- Good morning everyone, and
welcome to this new Geopolitical Rendez-Vous.
I am pleased to meet up again with Fabrice Ravel, to take on a new topic -
the international actions carried out by the United States under the Trump presidency.
We have had the opportunity to look at the United States in international relations.
But not so much President Donald Trump's own action,
which will be the subject of our session today.
Is there a Trump doctrine in international relations?
Hello Fabrice. - Hello Olivier.
- So, we are used to talking about the United States, the country is often involved in the issues we deal with,
international relations, and we each have an almost personal relationship with the United States,
and we could even say as a joke that we are all American voters
in the presidential election period.
It's a personal and emotional relationship,
which is intensified today by the personality
of President Trump, who we could say is controversial,
but precisely the purpose of the Geopolitical Rendez-Vous is to leave passions and emotions to one side,
to try and take a step back,
which is necessary if we want to study the facts.
So, since today's subject is the Trump doctrine,
perhaps we should first define what a doctrine is.
- Yes, absolutely, the Trump presidency
is something our students often want to talk about,
they were surprised that we have spoken about the United States, or other issues,
but that until now, we hadn't yet discussed the Trump presidency. Actually,
there are two explanations you are
right to underline;
first, it requires a certain distance.
We shouldn't forget that the Trump
presidency, after all, is still quite recent,
it's just 18 months since President Trump was elected on
16 November 2016, and he took office on 20 January 2017. Then,
to say the least, his personality is very controversial, so there is still a lot of passion, or impulse, that all comes together,
and so, it is really necessary to take a step back when putting a case forward.
So, the interesting thing is,
that in effect the best way of trying to perceive foreign policy
under the presidency of Donald Trump,
would be to start by recalling
the logic of doctrine in the United States,
because it is a logic that is a little particular, or unique, in the United States, even if there are other countries that do the same.
But it is less common in Europe.
It's a pretty classical approach,
in which we have an American president,
often in a speech, which becomes a founding speech,
seeking to identify the main lines of interpretation
of the geopolitical world,
and what would ultimately result from this - what the strategy and means to be deployed by the United States of America should be.
I think our students would be quite surprised
to see the number of doctrines
that have been put forward in the United States.
Over 200 years on, I will simply mention the best-known ones.
There is the Monroe Doctrine, formulated by James Monroe,
enacted in 1823, which also enacted
a relationship between the United States and the countries in South America,
and European states, which hones in
rather on a logic of isolationism until the 20th century.
There is a somewhat lesser known doctrine,
but which has had a great impact on the United States,
and that is the doctrine of Theodore Roosevelt,
who pronounced it in 1901, the famous
Big Stick theory, saying that
in international relations,
we're in a power struggle, that's what we're going to come back to.
There's a better-known theory,
that of Woodrow Wilson, which was announced in 14 points in a speech
in January 1918.
And which by the way, and I would insist on this point,
because at the time of the statement, we could say all this was rather conceptual.
Except that unlike the 14 Wilson points, they led to the creation of the League of Nations,
and later on, the United Nations.
This was a disruption in international relations, wanting to set up a general assembly
of united nations.
And then, closer to home, there is also the Truman Doctrine,
the famous containment
during the Cold War on the communist world,
and the domino theory,
which also became specific, since
General Eisenhower,
who conceptualized it, said that
when there is a country that experiences a communist revolution,
the risk is that it will end up
by influencing its neighbours and making them communists too. So,
this led to the Vietnam War, which lasted 20 years,
from 1954 to 1974.
Unfortunately,
the least we can say is that for the moment we haven't had this founding speech from Trump, who communicates more via Twitter,
and even avoiding exaggeration, it's still pretty true.
He does this for sensitive subjects too.
So, we can't even rely on that discourse.
If you will allow me one last remark,
you point out that Trump
is quite heavily criticized.
This is not the first time that a President of the United States has been criticized, we can remember that George W. Bush,
who was severely criticized, even by Ronald Reagan,
as Françoise Coste points out very well in her biography of Bush, from 1981 to 1988.
- No big founding speech, Twitter communication,
collaborators who can be understood but who resign.
It's very difficult to read the Trump presidency,
although there is one thing that can be verified,
from a factual perspective,
and actions that are being undertaken internationally.
Can we identify from these actions,
and how he handles cases,
a guideline to Trump policy?
- So, this is the first reflection in terms of methodology, we could tell our students that it would be appropriate
to apply this to international relations, but that it could,
because this could be the downside,
immerse us in immediacy or factual information, or in
events as we know them today.
Unfortunately, even if it's a natural and a somewhat easier approach,
it's not going to be of much help to us in this case,
because in retrospect, we can distinguish
three types of behaviour under the Trump presidency. It is true
that there are a number of cases for which you feel an attitude,
in the long term, or a guideline, to come back quite rightly to what you said, I am thinking in particular of the Paris agreements
on climate, where it was clearly understood that at least there the United States would walk out.
