NEW YORK — America’s friends and allies have been stunned and disappointed by President Donald Trump’s disregard for the rules-based order and weaponization of tariffs. More worrying is the failure to strengthen alliances crucial to containing an aggressive China.
That was a complaint shared during a task force, “The Global Reorganization,” at the DealBook Summit in New York this month. Among the participants were a former Prime Minister of Israel and people directly or indirectly involved with United States foreign policy.
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China was not present in every discussion or every question raised by the moderator, Nicholas Kristof, an opinion columnist for The New York Times.
But its presence has loomed large behind many of the crises debated by experts, with many seeing the United States letting its guard down — and leaving its defensive partners unprotected — as China continues to threaten Taiwan, advance into the South China Sea and pursue commercial and other ties that were once firmly aligned with the American camp.
“I would expect to see a comprehensive strategy, working with allies and partners to confront China, particularly in the security realm, but also in all other areas,” said Mark Esper, who was Trump’s defense secretary during his first administration before he was fired. He called China “the greatest threat we face this century.”
China is “the first true peer competitor the United States has ever had,” said CNN host Fareed Zakaria, citing Chinese dominance in global markets for solar panels, rare earths, penicillin and the many robots in its factories.
Esper and David Petraeus, a retired general and former CIA director under President Barack Obama, agreed that a positive element of Trump’s international policy is his focus on trade with China. “After all, this is the most important relationship in the world,” said Petraeus.
But the president has not done nearly enough to contain China, Esper emphasized. On chips, artificial intelligence, TikTok and other investment issues, the United States has been “repeatedly outperformed by China this year,” Kristof noted.
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Most agreed that part of the solution involves expanding trade and security agreements with American partners in Europe, Asia and the Middle East — and continuing to adapt to the changing structure of alliances.
Avril Haines, former director of national intelligence for the United States, said that, for decades, world powers were organized like lightning bolts around the American axis.
This structure is now transforming into a “network approach, in which there are types of regional and interregional minilateralisms, less dependent on the United States as the center of this collaboration,” said Haines.
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In addition to China, the group presented examples of what it considers Trump’s foreign policy mistakes.
In his pursuit of peace in Ukraine, for example, Trump would have ceded bargaining power to Russia, they said.
“The United States has abandoned a democratic ally fighting an aggressive war of conquest led by an authoritarian regime,” said Zakaria.
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Senator Chris Coons, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, pointed to the use of airstrikes to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, with little regard for the consequences. “This reinforces the worst of American force diplomacy in the eyes of Latin America,” he said.
Kristof teased the debaters: “Are we a little instinctively against something just because Trump can do it?”
“No, I don’t think so,” said Samantha Power, former U.S. ambassador to the UN during the Obama administration. There are many “unfortunate chapters in American foreign policy, of people in good faith trying to calculate these things and getting it wrong.” But in the case of Trump, “is there really an effort to think about the people of Venezuela?”
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Participants cited some potential positives in Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip. That diplomatic ambition could be a good thing, Power said.
Ehud Barak, Israel’s former prime minister, shared Power’s cautious optimism about the president’s willingness to jump into conflict.
“Trump is so central to everything that’s going to happen in Ukraine, in the Middle East.” He also praised the Israeli and American strikes on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program this summer, calling them a “formative moment for the Middle East.”
Participants also celebrated the release of Israeli hostages, while acknowledging the fragility of the peace agreement and the unlikelihood of reaching a consensus on how Gaza will be governed.
“I don’t see any country in the world raising its hand to say it will provide the 20,000 force” requested to ensure security, with Hamas fighters unwilling to lay down their arms, Petraeus noted.
The group described a global order that has lost its way in the face of wars, humanitarian crises, technological change, economic instability and a volatile American president.
Trump’s embrace of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a recent visit to the White House received mixed reviews.
But Power said the visit had a positive outcome in directing the president’s attention to the crisis in Sudan. “This is what life is like in this complicated multipolar world,” she said. “Find those zones of cooperation.”
Main points of the debate
— In the current multipolar global order of regional networks, countries have become less dependent on the United States as a center for trade and diplomatic collaboration.
— Trump’s punitive tariffs and erratic diplomacy have alienated allies and partners, damaging the United States’ long-term relationship with China.
— The Trump administration has achieved some foreign policy successes in the Middle East, but it has also undermined American legitimacy and security.
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