Trump's had 4 years in the job. Time for a foreign policy report card. THREAD 1/ washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
Climate change: F. Trump withdrew from the Paris climate accords and denies that this existential threat to the planet (and thus to all Americans) is even a problem. Trump’s refusal to even try to tackle climate change might be his greatest foreign policy failure. 2/
China: D+. Trump ... deserves credit for accurately diagnosing the challenge in the 2017 National Security Strategy. In 2020, however, his team then exaggerated this threat, claiming that the Chinese Communist Party seeks to export Marxism-Leninism & undermine global freedom. 3/
Trump’s prescriptions resulted in few tangible benefits. His trade war, resulting in a “phase one” deal, caused damage to American farmers, workers and manufacturers.... 4/
Trump’s silence on human rights abuses in Xinjiang & Hong Kong makes it difficult for his government to frame our fight with China in moral terms. Trump’s greatest success has been inadvertent - how ineptly Chinese President Xi Jinping has taken advantage of Trump’s mistakes 5/
Russia: F+. In his quest to befriend Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump has downplayed or dismissed countless belligerent actions...Trump’s embrace of Putin has not achieved a single beneficial outcome for the American people. 6/
Iran: F. Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear agreement, promising to secure a better deal and roll back Iranian influence in the region. Episodically, U.S. officials hinted at a larger objective — regime change. None of these goals have been achieved. 7/
North Korea: D. Trump experimented with a novel strategy: direct diplomacy with Kim Jong Un. Regarding the North Korea dictator, Trump said, “we fell in love.” But this bromance has not produced any reductions in North Korea’s threatening deployment of nuclear-armed missiles. 8/
Syria/the Islamic State: C-. Trump continued the U.S.-led military operation against the Islamic State launched by Obama in 2014. Trump flirted with using force to stop Assad’s atrocities, but pumped the brakes after a day of missile strikes & withdrew U.S. troops from Syria...9/
Diplomatic relations between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Israel: B. Trump deserves credit for helping to establish diplomatic relations between these Arab monarchies and Israel. But it’s not “Middle East peace.” The ... benefits to the United States are minimal. 10/
Israeli-Palestinian peace: F. Trump’s grade here is shared by many presidents. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, did float a novel approach. But presidents get judged by results, not originality. 11/
NATO: D-. Trump has expressed more disdain for the transatlantic alliance than any other American president since its creation in 1949. Tensions between the United States and several NATO members remain high. 12/
Africa: F. Trump’s only major policy initiative was to call them “shithole” countries. Enough said. 13/
Latin America: F. Mexico did not pay for the border wall. The attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan dictatorship has failed. New restrictions on travel, and relations more generally, with Cuba have produced no tangible security or economic benefits for the American people. 14/
The pandemic: F+. Trump has grossly mishandled the domestic response to the novel coronavirus, resulting already in more than 200,000 deaths, and did next to nothing to organize a global effort. The United States has provided some humanitarian assistance to other countries. 15/
The global economy:C-. The Federal Reserve has played a positive role in helping both the U.S. & global economy recover. The new trade agreement with Canada & Mexico is an incremental improvement over NAFTA (much of its language was lifted from the TPP drafted by Obama's team)16/
Democracy promotion: F. Trump does not even define advancing democracy abroad as a U.S. objective. He often brags about his friendly relations with dictators. 17/
Final grade: a gentleman’s D–. 18/ END THREAD.
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