Trump’s low summit scores: madness, method and meaning

In his recent appearances at different summits, Trump’s behavior followed a certain pattern. Is it just the mad behavior of a hooligan in international affairs? Does he follow a long-term game plan of radical ‘Realpolitik’ where might ultimately trumps (sic) right? Or does he represent a major shift in the system of international relations? Probably a bit of all above. But he certainly didn’t achieve much in terms of American interests.

That is certainly true for his bilateral meeting with Kim in Singapore. It is now apparent that the North-Koreans have pocketed their gains in form of a long-desired meeting of Chairman Kim with a US president and the cessation of US-Korean military exercises without substantial concessions. Why should they start a real, internationally verified process of denuclearization now, when Trump failed to nail down the respective, all important details in advance of the summit? In Singapore he gave away much of the store for a moment of apparent glory as a successful deal, and peace-maker where all his predecessors, and especially his ‘bête noire’ Obama had failed.

In his dealing with America’s traditional allies, on occasion of the Nato and G-7 summits, Trump played the tough businessman, interested in money only, disparaging history, tradition, values and simple respect for his peers. Problem is that his figures are simply wrong. Out of the 600 billion Dollars the US spends annually on defense, only 5%(!) is allocated directly to Europe. (All Nato members profit from, but then also buy advanced US armament, deployed all over the world). European Nato members taken together spend 240 billion on defense. (A certain part of which is used ‘out of area’, e. g. in Afghanistan, in Western Africa and globally by the UK and France). So much about Trump’s constant hectoring of the other leaders on occasion of the Nato Summit, in what senior European political pundit François Heisbourg has called ‘the monetizing of American power’.

Of course, the Europeans should do more for their own defense. The Nato goal of 2% of GNP for each European member state is both reasonable and achievable at this time of economic growth. All of the respective laggards, especially Germany have agreed and are moving in the right direction, if at a slow pace, again especially Germany. A somewhat paradoxical result of Trump’s complaints, and his whole behavior, will probably be a strengthening of the purely European, that is EU- side of defense, rather than Nato’s.

Now unto Trump’s complaint about the world, very much including the EU, ‘impoverishing my country’ through large trade balance deficits, amplified at, and by the G-7 summit. As we know now, Trump has since then not hesitated to sharply accelerate what is already seen as the worst global trade war since the 1930ties, granting no exceptions. The latter would make evident sense with regard to Europe as in services, englobing 80% of today’s real economic world, it is the EU who runs a deficit with the US.

Here again the results of Trump’s tariff war will be negative for everybody, most certainly for the US-Industry. The transcontinental value chains of today’s economy are simply too complex and interwined for any unilateral measures to be effective without serious blowbacks. Higher US tariffs on steel and aluminum will preserve US smelters but also mean higher production costs, less sales abroad and ultimately a loss of jobs in the US car industry. Higher tariffs on European farm products will force consumer goods producers in the US, hit by EU counter-duties, to shift their production where their main clients are in Asia and Europe. As the case of Harley-Davidson has already shown.

His state visit in London where he showed profound disrespect for the UK’s two leading ladies, the Queen and the Prime Minister, was typical for Trump’s international hooliganism. Counseling May ‘to sue the EU’ over Brexit shows that he hasn’t understood much about the public sector and international relations. His repeated snubs towards E. R. reminded one of Josef Stalin’s infamous dismissal of spiritual, as opposed to physical, power when he asked ‘how many guns does the Pope possess?’ Such ignorance of history, tradition and intangible values has contributed to the eventual demise of Stalin’s own empire in Eastern Europe (through Pope John Paul II), and in the case of Trump is eroding the system of shared values and open borders which has brought peace, stability and overall economic success to important parts of the world.

Trumps performance with Putin in Helsinki, and especially afterwards with repeated 180 degrees turns as to Russian involvement with his election, was in its own class. ‘High treason’ called it a former CIA Director, understandable only by Russian material to blackmail Trump.

Exactly what sort of material is not really decisive as it is probably of a nature that will bring Trump before a US court, once shorn of Presidential immunity. That could well be the case with some of Trumps real-estate deals involving shady money, such as the Toronto Trump Tower case, meticulously researched by Tom Burgis in a recent FT article. With just about any other politician than Trump, but not him, one would tend to dismiss the purported case of deviant sexual behavior recorded by Russian intelligence, back when the ‘stable genius’ (Trump’s autodescription) was just another US business man, albeit a high profile one, trying to sell real estate to local plutocrats.

But even if you give Trump the benefit of the doubt – conceding that regular US-Russian talks are better than none at all, and that Trump just realistically acknowledges an other mighty power in the person of Putin – his literal adoration of the currant Russian leader cannot be rationally explained. Trump is no master practitioner of Realpolitik. If the grand old man of the contemporary school of Realpolitik, Henry Kissinger, and his academic followers such as John Mearsheimer have always underlined that countries have interests, not friends, they have never denied that certain, and important parts of international relations consist of intangibles. Such as the famous ‘soft power’ of the US and the Western democratic model in general, brought into the theory of international relations decades ago by Harvard professor and former US official Joe Nye. It is first and foremost that intangible which Trump is wrecking.

An intangible at the core of the present system of international relations. ‘We are in a very, very grave period’, to cite the eminent historian Kissinger in his latest utterance on Trump, and he continues: ‘Trump (is) one of these figures in history(…)to mark the end of an area and to force it to give up its old pretenses. (…) It doesn’t necessarily mean that he knows this’. In plain terms, Kissinger sees Trump as a sign of the times rather than its initiator. The crest of a populist and nationalist wave washing over the world, caused by disaster, both natural (climate, mass migration because of shortages, ‘homelessness’ because of globalization) and man-made (financial crisis since 2007, inequality, lack of human control of the digital revolution, authoritarian rule and its propaganda, mass migration because of conflict).

Future historians will thus judge whether Trump was the harbinger of worse times to come or an accident only. An accident so grave, and so without positive results that those many with a stake in the traditional system, however imperfect it may be, will hopefully rally in time. Meanwhile, Trump’s diplomatic score sheet doesn’t look good. His repeated tactical failures may well lead to strategic failure for the US.

Picture: Gage Skidmore