Few U.S. Presidents in modern history will enter office with a platter more stuffed with foreign policy challenges than will Donald Trump. For most of the rest of the world (Russia perhaps the significant exception), their "wake-up" last Wednesday must have rivaled what Lord Cornwallis felt when he lost the battle of Yorktown and had his band play, "A World Turned Upside Down."
At this point, no foreign policy challenge is existential; none certainly matches that faced by President John F. Kennedy in October, 1962, for example, when the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis and a possible nuclear exchange.
Yet at least three on-going nightmares can easily escalate into foreign policy crises that approach the existential. How might the new President go about addressing them? Given the lack of details in much of Trump's foreign policy statements, one can do little more than guess; but here goes:
1. China
This is by far the most strategic and the closely related challenge of reigning in North Korea's rapidly expanding nuclear program.
- Best guess on how Trump might handle? He could start by working the back-channel with President Xi Jingping. Xi is in the middle of his own power consolidation (having just been named a "core leader" by his party); and he's the key to unlocking the riddle that is Pyongyang. Engaging China for a stable Northeast Asia (the title in fact of a recently published report by the Council on Foreign Relations) is the critical first step.
- But the problem with China -- as with so much of a hypothetical Trump foreign policy -- is what Trump has outlined during the campaign: tariffs on Chinese products and firms, declaration of the PRC as a "currency manipulator," threatened withdrawal from the WTO, just to start; it hard to imagine getting off to a workmanlike relationship with President Xi, especially over North Korea, with this agenda.
- And if an initial outreach to Beijing fails, Trump may have no choice, in the words of the CFR report, but to "accelerate efforts with South Korea and Japan to bring about a Korean peninsula without nuclear weapons." It doesn't take great imagination to see this escalating quickly to the existential.
2. Europe
Next to China, this critical area is causing the greatest neuralgia amongst key friends and allies in light of the verbal "embrace" between Trump and Putin over the last 12 months. Nervous allies need to be reassured about our commitment to them, in the face of Putin's recent high risk military maneuvers.
- Best guess? Trump will respond quickly -- as he should -- to the request by EU leaders for a summit, followed hopefully by a NATO summit. He must do these, given the enormous fear European leaders, especially eastern European leaders, have about U.S. reliability in the wake of Trump's campaign statements.
- But everyone is waiting for how the President-elect will reach out to Vladimir Putin. Frankly, it's anyone's guess how Trump will address the Russian leadership-directed cyber attacks on our political process, an outrageous breach of national sovereignty. Moscow believed it could continue its cyber activity ("active measure" in old Soviet-speak) with little or no consequence; does Trump work an understanding here with Putin?
- There is an even greater worry amongst Europeans: national elections in France and Germany in 2017. Will Putin feel emboldened to play in these elections, as he did with Brexit, and tried to do with our own? To this point, Putin has not been deterred, and if he isn't, populist, anti-Europe candidates like France's Marine Le Pen will shortly benefit.
3. Middle East
Trump will become commander-in-chief while coalition forces are in the middle of assaults against the ISIS caliphate in Iraq and Syria; does he double-down? And how does he rebuild our fractured relationship with Sunni partners in the region?
- Best guess? A ramp-up in support for Iraq PM al-Abadi, to accelerate the collapse of ISIS in and around Mosul. Assuming Iran stays "in the box' (a big if), Trump can help reestablish a notional Iraq state, with greater U.S .military and economic assistance.
- But Trump will follow a very different path in Syria from what Clinton would have pursued. Trump seems only too eager to default to the Russians and President Assad, something actually not much different from Obama's current approach. The result, though? The Syrian civil war continues, refugees again flood the neighborhood, and civilian deaths mount.
- Trump will have an equally daunting challenge with Turkey -- a NATO partner seemingly on an inexorable path to authoritarianism. The problem? Turkish President Erdogan has been one of the few world leaders to express admiration for the President-elect. Don't expect any Trump push-back. The result? Deepening fractures between Turkey and the EU, something of course that Putin would welcome.
4. Reassertion of U.S. Global Leadership
But perhaps the most important of all is the necessity to reassert U.S. global leadership in the wake of an 18-month presidential campaign that has world leaders questioning America's leadership role. A simple first step would have been to focus on passing TPP, the 12-nation Asia-centric trade deal that our Asian allies had bravely signed on to. But, as one DC analyst just opined, "TPP is now in history's dust-bin." As is no doubt the European trade analog, TTIP. As likely will be U.S. participation in the Paris climate accord.
But there are other opportunities: leadership in the UN, to reinvigorate this still relevant global institution; similar inclusive U.S. leadership in regional institutions like APEC and the OAS; and finally, moral leadership, to press on market-centered, democratic values that have uniquely defined America to the rest of the world.
Sadly, these values are being undermined by authoritarian rulers world-wide who are bent on demonstrating alternative -- and frightening --leadership models. Given Mr. Trump's odd expressions of warmth toward such a model, the world (and many in the U.S.!) ask: where now is our moral force? Who will listen to us when we press on democratic values and human rights?
Despite the dangers outlined above, it's short-sighted to view the "nightmares" as one-off challenges. The new president must stitch together a comprehensive national security and foreign policy strategy that allows his team to address these challenges -- and many others -- in a context that is clear and understandable to the American people, to our friends and allies, and to our adversaries. Trump's strategy must also be a compelling vision of where he wants to take this country in the turbulent world he will inherit as commander-in-chief.
Despite the dangers outlined above, it's short-sighted to view the "nightmares" as one-off challenges. The new president must stitch together a comprehensive national security and foreign policy strategy that allows his team to address these challenges -- and many others -- in a context that is clear and understandable to the American people, to our friends and allies, and to our adversaries. Trump's strategy must also be a compelling vision of where he wants to take this country in the turbulent world he will inherit as commander-in-chief.
A very anxious world awaits.
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EDITOR'S NOTE
This is an institutional research note written by Hedgeye Potomac Macro Policy analyst General Dan Christman. For more information about our research ping sales@hedgeye.com.
