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    What Explains Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy?

    Ever since his inauguration in 2017, US President Donald Trump has placed an emphasis on unilateralism and the rejection of international organizations and treaties as the hallmarks of his foreign policy.

    Trump has assumed an aggressive modus operandi in dealing with US partners worldwide and alienated many allies. He repealed US participation in the UN Human Rights Council, UNESCO, the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, the Treaty on Open Skies, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Even in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, he pulled the US out of the World Health Organization.

    The president has pledged to draw an end to the “forever wars” the United States has been involved in over the past couple of decades, and he has challenged the view that America should be the world’s “policeman.” At the same time, his Middle East policy has been nothing short of hawkish, and he has dragged the United States to the brink of war with Iran.

    The Role of Foreign Policy in the US Election

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    Some observers explain Trump’s overseas agenda by noting that he has been hellbent on scoring political points by hurling out of the window the foreign policy legacy of his predecessor, Barack Obama. Others say he has been focused on pulling off his “America First” policy, premised on putting US commitments and global leadership on the backburner and emphasizing the empowerment of the national economy.

    Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco. A leading scholar of the US affairs in the Middle East, he is a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus and an associate editor of the Peace Review journal. His latest book is “Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresoluton.”

    In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Zunes about Trump’s foreign policy challenges, his relationship with autocrats and his strategy in the Middle East.

    The transcript has been edited for clarity. This interview took place in summer 2020.

    Kourosh Ziabari: In a recent article on Foreign Policy, the former undersecretary of state for political affairs, Wendy Sherman, claimed that President Trump — after three and a half years in office — has “developed no foreign policy at all” and that his approach to foreign affairs has been one “without objectives, without strategy, [and] without any indication that it protects and advances US interests.” Is Trump’s foreign policy as disastrous as Sherman describes, or is she saying so merely as a former Obama administration official with partisan interests?

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    Stephen Zunes: This is a reasonably accurate statement. Indeed, many Republicans feel the same way, believing Trump has wasted an opportunity to further a more active foreign policy advancing their more hegemonic and militaristic agenda by failing to fill a number of important State Department positions and failing to articulate a clear policy.

    By all accounts, Trump is profoundly ignorant of even the most basic facts relevant to foreign policy — the names and locations of foreign countries, modern diplomatic history and other things which most reasonably well-educated Americans know. His refusal to even read policy briefs his advisers have written up for him has made it impossible for him to develop any kind of coherent foreign policy agenda. His view toward foreign relations is largely transactional — what you can do for me will determine US policy toward your country — and therefore not based on any overall vision of advancing US interests, much less international peace and security.

    His efforts to push foreign governments to pursue policies designed to help his reelection led to his impeachment earlier this year, but the Republican-controlled Senate refused to convict him despite overwhelming evidence of illegal activities in this regard.

    Ziabari: Some of the major foreign policy challenges of the Trump administration emanated from the threats apparently posed to the United States by Iran, North Korea, China and Russia. How has Trump dealt with these challenges? A June 2020 poll by Gallup found that only 41% of US adults approve of Trump’s performance in foreign policy. Is there a yardstick by which we can measure the president’s success in his overseas agenda?

    Zunes: Virtually every administration, regardless of party, has tended to exaggerate overseas threats to varying degrees, and this is certainly true with Trump. There have been real inconsistencies, however. For example, he has been far more tolerant toward North Korea, which has violated previous agreements and pursued its nuclear weapons program, than he has been toward Iran, which had dramatically reduced its nuclear capabilities and was scrupulously honoring its nuclear agreement prior to the US withdrawal from the Iran [nuclear] deal. Similarly, he has tolerated a series of provocative actions by Russia while obsessively targeting China.

    While hypocrisy and double standards is certainly not a new phenomenon in US foreign policy, Trump’s actions have taken this to a new extreme and have severely weakened US credibility in the international community.

    Ziabari: How has foreign policy historically influenced the prospects of politicians winning elections in the United States? Do you expect President Trump’s divisive foreign policy decisions to derail his chances of being reelected in November? 

    Zunes: Foreign policy is even less of a factor in this year’s election than usual, so it is unlikely to determine the outcome. Ironically, as in 2016, Trump may run to the left of the Democratic nominee, so, despite Trump’s impetuous and problematic foreign policy leadership, foreign policy issues may actually weigh to his advantage.

