While Donald Trump and his Republican familiars continue to expose themselves publicly as the abject hypocrites we always knew they were, behind the scenes the Trump administration is “reaching out” to them in the U.S. Senate to provide him with their “wish lists” of dangerous policy changes on top of whatever else his “advisers” are busy hoarding. TIME tells us that besides “building on” attempts to “remove protections for millions of miles of waterways and wetlands, narrow protections for wildlife species facing extinction, and open more of the hundreds of millions of acres of public land to oil and gas drilling,” we also have to listen to the preposterous “justifications” for these actions by EPA spokesman James Hewitt, who said, “EPA continues to advance this administration’s commitment to meaningful environmental progress while moving forward with our regulatory reform agenda.”
Joe Biden will have a great deal to undo if he wants to erase Trump’s “legacy,” as Trump tried to do to Obama’s. One question is will he be able to undo what Trump has done to this country’s reputation and credibility overseas, especially in regard to our “natural” allies in Europe. Trump, Mike Pompeo and Jared Kushner have been falling all over themselves slapping themselves on the back for “peace” deals between Israel and a couple of Gulf states, but these “deals” simply confirmed mutual security cooperation activities that were already “unofficially” going on. Otherwise, Trump, Pompeo and Kushner have “accomplished” the following:
Despite “friendly” meetings with Kim Jong-un, Trump became bored when his “deal making” produced no results, and North Korea continues to bolster its nuclear weapons capabilities. Here is what is described as a “monster” new ICBM rolled out during another one of North Korea’s military “parades” a month ago:
Reuters also reported that on display “were the Hwasong-15, which is the longest-range missile ever tested by North Korea, and what appeared to be a new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM).” What was the Trump administration’s response? Just a shrug: “A senior U.S. administration official called the display of the ICBM ‘disappointing’ and called on the government to negotiate to achieve a complete denuclearization,” which neither Trump, Pompeo or Kushner seem interested in or equipped to do anyways, since diplomatic “negotiation” isn’t exactly their strong point--just making empty “threats.”
Meanwhile, the new “acting” Secretary of Defense, Christopher Miller, is doing exactly what he was told to do when given the job with only months to spare: despite objections from military officials, he announced that troop strength in Afghanistan and Iraq will be reduced to 2,500 each before Biden is scheduled to take office. It can be argued that we should never have been in Iraq in the first place, and should have put more resources into Afghanistan at the very beginning instead of the haphazard approach by the Bush administration, which allowed the Taliban to regroup and retake large swaths of the country.
Military officials fear that because the Taliban knows that because of Trump’s disinterest and incompetence in geopolitics, they will simply wait him out so that Afghanistan will devolve into another Taliban-controlled state that sponsors terrorism against U.S. interests. The BBC recently reported that
Edmund Fitton-Brown, co-ordinator of the UN's Islamic State, Al-Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Team, has told the BBC that the Taliban promised al-Qaeda in the run-up to the US agreement that the two groups would remain allies. "The Taliban were talking regularly and at a high level with al-Qaeda and reassuring them that they would honour their historic ties," Mr Fitton-Brown said. He said the relationship between al-Qaeda and the Taliban was "not substantively" changed by the deal struck with the US. "Al-Qaeda are heavily embedded with the Taliban and they do a good deal of military action and training action with the Taliban, and that has not changed," he said.
What about Iran? Because of Trump’s foolish (no thanks to John Bolton) action in vacating the Iran nuclear deal without a back-up “plan,” the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran has increased its low-enriched uranium stockpile from 200kg to over 2,400kg; although not technically “weapon’s grade” enriched, it is enough to create two nuclear weapons--which is clearly the intent for this stockpile. What have Trump and Pompeo been doing to stop this? Absolutely nothing; they actually expect Iran to come to the table and “negotiate.” If Trump was actually “serious” about renegotiating the deal, he would have left it in place as a bargaining chip; but his real motivation was to simply end the deal because it was Obama’s deal--as always, there never was any “plan” or end game.
We are learning now that Trump had contemplated a military strike against an Iranian nuclear facility, but was talked out of it because Trump--as always--wasn’t prepared to deal with the fallout of such an action. Trump acts like international players are just bugs he can squash on; he doesn’t realize that they can actually come back to “life” and bite him back.
Not surprisingly, Trump and Pompeo are stumped on how to deal with China, apparently consider Russia a “friend,” and despite all the tough talk about the “socialist” regime in Venezuela, it has offered nothing but lip service for its opposition “government.” They are just a couple of “tough guys” who are all talk and no action. Unlike Obama’s second term, the Trump administration has been remarkably lifeless on the foreign policy front, busy making threats and placing tariffs here and there to annoy, and insulting allies and simply refusing to take any leadership role anywhere for any reason.
And what about our closest allies, in Europe? TIME points out that the damage Trump has done is unlikely to be undone anytime soon, if ever:
“You will never rewind history,” the E.U.’s Vice President and foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said. Four years of President Donald Trump, who labeled the bloc a “foe” and has slapped tariffs on European goods, has left Europeans with a lasting sense that U.S. support is not necessarily dependable, he says. “Trump has been a kind of awakening. And I think we should stay awake,” Borrell says. “We cannot say ‘oh Trump is no longer there, we can go back to our previous state of mind.’”
Almost all the 27 E.U. leaders celebrated Biden’s win with most publicly sending messages of goodwill. But behind the scenes, in recent days E.U. officials have also warned of the need to remain cautious about the U.S., given that Trump’s trenchant nationalist views clearly have strong support among Americans—and that those views could make a comeback in the next presidential election in 2024.“What led to the election of Donald Trump four years ago remains,” Clément Beaune, French Minister of State for European Affairs said last Friday at the Paris Peace Forum, a virtual meeting of world leaders, diplomats and officials. “This kind of discomfort of globalization, this fear of China, this concern about multilateralism, remain.”
Trump didn’t just damage his own “brand” these past four years, but that of this country as well. His supporters may call this a “victory” because of their delusional belief in insular “isolationism” in spite of the fact that nearly every consumer item that isn’t a food product in this country is made somewhere else. The problem that Biden faces is that few allies trust this country to lead anymore, but to be an obstacle in the many challenges the world faces. It will take more than one four-year period to even partially undo the damage Trump has done and the harm to U.S. interests globally. What it will take for 73 million people who apparently shared Trump’s foolish and dangerous worldview to come around to the realization that the U.S. cannot survive in isolationism isn’t certain, but regardless of if and when that happens, it will take far longer to “fix” than the time it took Trump to cause the damage in the first place.
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