Since leaving office in 2021, Donald Trump has become increasingly erratic. His comments about Haitians “eating dogs in Springfield,” his gimmicks and repeated falsehoods might have been considered amusing, but this is no longer a laughing matter.
The world only narrowly navigated the first Trump presidency, and now, it aims to be better prepared for a potential second term. His rhetoric, both during and after his time in office, highlights the true global implications of his leadership.
When Trump makes statements like “Putin can do whatever the hell he wants in Europe if they don’t pay for U.S. military defense,” or claims he “won’t give a cent” to Ukraine, allies are compelled to re-evaluate future international relations with the United States.
Throughout Europe, Trump has vocalized for years that he will not defend any NATO country that does not pay a minimum of 2 percent annual GDP toward defense. While this may just seem morally unjust, it is above all impractical.
For example, Serbia and Albania have a long history of violence going back centuries, with ethnic cleansing being used as a repeated tool by the Serbians, particularly in their battle for supremacy in the southeastern corner of Europe known as the Balkans.
In the scenario in which Serbia may attack Albania during a future Trump presidency, NATO is treaty-bound to aid in its defense. However, it is safe to assume that Trump would not send personnel or weapons to Albania, as a NATO ally, because of its lack of sufficient payment toward defense, which may make the difference between its victory or defeat.
The U.S. chief of staff and secretary of defense can heavily pressure him to send aid regardless, but if the president proves unpredictable or unreliable, then America is less likely to be trusted internationally.
For this reason, Trump’s Republican nomination was a wake-up call to the world, and therefore beginning to have an effect on global politics without him even being in the White House, a fact that America’s strategic allies are simply not prepared for.
In the case of Ukraine, Trump has repeatedly argued that its war against Russia is a lost cause, arguing that Ukrainian loss of life and infrastructure means there’s nothing left to fight for. He suggested Ukraine accept any deal the Russians give them, even if it means giving up land. AP News reported on Trump’s belief that President Joe Biden by contrast has “egged it all on,” alluding to him worsening the suffering by sending aid.
Trump insisted that he will end the war within 24 hours of being president but he has never explained how. From the moment the war started, he has bowed to nuclear threats and praised Putin, calling him a “genius” for invading a sovereign country.
So it should come as no surprise that when it came time to discuss peace, all he could say was “Biden and Kamala allowed this to happen,” according to AP News.
This creates a situation where Trump can single-handedly decide which side wins Russia’s war in Ukraine, which leaves Ukraine in a terrible situation while dictators globally feel as if they have an ally in the U.S.
Trump’s worship for dictatorship, evidenced by his praise for Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, North Korea’s General Secretary Kim Jong Un, and even China’s President Xi Jinping, is truly telling. In May, he said these anti-democratic leaders are “at the top of their game, whether you like it or not,” a scary remark for the possible leader of modern democracy.
This not only goes against the protection of democracies for the American people, but it goes against American strategy. Ukraine stands between Russia and the West, and if it were allowed to be dominated by Russian forces due to a lack of aid, what would happen next?
Russian foreign policy, for centuries, has been motivated by Europe’s geography. The relative flatlands of the North European Plain have proven ineffective at protecting Moscow from impeding invaders. This has forced Russian leaders to move westward to prevent invasions like those in the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, and World War II (WWII), despite the calls for sovereignty and state rights that define the modern era. It’s for this reason that Tim Marshall wrote that modern Russia is a “prisoner of geography.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is pursuing war to fulfill his ambition of expanding westward, is objectively rational towards his goals. This situation has prompted a growing number of experts in America to argue that “we have to be ready to stop this man” in Ukraine to prevent further expansion “because he’s not going to stop,” Sen. Dick Durbin said in an MSNBC interview.
NATO was based on collective defense, and the commitment that “an armed attack against one or more [signatory parties] in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all,” according to the founding charter’s Article Five.
Under Trump, it’s uncertain how the U.S. would respond if Putin opted to invade Romania, Lithuania, Finland or Poland. However, reaching that point would require the U.S., due to treaty commitments, to engage in war, so it’s in the U.S. interest to keep him within Russia.
