Trump's 'buy now, pay later' foreign policy
By Adam Taylor May 14 at 12:59 AM
Given all of the Trump administration's big foreign-policy announcements in recent weeks, the official move of the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on Monday has seemingly flown under the radar. It shouldn't.
The embassy move is a historic — and potentially explosive — act with plenty of regional ramifications. But it also offers an insight into what may be the guiding principle of President Trump's foreign policy: making splashy foreign-policy decisions that deliver for Trump's domestic base but seem to be causing massive diplomatic headaches and long-term problems.
Call it "buy now, pay later" — a phrase that can apply both literally and figuratively. In the case of the Jerusalem embassy, Trump has insisted he could build a new embassy on the cheap with his business acumen. For example, at a campaign rally in Elkhart, Ind., on Thursday he repeated his story about slashing the cost of the move from $1 billion down to about $400,000.
That's only true if you look at the short term: The Post's Loveday Morris and Ruth Eglash reported earlier this month that the $400,000 only accounted for the first phase of moving the embassy to the existing consular building in Jerusalem, but that's likely to be a temporary home. Building a much larger permanent embassy — and spending as much as a billion dollars to do so — could take another ten years, by which time Trump's time in office will have ended.
Trump's erroneous boast is a telling indicator of how he views the literal costs of his foreign-policy decisions. But, more important, he appears to have underestimated their long-term political costs as well.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/05/14/trumps-buy-now-pay-later-foreign-policy