Then there's the relationship with Iran, which is a country that was mentioned at a previous session,
where it is clear that not only is there a questioning
of the Treaty on Nuclear Agreements,
signed on 14 July 2015 in Vienna,
which now even has a policy of economic sanctions.
But the problem is that these cases are very limited.
There are many more on the one hand which are
ambiguous, not because they are ambiguous in themselves,
but because if we confront them
there may be doubt as to the actual line followed.
I'm going to take two examples if I may.
We see that the United States of America recognized Jerusalem
as the capital of Israel, which really hit the news,
and which may suggest a certain guideline,
but previously,
in May 2017 - and the recognition of Jerusalem was on 6 December
2017 - Donald Trump had signed trade agreements with Saudi Arabia for 380 billion dollars,
a third of which was for armaments.
So, when you take both together,
it's pretty hard to see if there is a
pro-Israeli policy, as is traditional in the United States, as they
also seem to want to get closer to a country
like Saudi Arabia, and then there are cases
that involve even more doubts,
in which there are clearly contradictions.
And there are two of them in particular,
the most significant, there is one that we will discuss later, with European countries,
but as for North Korea, it's even edifying, Olivier, if you don't mind me saying.
We shouldn't forget 19 September 2017,
the particularly virulent comments
at a UN General Assembly, no less.
Donald Trump had threatened North Korea with total destruction - these are very powerful words.
In the end he had a summit meeting in June 2018.
There is one thing we should remember,
never before had a U.S. president met a North Korean counterpart,
since the creation of North Korea, in other words since the 1950s.
And on top of that,
if we review the images, they are quite impressive.
The President of North Korea and Donald Trump are shaking hands,
and let's not forget that when the armistice was signed
in 1953, the Americans and North Koreans refused to shake hands.
So, there was
a 12-month interval,
and this policy that is clearly, well,
it may seem contradictory at first,
as far as relations with Russia are concerned,
we can see that we are oscillating between a desire to show friendship,
a good friendship with Vladimir Putin,
with the possibility of starting another Cold War, which does not simplify the interpretation,
even if in the end, we will try to bring out
a general impression of what might be
the logic that Donald Trump is currently following.
- So, no founding speeches,
no clearly defined, coherent actions in any case.
We have other sources
in Geopolitics, it means continuing by
comparing, and in particular by comparing to large systems, with a historical perspective,
so, we're going to get into some comparisons to see if anything comes out of it. - Certainly.
- The first comparison is with the doctrines that we have mentioned.
Where is Trump in relation to
the historical heritage of the United States?
- So, what is interesting is that it would be very tedious to state all the doctrines one by one, we have mentioned some of them,
so now we have to try and bring them together.
And here, I think we can indeed identify three principles.
There is one that we will call
Machiavellian, which is what Gérard Chaliand does in a book, America is Back. It's interesting,
even if the work is a little dated, it's from 2003,
I would recommend students to read it because
he tends to bring together the
great historical traditions, and there are three of them.
A realistic logic,
in which the balance of power, and in which we should
refrain from any moral perspective,
this would be Theodore Roosevelt, with the Big Stick theory we were talking about earlier.
There is a second one, which would be
moral, even moralizing,
that's very important, and not only that,
but we are getting into a moral logic in relations,
almost like a teacher,
there would be some kind of ascendency over other countries in this, because the United States has a unique history.
Or there is a special destiny in the United States.
We shouldn't forget that, because,
in this logic, we always perceive the positive dimension,
but we always forget some of it,
the dimension that could tend towards a certain hegemony.
Now with Woodrow Wilson, we always see the aspect that is
pacifist, almost a little naively,
but we forget the fact that being a teacher himself,
he had a strong belief that the United States was on a mission,
almost a divine mission, as it says in t he introduction to the Constitution.
It comes from Thomas Jefferson, so in fact, there would be this second main line,
and then there would be a third major line that is much later,
embodied by Ronald Reagan, in which there would be both the combination of a realistic approach,
and also, an approach that could almost be described as mechanical,
in the face of the Evil Empire, which Reagan said in a famous speech,
and which would be the Soviet Union. So,
to cut a long story short, more of an ultra-realistic approach,
a moral approach,
and an approach that would combine both. But frankly,
we're going to have to go a little further, because
considering what was said earlier,
the decisions taken by the Trum p presidency over the past 18 months
do not allow us to determine coherently
if it would be related to one of these three main sources.
- We're going to have to look even further back in time, and see if there's some kind of
cultural strategy that has been inherent in American politics
right from the start. - Yes, the point you raise is interesting.
It seems to me, because it allows us in addition
to raise a point that I think is very important
for our students,
the logic of strategic culture.
