What Will Trump II Do for Foreign Policy?

What will foreign policy be like under Trump II?

Biden-Harris hand over a weakened global deterrence, with major wars in the heart of Europe and at hotspots in the Middle East, including Israel attacking on the ground inside southern Lebanon again for the first time since 2006. Iran is ever-closer to being a nuclear threshold state, and no one has talked to North Korea for four long years. American troops are on the ground in Israel.

There is increased Chinese provocation in Asia. Yet Joe Biden’s China policy is unnecessarily adversarial, impractical, and dangerous. China was artificially reimagined as an enemy-in-a-box as the wars of terror sputtered out. Biden envisions China as an autocratic foe for democracy to wage a global struggle against. “On my watch,” Joe said, “China will not achieve its goal to become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world, and the most powerful country in the world.” (As if they had asked.) Biden went on to claim the world was at an inflection point to determine “whether or not democracy can function in the 21st century.” In Biden’s neo-Churchillian view, the U.S. and what the heck, the whole free world he believes he is president of, are in a deathmatch with China for global hearts and minds.

What of Obama? His administration saw the successful Russian invasion of Crimea with little U.S. reaction, and the nagging presence of the U.S. military in the Middle East, including expansion of Americans fighting into Libya, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere. Despite this, the world suffered the rise of the Islamic State and chaotic immigration into Europe. The George W. Bush administration launched two full-on wars of choice without any strategy for victory, destroying American credibility in the wake of the devastating events of 9/11 it failed to stop. Millions died.

Trump’s foreign policy, on the other hand, saw a broader sharing of costs within NATO, albeit at the price of being falsely criticized to this day for threatening to abandon the alliance. The United States pulled most of its troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan as Trump took steps to make good on his campaign promise to wrap up the neocons’ endless wars. More importantly, Trump did not initiate any new conflicts in the region, as had Clinton in Somalia, Obama and Bush, everywhere else.

The Doha agreement with the Taliban provided an exit strategy for the U.S. from Afghanistan, however poorly executed by the Biden administration. The Abraham Accords, a series of normalization deals, lowered tensions in the Middle East, and the ISIS Caliphate was eliminated within Iraq, oddly with the mostly off-the-record help of the Iranians. For the first time in decades there was the ever-so-slight possibility of progress with North Korea as Trump became the first sitting president to meet with its leader (and was mocked for it by Democrats).

“Results matter,” says Foreign Policy, “and the relative peace and prosperity that prevailed during Trump’s first term may make him the most effective U.S. foreign-policy president in the post–Cold War era.”

As for Term II, Trump makes clear wrapping up the war in Ukraine is a top priority, going as far as to promise to end it in the months between being reelected in November and Inauguration Day in January. While that timetable may not be possible (because, among other things, Citizen Trump would be violating the Logan Act by conducting diplomacy on behalf of the United States) it does make it crystal clear that Trump will not continue to feed weapons and money into the meat grinder outside Kiev that seems to produce no positive results.

Whether he has some special relationship with Putin or not, Trump will radically change policy by opening rounds of diplomacy with Russia. Russia at this point appears ripe for discussions, seeing its efforts to make ground progress inside Ukraine going nowhere. As in most inconclusive wars, the resulting “peace” agreement will be messy. Russia has no reason to quit the field empty handed and Ukraine will no doubt have to cede territory, maybe under the guise of a “Russian-controlled buffer zone” or some other clever excusing term. No one can today say what the cost to each side in men and dollars has been but it has been substantial and thus free from the nationalist pornography of the Biden administration about the “free people of Ukraine,” some sort of deal will be likely. A Republican-controlled Congress will make things move even quicker.

With China, Trump may choose to refine the struggle more as competition, primarily economic, between near-peers than WWIII-lite. Between 1991 and 2022, Taiwan invested $200 billion in China, more even than China’s investment in the United States. China remains Taiwan’s largest trading partner. “One country, two systems” has not only kept the peace for decades, it has proven darn profitable for all sides. As Deng Xiao Ping said of this type of modus vivendi, “Who cares what color a cat is as long as it catches mice?” China might one day seek to buy Taiwan, but until then, why drop bombs on one of its best customers? They even invited Taiwan to the Beijing Olympics and participated alongside them in Paris.

Any cross-strait violence would also affect U.S.–China relations, another incentive against war. Total Chinese investment in the U.S. is over $145 billion, and American investment in China has passed $220 billion. When Covid shut down world logistics, everyone learned the American economy is dependent on Chinese manufacturing and vice-versa. China is the second-largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt. If something interfered with all that commerce, China would have to find a way to eat unfinished iPhones. Occasional saber-rattling aside, the Chinese are literally betting the house on America’s continued economic engagement, not war over some miserable little islands in the South China Sea.

Expect Trump, in recognition of the economic struggle, to maintain or expand the China tariffs he put into place and Joe Biden grew. America will continue to build out its Navy in the Pacific via strategic cooperation with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and perhaps India (the U.S. Pacific Command has relabeled itself the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command). Indeed, if Trump really wanted to put pressure on China, he would expand relations with India, the world’s largest democracy. In East Asia, Trump’s insistence on greater burden-sharing with South Korea and Japan did not, as POLITICO worried at the time, “push the bilateral relationships near the breaking point.” Instead, it worked.

It would not be surprising for Trump to try to restart a relationship with North Korea. His nascent efforts came very close to being Nobel Peace Prize stuff, something clearly on Trump’s mind. Lessening the nuclear threat against Japan and South Korea, as well as diluting the value of North Korea as a buffer state for China in East Asia, are all goals worth pursuing. The North has demurred on testing nukes during the four “out years” of Biden (North Korea last tested a nuclear weapon in 2017), perhaps as a signal it is still willing to talk with a suitor should one have the guts to knock on the door.

Trump in moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem showed he is willing to make diplomatic moves against Tel Aviv’s desires, and he may do something similar with Gaza. Trump telegraphed his strategy to Netanyahu: Do what you need to do in Gaza but get it done soon and declare your victory. It is hard to say what role the hostages, including American citizens, will play in all this other than as complicators. Biden has essentially and shamefully made believe there are no Americans involved to remove the U.S. from any actionable role. Trump could go another way, demanding behind closed doors the release of the American hostages. If the hostages remain, he’ll unleash the IDF from American diplomatic pressure. There is rarely a “win-win” scenario in the Middle East in general and Israeli–Arab affairs specifically; this is no exception.

Which leaves Iran, another strategic tender spot left substantively untouched by the Biden administration despite its expanding role in the region and influence globally. The Biden administration had hoped to seal a revised nuclear deal with Iran, says Foreign Policy, but when those negotiations failed early on, the West was left without a backup plan for stopping Iran’s nuclear program. Trump in 2018 pulled out of the nuclear agreement negotiated by the Obama administration, leaving a vacuum in policy that 47 needs to fill effectively in Term II.

Trump’s Term I focused on isolating Iran, which he calls “the leading state sponsor of terrorism.” On the other hand, Trump, speaking to reporters in New York City, didn’t go into detail about what he, if reelected, would seek in any agreement, but said that talks are necessary because of the threat posed by Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons: “We have to make a deal, because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal.” Iran’s new reformist president says he, too, wants to rekindle the nuclear deal.

Failure on Iran will continue to drag the whole of the Middle East further down the path toward nuclear brinkmanship, a poor legacy for Term II. Trump would do well to remember the old diplomatic adage: If you don’t talk with your adversaries, you will certainly hear from them.