President Trump has become a successful foreign policy president. He’s feared as reckless, someone whose finger shouldn’t be allowed near the nuclear button. But over the past year, these disturbing traits have receded.
Around the world, Trump is the most disliked American leader in recent memory and maybe ever. His habit of insulting allies — Angela Merkel of Germany and Justin Trudeau of Canada come to mind — isn’t helpful in any discernible way. And his tweets tend to alienate more than persuade.
But these shortcomings haven’t prevented Trump from achieving breakthroughs in foreign affairs. His boldness has been productive in ways that the smooth elitism of, say, French President Emmanuel Macron has not been. Trump turns out to be neither an isolationist nor an interventionist. Instead, he’s full of surprises.
Here are five of his successes:
1) Trump’s Middle East peace plan. The president tossed out the old formula that required Israel to yield to Palestinian demands and rewarded the Palestinians with money.
The president stuck with the two-state solution, but would make Jerusalem solely the capital of Israel. Nor would Palestinians have the “right of return” to family lands they lost when Israel became a state in 1948. Trump has promised $28 billion over 10 years to the Palestinians. Israel would get 30% of the West Bank, but the building of new settlements would be barred for four years.
The Palestinians rejected the plan — no surprise — but are in a weak position. That many Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, said the Trump plan was worth pursuing revealed how much support the Palestinians have lost in recent years.
2) The president’s decision to kill Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s terrorist-in-chief, has changed the power equation between the United States and Iran. Any doubt by the mullahs about Trump’s willingness to use the muscle of the American economy and military against Iran is gone. First, the sanctions that devastated Iran’s economy and now, air attacks on Iran’s proxies in Iraq followed by the irreplaceable Soleimani’s death have demonstrated to the mullahs the U.S. is a superpower and Iran isn’t.
The Iranians cracked under Trump’s pressure, shooting down a Ukrainian airliner when it took off from Tehran’s airport. It was an act of panic. But the mullahs were lucky in one instance: Their missile attacks on two nearly empty American bases in Iraq killed no U.S. soldiers. This spared them a punishing Trump response.
The Iran operation contained none of chaos and infighting of earlier days in the Trump White House. The media and national security “experts” frowned, but they would have criticized Trump if he had commanded D-Day in 1944.
3) Brexit. Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson are personally quite different. Johnson went to Eaton and Oxford, Trump to New York Military Academy and Wharton. Johnson recites passages from the Iliad in Greek. Trump doesn’t. But Brexit, with its emotional impact, has made them allies. Trump endorsed Brexit while a candidate in 2016. He and Johnson were underdogs for high office. Like FDR and Churchill, there’s a lot they can accomplish together — a trade deal, allies at the United Nations, making fun of the European Union.
4) NATO. Trump was hammered when he publicly prodded members to pay what they had promised for the military. He shamed NATO members. Slowly but grudgingly, they began to pay up. In this episode, Trump showed his toughness, a useful quality in dealing with weak allies.
5) Immigration. It has gotten scant notice that the U.S. is, at long last, getting help from Mexico in stemming illegal immigration. Given Trump’s nasty and ill-advised barbs about Mexico, it’s not surprising this took months to happen. Mexican police are blocking Central American caravans from passing through and crossing the U.S. border illegally.
Fred Barnes is a Washington Examiner senior columnist.
