Trump's strongest defence is that this is what his voters wanted. When two years ago he questioned the idea that Nato should defend Montenegro — a country many Americans could not place on the map — Washington's establishment could barely contain its anger. But Trump was only channelling Mid-American sentiment. It may be reckless to dismantle Nato. But it is not preposterous to debate whether the US should risk a third world war over faraway places.
Nor is it outrageous to pull American forces from Afghanistan. Nineteen years after they went in, Trump is promising to bring the US presence down to zero (from 4,500 troops now). This week HR McMaster, Trump's former national security adviser, compared the US withdrawal from Afghanistan today to the 1938 Munich appeasement of Adolf Hitler.
This is the kind of overwrought analogy that led Washington's foreign policy establishment to be dubbed "the blob" by a senior official in Barack Obama's administration. Obama had mixed results in fending off conventional wisdom. At one point on his watch, the US troop presence in Afghanistan topped 100,000. Again, Trump is only voicing popular sentiment. The onus is on the experts to say why they are right about Afghanistan. The evidence is against them.
Trump has been gratuitously insulting towards US allies, particularly to German chancellor Angela Merkel. He has also misunderstood Nato as a protection racket rather than a mutual defence alliance. But the blob has spent years asking Europe nicely to increase its share of the defence burden with limited results.
Trump's thuggish approach has prompted a debate about European defence that would have been hard to imagine without him. Nor is he always batting for Russian president Vladimir Putin, as Washington consensus would have it.
Trump clearly envies autocrats, such as Putin, and China's Xi Jinping. But he often pursues lines that are at odds with his personal admiration. Consider his opposition to Germany's Nord Stream 2 — a gas pipeline that would increase Russia's leverage over Europe. Or his desire to include China in the next strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia. The blob understandably reviles Trump's style.
But his obnoxiousness can blind critics to the occasional merit in his policies. Any renewal of the treaty that would limit the Russian and American nuclear arsenals but excludes China's is hard to defend.
Trump's strongest foreign policy legacy is his new cold war with China. Some of his actions have clearly backfired. His trade war has done nothing to shrink the US-China deficit that he inherited. But it would be an exaggeration to blame him for China's more aggressive global posture. That was Xi's decision and it predates Trump. The US and China may now be on a dangerous collision course. But on this, unusually, Trump leads a bipartisan consensus.
A second Trump term, in my view, would be a disaster for US democracy and its ability to handle the pandemic. But if Trump loses, the blob wins. It is almost unanimously against him. America's poor foreign policy record over the past 20 years suggests the blob's return would not be an unmixed blessing.
Written by: Edward Luce
© Financial Times
