US President-elect Donald Trump will take the oath of office on January 20, 2025, only the second American president after Grover Cleveland (1885-1889; 1893-1897) to win non-consecutive terms.
He is already active, holding forth on a number of issues and making leaders around the world nervous. His billionaire wingman, Elon Musk, is also in the play, interfering in European national debates and even making derogatory comments about leaders like British Prime Minister Kier Starmer who he (Musk) accused of being an ‘accomplice’ to child grooming gangs.
The French president, the outgoing German chancellor, and the British and Spanish prime ministers have all denounced Musk’s outbursts on his social network X. Instead of relenting, Musk has doubled down.
It’s safe to assume that Musk is batting for Trump. If Trump wanted to rein him in, he would have just told him to shut up. Why doesn’t he? Is it because Trump can’t figure out the nuances of foreign policy? Or that he is impulsive and just jaywalks into sensitive areas unthinkingly?
Far from it.
He is transactional, for sure. Dangerous, yes. But impulsive or stupid he is not. If anything, a close examination of his utterances in the past three decades indicates that he is consistent, the dubious merits of his approach notwithstanding.
At least three motifs can be identified over the years even before his first presidential term: America is overstretched; US allies have taken advantage of it; the global economy doesn’t serve America well. What’s the fix? America needs a strong leader and, as the slogan goes, “Trump will fix it.”
In an interview with Playboy magazine in 1990, Trump was asked what would President Trump's foreign policy be like. Here’s what he said: “He [Trump] would believe very strongly in extreme military strength. He wouldn’t trust anyone. He wouldn’t trust the Russians; he wouldn’t trust our allies; he’d have a huge military arsenal, perfect it, understand it. Part of the problem is that we’re defending some of the wealthiest countries in the world for nothing… We’re being laughed at around the world, defending Japan.” (italics added)
Transactional is what definitely describes Trump. The other trait is narcissism. Wayne Barrett, the late investigative reporter who wrote a definitive book on Trump’s real estate dealings, said, “Everyone else in the movie that Donald Trump is making with his life…is an extra.”
Transactional is what definitely describes Trump. The other trait is narcissism. Wayne Barrett, the late investigative reporter who wrote a definitive book on Trump’s real estate dealings, said, “Everyone else in the movie that Donald Trump is making with his life…is an extra.”
When the outgoing President Joe Biden — whose only lasting legacy is the return of Trump and the US-Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza — took oath in January 2021, the Beltway pundits heaved a sigh of relief. Finally, the US could return to its alliance building. Biden would repair the damage Trump had done.
But Biden didn’t change Trump’s China policy or placate NATO allies into reducing their defence expenditures. On climate, notwithstanding Biden’s rhetoric — as opposed to Trump’s brazen climate denial — he approved nearly 50 percent more oil and gas drilling permits for wells on federal land than Trump.
The key to understanding Trump is his style. He comes to the podium and says something that no one expects him to say. Some of it is well-thought (acquiring Greenland, for instance, or Panama) mixed with bully-rhetoric on non-issues (Gulf of America, Canada as America’s 51st state).
Take Greenland. He sprung it suddenly, forcing hundreds of hours of conversation on the issue in the days following. But the issue is not new at all. The US has a history with Greenland. In recent years, melting Arctic glaciers and warming waters as also Russia and China’s interest in the Arctic waterways have revived the conversation among US policymakers.
When Nazi forces occupied Denmark during World War II, the US invaded Greenland and established military and listening posts on the island. After the war, the US expanded the Pituffik Space Base, formerly known as Thule Air Base. A 1951 defence agreement with Denmark also granted the US a significant role in the defence of the territory, including the right to build and maintain military bases.
As Marc Jacobsen, an associate professor at the Royal Danish Defence College, told the BBC, “If Russia were to send missiles towards the US, the shortest route for nuclear weapons would be via the North Pole and Greenland. That’s why the Pituffik Space Base is immensely important in defending the US.”
But before the 1951 agreement, in 1946, the US expressed the desire to purchase Greenland from Denmark for a sum of $100 million in gold bars. US officials at the time described the interest in Greenland as a “military necessity,” precisely the language used by Trump when he suddenly mentioned Greenland.
The 1946 offer remained classified until documents were declassified in 1991. It wasn’t the first time the US showed interest in Greenland, though. US Secretary of State William Seward raised the idea of annexing it along with Iceland in 1867. Seward had earlier purchased Alaska from Russia in March of the same year. The irony is that Russia had offered to sell Alaska to the US in 1859 after being defeated in the Crimean War in 1856. Tsar Alexander II thought the US would help offset British naval power, then Russia’s biggest rival.
Trump himself talked about buying Greenland in 2019. A Wall Street Journal report at the time revealed the plan. All these offers have been rebuffed by Denmark. The US already has bases in Greenland; Denmark is a treaty ally. So why pressure Denmark?
Vintage Trump. Allies must also be pressured for two reasons: they should know who the boss is and the US should gain more elbow space in the relationship. In this case, there’s another variable: an independence movement in Greenland that has been gaining momentum. Key Greenland parliament members have come online since Trump’s comments to say that they should be part of this conversation. In other words, Trump is building up pressure on Denmark at a time when Denmark is on a weak wicket in regard to Greenland. That’s an excellent bargaining position to be in.
Trump acts brazen. He pressures leaders. It’s not always successful — the case of Kim Jong-Un is an example — but his idea is to complicate the calculus for others and then negotiate
There are other examples. Back in April 2016, when Trump was looking to win primaries to get the Republican nomination as the party’s presidential candidate, he told a small rally in Milwaukee that he would be fine if NATO broke up. He said much the same to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the World Economic Forum in 2020: “By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO.”
He did not quit NATO, but he definitely did two things: he forced the European allies to do more to bear the expenses of the alliance by ramping up defence expenditures, and he instilled a lasting fear that he might just walk out.
Two other examples should help understand Trump’s style of bargaining with allies: the Korea-US Trade Agreement (KORUS) and the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Trump began with KORUS, testing the waters. He told Seoul he would quit, and put tariffs on Korean exports to the US, forcing Seoul to respond with its own tariffs before renegotiating the agreement. He used the same playbook with Canada and Mexico on NAFTA. Getting out, renegotiating, and renaming the agreement.
A recent example is the partial ceasefire in Gaza. Whether the ceasefire will hold or go through its three stages remains to be seen. Chances of that are slim for reasons that are outside the scope of this article. But for our purpose, it’s the way Trump has dealt with it.
He sent Steve Witkoff, a real estate tycoon and his special envoy for the Middle East, to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and be part of the ceasefire negotiations in Doha. Witkoff had clear instructions from Trump. As reported in the Israeli media, he sent a message to Netanyahu for a meeting last Saturday, Jewish Sabbath. Netanyahu’s aides told Witkoff that Netanyahu doesn’t meet anyone on Sabbath, promoting Witkoff to “explain to them in salty English that Sabbath was of no interest to him.”
At the meeting, Witkoff leaned heavily on Netanyahu and told him that Israel must agree to the deal. Period.
Trump acts brazen. He pressures leaders. It’s not always successful — the case of Kim Jong-Un is an example — but his idea is to complicate the calculus for others and then negotiate. This is a risky, wrecking ball strategy and could prove disastrous in the long term for the US and its alliance network. Equally, it could work in some cases.
Barrett’s 2016 book, Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, and the Reinvention, is arguably the best monograph on the man. It is a “vivid and inglorious portrait of a man” who now holds the most powerful office in the world for the second time, a world that is already poised to go to hell.