For months and months, President Donald Trump has bullied other countries on everything from trade to how they govern themselves. In just the last few days, however, a handful of global players have defied him, showing the limits of his influence. Iran’s Islamist leaders abandoned peace talks with the U.S., choosing to keep waging war instead. Hungary’s voters tossed out one of Trump’s closest European allies, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Then there’s Pope Leo, who presumably answers to a higher power, saying he has “no fear” of Trump after the president taunted him. Trump and his aides often appear to operate as if most other people on the planet are “non-player characters” in a video game. They believe, with few exceptions, that America can use threats, economic muscle and military action to bend other capitals to its will. But foreign policy has some basic laws. One of them, similar to physics, is that every action has a reaction. It may not be equal or opposite, but it also may not be what the Trump team wants. So far, the Trump administration does not appear to be adjusting well to the reality that more international players are willing to buck the American superpower. “If there were an appreciation that bullying was no longer a likely to succeed tactic you’d see a move away from it," but there’s no real sign that Trump is doing so, said Richard Haass, a former president of the Council on Foreign Relations. More than ever, I’m hearing concerns from foreign officials that critical information about geopolitical dynamics is simply not reaching the president because his aides won’t tell him hard truths. A New York Times rundown of his decision to go to war with Iran has fueled this worry. “He is surrounded by ‘yes’ people,” one senior European diplomat fumed to me. The Trump administration’s brash style came across in Vice President JD Vance’s comments after he held 21-hours worth of peace talks with Iranian officials over the weekend. Iran, Vance said, had “chosen not to accept our terms.” Such a statement, which Vance gave some version of twice, implied that the U.S. was dictating, not negotiating, despite Vance adding that the U.S. was “quite accommodating.” It did not go over well with supporters of the Islamist regime, while many in other countries saw the whole drama as a missed opportunity to deescalate tensions. “If you… [TheTopNews] Read More.
3 weeks ago
