By Jimmy Quinn
Saturday, November 28, 2020
President Trump’s combative and defiant brand of
nationalism enraged his critics — some within his own administration — as much
as it buoyed his base. The narrative, which calcified to a stubborn degree
these past four years, was that he coddled adversaries and cold-shouldered
allies, leaving America isolated.
Setting aside that Trump counter-claims Joe Biden would
go easy on Iran and China, his top diplomat has another rebuttal to these kinds
of charges. The claims of a go-it-alone approach, he contends, simply aren’t
true.
“I hear some attack us, saying we don’t build coalitions,
it’s America alone,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told National Review.
“I mean, this fact is just nonsense.”
Sitting down with NR in Abu Dhabi last weekend, Pompeo
reflected on an eventful three years in this post as he wrapped up an extensive
tour through the Middle East. His seven-country trip featured visits to
numerous U.S.-allied countries. (Click
here for more from that interview.)
He discussed the prospects for more normalization
agreements between Arab nations and Israel, the war in Afghanistan, and more.
But a common thread in his outlook, and in his overall assessment of the
administration’s foreign policy, is a stern rejection of the charge that it
acted without the support of partners.
Pompeo’s comments came one day before former Trump
defense secretary Jim Mattis co-authored an article for Foreign Affairs
arguing, “In practice, ‘America first’ has meant ‘America alone.’”
In disputing such claims, Pompeo pointed first to
Afghanistan, maintaining, to the backdrop of the president’s controversial
decision to withdraw more troops from the country, “We’ve built up partners and
alliances that are performing [the mission] together.” Pompeo, a day earlier,
had met with Afghan government and Taliban representatives in Doha, where
negotiations over a settlement to the protracted conflict have stalled.
But Pompeo also ticked off coalitions he said were
assembled to combat ISIS, isolate Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, and bring
Southeast Asian nations together as Beijing attempts to fortify its territorial
claims in the South China Sea. Some of these efforts — namely, the coalitions
in Afghanistan and against ISIS — started under previous administrations.
But his comments and his mindset shed light on how the
secretary of state — a proponent of a more conventional Republican foreign
policy who has staffed his State Department with 2016-era Trump opponents — has
thrived in an unconventional presidency.
“It all starts with telling the truth and not having a
bias towards appeasement,” Pompeo told NR. “Once you do those two things, you
can build a realistic platform that others will want to become part of.”
Pompeo doesn’t leave much daylight between himself and
Trump — a strategy that’s put him in the president’s good graces. But his
celebration of certain alliances and international coalitions would appear to
stand in contrast to Trump’s broader views on these issues.
“You know in many ways our allies treat us worse than the
enemy,” Trump said during a rally in Florida in the closing days of the 2020
presidential campaign. “The enemy at least we have our guard up. Our allies,
what they have done to us in terms of military protection and trade is
disgraceful.”
President-elect Biden and his supporters have argued that
Trump damaged America’s alliances and compromised its leadership in the world
through questioning NATO’s collective self-defense guarantees, imposing tariffs
on some key allies, and withdrawing the United States from several
international treaties and organizations, such as the Paris Agreement and the
Iran nuclear deal.
More than a few Republican officials have endorsed some
of these critiques, particularly regarding Trump’s withdrawal from the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, his first-year anti-NATO barbs, and the withdrawal
of troops from Syria, Germany, and Afghanistan. (The president’s tough talk on
NATO, however, has also been credited with convincing member states to up their
defense spending.)
During a November 24 event to unveil his picks for key
national-security posts in Biden’s incoming administration, the former vice
president called them “a team that reflects the fact that America is back,
ready to lead the world, not retreat from it.” His intended nominee for
secretary of state, former deputy secretary of state Tony Blinken, has been
portrayed by Biden supporters and the media as an advocate for strong alliances
who is being brought in to repair America’s global reputation under Trump.
The nature of the strained relations between the U.S. and
some of its European allies was on full display during the trip’s awkward first
stop in Paris. According to the Associated Press, the French Elysée called
Pompeo’s visit there a “courtesy visit,” though readouts from his low-key,
closed-door meetings with President Emmanuel Macron and Foreign Minister
Jean-Yves Le Drian noted discussions about the importance of maintaining the
trans-Atlantic relationship and cooperating on counterterrorism and China.
The Trump administration has found itself at odds with
France and others over Iran. As the State Department led a push to reimpose
U.N. arms embargoes set to expire under the 2015 nuclear agreement, the
European parties to the deal voted against those efforts at the Security
Council. At the time, a furious Pompeo accused them of “siding with
ayatollahs.”
On Sunday, his comments about the Europeans’ reluctance
to act on Iran were not as blunt, expressing confidence that the European
people “share the American view that says that the right way to approach this
is what we think about as sort of this idea of conservative realism, where we
centrally acknowledge the truth, build up coalitions around that, and then act
in a way that protects Americans and builds out prosperity around the world.”
This gets to the heart of Pompeo’s stated strategy. He
was warmly welcomed later in the trip by other countries that have enjoyed
close ties with the United States under Trump, such as Israel, the UAE, and
Saudi Arabia, demonstrating that as the president has alienated some foreign
governments, his administration has reassured U.S. partners elsewhere by
calling out the behavior of Iran and China.
The administration’s diplomatic push on countering China
is another that Pompeo addressed in his interview with National Review.
“See the agreement between the Australians and the
Japanese yesterday,” he said, referring to a recent security cooperation pact
between the two countries. “It’s historic. You see the relationship between the
United States and India and the Quad.” The Quad is a grouping of the U.S.,
India, Japan, and Australia that appears poised to contest China’s bid for
dominance in the Indo-Pacific.
“These are historic sets of relationships built up by the
Trump administration based on simple facts that we laid bare for the whole
world to see,” he said.
Pompeo’s acknowledgement of the central importance of
certain alliances hasn’t necessarily put him at odds with the president. It
appears more a translation of Trump’s instincts and tough talk into global
coalitions against malign actors.
Later in the interview, the secretary of state answered a
question about how he would like to be remembered for his time at Foggy Bottom.
While stressing his efforts at coalition-building, he did not shy away from the
America First worldview that brought Trump into office:
“For every hour that I have as America’s secretary of
state, I’m going to continue to do my best to take President Trump’s guidance
and implement it and demonstrate American leadership all around the world in a
way that fundamentally addresses the president’s America First view.”
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