It's not going to be easy to fix a foreign policy that was as "adrift" as Trump is now

 

Politico is reporting that Donald Trump has gone “adrift” since he’s left office, and we can certainly speculate as to the reasons, in particular his being banned from his favorite social media platforms to keep his latest false claims out of the news. His personal political PAC is overflowing with cash from gullible donors, but he doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. Now that he is out of office he drifts aimlessly about, since there are no Machiavellians and Rasputins around who have the power to promote and promulgate inhuman policies in his name. And besides, Trump has other things to worry about, such as whether or not the man who knows “everything” about his business practices, Allen Weisselberg, will turn on him, which is likely why he returned to New York last week—where one lone supporter greeted him outside of Trump Tower.

Trump has his problems, and further, he has left behind even more that others have to clean-up after him. It must be confessed that 20 years is too long to be in Afghanistan, and the fault of that was the George W. Bush administration. Saddam Hussein was Bush’s principle target, and 9-11 provided the rationalization he needed to get his “revenge” against him despite the fact Hussein had nothing to do with the attacks. Instead of deploying U.S. military power to clear-out the Taliban, Bush chose to engage in a bombing campaign in Afghanistan instead of putting boots on the ground to round up Taliban leaders and fighters, allowing them to escape into the hill country of Pakistan, where from they would eventually return. Instead of having a cowed Iraq that nonetheless remained a counterbalance to Iran, what we see now in Iraq is a pawn of Iran, and ISIS apparently in resurgence there after another recent attack that killed eight people who were allegedly “spies.”

Trump did not want to deal with Afghanistan anymore (other than allowing his “warfighters” to commit war crimes), and only sought a face-saving “peace plan” to get out of the country. The 2020 power-sharing proposal between the Kabul government and the Taliban is already in tatters thanks to the Taliban’s continuing insurgent attacks in the countryside in order to gain control over more of the country. The U.S. military presence is now so small that the Taliban feels it can run amok in the country until the Kabul government is so weak that no “peace” deal is necessary. What is the U.S. to do? The Biden administration is proposing a “reset” of negotiations, and delay moving troops, although the Kabul government is decrying putting more pressure on the parties to reach a deal, claiming the country will only decay back into chaos, which it mostly already is.

But putting “pressure” on the Taliban seems to be the only “solution,” and that was what Trump refused to do, so eager was he to get out of Afghanistan at any cost and believing the nonsense that he could “charm” the Taliban into a “deal.” One of the biggest roadblocks in the negotiations is the refusal of the Taliban to guarantee religious freedom for minorities—and we saw what that means when the Taliban blew-up the Buddhas of Bamiyan. The Taliban is also insisting on its particular intolerant brand of Islam in defiance of any whiff of “secular” democratic government.

The Taliban and Al-Qaida also seem to be returning to their “chummy” ways. The Taliban insists that it wants to continue the Trump-supported plan, but even in regard to the stipulation that it abandon support of the terrorist group, and end attacks that amounted to hundreds every month in every province, it is obvious that the last thing that Taliban “negotiators” want to feel is “pressure” from the U.S., because it knew that in the end, Trump just didn’t care what happened there—even if it meant that Afghanistan returned to being a staging ground for terrorist training and attacks.

Meanwhile, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is still out and about boasting on his record of “achievement,” although it is hard to pinpoint what exactly that is. The other day he “warned” the Biden administration not to return to the Iran deal that Trump vacated, although in the two-and-half years since then, Trump and Pompeo have only exposed the fact that bully-boy bluster does not adequately compensate for a failure to have a back-up plan, a lack of diplomatic skills and an overall incompetence. Iran supposedly wants to “talk,” which we should point out that the Iranians had no intention of negotiating with the Trump administration, and were just “fine” with enhancing its nuclear capabilities while our European allies were so alienated by Trump to begin with, that they continued to abide by the deal.

It is one thing at a time now for the Biden administration on the diplomatic front. North Korea continues its build-up of nuclear and long-range missile capabilities, which have been “strangely” out of the news, primarily because Trump and Pompeo lost interest in it because there was no chance for any more public relations stunts. That has been the principle aspect of Trump’s foreign policy: take harmful unilateral actions or make empty grandstanding pronouncements that do not advance this country’s international position, but have domestic political “value” because they receive cheers from white nationalists and nativists ignorant of the ways of the world.

Trump also made things difficult for Biden because of his “friendship” with Vladimir Putin, which did nothing save make him look like a fool. Trump believed all the lies Putin told him, probably “inadvertently” passed on secrets to him, and was do desperate to deny “collusion” with Russian—despite the fact that he and his associates (Rudy Giuliani for one) worked with known entities in the Ukraine who had ties to Russian intelligence to  undermine the 2020 election in Trump’s favor. So desperate was Trump and his stooges was that they overlooked and denied evidence of Russian hacking into classified government servers—who like Chinese hackers no doubt stole valuable information about “secret” U.S. weapons system, particularly of the “stealth” variety.

And while Trump was alienating our European allies, Russia and China have started to become a little more “chummy,” no doubt because of their “shared” interest in undermining the U.S., especially now since the idiot Trump is no longer around to play with. Despite their “strategic partnership,” Putin claims that Russia and China do not have at present the intention of forming a military partnership, since bully he may be, Trump was a bit of the “coward” when it came to actually doing anything against a country that might inflict a little more “hurt” than expected, and since Trump never had a “plan” on what to do next after an impulsive move even against one of the “little kids” on the playground, Russia and China were fairly confident that Trump wouldn’t do anything no matter how much they took advantage of him to the detriment of this country’s national interests.

Trump left Biden a mess, but of course Fox News won’t tell you that. Trump’s foreign policy was always “adrift,” which shouldn’t be surprising as when we see now what happens when Trump reveals himself to be a man without a plan.