Trump commits first foreign-affairs faux pas: It’s big, and it matters

Before the man has even been inaugurated, Donald J. Trump met, as his first European representative, with Great Britain’s Nigel Farage. Despite having been one of Brexit’s main advocates, after surprisingly winning that decisive, divisive referendum, Farage and other anti-EU cheerleaders quickly refused to lead the country or even its decoupling from the European Union. As Farage is scorned in Europe but embraced by Trump, America’s soon-to-be Chief Executive is giving a bad signal at the wrong time.
In a nationally televised interview with other political figures, Thomas Oppermann, chair of the co-ruling SPD in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, called Trump’s choice “an affront to Europe” at the very least. Reactions in Britain and elsewhere in Europe have been critical and vocal. This, in reaction to the unseasoned, apparently uninformed president-elect’s foolish, ally-estranging hubris. But, we can’t steer the world on our own; we need allies, in Europe and elsewhere. Trump’s actions belie that. If his loutish amateurism in foreign affairs wasn’t enough, The Donald then tweeted British Prime Minister Theresa May, naively asking if Farage might not be made the UK’s ambassador to the US: She shot back, “No.”
For America’s first 300 years—from the 1620 arrival of the Pilgrims until the US declared war in 1917—we were of little more diplomatic importance to the world than, say, Australia is today. Like our remote cultural cousins down under now, we influenced other countries and drew their admiring respect. It was only after WWI, however, that America stepped up and became a global player, an international leader. With a long list of partners and supporters, after 1945 America was able to call many world events.
Today, however, that is not the case. Especially after the alienating truth of George Bush, Jr.’s illegal war in Iraq, our country has frittered away most of the political as well as social capital we once enjoyed. The Great Recession eroded further what allure we hold for other nations, both economically and as an exporter of ideas, products, culture, causes, etc. This lack of international sympathy has left us largely friendless, impotent, and irrelevant—not a desirable condition in an increasingly interdependent world.
For Trump to flippantly smite proven European allies—Germany, France, Italy, Scandinavian and other countries—for the sake of a meaningless photo op with an outlandish, discredited political has-been like Farage, is to further erode America’s close, unqualified cooperation with countries that actually have a future, not to mention continue to be our best geo-strategic bulwark against maverick Vladimir Putin.
Can Trump’s closest advisors (his aspiring kids and son-in-law) talk some sense into their patriarch’s ego-driven head? Tell him that he shouldn’t embrace other EU xenophobes in—say—the Netherlands (Geert Wilders), France (Marine Le Pen) or Germany (Frauke Petry), as all three nations (and perhaps Italy) will hold elections in 2017. Trump’s flirting with phonies like Farage might seem frivolous but as with his own unexpected election, empowering Europe’s racist nationalists can bring down the European Union just as surely as a 1.5-point lead in the Brexit plebiscite is taking the UK out of the EU. For, someday, we may want to have a set of solid allies in the world opposite Russia, China and Friends. I’m jus’ sayin’…