Trumps adulation tour hides foreign policy weakness
As President Trump ends his Asia trip, he might sum up the 12-day journey with a revision of the remark attributed to Julius Caesar: Veni, vidi, blandivi. I came, I saw, I flattered.
Trump’s trip was closer to a pilgrimage than a projection of power. The president rarely explained details of U.S. policy. Instead, he mostly asked other leaders for help, lauded their virtues, and embraced their worldviews.
Along the adulation tour, Trump spoke of his “really extraordinary” relationship with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe; his “incredibly warm” feeling for Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he called “a very special man”; his “great relationship” with the “very successful” Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte; and his empathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose nation is “an asset to our country, not a liability.”
And the president praised himself at nearly every stop, telling reporters on the way home that the trip had been “tremendously successful” with “incredible” achievements.
Trump’s trip may indeed prove to be historic, but probably not in the way he intends. It may signal a U.S. accommodation to rising Chinese power, plus a desire to mend fences with a belligerent Russia — with few evident security gains for America. If the 1945 Yalta summit marked U.S. acceptance of the Soviet Union’s hegemony in Eastern Europe, this trip seemed to validate China’s arrival as a Pacific power. As Xi put it to Trump, “The Pacific Ocean is big enough to accommodate both China and the United States.”
Trump voiced a clear desire for accommodation with an aggressive Russia, too. Much was made of his regurgitation of Putin’s denial that he had conducted a covert action against America during last year’s presidential campaign. “President Putin really feels ± and he feels strongly — that he did not meddle in our election.”
Remarked one former senior CIA official: “When the Art of the Deal meets the KGB, the KGB wins.”
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