Photos: Menachem Kalish

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ineteen months into his presidency, what can we say about Trump’s foreign policy?

He’s started a trade war with China, insulted the Canadian prime minister, told US allies in Europe to pay up, embraced the Israeli prime minister, extended an olive branch to a North Korean dictator, and, most recently, shared warm words with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

Nineteen months into his presidency, how do we define Donald Trump’s foreign policy? In other words, is there a method to the seeming madness?

For answers, we turned to Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, and the author of a definitive 2015 policy paper that delineated the foreign policy of then-president Barack Obama. Doran, who has lately defended the president against the “never Trumpers” on the right, says Trump’s foreign policy can be summed up in two words: economic nationalism.

“It’s about the money,” said Doran in an interview in Washington. “Everything he does should be judged through that prism. What do you think is the first thought that crosses Trump’s mind when he wakes up in the morning? It’s what voters in swing states Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, think about him. As far as he’s concerned, the most important thing is to create jobs.”

So, for example, Trump sees China as America’s biggest rival because of its impact on the American economy. Likewise, his demand that NATO allies in Europe pay their fair share of the budget is also motivated by economic principles. Even though those countries, by agreement, have until 2024 to meet their 2 % threshold on defense spending, Doran says Trump is standing on principle.

“It’s important to remember that for those states, it’s very convenient to have until the year 2024, which, incidentally, is also potentially Trump’s last year in power. The problem is, they don’t usually reach the finish line. And if Trump sees now that countries like Germany are contributing only 1% of their GDP to the defense budget, he’s certainly entitled to be upset.”

His relationship with Vladimir Putin is a bit harder to explain, but there, too, economic matters weigh heavily, Doran says. Trump, he says, wants to create a better relationship with Russia at a time of growing trade tensions with China. And then there’s purely a political motivation. The future of Syria is yet to be written, and Putin will play an outsized role in its future. (For the record, he says that Putin doesn’t have the power to force Iran out of Syria.)

On Trump’s embrace of the Jewish state, it’s instructive to look back at a statement Trump made during the campaign. After he met Netanyahu in September 2016, he said that American defense aid to Israel had been “an excellent investment.”

“When you look at things in this light, you can better understand — even if you don’t agree — why Trump does what he does, and why he’s not anxious to respect old treaties.”

For a differing view, we turned to Professor Nathan Tarcov, an expert in American foreign policy at the University of Chicago. Unlike Doran, Tarcov can’t discern any grand scheme for Trump’s foreign policy.

“America First is a slogan rather than a principle,” he said. “America First has some of the aura of an older isolationism, but I’m rather reluctant to give any ‘-ism’ to Trump because I don’t think he thinks in abstract or principled ways.”

But in particular areas, Tarcov says Trump has two motivating factors: The first is economic — what is the balance of trade between nations? The second is personal: Does a given leader respect Trump and speak nicely to him? “He tends to look at the balance of trade in goods as somehow crucial, that any country where we have a major deficit in the trade and goods is somehow hostile, is robbing us.”

However, he explains, Trump’s economic worldview is flawed because it considers only goods, while modern economics is service-based. So while the goods trade balance with Canada is negative, if you take into account the services, then America is in a trade surplus with its northern neighbor. (An exception to this rule, he explains, is Israel. Trump is pro-Israel despite America’s negative trade balance with it.)

Since Trump tends to view international matters through economic lenses, he considers money spent on NATO a “bad deal” because other nations contribute less of their defense budgets to it than the United States. Whatever the president’s calculations, Tarcov believes the opportunity to prevent Russia from dominating Central and Eastern Europe is more important than alienating allies over their defense budgets.

On Trump’s tendency to invest meaning in personal relationships with foreign leaders, Tarcov says the president conflates personal interactions with international relations. For instance, if Trump had a good personal meeting with Putin, then he interprets that to mean that relations between the United States and Russia are also good.

Looking at the big picture, if Trump wants to leave a foreign policy legacy, Tarcov says, it’s to undo Barack Obama’s legacy. That’s why he pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and the climate agreement and has completely changed the tone of US foreign policy. That’s why he’s also distancing Europe, a move Tarcov believes could have dangerous long-term ramifications.

Key Moments of Trump’s Foreign Policy

• June 2017 — withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change
• December 2017 — recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital
• March 2018 — imposes protective tariffs on China
• May 2018 — withdraws from Iran nuclear agreement
• May 2018 — moves US embassy to Jerusalem
• June 2018 — refuses to sign the G7 Summit joint agreement calling for free trade
• June 2018 - meets North Korean leader Kim Jong-un
• June 2018 - withdraws from UN Human Rights Council due to anti-Israel bias
• July 2018 — declares to NATO member states that they must increase their defense budgets to 4% of their GDP
• July 2018 — In interview, Trump calls the European Union a “foe”
• July 2018 — At press conference with Vladimir Putin, casts doubt on intelligence reports that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections. Twenty-four hours later, backpedals on those remarks

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 720)