Earlier this month Ian Bond and Charles Grant were in Washington for the biannual Daimler Forum, which brings together officials and think-tankers from the US and Europe to discuss foreign policy challenges. They took the opportunity to see a wide range of current and former officials and foreign policy experts from both sides of the political spectrum. This is a private note for friends of the CER, not to be published or cited.
Trump’s presidency seems likely to mark a big shift in US foreign policy, with a greater emphasis on realism as opposed to principles, bilateralism as opposed to alliances and unilateralism as opposed to multilateralism. There are likely to be big policy changes on Israel (more sympathetic), Iran (more hostile), Russia (more sympathetic) and China (probably more hostile), all of which will create tensions with allies, including the Europeans. Policies apart, some of the best foreign policy experts in Washington worry about Trump’s nonchalant approach to foreign policy and the quality of some of his key appointments. But first, what explains Trump’s victory?
Why did Trump win?
The mechanical answer is that Clinton took the mid-Western white working class for granted. A Clinton campaign worker who had gone door-to-door in Western Pennsylvania said that it was obvious that Trump’s messages resonated more with that group than Clinton’s, and she had done nothing to deal with that problem.
A more nuanced answer is that Trump tapped the pessimists in American society: those who thought life was getting worse; those who felt disempowered; and those who feared that the America they grew up in was being taken over by migrants (the number of immigrants has risen since 1965 from 5 to 14 per cent of the population). The US has lost a third of its manufacturing jobs since 2000, many of them – it is widely believed – because of China joining the WTO. Median household income in the US has fallen since 1999. The proportion of young adults earning more than their parents by age 30 has declined by more than half. Endless wars since 9/11 have brought no victories, only costs and casualties. And cultural change (for example the increase in support for same-sex marriage) worries those who seem themselves as on the ‘losing side’. Trump appealed to all the loser groups.
How will Trump govern?
Because Trump has no previous government experience, there is a lot of guess work. He may turn out to be very hands-off, making Vice President Mike Pence a key figure. That would also imply that the Secretary of State would play an important role. But Trump’s tweets suggest that he is ready to dive into sensitive questions impulsively (and not just in foreign policy: recent tweets criticising Boeing and Ford drove down their share prices). He has strong but poorly-informed views on many questions, including hostility to Iran and China. He believes in personal diplomacy but not in the preparation needed to make it work.
His transition team nurtures deep grudges against the many Republican foreign policy experts who signed letters saying that they would not work for Trump (the team has been calling some of them pre-emptively, to say that they cannot have jobs in the administration, even if they recant). This means that the quality of staff in some key areas is likely to be second rate. Among the think-tanks, the Heritage Foundation is supplying large numbers of staff for the new administration, but other think-tanks, even on the right (such as the American Enterprise Institute), are much less in demand.
The early senior appointments are seen as a mixed bag: Republicans and Democrats both praise General James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis as a widely read strategic thinker (even if some defence professionals worry about the propriety of a recently retired general becoming Defense Secretary). Lt Gen Mike Flynn, on the other hand, is widely regarded as a dangerous liability as National Security Adviser. One Republican suggested that Trump might be having second thoughts about Flynn. People who had had professional contact with Flynn thought he was prone to accepting conspiracy theories, impossible to work with, a poor manager of people, convinced of his own rightness to the point of ordering intelligence analysts to fit their analysis to his (unsupported) theories, and above all extremely islamophobic (We were in Washington just before it was confirmed that Trump had picked Rex Tillerson to be Secretary of State).
Some people expected that Trump would listen to the mainstream figures around him, including his Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, more than the outsiders like Steve Bannon, formerly of Breitbart and now Trump’s strategic adviser, or Flynn. Others warned that Trump was a disrupter, who would not follow conventional advice. The general view of those close to Trump’s circle is that the best tactic for foreign countries who want to influence him is flattery. Mexico is already looking for ways to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to make Trump look as though he had won concessions.
Europe and the UK
One foreign policy eminence who had advised Trump described him as a ‘populist conservative’. He said that his election meant the end of the Davos world; challenged globalisation, neoliberalism, free trade and multilateralism; and marked the transition to a more nationalist, unilateralist, protectionist, transactional ‘Brexit world’.
Trump the unilateralist will be a difficult partner for Europe. His instincts will be to work with the UK (though if he continues to take political advice from Nigel Farage, that may be tough); then France (especially if it keeps fighting Islamists) and Germany (but he and Merkel are so different that it will be hard for them to find a common language); then NATO; and finally the EU. We heard that Trump does not care about the EU, while Bannon hates it as – in accordance with the Nigel Farage world view – an anti-democratic and growth-destroying organisation (and Breitbart intends to nourish euroscepticism through expanding into a number of European countries).
