President Trump Turned International Diplomacy Into A Fistfight - And Lost [View all]

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/28/president-trump-turned-international-diplomacy-into-a-fistfightand-lost?source=TDB&via=FB_Page

UGLY AMERICAN
President Trump Turned International Diplomacy Into A Fistfight—And Lost
President Trump’s performance in the last leg of his first international trip has European leaders fuming—and American diplomats likening him to a ‘drunk tourist.’
Scott Bixby
05.28.17 7:41 PM ET


During his inaugural international trip as the leader of the free world, President Donald Trump learned the problem with first impressions—you only get to make one.

After indulging the royals of Saudi Arabia with assurances that he was “not here to lecture”—in exchange for gold chains and glowing orbs—Trump took a much harder stance toward major Western democracies, distancing his administration politically and, in some cases, personally from some of America’s oldest and closest allies. The concept of diplomacy as a pursuit of mutually beneficial terms for both parties stood in stark relief against Trump’s worldview, which divvies up the world into two groups: winners and losers.

In a meeting with European Union leaders on Wednesday, Trump reportedly dubbed the Germans “bad, very bad” and decried current U.S. military commitments to Europe as “unfair to the people and taxpayers of the United States.” During a ceremony at NATO headquarters in Brussels meant to dedicate a memorial to the alliance’s strength in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Trump scolded NATO member nations for “not paying what they should be paying.”

Rather than speak to leaders from the 28 nations of which NATO is comprised, Trump instead, it appeared, spoke to his base. Trump declined to recommit the United States to upholding Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, which stipulates that an attack against one member nation is considered an attack against all. The omission—later downplayed by White House press secretary Sean Spicer—underscores threats Trump made as a candidate to treat Article 5 as conditional, based on whether a country was spending enough on defense.

The only form of offensive action Trump seemed to endorse during the event, it seemed, was shoving the prime minister of Montenegro.

(Dusko Markovic, the leader of the small Balkan nation in question, later downplayed the shove as “inoffensive.”)

Even handshakes with allied leaders became confrontational. After a white-knuckle grin-and-grip between Trump and President Emmanuel Macron of France, the newly elected French leader suggested that the salutation “was not innocent.”

Trump’s insistence upon returning stateside that the “trip was a great success for America,” therefore, came as a surprise to European allies who viewed the trip through a much darker lens. Citing Trump’s silence on threats of Russian aggression in the region, his disinterest in committing to deterrence efforts, and his six-against-one stance athwart the enactment of the Paris Agreement, Western leaders left the NATO and G7 talks resigned to the assumption that the era of America intervening on its allies’ behalf is over.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/28/president-trump-turned-international-diplomacy-into-a-fistfightand-lost?source=TDB&via=FB_Page