Javier Milei is mistaken if he thinks that, as Donald Trump’s best friend, he will not have to worry about foreign policy because all he will have to do is follow the orders sent to him from Washington and Mar-a-Lago. Toeing the US line would be a simple matter if the man in charge knew where he was going and approached his goals in a consistent manner, but it so happens that hardly a day goes by without Trump changing his mind about something of strategic importance.
Last Monday, he pulled out of the hat a “peace plan” for Europe which, after taking a close look at the wording, many assumed had been cooked up in Moscow where, it transpired, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witcoff has been advising people in the Kremlin on what they should do to get on good terms with his boss, and told Volodymyr Zelenskyy that if he knew what was good for him he would accept it and give Vladimir Putin almost everything he wanted. On Tuesday, Trump admitted that changes would have to be made in the original text; even people close to him thought that inviting Putin to carve up Ukraine would not impress the Norwegians who hand out the Nobel Prize for Peace that he so openly covets.
Many North Americans and, of course, Europeans were appalled by what Trump appeared to be up to. Dozens immediately compared him to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who gave Adolf Hitler the go-ahead to take over large parts of Czechoslovakia and thereby strip her of her defences in the naïve belief it would bring about “peace in our time.” In the view of Trump’s critics, handing Putin what he would hail as a victory would ensure that, after recovering from the painful mauling his armed forces have been subjected to, he would renew his campaign to restore the Russian empire by launching “special military operations” against other now sovereign nations that once belonged to it,
For Milei, all this must be bewildering. On moving into the Pink House, he posed as a fervent supporter of Zelenskyy, who rewarded him by turning up at his inauguration. But his enthusiasm quickly cooled when in the oval office of the White House Trump told the embattled Ukrainian president, and many millions of television viewers, that he had “no cards” and should cave in to Putin because unless he did, he would be guilty of starting a world war.
And then there are the problems posed by China. After threatening to wage an all-out trade war against the ambitious autocracy whose regime has concocted, with considerable success, a blend of cut-throat capitalism and dictatorial communism spiked with a strong shot of ethno-nationalism, a few days ago Trump said he had enjoyed a “very good” telephone conversation with Xi Jinping and suggested that all the nasty stuff dividing them belongs to the past. For countries such as Argentina which would like to do business with China without having to worry about risking an adverse reaction from the US, a genuine thaw in relations between the two biggest powers would be more than welcome, but Trump is so erratic that at any moment he could change his tune.
The eminent historian Bernard Lewis once remarked that, as far as people in the Middle East were concerned, the United States was an unreliable friend and a harmless enemy. That was always a bit unfair, but though many in the Middle East have learned to their cost that the US can inflict a great deal of damage if so inclined, people in Europe and East Asia have good reason to fear that it would be foolish of them to expect the superpower to back them if things got really bad. This is why the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan and other countries recently came to the conclusion that they had better rearm themselves because, unless they do so very soon, they will be easy meat for their enemies led by Russia and China.
Needless to say, rearmament will entail much more than giving a boost to factories producing guns, bullets, tanks, jet-fighters and drones; it will also mean encouraging a revival of militaristic attitudes in societies that had grown accustomed to the notion that pacifism and touchy-feely soft power would deter would-be aggressors much more effectively than a demonstrable ability to destroy them on the battlefield.
Trump is the man responsible for what is happening in Europe and East Asia, where it had been comfortably assumed that there would never be any need to restore the values of an often brutal past. He sees himself as the great peacemaker and delights in boasting that he has put an abrupt end to at least half a dozen nasty wars, but by warning others in strident tones that from now on they will have to look after themselves, he is reviving militarism in countries that generations ago beat their swords into the modern equivalent of ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Thanks to demography, their armies will be rather smaller than those of their forefathers, but technology will make them far more lethal.
Trump is not an ideologue with a carefully thought out programme of action to which he tries to adhere. His approach is that of a businessman who loves making commercial deals and on occasion likes to gamble. He plays everything by ear and does his best to take advantage of any personal weakness he thinks he detects in the men and women he runs into. For reasons that remain mysterious, he seems to admire Putin greatly. It is also evident that he dislikes Zelenskyy; he presumably felt that the Ukrainian was cutting a far more appealing figure on the world stage than he could ever hope to do and that he would have to bring him down a peg.
As for the Europeans, Trump sees them as born spongers who want US taxpayers to continue to provide the wherewithal they need to protect them from their enemies. While this may be fair enough, by reminding Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and the rest that they could no longer depend on the United States when Russia was already on the rampage and China was making bellicose noises, he has not made the world a less dangerous place. The situation will become even worse if, as for a while last week Trump seemed about to do, he throws Ukraine under the bus in order to get one over on that pesky Zelenskyy or if, to win Xi’s approval, he lets him think he will take a backseat and do nothing to dissuade him from invading Taiwan.
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