Trump’s foreign policy

Trump has started his presidency in a furious tempo with more than 200 executive orders and a packed agenda with trade, peace efforts and finalizing his nominations. He has, not surprisingly, stirred the pot and managed to anger many with his threats of tariffs towards China, Mexica, Canada and Europe, and created tension by annoying he might take the Panama Canal and Greenland, and they are needed for American national security. Biden is really far gone and the differences in administrations could not be greater. The democrats focus on spending on immigrations, DEI, transgender rights and government expansion is history and the Trump agenda is totally different. This time around, Trump is more focused in actually draining the swamp in DC, expose corruption and making a difference. He has the mandate, and it will get nasty. He might already think about his legacy and that he only has four years to make the changes. His agenda might also run into roadblocks after two years, should the republicans do poorly in the 2026 midterm elections.

Trump has been aggressive in trying to find a solution to the conflict in Ukraine and there is hope that there will be a peace agreement at some point in late February or March. More about Ukraine in separate papers. Regarding other foreign affairs situations, it is understandable that Trump focuses on the Panama Canal. Not only does a Chinese company control container ports at each end of the waterway, but a Chinese construction battalion is slowly building a bridge right across the middle. The bridge is supposed to be completed in 2027. The last administration turned a blind eye to these kinds of national security risks. While Biden slept, China crushed the democracy movement in Hong Kong, thereby in effect destroying Hong Kong as a long-term economic hub it used to be. They also locked up the leading dissident, Jimmy Lai, without any complains from the Biden administration. China also nibbled away at the territory of neighboring states like Bhutan and India, built a naval base in Cambodia and encouraged North Korea’s Kim Jong-un to continue his campaign of missile intimidation.

China has embarked upon a new kind of grey zone warfare, with its ships severing undersea communications cables in the Baltic Sea, and around Taiwan and its offshore islands, in what may be a prelude to an actual blockade. At the same time, China has moved into the South Pacific in a big way, signing a security pact with the Solomon Islands and seeking to rebuild a strategic World War II airfield in Kiribati, just 1,500 miles from Hawaii. Even closer to U.S. soil, China has declared itself to a near-Arctic power and has built a fleet of Arctic icebreakers. This should concern both the U.S. and Russia.

It is impossible to overstate how disruptive China has been over the past four years. China today is the chaos agent lurking behind every major world conflict. Without China’s electronic equipment, Hamas would not have been able to plan and execute a stealth attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. The cyber-attack that reduced Israel’s response time to the incursion were also China’s handiwork. Without China’s aid to Iran’s ballistic missile program, which began in the 1990s, and its financial support in the form of oil purchases, Iran would not have been able to attack Israel. It is also unlikely that Kim Jong-un would have sent munitions, artillery and even troops to help the Russians in Ukraine without a green light from China. Biden left the White House with the world closer to World War III than has been seen since the 1961 Cuban missile crisis. Trump, having completed his on-the-job training during his first term in office, is capable of ending this chaos, and reining in the actor behind it. It seems clear that Trump’s focus will be to secure the American homeland.  

This is way he is securing the borders, consider building a missile defense shield, an American Iron Dome, similar to the one Israel has. That is also why Trump will do what he can to keep China out of the Arctic and Greenland and why Trump wants to control the Panama Canal. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter made two strategic blunders that continue to haunt the U.S. today. The first one was to give away, in a gush of global empathy, the Panama Canal to the tiny country that surrounds it, Panama. The second was to extend diplomatic recognition of China, thus legitimizing a criminal regime that today poses a great danger to the U.S. and its allies. The Panama Canal needs to be clear of Chinese meddling and influence, otherwise the Trump administration will act and could even use military to retake the Panama Canal. Trumps vendetta against China will not just be about tariffs this time around, it will be about global geopolitical affairs. If China is creating problems, they will pay.