Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
President-elect Donald Trump spent the holidays mocking Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, suggesting that the U.S. could annex and make Canada the 51st state. He then went on to propose that the U.S. retake the Panama Canal, and buy Greenland.
Trump’s remarks brought the usual outcries and exhortations, but, in all seriousness, Trump will have more immediate foreign policy challenges on Day One, beginning with the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as Washington’s overall relationship with China.
Experts at the Quincy Institute have assembled several key priorities, keeping in mind Trump’s stated desires to pursue foreign policy in the national interest and reduce Washington’s foreign entanglements and new wars abroad. Can he keep to his own goals, considering the hot wars in Israel and Ukraine and Washington’s continued involvement in them — and growing tensions with Beijing?
2025 will be the test.
According to QI’s Eurasia and Grand Strategy fellows, Trump should maintain his commitment to putting U.S. interests first. This would mean pursuing a European balance of power strategy that avoids unnecessarily provoking Russia; rather, bringing all parties to the table and ending the war through negotiations.
This path to peace would focus on a new European security relationship that takes into account Russia’s longstanding aversion to NATO expansion, emphasizing instead expediting Ukrainian admission to the European Union and providing strong guarantees for Kyiv to deter future Russian aggression.
Furthermore, says QI experts, the U.S. should play “the China card” by taking into account Beijing’s interest in seeing the war in Ukraine end, including some of the ancillary dynamics — like North Korea’s military support of Moscow. Including China in coming to a negotiated peace would help bind the parties and could help improve the rocky relations between Washington and Beijing, and lay the foundations for future diplomatic cooperation
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