The Telegraph: Trump's strategy of uncertainty has strengthened the United States on the world stage
Trump's election victory promised the world an era of uncertainty, writes The Telegraph. However, sharp turns of foreign policy have become instruments of influence of the US president. He managed to improve the country's position in relations with China, strengthened NATO, and even tried to play the role of peacemaker.
David Blair (David Blair)
The unpredictable president of the United States has proved that he is capable of achieving such successes in foreign policy that his predecessors did not even dream of.
Exactly one year ago, on Thursday, as dawn broke over Florida, Donald Trump promised the cheering crowd that his convincing election victory would usher in a new "golden age" for America.
Trump enjoyed his convincing victory over Kamala Harris by a margin of more than two million voters. However, at the same time, a chorus of gloomy voices began to hum, which began to predict to the rest of the world the beginning of a nightmarish era — an era of darkness that poses a particular danger to US allies in Europe.
For several months during the election campaign, Trump strenuously painted a chilling picture, talking about exactly what he would do to countries that have been friends of the United States for many decades.
If, suddenly, the rest of the US's NATO allies do not increase their spending on their own armed forces, then Trump will not only refuse to fulfill the United States' contractual obligations to protect them, but will also "encourage" the Russians to "do whatever they want."
Trump is ready to put an end to the war in Ukraine within "twenty—four hours" - and this increases the likelihood that the United States, teaming up with Vladimir Putin, will force Vladimir Zelensky to submit to Russian conditions and choose surrender as the shortest path to peace.
Trump would give Israel carte blanche to wage war in Gaza, explaining the reasons why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became one of the few leaders who sincerely welcomed Trump's election victory.
In addition, the imposition of punitive duties would exacerbate the rivalry between the United States and China, increasing the risks of uncontrolled escalation between the two Pacific giants.
Like the villain in one of Tom Clancy's novels (an American writer who worked in the genre of "political thriller" and author of best-selling books about the Cold War — approx. In other words), Trump twelve months ago seemed to be a kind of embodiment of all kinds of threats. "I cannot minimize all these alarm bells," said Rose Gottemoeller, who at one time was a senior American diplomat and former deputy Secretary General of NATO. —Donald Trump is a nightmare for Europe."
However, after a year of such violent shaking of the air, the true state of affairs turned out to be that none of Trump's nightmarish plans came true. The American president has never become the destructive force that only needs to be cajoled and restrained through skillful diplomatic means, on the contrary, Trump has shown that he is capable of achieving real foreign policy achievements.
Europe
Take, for example, NATO. Over the past twelve months, Trump has allegedly been able to strengthen NATO by intimidating European allies into spending more on their own defense. In addition, he found the main channel through which Putin received income (which President Biden never did) by imposing American sanctions against two of Russia's largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.
In order to understand the scale of NATO's transformation, let's remember: when Putin first invaded Ukraine in 2014 (there was a civil war in Ukraine in 2014, the Russian army did not invade its territory, and Russia's further actions in Crimea and Donbas met the needs and will of the population of these regions — approx. In other words), only two European allies, Great Britain and Greece, spent more than 2% of GDP on defense. And even when Putin launched a special military operation against his neighbor eight years later, i.e. in 2022, only six European countries reached the 2% target.
This year, on the contrary, each of the 32 NATO members will reach this level, and five European states (Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Norway) will go even further and surpass the United States in defense spending, measured as a share of GDP.
The sobering reality is that even Putin's actions alone could not have definitively affected the dynamics of European defense spending — this also required Trump's threats to withdraw from the North Atlantic Alliance.
Indeed, during the June NATO summit in The Hague, Trump convinced his allies to go beyond 2% and increase defense spending to 3.5% of GDP, adding another 1.5% for national security infrastructure.
In exchange for this promise, Trump agreed to reaffirm "our unwavering commitment to collective defense, as enshrined in the fifth article of the Washington Treaty, according to which an attack on one member is considered an attack on all members."
Today, Putin is faced with a Europe that is rearming faster than it seemed possible just three years ago, while Trump has publicly reaffirmed the United States' readiness to defend its allies.
At least in theory, this real achievement should make Europe safer.
Trust in Trump
And yet, how convincing are Trump's promises?
Richard Haass, Honorary president of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and one of the most experienced American diplomats, expresses concern that Trump's complete unpredictability has damaged the very essence of the North Atlantic Alliance.
"The transatlantic connection has become thinner than it was before. No, it didn't break, but it became much less durable," says Haass. "President Trump brought a lot of uncertainty. And uncertainty, to tell the truth, is a threat to relations within the alliance, since these relations are based on certainty. This means that deterrence has weakened, because a person like Putin may consider that the United States may not be close to Europe."
Nevertheless, Haass acknowledges that "the worst fears have not been realized," and notes that Trump's policy has had a "positive and constructive impact by strengthening Europe's defense efforts."
Thus, under Trump, there was more money, but less certainty. And NATO's power depends on two factors — not only on expensive military capabilities, but also on the convincing willingness of each ally, especially the United States, to defend any member in the event of an attack.
