When a new US president takes business, his first priority is usually to comfort America’s supporters and inform its allies. But, Donald Trump is doing things differently. It seems his objective is to strike fear into the heart never of America’s enemy, but rather its companions.
American presidents have usually seen the government’s network of friends as a “force multiple” – everything that magnifies American strength and applies it more efficiently. A wide range of allies include trading lovers, military installations, and political assistance at international organizations.
According to this line of reasoning, it is in America’s personal objectives to defend and support its allies – the advantages outweigh the costs.
Trump, by comparison, opinions friends both as rivals and burdens. He believes that they are too dependent on American navy might to justify themselves, and that their financial partnership with the US results in wealth at the expense of American workers. He wants US friends to spend more of their own funds on security and to purchase more goods from the US, especially in Europe.
He also appears perhaps more eager to use America’s formidable coercive means to force this happen than he did during his first term. His common risks of taxes, for instance, are designed to push places to go along with his desires, including in non-economic aspects of the relationship. He also threatens to employ economic and military force in disturbing methods, such as attempting to overthrow Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal.
The end result is a universe in which American friends can no longer depend on the US to be a trustworthy companion. They may have to contend with a predatory Washington in addition to their standard enemy.
Some are more astonished than another, despite the fact that all US friends are concerned about this new direction of events. The biggest impact has come in Europe, which has long occupied a wealthy place in America’s proper thinking.
Europeans were aware that a following Trump word would be difficult. On the campaign trail, for example, he vowed across-the-board tariffs of up to 20 %. But they didn’t believe Trump to threaten the place of NATO people Canada and Denmark, which owns Greenland.
Since Trump’s return to the White House, Europe’s opinion of the country has changed. The majority of Europeans no more see the US as an alliance that shares the same values and interests, according to the findings of a recent study conducted by the European Council on Foreign Relations, opting instead to view it as a “necessary lover.”
For additional US allies and partners, especially in the Global South, this transition is less amazing. Panama owes its existence to an action of US colonization. The US sent military troops to Colombia in 1903 to aid in its independence, with the ultimate target of collaborating with the new government to build the canal.
But Panama has since witnessed many American military treatments. Most recently, in December 1989, the then US senator, George H W Bush, ordered 20, 000 US soldiers to Panama where they toppled the state and arrested the country’s president, Manuel Noriega, on costs of drug trafficking, extortion and money laundering.
Non-Western nations have long been taught that if legislators in Washington feel it is necessary, the US will reject their interests and exploit their weakness. What we are currently seeing is the expansion of this fragility to everyone.
Failure for adulation
There is an extra issue for globe leaders looking to explore this troubled time. Trump has a habit of personalizing politics, deciding who he likes and who doesn’t enjoy based on their alleged kindness rather than a more sane analysis of their objectives.
He is also a junkie for large, colorful works of politics. He frequently gives the impression that his primary goal is to be able to signal any offer that he can consider to be a success, more than giving too much consideration to the competing interests at stake.
This implies that intelligent frontrunners can mislead and deceive him. In early February, Trump postponed tariffs on Mexico after the country’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, promised to send troops to the US-Mexico borders to address the cartels trafficking the medicine morphine in the US.
The only issue is that almost all morphine is trafficked by US residents at legitimate border crossings, where they only bring in little amounts of it in their cars. According to Raúl Benítez, a military analyst at Mexico’s National Autonomous University, the “ant-like prospects of morphine” makes command of the business “almost difficult”.
Therefore, adding soldiers to the boundary will likely not be able to stop the flow of fentanyl. Trump declared success anyhow– and then another world leaders are studying Sheinbaum’s approach.
Trump’s sporadic lack of confidence in adulation is hardly surprising. Trump rather presents US friends with a harmful and uncertain power. Trump appears to view the world as divided into spheres of influence, in which strong nations are free to intimidate their companions, similar to those of the leaders of Russia and China.
Some nations will come to the conclusion that America is just another hostile great power that needs to be managed as opposed to a nation that at least exhibits limited compliance with international law. Some people may decide that they have no choice but to rift out of US trajectory and start anew with Russia and China.
One thing is clear: US friends must do more to guarantee they can protect their interests separately. If only they can mobilise the would, European nations have the resources to do this, in contrast to countries like Panama. They ought to consider themselves lucky and get to operate.
Andrew Gawthorpe is professor in history and foreign Studies, Leiden University
This content was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original content.