Donald Trump’s expulsion would face several other leaders with immediate challenges.
If Donald Trump is kicked out of the White House in the November election, he won’t be the only loser. While many governments would probably celebrate the end of the most unconventional and sometimes chaotic American presidency of modern times, others will have reason to miss it. For the leaders of Turkey, North Korea and Israel, the ledger has been almost entirely positive. Trump’s ejection would present them with immediate challenges.
The scoreboard for countries like China is more nuanced. Even so, what the mostly authoritarian victors of Trump’s four years in power have in common is fear that his departure could lead to the return of a more conventional US foreign policy.
It could see the United States mending its alliances and promoting the universality of values such as democracy and human rights, or the fight against climate change. “This president embraces all the thugs in the world,” Trump opponent Joe Biden said at a recent town hall as he sought to highlight the political divide.
Kim Jong Un
No relationship with the United States has changed more under Trump than that of North Korea. What started as threats and mutual insults evolved into an at times bizarre love affair as Kim and Trump met three times and exchanged more than two dozen letters, showcasing their “mysteriously wonderful” chemistry.
Yet the drastically different approach of the United States has also failed to ensure the denuclearization of North Korea. Kim unveiled a massive new intercontinental ballistic missile on October 10 that appears capable of delivering multiple nuclear warheads.
Biden has said he will not meet without preconditions, making it less likely the swift lifting of sanctions that sent the North Korean economy into its worst recession in two decades.
Mohammed ben salman
Trump set the tone for his approach to international relations in Saudi Arabia, choosing Riyadh for his first overseas visit in 2017. He was greeted by a huge image of his own face projected onto the facade of the lavish hotel where his delegation stayed.
The Saudi crown prince has made some big gains, especially Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, his country’s deadly rival. Trump also offered personal support and vetoed congressional sanctions when MBS, as he knows, was besieged by allegations that he ordered the 2018 murder of prominent regime critic Jamal Khashoggi.
There have been disappointments for Saudi Arabia, particularly Trump’s failure to respond militarily after a 2019 attack on oil facilities in eastern Saudi Arabia that the United States attributed to the United States. Iran. Saudi officials say they are confident they can navigate the transition to Biden. Nonetheless, with Trump’s departure, the more traditional U.S. focus on human rights is likely to return, and a door may open for relaunching the deal with Iran.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
If anyone relies more on Trump than on MBS for political protection, it is the President of Turkey. Trump has remained virtually alone between Turkey and the imposition of congressional sanctions over Erdogan’s decision to purchase Russia’s S-400 air defense missile system, despite being an ally of the Organization of the North Atlantic Treaty.
Their personal connection enabled Erdogan to persuade Trump to withdraw US troops from Kurdish areas in northern Syria so that Turkey could send its own forces to take control of the area. Trump made this move without consulting the Pentagon or its US allies in the fight against Islamic State in Syria, including the UK, France and Kurdish fighters whom Turkey considers terrorists.
With the sanctions ready to be applied and Biden previously calling on the United States to support Turkish opposition parties, Erdogan could have the most to lose from Trump’s departure.
Xi Jinping
Trump has been more aggressive towards China than any US president in recent memory, imposing tariffs on Chinese goods and working to restrict his access to key technologies. Still, Chinese officials have said that overall, the leadership would rather Trump stay.
Trump rocked the post-war alliance system that China sees as a constraint on its geopolitical ambitions, a huge advantage. He also undermined America’s international stature by breaking out of agreements in pursuit of the “America First” policy, creating opportunities for the Chinese president to fill the resulting leadership vacuum on everything. from trade to climate change.
Beijing’s concern about Biden is that he would try to create a more coordinated international front in its dealings with China, while maintaining pressure on trade and technology. Even so, China could benefit from a less emotional relationship with Washington if Trump loses, according to Zhu Feng, professor of international relations at Nanjing University. “Do people really want to see China and the United States go into a cold war?”
Vladimir Poutine
Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 election resulted in an official U.S. investigation and a 448-page report. But in some ways, Putin hit the jackpot. In power, Trump questioned the value of NATO and even the status of allies of countries like Germany, weakening a transatlantic alliance that the Russian and Soviet leaders of Joseph Stalin sought to break.
There is every reason to believe that the trend would continue during a second Trump administration. Still, the Russian president has achieved only a few of the most concrete gains he wanted, from the lifting of sanctions to progress on arms control. Russian officials see little prospect of a thaw, and less under a Biden administration.
Rather than deploring the anti-Russian mood, the Kremlin could try to change it, according to Fiona Hill, senior director of the National Security Council for European and Russian affairs until 2019. “They could curb the guys who poison them people correctly. , left and center, ”said Hill, now at the Brookings Institute. “When they have meetings with us, they couldn’t push us in the eye. They could just stop doing all of that.”
Jair Bolsonaro
For the Brazilian president, Trump is a political soul mate. As U.S. opinion polls have turned to Biden, Bolsonaro is increasingly concerned about the future of his White House ties, according to a senior cabinet member.
Since taking office in 2019, Bolsonaro has upended Brazil’s decades-old tradition of an equidistant foreign policy in favor of automatic alignment with the United States and its allies. In return, Trump lifted the ban on imports of fresh beef, supported Brazil’s bid to join the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and signed defense and space exploration cooperation agreements. .
Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo said Brazil would have no problem with a Biden administration, but Bolsonaro’s environmental policies would face strong opposition. Biden suggested that Brazil could face economic consequences if it does not stop deforestation in the Amazon.
Benjamin netanyahu
Trump has repeatedly broken with US precedent to bolster the Israeli leader’s nationalist agenda, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights and moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. Plans to annex parts of the Palestinian West Bank have been scrapped, but could be revived in a second term for Trump.
The real gain came in September, when Trump negotiated normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, but there was a cost; bipartisan support for Israel in Congress has eroded. Many Israelis fear their country will come under more scrutiny under the Biden administration, while the security establishment worries about a US return to the Iran nuclear deal.
Andrzej Duda and Viktor Orban
Foreigners among more liberal European heads of state, the leaders of Poland and Hungary have found solace in Trump. In 2017 he chose Warsaw for a major speech in which he redefined the West in terms of conservative and Christian values - validating Duda’s right-wing agenda, which the Hungarian Orban shares.
The Hungarian prime minister openly endorsed Trump ahead of the election, saying he did not want to see a return of “moral imperialism” that a Democratic administration would bring to the White House.
Both men share Trump’s contempt for political correctness in a way that could cause friction with Biden. President Duda called the LGBTQ + community an “enemy” of Polish families. In September, Biden weighed in on Twitter against regions in Poland that had declared themselves “free from LGBT ideology.”
In his commentary on Trump’s penchant for “thugs,” Biden singled out Hungary and Poland, as well as post-Soviet Belarus, warning of the risks to NATO of “the rise of totalitarian regimes in the country. world“.
– With the help of Jeong-Ho Lee, Vivian Nereim, Selcan Hacaoglu, Ivan Levingston, Samy Adghirni, Simone Iglesias and Wojciech Moskwa.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
