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US allies wary of a disruptive new Trump presidency

Former US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky look on during a meeting in New York on Sept 25, 2019, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. AFP

In a March post on his website, Donald Trump pledges to end the war in Ukraine when reelected to a second term, halt confrontation with Russia and "finish the process we began under my administration fundamentally reevaluating Nato's purpose".

It is a promise likely to unsettle America's allies and alarm Western foreign policy and defence establishments. But that won't concern MR Trump or his supporters.

Mr Trump's first term saw his idiosyncratic and sometimes shifting worldview moderated, shaped and interpreted for US partners by a fast-revolving selection of senior officials with often considerable experience.

That looks less likely, if not outright impossible if he returns to office after the November 2024 election. Mr Trump and those around him are running on an explicit platform of "dismantling the deep state", which they define as including the State Department, Pentagon and US intelligence agencies.

It is a position on which Mr Trump and his campaign have doubled down in earnest following his indictment. Mr Trump pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to 37 criminal counts that he unlawfully kept national security documents when he left office and lied to officials who sought to recover them.

According to a Reuters-Ipsos poll last week, more than 80% of registered Republican voters view those charges as at least partly politically motivated. If Mr Trump takes the Republican nomination -- and he retains a double-digit lead in the polls -- then he will be running on a platform more anti-establishment, isolationist and disruptive to decades of US foreign and military policy than anything previously seen.

The same March campaign website post also talks of a "complete commitment to dismantling the entire globalist neo-con establishment that is perpetually dragging us into endless wars pretending to fight for freedom and democracy abroad, while they turn us into a third world country and ... dictatorship right here at home".

So far, few of America's allies have engaged publicly with the prospect of a second Trump presidency. Opinion polls show the 2024 election potentially too close to call, particularly with the contest likely once again between Mr Trump and incumbent President Joe Biden.

Mr Biden and his foreign policy team have worked fast to re-establish a much more mainstream foreign policy, particularly with allies. Russian President Vladimir Putin's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine also provided an opportunity to re-establish US leadership after the turmoil of the pandemic and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2020-2021.

US support has been critical to Ukraine's battlefield successes, while Washington has also led international sanctions against an increasingly isolated Russia. Mr Trump has made it clear he might reverse that policy.

SHAPING UKRAINE'S WAR

"Every day the proxy battle in Ukraine continues, we risk global war," Mr Trump said in his March post. "We must be absolutely clear that our objective is to IMMEDIATELY have a total cessation of hostilities... We need PEACE without delay."

Nervousness over a Trump win is likely to give further impetus to Ukrainian and Western desires to make swift further advances, although the fact the Biden administration has only recently decided to supply F-16 jets and advanced tanks makes them unlikely to have significant frontline impact for some time.

Who, under Mr Trump, might implement or lead on such foreign and defence policy beyond Mr Trump himself is harder to say than when he first ran in 2016. Then, his comments on Nato being "obsolete", among others, raised concerns, but he was still able to assemble a foreign policy team.

That included his first Defense Secretary and former Marine General James Mattis, Secretary of State and former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson and his successor, former CIA director Mike Pompeo. All of those, however, were either fired or resigned, with a final exodus of senior staff after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan 6, 2021.

The site of pro-Trump rioters storming the U.S. legislature and clashing with police and National Guard was the last straw for many of the US defence establishment. Even those who have not explicitly condemned the former president, such as his final defense secretary Chris Miller, have criticised his inflammatory rhetoric. For Mr Trump, even that might be seen as a betrayal.

Relationships with allies are also likely to be similarly more awkward than during his first term. Relations with French President Emmanuel Macron and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel were particularly poor, while Mr Trump dismissed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as "two-faced" after he was caught on camera apparently mocking Mr Trump at a 2019 Nato summit.

BIGGER ISSUE THAN TRUMP

Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg put considerable effort into wooing Mr Trump during his first term, crediting the US president's highly public interventions with encouraging European nations to increase their defence spending. Some US officials, however, grew increasingly concerned during Mr Trump's term that he wanted to quit the alliance in its entirety, upending eight decades of US policy.

Huge uncertainties remain over what a Trump administration's policy priorities might be. In his last term, Mr Trump threatened to pull US troops from Germany but had relatively good relations with Poland's right-wing government. But with Warsaw now amongst Ukraine's most vociferous supporters, how that relationship would develop is anybody's guess.

The same goes for policy on China, where Mr Trump has dismissed Mr Biden as "too soft". The first Trump administration was characterised by trade wars with both the developed and developing world, ratcheting up tensions with both. It also saw heightened confrontation with Iran, although that now appears to have moved further down the political agenda.

Only 3% of Americans polled currently view war and foreign conflicts as the most important problem facing the United States today, only marginally outstripped by those who view the main problem as terrorism and extremism. That contrasts with 22% viewing the main issue as the economy and employment, 12% crime and corruption and 8% immigration.

That points to a much larger issue. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, America's allies have been reassured by Mr Biden's determination to bolster European defence and take the lead on issues such as sanctions. In the longer run, however, they are steeling themselves for an era in which such an approach might be the exception rather than the rule.

America's politics are becoming more isolationist and more unpredictable. Other countries are likely to learn to adapt to or exploit that in years to come. Reuters

Peter Apps is a Reuters columnist writing on defence and security issues.

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