Trump set to look abroad for victories

By Andrew Hammond

Donald Trump's decision to back down Friday and reopen the U.S. government could be a pivotal point in his presidency. At the half way point of his term, with much uncertainty over his prospects in the next two years, it may be Richard Nixon who provides historical guideposts to what happens next.

Nixon assumed the presidency 50 years ago this month coming to office, like Trump, during significant domestic social and political upheaval. While some have compared the potential scandals surrounding Trump to Watergate, there may be other potentially powerful parallels between the two presidents.

One of these could be the intense focus Nixon had on foreign affairs in his second two years in office from 1971 to 1973. Coinciding with the controversies of his Vietnam policy during this period, he scored a string of achievement including his landmark meeting with Chairman Mao Zedong in China, and the signing of two nuclear agreements with Moscow to limit nuclear weapons.

While the international context of Trump's presidency is significantly different from that of the early 1970s, it is quite possible he will increasingly turn his attention to foreign policy in 2019 and 2020.

Firstly, with Democrats now controlling the House of Representatives, and high political polarization in Washington as shown by the recent government shutdown, Trump will find it difficult to acquire momentum behind significant new domestic legislative measures.

Secondly, Trump will want to establish a stronger presidential legacy in the event that he fails to be re-elected, decides not to seek a second term, or voluntarily leaves or is forced from office before his term expires in January 2021. Previous incumbents have often seen foreign policy initiatives as a key part of the legacy they wish to build, and Trump appears no different.

Straight after November's midterm elections, Trump undertook significant foreign travel, including his attendance at centenary events in France for the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I. Plus also the G20 summit in Argentina later that same month where he met Chinese President Xi Jinping for a trade summit.

And already this year, he is planning a second meeting next month with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un; seeking to ratify the "new" North American Free Trade Agreement deal with Mexico and Canada; not to mention secure a successful outcome to the ongoing trade spat with China. And this along with day-to-day foreign policy gambits such as his controversial intervention last week in the power struggle in Venezuela by recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaido as the legitimate head of state rather than sitting President Nicolas Maduro.

Yet, even if Trump does now "double down" on foreign policy, a major uncertainty is whether he will secure any genuine, positive breakthroughs. Take the example of North Korea where the Trump team has sought to draw a parallel with Nixon's China policy.

While Trump could yet secure a breakthrough with Pyongyang, what is striking about his decision to engage with Kim Jong-un's regime is how spur-of-the-moment the original decision was last year with little detailed preparation. By contrast, Nixon's visit to see Mao in 1972 came after years of contact building and diplomacy by the then president's aides with a goal of normalizing relations.

Even now, more than a half year after the Singapore summit between Trump and Kim, it is unclear that the president has spent any significant amount of time getting to grips with the complexity of the North Korean nuclear challenge. He appears instead to have focused on the media relations and building up the perceived prestige of a second summit.

To this end, it is still not clear that Trump had a comprehensive, clear or coherent strategy toward Pyongyang. And this has not been helped by the change period that his foreign policy team has been going through with the recent departure of Jim Mattis from the Pentagon.

With uncertain progress since the Singapore summit, next month's meeting with Kim contains much complexity for Trump, around U.S. alliances, the nonproliferation regime, and what exactly would constitute "denuclearization" on the peninsula. It is here that some of the most recent complications between Washington and Pyongyang sprung up around the latter's purported "commitment to denuclearization" which always had potential for different meanings between the two nations.

To Trump it seems to mean unilateral disarmament. For Kim it appears to be much more about lengthy negotiations in which North Korea should be treated as an equal to the United States, giving him further propaganda victories.

It was always very likely that Kim would be wary about making concrete commitments, at least initially, and want to win economic and political concessions from Trump before any reduction in nuclear capabilities, let alone committing to "full denuclearization." And in this context, much risk as well as opportunity hangs over the outcome of next month's Trump-Kim meeting.

Nevertheless, following the Democrats' win in November, Trump may now increasingly turn to Korea and the wider world stage in advance of 2020. This will be especially likely if he perceives significant potential opportunities on the horizon, including the elusive possibility of de-escalating tensions in the world's last Cold War-era frontier through the prize of verifiable and comprehensive denuclearization of North Korea.

Andrew Hammond (andrewkorea@outlook.com) is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.