Carnegie Europe was on the ground at the 2018 NATO summit in Brussels, offering readers exclusive access to the high-level discussions as they unfold.
**
The Donald Trump that lands in Brussels this week is a relatively simple man, yet Europeans get him surprisingly wrong.
Let’s begin with the common assumption that Trump likes dictators more than leaders of democratic countries. He does seem to have a fondness for the strongman type, reflecting his notable mix of deep insecurities and natural arrogance. But to understand the president’s approach to U.S. relations with other countries, a better way to look at it is this: Trump believes there are only two kinds of states—the United States and everybody else.
He regards current allies as being too close to the United States—as hangers-on who need to be pushed away to show that America means business and intends to bolster what it gets from them. Those who have a more hostile relationship with the United States need to be brought closer to Trump so that everybody is in about the same position. It does not matter whether he likes an ally or adversary better than another, he just wants the United States to be surrounded by a large set of potential transactional business partners with whom he can then decide what deals he wants to make. There is no gain in treating Trump as ally; his instinct is to keep friends and enemies alike at a similar distance.
For the first time, at least in modern history, the United States has a president who is a businessperson. Businesspeople don’t have ideological allies or rivals. They have people they do business with. Sometimes they have friendly business relations and sometimes they have hostile business relations. The world to Trump is a series of transactional opportunities and challenges, not of unchangeable, long-term relationships. Everything is up for question with Trump, and the main question for him is: What’s good for the United States, right now? Trump is puzzled that this approach comes as a surprise to Europe because he believes that narrow self-interest should be the driving force on both sides of every state-to-state encounter.
The world to Trump is a series of transactional opportunities and challenges, not of unchangeable, long-term relationships.
That is not necessarily the view of some around him, like Secretary of Defense James Mattis, but the assumption that Trump can be restrained by “the adults in the room” needs to be put to rest. Trump 2.0—that is, the Trump of 2018—is a different man from the Trump who attended his first NATO summit last year. His popularity is rising among Republicans: he now has a nearly 90 percent approval rating amongst Republican voters, which is the second highest of any Republican president since World War II, exceeded only by president Bush right after 9/11. Trump’s national job approval rating reached a personal best of 45 percent last month, just 1 percent below his vote total in 2016. He feels he’s doing well and therefore is less open to being told to change course.
There are also fewer and fewer critical voices around him. With Mike Pompeo newly installed at the State Department and John Bolton replacing McMaster at the National Security Council, Trump feels that he’s now got people on side who understand him and who work with him. The new team energizes him, and they carry out his orders—they don’t reinterpret his decisions. Trump is even more confident than last year about disrupting the status quo, consequences be damned.
Trump feels that his core message to NATO—increase your defense budgets—is both popular with the American people and working. He thinks that his foreign policy is in good shape in general. He’s found his feet internationally; he's more self-confident about overseas trips and views summits as a chance to shine and to take control of the narrative. The July 16 Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin will be Trump’s second try at a big one-on-one meeting, which he feels is his natural strength. It’s what he always believed that as president he offers to the world—his ability to charm, bully, bluster, and gesture his way through one-to-one encounters with other leaders.
Donald Trump is a postmodern president; he’s history-free, fact-free, structure-free, and protocol-free.
Donald Trump is a postmodern president; he’s history-free, fact-free, structure-free, and protocol-free. He is acting in ways that belie the last 60 years of assumed history of the United States and the world, and the way the world is organized. He has been a disruptive figure from the day he announced he was running for president. If one put that characteristic to him as a rebuke, he would be genuinely surprised. The response would be: of course I am disruptive, that’s why I’m successful. Trump will continue to disrupt until the day he leaves the office. It is his core message and that’s what his supporters are happy about.
