I wish I could write as well as David Frum
Trump’s Reckoning Arrives
The president’s unpredictability once worked to his advantage—but now, it is producing a mounting list of foreign-policy failures.
“Gradually and then suddenly.” That was how one of Ernest Hemingway’s characters described the process of going bankrupt. The phrase applies vividly to the accumulating failures of President Trump’s foreign-policy initiatives.
Donald Trump entered office with more scope for initiative in foreign policy than any of his recent predecessors.
In his campaign for president, Trump had disparaged almost every element of the past 70 years of U.S. global leadership: nato, free trade, European integration, support for democracy, the Iraq War, the Iran deal, suspicion of Russia, outreach to China. Trump’s election jolted almost every government into a frantic effort to understand what to expect. Other countries’ uncertainty enhanced Trump’s relative power—and so, perversely, did Trump’s policy ignorance and obnoxious behavior. After eight years under the accommodating Barack Obama, the United States suddenly turned a menacing face to the world. In the short run, that menace frightened other states into attempted appeasement of this unpredictable new president.
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The “bark orders, impose punishments, and bully friends and enemies into surrender to the mighty, imperial me” approach to foreign policy is unlikely enough to work even when applied to relatively weak states like North Korea and Iran. When simultaneously applied to the entire planet, allies and adversaries alike, it produces only rapidly accelerating failure.
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All this is only the beginning. Deficits are rising fast. Military commitments are rising fast. America’s friends are turning their backs fast. (Only 17 percent of South Koreans trust Trump to do the right thing, according to the Pew global surveyin 2017, well before the latest chaos. Obama’s trust rating in South Korea bounced between a low of 75 percent and a high of 88 percent over his presidency.) At a time of relatively low military casualties and strong job growth, the president’s popularity at home roughly matches that of George W. Bush’s during the worst months of the Iraq war, 2005–2006, and Barack Obama’s during the most disappointing months of the weak recovery from the recession of 2009. The president’s options are narrowing even before the midterm elections.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/05/trumps-reckoning-arrives/561209/
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