Trump
team warns Obama not to make major moves on foreign policy
‘It’s
not going to be just counterproductive, but it will also send mixed
messages,’ an aide says.
By NAHAL
TOOSI 11/11/16, 5:44 AM CET
Before Donald Trump
won the presidency, Democratic foreign policy circles hummed with
talk that an outgoing President Barack Obama could take a last stab
at peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians. There also
was a strong expectation that Obama would push hard for Congress to
approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
But now that they’re
on the verge of power, Trump aides say Obama shouldn’t even think
about taking such steps.
“On big,
transformative issues where President Obama and President-elect Trump
are not in alignment, I don’t think it’s in keeping with the
spirit of the transition … to try to push through agenda items that
are contrary to the president-elect’s positions,” a Trump
national security adviser told POLITICO on Thursday. “It’s not
going to be just counterproductive, but it will also send mixed
messages.”
Presidential
transitions are often fraught, messy affairs, especially when White
House control is switching from one political party to another. (Some
Clinton administration officials, famously, took the “w” off
their keyboards as the Bush team was coming aboard.) Outgoing
presidents try to lock down their policies however they can, whether
through executive orders, regulations or legislation. Incoming
administrations try to lay the groundwork for what they want to do
without declaring open war on the people they are replacing.
Obama and Trump met
at the White House on Thursday, and Obama insisted: “My No. 1
priority in the coming two months is to try to facilitate a
transition that ensures our president-elect is successful.” Trump
also has been fielding congratulatory messages from foreign leaders,
even those — like Canada’s Justin Trudeau and Germany’s Angela
Merkel — who had signaled their discomfort with his candidacy.
But foreign policy
practitioners in Washington and overseas are unusually worried about
the Obama-to-Trump handover, a reality that many had dismissed as
impossible until it became clear late on Tuesday that the Republican
would defeat heavily favored Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
On Thursday, German
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier offered a blunt warning to
the incoming Trump team. “We don’t know what we’re in for,”
Steinmeier told Spiegel Online. “Surely, no one can dispute that
Donald Trump has had his fair share of no-holds-barred confrontation.
But now the question will be whether President Trump will behave the
same way as candidate Trump.”
Trump, officials and
analysts note, has repeatedly shifted his approach on some foreign
policy issues, including the Iran deal and restoring ties to Cuba.
Some of Trump’s more definitive stances (such as his hostility to
trade deals and conciliatory stance toward Russia) also run
diametrically opposed to establishment Republican thought, not to
mention Democratic preferences. To top all that off, there are
numerous issues of international concern about which Trump has said
little to nothing whatsoever.
“In the past 24
hours, I’ve seen embassies all over town, foreign journalists,
officials in foreign capitals reaching out to anybody they can find
to try to get a sense of what does Trump foreign policy look like
with regard to my country, my issue, whatever it is, because there
has not been a huge amount of detail spelled out during a campaign,”
said Richard Fontaine, president of the Center for a New American
Security. “The Trump win was such a surprise that most of them had
put their emphasis on trying to understand what a Clinton
administration would look like rather than a Trump administration. So
now, quite a few of them are caught somewhat flat-footed.”
Also struggling with
the new reality are the many employees at the State Department, the
Pentagon and other agencies that deal with foreign policy and
national security. At Foggy Bottom, people have been breaking down in
tears since the election, a State Department official told POLITICO.
Minority employees in particular are worried about how they will be
treated under a Trump administration after a campaign in which the
Republican real estate mogul called for a ban on Muslim immigrants
and drew plaudits from white nationalists.
In the coming weeks,
many of these officials will meet with members of Trump’s
transition team to help prepare them for the numerous challenges
ahead on the global front, not the least of which is a Middle East on
fire and an increasingly assertive Russia and China. Because many had
expected a Democrat-to-Democrat transition, they’re now wondering
how to lay out their reasoning and policies to a group with vastly
different views. Some even view it as a rare opportunity to reshape
the views of Trump and his aides.
“We are asking
ourselves: Are we going to be able to have some influence on the
transition team or not? There is so much unknown. Nobody really knows
these people,” the State official said. “I’m not sure I need to
feel defensive about what we are working on, but I think it’s
important to explain it, and explain options, and to be willing to
explore alternatives. Our job is, as much as we can, not to pull
punches. It’s to lay out the realities to the new political
leadership so they can make decisions.”
Perhaps nowhere are
more changes expected than on U.S. policy on Russia.