Trump is producing intensified polarization in the United States, which also brings out fundamental differences between U.S. and European politics. European politics is much more about consensus, civility, and continuity. In U.S. politics, polarization has been growing for decades, and with that has come a steady erosion of consensus and civility. Presidential races are often disruptive affairs, in which outsiders not initially chosen by the leadership of the two main parties—such as Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, or Jimmy Carter—challenge through an open primary process, raise much of their own money, and wage their own fight to victory. It’s much less about party politics than the national elections in most European countries are. Presidential campaigns have a strong element of self-financed entrepreneurial politics. As a result, leaders who come to power often have little real obligation to the party and instead remake the party in their own image. Trump’s foreign policy is a dark extension of this harsh quality of American politics: combative, lonely, winner-take-all.
As Europe worries about the Trump-Putin summit next week, it is worth keeping in mind that the U.S. president is probably not going into it aiming for a specific deal, in which he trades a concession on Syria for a concession on Ukraine, or some grand bargain with multiple parts. At the Singapore summit with Chairman Kim, Trump’s goal was not to reach a fully negotiated agreement so much as simply to say that he had forged a changed emotional relationship, and therefore the United States is better off because the animosity from this particular foreign leader has been reduced.
As Trump approaches his summit with Putin, he’s probably focused on showing that he and the Russian president can sit down and talk in a friendly fashion.
As Trump approaches his summit with Putin, he’s probably focused on showing that he and the Russian president can sit down and talk in a friendly fashion. To Trump, a meeting of this sort is less about specific results than about how he frames the outcome. He wants to come out of it and say: I have overcome the animosity between Putin and the United States, and that’s what I’m bringing. That’s good for America. That’s all. Which is a bad thing if you believe there are serious issues on which the United States and Russia need to work together, but possibly a relief of sorts if one worries about Trump compromising European security through specific trades or concessions.
Unfortunately, one cannot rule out Trump saying something startling on Crimea or sanctions. The temptation of further disruption will be great to the world’s new disrupter in chief.
Comments(6)
For Trump, all politics is local. His international approach is driven by his desire to look strong to his base. It is myopic and solipsistic. It may work at home but is will, eventually, self-destruct abroad.
Excellent article to educate Europeans and others about what "Trump" means.
The 2016 elections were about two disrupters: Sanders and Trump. They were disrupters not in the sense implied in the article but disrupters because suddenly two people were describing the reality around them the way it was seen by those living in it. The official narrative was that of a marvelous world in which a global middle class rose from poverty, a world led by a meritocracy emanating from our local expensive educational businesses, aligned with MPS (mistakenly called by Bannon Davos Men); this meritocracy has negotiated eternal, magnificent trade deals, such as NAFTA; every week they can be seen parsing the world on CNN’s GPS, all brightest with expensive credentials (very good actually). In this world entrepreneurs compete to drive you to the airport or deliver your McDonald’s dollar menu; you order them on your phone, while watching target adds which help enhance your world. This was the message brought by Obama to the German and Greek youth, the best times to be alive in human history, a more perfect union message for all. In the actual reality NAFTA didn’t manage to create in 24 years a middle class in Mexico, AMLO’s electoral campaign and victory proves it. Worse, the entire space of the Monroe doctrine is in disarray, although Friedman thought he fixed it starting with Chile (Keynes won!). In this reality the UBER driver isn’t an entrepreneur, and when you order on your cell phone your personal information is being extracted and sold many times for pennies; a targeted add might convince you to change your vote, which is worse and unfortunately is on you; the driver probably has a degree, like Cortez. The Alston report on US poverty states: “For almost five decades the overall policy response has been neglectful at best”; according to Bannon’s EU tour this is being fixed by increasing the debt and stimulating entrepreneurs, in the latest round of tax cuts (Norquist supported);Piketty would disagree. In this reality Obama talked to our youth how hard it is to pay your student loan, now at $1.5 trillion, Warren couldn’t even lower the rates; add ERI, and the nuclear expansion program; there was no money for Flint water or fix potholes in Wilson’s Princeton. In foreign policy the meritocracy (many books on this, see McNamara) is still implementing Fukuyama, with Tiraspol a red line (if somehow Georgia, Ukraine, Crimea are solved of frozen). This time the Democrats support a more muscular foreign policy, but not by joining the military or by running on it.
