It’s not his cosying up to dictators.
US president Donald Trump made quite a turnaround regarding North Korea. Insulting the North Korean leader as a rocket man, sending ships towards the country and threating with all sorts of consequences, he first burnt down any bridges that were still to be found in an anyways tense relationship, to come to a meeting this week with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, and proclaim him a nice guy with whom he could do bussiness.
Time will tell, what will come of it. North Koreans have always wanted guarantees, they will not get attacked and development of nuclear weapons was just a means to that end. Never were they really contemplating an attack on United States, no matter their bellicose rhetoric and aggressive moves. It seems, they have gotten, what they wanted and Trump is just trying to sell this as a huge success. Both sides are happy.
The Russian interference in US presidential elections story hasn’t died away yet, allthough it is questionable, how many people still take it serious. But, there are still occasional Trump is under Putins thumb takes and now the US president is accused of not caring that Kim is a dictator of an impoverished country, that still has gulags for its citizens. Well, he doesn’t seem to care about Saudi war again Yemen either, and that doesn’t make much news.
United States has always supported dictators, if that was in their interest. That didn’t push away their other allies, even if those were freedom loving, human rights abiding democracies. The real reason so many US allies are now worried and must be thinking about alternatives to the world order they grew accustomed to, is Donald Trump really is putting America first and that comes at their expense. To them it seems, they are dealing with a businessman, who will blackmail them into agreeing to deals, that are not in their best interests. They could swallow that, if it wouldn’t seem so one sided, that it threatens trade wars, that it threatens the same world order, the United States put up in the first place and their allies agreed to.
Then there is the instability. Trump one day says one thing, and the other he changes the tune. You can be his worst enemy, and the next week he finds you a great guy. Can US allies really count on a man like that, can they count on a country he leads? Can they trust someone, who wishes to sell them weapons, because that brings in money, but would sanction their firms, if they would deal with Iran, a country a deal was made and signed with?
Politicians lie, but Trump brings it to a whole new level. It often seems, he just goes with the flow of his thoughts, not really having a plan. He is not even lying as much as he is bullshiting, not taking care to construct believable lies, but assuming his words are irrelevant and he can do whatever he pleases. This puts US allies in a situation, when they can’t trust even his words, because, who knows what he will come up with next.
It doesn’t seem, Donald Trump is a president willing to go to a real war, be it in Syria, or against North Korea. Probably not even against Iran. He is loud, he insults and threatens and that’s it. The real danger is, that he sees United States as a business in competition with others and he wants to get such a good deal, that in the process he threatens the very fabric of US centric world order, that US economic and military power rests on.