WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd November, 2020) It is hard to say if President Donald Trump lived up to his promise to "Make America Great Again," during his first term in office, yet there is no doubt he took decisive actions, caused stirs, triggered disputes and frustrated allies.
Trump was not only a transactional businessman with no comprehensive vision. He did have a grand strategy of sorts - "America First" was not just a throw-away campaign phrase. Trump legitimately embraced and carried out a populist and anti-globalist agenda focused on rebuilding the country while eschewing international entanglements.
He also challenged the status quo. Trump undermined the so-called "Washington consensus" - the bipartisan embrace of neoliberal globalization - and challenged the military establishment by demanding the removal of troops from overseas at a pace that unhinged Pentagon planners. However, at the end of the day, his overall record is mixed despite the general attitude and rhetoric.
NEGATING OBAMA: ANTI-GLOBALISM/ISOLATIONISM
On April 30, 2011, President Barack Obama during a speech at the White House correspondents' dinner openly mocked Trump for his birther theories, a barrage of insults which the New York billionaire sat through, seething with anger.
"I think that is the night he [Trump] resolved to run for president," campaign aide Roger Stone told PBS in 2016.
It is in this light that all of Trump's actions should be seen, especially when he first took office in 2017, because he went to great lengths to reverse many of Obama's foreign policy achievements - including many promises he quickly delivered upon.
Trump, as he repeatedly had promised on the campaign trail, exited the Iran nuclear deal, Paris climate pact, and Transpacific Trade agreement (TTP). He also reversed Obama's normalization of relations with Cuba and the decision to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
And he delivered on his vow to renegotiate the NAFTA agreement, after several rounds of intense talks that saw Trump apply intense pressure on his Canadian and Mexican counterparts through tariffs, and the threats thereof.
The president's pivot against his predecessor was not simply tactical, he ushered in an entire philosophy antithetical to Obama's. The Trump administration tore up, exited or violated a record number of international agreements with a fury driven by something deeper than simply getting revenge against Obama.
Trump and his brain trust ended up undermining - to new levels - the very post-WWII architecture and international institutions the US helped construct in the first place with the United Nations topping the list. The Trump administration defunded the World Health Organization in the middle of a global pandemic, exited the UN Human Rights Council, cut funds to the UN's Palestine refugee relief program and threatened to leave the UN postal union.
Trump's top diplomat and White House advisers went so far as to target International Criminal Court (ICC) officials with sanctions for daring to probe potential US war crimes related to the war in Afghanistan.
The White House, in a move opposed by most of the international community, took the controversial step of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a decision that when first announced sparked riots and instability across the entire Middle East within 24 hours.
On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump's message to end US involvement in foreign wars struck a chord among the electorate, who were weary of long engagements overseas like the fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan. The irony is that Trump, while tearing up a record number of international agreements, at the same time brokered historic peace pacts.
Trump is also first president in 40 years - and only the second in 70 years - not to start any new wars.
He opened up direct nuclear talks with North Korea and brokered historic peace deals between Israel and several Arab Gulf states. Trump boldly also opened direct talks with the Taliban and has reduced troop levels in Afghanistan to wind down America's 19-year role in the war.
He also ordered troops home from Syria, despite resistance from both parties of Congress. This came after he ended Obama's program to fund and train the Syrian opposition. However, Trump has offset this by keeping an almost equal number of troops in Syria to seize the oil.
For these efforts Trump even received a couple Nobel Peace prize nominations, which some critics have widely mocked, forgetting that Obama, absurdly, won the award before even taking office. Obama would go on to escalate the war in Afghanistan, launch a new war in Libya, arm extremists in Syria and expand the US targeted killing program across multiple continents.
However, the great peacemaker has also been quite lucky to avoid a war given his extremely aggressive posture towards both Iran and Venezuela. For example, Trump personally ordered the drone strike assassination of Iran's top military leader, Qasem Soleimani while a hawkish cabal within the White House launched a coup in Venezuela that failed because the administration backed an opposition figure in exile with little popular support.
Trump repeatedly said he wanted to "get along" with Russia yet the relationship between Washington and Moscow has, arguably, hit an all-time low. The US president kept trying - and Moscow also expected improvement - but the domestic political environment fueled by Russiagate made it practically impossible.
Trump's national security adviser Michael Flynn was forced to resign and charged for making false statements about a conversation he had with Russian ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak in 2016.
Trump was essentially powerless, handcuffed by Congress, unable to even veto a sanctions bill targeting Russia. He also felt pressure to defend himself, take a strong stance against Moscow given the allegations, which ended up being untrue, that he colluded with Russia to get elected.
"I have been FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President. At the same time, & as I have often said, getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. I fully expect that someday we will have good relations with Russia again!" Trump tweeted in January of 2019.
