After Donald Trump became the US president, some of the country’s oldest allies believed that they could anticipate his next move. The billionaire’s approach was unorthodox for sure, but there was a certain logic.
Many realize now that their thinking was not only misguided, but that they do not have much power to influence him. There is also a growing dread that the embattled leader will stop at little in a brutal fight to get re-elected in November. Polls show him badly trailing his Democratic rival, former US vice president Joe Biden.
The geopolitical consequences of any sudden decision in the next four months, from yet another escalation in the conflict with China to more trashing of NATO, could reverberate beyond whoever winds up winning.
Illustration: Yusha
From Berlin to Tokyo, officials speaking on condition of anonymity acknowledged a few truths.
One is that when it comes to dealing with a president who likes to shock to gain the upper hand, even friends are caught off guard. Another is that trying to stay out of harm’s way is one way to avoid being targeted, but it is by no means enough. Flattery works, but it will only get you so far.
Perhaps most critically, they said that multilateralism, as it was conceived in the post-war era with the likes of NATO and the UN, has been so compromised that it might never recover.
According to an official close to the leader of one big G7 economy, governments have come to realize that in their dealings with Trump, they can only be reactive.
It is impossible to plan ahead with a leader who behaves in such an erratic way, the person said.
Leaders from the G20 are bracing themselves for the US president to become even more unpredictable. From Trump calling Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “two-faced” after a hot-mic incident, to a report that he told German Chancellor Angela Merkel she was “stupid” during a telephone call, the idea that crystallized for many is that anyone is fair game.
While the COVID-19 pandemic gave some allies an excuse to keep Trump at arm’s length for a few months, his readiness to blame the rest of the world for the US’ economic ills could make them targets in his frenzied campaign.
In the past month, Trump announced his intention to withdraw from the WHO and pull a large number of US troops from Germany, ending an arrangement that has been in place since World War II.
He is also belligerent with China and the EU with what officials see as a personal fixation with the US’ trade deficit.
China, with a giant economy to rival the US, has its own strategy. Europeans are caught in the middle.
“They want to avoid any provocation from Trump during the election campaign, but even if they remain silent, it’s hard to believe he won’t put things like the European trade imbalance at the heart of his political message, simply because it plays well with his political base,” said Pierre Vimont, French ambassador to the US from 2007 to 2010.
Trump’s time in office has tested the ability of many a political veteran to adapt to a new way of doing politics.
Merkel knows that more than most. She has been a frequent target of Trump’s ire. On a video call in June, when European leaders held a brainstorming discussion about the EU’s next few months, she cited the US election as one of the risk factors, an official said.
For weeks she has found herself dragged into a debate over Trump’s attempts to rearrange the G7 in person, despite COVID-19 running rampant in the US.
Merkel was not the only one surprised by a May 20 tweet announcing his plan to reschedule for close to the original date, officials said.
Her reluctance to attend was due in part to her unwillingness to help Trump’s campaign.
She has since said that she is prepared to attend the event, now slated for after the summer, in the spirit of “multilateralism.”
Merkel might be in the firing line, but her dilemma is felt across the globe. If the G7 goes ahead as Trump intends, leaders would be performing a delicate balancing act mere weeks before the US elections.
An official close to French President Emmanuel Macron said that to ensure the G7 does not become a Trump rally, France should try to set the agenda in advance.
That smacks of hubris, given how Trump has been a consistent wild card in events he was attending, never mind one where he is a host.
Trump’s conduct at previous international gatherings certainly has diplomats gritting their teeth. At the NATO summit in Brussels in 2017, he hesitated to endorse the military alliance’s sacrosanct clause — an attack against one ally is considered as an attack against all.
At the G7 meeting in Canada in 2018, he agreed to sign up to an anodyne joint communique only to then renege on it and rage at Trudeau in two tweets on a plane to a summit on North Korea.
Past experiences can sting. Trudeau now tries to keep a low profile on anything that might upset relations with the White House, an official said.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador flew to Washington to see Trump, but Trudeau politely declined an invitation to join.
The EU has a similar approach, an official in Brussels said.
Even during the election campaign, officials said that the aim is to keep channels of conversation open and resist drawing attention to setbacks or give any inkling they might prefer Biden in the White House.
Political observers can see how charged the atmosphere is.
With the US failing to contain the virus and the Black Lives Matter movement gaining momentum, Trump has tried to reignite his flagging campaign.
On July 4, celebrating US independence from English colonial reign, he blamed “the radical left” for threatening the US way of life.
There are other targets, too, that complicate the political calculations.
Trump also lashed out at China in the same speech, blaming it for “secrecy, deceptions and cover-up” in its handling of the virus.
As they design strategies for dealing with the US, before and after the election, governments are increasingly finding they must do so in tandem with shaping policy on an increasingly assertive Beijing, which has made a bold bid to seize broad control of Hong Kong and defy global condemnation in the process.
That puts the UK, which controlled Hong Kong until 1997, in a particular bind. It is desperate for Trump to deliver rapidly on a trade deal to burnish its post-Brexit independence and it plans to phase out China’s Huawei Technologies Co from its 5G networks.
The EU is more reluctant to pick sides. It does not help that the bloc is split between countries such as Germany and France, whose leaders are as skeptical of Beijing as they are of Trump.
Italy is the perfect embodiment of that tension: It is close to Trump, but ready to dive headfirst into cooperating with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) trademark Belt and Road investment and infrastructure program.
“It has not been a good presidency for the alliance system the US built up since World War II,” former Canadian ambassador to China David Mulroney said. “China has taken advantage of that and begun to pressure middle powers like Canada and Australia.”
Still, Trump’s time in office has not been difficult for everyone. Populists in power in Hungary and Poland feel a natural affinity to Trump’s “America first” and chest-thumping. In the EU, there is a shared enemy. Those eastern countries receive a lot of aid from the bloc, but defy its rule of law.
Saudi Arabia is grateful that Trump declared US support for the kingdom after allegations that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
A Saudi official said that it was incumbent to maintain a good relationship with the US president, whoever it is.
In South Korea, Trump is seen as being integral to opening up a dialogue with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
He and South Korean President Moon Jae-in “have good chemistry,” said Boo Seung-chan, a former adviser to the South Korean minister of national defense.
That is a point of view contradicted by former US national security adviser John Bolton in his recent memoir.
For anyone hoping a Biden victory might restore the US to being the world’s global policeman, officials said that US politics might have changed forever, even if Biden would be a well-known entity.
As Kuni Miyake, a former Japanese diplomat, said: “Which is better, Biden or Trump for Japan? My conclusion is neither. It [has] never been easy to deal with an American administration, especially a new American administration.”
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