Trump thinks by putting his name on everything from websites to the Kennedy Center and constructing grand monuments to himself, that he can determine the way he will be remembered. He won’t succeed. His performance in office will be the measure of the man and there is no shortage of things on which to assess that.
Trump should go down in history as the American president responsible for the deaths of more people than any of his predecessors, but he probably won’t. Millions of poor people around the world will die because Trump gave the world’s richest man, abetted by the Secretary of State, free rein to destroy life-saving aid programs. The lack of outrage over that means those people will die unseen, unheard, and unremembered by an uncaring America.
In addition, there are the Americans, whose numbers it will be hard to estimate, who lose their lives. They will die because Trump put the nation’s public health apparatus in the hands of a man who has done nothing in his life except dine out on his last name and ignore science as he sells his snake oil remedies. And there will be many others who pass away prematurely thanks to Trump making health insurance unaffordable for tens of millions of Americans.
But the most significant benchmark for which the Trump administration will be judged is his failed foreign policy. He has approached international affairs the way he conducted his business affairs. The objective was to enrich himself, always claim he negotiated a great deal and never worry about the details of the agreement, its implementation or whether it will last.
These days the only people that like American foreign policy are the Kremlin, the Chinese Communist Party and chiropractors. These three groups have reason to be pleased. Putin is happy because Trump has made no serious attempt to end the war in Ukraine, which would require Russia not getting the territory it is demanding. No matter how many more hundreds of thousands of young Russians are killed, Putin, like Trump, will never admit he made a mistake. So, unless Ukraine is given the means to defend itself that war will go on.
But Putin need not be concerned about any pressure from Trump. As Garry Kasparov, the Russian chess grandmaster and political activist, recently put it in the Washington Post “What would Trump do differently if he were a Russian agent? It has been difficult to tell, going all the way back to a 1987 Trump visit to Moscow.”
Xi Jinping is happy because Trump has effectively abandoned those countries that are not prime locations for another billion-dollar golf resort. That creates more opportunity for China to greatly expand its influence in the world. And with the dismantling of American public diplomacy and six-figure visa fees, potential visitors and immigrants who are not wealthy are being given a clear signal they are not welcome in America. That is not a great way to win friends and influence countries.
Chiropractors are also among the happy because their business must be booming. They often treat people with neck injuries. And who could follow what our government says about the war with Iran without suffering from whiplash. One day it claims talks with the Iranians are making progress, the next day America is going to bomb them into the Stone Age.
It is clear there are some basic and irreconcilable differences between both sides and yet how many times have Trump’s amateur envoys been on the verge of securing a peace deal? Iran is demanding that the U.S. must never threaten Iran again; permanently end the war and cease any attacks on its armed allies in the region; lift the naval blockade of Iranian ports; withdraw its military from the area, and “completely compensate” Iran for damage it has suffered in the war, lift sanctions and “unconditionally” release frozen assets.
In response Trump said he was “demanding compensation from Iran, for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts.” And he added that compensation should be given to the families of Iranian protesters who were killed “over the last 50 years, not to mention the 52,000 that have been killed in the last five months.” Swapping ridiculous ultimatums is not a path to peace.
Another one of his signature foreign policy failures is the effort to bring lasting peace to Gaza. He has essentially given the most extremist government in Israeli history no limits on its relentless campaign to extinguish the identity and hopes for a homeland of Palestinians. Since Trump is always susceptible to flattery, Prime Minister Netanyahu nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize writing that he “demonstrated steadfast and exceptional dedication to promoting peace, security, and stability around the world. In the Middle East, his efforts have brought about dramatic change and created new opportunities to expand the circle of peace and normalization.”
According to Gazan health authorities, since the latest ceasefire agreement went into effect last October, over 1,200 people have been killed and nearly 4,000 injured. Most of those casualties have been the result of Israeli efforts to drop a bomb on any Hamas leader who dares to show himself. And to make sure he can keep the war going Netanyahu has openly rejected Trump’s 15-point peace plan and declared that Israeli troops will not leave the 60 percent of Gaza they control until Hamas surrenders all its weapons. His extremism is motivated in part by having to face an election at the end of October that he fears losing almost as much as Trump worries about the American one a week later.
With Netanyahu’s unrelenting attempts to kill their leaders, Hamas is not likely to give up all their arms and only get the hope that Israel lives up to its end of the bargain in return. As the BBC recently described the dilemma: “Trump’s Board of Peace said last month it had reached an agreement for the ‘complete disarmament’ of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza. But Hamas said handing over its heavy weapons was contingent on Israel ending ‘all forms of aggression’ and withdrawing its forces from Gaza.”
All Trump has done about peace in the Middle East is to tell Arab monarchs they should put themselves at grave risk from their own people by joining the Abraham Accords. Instead, he should do something about the West Bank as well as Gaza. Israeli settlers, who should really be called squatters, are running amok there and committing violent acts against Palestinians while the Israeli army does nothing to stop them. The attacks have been so atrocious they have been condemned as terrorism by our evangelical Christian ambassador, Mike Huckabee. He is usually a cheerleader for whatever the Israeli government wants to do.
History can’t ignore just how disastrous Trump’s approach to Ukraine, Gaza and Iran have been. Not to mention the economic damage done by his constant use of tariffs as a cudgel. Under Trump, American foreign policy has so frequently oscillated between fraud and farce that other countries now look at the United States with fear and without respect. It remains to be seen how long it will take for America to once again be considered a serious nation when it comes to international affairs.
Ukraine, Gaza and Iran have shown the limits of diplomacy conducted by a playground bully who never grew up. When practiced professionally, governments decide what they have to have and what they can concede. They then have serious people painstakingly work out the details usually behind closed doors. They lay out in clear and precise language what has been agreed before rushing to social media with it. And they understand what the other side must attain and look for an agreement that can be sold back home by both sides as a success.
In other words, the Trumpian approach is exactly the opposite. He believes the only use for the intelligence community is validating the reality he is trying to create out of whole cloth. And he has nothing but contempt for career diplomats and anyone else who has not gone to work in government solely for personal enrichment.
Were it not for all the lives lost, homes destroyed and tax dollars wasted there would be a delicious irony in the fact that Trump has failed so completely. But don’t expect him to ever admit that he has not been well served by relying only on the wisdom of his own judgement and the sycophants that surround him.