Trump, Israel, and the Republic of Korea

By Sidney Tarrow

In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network in late March, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pronounced that he thought "President Trump right now has been … raised for such a time as this, just like Queen Esther, to help save the Jewish people from the Iranian menace" (Jerusalem Post, March 24).

Pompeo was referring to Trump's tweet that he intended to recognize Israel's effective annexation of the Golan Heights, which has been illegally occupied since the Six-Day War in 1967.

If this was a "one-off" move it would not be surprising: Trump wanted to help his friend, Prime Minister Netanyahu, secure his re-election in a tight Israeli election campaign.

But Trump was also aiming to please Trump's Evangelical base ― which supports Israeli possession of the "whole" land of Israel ― and gain support from Jewish-Americans in his own re-election campaign.

Trump's interference in the Israeli election is part of a broader shift in American politics under his reign: the use of foreign policy for domestic purposes. This has profound implications for the Republic of Korea and for America's international alliances in general.

Consider how Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord soon after his election. True, the move followed from the president's distaste for binding multilateral agreements and from his disdain for America's European allies.

But it also carried fuel ― both literally and figuratively ― to his supporters in the domestic oil and gas lobby, which has profited handsomely from his administration's reversal of domestic hydrocarbon regulations at a time when climate change is an increasingly growing certainty.

Or think of how Trump interfered in the British Brexit debate. With studied indifference to the negative effects of Brexit on the U.K.'s economy and its place in the world if it blunders out of the European Union, Trump and his acolyte, Steve Bannon, are trying to push Britain towards the same kind of nativist isolation they want to foist on their own country. (It is no accident that Trump's closest British friend is the extreme nationalist, Nigel Farage, who campaigned for him in the 2016 election).

Foreign policy analysts might argue that these moves are no more than an expression of the increasing globalization of world politics in which the line between domestic and foreign policy has been blurred. That may be so, but this does not gainsay the negative effects of Trump's domestic nativism on America's allies ― among them the Republic of Korea.

In a time of increasingly delicate relations among the U.S., the ROK, and the DPRK over the latter's nuclear threat, the Trump administration has been largely indifferent to the effects of its policies on its South Korean ally. A recent example is symbolic of this indifference.

In February, after Trump failed to gain congressional support for his plan to keep undocumented immigrants out of the U.S. by building a 2,000-mile border wall, he proclaimed a national emergency. This, he claimed, gave him the power to shift money from congressionally-approved projects in order to finance the wall.

Congress and most of the public disagreed, but on March 17, Trump's acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan provided Congress with a list of projects to be taken from the military construction budget to help pay for the wall (the New York Times, March 18).

Most of these projects are to be built on American soil. But largely unnoticed in the political outrage over Trump's unconstitutional move was information that the Pentagon would take $70.5 million from the budgets for two U.S. bases ― Camp Tango in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, and Kunsan Air Base in North Jeolla Province.

In a time of increased tension ― but also possibilities for improved relations ― on the Korean Peninsula, President Trump appeared indifferent to the effects of his policies on his South Korean ally.

Political realists expect that big countries will outweigh small ones in international politics. But savvy hegemons take account of their allies' interests ― especially when these allies are under stress, as is the case on the Korean Peninsula today. They are also expected to separate their domestic policies from their foreign policy initiatives. Neither of these precepts have been evident in the Trump administration's foreign policy in East Asia.

The implications go well beyond the military base policy of the USFK, and even beyond Washington's critical relations with Seoul. As the Moon administration tries to manage its delicate relations with the North, an erratic and ill-informed American president supported by a recumbent Republican base may be threatening to destroy the edifice of international cooperation built up over the last seventy years. Loyal allies, like the ROK, should take note.

Sidney Tarrow is the emeritus Maxwell M. Upson professor of government at Cornell University. He is the co-author, most recently, of "The Resistance: The Dawn of the Anti-Trump Opposition Movement."