This article tried to explain away Trumpism. Succeded to some extent. Main reason for Trump's rise to power is due to two aspects. 1. America's decline as a superpower. 2. Failure of American style capitalism. As all past empires were eventually replaced by a new and more resilient challenger, there's one common thread that is a constant, i.e. financial stability of a state or empire, or lack thereof. The cost of maintaining an empire is colossal and due to many foreign affairs' miscalculations and mistakes post WWII, the American empire is broke and bankrupt by any financial standard of solvency. Whereas EU, operates by consensus and strong cooperation, such as the Airbus example, Japan has MITI, another form of consensus and cooperation between government and business, South Korea with a similar platform, Germany with its system of apprenticeship orchestrated by government and business community, China with its mixed blended command and capitalism hybrid, on the way to building the next empire with its "one road, one belt" colossal undertaking with unlimited patience. America, is the sole, gung-ho, jungle capitalism of winner-takes-ALL. An island, isolated internationally and internally " E Pluribus Disunum " There are two main reasons for America's continued strength, currently, its ability to cherry pick from the brightest minds of the world and its not-so-mighty $ is still the world currency of choice. Not for too much longer. Blockchain will eventually take over to replace current forex complex and inefficient system of monetary exchanges. The old and tried motto : evolve or perish, has withstood the test of time.
This article is interesting, and Thomas Carothers is a smart guy, but I believe that the opening analysis is deeply flawed. Thomas Carothers states, “Trump believes there are only two kinds of states—the United States and everybody else.” That is a huge conceptual error. Trump is a sovereigntist. His “Make American Great Again” is an ideology of national sovereignty. This illuminates his attitude towards both the USA and towards other countries, be they allies or adversaries. A sovereigntist sees it as the duty of the president to support the US national interest. Prima facie this seems hardly surprising -- don’t all national leaders support their societies’ national interest? Well, actually no, at least not American leaders. In the US, the political establishment has long had an internationalist ideology that at times sacrifices the national interest (and especially regional interests – think the Rust Belt) for internationalist gains. A sovereigntist regards other countries as sovereigns. Other countries are autonomous and legally equal. Trump doesn’t love them (Germany take note,) and he doesn’t hate them (Russia take note.) He simply regards them as independent players with whom the US must and will interact in its pursuit of its national interest. The US may wield brute power in international relations (Iran take note,) but it does so as one sovereign confronting another in the pursuit of national self-interest. This national sovereignty ideology differs from that of US political elites (AKA “the swamp”), who share an internationalist ideology characterized by terms like unipolar power, exceptionalism, global policeman, etc. In that internationalist world order, allies are largely subordinated to US power and adversaries are targeted by US power. The subordination of allies is done largely through trade incentives, similar to how the US federal government controls state governments through funding (think of the highway fund.) The US gives its allies/subordinates terrific trade deals when they are part of the US camp, and they defer to the US in international relations. This has proven to be an expensive policy, insofar as cultivating and cementing ties with allies involves giving away the US manufacturing base. The expense of the internationalist policy falls disproportionately on places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. (Wall Street, however, is booming.) (Continued)
(Sorry to overrun the character limit!) (continued) In our relations with our allies/subordinates Trump sees them getting lots of money and the US as overstepping its sovereign boundaries. He wants to protect American citizens from the deals cut by internationalists in Washington, and he doesn’t value the benefits those deals provide to our global empire. He would detach Germany from the American teat, and he doesn’t care if Germany starts acting like an independent sovereign. He would deprive Germany of its current dual status as welfare queen and vassal state. In our relations with adversaries Trump also seems guided by sovereignty. When it is in the American interest to work with China and Russia, he seems willing to do so. When they challenge American interests, he stands up. Cold War II doesn’t seem to figure in his thinking, even though it is the latest “War on XXX” espoused by the US political establishment. In summary, when Thomas Carothers writes that “Trump believes there are only two kinds of states—the United States and everybody else,” he is way off. Trump may be the first president since WWII who believes that all states, including Germany and including Russia, are equal sovereigns.
Comment Policy
Comments that include profanity, personal attacks, or other inappropriate material will be removed. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, steps will be taken to block users who violate any of the posting standards, terms of use, privacy policies, or any other policies governing this site. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.