This largely explains U.S. policy in Ukraine, suggesting that significant investments are part of a broader strategy. The U.S. supports democracy abroad and undermines its adversary by providing aid, thereby diminishing the adversary’s ability to invade other allied nations—all for a cost effective $60 billion, according to the Atlantic Council, which helps avoid war. No amount of isolationist fear-mongering can refute this. Trump, by contrast, lacks a coherent plan.
In the Pacific, it’s no better. Don’t let the anti-China rhetoric fool you, he secretly roots for Jinping. In recent months, Trump called into question the significance of Taiwan, arguing that they ought to pay the U.S. for its defense, signaling that he will not prioritize its security at a time when most military experts suggested the Chinese are most likely to attack it.
This is critical, as despite what the former president’s speeches recently would suggest, Taiwan’s independence is a key factor to U.S. national security. The local Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) produces 95 percent of the world’s most advanced chips essential to cybersecurity, advancements in medical technologies, high-speed rail, solar farms and secure communication infrastructure, according to Time Magazine.
In tandem, current developments in the Middle East are alarming, with Israel on the verge of starting a regional war. This has been the latest of many instances where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ignored U.S. advice for caution, undermining Biden’s authority as the leader of the free world.
Despite countless human rights violations and global condemnation, Netanyahu acts as if he doesn’t have someone to answer to, and as if the U.S. isn’t the only country willing to vote against the entire world in favor of its actions at the UN. Unlike Biden, though, Trump has no restraint in his vocabulary.
Meanwhile, deep within the halls of his to-be Mar-A-Lago retirement home, the former president ruminates on how if he were president again, he would let Israel “finish the job.” In recent months, however, it is no longer clear what the “job” in question is, with operations in the past year targeting the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran.
During his 2016 campaign, Trump pledged to exit Afghanistan, but it wasn’t until 2020 that he struck a deal with the Taliban to withdraw by May 2021, without consulting the Afghan government. He then failed to implement this agreement during his final months in office, leaving the incoming Biden administration with a challenging situation.
Similarly, in Syria, Trump’s 2019 decision to pull troops from the northeast disrupted a previously stabilized area, as U.S. troops withdrew without coordination with allied forces on the ground, based on reports from American Progress. Trump rationalized these actions by expressing his intent to end America’s involvement in “endless wars,” but what lessons are U.S. allies supposed to learn when its main supporter can go behind its back and leave whenever the president wants?
This is particularly damning, as this land is predominantly inhabited by the stateless and historically oppressed Kurdish people, who have been persecuted by every country their people have lived in, whether it be Iran, Iraq, Syria or Turkey.
CNN’s Christine Amanpour learned from Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s top adviser, Ibrahim Kalin, that Trump withdrew troops in coordination with the Turkish upon hearing of a planned offensive on Kurdish positions.
When he was eventually caught, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio reminded the president that “the Kurds served as the primary ground fighters against ISIS in Syria so U.S. troops wouldn’t have to call for Trump to “cut [a] deal with Erdogan allowing him to wipe them out.”
In defense, Trump would claim the decision was motivated by the Kurds not contributing to the fight against the Nazis in WWII, which is ridiculous because Germany, Italy and Japan are all key U.S. allies, and the Kurdish didn’t even have a state so they couldn’t have fought the Nazis even if they wanted to.
It’s important to mention all these examples, as today we stand at an inflection point in international affairs, as the U.S. faces the greatest challenge to its global supremacy since the Cold War. In response to growing fears of war in the Middle East, Russian advance into allied territory in Europe and Chinese threats of expansion into the Pacific, Trump has neither proven himself able to either maintain America’s position in the world or commit himself to American values abroad.
From the first weeks of his presidency, Biden accurately declared the 21st century to be the battleground between democracy and autocracy. Trump has consistently put distance between America and its allies while emboldening our adversaries, stoking division not only within his own country but around the whole world.
The United States needs a president who understands America’s place in the world. Our allies are scared, and our adversaries are confident. Whether it be Europe, the Middle East, or the Pacific, a vote for Harris is a vote for stability that can turn the world toward the right course at a time when everything can fall apart– because this is bigger than us.
Copy edited by Camiryn Stepteau
