Trump's foreign policy is perfectly coherent
President Trump’s foreign policy is perfectly coherent — so coherent, in fact, that we could give it a name: pure bilateralism.
Trump’s foreign policy doctrine has been staring us in the face so plainly that we’ve overlooked it. Here’s my unifying theory: He didn’t get out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal because he disagreed with this or that detail of the agreements. He hasn’t started up deals with Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin and sought to force Xi Jinping to the bargaining table because he has refined views of what he seeks. He got out of the former deals because they were multilateral; he’s working on the latter deals because they are bilateral.
In an interview with CNBC last week, Trump said: “I’m different than other [presidents]. I’m a dealmaker. I’ve made deals all my life. I do really well. I make great deals.”
----------------------------
The purpose of Trump’s bilateralist foreign policy is not some overarching vision about world peace or democracy’s role in global order. The purpose is simply to maximize Trump’s personal power, to make him personally great, by proving his dealmaking prowess and making himself necessary to the world’s economy. I think that he himself believes that when he is great on his own terms, America is great. That, with him in the White House, his interest is the national interest.
But what about for us? Is pure bilateralism good for the American people? Is Trump’s interest the same as the national interest? A thousand times no. A democratic republic cannot afford to become dependent on the bilateral relationships a single individual has with the other countries of the world. We need to secure and preserve institutional relationships, both multilateral and bilateral, that we the people can control and steer over time through temporary representatives.
Trump is not merely disrupting NATO and other multilateral relationships. He is disrupting the institutional power, durability and sovereignty of the American people.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-foreign-policy-is-perfectly-coherent/2018/07/23/43dce312-8a0c-11e8-a345-a1bf7847b375_story.html?utm_term=.415fd94b2a50