What impact
will the soon to commence impeachment inquiry, conducted by the US House of Representatives, have on the foreign policy of the United States? Specifically, how will it affect the ongoing
crisis with Iran and US relations with Saudi Arabia and American allies in the
Persian Gulf? What do recent
developments in the Trump presidency tell about the manner in which populist
leaders conduct foreign policy?
There is little disagreement that US foreign
policy under the Trump administration has been dysfunctional. Positions on key US
foreign policy issues, e.g., US attitudes towards the North Korean regime of
Kim Jong-un, have changed from month to month, sometimes week to week. Except for the trade war with China, a pet
peeve of Donald Trump, there is nothing approaching the most skeletal form of a
“Trump Doctrine.”
Many key ambassadorial
positions still have not been filled since Donald Trump took office and key policies
which might address some of Trump’s concerns, such as what he refers to as a “migrant
crisis” at the US-Mexican border, namely economic and law enforcement aid to
address unemployment and the power of drug gangs in Central America, have been
cut or eliminated.
Nowhere has
the chaotic nature of US foreign policy been more on display than in the Middle
East. The haste with which Trump declared
that the Dacish (Islamic State) “completely defeated” failed to show
any understanding of the fact that the terrorists had faded into sympathetic communities
in Northeastern Syria and North Central Iraq. His subsequent decision to
withdraw 2000 US advisors from northern Syria who have played a key role in
helping the Syrian Democratic Forces defeat the Dacish constituted
another indication of his complete lack of understanding of the continuing threat
played by terrorist in Syria and Iraq.
Trump’s decision
to withdraw from the JCPOA, which was designed to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear
weapons, has only divided US allies who signed onto the accord and put the US
at odds with Russia and China which support it.
While many nations in the MENA region resent Iranian sending troops to
support the genocidal regime of Bashar a-Asad, as well as interfering in Iraqi
and Lebanese domestic politics, an international sanctions regime would have
been much more effective in pushing Iran to pull back from such interference if
it had left the JCPOA in place. Withdrawing
from the JCPOA, which the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had scrupulously
adhered to, served to make it all the more difficult for Iran to reduce its
regional meddling because it would appear to be weak and caving in to US
pressure.
A targeted
but low key sanctions policy, deployed through a multi-lateral framework, but without
all the bluster by Trump over the JCPOA (which he seems to have more against because
it was enacted by Barak Obama than based on any well thought-through logic). In the context of the US-Iranian crisis
engendered by Trump and his key foreign policy advisors, the US appears weaker
not stronger in it struggle with Iran.
The US
failed to respond when the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC) seized a
British tanker or when the Iranians shot down a US drone. After threatening to
attack Iran in retaliation, Trump abruptly cancelled the attack to chagrin of
the US military. In the process, it sent
an inadvertently but powerful message to the US; Saudi and Gulf allies. There is no US “security umbrella” which will
guarantee the protection of the Saudi or Gulf monarchies from an Iranian attack.
The
impeachment inquiry, raising from the transcript, which have emerged from Trump’s
telephone call on July 25, 2019 with the recently elected Ukrainian presented Zelensky,
detailing Trump’s effort to use the Ukrainian leader to gather political dirt
on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, have thrown
the White House into a frenzy. Trump’s daily
behavior has never been structured. However,
from the time the news an anonymous whistle-blower’s report was given to
Congress by the Inspector-General of the Directory of National Intelligence until
now, trump’s outbursts and behavior have become even more erratic than usual.
The war in
Yemen recently saw the withdrawal of UAE troops from the conflict as its
interests have come to diverge with Saudi Arabia, especially in newly contested
areas in south Yemen. The UAE withdrawal,
and the inability of the Saudis to defeat the Houthis through an air war, had
some analysts envisioning a possible opening for finally being the warring
parties to the negotiating table. With
the Trump White House under siege and Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence also implicated
in the Ukraine debacle, there is no possibility that the US will be playing any
significant role in the Yemen War anytime soon.
The
September 17, 2019 Israeli elections also threw a monkey wrench in Trump’s plan
to enhance his reelection chances in 2020. Having angered many
neo-conservatives by his refusal to call out Vladimir Putin for interfering in
US elections (and even telling Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, that he
didn’t find such interference problematic since the US does it in foreign elections
as well), and his playing up to North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, Trump hoped
that his strong ties to Benjamin Netanyahu would provide him the bona fides to
offset his behavior towards two states which the US foreign policy community
overwhelmingly consider to be US enemies.
With
another crisis now brewing in Egypt, with demonstrations against the regime of
General Abd al-Fatah al-Sisi, due to the lack of jobs for youth, the best the
US could do was to issue a statement asking the Egyptian governments to allow peaceful
demonstrations to take place. Egypt,
together with Israel and Saudi Arabia, comprise the US’ three most important allies
in the Middle East. All three states are facing problems of different orders of
magnitude. But don’t expect the Trump
administration to offer any guidance on how to deal with these problems.
As I have
argued elsewhere, populist leaders like Trump are self-centered and transactional
in their behavior, which means that they never adopt a long-view of domestic or
foreign policies. This lacuna represents
their Achilles heel. As Steve Bannon noted, describing Boris Johnson and Trump,
“They’re both showmen, they’re both
performers. The trouble is, that gets you elected, but it doesn’t help you
govern.”
What we can expect in this fall is a further retreat of the
US from the foreign policy arena and an ever greater opening for two
authoritarian powers, China and Russia in particular, to fill the vacuum.
