 "Donald Trump")
More than six weeks before his inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump is already carrying out his promise to make US foreign policy less predictable with a series of moves that are keeping America’s adversaries, as well as its friends, off-balance.
In the span of a week, Trump slammed China over currency and trade, had an unprecedented call with Taiwan’s leader, praised the Philippine president’s violent war on drugs and promised to visit Pakistan, effectively upending years of foreign policy. Even when new presidents want to change policies, they are usually careful to adhere to the strict and deliberately stilted language of diplomacy, which exists to prevent misunderstandings that can lead to unintended consequences.
The president-elect is showing “a pretty dramatic departure” from traditional practice, said Aaron David Miller, vice-president for new initiatives at the Wilson Centre and a former adviser at the State Department. “When I look at what appears to be the emerging Trump foreign policy, I see a lot of unpredictability when it comes to process,” he said. What most concerns some critics is the possibility that Trump, who claimed to know more about Islamic State than the Pentagon’s generals, may be making decisions hastily or without thinking about the broader consequences of decisions such as taking the call from Taiwan.
“In dismissing the significance of this exchange they failed to recognise that process and people are policy when you’re president of the United States,” said Mira Rapp-Hooper, a senior fellow at the Centre for a New American Security and Asia policy coordinator for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. “A phone call to interact with a particular figure, especially of this significance, is going to be interpreted as policy.”
