Donald Trump’s presidency is a complete disaster, not just because of domestic unrest and a deadly pandemic that has claimed the lives of more than 108,000 Americans, but also because our longtime allies want nothing to do with him.
As long as Trump remains in office, our relationship with our allies will become more strained. And that strain was evident when German Chancellor Angela Merkel declined Trump’s invitation to the G7 summit he plans to host at the White House later this year.
According to the New York Times:
Ms. Merkel cited the lingering threat of the virus, but a senior German official who spoke on the condition of anonymity made clear that she had other reasons to decline: She believed that proper diplomatic preparations had not been made; she did not want to be part of an anti-China display; she opposed Mr. Trump’s idea of inviting the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin; she did not want to be seen as interfering in American domestic politics.”
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Relations abroad have only worsened because of the mass protests across the United States and Trump’s brutality against protesters.
In fact, Merkel believes Trump is only angling for a photo-op with G-7 leaders so he can claim that they endorse him. She’s so repulsed by Trump that she doesn’t want to even be in the same room with him.
“The G7 is a Trump show, with no negotiation,” German analyst Ulrich Speck explained. “The old G7 is gone. For Trump it’s not multilateral in spirit but unilateral, just a meeting to serve one purpose — his re-election.”
“She knows that any event, Trump will spin as if the others are implicitly endorsing him, and that’s the last thing she wants to do,” Brookings Institution senior fellow William Drozdiak added, going on to quote Merkel saying she doesn’t “want to be in the room” with him.
Even France is getting tired of Trump’s bullsh*t despite French President Emmanuel Macron’s effort to work with him.
“In France toward Trump is a mix of sadness and anger,” French Institute of International Relations director Thomas Gomart said. “Our main ally refused to exercise leadership during the corona crisis and is every day more provocative toward its allies and is creating divisions that are very actively exploited by China.”
He’s not wrong. China recently mocked Trump for hiding from protesters in a bunker even though he urged Chinese officials to meet and make a deal with protesters in Hong Kong. China has also noted Trump’s hypocrisy on human rights, making it impossible for the United States to claim the moral high ground on that issue when Trump is ordering the police and military to tear-gas American citizens, a potential violation of international law restricting the use of chemical weapons against civilian populations.
Despite the coronavirus originating in China, Trump failed to act to prevent the pandemic from becoming a full-blown crisis here, resulting in our nation having the most cases and the most deaths while endangering the world with a potential second wave.
The British and Canadians also raised a rare vocal protest against Trump for inviting Russian President Vladimir Putin to the summit even though Russia had been kicked out of what used to be the G8 for invading and annexing the Crimea from Ukraine during the Obama administration.
Former Obama adviser Julianne Smith explained just how bad these souring relations are for Trump and pointed out that he isn’t getting along with authoritarian leaders he admires either.
“It all shows just how out of touch Trump is with allies,” Smith said. “This is a man isolated at home and abroad. He is trying to find friends in other places, knowing that relations with traditional allies are bad. But there are serious strains even with the authoritarians he admires, like Xi Jinping and even Putin.”
“[Trump] continues to believe allies can be abused and mistreated and that he can order them around and at the same time count on them,” she continued. “He doesn’t understand that while the U.S. is powerful, it doesn’t always call the shots. [N]ow there is a sense of America’s weaknesses being exposed, and a feeling that the emperor has no clothes.”
Trump’s failures have not only weakened us domestically, he has put our national security in serious jeopardy. The United States would not be as powerful on the international stage without our friends backing us up. The idea that we can go it alone because of our military is a fallacy that has been proven utterly and embarrassingly wrong.
The only way to fix this mess is for Americans to vote in November. Because we may not have any allies left in four years if Trump wins another term.
Featured image via screen capture
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