Photo by Bernd Dittrich on Unsplash
Let start with the UN. First, a look at President Trump on the opening day. Certainly parts of the speech were in my opinion startling – and not in a good way. Here, a notable excerpt from his UN podium remarks to the world body, as quoted in the FP article by John Haltiwanger and Rishi Iyengar – focused on Iran:
“I have a big decision to make: Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world?” Trump mused to the audience of world leaders and diplomats. “Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again. Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?”
“After presenting the stark choice, Trump said he believed that the two sides would arrive at a deal after the upcoming U.S. midterm election “because it doesn’t make sense for them not to.” It remains unclear whether any progress toward such a deal will be made this week—Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is leading a delegation to UNGA, but we don’t yet know if the two sides will meet.”
Make a deal, huh. If not, “annihilate’ the Islamic Republic. It has become, perhaps, sadly too normal to hear or read such assertions by President Trump like this. But it may be difficult to understand how ‘over the top’ Trump has taken international diplomacy. But statements like this are ‘over the top’. Reflecting back, it is hard to imagine international leaders of any variety, friend or foe, expressing publicly in such aggressive and intemperate views possibly revealed privately, but I can’t remember statements like this made publicly but especially at the UN podium. But Trump has taken us to a sad place and I am not quite sure how we find our way back to a measured public diplomacy setting. But I do hope that leaders, notably allies of the United States – hello Mark Carney, Friedrich Merz and Andy Burnham, and others too, maybe, just maybe, calling out publicly to criticize such grim diplomacy.
Then, there was chilling public statement, by the Prime Minister himself, that the Canadian government was examining aggressive US actions against Canada and Canada’s possible response. As described in the Globe and Mail by Steven Chase and Mercedes Stephenson:
“Prime Minister Mark Carney over the past year has prepared for the unlikely risk that President Donald Trump might order military action against Canada, a news report says.”
“The New York Times, citing an interview with Mr. Carney, said he had described the probability of such action as “extreme tail risk.” It’s a term used in finance and risk management, and refers to a very rare event that would cause enormous damage but is so unlikely that people tend to ignore or underestimate it.”
“The Times reported Wednesday that Mr. Carney, after being pressed on whether he took Mr. Trump’s threats to make Canada a 51st state seriously, “suggested that he had carefully examined the possibility of a U.S.-led military invasion,” but declined to discuss in detail what that involved.”
These statements were first reported as noted in the above article as part of an interview with Prime Minister Carney by Matina Stevis-Gridneff, David E. Sanger, Tyler Pager and Colby Smith at the New York Times:
“Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada said that he had prepared over the past year for the “extreme tail risk” that President Trump might order military action against Canada, but disclosed that the two men have spoken “frequently,” even since trade talks collapsed last month, describing a tense, evolving relationship.”
“In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times at its headquarters in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday, Mr. Carney described in meticulous detail how he was systematically reducing Canada’s reliance on the United States for key technology — from space satellites to fighter jets — in an effort to make his country far less vulnerable to American threats. He outlined a plan to diversify Canada’s relationships and suppliers, and said that even with a different future president “we will be a better partner for the U.S. because of what we are doing.”” …
“When pressed on whether he took Mr. Trump’s threats to make Canada a 51st state seriously, Mr. Carney suggested that he had carefully examined the possibility of U.S.-led military action, but declined to discuss in detail what that involved.”
““I think you have a responsibility in these roles to look at extreme tail risk,” said Mr. Carney, a former central banker for Britain and Canada who approaches the world by meticulously assessing worst-case scenarios and drafting responses. He added: “That’s just risk management. That’s not a base case, but it would be irresponsible not to” prepare.”
It is both chilling, but significantly sad that President Trump has darkened the relations between such close allies especially as I look at Trump’s – dare I suggest rather fawning approaches to US competitors – China and Russia.
And speaking of China, of course, what has been notable this week is the state visit by President Xi Jinping to the United States and the meetings between Trump and Xi and the state banquet held Thursday in his honor.
