At the end of 4 years, ‘Trump Doctrine’ calls for a new US approach to the world

Over his much controversial four-year-term at the White House, US President Donald Trump has made the country’s foreign policy take a U-turn, thanks to his disdain for international agreements, a scornful attitude towards his diplomatic allies and a soft corner for autocratic leaders.

However, given all this, does a ‘Trump Doctrine’, based on which millions of voters will decide the fate of the US on November 3, really exist?

The president has in fact flaunted his ‘America first’ approach as he had promised during his campaign four years back. These get reflected in his actions of curbing immigration, confronting a rising China, winding down “endless wars” and renegotiating trade deals that the tycoon charged had hurt US workers.

Colin Dueck, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “Age of Iron: On Conservative Nationalism,” told AFP that Trump’s perspectives on some issues have been really consistent.

“I think there is a kind of Trump Doctrine, even though it obviously doesn’t fit the usual DC pattern at all,” Dueck was quoted by AFP, as saying.

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Dueck noted that Trump has constantly prioritised US commercial interests and, when not appearing alongside the security establishment, has questioned the need for military deployment. The latest example of this approach can be found in his promise of speeding up the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.

Boasting of his decades-long negotiating skills. the real estate tycoon has created a unique style for himself by showing a willingness to engage widely — be it through his barbed tweets or his shocking praise.

The rhetorical whiplash has been no more stunning than on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with whom Trump said he “fell in love” a year after he mocked him as “Little Rocket Man.”

Dueck says that Trump is willing to negotiate with anybody, saving the ISIS. “The up-and-down ladder of escalation is characteristic.”

He added, according to AFP, that the 74-year-old, while not being a student of history, has revived a pre-Cold War US approach to the world.

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Leaders of Trump’s Republican Party a century ago similarly ran on the “America First” slogan — slamming the brakes on immigration, rejecting the fledgling League of Nations and vigorously promoting economic goals.

“The US as an independent actor, not thinking of multilateral commitments of having primary importance, and just looking at the world from the point of view of does this serve American interests narrowly defined — it was a dominant strain of American foreign policy for generations prior to World War II.”

The Republican leader has now sought to highlighting his international success, at a time when he is trailing in polls to Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

In September, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain agreed to recognise Israel, a coup for the Jewish state — a major cause for the Republicans’ evangelical Christian base — as Gulf Arabs and Israel both rally behind Trump’s campaign against Iran.

Afghanistan’s government and the Taliban have opened peace talks, although there has been no visible progress, and the administration has found limited but growing success in coaxing nations to reject China when adopting fifth-generation internet.

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However, the Trump administration’s relations with its European allies have gone to the gutter, with them resenting his approach and the subsequent rejection of international agreements. An example can be found in the Paris accords, which Trump has not reacted to in a pleasant way, even with the alarming rise in temperatures globally.

Meanwhile, Iran, with its failing economy — courtesy of the US sanctions imposed unilaterally by the Trump administration — has amped up its nuclear work.

According to a Pew survey which has been quoted by AFP, opinions regarding America has hugely dropped in other wealthy nations during the Trump administration, especially after his approach to the COVID-19 situation.

Thomas Wright, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told AFP that the Republican president’s foreign policy was largely “flirting with catastrophe”, while no real achievement can be attributed to his leadership years.

Gulf Arabs had already been warming to Israel for a decade, while the tougher approach on China is part of a bipartisan consensus in Washington, Wright told AFP.

On a different note, however, he says that Trump for the first time has questioned the United States’ commitments to the NATO alliance, thereby irking the COVID crisis.

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“I think there’s uncertainty about America’s role in the world that wasn’t there before,” Wright told AFP, adding, “With a combination of Trump and COVID, we don’t really know if we’re ever going to go back to sort of a more open global economy.”

The Trump impact is likely to stay with the United States as well as the world, even if he loses to Biden on November 3.

(With AFP inputs)

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