And it's interesting where they go to work in companies,
and where there is an author,
who is well known to both of us, a sociologist, Michel Crozier, who very early in 1977,
in a famous book, The Actor and the System,
showed
that you think you're completely free to make strategic choices,
but often,
even unconsciously, there is a tendency to reproduce patterns,
because they would have succeeded on the one hand,
but also, because they correspond to a cultural reading,
or to a reading we make of the world.
So, what is really interesting in this book is that
he uses
an event in international relations, the Cuban missile crisis,
and he shows that Kennedy resisted a major desire
of the American general staff, which advocated, it should be recalled, the total bombardment of the island.
If you allow me to develop this idea a little bit,
I think it's all the more interesting because when you take sports,
the main sport in the United States, American football,
which was created by Harvard University,
around 1895-96,
we can see that the United States also likes
anticipation in terms of strategy.
Which brings us back to the logic of doctrine.
American football is a sport that was
inspired by rugby, but in which Americans are told,
to reduce the risks,
you have to anticipate actions by building strategies upstream.
And so, in fact, there is already this first fundamental work,
and then it was completed in a book by Bruno Colson,
who seeks to understand American strategic culture.
The book was published in 1993,
and identifies a number of points
that have been prominent for 200 years.
And this is interesting precisely in the perspective of the Trump presidency,
it's important not to forget it, it's that the Americans,
obviously with nuances, because right now, they've been there for over 200 years.
They have more in general,
a diplomacy that is quite soft, to use an Anglo-Saxon term,
or flexible, but once they are in a conflict,
they are particularly determined and particularly tough in their choices.
We should remember the choice of nuclear bombs on the Japanese, although we tend to
forget it, and then the secession war they inflicted on themselves.
And as we said,
the Vietnam War, so in fact, what would emerge in a prominent way
from this analysis,
even if it isn't enough to explain the Trump doctrine,
is that there's still one thing,
once the United States has made a choice,
and in particular when they find themselves in a military situation,
they still tend to assume
rather violent strategic choices.
- So, the first comparison is with doctrines, Trump,
compared to previous doctrines,
Trump, the second comparison, in relation to American strategic culture,
which brings us to a third comparison that is crucial.
This is the international geopolitical context,
It's 2018,
and sometimes we have a tendency, and it's a bias we have,
all of us, thinking about the world as if we were in 1945.
However, there have been major changes,
and maybe this is a relevant interpretation to be able to understand Trump's action.
- Yes, I find this quite
interesting, perhaps even the most interesting and most paradoxical point,
because you rightly refer to the rupture of 1945, there is a second one
which also comes to mind, if you don't mind, the fall
of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and then the end of the Cold War, 1989-91.
Because after all,
we rightly had the impression that the Soviet Union was collapsing,
and that in the aftermath of the Cold War,
when we had two great powers to globalize the world,
but which opposed each other in everything, the Soviet Union on the one hand, and the United States on the other.
Suddenly, we were left with only one power,
which perhaps hadn't increased its intra-faction capacities,
but which in fact found itself alone,
with such power
as had never been seen before. Besides, we should recall,
that it was at this time
that the concept of the world police force was coming together,
and the rogue state.
That is to say, this was a globalized world, where the concept of globalization was beginning to emerge
and where there were two or three states that didn't behave properly,
which should be punished under UN mandate.
I am thinking in particular of the first war in Iraq,
from August 1990
to February 1991.
And this is very important because
in effect it was us.
I have the impression that everyone forgets this turning point.
There were 20 of us after that,
and it's not certain that the United States
is on the same latitude, due to the emergence of new countries on the one hand,
and neither the same means, perhaps due to a decline,
or increased competition, I am thinking in particular of China.
So, and this is something of a paradox,
today we tend to
still have this idea that the United States is unilateral,
it's an interesting concept, in other words hyper-realism,
they are the only ones to decide,
while their means are reportedly decreasing.
And I wonder if that's not
the best starting point to understand
what a Trump doctrine might look like, as we're going to try and define it now.
- So, let's go, I suggest we ask what is this Trump doctrine?
- If we combine all the comparisons we have just made,
which is quite interesting.
First of all, it's true that you could have the feeling that it's pretty much disconnected.
But there are still two or three major trends
that emerge. First of all,
there's a lot of confusion
between the financial aspect and the geopolitical aspect.
And there we have an issue that has not yet been mentioned and that I think is fundamental.
It's the links between the United States, so it concerns us first and foremost,
and the European Union, or NATO.
And that came to light
at the G7 meeting
on 9 June 2018,
and at the Extraordinary NATO Summit in Brussels,
on 11 July 2018.
