I would be the first to concede that President Trump’s behavior at the recent G7 summit, while not unexpected, was certainly unconventional. In his patented way, the president seemed to waver between a breezy, hail-fellow-well-met manner and irritability, declining to endorse a summary declaration and insulting—by way of Twitter, of course—his Canadian host.
It reminded me, as if the fact were ever in doubt, that Trump seems to thrive on disruptive language and conduct, designed (I trust) to keep his global audience off-balance and his fans tuned into the show. Yet the summit also reminded me, as such meetings tend to do, of Eugene O’Neill’s famous experimental play Strange Interlude (1928), in which the players periodically break character to address the audience directly and express their innermost thoughts.
In their comparatively short history, G7 (formerly G8) summits have customarily been exercises in polite discussion, emollient language, heartwarming visuals, and awkward bonhomie, followed by an anodyne “final statement” that represents the lowest common denominator of agreement. It may not be much, but it’s diplomacy. By contrast, like a player in Strange Interlude, Donald Trump says aloud what he’s thinking about trade and security issues and seems either not to care about the immediate consequences or to delight in his status as the Peck’s Bad Boy of the G7, or both.
The question, of course, is the nature and quality of Trump’s instincts. A free-trader by conviction, I am opposed to tariffs and trade wars. But I would also acknowledge that we’ve been living in a free-trade paradise for the past three-quarters of a century, and such policies have not benefited most people without cost to some, especially in historic manufacturing economies such as our own. Blinking at the unfair trade practices of, say, our Asian or European partners makes for more congenial summits, but some political adjustment was inevitable. And who would have guessed, two years ago, that there were enough votes on this issue to help elect Donald Trump to the presidency?
The same might also be said about Trump’s comparable complaint that our NATO allies get a “free ride” under the American security umbrella. It is true that the cost of Western European defense—to the United States, at any rate—is not especially high, and it is equally true that Trump’s attitude is redolent of isolationist tendencies long dormant in American politics. But Trump is rather a mixed bag on this question—when push comes to shove, he usually reflects conventional “Republican” views on foreign policy, and I have attended far too many conferences at places like the Council on Foreign Relations where the same observations were made (albeit in sweeter tones) about our European allies shouldering a greater burden of the common defense. To no avail, it goes without saying.
All of this has led any number of scholars and analysts to take note of certain symptoms and worry that Trump is deliberately presiding (as Kori Schake observed last week in the New York Times) over “the end of the liberal order” in the postwar world. I have my doubts. As North Korea’s Kim Jong-un has learned, Trump certainly believes in brinkmanship, which by definition is anathema to the custodians of the status quo known as foreign ministries. And for whatever reason, he has little patience for the customs and niceties of diplomatic method. But his practical policies—toward the Western alliance, against terrorism, in the Middle East and along the Pacific Rim—are more familiar than not, and governed less by his volatile personality than by the weight of precedent.
It is also of interest to note that Trump, in contrast to most of his predecessors, seems to be offended by impasses largely buttressed by hypocrisy. For example, the movement of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is not necessarily something I would have done as president, but as Trump himself noted, it merely affirms reality and what Congress and successive presidents have long pledged to do. Similarly, while Schake is horrified to note that Trump “even reiterated his desire to withdraw American troops from South Korea,” it is worth remembering that the last president to make a similar suggestion was Jimmy Carter (1977), hardly anyone’s idea of an out-of-control right-wing nationalist.
It is altogether too easy, and surely tempting, to mistake Trump’s instinctive reactions—his Strange Interlude moments, as it were—for considered policy. For in foreign, as well as domestic, affairs, attitudes are often governed by partisan conviction, and observers are not quite as disinterested as they wish to appear. There is no doubt that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is an abhorrent regime. But why is diplomatic engagement with one Asian tyrant (Kim Jong-un, 2018) a betrayal of American principles while a smiling exchange of toasts with another, and far worse, despot (Mao Zedong, 1972) is a thrilling maneuver on the global stage?
Similarly, while Ronald Reagan deserves credit for his management of U.S.-Russia relations in the 1980s and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, that is hardly the way it appeared at the time. His affirmation of Carter’s decision to deploy a new generation of medium-range ballistic missiles in Western Europe inspired impassioned left-wing protests and rhetoric, here and abroad. In those days, it was fashionable to draw a parallel with the popular Rambo movies rather than with fascist Europe, as now seems obligatory. But today’s reality-TV/ignoramus commander in chief was yesterday’s B-movie actor/ignoramus in the White House, hurtling America toward nuclear apocalypse.
This is not to compare Trump’s temperament favorably with Reagan’s or insist that his actions and impulses are benign. They may well strain the Western alliance. But perspective is always a more reliable guide than prediction.
The liberal order that has governed the postwar world, and benefited from American leadership, was created partly as a means of balancing power but largely as a feature of American national interest. Franklin Roosevelt promoted the creation of the United Nations not because he believed in harmony for its own sake but because he wanted a League of Nations run by the United States. And if you think that the shaking heads and rolling eyes at the G7 summit were unprecedented, may I refer you to the relevant (private) accounts of meetings among the Allied political and military leaders of World War II?
Donald Trump will have to try especially hard to turn our postwar liberal order upside-down.
