WASHINGTON (Conspiracy Talk News) – US President Donald Trump shook the world back in 2017 with a disconcerting foreign policy, characterised by an apparent distrust of multilateral forums and agreements including a bellicose rhetoric towards a handful of countries, such as North Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.
Trump broke the traditional outlines of US foreign policy in his first eleven months and replaced them with a mixture of nationalism and militarism that disoriented US allies and emboldened his rivals.
The outlines of the Trump doctrine were taking shape throughout the year and gave substance to the slogan “America First”, which Trump used during his election campaign.
Its main elements seem to be “the protection of US borders, the defence of sovereignty over multilateral agreements and an important boost to the Armed Forces,” a foreign policy expert at the American University in Washington, Gordon Adams explained.
That philosophy implies “a firm rejection of the leadership of the United States, multilateral action and the promotion of democracy” that characterised, to a greater or lesser extent, the US diplomatic strategy since the Second World War, he also added.
Trump corroborated this trend in his first speech to the UN General Assembly back in September, with an exalted defence of national sovereignty against any external interference.
But, while promoting that idea, Donald Trump harshly condemned “rebel regimes” of the world, and threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea and even intervene militarily in Venezuela.
Its rhetorical escalation with the Northern Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, had the world in suspense almost all 2017 year, and its strong threats did not dissuade Pyongyang to continue its tests of missiles.
“Time will tell if Trump’s harsh words attract global attention to common threats and help resolve them, or if they simply increase tensions and the likelihood of a new war,” a professor of politics and international law at the University Atlántica told Conspiracy Talk News reporters.
If US President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) recommended “talk softly and carry a big stick”, Trump however “speaks loudly and carries a blunderbuss,” something that keeps the world constantly on edge, according to Adams.
During his first foreign tour, in May, President Donald Trump stunned his European allies by not reaffirming the US commitment to article 5 of the NATO treaty, which provides mutual defence in case of attack, but then tried to correct that error.
Trump also expressed his disdain for two other major multilateral structures: the Paris Agreement against climate change and the nuclear pact reached in 2015 with Iran and five other powers.
In announcing its withdrawal from the climate pact in June, Donald Trump managed to isolate the United States from an overwhelming international consensus and, threatening in October to abandon the Iranian nuclear agreement if its “shortcomings” are not corrected, putting the future of the pact at risk.
Shortly before the end of the year, Trump actually escalated the tension within the Middle East by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and ordering the US embassy to move there, a move that complicates Washington’s future as a mediator between Israelis and Palestinians.
If that wasn’t enough, President Trump also outraged the Arab world with his immigration ban to citizens of six Muslim-majority countries, despite several litigation in US courts.
In Latin America, Trump, in his wisdom, has combined a general lack of interest in the continent with a hostile attitude towards immigrants and commercial pacts, which has weakened the traditional alliance with Mexico.
In the case of Cuba and Venezuela, “Trump’s policies have been guided more by short-term punitive objectives than by a strategy of long-term political change,” argued experts in the region Christopher Sabatini and William Naylor who published articles on the subject early November in the magazine “Foreign Affairs”.
In addition to hindering travel and trade with Cuba, Trump was carried away by the hard-line of anti-Castro in his reaction to the ” attacks” against US diplomats in Havana expelling 17 US Cuban officials despite doubts about what happened.
Trump cited human rights violations in Venezuela and Cuba as justification for his sanctions, but that argument sounds “disingenuous” when compared to his silence in the face of abuses in “the Philippines, Russia or Turkey,” Sabatini and Naylor said.
If continued in 2018, Trump’s doctrine will “accelerate the re-balancing of global power” in favor of “emerging powers such as China, India, Iran or Russia,” as the world “stops seeking leadership” in a disinterested United States. At the multilateral level, Adams predicted.