    During the 2016 campaign, Trump successfully, if somewhat disingenuously, was able to portray himself as a president who would be more cautious than his Democratic opponent regarding unpopular US military interventions overseas. Despite having actually supported the invasion of Iraq, Trump was largely successful in depicting himself as a war opponent and Hillary Clinton as a reckless militarist who might get the United States in another round of endless wars in the Middle East. An analysis of voting data demonstrated that a significant number of voters in northern swing states who supported the anti-Iraq War Barack Obama in the 2008 and 2012 elections switched to supporting Trump in the 2016 election over this very issue, thereby making possible his Electoral College majority.

    Already, the Trump campaign has begun targeting Joe Biden on this very issue. Biden played a critical role as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in pushing the war authorization through the Democratic-controlled Senate, limiting hearings and stacking the witness list with war opponents. He has also repeatedly lied about his support for the [Iraq] war — even after inspectors had returned and confirmed the absence of the weapons of mass destruction that he and President Bush falsely claimed Iraq still possessed — giving the Trump campaign an opening to press this issue even more.

    Meanwhile, Biden has alienated many rank-and-file Democrats by pushing through a party platform calling for tens of billions of dollars of unconditional taxpayer-funded arms transfers to Israel while not even mentioning, much less condemning, the Israeli occupation and settlements. It criticizes efforts by both the United Nations and civil society campaigns to end the occupation as somehow unfairly delegitimizing Israel itself. This comes despite polls showing a sizable majority of Democrats oppose the occupation and settlements and support conditioning aid.  

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    Neither candidate appears willing to reduce the United States’ bloated military budget or end arms transfers to dictatorships. However, Biden has promised to end support for Saudi Arabia’s devastating war on Yemen and the longstanding US backing of the Saudi regime, as well as reverse Trump’s escalation of the nuclear arms race, both of which are popular positions.

    Meanwhile, Biden has won over the vast majority of the foreign policy establishment, including quite a few Republicans, who have been appalled by Trump’s treatment of traditional allies and cozy relations with the Russian regime. How much impact this will have on swing voters, however, remains to be seen.

    Ziabari: Trump’s pullout from the Iran nuclear deal was one of his major and contentious foreign policy decisions. In a poll conducted shortly after he announced the US withdrawal, CNN found 63% of Americans believed the United States should stick with the accord, while only 29% favored abandoning it. Last year, a Pew Research Center poll revealed 56% of the respondents did not have faith in the president’s ability to handle the crisis with Iran. Has the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign against the Islamic Republic yielded the results it was expected to achieve?

    Zunes: Iran already made enormous compromises in agreeing to the JCPOA required it to destroy billions of dollars’ worth of nuclear facilities and material while neither the United States nor any of Iran’s nuclear-armed neighbors — namely Israel, India and Pakistan — were required to reduce their arsenals or any other aspects of their nuclear program. Iran agreed to these unilateral concessions in return for a lifting of the debilitating sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council.

    Despite full Iranian compliance with the agreement, the United States not only re-imposed its own sanctions, but it effectively forced foreign governments and countries to do the same at an enormous cost to the Iranian people. Hardline elements in the Iranian government, who opposed the agreement on the grounds that the United States could not be trusted to uphold its end of the deal, feel they have been vindicated, and moderate elements in the government are on the defensive.

    Some fear that the goal of the Trump administration in tearing up the agreement was to encourage the Iranians to resume their nuclear program, which is exactly what happened, in order to provoke a crisis that could give the United States an excuse to go to war.

    The mistake the United States made in Vietnam was seeing the leftist revolution against the US-backed regime in Saigon in terms of its communist leadership rather than the strong nationalist sentiments which propelled it. Washington could not understand why the more troops we sent and the more bombs we dropped actually strengthened the opposition.

    Similarly, looking at the Iranian regime in terms of its Islamist leadership misses the strong nationalist sentiments in that country. While a growing number of Iranians oppose the authoritarianism, conservatism and corruption of the clerical and military leadership, a large majority appear to support the regime in its confrontation with the United States. Iranians, like the Vietnamese, are among the most nationalistic people in the world. Iran, formerly known as Persia, has been a regional power on and off for the past 2,500 years and does not appreciate being treated in such a dismissive way. The more pressure on Iran, the greater the resistance.

