The fall in America’s global esteem is becoming an international horror show as the world watches the superpower’s fight to match the efforts of many poorer nations to control the coronavirus pandemic.
Three and a half years of President Donald Trump in office have changed America’s international reputation and perhaps his future role in a way that seemed unimaginable when he was sworn in on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on January 20, 2017.
He set the tone in the drizzle that day: “We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries that manufacture our products, steal our businesses, and destroy our jobs.”
Trump’s early decisions were deliberate, turbulent, and at times seemed giddy.
Three days after his inauguration, he left the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a potentially lucrative 12-nation Pacific trade deal. Executive Order 13769 quickly followed, prohibiting citizens of seven Muslim nations from traveling to the United States.
So when the leaders of the European Union gathered in Malta for an emergency summit in February 2017, “America first” was on their minds. EU Council President Donald Tusk wrote to the leaders of the bloc: “The change in Washington puts the European Union in a difficult situation; the new administration seems to question the last 70 years of foreign policy. U.S”.
Europe’s matriarch and often her moral compass Angela Merkel stated: “Europe has its destiny in its own hands. And I think the more we clearly spell out how we define our role in the world, the better we can take care of our transatlantic relations” .
Three months later, on his first trip abroad, Trump proved that Merkel was right. At NATO headquarters in Belgium on May 25, the President not only roasted Merkel for Germany’s performance in trade and attacked her allies for failing to meet NATO’s funding goals, but showed a shocking disdain for his peers, beating Montenegrin Prime Minister Dusko Markovic, and giving a very icy handshake to the newly arrived French President Emmanuel Macron.
His coup de grace at NATO headquarters that day was unable to support the alliance’s founding principle, its Article 5, under which it is obligated to protect each and every one of its members.
After three and a half years of Trumpian vacillations, NATO’s top levels privately fear that a second Trump term could lead to NATO’s “effective end”. Those fears peaked two weeks ago when Trump announced he would withdraw 9,500 soldiers from bases in Germany. Angela Merkel had not been notified.
Last week, a leading NATO source told me that if Trump is reelected, it would be “extremely bad news” and could “fundamentally f ** k the alliance.” It would not cease to exist, but the concept of transatlantic deterrence “would no longer be fit for purpose.”
What Trump is proposing, the source said, is “very real, there are many troops.” And it was emblematic of a bigger problem, that “the United States cannot be trusted.”
That often mercurial streak of unilateralism has been the trademark of Trump’s first term. His doctrine of the United States, first multilateralism, has changed Washington from being the global center of gravity built by generations of American politicians, to an unreliable centrifugal force in danger of dispersing democratic forces.
In capitals around the world, Trump’s impact has become the endless hangover. The global village is in a semi-permanent turn, the geopolitical furnishings were seldom where they were the night before.
The heap of pressing international problems: climate change, the coronavirus, and the threatening economic collapse, China’s inexorable rise, teeter to the point of collapse.
It is no longer possible to hide how much the United States is “on the street.” When it comes to international cooperation, Europe is likely to side with China as it is with the White House. Not least because of Trump’s utter unpredictability, whether in Syria, North Korea, trade, or NATO.
In January, Trump praised China’s handling of Covid-19, saying: “I think our relationship has never been better. We are very involved with them, right now, in the virus that is circulating.”
But in late April, the White House wanted China to be punished and punished for failing to warn the world about the pandemic.
In a vote last month at the World Health Organization annual meeting, Europe resisted pressure from the United States to demand an investigation into how China had handled the pandemic, while Trump criticized the WHO as a Chinese puppet.
Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt said it was like “observing the post-American world. A secure and assertive China with a clear strategic focus. An EU trying to rescue what remains of global cooperation. And a more disruptive American interested in fighting China than fighting COVID19, “Bildt tweeted.
What’s worse, Trump’s own actions have made his views on fighting the virus almost useless. It is not just that he suggested taking chlorine or taking the drug, hydroxychloroquine, against most health guidelines. But stacked against China, the United States is failing its people.
If Covid-19 were Trump’s only crisis, the world could be a little more forgiving. But in his presidency he has rocked nerves around the world more than any of his recent predecessors.
He pulled out of the global climate change deal, quit the JCPOA: the multilateral deal limiting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, started a trade war with China, and another is brewing with Europe. He played with the triggering conflict against Iran and has had a troubled relationship from time to time with Kim Jong Un in North Korea, as well as disputes with most major multinational bodies, from the UN to the IMF and more.
On top of all that, he seems barely capable of criticizing powerful dictators. Under his watch, China and Russia have moved toward life-long leaders in Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.
By Independence Day next week, the United States may be more alone than it has been in decades. Trump has cut many of the ties that have forced the country to the expected international standards, but it comes at a cost to the rest of the world.
But Trump’s unorthodox unreliability may have served his match at Covid-19. Unlike many other leaders, a virus cannot be defeated. As the number of infections increases in more than 30 US states, the global will to turn a blind eye to the obvious flaws of the US president.
As the largest global economy, the failure of the United States to stem the pandemic will affect us all. More than ever in recent history, the rest of the world is interested in an American course correction.
In the absence of the highly unlikely, that Trump acknowledges his flaws in directing the U.S. response to Covid 19, Washington’s allies will have to wait until November for the possibility of release.
.
