In his election campaign, Donald Trump was lauded by fans — and hammered by critics — for saying out loud what many regular voters were thinking.
From migration to economics, foreign policy to Hillary Clinton’s emails, his blunt style won him fans and enemies in almost equal number. Those fans have now sent him to the White House.
The experts, having predicted his certain failure, are now stumbling to predict how he will run the foreign policy of the only hyper-power in the world.
The likely answer is the most obvious one: Trump, in office, is likely to be the same as Trump on the stump. Blunt. Forthright. Dedicated to one belief: banging America’s drum. Using one method to achieve it: dealmaking.
Many analysts see Trump’s lack of political experience — he will be the first US president to have served neither in politics or the military — as a liability.
But might it also be an asset? Might a dealmaker be just what a world engulfed in crisis needs?
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the greatest political dealmaker of modern times, certainly thinks so. Last week he described Trump as the “most unique” President-elect in his lifetime after meeting him. “He has no obligation to any particular group because he has become president on the basis of his own strategy,” he said.
Lack of experience on the world stage was leveled when Ronald Reagan came to power, and his term of office saw one of America’s greatest triumphs in the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union.
Confucius said 500 years before the birth of Christianity that “the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name,” and Trump embraces this methodology with gusto. Indeed, an end to political correctness was his campaign cry, and probably won him the keys to the Oval Office. His big idea — that a system choked by bureaucracy and the liberal media is broke — got him to the White House.
Free of ideology, of political baggage and of the trappings that go with it, Trump can look the world in the eye, his guiding principle outlined in his election cry: Make America Great Again.
He has already made a start, declaring he will dismantle the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, which many Americans say favors rich business leaders at the expense of tens of thousands of US jobs to be exported overseas.
His words caused consternation with China, and if anyone doubts the United States is still the big boy on the world’s economic block, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe rammed home the message, declaring in Peru on Monday, “The TPP without the United States is meaningless.”
Trump’s broader foreign policy is unknown but seems likely to be as blunt as his stump speeches.
Russia? Cut a deal. Neither Moscow nor Washington needs tension in the Middle East or Europe to boil over, and neither directly threatens the other, so there is a deal to be made. Especially if they can find some way of getting a fix on the open wound that is Syria.
The Chinese? Work with them, if they work with the United States.
Iran? If the deal to lift sanctions in return for cutting Tehran’s nukes works, keep it. If not, talk to them about a new deal.
Europe? The same. If European nations pay a fair share for their common defense, America may — may — be open to a deal with European Union member states.
What about Libya, which President Barack Obama has declared the greatest foreign policy mistake in his eight years in the White House?
Mahmoud Jibril, former Prime Minister of the rebel administration that emerged in Libya’s Arab Spring to combat Moammar Gadhafi, said the key to Libya, as with Syria, is learning to work with Russia: “If Trump can reach some sort of rapprochement with Russia, then there is a likelihood some sort of transaction over various MENA (Middle East and North Africa) problems can be reached.”
And it will be reached with the blunt mind of a businessman. The United States has been backing Libya’s unelected, unpopular Government of National Accord, which has failed to become either a government, or find accord in a country convulsed in violence.
A Trump view may be that, if it cannot command the respect of Libyans or bring peace, what is America doing supporting it? Why not find other groups to knit together a peace that would leave one less global headache for the United States to worry about.
Trump’s dealmaking, echoing that of Kissinger, can personify a spirit of realpolitik in the 21st century, using politically unorthodox skills that get the job done.