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    Concerns raised by the Trump administration about the Iranian regime — its repression, discrimination against women and religious minorities, support for extremist groups, interference in other countries, among other points — are indeed valid. Yet each of these issues are also true, in fact, even more so, when it comes to Saudi Arabia and other close US allies in the region. The problem the United States has with Iran, therefore, is not in regard to such negative behavior, but the fact that Iran is the most powerful country in the greater Middle East that rejects US hegemony. Iran was willing to compromise on its nuclear program, but it is not going to compromise when it comes to its sovereignty.Ziabari: One of the critical points President Trump’s opponents raise about him is his affinity for autocratic leaders and dictators. He has — on different occasions — praised, congratulated or invited to the White House President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines; President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt; President Vladimir Putin of Russia; the far-right leader of the French party National Rally, Marine Le Pen; and the supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un. Why is Trump attracted to these unpopular leaders? Can it be attributed to his desire for becoming a president for life? 

    Zunes: Most US presidents have supported allied dictatorships. Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, US arms have flowed to autocratic regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other repressive Arab regimes as well as dictators in Africa, Asia and, in previous years, Latin America as well.

    What makes Trump different is that while previous administrations at least pretended to support improved human rights in these countries, and often rationalized for arms transfers and other close relations as a means of supposedly influencing them in that direction, Trump doesn’t even pretend to support political freedom and has even praised their repressive tactics.

    There is little question that Trump himself has autocratic tendencies. The US Constitution prevents him from becoming president for life and other more overt autocratic measures, but he has certainly stretched his presidential authority in a number of very disturbing ways.

    Ziabari: Rescinding international agreements, reducing the commitments of the US government abroad and embracing unilateralism have been the epitome of Trump’s foreign policy. This is believed to have created rifts between the US and its traditional allies, particularly in the European Union and NATO. Some observers of US foreign policy, however, say the gulf has been exaggerated and that the United States continues to enjoy robust relations with its global partners. What are your thoughts?

    Zunes: Due to the United States’ economic and military power, most foreign governments have little choice but to work closely with Washington on any number of issues. However, the United States is no longer looked at for leadership in ways it had been previously. This decline has been going on for some time, accelerating during the George W. Bush administration and paused during the Obama administration, but it has now plummeted under Trump to a degree that it is not likely to recover. The rejection of basic diplomatic protocols and other traditions of international relations repeatedly exhibited by Trump has alienated even some of the United States’ more conservative allies.

    While Joe Biden is certainly far more knowledgeable, experienced and diplomatic in his approach to foreign policy than the incumbent president, his support for the Iraq invasion, the Israeli occupation and various allied dictatorships has also made him suspect in the eyes of many erstwhile allies. And many allies have already reset their foreign policy priorities to make them less dependent on and less concerned about the United States and its priorities.

    Ziabari: President Trump appears to have taken US-Israel relations to a new level, making himself known as the most pro-Israel US president after Harry Truman, as suggested by several commentators and pundits, such as the renowned political analyst Bill Schneider. Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, defunded UNRWA, closed down the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington and unveiled the “deal of the century,” a much-hyped peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that Palestinian factions rejected outright on account of being overly biased in favor of Israel. Why has Trump prioritized pleasing the Israelis and advancing their territorial ambitions?

    Zunes: The right-wing coalition governing Israel shares Trump’s anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia and contempt for human rights and international law, so this is not surprising. While Democratic administrations rationalized their support for Israel on the grounds that it was a liberal democracy — at least for its Jewish citizens — what draws Trump to Israel is the right-wing, anti-democratic orientation of its current government.

    Though Trump has brought US support for Israeli violations of international legal norms to unprecedented levels, in practice — at least for Palestinians living under occupation — it has made little difference. For example, previous administrations did not overtly recognize Israeli settlements and annexation as Trump has, saying such issues should be resolved in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. However, this policy ignored the gross power asymmetry between the Palestinians under occupation and the Israeli occupiers, an imbalance compounded by the fact that as the chief mediator in negotiations, the US has also served as the primary military, economic and diplomatic supporter of the occupying power.

