Trump unmasks American selfishness, say cynics

THESE AREPEPFARHIV happy, “I told you so” times for foreign-policy cynics. In many world capitals the inauguration of an America First president inspires not shock, but vindication. Over a policy-filled lunch in Asia, a veteran official tells The Telegram that his government feels “serene” about the return of President Donald Trump. Westerners are forgetting their history, he suggests, if they mourn the crumbling of a principled, America-led world order that has supposedly prevailed for 80 years. Tell that to Asian peoples attacked by colonial European troops as they fought for independence, he says. Moral values never guided the post-war world. At least under Mr Trump, the mask is off, and interests are all.Jump to Latin America, and coffee with a former government minister. Talk turns to free trade, and how Mr Trump’s alarms allies. The Trump era’s true novelty is honesty, the politician retorts: “I negotiated with two American administrations. They were both protectionist, one just admits it more openly.”If many elites in emerging economies are impatient with Western dismay over Mr Trump, they are in step with their publics. A survey of some 29,000 people in 24 countries by the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank, finds deep gloom about Mr Trump’s re-election in and in South Korea, a close ally. In contrast, his transactional approach to statecraft is called good for America and for world peace by pluralities from Brazil to China, India, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.Officials from the global south are right that America can fall short. But to claim that Mr Trump is just another president, guided like all the others by selfish interests, is crude and unfair. Just ask a different group: American diplomats with long careers under Democratic and Republican presidents. A wave of them are quitting or retiring from the State Department. Some resignations were ordered by Mr Trump’s team. Others reflect bleak career prospects for traditional envoys. A former ambassador describes “deep despair” over signs of meteoric promotions for a few Trump-supporting colleagues, regardless of age or experience.Trump loyalists will cheer such exits, for they scorn the State Department as a treasonous, left-wing, anti-American “deep state”. In reality, career diplomats are often hard to pigeonhole politically. The same officials can be admirers of Henry Kissinger’s unsentimental, interests-led approach to foreign policy, and ardent defenders of reforms dating back to Jimmy Carter’s presidency, that urge American embassies and envoys to promote human rights and democracy whenever the national interest allows.Diplomatic veterans are sure that Mr Trump marks a rupture, and is not merely America with the mask off. They do not expect pure isolationism from Mr Trump. The returning president seeks a legacy as a peacemaker in Ukraine and the Middle East. His new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is called deeply knowledgeable after years as a Republican senator focused on foreign policy, notably in Latin America. Instead, old-timers worry about Mr Trump’s focus on coercion rather than persuasion when trying to bend foreign powers to his will, and his seeming hostility to democratic norms. They also remember his first administration’s record of scorning the sort of expensive, thankless missions that America has led when no other country would or could.Examples abound. Africa hands cite the fight against the . In 2014 President Barack Obama sent scientists, mobile laboratories, isolation units and 3,000 troops to west Africa, to lead multinational efforts to quell an outbreak. Mr Trump, then a vocal New York property tycoon, called it “stupid” to send troops to infected regions, adding that Ebola-infected Americans should be banned from coming home. “People that go to far away places to help out are great—but must suffer the consequences!” he tweeted. Amid fresh outbreaks in 2018, the first Trump administration tried to cut $252m in Ebola funding as “excessive spending” overseas. All eyes are now on , a multi-billion-dollar project launched by President George W. Bush in 2003 to test for and treat in Africa, estimated to have saved 26m lives. Up for renewal this year, it was targeted for cuts by the last Trump administration.Longtime diplomats insist that America has good works to be proud of in Latin America, as well as misdeeds to regret. They cite two decades of bipartisan support for Colombia that built up everything from its justice system to tax collection and education when drug gangs and leftist rebels left the country “almost a failed state” by the mid-1990s. An official who recently left office recalls the crisis in 2022 when Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s populist, right-wing former president, sought to overturn an election defeat. American generals and defence chiefs quietly urged Brazilian counterparts to respect democratic values and their oaths to the constitution, he says. Such calls helped to “turn the tide” and prevent a coup. The Trump worldview is different. Though he faces conspiracy charges in Brazil, which he denies, Mr Bolsonaro was invited to Mr Trump’s inauguration (a confiscated passport kept him in Brazil).Scepticism of America has many causes. Some good deeds must go unsung, for America’s aim is to strengthen partners, not shame them. American help is taken for granted, too. China is much praised in the developing world, though it is a stingier donor than America and a hard-nosed lender. But it is a newcomer, and eschews lectures about corruption or human rights. Still, America First resentment is the wrong response, that miscalculates the costs and benefits of magnanimity. Take American free- and preferential-trade pacts with very poor countries, from Africa to Haiti. They amount to a “rounding error” in global trade, notes a veteran diplomat. But they create vital jobs, curbing instability and migrant flows. Imperfect America is indispensable at times.