Donald Trump's Foreign Policies As Compared To Previous US Presidents

The aim of this paper is to analyze and compare Trump’s foreign policy decisions in regards to previous American presidents bringing into discussion main strategies. This paper will be focused on three main foreign policy grand strategies and Trump’s decisions since January 2017 when he came into office. Donald Trump is the 45th and current President of the United States, but before he turned his attention to politics, and announced in 2015 his candidacy for President of the United States on the Republican Party, he was a business man and television personality. These aspects are worth mentioning because his personal background influenced his decisions guiding the foreign policy.

The experience of last decades indicate that making foreign policy is a complex process, and that the support of Congress and The President is required for a strong and effective U.S. foreign policy. There are some main goals when talking about foreign policy grand strategies, such as security, prosperity, and spreading American ideas.

The first unit of analysis that is used is security. Security can be assured though different strategies such as hard power (the military), diplomacy (most visible during Obama administration), soft power (influence through culture and values), and foreign aid (USA is the largest foreign aid donor in the world, however, foreign aid forms a small part of the United States budget. While conservatives believe that each nation should protect itself, liberals think that assisting other nations is an important path to security, it builds goodwill and helps lift nations out of poverty that breeds extremism. Moreover, USA’s military expenditure ranked number one worldwide (SIPRI, 2017) with a percentage of 35%, follow by China with 13%.

Prosperity is the second tool in measuring and achieving foreign policy goals. Free trade (until recently, in contradiction to Woodrow Wilson’s liberal internationalism approach), supply of energy goods, and economic weapons (“economic sticks and carrots”) are important mechanisms in providing prosperity. Critics suggest an alternative to free trade which is fair trade that reduces barriers but at the same time negotiates worker protections and environmental regulations right into the trade agreements. In these ways, the workers of all nations can compete with the same rules. Free markets cause social displacement, at least in the short run. As an example, free trade in agriculture pushes small farmers in poor nations like Nigeria as free trade markets have grown volatile. Moreover, American leaders champion free trade only until they run into powerful interests. When government helps American farmers, it violates the rules of free trade that the government itself is championing. Almost all experts and most political leaders reject a return to protectionism, but at the same time, the opposition to free trade has grown. The United States consumes over 20 million barrels of oil a day, a quarter of the world total. Today, the United States and Canada produce almost 60 percent of the nation’s supply. As reliance on foreign energy diminishes, a major issue for American policy, the struggle to ensure a reliable supply of energy fades. Lastly, economic weapons sometimes disrupt free trade. American officials use economic relations as carrots to reward other nations or as sticks to punish them, for attacking another country, trying to build nuclear weapons, or repressing its own citizens. Applying economic sanctions is never easy, it requires building an international coalition.

Spreading American ideas is another tool in achieving foreign policy goals. One can mention the American exceptionalism in which is believed that the United States is unique, marked by a distinct set of ideas such as equality, self-rule, and limited government, that the U.S. has a unique duty to spread freedom, democracy, and peace to other nations. However, critics argue that Americans use the language of values to pursue its self-interest.

Upon taking office, Trump relied more on his White House advisors rather than the State Department to advise him on international relations. Trump has made significant decisions, such as a proposed travel ban from certain countries and a counter-terrorism strike in Yemen, which was made without any input from the State Department.

Trump said his foreign policy would be ‘based on American interests.’ The new president has been very anti-trade. He has actually been against U.S. trade policies for decades; the rhetoric has remained the same since the 1980s. Trump also noted that he would ’embrace diplomacy,’ that the U.S. would ‘not go abroad in search of enemies,’ but ‘that we are always happy when old enemies become friends, and when old friends become allies’.

The worldview of the President is fundamentally realist (Schweller, 2018), which means a multipolar world with greater competition and an international arena populated by self-interested states concerned with their own security and economic welfare.

Moreover, Trump’s administration rejects multilateralism, the direction in which Obama was directing U.S.’s foreign policy after World War II. The Obama administration has struggled to pivot away from the War on Terror and establish a new grand strategy. They had a clear goal: to pivot away from the Bush administration’s War on Terror and reestablish a multilateral foreign policy. Obama has attempted to engage with allies to solve common international problems, such as the overthrow of a dictator in Libya, nuclear disarmament, isolating threatening states like Iran and North Korea.

Important foreign policy decisions during Trump presidency so far are the withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the Paris agreement on climate change.

The first action Trump took regarding foreign policy was withdrawing US from the Trans-Pacific Parternship, on the assumption that the agreement undermines US economy and independence. The steep tariffs on imported steel and aluminium are the start of a trade war between US and their main steel importers, from which China revolted the most, together with the European Union. Once again, Trump explained that tariffs on Chinese imports would benefit the domestic steel manufacturers and weaken the trade deficit between the 2 countries. Trade issues continue to affect US-China relations, crumbling a relation that presidents from Richard Nixon till today worked on meticulously. One of the main goals is the reduction of systematic trade deficits with countries in Europe and Asia, threats of tariffs and other protectionist measures. Also, he is trying a type of trade diplomacy in order to put pressure on China to make concessions

Previous presidents tried bringing US in the centre of multilateral agreements on military, peace, human rights and environment issues, Donald Trump seems to downplay US presence from international accord. He threatened the withdrawal from NATO, a military organization that president Harry Truman founded against USSR, on the premise that US invests too much for other states’ safety and their partners don’t give enough in return. This idea was also shared by Barack Obama in a limited sense, being aware that US allies aren’t always keen on paying their contributions to NATO, but the former president took upon more diplomatic approaches to this matter. Trump considers that allies should contribute more to their defense spending.

Withdrawing from the Paris Accord, an agreement that Barack Obama established on the issue of climate change, Trump’s efforts to erase any development of his predecessor unfold, together with the Iran Nuclear Deal. On June 1, 2016, the US has backed away from the 2015 Paris Accord, as the agreement ‘undermined US economy and puts US at a permanent disadvantage’, as Trump argued his exist. The international environmental societies and organizations along with major political figures reacted negatively to the action, pressuring Donald Trump to re-evaluate his stance, including in the most recent state visit of French president Emmanuel Macron, who stressed the importance of climate control in a speech delivered in front of Congress. In January 2018, Trump said he reconsidered re-entering the Paris Accord and acknowledging that climate is indeed an important issue, but nothing was recently done on this matter. What was a top priority on Obama’s foreign policy agenda, climate change is now a subject tossed away from the very first months of Trump’s presidency.

In contradictory to Obama’s foreign policy, Trump’s actions in the Middle East are far different that the previous president. The most important difference is the handling of Syria and terrorism, Donald Trump being vocal of punishing the Syrian government, something that Obama refused to do. In April 2017, Trump did not back down from launching the first unilateral strike against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. On April 14 this year, Trump, together with French president Macron and Prime Minister, Teresa May, attacked Syria after the Syrian government’s civilian attack with chemical weapons. For the whole world, the attacks were a shock and even condemned.

However, Trump’s administration continued Obama policy of avoiding large scale controversial wars in Middle East even if some of his discourses contradict this decision, such as the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and relocation of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem which broke a long tradition of American foreign policy in the Israeli-Palestian conflict.

In conclusion, with less than two years left into office, Trump has taken decisions both in opposition to prior presidents, but also continued some policies in what he calls “America First” and “Make America Great Again” agenda. Also with the involvement of more bilateral agreements one can conclude that he thinks more in short-term grains compared to the previous president.