Because Trump, on Twitter, by the way,
made it perfectly clear,
from his point of view,
that it is not acceptable
for Americans to devote
3.5 to 4% of their GDP
which comes to around $700 billion for this year
while Europeans, despite their commitment,
and we have to be honest about this,
there are only 7 of them
out of 27, or 28 if you include the United Kingdom,
which would be at 2% as promised by the Europeans
in terms of financial and military commitment.
So, Trump's argument is to say,
it's really quite inconceivable
that we have to ensure the safety of Europeans,
Europeans who benefit from it
and then at the same time wage a trade war against us,
flood us with their products,
and here we can see that Germany was a particular target.
And the interesting thing is that
in fact, under the guise of a comeback of unilateralism,
if you don't mind my saying so,
or strong power, you can see that here,
if there was any synthesis in terms of a slogan, it was America First.
Trump used this a lot in his
speeches during the campaign.
In fact, one might wonder if under a speech that looks
very strong, there is not a weakness
that looks like
baring yourself.
And that is the link with our previous intervention,
because here, paradoxically, the Americans
are making more and more decisions on their own,
because they are increasingly obsessed by financial issues.
There is a book by Bob Houdward that is quite interesting,
it was written in 2010, and dates back to Barack Obama's presidency,
because what is striking in relation to the dialectics we are trying to understand
is that Bob Houward shows that at some point when Barack Obama was being asked whether he would send
a new contingent to Afghanistan, as that was the question,
and above all, how big it would be,
Obama made an intermediate choice,
but which was less strategically driven,
based on financial reasons - basically the President said quite clearly
that they would send 30,000 men, and not 100,000 as the U.S. military wanted,
because it would be too expensive for the American taxpayer. So, here we can see that there is a financial obsession.
It's under the aspect of this financial obsession,
which in effect
we can see that Trump tries to separate
from money,
to say that he wants to reinvest in the United States, and we can see that
in particular, because there will be mid-term elections in the United States, we must not forget that,
he wants to show the American voters that it's no longer about the American voters
being the only ones to guarantee world safety.
So, I think that explains
that we're much more piecemeal
with these cases, because we're obsessed
by the immediacy of profitability
both political and financial.
And maybe the Trump doctrine
is a doctrine that combines this point of view
with the logic
I wouldn't say self-righteous, because it might be a little paradoxical,
but in any case related to internal politics,
a bit like Woodrow Wilson,
but more of ultra-realism
like Theodore Roosevelt,
and what would perhaps be interesting, Olivier, as a conclusion,
would be to
make some sense of the two opening matters, which brings us
to ask ourselves
this question which is related to the Trump doctrine,
which on the one hand is that this Trump doctrine, what we try to extract from it
doesn't bring us to ask ourselves the question about
what the real means of the United States are in the world today,
from a financial and military point of view, so
in the end we are not
holding onto an image that is somewhat dated and no longer corresponds to reality.
With resources that are shrinking,
and then there's a second point,
which is whether Trump is in the end an exception
in this reading, or if rather he is a firm trend
and so if there are from that point of view
still marked differences between the Republican and Democratic parties,
or rather a cumbersome consensus
that would ultimately be trapped in several objective realities
that we can't escape from.
- Fabrice, I would like to propose something, we will ask the students these two questions on the forum
of the Geopolitical Rendez-Vous, and it will be up to them to determine
which axis they would prefer,
and we'll answer that question at a future session.
- I'd be happy to. Thank you, Olivier. - Thank you, Fabrice.
Thank you all for following us in this new session, we'll see you again
very soon for the Geopolitical Rendez-Vous.
For more infomation >> Acosta Proven Wrong After Telling Trump Migrants Would Not Scale Walls - Duration: 1:29. 
For more infomation >> 2020 Candidate Richard Ojeda Believes He Can Turn Trump Voters Back To The Dem | MTP Daily | MSNBC - Duration: 8:20. 
For more infomation >> Fmr. Amb: Reported Trump Devil's Bargain After Khashoggi Killing Horrendous | The Last Word | MSNBC - Duration: 7:48. 
For more infomation >> Trump reacts to judge's ruling on Jim Acosta's press pass - Duration: 1:11. 
For more infomation >> The Reporter Who Exposed Trump's Record-Breaking Lying Ahead Of Midterms | The Last Word | MSNBC - Duration: 8:53. 
For more infomation >> The President Donald Trump White House Is Suddenly Urging Decorum | Deadline | MSNBC - Duration: 7:39. 
For more infomation >> Conservatives Lawyers Concerned With President Donald Trump, Rule Of Law | Morning Joe | MSNBC - Duration: 9:10. 
For more infomation >> Indictments Coming? What Mueller's Latest Move Means For President Trump | The 11th Hour | MSNBC - Duration: 8:12. 
For more infomation >> Donald Trump Lashes Out As His Lawyers Prepared Answers For Robert Mueller | Morning Joe | MSNBC - Duration: 9:35. 
No comments:
Post a Comment