Gambler Donald: Trump’s risky style is reshaping foreign policy

Just as a gambler, U.S President Donald Trump likes to cancel any international deal where the U.S. paid the price of the role of world leader - the most expensive bill, according to his vision.

He banged his hand on the table to renegotiate any deal where Washington’s position was perceived as “weak.”

Why?

Maybe because the U.S. has lost the role of leadership of the globalization project. The project failed as planned because it was too complex, the “globalists” political elite lost the White House seat, and the bill to pay was heavy, even for the American labor market and industry.

Typically, the U.S. has increased imports from a partner country hit by economic crisis, as an emergency aid – and in 2017, the total U.S. trade deficit was $566 billion. An attitude that, along with the fading of the old model of globalization, drove serious problems.

Trump wanted to mend these damages. That conceived plan – that was going out of control at the end of the 90s - got too many political and international attachments that Trump seems to want reshape. He immediately started with the Paris agreement on climate change, then the notorious initiative to build a wall with Mexico.

In the U.S. president’s mind, the still porous southern border was just a free tap of low cost handworkers to feed the globalists’ needs that ignited a social dumping among many U.S. working sectors. The nature of the exit from the Iran nuclear deal, on May 9, that stressed a sharp turn in U.S. foreign policy “orthodoxy” was the same, giving a headache to Europe (with China and Russia) that greatly relies on that agreement. The White House move could even be a call for Kim Jong-UN’s next nuclear deal. Even the “tax war” on steel could be placed in the “renegotiate” category, because by itself it is not worth so much. It looks more the sign of a fading power that needs to breathe, rather than a sign of political arrogance. Perhaps. However, not all the results of this gambling attitude could be good.

The U.S. foreign policy seems like a rollercoaster under “Donald’s” ruling, where success and blunders often swap roles. Some examples? North Korea’s leader shaking hands with South Korea’s prime minister. Something wonderful for Koreans after over 60 years of constant tension and an open war in the 50s. It could be a “historic deal” especially with the strategic consequence of the “denuclearization” of the Korean peninsula, something that China, by the voice of its leader Xi Jinping proposed some time ago. President Trump was challenging Kim Jong-Un and his pretended “nuclear danger” so he links the outstanding outcome to his own politics.

Among other issues, the Pyongyang dictator released three U.S. citizens who had been detained for years in his “not-so-nice” prison camps, surrendering to another U.S. president’s demand ahead of the planned historic summit between the two leaders. The armistice pact involved Pyongyang, Beijing and Washington, not Seoul, so it is primarily a business between Donald and Kim with the direction of Xi.

Last October we wrote about the fake North Korea danger, because the Pyongyang “bogeyman” was useful to justify the strong American military presence in Japan and South Korea, while it did not seem to pose a real threat. North Korea served more like a troublemaking presence for both countries that periodically have to justify the reasons of those solid settlements to their citizens. It is very hard to quote 60-year old covenants to explain “secret” agreements – it is much easier to herald a “Pyongyang crazy man” playing with such dangerous atomic toys. A U.S. military presence needed to support a security belt around China, Washington’s real strategic competitor.

That could explain the speedy and easy fading of NK’s threat, like snow under the sun. The denuclearization of the Korean peninsula is another stunning achievement if it can reached, but it is goal of Beijing, not an American one. So the question is: Does Trump know that with the Korean pacification he will have to reshape the U.S. military and strategic presence in the Far East? Perhaps “Gambler Donald” has a secret project for an Asian policy revolution, to involve China in a win-win game. It is really wishful thinking if we watch at the real nature of the US-China challenge. A challenge stance that recently got a confirmation about Taiwan.

Trump signed the Taiwan Travel Act last March, a bill that gives the president political cover to significantly shift U.S. policy toward Taiwan, in a way that would deeply rile Beijing. The legislation, which congressional Republicans introduced a year ago, was passed by both wings unanimously this February. By signing the bill, Trump signaled to Beijing that he would consider allowing high-level U.S.-Taiwanese contacts of a sort normally reserved for nations with official diplomatic ties. Something forbidden for decades in the past. What does this kind of back and forth attitude mean? Sino-U.S. relations are multidimensional and very complex, so economic frictions and political frictions coexist with cooperation frames, exactly as it happened in the past between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Of course it is a risky game, especially because today “war” does not imply just army and navy moves, but even economic challenges and any kind of means to exert influence and social changes.

China is going from what you might call a “nice-to-have” market to a “have-to-have” market, and this has significant implications. The economic damage of a China-U.S. trade war could be comparable to that of a real war. The value of their bilateral trade equals the GDP of many countries. So taking for granted the fact that Trump is a rational player, even the tariffs war is just a piece of the big puzzle we are attempting to sketch, putting it in the big box of the “renegotiate” policy.

Another strategic chapter in the U.S.-China confrontation is the India file. The Wuhan meeting in May this year was the first ever “informal summit” between Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi. The talks were officially set to tackle a range of bilateral issues, from border disputes to trade. But there was an unacknowledged third party —President Trump. Wuhan’s bilateral diplomacy has a triangular twist. Both Beijing and New Delhi find it hard to view each other outside of the framework of relations with Washington. China has long feared that India is being lured into a U.S.-led alliance meant to contain China and block its rise to a superpower status. And while wary of a full-fledged alliance, New Delhi sees the United States as a necessary strategic partner to build up India’s economic, technological, and military muscle and to withstand Chinese expansionism.

Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security, and Gambler Donald’s stance could be better explained under this light. But gambling brings blunders too. And a mistake attached to the president’s new stance could be, for example, the exit from the Iran nuclear deal of 2015. Or the implementation of the U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem that provoked the reaction of Palestinians and a bloody record of civilians because of the Israeli military. Maybe he decided to be partisan in the Middle East or maybe he just popped another issue from his political list. So now he can say: “I did what others just talked about it.”

His Cartesian assumption like: “Iran doesn’t fully comply to some points of agreement” does not work in the Middle East political environment. It is almost impossible to achieve a “perfect” deal and it is hard to sign a pact in a short span of time. The Iran deal happened after 10 years of negotiations. Even London attempted a last minute endeavor to make Trump change his mind. The U.S. president has to deal with Israel’s will to erase the Iranian presence from Syria and downsize its influence in Lebanon on the one side, and Saudi’s will of revenge against its historical Shia enemy, after the defeat in Iraq, on the other. It is like playing with dynamite.