are ardent in their advocacy of the democratic aspirations of the Palestinians, including Hezbollah, and angrily dismissive of Israel’s claim to uphold human rights and democracy. To say the least, the policy of the Trump administration gives no comfort to the campus demonstrators against Israel.

Commonsense argues that since the election of President Trump, the Middle East has achieved a certain stability. No longer is there the almost daily impression of irrepressible conflict flaming across the region. Headlines have moved on to daily drama over the investigation of Trump and perpetual hopes that he can be impeached, convicted, and ejected from office without the formality of an election.

Commentary on the Middle East continues on the level of professional policy studies. They are not one whit less critical of the President’s policies in the Middle East—albeit in more academic terms—than are the Democratic candidates for the 2020 election—to the extent they are conversant with foreign policy at all.

Here is one conclusion of a typical sober “policy analysis” of the Trump administration’s record in the Middle East. Observe the blending of assertion with innuendo and the argument ad hominem:

“Washington has long-standing alliances with Saudi Arabia and Israel, and doubling down on them is easier than following the trail blazed by Obama, which entailed a complicated balancing act of seeking improved, but still tense, ties with Tehran and accepting less cordial relations with the Saudis and Israelis—an arrangement which satisfied few. It also allowed Trump to visit Riyadh and Jerusalem in triumphant style, and gave his hosts the opportunity to take advantage of the president’s well-known susceptibility to flattery.”

But truth, if obvious enough, will out. A surprising article in Foreign Affairs, September/October 2018, was entitled “Three Cheers for Trump’s Foreign Policy.” The much-battered Trump supporter is tempted to quote the entire article, but let us settle for the opening:

Donald Trump’s…election heralded nothing less than certain catastrophe. At least, that was and remains the firm belief of “the Blob”—what Ben Rhodes, a foreign policy adviser in the Obama administration, called those from both parties in the mainstream media and the foreign policy establishment who, driven by habitual ideas and no small amount of piety and false wisdom, worry about the decline of the U.S.-led order. “We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight,” the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman forecast after Trump’s victory. Others prophesied that Trump would resign by the end of his first year (Tony Schwartz, the co-author of Trump: The Art of the Deal), that he would be holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in six months (the liberal commentator John Aravosis), or that the United States might be headed down the same path that Germany took from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich. That last warning came from former U.S. President Barack Obama last December at the Economic Club of Chicago, where he invoked the specter of Nazi Germany. “We have to tend to this garden of democracy or else things could fall apart quickly,” he said. “Sixty million people died, so you’ve got to pay attention—and vote.”

So far, the world has not come to an end, far from it.

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About the Author: Walter Donway

Walter Donway contributes to Savvy Street on political economy, science, and trends in fiction, film, and culture. Walter Donway’s most recent book is Donald Trump and His Enemies: How the Media Put Trump in Office (Romantic Revolution Books: New York, September 2017). His Amazon profile can be found here