    By refusing to condition the billions of dollars’ worth of unconditional military aid to Israel on Israeli adherence to international law and human rights norms and blocking the United Nations Security Council from enforcing — or, in some cases, even passing — resolutions calling for Israeli compliance with its international legal obligations, it gave Israel’s right-wing government no incentive to make the necessary compromises for peace. In many respects, Trump’s policies have simply codified what was already going on under previous administrations.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    US election: what a Biden or Trump victory could mean for Britain

    US election: what a Biden or Trump victory could mean for Britain

    Boris Johnson and Donald Trump meeting on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York in September last year.
    Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

    It could be the most significant election for US foreign policy since 1940, with huge implications for the UK
    by Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor

    Main image:
    Boris Johnson and Donald Trump meeting on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York in September last year.
    Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

    The British government has a long history of misreading America – from Lord Palmerston expecting the Confederacy to survive the civil war, to Ernie Bevin being shocked that the US would not pay the UK’s postwar bills, to Tony Blair believing in 2003 that he could ride the US military tiger in Iraq and create a democracy.
    Few serving or former British diplomats are confidently predicting the outcome of this November’s presidential election, or even whether an increasingly erratic Donald Trump will accept the result as legitimate. The collective delusion about the 2016 election hangs heavy.
    Between now and polling day, two fears will stalk the Foreign Office. The first is of a late October surprise – a Trump military showstopper in the Middle East or the South China Sea, designed to convulse America. The betting is that caution will prevail. “Trump talks very tough, but he has a habit of not following through” said Peter Ricketts, the former UK national security adviser.
    The second is of a November impasse – a constitutional crisis as Trump disputes the result. One former Foreign Office staff member said: “It is noticeable that Trump’s most consistent message this election is that it is rigged.” Kim Darroch, the former UK ambassador to Washington and an early Trump sceptic, notes all the preparations being made for a challenge in the supreme court.
    All observers agree that if the US can reach a consensus on the outcome, it will be the most consequential election for American foreign policy since 1940. The implications, in turn, for the UK and for the kind of government Boris Johnson will lead are enormous.
    Lord Ricketts points out that the UK is already at a historic turning point. “Put together Brexit, the return of muscular nationalism and the pandemic, you have an extraordinarily important moment, probably the biggest strategic moment facing the UK since the war. The US election only adds to that.”
    The outcome will throw up a particularly acute personal dilemma for Johnson. He knows Trump is wildly unpopular with the British electorate. The latest Pew research shows that only 19% of Britons have confidence in Trump.
    Yet if Trump wins, Johnson can reassure his party that rule-breaking populists still have a winning appeal for those who feel betrayed by mainstream politics. What have been described as “counter-order movements” will have shown they have not run out of steam. More

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    Angry Tory MPs reject Joe Biden's comments on UK-EU Brexit talks