Trump’s presence in the White House may affect the kind of Brexit that Theresa May’s government pursues. Hard-line Brexiteers see Trump’s America as an alternative to the EU and may think it makes close economic ties to the continent less essential. Trump will certainly offer the UK a trade deal. But one Republican warned the UK against thinking that with Trump in the White House it no longer needed the EU for trade. Any US trade offer to the UK would be “very demanding”, for example by asking the UK to open up the NHS to US companies.
The EU will have to work hard to be taken seriously, including on issues of counter-terrorism and protecting its borders (if it fails such tests, it might lose its visa waiver programme). Tensions with Trump’s America are almost inevitable, given European governments’ belief in multilateral institutions, the rule of international law and the relevance of human rights in foreign policy. There will be specific problems on trade, with the economically liberal EU member-states annoyed by Trump’s abandonment of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (though plenty of Europeans will be happy with TTIP’s demise); climate change, which most EU countries consider a serious problem that requires concerted international action; Russia, where about two thirds of the EU countries will fret about any US-Russia rapprochement; China, where most Europeans seek close economic ties and will be worried by any tough new US line; and Iran, where, again, Europeans want to trade. Trump may seek to ignore the EU as much as possible, but find that on issues like counter-terrorism, data flows and trade sanctions, he is forced to deal with it.
Trump will push hard on burden-sharing in NATO, even if his advisers are retreating from his campaign statement that the alliance is ‘obsolete’. He will spend more on defence, but with a greater emphasis on homeland security (including missile defence) than protecting allies. And he is likely to be hostile to EU defence co-operation: some of his transition team worked for George W Bush in the early 2000s when his administration saw EU defence co-operation as a rival to NATO and worked to obstruct it.
Turkey is likely to be a big problem for the US and the EU alike. Trump and Erdogan may bond (as Erdogan and Putin have bonded), sharing a common hostility to the liberal Western establishment. But Erdogan’s unpredictability and commitment to Islam is likely to rile Trump at some point. Trump’s America will see the need for Turkey to remain attached to at least NATO (if not the EU). Concerns about human rights in Turkey will be subordinated to that goal.
The Middle East
Trump is likely to give strong backing to Israel, including by moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem – something which previous presidents have refused to do because of the inevitable negative impact on US relations with Arab countries. Moving the capital may create more animosity in Muslim countries across the world than Trump’s advisers realise. These advisers oppose the two-state solution and strongly support illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank (Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Israel chairs a US support group for one of the settlements). Nobody can be sure of the consequences of the Palestinians seeing that there is no longer a political route towards statehood.
Trump’s second priority will be promoting stability in the region by backing strongmen (eg General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt, President Erdogan in Turkey and the Gulf monarchies). Unlike Bush and Obama, he will not push for more democracy or respect for human rights (This lack of concern for human rights and democracy promotion will not just apply to the Middle East, but to the world as a whole, a point which is causing concern in the State Department).
Trump is likely to let Putin have his way on Syria, because he regards beating Daesh as his top priority, and the Russian president claims to be fighting them. But paradoxically, his third priority in the Middle East will be to counter Iran (a goal on which there is consensus between him, Flynn, Mattis and CIA Director-designate Mike Pompeo); it is not clear how in Syria he will be able to ally with Putin but not with Putin’s ally Iran, or whether he understands the contradiction.
The general view in Washington is that Trump is unlikely to tear up the nuclear framework agreement struck in 2015 between Iran and the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany. General Mattis, though tough on Iran, supports the deal. As the Israeli security establishment recognises, that agreement has led to Iran suspending its nuclear programme and is now enshrined in international law. Tearing up the deal would upset the Europeans, Russia and China.
But Trump is quite likely to introduce new sanctions on Iran, because of its missile programme and its alleged involvement elsewhere in the Middle East (such as in Bahrain, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon). There may be friction between the US and the EU if Trump puts additional sanctions on Iran while Europe is increasing business links with Tehran. New US sanctions could so annoy hard-line Iranians that Tehran restarts its nuclear programme. Indeed, that may be the purpose of some of the more right-wing figures around Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Russia
There is widespread concern about Trump’s support for Russia, one of the few subjects on which his line was consistent throughout the election campaign; and about the links that some around him have to Putin. The Russian hacking of the Democratic Party’s computers, and Trump’s refusal to believe what US intelligence agencies have said about it, has led traditional Republicans like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham to call for investigations. Many of their colleagues, however, would rather sweep the whole affair under the carpet, because Trump won.
