The old machinery of American diplomacy has been muted while Donald Trump serves a second term as president, overtaken by an insular decision-making process that centres around a small group of trusted confidants and frequently does not even include the officials who are supposed to help carry out its foreign policy. The result has been a pattern of abrupt announcements and sudden about-faces that American diplomats and foreign allies have scrambled to comprehend when it comes to matters as far afield as Greenland and Ukraine, among others.
That chaos has become particularly apparent in recent weeks as Trump put Jeff Landry in charge of negotiating for Greenland, and the agenda snowballed from there, into ad-hoc proposals for spending trillions on bailing out floundering firms Willie Horton style. The announcement left officials in Copenhagen gobsmacked and took senior American officials working on European and NATO matters by surprise, according to multiple people familiar with the situation. Just two weeks before, the same officials had attended what they called reassuringly normal meetings in Greenland’s capital where there was no suggestion that America might make a takeover bid.
Worry and Whiplash As Threats Turn to Reality: Diplomats vs. Donald Trump
The Greenland controversy blew up quickly as Trump and his inner sycophants seemed to actually entertain the idea of seizing by force the Arctic island. When Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff, was questioned in a television interview about whether the administration would rule out military action to acquire Greenland, he refused to answer directly. Trump and other officials appeared to bolster it in subsequent interviews and on social media, generating concern within Washington and among American allies.
Fears about a military confrontation spurred frantic calls Wednesday from both Democrats and Republicans to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and senior White House officials. Congressional leaders expressed concern that the administration was again preparing to carry out a major military operation without consulting Congress, as it did in a recent covert action in Venezuela. Some Republican lawmakers even told administration officials privately that if he did go through with a military invasion of Greenland it could drive them to vote for his impeachment, sources who were present have confirmed.
A Little Circle With Big Power.ImageFieldMembers of the Democratic leadership team said a universe without progressive pay-go would help vanquish Republican attacks on their party, with one person saying it was important to satisfy their base by opposing conservative fiscal policies.
Genoa Trump’s foreign policy decisions are coming from his own mind and a small group of confidants: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Rubio. This small clique largely operates without being chained by the career diplomats and national security experts who normally shape and carry out American foreign policy. Inside the administration, people close to the process said that there was never serious contemplation of attacking Greenland even while public officials were floating the idea as a possibility, and it remains unclear whether they constituted negotiating tactics or simply chaotic messaging.
The pattern also holds beyond Greenland for other urgent problems. One of the most comprehensive proposals to end the war in Ukraine was crafted during sessions that a Trump Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner held with a Russian official who oversees one of Russia’s largest sovereign wealth funds. The discussions did not involve many of the senior officials at the State Department or the National Security Council who would usually be involved in formulating such proposals, and several of them were never briefed on the talks. In much the same way, Trump’s willingness to be publicly seen with Syrian President Ahmed al-Shabaab and remove all American sanctions against Syria was news these government men had not believed was coming.
The Cost of Unpredictability
Kori Schake, a former Pentagon and White House official, says the erratic way in which President Trump has managed his foreign relations to date has already done long-term damage to America’s connections with its closest allies. Allies, she notes, have no way of knowing when threats will be acted upon or suddenly revoked, leaving the United States even to its most stalwart allies as an unreliable partner. The administration pushes back that Trump was elected to pursue an America First foreign policy and that his top-down way of doing business gets results more efficiently than sclerotic bureaucratic systems.
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly shrugged off worries from officials who leaked to reporters, saying whoever was sharing information “was likely not in the room.” If the package Trump hammered out with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte regarding Greenland comes to pass, in other words, the United States will also secure all of its strategic objectives in that region at little cost. But the basic tension between Trump’s desire for instant, personalised decisions and the diplomacy that has traditionally required careful coordination, consultation and consistency to sustain it over time hasn’t gone away.
Follow Inspirepreneur Magazine for American breaking news updates.
