“Trump returns to the White House at a time when politics in North America and Europe are fracturing. This rupture – caused by the growing divide between rich and poor within the world’s richest societies and the inability of traditional parties to address it”
In Part I of her examination of what’s in store when Trump’s in the White House, Nato, War, Nukes: What Should we Expect from Trump? Carol Turner argued that his foreign policy record during his first presidential term is a guide to what we can expect after 20 January. In Part II, Carol reminds us what some of those action were.
As Donald Trump’s inauguration draws closer, media scrutiny of his latest foreign policy pronouncement has increased. At first sight, some of them seem off-base to say the least – the US should own Greenland, or Canada should become America’s 51st state. Bizarre or not, each contains a message about the Make America Great Again (Maga) approach to foreign policy Trump brings to his second term in the White House.
Take the case of Greenland. It is the world’s largest island and most scarcely populated land mass, located between the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans. An autonomous territory of Denmark, its soil is rich in uranium, graphite, rare earth metals, and other valuable deposits; and its seabed is believed to hold significant oil and gas reserves.
The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on earth. Greenland’s sea ice is melting, opening up new possibilities of resource extraction, faster trade routes, new fishing zones, and military and space bases. These economic and strategic possibilities are not lost on Trump, which is why he refused to rule out the use of military force to control them.
Decoding Trump’s America First policy
Trump returns to the White House at a time when politics in North America and Europe are fracturing. This rupture – caused by the growing divide between rich and poor within the world’s richest societies and the inability of traditional parties to address it – has created the space for the rise of the Trumps, Farages, Le Pens, and Melonis.
Trump’s Maga clarion call is reflected elsewhere in Europe – in Farage’s ‘put the Great back in Britain’ slogan, and le Pen’s ‘France for the French’. These ‘my country first’ slogans and policies adopted by an increasing number of European politicians and parties are intended to channel supporters’ anger towards outsiders – Muslims, Latinos, refugees, asylum seekers – and away from the neo-liberal economic strategies which strengthen the role of big business in state and government.
When Trump says he can end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, it’s not a satisfactory settlement for the people of Ukraine he has in mind. When Trump says he would encourage Russia to attack any Nato member that fails to pay their way, he’s not pitching to change the first tenet of the Nato Alliance but threatening to withdraw support from member states failing to pay their fair share of Nato costs.
Ending the war in Ukraine
As the third anniversary of war approaches, it is clear that Ukraine is unable to defeat Russia militarily, without further intervention by the US and Nato allies. It is equally clear that escalation of the sort we’ve witnessed since August last year not only threatens to extend the war across Europe and beyond but also poses the possibility of a nuclear exchange.
Trump’s intention to end the Ukraine war ‘in 24 hours’ has begun to take shape. As fighting escalated, in September Vice President-elect JD Vance put forward a plan. Russia and Ukraine would retain the land they currently held and a demilitarised zone would be created with the Ukrainian side heavily fortified to prevent further Russian advance. In return, Putin would receive a ‘guarantee of neutrality’ from Ukraine – meaning no Nato membership for now at least.
Keith Kellogg, the Special Envoy to Russia and Ukraine Trump named in November, has put forward a moratorium on Ukraine’s Nato membership. Both Biden and Trump have said Ukraine should not join Nato and, with little choice, Zelensky says he’ll accept this if Ukraine’s security concerns are met.
However, a ‘fact-finding’ visit to Russia by Kellogg in January was called off at the last minute without explanation. Neither has a date been agreed yet for Trump’s meeting with Putin to end ‘the bloody mess’. What an end to the war in Ukraine will look like remains unclear.
What to expect from Trump
Widespread confusion about Trump during his first presidential term is, by and large, resolved. He will be transactional, a deal-maker.
No president makes policy in a vacuum and, by and large, the strategic decisions of one presidential term roll over into the next, regardless of changes in party and occupant. The history of US foreign policy in the post-Soviet era is one of greater continuity than change. The best measure of what to expect from Trump in the next four years is therefore to look at his actions.
The reminder of his first term record below is a checklist – and warning – of what we might expect from US foreign policy in Trump’s second term.
War
In his victory address last November, the President-elect said he would stop wars, not start them. He claimed his first term in office, January 2017 to January 2021, was four years when ‘we had no wars’ and ‘we defeated Isis in record time’. The record shows otherwise
- Afghanistan – the US-led military invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 ended in August 2021 when the last US troops were drawn down. The Doha Agreement of February 2020 between the US and Taliban which ended the occupation, left Afghans to their fate at the hands of the Taliban.
Afghanistan today is experiencing a severe and many-sided humanitarian crisis. Extreme repression, human rights violations, and economic upheavals continue. The Taliban carries out public executions, stonings and floggings. Enforced disappearances, unlawful detentions, arbitrary arrests, torture and other forms of ill-treatment are commonplace. The Taliban has failed to lift restrictions on women and girls as it suggested at the time of Doha. Ethnic groups, including religious minorities, are increasingly marginalised and subject to forced evictions.