Trump’s take on
Russia is far more dovish that that of many leading members of his
own party — including his vice president-elect, Mike Pence. Trump
has said he’d like to get along with Russian President Vladimir
Putin, and Russian officials have said they were in touch with
Trump’s advisers during the U.S. presidential campaign. As a
result, the Russian government, which used its state-backed media
apparatus to bolster Trump’s candidacy, will probably wait out the
Obama administration on a number of critical subjects.
That means there’s
virtually no chance of a peace deal or even a meaningful cease-fire
anytime soon in Syria, where Russians are backing Syrian President
Bashar Assad in the fight against U.S.-supported rebel groups. Even
under Obama, Russia has been unwilling to meet U.S. demands for a
truce or increased humanitarian access to besieged Syrians.
There also is a
strong likelihood that Trump will not support continuing U.S. or
European sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. The
European Union is likely to renew its sanctions on Russia later this
year — sanctions the Obama administration is pressing the Europeans
to keep up despite their economic ties to Moscow. But if Trump won’t
back the same policy, why should the EU renew the penalties when they
expire later on?
Trump’s hostility
to trade deals has alarmed other countries well as the private
sector, and both already are considering how to deal with a United
States that’s not fully open for business. Mexican former President
Vicente Fox, who vigorously opposed Trump’s candidacy, mused in a
post-election column that his country (America’s third-largest
trading partner) should take the “opportunity to explore what other
nations have to offer. We can create trade agreements with South
America, China, India and Europe.” And despite what the Obama
administration says in these final months, the incoming president’s
view will matter a lot more to corporations that think and invest
long term.
The U.S.-led fight
against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq will likely continue in
the final months of the Obama administration, and Trump — who has
talked tough but vaguely on fighting terrorism — may not change
that policy. However, his isolationist streak has alarmed countries
such as Afghanistan, where thousands of U.S. troops are still aiding
Afghan troops battling the Taliban. Upon hearing of Trump’s
victory, the Taliban called on him to withdraw those American troops.
In a similar vein, Trump’s suggestion that the U.S. may not honor
its alliances to fellow NATO members unless they spend more on
defense has alarmed Eastern European states worried about Russian
aggression.
The Trump national
security adviser insisted that the president-elect’s transition
team doesn’t expect the U.S. bureaucracy to cease functioning
during these final months, especially if it means handling technical
issues on policies that already are in place. “The machinery of
government is going to have to keep grinding as best it can,” he
said. But Obama and his aides shouldn’t go seeking new adventures
or pushing through policies that clearly don’t match Trump’s
positions, he added.
That includes
efforts to bring peace to the Israelis and Palestinians — even if
those initiatives are symbolic at best. Trump, for one, has made it
very clear he will support Israel and its preferences. A
post-election statement by Trump’s advisers on Israel said, “A
two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians appears
impossible as long as the Palestinians are unwilling to renounce
violence against Israel or recognize Israel’s right to exist as a
Jewish state.”
Israel staunchly
opposes any move by Obama to secure a U.N. Security Council
resolution seen as hostile to Israeli interests — especially if he
asked other world powers to embrace U.S.-drafted parameters for a
two-state solution. It’s a very fragile time, and, according to an
Israeli official, any such move would represent a “dagger in the
heart” of the peace process — perhaps forever.
The official, who
asked not to be identified, said that Israel is especially concerned
that Obama would make such a move in the event that Trump won the
election.
Obama administration
officials likely will do everything they can to maintain the
integrity of the Iran nuclear deal, but that is one area in which
Trump can singlehandedly undermine all of their efforts. The deal
relies on a U.S. president waiving certain sanctions on Iran as long
as the country avoids pursuing nuclear weapons. Trump, who went from
saying he’d consider renegotiating a deal to promising to dismantle
it, could simply reimpose sanctions and scuttle the deal.
Trump also could
reverse Obama’s decision to restore diplomatic ties to Cuba. As a
candidate, he said he supported the reopening to the communist-led
island. But toward the end of his campaign, in an effort to appeal to
hard-line Cuban-Americans in Florida, Trump promised to “cancel”
the rapprochement. Since so much of the diplomatic re-opening relied
on executive orders, it won’t be hard for Trump to undo.
With such a huge
change coming to Washington, there’s no doubt that a number of
America’s allies and adversaries will hold off making major
decisions related to the U.S. until the new president is sworn in. In
many ways, that’s a traditional symptom of any transition. But few
expect this transition to be a traditional one.
Authors:
Nahal Toosi
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário