Thanks to Trump, the world no longer trusts the United States to honor its commitments. According to a Pew survey conducted last year, 82 percent of Europeans had no confidence in Trump’s handling of international issues. Seventy-five percent of Canadians and 91 percent of Mexicans don’t trust the president to do the right thing regarding world affairs. His numbers are bad even in Russia.
After Trump promised to send “an armada, very powerful” to deter North Korea in 2017, South Korean presidential candidate Hong Joon-pyo said, “If that was a lie, then during Trump’s term, South Korea will not trust whatever Trump says.” It was a lie. The U.S. Navy posted a photograph six days later of the fleet heading in the opposite direction.
Lesson: So long as Trump is president, the United States cannot be trusted.
Trump’s foreign policy mirrors his personal behavior. It is erratic, unreliable, duplicitous, greedy, shortsighted, self-destructive, easily manipulated, unprincipled, and callous. The key to understanding it is understanding him. Lacking a coherent worldview, Trump mines his own insecurities for material and projects them onto the United States, which he casts as a perennial victim of other countries’ cunning and conniving.
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