Workers assemble a tractor on the factory floor of a tractor manufacturer in Qingzhou, east China's Shandong province on Jan. 27.STR/AFP/Getty Images
Is it U.S. President Donald Trump’s goal to make America feared but friendless? He’s well on his way.
Threats have their time and place in international relations. Between adversaries, a clear statement of threatening intent – do not cross this line, or else – can sometimes open the door to defusing conflict. If Washington and NATO had been clear about just how far they were willing to go in backing Ukraine, Russia’s invasion might not have happened.
But menacing friends? And mocking them? It’s a relationship ender. You can’t punish your way to amity. You can’t abuse your way to comity. You can’t bully your way to trust.
Mr. Trump campaigned on a promise to tackle the biggest strategic challenge for the United States, namely the rise of China, whose industrial strategies have delivered a “China shock” that has sapped industries in the U.S. and among allies. But since his election, Mr. Trump has not been taking care of business with the chief adversary. He’s mostly been going after the allies.
Calling Canada the 51st state and threatening a trade war against this country is bad enough. But he’s levelled stronger demands at Denmark, even refusing to rule out using force to compel it to hand over Greenland. Denmark is, like Canada, a member of NATO – the U.S.-led military alliance whose members are pledged to defend one another against attack.
Mr. Trump similarly refused to rule out using force to get Panama to surrender the Panama Canal. And instead of quietly negotiating with Colombia to allow U.S. military planes to continue to return deported Colombians, his administration seized the opportunity to make a great show of publicly punishing and humiliating a friendly country.
Not only has Mr. Trump spent the past few months threatening tariffs on Canada, he’s been insistently unclear on what he wants in return, or what, if anything, would prevent the tariffs. Appearing this week before the U.S. Senate, Howard Lutnick, the nominee for Commerce secretary, surprised when he said that Canada is in fact facing two volleys of tariffs – a possible 25-per-cent levy on Feb. 1, in response to allegedly insufficient Canadian action against (very low) levels of illegal immigration and fentanyl trafficking into the U.S., and a whole other suite of tariffs that could land as soon as April 1, after a study into unfair trading practices.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump said the Feb. 1 tariff is definitely coming, and it “may or may not” include oil.
It’s one thing to throw adversaries off balance. Richard Nixon sometimes used the “madman theory” to try to cow the Soviet Union and North Vietnam, pitching himself as a temperamental lunatic prone to violent overreaction. But there’s no logic in convincing friends that you’re dangerously unstable. Not unless you want them to stop trusting you.
As Senator Mark Warner said on Thursday, while questioning Tulsi Gabbard, Mr. Trump’s controversial nominee for director of national intelligence, her record of sympathizing with adversaries could deter long-time allies (NATO, the Five Eyes and others) from sharing intelligence with the U.S. That threatens relationships that he correctly characterized as “all based on trust.”
The 19th century British prime minister Lord Palmerston said that countries have no permanent friends or enemies, only enduring interests. Regardless of who’s in the Oval Office, the president will pursue what he believes are his, and his country’s, interests. That’s why Mr. Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement on climate change in his first term. That’s why Joe Biden rejoined. That’s why Mr. Trump has once again withdrawn.
But standing up for one’s interests is a long way from opening hostilities against friends. Mr. Trump’s foreign policy so far is strangely preoccupied with the latter. He seems to believe that America suffers from the burdens of friendship. Friends are for suckers.
Instead, he favours purely transactional relationships, while signalling that deals are always contingent and transitory, to be broken by either side the moment it suits them. But such agreements are in bad faith, and everyone knows it. Mr. Trump 1.0 called the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement the greatest trade deal, ever; Mr. Trump 2.0 is already ripping it up.
If you signal that your commitments are not worth the price of a free-with-purchase cartridge of printer toner, your unfaithfulness will be repaid in kind.
All this is a gift to Beijing.
Canada and the European Union share Washington’s long-standing concerns about China, and their hope was that Mr. Trump would focus on diminishing the economic influence and power of America’s chief rival – an assignment best achieved by forming a united front of allies. Instead, he has spent the past couple of months preoccupied with threatening and belittling allies, and undermining alliances.
How does that benefit Americans? It doesn’t.