Washington – When President Trump announced last week that the United States took over the war stripes, let off their Palestinian population and build a high-end beach resort, most reviews ranged from unbelief to outrage.
“The craziest and most destructive proposal that an administration has ever made,” said Aaron David Miller, who advised both democratic and Republican presidents on the Middle East of the Middle East. “Problematic,” allowed Senator Lindsey Graham (Rs.c.), usually a reliable Trump cheek leader.
Optimists speculated that Trump only tried to produce wealthy Arab states to rebuild Gaza, but the president insisted that he was serious.
In his first three weeks, this was at the top of the US foreign policy only one of many disturbing steps.
Trump also announced that he intended to take the Panama Canal back and to force Denmark, a US ally, to sell him Greenland. He threatened two other friendly countries, Canada and Mexico, with punitive tariffs until a tank exchange prompted him to rethink. Most of the US abroad abrupt his expenses for Tsar, Elon Musk, and at least temporarily cut off life-saving medication millions of times.
During Trump's first term, experts often referred to him as a “isolationist” because of his contempt for alliances and his natural resistance to military adventures.
But this day does not quite fit a president who claims that he is ready to send troops to Gaza, Greenland and the Panama Canal to secure desirable properties.
A historian of Rutgers University, Jennifer Mittelstadt, has proposed that Trump is classified more precisely as a “sovereignty”, an almost forgotten label from the early 20th century.
Sovereignty are allergic to foreign alliances and multilateral trade agreements. They are eager to protect American borders from immigrants or invaders, but mainly indifferent to conflicts elsewhere. They also believe in the Monroe doctrine, the idea that the United States are entitled to throw their weight around the western hemisphere.
Sounds very much like Trump.
His foreign policy is a historical break from the basic doctrine, which has been shared by the presidents of both parties since the Second World War: the conviction that American leadership is necessary to ensure world peace to stabilize the global economy and, if they are feasible to promote democracy and human rights.
In order to pursue these goals, former presidents built alliances in Europe and Asia, which would serve the allies and the United States.
Trump doesn't buy most of it.
His mantra is “America first”. In his view, other countries are largely alone. He denounced traditional US alliances, starting with NATO, as a fraud with which foreigners use the gullible Americans.
It is often more difficult for allies than with opponents. He seems to enjoy it as a dominance show too “depressed” and less powerful countries such as Denmark and Canada, both NATO members.
In the meantime, he is full of flattery for nuclear enemy opponents such as China's Xi Jinping, Russia's Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong Un.
He has no remuneration to violate contract obligations or tear down trade agreements, even business that he dealt with. He says that a capital is unpredictable. It is also a good way to convince other countries that he is an unreliable friend.
The danger that US and foreign diplomats are that some of these countries could choose to look for other allies to protect their interests.
“Trump gives China Goodies,” said Kishore Mahbubani, an Asian expert at the National University of Singapore. “He alienates so many countries, especially friends, so quickly that the Chinese say: 'Why can't we have Trump for eight years?”
Musks Abrupt equipment from the US foreign assistance agency USAID is also a gift for China.
Trump and Musk mocked the external aid as unnecessary charity for the poor – or worse as “corruption”. But foreign help is rarely motivated by charitable purposes; It is a tool super forces that are used in the competition for global influence.
China, whose regime has rarely been confused as a non -profit institution, cast billions of dollars and investments in developing countries to extend its own power.
The Chinese are more easily expanded in Asia, Africa and Latin America with USAID.
And when Trump has weakened the traditional alliances of US security, Xi built its own military alliance with Russia, North Korea and Iran – a group that is sometimes referred to as the “axis of the autocrats” and mainly by their wishes, American power to counteract, united.
If this axis holds together, this could be the most dangerous threat to US security in a generation – and Trump seems to know that.
“The only thing they never want to happen … is Russia and China who are unite,” he said in an interview with Tucker Carlson last year. “I will have to relieve them and I think I can do that.”
But the president has never offered a strategy to achieve this. At the moment, he seems to focus more on reducing the bureaucracy, starting trade wars, regaining the Panama Canal and acquiring real estate in Greenland and Gaza.
His new “sovereignty” foreign policy could be cheaper at short notice. Foreign help is less than 1% of the federal expenditure, but it still comes more than 68 billion US dollars.
He can somehow succeed in purchasing Greenland or building beach hotels in Gaza. But in the long run it will almost certainly be a bad business – because it will leave the United States with fewer friends and allies if we may need them.