Wall Street Journal: Trump is creating a new world order that scares allies
According to American national security columnist, Alexander Ward, who confirmed that the criticisms directed by President Donald Trump at his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky are an announcement of the formation of a new world order that turns the system that was born after World War II upside down.
Trump has called Zelensky a “dictator” kept the Europeans at arm’s length from negotiations between Moscow and Washington, and hastened to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which would allow China to intervene, and has talked about displacing Palestinians from Gaza, which would erase previous US efforts to mediate a two-state solution, Ward added in a lengthy report in the Wall Street Journal.
He added that no one expected Trump to make such comprehensive changes in US foreign policy so quickly, far from the path that saw the light of day after 1945.
“It’s not that Trump has abandoned the post-World War II order,” Victoria Coates, vice president for national security and foreign policy at the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, was quoted as saying.
“It’s that we’re no longer living in the post-World War II era, and we have to accept that the geopolitical landscape has changed”.
For Richard Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior official in previous Republican administrations, what is happening has caused the United States’ reputation to suffer a major blow in the eyes of its allies.
The Wall Street Journal also quoted Chuck Hagel, a former Republican senator who served as Secretary of Defense in the Barack Obama administration, as confirming that what is happening is a serious challenge to the foundation of the global order that was formed after World War II, adding, “I’ve never felt as much concern about the future of this country and the world as I do now”.
In contrast, National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes explained that President Trump’s leadership created the first opportunity for talks with Russia in years to find a peaceful solution and end the war, and he did so just four weeks after taking office.
Justin Logan, director of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, a liberal think tank in Washington, said it was time for an US leader to act in a way that would convince Europeans to care more about their region.
“Trump is fulfilling an American vision that goes back to Dwight Eisenhower, who was concerned in 1959 that Europe’s indifference to its security was turning Uncle Sam into a fool,” he continued.
Trump administration officials say his new approach has produced early victories, as talk of control of the Panama Canal prompted Panama’s president, José Raúl Molino, to abandon China’s Belt and Road Initiative, diminishing Beijing’s influence in the Western Hemisphere, Alexander Ward continued.
Trump talk of getting Gazans out of the Strip also led to fruitful meetings with Middle Eastern leaders.
Ward revealed that John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser before he turned against him, said that the president does not have a coherent enough ideology to dismantle the world order.
He continued, “This is the view of one man, but unfortunately he is the president,” and addressed the United States’ allies, saying, “Just hang in there”.
