America First, America Last

Eduardo del Buey
Foto: Afp
La Jornada Maya

Martes 11 de julio, 2017


There is a photo of the recent G-20 meeting in Hamburg that shows President Donald Trump sitting alone at the table while others converse in groups around him. It is emblematic of the place of the United States at this global gathering, and of President Trump’s inability or unwillingness to use U.S. strength to influence the outcome of the meeting.

So, does America First mean America Last?

It may well be.

Like all of President Trump’s initiatives (if one may call them that), he focused on the negative rather than the positive. Instead of getting the group of leaders to focus on issues of importance to the United States (as would have any other US leader), he allowed the G-20 to be about the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Change Accord, and managed to coalesce a “G-19” around a strong condemnation of the United States for withdrawing from this vital piece of international diplomacy.

As well, while the “G-19” focused on free and fair trade, and celebrated open trade borders as the road to prosperity for all, Trump concentrated on Fortress America, and promoting the isolationist policies that contributed significantly to the fallout from the Great Depression of 1929. Playing to his base can be counterproductive to US global interests – a fact that seems to be lost on Trump.

President Trump also appeared to have caved before Russian President Vladimir Putin over the issue of Russian hacking of election systems during the 2016 elections. Furthermore, his antipathy over global free trade and the Paris Climate Change Accord and has now left the United States isolated in global terms on key issues.

To buttress his credentials as an egocentric who cares about nothing but himself, he let his daughter Ivanka sit at the head table when he went off politicking, an insult to the gathered leaders who actually know about the issues under discussion, and who indeed should have asked her to leave immediately and have an official of the US government replace Trump during his absence.

I have two impressions of the dynamics of this meeting.

One, the optics are that President Trump doesn’t care about US leadership on global issues. Two, he may be vying to follow in the footsteps of other autocratic leaders such as the Assads in Syria and the Kims in North Korea by looking like he is trying to steer his daughter into a position of succession – a common ploy of populists disinterested in the architecture of democratic institutions and focused on their own aggrandizement.

In his meeting with President Trump, President Putin’s body language spoke volumes about who was in charge of that encounter, and the fact that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke to the cameras first after the meeting set the Russian narrative out as the “official” report on the discussion.

Between them Lavrov and Putin have over fifty years of combined diplomatic experience. Trump and Tillerson have one. Given Trump’s post summit tweet that Putin and he are looking at creating a joint task force to investigate elections hacking, one wonders at the naiveté of the President and his Secretary of State, as have a good number of influential Republican Senators when they learned about this initiative. While he has since said he no longer supports this initiative, one can never be sure where Trump stands on anything at any given time.

The fact that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson did not speak before the cameras immediately after the bilateral meeting says volumes about the inability or unwillingness of the Trump administration to use simple rules of effective communications to get its message out. One wonders if, indeed, they have a coherent message to get out.

By comparison, the Chinese, with their recently announced multi-billion intercontinental “Belt and Road” infrastructure project, are taking the initiative towards the future of a global economy, integrating Europe, Asia, and Africa into a seamless market through highly connected transportation and communications networks.

French President Emmanuel Macron made an impressive debut on the stage of summitry, and Canada’s Justin Trudeau held sway inside and outside the meeting hall. However, a tip of the hat goes to Angela Merkel. Throughout, she demonstrated that Germany is back after over half century of avoiding global leadership as a result of its defeat in World War Two. U.S. leadership is being eclipsed by Europeans and others, as Trump’s U.S. retreats behind isolationist walls.

Merkel led the G-20 in defining the terms of the final communique. Usually, this is an anodyne document formulated by a committee of officials. It usually seeks out the lowest common denominator that all can agree upon, and rarely inspires anyone to achieve anything.

In this Communique, however, nineteen of the G-20 members isolated the United States and called into question that country’s fundamental willingness and ability to provide leadership on key global issues. Germany comes out far stronger from this Summit as President Trump steers the United States deeper into fortress America.

President Trump seems to have forgotten that the global interests of the United States do not, in many cases, reflect the priorities of his political base. Rather, they reflect the needs of the country as a whole, of its leadership capabilities and the resources it commands, and of a certain moral position that inspires others to action.

Many will not lament the decline of American influence in the world. But many did not expect the US to go down without a fight. This is what President Trump appears to be doing.

A sad end indeed to the cohesion and vision of the “G-20” and of the Summit itself.

America First may well be America Alone. Pity.