Threatening Friends and Courting Enemies in Trump’s ‘Upside-Down World’
New York Times · LC · trust 32/100
The president’s hostility to allies like Oman, Canada and South Korea, and his affection for adversaries like North Korea, may still shock some. But it comes as little surprise after a decade of upheaval.
Listen · 10:00 min Share full article President Trump’s attack-thy-friends, revere-thy-enemies approach has become the norm in U.S. foreign policy. Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times By Peter Baker
Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent. He reported from Washington.
Nearly 10 years after Mr. Trump first came to the White House on the slogan of America First, his attack-thy-friends, befriend-thy-enemies approach to international relations has become the feature, not the bug, of U.S. foreign policy. Traditional alliances from Europe to Asia to the Middle East have frayed while the president courts those once seen as its adversaries.
Even so, the past few days have thrown the Trumpian worldview into stark relief. Mr. Trump declared that he would bomb Oman, a key friend in the complicated diplomacy of the Middle East, if he decides it is getting in the way of his war with Iran. He was set to impose punitive new tariffs on Canada, once considered the United States’ closest friend. And he announced that he would pull back military support from South Korea, the bulwark of the U.S. network of partners in the Asia-Pacific.
At the same time, he again began sending public mash notes to North Korea’s absolute dictator, Kim Jong-un , with whom by his own description he “fell in love” in his first term. Mr. Kim, who rules one of the most oppressive nations in the world, never did give up his nuclear weapons, as Mr. Trump once declared he would. Instead, Mr. Kim has vastly expanded his nuclear arsenal in defiance of Mr. Trump, who nonetheless remains a suitor, no matter how unrequited.
“He dumps on our friends and cozies up to our enemies,” said James J. Blanchard, a former ambassador to Canada and Democratic governor of Michigan. “If someone once told me that Russia is our friend and Canada is our enemy, I’d have told you we’re in an upside-down world.”
Richard Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security and a former adviser to Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said that none of the bombastic threats were new. But he pointed out that Mr. Trump had not always followed through on them. The United States, he noted, had not pulled out of NATO, abandoned South Korea, bombed Oman or seized Canada and Greenland.
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