Washington – When President Trump announced last week that the United States will take care of the Gaza Strip, expelled from the war, will expel its Palestinian population and build a high -end beach resort, most of the revisions vary from disbelief to disbelief to The outrage.
“The craziest and destructive proposal that any administration has done,” said Aaron David Miller, who advised democratic and republican presidents about the peace of the Middle East. “Problematic”, allowed Senator Lindsey Graham (RS.C.), usually a reliable Trump cheerleader.
The optimists speculated that Trump was simply trying to boost the rich Arab states to rebuild Gaza, but the president insisted that he was serious.
That was only one of the many disruptive movements in his first three weeks ago at the head of the foreign policy of the United States.
Trump also announced that he intends to “recover” the Panama Canal and the Force of Denmark, an American ally, to sell Greenland. He threatened two more friendly countries, Canada and Mexico, with punitive tariffs until a tank stock market led him to reconsider. His tsar expense, Elon Musk, abruptly stopped most foreign aid in the United States, eliminating millions of people from medications that save lives, at least temporarily.
During Trump's first mandate, experts often labeled it as an “isolationist” due to their disdain for alliances and their self -declared opposition to military adventures.
But that label does not conform to the president who states that he is willing to send troops to Gaza, Greenland and the Panama Canal to ensure desirable real estate.
A historian from the University of Rutgers, Jennifer Mittelstadt, has suggested that Trump is classified with greater precision as a “sovereign”, an almost forgotten label of the early twentieth century.
Sovereigns are allergic to foreign alliances and multilateral trade agreements. They are jealous to protect US borders against immigrants or invaders, but mostly indifferent to conflicts in other places. They also believe in Monroe's doctrine, the idea that the United States has the right to throw its weight around the western hemisphere.
Trump sounds a lot.
Its foreign policy represents a historical rupture of the basic doctrine shared by the presidents of both parties since World War II: the belief that American leadership is necessary to guarantee world peace, stabilize the global economy and, when feasible, promote Democracy and human rights.
To pursue these objectives, the previous presidents built alliances in Europe and Asia that would serve the allies and the United States.
Trump does not buy most of that.
His mantra is “America first.” In his opinion, other countries are mostly alone. He has denounced traditional US alliances. UU., Starting with NATO, as scams for which foreigners take advantage of gullible Americans.
It is often harder with allies than in adversaries. It seems to enjoy “hit” as a sample of domain, pressing less powerful countries such as Denmark and Canada, both NATO members.
Meanwhile, it is full of flattery for adversaries with nuclear weapons such as Xi Jinping of China, Vladimir Putin de Russia and Kim Jong a North Korea.
He has no compunction about violating the treaty commitments or breaking the trade agreements, including the agreements he negotiated. He says that being unpredictable is an asset. It is also a good way to convince other countries that he is an unreliable friend.
The danger, American and foreign diplomats say, is that some of those countries can decide to look for other allies to help protect their interests.
“Trump is giving sweets to China,” said Kishore Mahbubani, an expert in Asia at the National University of Singapore. “He is alienating so many countries, especially friends, so fast [that] The Chinese can say: “Why can't we have eight years from Trump?”
The abrupt Demak Destripation of the United States foreign aid agency, Usaid, is also a gift for China.
Trump and Musk have ridiculed foreign aid as unnecessary charity for the poor, or worse, as “corruption.” But foreign aid is rarely motivated by charity; It is a tool that super powers used in competition for global influence.
China, whose regime has rarely been wrong as a charity institution, has poured thousands of dollars of help and investment in developing countries, seeking to extend its own power.
With the paralyzed USAID, the Chinese can more easily expand their influence in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
And as Trump has weakened the traditional security alliances of the United States, XI has been building an own military alliance with Russia, North Korea and Iran, a group sometimes called “Autocrats Axis”, united mainly for its desire to counteract American power.
If that axis remains united, it could be the most dangerous threat to US security in a generation, and Trump seems to know that.
“The only thing you never want to happen … [is] Russia and China come together, ”he said in an interview with Tucker Carlson last year. “I'm going to have to unite them, and I think I can do that.”
But the president has never offered a strategy for that to happen. At this time, it seems more focused on reducing bureaucracy, launching commercial wars, resuming the Panama Canal and acquiring real estate in Greenland and Gaza.
Its new foreign policy “sovereign” could be cheaper in the short term. Foreign aid is less than 1% of federal expenditure, but it still reaches more than $ 68 billion.
Somehow I could succeed in acquiring Greenland or building beach hotels in Gaza. But it will almost surely be a bad long -term business, because it will leave the United States with fewer friends and allies just when we can need them.
