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To hear Hillary Clinton tell it, letting Donald J. Trump anywhere near the Oval Office would be tantamount to inviting a nuclear apocalypse. The address she delivered from San Diego Thursday opened up a new front in the 2016 campaign: whether Trump can be trusted as leader of the free world. Calling Trump’s ideas “dangerously incoherent,” she presented herself a sure-handed, sober-minded alternative to the erratic billionaire. “He is not just unprepared,” she said, “he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility.”
It’s powerful political rhetoric, and Trump is certainly an unknown quantity—perhaps even a radical disruption to the current order. But what are the actual global risks that a Trump presidency would pose?
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His campaign has already raised any number of potentially destabilizing questions. Might President Trump send U.S. ground troops after ISIL? Confront Vladimir Putin, or let him run loose? Sanction Mexico or Japan? Bomb China’s artificial islands in the South China Sea? Wage trade war on China? Attack Iran or North Korea? Would he tear up existing trade deals? Pull the U.S. out of NATO if allies don’t pay more? Use U.S. debt as negotiating leverage? What risks might any or all of these actions pose for Americans?
My firm, Eurasia Group, specializes in analyzing large-scale global hazards, and each year we publish a list of what we see as the top geopolitical risks of the year. This year, there is so much uncertainty surrounding a Trump presidency that I’ve worked with Politico Magazine to apply this model to the specific question of a Trump presidency, with the goal of separating sound arguments from hype, and looking at the full-risk implications of a Trump foreign policy.
Mapping those implications is a challenge, in part because Trump’s habit of issuing contradictory statements on the campaign trail make it tough to predict what he would actually do in office. Both Trump and Clinton are shrewdly evasive candidates, but Clinton’s tenure as Barack Obama’s secretary of state gives her a clear track record we can study. She also has a campaign website that offers detailed foreign policy proposals. Trump has no foreign policy history and few clearly stated plans. It’s also much easier to guess whom Clinton might invite to join her team, and who might accept. Not so for Trump on either count; he has alienated much of the Republican foreign-policy establishment, depriving him of a reservoir of expertise he would normally be able to rely on.
Compounding the problem, Trump’s positions change pretty quickly. Clinton flip-flops as well, but her shifts develop more slowly than Trump’s and involve carefully crafted, if sometimes convoluted, justifications. Trump’s are a magician’s quicker-than-the-eye sleight of hand, and they often come with little or no explanation. Would Trump really try to ban all Muslims from entering the United States? That was a pledge, and then it was a “suggestion.” How could this ban be legal? How would it be enforced? He hasn’t said, and his supporters don’t seem to care.
That said, we have to assume that Trump’s “America First” philosophy will guide his choices. That’s a term I bear some responsibility for: When I observed earlier this spring that Trump’s worldview amounted to an “America First” foreign policy, I didn’t mean it as a compliment, and I was startled to see him grab that label with both hands. In addition, Trump prides himself on being a tough negotiator, and he wants to show U.S. taxpayers and foreign governments that he’s no chump.
What would a Trump presidency mean for the worl
He won’t be guided by ideology. He doesn’t appear to have one. He’s a gut-feel guy, a zero-sum strategist, and a bottom-line businessman. He won’t approach problems as if the world’s sole superpower can afford to be generous, to do more so that others can do less. He sees no special responsibility to be magnanimous, or even patient. Being No. 1 doesn’t mean playing the role of provider. It's about winning. It means being the toughest, smartest son of a bitch at the table. In short, Trump will probably try to remake U.S. foreign policy in his own (self-)image.
One caveat: I think Trump is unlikely to be president. A Democratic Party more unified after its convention will probably generate enough votes to lift Hillary Clinton to victory. And the nuclear threat, though it tops many people's list of visceral fears, is the ultimate red herring: Trump himself may be reckless, but we're well past the days of the Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis. That's well outside what even he would be willing to gamble on.
But that doesn’t mean we can afford to dismiss the risks of a Trump foreign policy. He has hit on a message that resonates with millions of Americans, and it won’t be easy for future presidential candidates, of either party, to ignore the electoral potential of this formula. Even if Trump falls short, his America First approach to foreign policy deserves a close look because it will survive his candidacy. And if he does manage to pull of the upset, the implications of an America First foreign policy directed by Trump himself will be far reaching.
Here are the “Trump Top Risks,” the most worrisome implications of a Trump foreign policy, and a few red herrings we won’t need to worry about.
1. The Bolt from the Blue
Despite their best-laid plans, all presidents face storms they didn’t expect. For Bill Clinton it was the war in Yugoslavia. George W. Bush had 9/11. Barack Obama got the Arab Spring, a civil war in Syria, and the conflict in Ukraine. What’s the best way to handle the unexpected? In an off-the-record briefing with reporters in 2014, President Obama described his foreign policy doctrine as “Don’t do stupid stuff,” a “first, do-no-harm” approach to crisis management. “Don’t do stupid stuff is not an organizing principle,” as Hillary Clinton later noted, but it can help presidents avoid making a bad situation worse.
With Trump, the biggest risk comes from the way he’d handle a crisis that no one saw coming, whether from China, Putin, North Korea, a cyberattack, terrorists, or something else. As a candidate, he thrives on surprise. Restraint and strategic patience don’t figure among his strengths, and Trump might well respond to a bolt-from-the-blue crisis with a shot of bravado, a threat of escalation and tactics designed to keep antagonists, and maybe U.S. allies, off guard.
In addition to the risk of what will actually happen in a crisis, his approach creates another kind of risk, one that exists even without a crisis to trigger it. An improvised foreign policy based on maintaining the element of surprise might make policymakers and a few citizens feel more powerful, but it invites rivals and enemies to test U.S. intentions to find out what Washington will and will not defend. A clear policy, and predictable outcomes, help shape the behavior of the world’s bad actors. Mixed signals and big surprises, on the other hand, increase the risk of miscalculation on all sides—and increase the chances the U.S. will be provoked.
2. The Dollar
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/2016-donald-trump-international-foreign-policy-global-risk-security-guide-213936#ixzz4AWq3eOia
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