President Donald Trump erupted onto the global stage under
the isolationist banner “America First” -- bent on tearing the
multilateral world order down to its foundations.
Now, at
the end of his first year in office, the United States and its
shell-shocked allies face several escalating crises that could plunge
the world into devastating new conflicts.
When Trump
came to office in January, his predecessor Barack Obama warned that
North Korea's breakneck dash to develop long-range nuclear missiles was
his most pressing threat.
As 2017 comes to an end, that
threat has soared dramatically — last month Kim Jong-Un test fired an
ICBM and boasted that his nuclear arsenal can now hit any city on the US
mainland.
Trump himself has stirred tensions with
reckless language, sneeringly branding Kim “Little Rocket Man” and
threatening to visit “fire and fury” on his authoritarian regime.
Alongside
the bravado, US diplomats have put together a punishing international
sanctions regime designed to force Pyongyang to the table — so far to no
avail.
South Korea and Japan — also in North Korea's
firing line — are facing a potentially cataclysmic conflict and China is
concerned about chaos erupting on its border.
But,
perhaps for the first time it is not the erratic behavior of the North
Korea dictator that worries the world, but the unpredictable signals
coming from the White House.
“I think before President
Trump there was always a consistency about US policy and preferences,
with some exceptions,” said Paul Stares, senior fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations.
“But President Trump's behavior, the
erratic decision making, the tweeting and seemingly impulsive behavior
has I think rattled a lot of capitals around the world,” he said.
Bluster and brinkmanship
To produce the annual Global Conflicts to Watch survey,
which rated US wars with North Korea or Iran as “tier one” threats, the
CFR interviewed 436 government officials and outside experts.
Stares, the author of the report, told AFP he found wide concern.
“It's
just difficult to determine whether this is bluster and brinkmanship or
a real determination to use force,” he said, citing fears of conflict
with North Korea, Iran and even Russia.
“Looking ahead to 2018, I don't think anybody is really confident that another year will go by without a serious crisis.”
Trump
has blown hot and cold on the North Korea sanctions strategy, at one
point warning Secretary of State Rex Tillerson he was “wasting his time”
in pursuing diplomatic contacts.
But the threat of US
pre-emptive military action has remained a constant, even if many
experts and —privately -- serving officials admit it looks like far too
risky a prospect.
With North Korean artillery poised
just a few miles outside the South Korean capital and Pyongyang warning
the US base on Guam could be “enveloped in fire,” military action looks
dicey.
But the diplomatic track is a narrow one and Kim
has shown no particular enthusiasm for it himself, insisting he plans on
becoming the world's greatest military nuclear power.
Trump's
brinkmanship here doesn't seem to be helping, and now tensions with
Iran threaten to start a new front in the many wars still roiling the
broader Middle East.
The new president's contempt for
the nuclear deal signed by Iran, Obama's administration and the great
powers Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia has stoked tensions.
When
Trump ruled that the Iran deal was no longer in US interests, CFR
president Richard Haass tweeted: “Trump foreign policy has found its
theme: 'The Withdrawal Doctrine.'”
As Barbara Slavin, of the Atlantic Council, told AFP at the time: “Trump... fails to understand that the US is most powerful when it leads and shapes an international consensus.”
Along
with Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris climate change accords,
the Iran deal row has best symbolised Trump's “America First” break with
multilateral diplomacy.
Since his first weeks in
office, Trump has also railed against America's traditional allies,
accusing them of short-changing America by failing to find mutual
defence pacts.
If Trump had made good on his plan to
forge warmer ties with Vladimir Putin's Russia, then his more prickly
and distant relations with Europe might have caused less anxiety.
But
the already ugly relationship between Obama's Washington and Moscow
has, if anything, worsened since US intelligence accused Russia of
interfering in the US presidential race.
Meanwhile,
Trump has shown far more respect for strongmen like China's Xi Jinping,
Egypt's Abdel Fattah al-Sisi or Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan than he
has for traditional US allies.
A less stable world
He has hit out at Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May and
Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel on Twitter, accusing them of being
lax in the battle against Islamist extremism.
And,
having ditched the TPP trade pact that was meant to bind small east
Asian neighbours under US influence to contain China, he is now
threatening the NAFTA deal with Canada and Mexico.
Last
week, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel warned that Trump's
abdication of US leadership “is accelerating a change in the world
order” and that Europe should look to itself.
And that
was before Trump broke with decades of US peacemaking practice and
unilaterally recognised the divided and disputed city of Jerusalem as
Israel's capital.
Arab leaders were predictably appalled
at what they saw as a reckless snub to the Palestinian cause, but the
chorus of condemnation was international and near universal.
Celia
Belin, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, sees a theme
running through Trump's most isolationist stances: they are gestures to
please US electors and donors.
Indeed, in a speech on
Monday to launch his first National Security Strategy, Trump declared:
“America is coming back, and America is coming back strong” — a message
clearly aimed at his base.
On climate, Iran and
Jerusalem he has signed off on a vow given to part of his electoral
base, without really committing Washington long-term to anything new,
Belin said.
Nevertheless, she told AFP, the very
fact that US allies and foes feel forced to react to Trump's domestic
posturing poses risks: “The problem often comes from external
overreaction."
