Trump's Flailing Foreign Policy
By Robin Wright
By Robin Wright
When I was five, I almost drowned after stepping into the
deep end of a lake. I can still recall the terror, my small arms flailing
toward the sunlight above the water, my legs kicking in all directions to find
ground. A month into the Trump Presidency, that image haunts me as an apt
metaphor for both the Trump Administration’s foreign policy and the
gasping-for-breath fear among many old hands watching it play out.
“Our government continues to be in unbelievable turmoil,”
General Tony Thomas, who heads the United States Special Operations Command,
remarked at a military conference in Maryland this week. “I hope they sort it
out soon, because we’re a nation at war.”
The President is increasingly bewildering or worrying
friends and foes alike. Longstanding allies now publicly chide America. On
Thursday, the French Foreign Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, called the Trump
Administration’s policy on the volatile Middle East “very confusing and
worrying.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel—who has become the de-facto spokesperson
for the West’s liberal democracies since Trump took office—rebuked his “America
First” policy this week. “No country can solve the problems alone; joint action
is more important,” she said.
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