    Conservative MPs have reacted angrily to an intervention by Joe Biden, the US Democratic presidential candidate, in the UK Brexit talks, accusing him of ignorance of the Northern Ireland peace process.In a tweet on Wednesday, Biden warned the UK there would be no US-UK free trade agreement if the Brexit talks ended with the Good Friday agreement being undermined. He tweeted: “We can’t allow the Good Friday agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit.“Any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period.”His intervention was welcomed by Richard Neal, the chairman of Congress’s ways and means committee.The backlash was led by the former cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith, who told the Times: “We don’t need lectures on the Northern Ireland peace deal from Mr Biden. If I were him I would worry more about the need for a peace deal in the US to stop the killing and rioting before lecturing other sovereign nations.”Donald Trump has made law and order a key theme of his re-election campaign after months of unrest triggered by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May.David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, said: “Perhaps Mr Biden should talk to the EU since the only threat of an invisible border in Ireland would be if they insisted on levying tariffs.”Biden spoke out after the UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, met the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, in Washington in a bid to reassure her that the British government was not seeking a hard border on the island of Ireland via measures in its internal market bill, a move that is seen by the US pro-Irish lobby as potentially fatal to the peace process.Q&AWhat is the UK internal market bill?ShowThe internal market bill aims to enforce compatible rules and regulations regarding trade in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.Some rules, for example around food safety or air quality,  which were formerly set by EU agreements, will now be controlled by the devolved administrations or Westminster. The internal market bill insists that devolved administrations  have to accept goods and services from all the nations of the UK – even if their standards differ locally.This, says the government, is in part to ensure international traders have access to the UK as a whole, confident that standards and rules are consistent.The Scottish government has criticised it as a Westminster “power grab”, and the Welsh government has expressed fears it will lead to a race to the bottom. If one of the countries that makes up the UK lowers their standards, over the importation of chlorinated chicken, for example, the other three nations will have to accept chlorinated chicken too.It has become even more controversial because one of its main aims is to empower ministers to pass regulations even if they are contrary to the withdrawal agreement reached with the EU under the Northern Ireland protocol.The text does not disguise its intention, stating that powers contained in the bill “have effect notwithstanding any relevant international or domestic law with which they may be incompatible or inconsistent”.Martin Belam and Owen BowcottRaab has argued that the measures in the UK internal market bill are proportionate, precautionary and necessary due to the EU’s politicising of the stuttering talks on a trade deal between the UK and the EU.However, the EU hit back on Thursday, saying an agreement on a trade and security deal remained conditional on the government pulling the contentious clauses in the internal market bill.The European commission’s vice-president for the economy, Valdis Dombrovskis, said: “If the UK does not comply with the exit agreement, there will no longer be a basis for a free trade agreement between the EU and the UK. The UK government must correct this before we continue to negotiate our political and economic relations.”The dispute between Biden and Downing Street poses a broader threat to UK interests if Biden, a pro-EU and pro-Ireland politician, decides to turn against Boris Johnson, who has made a virtue of his close relations with the Trump administration.The former UK trade minister Conor Burns tweeted: “Hey JoeBiden would you like to discuss the Good Friday agreement? It is also called the Belfast agreement so it doesn’t offend both traditions. Did you actually know that? I was born in NI and I’m a Catholic and a Unionist. Here if you need help.”The Conservative MP for Beaconsfield, Joy Morrissey, replied that “Biden is shamelessly pandering to the American Irish vote while refusing to engage with the UK government or UK diplomatic channels. Nice.”She later deleted her tweet, but added: “Clearly it’s all about the Irish American vote.”Burns added: “The error those of us who supported Brexit was to assume the EU would behave rationally in seeking a free trade agreement with a large trading partner like the UK..”Alexander Stafford, the Conservative MP for Rother Valley, tweeted: “Is this the same JoeBiden who once described Britain’s position in Northern Ireland as ‘absolutely outrageous’. And who hit the headlines in the 1980s for his stand against the deportation of IRA suspects from the US to Britain?”John Redwood, a leading Brexiter, said: “Trade deals are nice to have but not essential. We did not have a trade deal with the US when we were in the EU. Getting back full control of our laws, our money and our borders is essential.”Theresa May’s former chief of staff Nick Timothy rejected the frenzy, dismissing “the sudden discovery that Democrats don’t like Brexit and prefer the Irish”.Other Tory MPs including Stewart Jackson tweeted articles claiming that two of the representatives criticising the UK over the Good Friday agreement were overt IRA sympathisers, and a third was a supporter of Martin McGuinness, the now deceased former deputy first minister for Northern Ireland.The shadow foreign secretary, Lisa Nandy, said: “This shows the scale of the damage the government have done to Britain’s standing in the world. They’ve lost trust and undermined cooperation at the moment we most need it – and all to tear up an agreement they negotiated. Reckless, incompetent and utterly self-defeating.”Daniel Mulhall, the Irish ambassador to the US, has been working the corridors in Washington for the past fortnight, lobbying to lessen the threat the Irish perceive to the Good Friday agreement posed by the British proposals. He has been tweeting his gratitude to those representatives issuing support for the Good Friday agreement.No free trade deal between the UK and the US can be agreed unless it is supported by two-thirds of Congress.In a sign of Trump administration concern about the row, Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s former acting chief of staff, will shortly make his first trip to the the UK in his new role as the US special envoy for Northern Ireland.The Foreign Office, criticised by some for failing to anticipate the likely US backlash, will argue Raab’s visit to Washington may have drawn a predictable reaction from some corners, but was necessary to reassure and counter Irish propaganda.But UK diplomats will be anxious that the UK is not seen to adopt a partisan stance in the US elections, especially since Biden currently holds a fragile poll lead. More

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    Dominic Raab to face hard questions about Irish border on US visit

