Trump’s ’unpredictable starting now’ foreign policy already here

WASHINGTON (TNS) — More than six weeks before his inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump is already carrying out his promise to make U.S. foreign policy less predictable with a series of moves that are keeping America’s adversaries, as well as its friends, off-balance.

In the span of a week, Trump slammed China over currency and trade, had an unprecedented call with Taiwan’s leader, praised the Philippine president’s violent war on drugs and promised to visit Pakistan, effectively upending years of foreign policy. Even when new presidents want to change policies, they are usually careful to adhere to the strict and deliberately stilted language of diplomacy, which exists to prevent misunderstandings that can lead to unintended consequences.

The president-elect is showing “a pretty dramatic departure” from traditional practice, said Aaron David Miller, vice president for new initiatives at the Wilson Center and a former adviser at the State Department. “When I look at what appears to be the emerging Trump foreign policy, I see a lot of unpredictability when it comes to process,” he said.

What most concerns some critics is the possibility that Trump, who claimed to know more about Islamic State than the Pentagon’s generals, may be making decisions hastily or without thinking about the broader consequences of decisions such as taking the call from Taiwan.

“In dismissing the significance of this exchange they failed to recognize that process and people are policy when you’re president of the United States,” said Mira Rapp-Hooper, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and Asia policy coordinator for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. “A phone call to interact with a particular figure, especially of this significance, is going to be interpreted as policy.”

Trump is also doing all this without a nominee for secretary of state to advise him - or to explain his thinking to foreign governments and their advisers behind the scenes. While former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and retired General David Petraeus have both been on a short list to serve as the top U.S. diplomat, his closest advisers remain divided over the two men, and other names have emerged, such as former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a Republican who served as President Barack Obama’s envoy to China.

Some experts say Trump’s strategy echoes that of President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who served as his national security adviser and then as secretary of state. They sought advantage in world affairs by keeping other leaders guessing about Nixon’s intentions.

“Nixon toyed with the idea that he could affect international relations with his madman theory - the idea he could convince overseas leaders that he was unpredictable and irrational,” said Nicholas Eberstadt, the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. “Donald Trump is in a lot better position to leverage the madman theory than Nixon was.”

Trump’s chat with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen on Friday initially prompted a muted protest from Beijing, which regards the island as its territory. But his continued criticism of China - he accused the country of devaluing its currency and building a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea in Twitter postings on Sunday - may provoke a stronger reaction.

Trump presaged his own actions during the campaign. He lambasted Republican national security experts and criticized Obama’s slow-and-steady approach when he outlined his foreign-policy strategy in a speech in April.