The fallout from Trump's international temper tantrum by Jennifer Rubin

White House
Trump stuns allies, won’t sign G-7 joint agreement

By ANDREW RESTUCCIA and BRENT D. GRIFFITHS



The fallout from Trump’s international temper tantrum




https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/06/10/the-fallout-from-trumps-international-temper-tantrum/?utm_term=.205e04aa9622
by Jennifer Rubin June 10 at 12:00 PM Email the author
1:56
Trump pulls out of G-7 joint statement

President Trump removed the U.S. from a joint G-7 agreement on June 9, and blamed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for "false statements." (Reuters)

From his ranch in Arizona where he is battling brain cancer, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), almost certainly the most respected American politician internationally, reached out to comfort our allies. “To our allies: bipartisan majorities of Americans remain pro-free trade, pro-globalization & supportive of alliances based on 70 years of shared values,” McCain tweeted. “Americans stand with you, even if our president doesn’t.” Unfortunately, Donald Trump is for now president, and he is busy trashing our most important international relationships. It will be fascinating to see which other Republicans have the nerve to speak up.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) sounded genuinely appalled; not phony-political appalled, but for real. Pelosi tweeted, “This week started with @realDonaldTrump boosting a Chinese company identified as a national security threat to the U.S. It ended with him standing up for Russia and alienating our allies at the G7.” And for good measure, she added, with obvious disdain, Trump’s “MAGA” hashtag. Schumer echoed that sense of amazement. He tweeted: “Are we executing Putin’s diplomatic and national security strategy or AMERICA’s diplomatic and national security strategy? After the last few days, it’s hard to tell.”

Michael D. Shear and Catherine Porter of the New York Times describe the G-7 trainwreck this way:

The result was a slow-rolling collapse of the fragile alliances that officials at the summit — and even Mr. Thump’s own White House advisers — insisted throughout the day could be maintained in the face of fundamental disagreements. . . .

Mr. Trump confronted several of the leaders individually, giving examples of how, in his view, each of their countries had mistreated the United States, whether it be through trade barriers or security commitments, according to a European official.

The president delivered a running monologue in one of the closed-door meetings, one person familiar with the discussion said. One minute, he slammed Germany for taking advantage of the United States by selling so many cars there. The next, he talked about how his grandfather was German and how much he loved Europe.

In other words, our allies see an incoherent, irrational president who cannot grasp the fundamentals of the international system that works for the benefit of all Western democracies. To him, none of the benefits of the post-World War II international architecture matter. It’s about his pride, his demand for attention, his ability to create havoc — and if he needs to take a wrecking ball to the Western alliance to convince himself he’s smarter than all his predecessors, he’ll not think twice about it.




German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other world leaders speak with President Trump, right, at the G-7 summit on June 9. (Steffen Seibert/German Information Ministry)

He pulls out of the Iran deal and declares, with no basis in fact, that Iran is now cowed. He says he’s getting tough on China, and then lets Chinese telecom company ZTE — a national security threat to the United States, according to our intelligence community — off the hook. (You do wonder if Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is mortified by all of this, or whether he too has become a soldier in the Trump cult.) He pulls down the curtain on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would have limited China’s influence, and now China’s “one belt, one road” vision may secure it as the most dominant power in Asia (and beyond).

This is all the more stunning as Trump turns to the North Korea summit. America’s allies, a significant cross-section of Congress (although Republicans are too cowardly to admit it publicly), much of the free press here and abroad, and a very sizable majority of Americans do not trust him. (As for the latter, the most recent Quinnipiac poll showed 64 percent of voters don’t think he is level-headed; 59 percent don’t think he is honest. You wonder if the other voters have just tuned out.)............................................