MATTHEW SYED
I planned this to be a “balanced” column about the US national security strategy (NSS) released by the White House on Friday, which warned of the “civilisational erasure” of Europe. The document said that Europe had failed to invest in defence, left our borders wide open and become strangulated by regulation. All too true. The document also had sections on the Indo-Pacific, Asia and the global south. An opportunity, then, to examine the Trump doctrine and to grasp its logic.
But perhaps I can be honest: as I typed the opening paragraphs, I started to feel my willpower draining away. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Something inside (sanity? scruples?) stayed my hand. For when you look at Trump’s foreign policy, it is impossible to offer a “balanced” perspective, since it doesn’t pretend to balance, or logic, or even the national interest. Instead, it is foreign policy that can only be conceptualised as a kind of personal extortion racket.
You may remember that in the build-up to the inauguration the president-elect launched a cryptocurrency through his company World Liberty Financial (WLF), effectively giving rich people (and poorer ones) the opportunity to hand over billions of dollars to the Trump organisation without scrutiny. You might also remember the dinner at the White House for those who had made the biggest donations, not to mention the private members’ club called Executive Branch set up by the Trump and Witkoff families with founding memberships selling for $500,000 a pop.
Now look at Trump’s foreign policy. I was astounded after returning from a trip to Vietnam this year to see that Trump had imposed a 46 per cent tariff on one of its most important allies in the region, effectively pushing this fast-growing nation into the orbit of China. Not long afterwards, Reuters reported the Trump Organisation and “partners in Vietnam” had secured investments worth billions of dollars in golf courses, hotels and other property. The tariff rate was slashed by more than a half.
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