Another Trump presidency would be a foreign policy catastrophe

Following up on Cheryl’s post about the GOP abandoning Ukraine, Thomas Edsall interviewed a bunch of foreign policy experts about what a second Trump presidency would portend for America’s strategic alliances, especially in regard to the loose alliance of autocrats in China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea that is trying its best to undermine American power and influence. Their answers ranged from it would be bad but there are guardrails, to omigod I don’t even want to think about this. Here’s an intermediate take on that spectrum:

James Lindsay, senior vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations, referring in an email to the perceived threat emanating from the “alliance of autocrats,” observed that

If “alliance” is only intended to mean general cooperation among China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, then that is clearly happening. North Korea and Iran are supplying Russia with artillery shells and drones. Russia is supplying China with energy. China is supplying Russia with political cover at various international venues over the war in Ukraine.

Lindsay argued that

Trump could effectively gut NATO simply by saying he will not come to the aid of NATO allies in the event they are attacked. The power of Article V rests on the belief that alliance members, and specifically, the most powerful alliance member, will act when called upon. Destroy that belief and the organization withers. Walking away from Ukraine would damage the alliance as well even though Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Member countries would read it as a signal that Trump is abandoning Europe.

One of the major risks posed by a second Trump administration, Lindsay wrote, is that

Trump’s hostility toward alliances, skepticism about the benefits of cooperation writ large, and his belief in the power of unilateral action will lead him to make foreign policy moves that will unintentionally provide strategic windfalls to China, Russia, Iran or North Korea. The scenario in which he withdraws the United States from NATO or says he will not abide by Article V is the most obvious example. His intent will be to save money and/or free the United States from foreign entanglements. But Vladimir Putin would love to see NATO on the ash heap of history.

Lindsay described decisions and policies Trump may consider:

It’s easy to imagine other steps Trump might take, given his past actions and current rhetoric, that would similarly give advantage to Beijing, Moscow, Tehran or Pyongyang: abandoning Ukraine; questioning the wisdom of defending Taiwan; terminating the alliance with South Korea; ignoring Iranian aggression in the Middle East; recognizing North Korea as a nuclear power; and imposing a 10 percent, across-the-board tariff on all goods.

On a larger scale, it would be difficult to overestimate the degree to which a second Trump term would represent a major upheaval in the tenets underlying postwar American foreign policy.

We can argue until the cows come home about whether Trump is more cause or symptom of the Republican rot, but it’s very clear to me at least that he’s very much both, and that his presidential run is accelerating the cumulative radicalization of the Republican party into the American version of the revenant fascism that is sweeping across the world.