- Iraq – the US and Britain invaded Iraq in 2003; the last US troops did not withdraw until December 2011, marking the official end of the war. US attacks continued throughout Trump’s presidency. A US airstrike on Mosul in March 2017, for example, known as the Mosul Massacre killed between 2-300 civilians were killed. It was the largest civilian death toll of any airstrike during the invasion.
- Islamic State – Trump’s White House Archives say: ‘On President Trump’s watch, the world’s most notorious terrorists were brought to justice; the ISIS territorial caliphate was completely destroyed; and violent, corrupt regimes were held accountable through a mix of sanctions and targeted military action.’
As the state structures of Iraq were destroyed and dismantled, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria moved in to fill the gap. The destruction of the Iraqi state led to a series of conflicts between armed groups contesting for power. In January 2018, for example, ISIS suicide bombers killed 27 people in the centre of the capital Baghdad. The IS insurgency was a direct result of the war in Iraq. It continues to this day.
- Israel-Palestine – Trump’s first term is a record of pro-Israel actions. He promised to further strengthen US relations with Israel and in office Trump:
- recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and relocated the American embassy there,
- supported West Bank settlements,
- recognised the Golan Heights as part of Israel, and
- hosted the signing of the Abraham Accords – two bilateral agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which normalised relations by recognising Israeli sovereignty.
During his first term, Trump also:
- closed down the PLO’s Washington mission
- cut off funds to UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, and
- stopped US aid to the West Bank.
In 2024 Trump said of Israel’s military action in Gaza: ‘Biden should let Israel ‘finish the job’. In a post-election statement, he said Netanyahu was ‘doing a good job’ but President Biden was holding him back. On 7 January 2025, Trump threatened: ‘All hell will break out. If [the Israeli hostages are] not back by the time I get into office.’
Military
One of Trump’s most concerning announcements in the lead-up to his inauguration is the demand that European Nato members should spend 5% of their national GDP on defence, insisting ‘they can all afford it’. He has been critical of the Nato ‘burden’ the US bears – without acknowledging the indispensable ‘advantages’ it confers on the US including over its allies, of course.
In his first term, Trump presided over the establishment of the US Space Force and withdrew the US from the Open Skies Treaty. He strengthened and expanded the US military, strengthened Nato, abandoned important arms control treaties and further developed US nuclear weapons.
US Space Force, set up in 2019, was a new branch of the US military. Its objective was to protect US interests in space and provide the US with freedom of operation. Mark Esper, Trump’s Defence Secretary, 2019-20, described Space Force as ‘the dawn of a new era’ for the US military. ‘Space has become so important to our way of life, our economy and our national security that we must be prepared as a nation to protect it from hostile actions.’
Despite domestic and international opposition, in 2020 the US withdrew from the Treaty on Open Skies, an arms control agreement of 2002. It allowed the 36 states which signed it to surveil each other’s military installations and activities at short notice, flying unarmed aircraft over their territory and sharing information gathered with the signatories.
Nuclear weapons
During Trump’s first term, the US withdrew from a number of arms control treaties and organisations. In 2019, he unilaterally withdrew the US from the US-Russia Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a landmark agreement that was fundamental to holding the nuclear arms race in check. The INF Treaty prohibited the possession, production, and flight-testing of nuclear and conventional medium-range ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles. The US and Russia are now developing and testing new nuclear missiles and delivery systems.
Under Trump, the US nuclear weapons industry experienced its largest expansion since the end of the Cold War in 1991. Nuclear forces and missile defences were modernised and recapitalised.
Spending on nuclear arms increased by billions of dollars. The budget for making and maintaining nuclear warheads rose by over 50%, outpacing the overall rate of increase in the defence budget.
A national security aide to President Obama commented at the time: ‘the insane idea that after a pandemic and dealing with climate change and in an economic crisis in which people are struggling with massive inequality that we are going to spend this much money modernizing every last piece of our nuclear infrastructure [was] a failure of policy and a failure of imagination.’
Iran nuclear agreement
Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear agreement in 2018 – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which was ratified by the UN Security Council in 2015, after two years of negotiations conducted during Obama’s presidency. In return for some sanctions being lifted, Iran agreed to stop using heavy-water nuclear power plants capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium by-products, restricting uranium enrichment, reducing uranium stockpiles, and permitting inspection by the UN’s nuclear watchdog.
As a result, Iran withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and is now believed to be closer to developing a nuclear weapons programme. Given Israel’s increasing military incursions in the Middle East, there is growing pressure within Iran to develop a nuclear weapons programme.
Trump’s record speaks for itself. We may expect the worst.
- Carol Turner is chair of London Region CND and Coordinator of CND’s International Advisory Group. She is author of Corbyn and Trident: Labour’s continuing controversy and Walter Wolfgang a political life.
- You can follow the CND on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X and follow London Region CND on Twitter/X and Facebook.
- If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.
