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Analysis
The world
braces for Trump, hoping for the best, unprepared for the worst
Patrick
Wintour
Diplomatic
editor
His pick for
secretary of state may have given measured assessment of world affairs, but
‘crazy’ Trump will call the shots
Sun 19 Jan
2025 18.22 GMT
Western
allies of the US are braced for the return of Donald Trump, still hoping for
the best, but largely unprepared for what may prove to be a chaotic and
disorientating worst.
The run-up
to his inauguration has sent out a catherine wheel of signals as Trump turned
up the volume on tariffs against Canada, China and Mexico, vowed to buy – and
if not, invade – Greenland and the Panama canal, and used his leverage to press
Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a Gaza ceasefire that the Israeli PM had resisted
since May.
At the same
time his pick as secretary of state, Marco Rubio, gave four and a half hours of
evidence at the Senate foreign relations committee, which in the breadth of his
knowledge and views resembled less Steve Bannon and more James Baker III in his
heyday.
Whether
Rubio and the state department will hold sway on foreign policy – over the
other agencies, court favourites and a plethora of special envoys – is already
the question in Europe and will depend heavily on the chief of staff, Susie
Wiles, and the national security adviser, Mike Waltz.
Seeking
signals amid all this noise, distinguishing the threats that presage action, as
opposed to bargaining bluster, and locating the rationale for an administration
decision is already keeping confounded foreign diplomats in Washington up at
night.
Trump has
become more candid that unpredictability is his modus operandi. He told the
Wall Street Journal, for instance, he was pleased that President Xi Jinping of
China “respects me because he knows I am fucking crazy”.
Unfortunately,
fear of the madman recedes if he does not occasionally do something truly
deranged. For that reason, many expect Trump to start his administration fast,
trying to unsettle his opponents and prove his America First approach has
substance.
On day one,
he cannot hope to end the Ukraine war in 24 hours, start mass deportations or
slap 25% tariffs across the world, but he is expected to reveal which foreign
countries are in his sights, starting with Canada, China and Mexico.
Canadian
diplomats, stunned to be thrust into the frontline alongside China, spent much
of last week camped in Washington trying to bend the ear of Republican
senators.
Despite its
internal divisions, Canada claims to have three tiers of reprisals drawn up to
put on $150bn worth of US imports if Trump launches his trade war.
Mexico’s
president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who conferred with Latin American foreign
ministers on Friday to devise a common Trump strategy, says the country has
consular plans in place if mass deportations begin.
China has
been preparing its reprisals for a year, and looking for allies.
Dr Chietigj
Bajpaee, a south Asia research fellow at the Chatham House thinktank, predicts
that “allies will attempt a mix of appeasement, strengthening resilience and
retaliation, as well as middle powers stepping up to try to preserve free trade
as they did in [Trump’s] first term”.
But in
Europe, where popular hostility to Trump is greater than elsewhere, the
foreboding is great. The German economy minister, Robert Habeck, gloomily
predicts the US tariffs against the EU will be framed to damage German
industry. Even transatlanticists such as Friedrich Merz, widely predicted to be
the next chancellor, argue that EU unity is the prerequisite if the
opportunities for a successful relationship are to be exploited.
More
generally, European diplomats insist they are not clutching at straws when they
say the Trump administration’s policies may be more nuanced than his rhetoric.
In 2016 Trump threatened 30% tariffs on Mexico but settled for renegotiating
the North American Free Trade Agreement. The EU eventually avoided tariffs on
cars by agreeing in 2018 to buy more US liquid gas and soya beans. Similar
offers will be drafted this time.
The
transcript of Rubio’s Senate confirmation hearing is also being cited as a sign
that the US is not about to pull up the drawbridge. His evidence repeatedly
referred to the US’s global role and the importance of cultivating alliances,
even admitting a preference to cooperate with Mexico over fighting drug
cartels.
On Ukraine
it is true that he said the official administration position was that “the war
had to be brought to an end”, and that required territorial concessions by both
sides. But before a ceasefire started, Ukraine needed to be in a strong
bargaining position, Rubio said, adding that what Vladimir Putin had done by
invading Ukraine was “unacceptable”.
He added:
“Putin’s goal now is to have maximum leverage so that he can basically impose
neutrality on Ukraine, retrofit and come back and do this again in four or five
years. And that’s not an outcome I think any of us would favour.” Pressed to
say that Ukraine had to offer military neutrality, he refused to agree, saying:
“Even if the conflict were to end, there needs to be the capability of Ukraine
to defend itself.” A British official said: “That does not sound like a neutral
Ukraine left without security guarantees.”
On Nato,
Rubio said he stood by the 2023 Kaine Rubio Act that prohibits the US president
from withdrawing from Nato without Senate approval. Overall, his demand that
Europe contribute more to its own defence is the utterly familiar refrain of
any US politician over the past two decades.
Only once
did he hint at a bigger security recasting when he asked: “Should the role of
the United States and Nato in the 21st century be the primary defence role or
as a backstop to aggression, with countries in the region assuming more of that
responsibility by contributing more?”
Rubio, famed
as a China hawk, said he did not believe Beijing wanted military conflict,
saying: “The Chinese have basically concluded that America is sort of a tired,
great power in decline. That they are on a path over the next 20 or 30 years to
naturally supplant us, irrespective of what happens. And I think their
preference is to not have any trade and/or armed conflict in the interim,
because I think they might interrupt what they believe is a natural
progression.”
In seeking
alliances against China in the Indo-Pacific, for instance, he said: “It would
be a mistake to go in with a cold war mentality of pick a side and pick a side
now.” Overall he framed the conflict with China in terms of making the US
economy and those of its allies less dependent on China.
Nor did he
advocate simple withdrawal from the Middle East, rejecting abandonment of the
Syrian Kurds to the Turks, a position that will be welcome in Europe. Referring
to the Syrian Democratic Forces, he said: “There are implications to abandoning
partners who, at great sacrifice and threat, actually jailed the Isis [Islamic
State] fighters. One of the reasons why we were able to dismantle Isis was
because they were willing to host them in jails, at great personal threat to
them.”
Even on
Iran, he took a nuanced view, arguing there was one school in Iran that
recognised they were “in a great deal of trouble and needed an off ramp”, while
another school saw immunity from foreign interference would best come through
acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Rubio
unsurprisingly said the Trump administration would be the most pro-Israeli in
history, but even so rejected Israel’s return to controlling Gaza, saying: “The
real open question for the Palestinians is who will govern in Gaza in the short
term and who will ultimately govern? Will it be the Palestinian Authority or
some other entity? Because it has to be someone.”
He also
agreed with the outgoing Democratic administration that a genocide was under
way in Sudan and that meant the US needed to raise with the United Arab
Emirates that “they are openly supporting an entity that is carrying out a
genocide”.
But do
Rubio’s views matter?
The former
Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has warned that in the new US
administration there will be only be one decision maker: Donald Trump.
Turnbull
advises that as the executive orders pour out of the White House next week –
many of them hostile to the US’s allies – the test will be first to stand up to
the bullying, but then to convince him there is common ground, for there is
only one question – commercial and political – that Trump ever asks: “What’s in
it for me?’
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