Moreover, many of Trump's actions did in fact contradict his promise to get along with Russia, such as the bombing of Syria over unverified allegations of chemical weapons use, along with other rounds of sanctions unrelated to the Russia probe. Not to mention exiting the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the Open Skies agreement, and threats to exit the New START treaty, in addition to escalating the Ukraine conflict.
Moscow was likely disappointed in his change in attitude towards NATO, the anti-Russian alliance which Trump had characterized as an irrelevant relic whose time had passed. Moreover, despite the rhetoric, one could argue that Trump's policies actually made NATO stronger during the past four years.
"I complained about that a long time ago, and they made a change - and now they do fight terrorism," Trump said at a 2017 presser alongside NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, "I said it was obsolete. It's no longer obsolete."
To be sure, Trump repeatedly pressed US NATO allies on burden-sharing, demanding that they pay more as opposed to having Washington foot most of the bill. Trump went so far as to symbolically punish Berlin for falling short on its NATO dues by pulling around 12,000 troops from Germany.
However, little attention was paid to the fact that most US troops removed from Germany were moved closer to Russia's borders, hence fulfilling the core of NATO's mission and reason for existing. It is also worth mentioning that under Trump US-Polish relations grew stronger.
Political commentator Dan Lazare adeptly captured the essence of Trump's record vis-à-vis Russia.
"Trump walked away from the INF Treaty, he's stepped up economic sanctions, and he's approved lethal arms sales for use against pro-Russian forces in the eastern Ukraine, something even the warmongers who filled the State Department and the Pentagon under Obama were loath to do," Lazare told Sputnik.
CHINA RELATIONS: DEALS/SETBACKS
China was in Trump's crosshairs nearly on a daily basis during his first presidential campaign. He made fixing the trade deficit overall and especially with Beijing a high priority once in office. In the spring of 2016, Trump accused China of "the greatest trade theft in history," at a rally in the Midwestern state of Indiana.
"We can't continue to allow China to rape our country, and that's what we're doing," Trump said. "We're going to turn it around, and we have the cards, don't forget it... We have a lot of power with China."
As early as November 2015, his campaign formally vowed to label China a manipulator of currency.
"We must stand up to China's blackmail and reject corporate America's manipulation of our politicians," the Trump campaign said in a statement. "The US Treasury's designation of China as a Currency manipulator will force China to the negotiating table and open the door to a fair - and far better - trading relationship."
Treasury followed through on this promise, but removed the designation in early 2020 after China agreed to refrain from devaluing its currency.
However, when it comes to the trade imbalance, it is still difficult to tell the extent to which he was successful because of conflicting data.
"The trade deficit with China came down by $2 billion-plus from 2017 to 2019. That result is interesting, but perhaps some of the change is due to the corporate tax policies which tended to encourage production domestically," retired Brown University Assistant Professor of Economics Barry Friedman told Sputnik.
However, the US-China trade deficit actually reached a 14-year monthly high in August of 2020, according to government data.
Trump sparked a trade war with Beijing by imposing multi-billon tariffs on Chinese imports. The gambit appeared to partially work given that it led to a phase one trade deal with China that even Democratic Party leaders embraced. Ironically, however, in September the World Trade Organization concluded that the US tariffs on China actually violated international trade rules.
The New York billionaire also had promised to punish companies who outsourced jobs or moved operations to China. However, according to a US-China business Council survey taken earlier this year, 87% of companies had no plans to leave China and 11% said they were shifting production to other foreign countries - not the United States. So, Trump's objective to "bring jobs back home," has not yet materialized.
Then the pandemic caused a Cold war-type atmosphere to break out between Washington and Beijing that at times looked headed for a hot war, as the United States targeted China with sanctions related to human rights issues, intellectual property theft while military tensions rose in the South China Sea.
Trump's State Department went to extraordinary lengths to demonize the country, including designating Chinese media in the United States as well as entities like the Confucius Institutes.
The domestic front battle included many purely local policy issues - like economic and healthcare. Early on, Trump failed to repeal Obamacare, a fight he invested too much time in during his first year in office, but was successful in pushing through tax cuts.
Before the pandemic hit, the US had reached record-low unemployment numbers and experienced robust economic growth under Trump. After a series of pandemic-induced lockdowns, however, the US jobless rate reached proportions not seen since the Great Depression.
"Trump cut taxes when the economy was good, while massively increasing spending, thus creating more budget deficits and debt. The COVID-19 recession has exacerbated these problems," Independent Institute Center on Peace and Liberty Director Ivan Eland told Sputnik.
Trump was successful in tightening immigration policy and partially built a wall on the US-Mexico border. After a series of court fights he was able to implement a "Muslim ban" which eventually included nationals from non-Muslim states like Venezuela and North Korea. He was also successful in setting refugee caps at historically low levels.
