Ignoring America

 “Eat your food. Many children are starving in America.”

A line from the recent and highly successful film, Crazy Rich Asians

As the United States cancels its treaty obligations, withdraws from multinational accords, insists on policies that attempt to force other countries to kowtow to American unilateral demands that only benefit the United States and significantly negatively impact those other nations, the rest of the world is slowly drifting away from constructive dialog with the United States. America has not been this isolated in over a century.

On September 26^th, Trump’s braggadocio before the United Nations General Assembly drew derisive laughter from the gathered body of seasoned diplomats. His, “not the reaction I was expecting, but that’s okay” response, to Trump observers, suggested that he was enraged inside. These experts noted that typically his use of the words, “that’s okay,” are an indication of his extreme anger while attempting to maintain his cool. Trump’s constituents saw the U.N. response as derisive laughter at the United States (not Trump), ramping up their own anger against “globalism” and bolstering their commitment to stand behind the President. But the reality: Outside the United States, Trump and his policies have been, are and will remain somewhere between a sad reality and a bad joke. He has become America’s “clown prince”; his base’s rally adoration of his rhetoric does not play outside the United States.

The Trump administration’s basic international diplomatic tools, vestiges of failed 19^th century strategies, are bullying, intimidation, threats, trade barriers, rejection of multinational agreements of every kind and insistence on a complex web of bilateral diplomatic and trade agreements. These proclivities ignore the existence of multinational agreements that embrace so many of the nations with which Trump wishes to force into bilateral negotiations. The world is too interrelated, too interconnected to believe that a web of bilateral agreements can replace multinational accords. Trump’s policies are anchored in the belief that the United States is so powerful that the rest of the world must bend to our demands.

Simply put, many of these nations cannot even entertain that bilateral agreement Trump is demanding unless they too withdraw from their own multinational commitments. And should they follow that path, they will dramatically alienate all those other countries who are part of those existing multinational agreements. To many countries, it’s a choice between sidling up to Trump’s America or being part of the “rest of the world.” Smaller nations might have to walk a tightrope where they rely in significant part on the United States; larger powerful nations can simply resist and use Trump’s ability to alienate nations around the world as a stepping stone for those other powers – particularly Russia and China – to replace the United States within those alienated countries.

Not that Donald Trump has failed to identify some issues that truly need to be addressed. China’s tendency to steal trade secrets, operational technology inventions and fail to enforce the patents and copyrights of companies from other countries continues to be infuriating. That said, his choice of tariff barriers as his weapon of choice against China, mired in the firm belief that China cannot tolerate our tariffs, that they are so dependent on U.S. that they will cave to our demands, is perhaps the least effective tool he could have chosen.

Of course, China will ultimately come to the negotiating table, but to expect the level of concessions Trump is demanding is inane. When that negotiation takes place, Trump will do what he always does: take the minor but inevitable two-way agreement that results and tout the results as a major triumph for his brilliant policies. Those concessions were available before the tariffs were imposed. Because trade is so complex, most Americans lack the knowledge to evaluate the resulting accord on its face, so they generally will accept the labels that the politician in charge uses to describe the negotiated result. But if China’s President Xi Jinping were to fold his hand in trade negotiations with the U.S., he would be cutting his own political throat. His power and stature in the People’s Republic would plummet.

For those Americans who have actually travelled to major cities inside China, from Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, etc., they understand how advanced that country has become. In terms of economic and political power, it is second only to the United States. Those urban areas are rich, modern and technologically advanced – new cities that make the aging infrastructure and historical architecture of older American cities seem like yesterday’s news. We’re still the most powerful country on earth with the strongest economy… but we are doing very little to continue to invest in ourselves (education, research, infrastructure, healthcare) to maintain that status. Trump believes that the right path is to take the rest of the world down rather than to invest in growing us into sustainable primacy. Tax cuts cannot substitute for investment in “us.”

One of the most visible signs of negative reactions, including what were purportedly America’s closest allies, to American policies surrounding Trump’s withdrawal from the U.N.-sponsored, six-party Iran nuclear accord. Trump went out of his way, in his recent U.N appearance, to excoriate Iran and then accuse China of interference with our upcoming mid-term elections. As the Trump administration has escalated new economic sanctions on Iran, it threatened any country or company that chooses to ignore those new pressures with a boycott. It seems as if these threats are increasingly falling on deaf or unwilling ears

Speaking at an anti-Iran conference on September 25^th, “US National Security Adviser John Bolton has warned Iran's rulers that there will be ‘hell to pay’ if they harm the US, its citizens or allies… His comments came hours after President Donald Trump accused Iran of sowing ‘chaos, death and destruction’ across the Middle East…

“The accord, negotiated by former President Barack Obama, saw Iran limit its nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief… The remaining signatories are standing by the deal. The UK, China, France, Germany and Russia say they will set up a new payment system to maintain business with Iran and bypass US sanctions.

“US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemned the plan as ‘one of the most counterproductive measures imaginable.’… Mr Bolton said the ‘murderous regime’ of ‘mullahs in Tehran’ would face significant consequences if they continued to ‘lie, cheat and deceive.’” BBC.com, September 26^th.

Despite some nice meetings, North Korea has not agreed to take down its nuclear arsenal. Russia has built new ties with the Assad regime in Syria, promising to upgrade Syrian air defenses to the highest and most technologically advanced systems available. China now completely dominates the South China Sea and the nations in the entire region. The U.K, one of our few allies (but Trump is now really unpopular among their electorate as his recent visit illustrates), is teetering in its Trump-like populist withdrawal from the European Union. All of the above have been at the expense of U.S. demands and policies.

By moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, cutting all U.N. humanitarian aid to Gaza and clearly siding with the globally-unpopular Netanyahu regime, the United States as lost its power to mediate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Russia’s links to Syria and Iran have grown stronger, Putin’s undermining Turkey’s commitment to NATO, have rendered U.S. influence in the Middle East to the lowest point in modern history.

In short, Trump has used powerful words to explain his unprecedented “accomplishments” in the realm of foreign policy, and while his opening the door to direct discussions with North Korea is indeed a good first step, the balance of Trump’s international efforts is a story of failure, mockery, isolation and plunging credibility and influence around the world. Trump has hardly been held accountable for his legacy of failure and disruption.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the willingness of too many Americans to allow self-aggrandizement to substitute for genuine positive results is deeply disturbing.