As described by Alex Leary, Alexander Ward and Lingling Wei in the Wall Street Journal:
“President Trump hosted Chinese leader Xi
Jinping for a summit heavy on ceremony and light on outcomes, concealing major
disagreements between the two superpower nations on trade, technology and
Beijing’s support for Iran.”“Trump seemed intent on putting a bow on his friendship with Xi and showing off his remodeling of the White House. Speaking Thursday night at a state dinner, Trump maintained the pleasantries and didn’t delve into the substance of earlier discussions. Xi said they had common understanding on issues without elaborating.”
“Xi got what he wanted: A red carpet extravaganza—and more. Beijing pushed to have Xi treated as a full equal but Trump went further by greeting his counterpart on the tarmac, almost unheard of for a U.S. president, and delivering a spectacle for the authoritarian leader that included military flyovers and an elaborate state dinner. Xi announced China would give the U.S. two giant pandas.”
“Ahead of the summit, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent raised the idea of a notification system—in effect, an AI hotline—to alert each other when an incident rises to the level of national security. It wasn’t clear late Thursday whether that idea was addressed between the two leaders.”
“Despite ongoing friction over trade, little appeared to have been accomplished Thursday.”
“The two sides agreed to extend an existing agreement on trade by two months, pushing its expiration to Jan. 10 to buy time for a broader deal. Beijing had wanted a two-year extension.”
There was, needless to say, incomplete support for this Trump summit and indeed some expressed criticism of the event and the results to this point:
“Trump’s fawning drew complaints among several Republican senators, who said they weren’t sure what the GOP would gain from hosting the Communist leader and U.S. business rival, or at least wanted a more forceful presentation of disputes.”
The Economist also reviewed the event and drew these tentative outcomes:
“But the main achievement of this week’s summit appears to be an extension of the economic truce that America and China reached last year, ending a tit-for-tat spat in which China wielded rare-earth export controls to strike back against Mr. Trump’s tariffs. China wanted to extend the truce, which was due to end in November, until the end of Mr. Trump’s tenure. In the end, the two sides agreed to a paltry two-month extension, expiring on January 10th. The only other new agreement announced by the end of the first day of talks was for China to provide two giant pandas to a zoo in Atlanta.”
“Perhaps most striking has been Mr. Trump’s scant interest in matters of security and defence, issues that have at times dominated the Sino-American relationship. Iran appears to have used Chinese satellite images to target strikes in the Middle East, including an attack on Jordan in July that killed three American troops. Mr. Trump played down those accusations. “They basically do what we do,” he said. “When they say China spies on us, I say you’re right and we spy on them too.””
“On September 23rd Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief, said that America’s aim in Asia was to secure “a decent peace”, one in which it would ensure access to trade but would not “dominate” Asia. It would show a “respectful attitude towards Beijing”, he added. And it was no bad thing, Mr. Colby said, that each side believed it had the upper hand over time: “Let’s have a spirited competition…that doesn’t result in a large war.””
As a good colleague, Ryan Hass from Brookings was quoted as saying about the Xi-Trump Summit:
“Ryan Hass of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, who worked on China policy at the White House during Mr. Biden’s tenure, noted that the 30 minutes devoted to substantive talks in the Oval Office was unusually low. “The pageantry,” he wrote, “appears to be the point of [the] visit.” The most consequential aspect of the relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi might be the frequency of their meetings rather than the substance of what is agreed.”
And you know that conclusion by Ryan of this Summit may just be all right, at least in the short term. I suspect if stronger efforts to resolve contentious issues had been tackled, including Trump, we would likely be far more unhappy than we are today with the limited results reached to this point.
And unless we have explosive outcomes in the final meetings between the two leaders today – and that does not appear to be case – we may reflect positively on the minimal damage to the global order, generally, and to US-China relations, in particular, given we are dealing with President Trump.