    The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, is travelling to Washington for talks with senior US officials and senior Democrats, where he is expected to be pressed by pro-Irish legislators to explain whether the UK is intending to break international law and undermine the Good Friday agreement.The Irish ambassador to the US, Daniel Mulhall, has been lobbying in Washington, warning that the UK’s latest row with the EU may yet lead to the re-emergence of a hard border on the island of Ireland.With the US presidential elections less than 50 days away, and the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, still the favourite to win, according to polls, Raab will be eager to reassure members of the Senate and the House of Representatives about the UK’s plans to revise the EU withdrawal agreement.The pro-Irish lobby in Washington rivals that of the UK, and the Democrats, who tend to be Brexit sceptics, want to see the dispute settled without threats, real or imagined, to peace in Northern Ireland.The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, warned last week that there would be absolutely no chance of a US-UK trade deal passing Congress if Britain violated its international agreements and Brexit undermined the Belfast accords. Any such trade deal needs two-thirds support of the Senate, and so requires substantial support from Democratic senators.A key target of UK lobbying is also likely to be Richard Neal, the chairman of the ways and means committee, which oversees trade agreements. In a statement last week he pointed out that the US was a guarantor of the Good Friday agreement.“I urge both sides to uphold the terms of this joint agreement, particularly with respect to the treatment of Northern Ireland, in accordance with international law,” Neal said. “The UK’s departure from the EU at the end of this year and any US-UK trade agreement must preserve the Good Friday agreement, which has maintained peace and prosperity for British and European peoples since 1998.“I sincerely hope the British government upholds the rule of law and delivers on the commitments it made during Brexit negotiations, particularly in regard to the Irish border protocols.”Tony Blinken, a senior foreign policy adviser to Biden, warned on twitter: “Joe Biden is committed to preserving the hard-earned peace & stability in Northern Ireland.“As the UK and EU work out their relationship, any arrangements must protect the Good Friday agreement and prevent the return of a hard border.”Biden has Irish roots and will look askance at anything that brings the threat of a hard border closer.A set-piece speech at the Atlantic Council thinktank on Thursday may be Raab’s single biggest public chance to explain UK government thinking on Ireland, as well as Iran. The UK is at loggerheads with the Trump administration on the US claim that it has the right to impose UN snapback sanctions on Iran.The UK also questions the practical impact if the US unilaterally declares it has the right to order UN member states to reimpose the sanctions lifted in 2015. The US already has punitive secondary sanctions against Iran.Like the US, the UK would like the UN embargo on conventional arms sales to Iran to be extended, but cannot see a way in which the Russia and China would not use their security council veto to block such a move.Raab on his trip will also be seeking an update on the civil lawsuit being filed by the parents of Harry Dunn in Virginia against Ann Sacoolas, who was charged with causing death by dangerous driving after a crash last year in Northamptonshire that resulted in the 19-year-old’s death.The US has refused a UK government request for the extradition of Sacoolas, the wife of a CIA operative. The UK is not expecting the US administration to change its position on extradition, but is sympathetic to the case. More

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    Donald Trump hopes for election boost from Kosovo-Serbia talks

