This is the second in a series of posts on Trump’s upcoming presidency; see the previous post, Concerns About Trump Presidency Part 1: Important Intro.
It is interesting that one of my biggest concerns comes in the area of foreign policy. I think Trump is more of a domestic candidate. In other words, I think most those who support him do so for his domestic policy. At the very least, he is known for being protectionistic—that is a desire to lessen competition from imports toward domestic production. This may be my bias, but I suspect most people are oblivious to foreign affairs beyond the belief that other countries have taken our jobs and that foreigners are trying to break into the U.S. Beyond this, most are aware of the war in Ukraine and Palestine, but have only cursory knowledge of the situation.
It’s a bit ironic that the next president of the U.S. will likely have a significant impact on many people across the world, despite them not having a vote in the matter. It’s interesting that, according to the beginning of the video on Israel below, Europeans overwhelming favored Harris over Trump.
U.S. Allies
In his first term, Trump was antagonistic toward our allies while seeming to respect some of our traditional enemies. While I am for improved relations with any country, I want the relationships with our allies to remain strong. It’s easy to think that the U.S. can just do whatever we want since we are the world’s most powerful nation. Often we have done just about this both for better and for worse. (On a tangent, I am concerned that we have undermined the legitimacy of the U.N. by ignoring it whenever we don’t like it’s opinion, such as when we invaded Iraq.)
Palestine
One of the biggest concerns ought to be the crisis in Gaza. This is a big enough topic that I expanded my thoughts into it’s own post. I’ve been very disappointed in the U.S.’ response to Israel so far. But from what I understand, Trump is even more likely to give Israel unconditional support in their seemingly unrestrained attack on Palestinians.
Ukraine/Russia
Another concern regards the war in Russia/Ukraine. I’ve had the impression that Trump admires Putin. It would seem that Putin likely favors Trump as the Russian government apparently attempted to sway the election in his direction in 2016, and he called Trump to congratulate him on his victory this year.
Trump has stated that he wants to end the war, and I presume he thinks he can force the two countries into a deal. I admit that I had thought that he would favor Russia rather than Ukraine, but I’ve learned that he has talked tough toward Russia as well. This makes me feel better. However, I am still concerned that the U.S. has much more leverage over Ukraine than it does Russia.
It seems highly likely that Ukraine won’t be able to long continue their resistance without the U.S.’ aid. In regards to Russia, about all we can offer is to lift our sanctions. How much does Russia want this? I don’t know. Sanctions will probably have some long term effects, but it seem clear that Russia has fared relatively well despite them—better than I think most predicted initially. Russia knows that the longer they hold on, the better scenario they will likely be in. All this to say, it will likely be easier to get concessions from Ukraine than from Russia.
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The reason that the U.S. and the rest of the west has stood against Russia is at least in part because it sets a bad precedent to allow an autocrat to go around grabbing territory. Along with this, it seems clear that the majority of the Ukrainian population leaned more toward western style freedom and independence from Russia as opposed to living in a more autocratic state. So I hate to see Russia be granted much here.
That said, the video above does highlight that there are some good reasons for wanting this war to end (besides merely to end the death and destruction which war brings). The two biggest reasons are our depleting stockpiles of ammunition and the desire not to push our foes closer together.
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Iran
The following actually happened during Trump’s first term, so I can’t call it a direct concern for his upcoming term. However, I am including it here because it is an example of how I think his foreign policy can be concerning. According to the below video, Trump’s pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal 1) made life much worse for ordinary Iranians, 2) undermined Iran reform movement, 3) hurt western businesses, 4) and worked against the west’s nuclear goals.1