Concern about Russia’s influence over the new administration has been heightened since our visit by the confirmation that Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, will be nominated as Secretary of State. Republican experts on Russia said that Tillerson – who had done much business in Russia and opposed sanctions on the country – could be a serious problem for US Russia policy. True, his personal knowledge of the country may prove an asset; but his close ties to both Putin and Igor Sechin, the head of Rosneft, could cloud his judgement.
It was widely expected that Trump would cancel most of the US sanctions against Russia (US sanctions in response to Russian actions in Crimea and Ukraine were imposed by executive order, so could be lifted without congressional approval). But Trump could not do anything about the Magnitsky Act (which punishes Russian officials involved in the death of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky). Some Republicans had tried to give the Russia sanctions a legislative basis, but others had blocked them. Congressional Republicans could easily clash with Trump over Ukraine: while many of them have backed Kyiv, Trump’s close advisers are actively hostile, believing that the Ukrainian authorities leaked or forged information about the links between Trump’s former campaign chief Paul Manafort and deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. It was unwise of Ukraine’s government to give such active support to Hillary Clinton in the election campaign.
Trump himself does not know a lot about Russia, making it crucial that he gets good advice. But one (Republican-orientated) eminence commented that no Russia expert of any standing was talking to Trump or his team. Trump might turn to Dmitri Simes, who heads the Centre for the National Interest, a think-tank which is regarded by some as a beacon of realism and by others as one of the most Kremlin-friendly bodies in Washington.
Trump sees himself as a great dealmaker and so may try some sort of bargain with Putin. Even Obama, who ended up on such poor terms with the Russian leader, tried a ‘reset’ with then President Dmitri Medvedev, which worked quite well for a few years. In any bargain, it is clear what Putin would be looking for: an end to sanctions; a carte blanche in Syria; a free-ish hand to do what he wants in his own backyard (including Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova); and the scrapping of the NATO plans for missile defence, which will see interceptor missiles installed in Poland). It is much less clear what Trump would ask for, other than common action against Daesh. It is possible, but probably unlikely, that Trump would urge Putin to leave Ukraine alone. He might ask Putin to break with Iran, but that would require a major realignment of Russia’s Middle East policy, which seems implausible.
Putin probably sees Trump as offering a window of opportunity for Russia to enlarge its sphere of influence. Putin could conceivably seek to boost his domestic popularity by ‘rolling the dice’ in the Baltic States, believing that Trump would not react. While that scenario is unlikely, several experts worried that Putin might overplay his hand: if he did something which annoyed Trump and made him feel that he had been manipulated, the Trump/Putin honeymoon could prove short.
China and North Korea
While Trump clearly wants to rebuild good relations with Russia, he appears to be hostile to China. Again, experts worry that he is doing this without understanding the implications. The people closest to Trump have no knowledge of Asia and only a rudimentary understanding of international trade. Those beyond his immediate circle (who were involved in setting up the Taiwanese president’s congratulatory call) understand Asia but have ulterior motives, and have been waiting since before George W Bush’s time for their chance to change US policy. One Republican expert said that Trump and his team wanted to “shock and awe” China, but risked stumbling into a crisis before they had a full Asia team to manage it. Initial Chinese reactions to Trump’s Taiwan call were restrained, but that that would change if Trump’s advisers pushed for the US to shift from a One China policy to a One China, One Taiwan policy.
Trump’s decision to dump the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was generally seen as weakening America’s standing in Asia. It left Japan quite exposed (though Shinzo Abe had been smart to visit the US and meet Trump quickly, and would now have the president-elect’s ear). China could now pose as the most pro-trade power in the region, offering the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership as an alternative to TPP. Trump generally favours bilateral trade deals over multilateral or regional ones. He might try to do a bilateral deal with China, and to show that he could create jobs in the US at the expense of China. His transition team included hardliners on trade and China.
Yet at the same time many Republican foreign policy experts see North Korea as the greatest strategic challenge facing the Trump administration (it may greet his inauguration with another nuclear test). Pyongyang has managed to mount atomic warheads on ballistic missiles and could be capable of striking US territory within a few years. There are no good ways of dealing with this problem. Diplomacy has failed. Military action would probably spur North Korea to rain fire on Seoul. Whether China has the capacity to influence North Korea is a moot point, but it may offer the only prospect of a non-military solution to the problem of the North Korean nuclear programme. Which is why a frosty relationship between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping would not be in anyone’s interest.
Ian Bond and Charles Grant, December 2016