Trump poised to leave legacy of chaos with
last-minute foreign policy moves
Analysis: With defence secretary’s firing and
potential new Iran sanctions, Trump raises fears over impact of a vengeful
president
Julian
Borger in Washington
Tue 10 Nov
2020 10.00 GMTLast modified on Tue 10 Nov 2020 10.02 GMT
The abrupt
dismissal of the US defence secretary, Mark Esper, and reported plans for
multiple layers of new sanctions on Iran have made clear that Donald Trump’s
last 10 weeks in office could still prove a very bumpy ride for the rest of the
world.
Trump is
refusing to concede his loss to Joe Biden and, while he launches a quiver of
baseless legal challenges to the results, he is also seeking to demonstrate he
is still in charge of foreign and defence policy – fueling fears about the
impact a vengeful president might have on the US role on the world stage over
the coming 10 weeks of transition.
It was
unclear on Monday whether Esper’s firing by tweet was just an act of
score-settling with an outgoing defence secretary who openly disagreed with the
president, or whether it was intended to clear the way for actions in the
domestic or foreign sphere that Esper had been blocking.
This is less a lame-duck period and more of an
adrenaline-infused mallard
Naysan
Rafati, International Crisis Group
On the same
day as Esper’s departure, the Axios news website cited Israeli sources as
saying the US, Israel and their Gulf allies were discussing a plan to add more
bricks to the sanctions wall they have built around Iran, potentially with a
new raft of punitive measures a week running up to Biden’s inauguration on 20
January.
The Trump
administration strategy in recent months has been to build up pressure on Iran
with the aim of provoking a response from Tehran which would make it harder for
the incoming administration to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint
Comprehensive Programme of Action (JCPOA).
So far,
Tehran has remained broadly within the JCPOA, while shrugging off some of the
constraints it imposed on its nuclear activity in a calibrated response to US
sanctions. But the Trump administration has clearly not given up trying to goad
the Iranians into more irreversible actions.
“Given
Donald Trump’s record of chronically ignoring norms and customs, I would be
quite concerned about the hijack that he and his administration might pull
during this transition period, which is perilous even in normal times and all
the more so today given the domestic and international crises facing the United
States,” said Rebecca Lissner, co-author of a book on US foreign policy, An
Open World: How America Can Win the Contest for Twenty-First-Century Order.
Trump could
declare formal withdrawal from the New Start treaty with Russia, which limits
the nuclear arsenals of both states and which is due to expire in February, or
seek to “unsign” the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the US signed but
which remains unratified by the Senate. Those acts could be reversed by an
incoming Biden administration but the whiplash effect would add confusion over
Washington’s standing and sap confidence around the world that the US will
stick to agreements it signs.
The
reported new Iran sanctions show that Trump and his secretary of state, Mike
Pompeo, have not given up trying to kill off the JCPOA, which has stumbled on,
wounded but alive, despite US withdrawal in 2018, the imposition of a US oil
and financial embargo on Iran, and Tehran’s response.
The Biden
team intends to negotiate a return to the JCPOA by both countries, but new
sanctions would sour the mood. On Sunday and Monday, the Trump administration’s
Iran envoy, Elliott Abrams, was in Israel for talks on the new measures with
the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and other senior officials and was
expected to fly on to Abu Dhabi and Riyadh.
The new
sanctions were expected to be imposed for Iran’s ballistic missile programme,
its alleged links with terrorism and its dire human rights record, rather than
for the nuclear programme, potentially making it harder politically for a new
Biden administration to remove them.
“The intent
seems to be to max out maximum pressure in the short term and throw up
procedural and political hurdles for a Biden administration to contend with if
it moves to provide Tehran with sanctions relief after January,” said Naysan
Rafati, an Iran expert at the International Crisis Group. He called the coming
10 weeks as “less a lame-duck period and more of an adrenaline-infused
mallard”.
Trump’s
refusal to recognise his election loss or cooperate in an orderly transition
has other significant implications for foreign policy and national security.
Biden’s team is not receiving intelligence or defence briefings, as would be
normal during a transition, because a Trump-appointed official running the
General Services Administration has refused to sign the necessary paperwork.
“Taking
over the vast US federal government on a dime on January 20 is an exceptionally
tall order under any circumstances,” Lissner, a non-resident scholar at
Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies, said. “The fact is that so
much of the intelligence-sharing that typically happens during the transition
period is at the discretion of the president. So usually during this period,
the president-elect learns of ongoing or planned covert or military operations
that might be in the offing, but there’s no law that dictates that President
Trump needs to share that information.”
New
national security officials entering their offices for the first time in
January could arrive entirely unaware of what actions the US is pursuing around
the world, equivalent to changing drivers of a huge truck travelling full speed
down a busy highway. The Trump administration may well fail in forcing its
successor to follow its direction on critical issues, but it shows every sign
of bequeathing a legacy of chaos.
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