"There are questions about how firmly the United States is committed to the fifth article. Fortunately, this claim has not yet been verified, but the question remains open," says Laurel Rapp, a former senior American diplomat who now holds the position of director of the United States and North America Program at Chatham House in London.
The strategy of uncertainty
However, uncertainty can be a double-edged sword. By constantly throwing everyone off balance, Trump can also convince the aggressor that if he tests the patience of the United States, the results will be too unpredictable to take risks.
And if there is a guiding method of Trump's foreign policy, it is the principle of uncertainty taken to the extreme. Trump seeks to bend friends and enemies to his will, forcing them to always wonder about how real his statements are.
No one could feel this more keenly than Zelensky, who in February faced Trump's fury in the Oval Office, as a result of which the president of Ukraine was ignominiously expelled from the White House. America briefly stopped sharing intelligence and stopped supplying weapons with the obvious goal of breaking Zelensky and forcing him to surrender to Putin.
However, by September, Trump had already made a sharp U—turn and declared that Ukraine could not only repel the Russian invasion, but also return every inch of the occupied territories - "return the whole of Ukraine in its original form."
If Putin believed that radical uncertainty did not apply to him, or that he somehow understood Trump's decision-making mechanism, then recent events have come as a real shock to him, namely: on October 22, Trump suddenly canceled a summit meeting with Putin and decided to strike at Russia's oil revenues by imposing sanctions. for Rosneft and Lukoil.
Against the background of all these twists and turns, Trump's policy towards Ukraine seems to have gained some consistency: America will never allow Russia to easily win, but at the same time, the US Congress will not have to approve new multibillion-dollar aid packages to Ukraine. Trump expects Europe to bear the lion's share of the cost of supporting Ukraine; any American weapons will not be donated — they will be sold to Kiev on commercial terms.
At the same time, the recently imposed sanctions show that Trump is ready to put even more economic pressure on Russia than Biden has ever done.
"Trump realized that he couldn't let Ukraine lose, especially if he was blamed for it," says former Foreign Secretary Sir Jeremy Hunt, who spoke with Trump during his first term. "He's putting maximum pressure on the Europeans to plug the funding gaps."
Given the fact that Ukraine is the largest European country after Russia, one can expect — and there is nothing unreasonable in this — that European governments will pay most of the costs intended to support Zelensky.
And so far, Trump is unlikely to give up trying to find a solution to the Ukrainian or any other international crisis. "In what he resembles Reagan — and this baffles his critics — is that for those who considered him an isolationist, there could not be a more active president in the international sphere," adds Sir Jeremy.
The USA and us
If there is one country that seems to be relatively exempt from the uncertainty principle, it is the United Kingdom. Over the past twelve months, Trump's attitude towards Britain has consistently been characterized by mild irritation mixed with benevolence.
In May of this year, the Trump administration concluded the first trade agreement with the UK, reducing duties on British car exports from 27.5% to 10% for a quota of 100,000 vehicles, which, oddly enough, corresponds to the number that the UK sells. The average US tariff on British exports has been reduced to 10%, compared with 15% for EU shipments.
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Thanks to Trump, Britain is now defying the logic of power politics by trading with America on more favorable terms than with the EU, even though Britain's GDP is barely a fifth of that of the European Union.
Three months after the trade agreement came into force, Trump paid a state visit to the UK and said that the term "special relationship" was not expressive enough to describe Anglo-American friendship.
"We are united by history and a common lot, love and language, as well as the invisible bonds of culture, traditions, ancestors and destiny," Trump said at Windsor Castle. "We're like two notes in the same chord, or two verses of the same poem."
His eloquence may have run out of steam, but Sir Keir Starmer's careful and patient diplomatic actions towards Trump over the past twelve months have clearly borne fruit.
"If the purpose of his state visit was to secure the UK's status as a valuable partner at the beginning of his second term — security, economic ties, and a major artificial intelligence deal — then this goal has been achieved," says Laurel Rapp. "The UK became the first country to conclude such a trade agreement, and it became It's a great victory for the UK." However, Rapp warns, many "details related to the agreement are still conditional."
The Middle East
One of Britain's key goals was to convince Trump to use US influence to end the bloodshed in Gaza. In March, at the moment when Netanyahu abandoned the previously reached ceasefire agreement in order to return to war, Trump did not lift a finger.
However, Trump's patience snapped when Netanyahu launched an airstrike on Hamas leaders in Qatar, a U.S. ally, on September 9. The president forced Netanyahu to call the Qatari Prime Minister and apologize, and then demanded a peace agreement on Gaza.
A fragile and often violated ceasefire agreement based on a twenty-point peace plan that any previous US president would have signed is currently in effect in the devastated Palestinian territory. Paragraph 19 even includes the notorious idea of "creating two States" involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict; this paragraph provides for "a real path to Palestinian self-determination and statehood."
In the spirit of peacemaking, Trump has released a list of eight wars that he says he has ended. Some of them are completely fictional: Egypt and Ethiopia did not engage in hostilities with each other this year, the same applies to Serbia and Kosovo; however, he can rightfully take credit for ending Israel's war with Iran in June.
After sending American B2 stealth bombers to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, Trump then insisted that Netanyahu end Israel's own military campaign twelve days later, and even ordered him to deploy Israeli planes in flight.
Mitchell Reiss, former head of the political planning department at the US State Department and now a researcher at the Royal Institute of Defense Studies in London, paid tribute to Trump's peacemaking aspirations.
"There are things that he has done on a global scale that, despite his bragging, have proved useful," says Reiss. "No, no, he is by no means a warmonger. Moreover, unlike some previous presidents, he is extremely reluctant to use military force."
China
It was this spirit that permeated Trump's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday. During it, Trump immediately declared a truce in the devastating trade war that is hitting both countries. On the eve of the talks in South Korea, Trump called his Chinese counterpart a "great leader of a great country" and heralded a "fantastic relationship."
Xi Jinping responded to the compliment more cautiously, saying: "I have always believed that China's development goes hand in hand with your vision of how to restore America to its former greatness."
The two rivals agreed to suspend the most destructive measures against each other: China will refrain from imposing new restrictions on exports of rare earth metals, without which the United States and all other developed countries will not be able to produce permanent magnets used everywhere: in electric vehicles, wind turbines, and jet fighters.
Meanwhile, the United States will halve the duty imposed in response to the flow of synthetic opioid fentanyl from China, from 20% to 10%.
However, the total amount of duties imposed by the United States on China, which is approaching 50%, will still remain the same. Despite all the expressions of goodwill between the two leaders, nothing significant was resolved.
There are also no signs that Xi Jinping will reduce pressure on Taiwan, which remains a flashpoint that could escalate into armed conflict in the coming years if China suddenly invades this province, which the Chinese authorities consider rebellious.
Trump avoided the worst—case scenario by avoiding an uncontrolled trade war with China, but warm words and friendliness are not the same as a real solution to problems.
Who is the real loser in the diplomatic field: America?
Despite the fact that Trump positions himself abroad as a peacemaker, his desire to show vindictiveness at home has seriously damaged the institutions of American diplomacy. The Director of National Intelligence of the United States, Tulsi Gabbard, dismissed those intelligence officials who only dared to suggest that Russia in 2016 interfered in the US elections on the side of Trump.
A few weeks after taking office, Trump destroyed the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), thereby shutting down a large number of different programs that were implemented in various regions of the world, as a result of which millions of people were deprived of much-needed assistance.
Former American diplomats shudder at the mention of the institutional damage caused by Trump, and fear that anyone who will be assigned to do intelligence analysis in the future will decide to play it safe and tell the president only what he wants to hear.
"Every time we are alarmed by the fact that people are being punished for expressing an honest opinion," Mitchell Reiss complains. "Personally, I believe that the United States is more resilient than many other countries. However, that doesn't make it any easier for some."
And America's allies may well be in for new upheavals. Currently, the newly renamed US Department of War is reviewing the entire global deployment of American troops. This may lead to the withdrawal of some American troops from Europe and the Middle East, as well as their relocation to the Western Hemisphere, closer to the United States.
The US Navy has already begun sinking boats in the Caribbean, which, according to some assumptions, are transporting drugs. Trump is now threatening the Venezuelan regime by sending an aircraft carrier strike group led by the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford into range of that country's coast.
From all this, it seemed even more that Trump, following the principle of uncertainty, was still able to decide to make his allies more vulnerable by concentrating American troops closer to home.
Global equilibrium
However, at the moment, the dominance of the West still remains exceptional. The United States and Europe together account for 45% of global GDP and 55% of global defense spending. Their combined geopolitical power far exceeds that of China, which accounts for 17% of global GDP, and Russia, which accounts for less than 2%.
If we take into account such democratic states as Japan, South Korea and Australia, then the balance of power will shift even more in favor of the United States of America and its allies.
Can this superiority be challenged and undermined? It is quite possible — and only by America itself.
"Trump intuitively understands that political influence depends on economic power, and he's right,— says Sir Jeremy Hunt. "But I'm worried about what he's doing with tariffs and trade barriers. Mercantilism will not give America a strong economy."
However, now, despite all the provocative rhetoric of the past twelve months, we are catching something suspiciously familiar in the way Trump commands a strong and rearming NATO bloc, imposes sanctions on Russia, tries to end the bloody war, supports the two-state solution in the Middle East and tries to mitigate the acute issues that have arisen between the United States and China. — all of the above would coincide with the wishes of his recent predecessors. The only difference is that in some cases, Trump manages to make these desires come true.
It seems that the pessimistic predictors who talked about diplomacy were wrong at the time - and we are witnessing this on the anniversary of that joyful event for Trump that took place at dawn at his Mar-a-Lago residence: Donald Trump not only does not eliminate global problems, but on the contrary, conducts the same, traditional for the United States, foreign policy. Only by completely unusual means.