    The leaders of Kosovo and Serbia will meet at the White House on Thursday and Friday, in an encounter that some see as a push for a diplomatic win for Donald Trump to brandish during his re-election campaign.Kosovo’s prime minister, Avdullah Hoti, will meet with the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, in talks that Trump aides say will be primarily about economic issues between the two countries, but may pave the way to a broader deal.The goal of the talks is “to create economic development that will then somehow change the dynamic amongst the political class”, said a senior adviser to Trump in a call with reporters earlier in the week. The adviser said it was not yet clear whether Trump would take part in the meetings – suggesting he would only meet the two leaders if there is a deal to be signed.Kosovo broke from Serbia after a war and Nato bombing campaign, and declared independence in 2008, but the two sides have no relations.The White House diplomatic push, led by the Trump loyalist Richard Grenell, has irritated some European diplomats, who say the EU’s long-running mediation process should be given priority.It has also prompted fears that a land swap could be on the table as part of the deal, which many believe would have knock-on effects in other parts of the Balkans. Grenell has long denied that a land swap is under consideration.Grenell, who has courted controversy as Trump’s ambassador to Germany and then as acting director of national intelligence, has also attracted criticism for his negotiation tactics. In April, Kosovo’s ousted prime minister Albin Kurti accused Grenell of mounting a coup to overthrow him so he could present Trump with a diplomatic success in an election year. “My government was not overthrown for anything else but simply because Ambassador Grenell was in a hurry to sign an agreement with Serbia,” said Kurti.A meeting at the White House planned in late June fell apart at the last minute after prosecutors at a court in The Hague announced they had filed a draft indictment against Kosovo’s president, Hashim Thaçi. The statement was released as Thaçi was already en route to Washington.Now, two months before the US election, the meeting will finally take place, with the emphasis on economic progress.“We can either sit around and continue talking about political issues that get us nowhere, or we can do something that President Trump thinks might work, and we’re going to test it to see if it works,” said the Trump adviser.The EU-brokered talks were on hold for two years after Kosovo imposed import tariffs on Serbian goods, but have recently resumed. Meetings in Brussels, including expert dialogue and top-level discussions, are planned for next week.The EU envoy for Kosovo-Serbia talks, Miroslav Lajčak, has said an EU-brokered deal to normalise relations between Belgrade and Pristina could be ready soon.“Let’s see how much time we need, but I am speaking about months, I am not speaking about years,” he said at a forum in Slovenia this week. “Both parties are committed, both parties are serious, respecting each other.” More

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    Why a Biden presidency might not mean a return to pre-Trump foreign relations

    European leaders, desperate for an end to the Trump presidency, are being warned that four years of Joe Biden may present them with new challenges and not a simple restoration of the benign status quo in transatlantic relations prior to 2016.An evolving Biden doctrine about ending “forever wars” and protecting American workers from Chinese competition would require collective military and economic commitments from the EU that it is still ill-equipped to meet, foreign policy specialists have suggested.The overall tenor of the platform, emphasising post-Covid multilateralism and cooperation with fellow liberal democracies, is already welcome in Europe. Biden’s promised end to the institutionalised mayhem, animus towards allies and pandering to authoritarians will be a relief. Competence, reliability and dialogue may not be a high bar to set a presidency, but simple normality would amount to a revival of the idea of the west, such has been the chaos of the past four years.Forsaken multilateral institutions, such as the World Health Organization, would be rejoined, ending the US practice, in the words of Biden’s chief foreign policy adviser Tony Blinken, of simply going awol. “Ninety per cent of life is about showing up,” Blinken told Chatham House, adapting Woody Allen.Biden may seem to personify an old-school nostalgic Atlanticism of the foreign policy establishment. But the Democrat’s draft policy platform released last month reflects the influence of the progressive left, and an effort to absorb the lessons from the shock 2016 defeat.Matt Duss, Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy adviser, speaking to the European Council on Foreign Relations podcast, agreed that Biden had moved to the left, saying he had faced mobilisation on foreign policy from progressives in a way that Barack Obama never experienced. As a result, foreign policy is no longer a backwater in democratic politics, and new links between foreign and economic policy are being drawn.Many of the Obama-era foreign policy advisers now clustered around Biden, dismissed as a horror show by some on the left, also deny that they crave simple restoration, saying everything has changed since 2016.Stung by Hillary Clinton’s defeat, they recognise the populists’ claim to have better constructed a foreign policy to help Americans’ daily lives at home. William Burns, a former state department official under Obama and one of Biden’s many advisers, recently wrote: “The wellbeing of the American middle class ought to be the engine that drives our foreign policy. We’re long overdue for a historic course correction at home.”Jeremy Shapiro, a senior researcher with the European Council for Foreign Relations (ECFR), also says there has been a pressure on Democrats to make their foreign policy more relevant to daily American lives. “There was this sense that in the Obama administration foreign policy was a plaything of the elites divorced from Americans’ daily existence. The change from Obama to Biden is there will be more focus on America.”Without threatening tariff wars, the Biden platform hints at a new scepticism about globalism and free trade. In broader policy terms, Europe will welcome Biden’s commitment to the Paris climate change treaty, and to Nato, “the single most significant military alliance in the history of the world,” as Biden described the organisation to the Munich security conference in 2019. To the relief of Berlin, the withdrawal of US troops from Germany would stop. A more consistent approach to Turkey would be sought. More