When President Trump returns from his Christmas break at Mar-a-Lago, he’ll face an inbox full of pressing foreign policy problems. There’s the continuing fallout from his decision to pull American troops from the Syrian border with Turkey, North Korea’s accelerating rate of missile tests, and Iran’s continuing meddling in the Middle East.
Even the good news, such as Afghanistan, where the Taliban’s ruling council has announced a ceasefire to provide a window for a peace deal, or the hopes that Washington and Beijing are about to sign a “phase one” trade deal, raise fresh questions that could yet complicate the 2020 election campaign.
And Trump will have to deal with it all from a White House that has its eye on a much closer threat just down Pennsylvania Avenue.
“Despite all of the great success that our Country has had over the last 3 years, it makes it much more difficult to deal with foreign leaders (and others) when I am having to constantly defend myself against the Do Nothing Democrats & their bogus Impeachment Scam,” Trump wrote on Twitter at the end of the year, contradicting his officials’ assurances that it was business as usual despite the challenge. Trump added, “Bad for USA!”
If Trump needed any reminder of the state of the world, it came as he enjoyed a spot of winter sun at Mar-a-Lago during the last weekend of 2019. U.S. missiles struck five sites believed to be linked to an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq. Pentagon officials later said the United States was not seeking conflict in the Middle East but that action had to be taken against a group responsible for 11 attacks in two months on coalition bases.
“These were defensive strikes,” said a senior official. “But we are not going to let Iran get away with using a proxy force to attack American interests, and we will hold Iran accountable for these attacks, which we have done.”
The blowback came a little more than 24 hours later, when Shiite militants stormed the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad. Chants of “Down, Down, USA” and “Death to America” served as a vivid reminder that even if a Taliban cease-fire offers Trump a potential way out of Afghanistan, he remains mired in George W. Bush’s other war.
At the same time, North Korea appears intent on more missile launches, and analysts are bracing for Kim Jong Un’s regime to resume nuclear testing, perhaps introducing a solid-fuel variant that makes missiles easier to transport and quicker to fire.
Taken together, the cascading crises have Trump critics pointing to a policy vacuum at the heart of his “America First” approach.
For example, Ben Rhodes, a National Security Council staffer under President Barack Obama, said Trump’s Iran sanctions had only made Tehran’s behavior worse. “This is what happens when your foreign policy is based on Obama envy, domestic politics, Saudi interests, and magical right wing thinking,” he wrote on Twitter.
For a different view, John Bolton, the Iran hawk who served as Trump’s third national security adviser, posted: “The attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad is straight from Iran’s playbook in 1979. It’s a sign of Iranian control over Shiite militia groups, not a sign of Iraqi anti-Americanism. We must protect our citizens from Iranian belligerence.”
Trump’s focus in the early part of the new year looks likely to be on China. He will sign the first part of a trade deal on Jan. 15 and then travel to Beijing to get started on the second part, which will feature some of the toughest sticking points, such as Washington’s complaints that Chinese practices disadvantage American companies.
Jeanne Zaino, professor of politics and international studies at Iona College, said foreign policy would dominate Trump’s 2020 and (should he win) his second term. The high level of overseas peril carried the risk of an overreaction, but a favorable electoral landscape, where few voters paid attention to foreign news, meant he could detach his policy from the upcoming election.
“His foreign policy, whether you are talking about tariffs, bringing home troops, ending foreign wars, are Democratic policies,” she said. “Barring some new crazy crisis, he has insulated himself electorally from incoming fire from the Democrats. Conservatives are more likely to take issue, but they are bound to him for their electoral survival, so he has insulated himself.”
Even so, if the last days of 2019 are anything to go by, then 2020 will test Trump’s foreign policy apparatus to its limit.
