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Updated 15 minutes ago
Donald Trump as a real estate deal maker thrived on chaos — creating and then exploiting it to achieve his goals. Now as president, Mr. Trump is upsetting allies and disrupting international security and economic arrangements to deliver on his campaign promises to make Americans safer and more prosperous.
Since the end of World War II, presidents from both parties carefully cultivated NATO and other defense alliances in the Pacific and Middle East, and they built a network of multilateral and regional trade and investment agreements to promote democracy, human rights and free-market capitalism.
Most U.S. allies have been unwilling to make the same sacrifices as the United States to defend the frontiers of freedom and build a strong Western economy where everyone may prosper.
Over the years America's two biggest allies, Germany and Japan, pursued selfish economic policies based on exports exceeding imports.
Simply, if those trading giants have trade surpluses, the United States and other nations must have trade deficits — and this mightily penalizes investment, R&D and economic growth in the United States and many other economies.
Today, broad swaths of America's industrial heartland are impoverished thanks to U.S. presidents appeasing mercantilism. The United States simply cannot carry the load.
President Obama recognized the limits of American resources and sought to circumscribe U.S. military engagement to direct threats to U.S. security, encourage allies to do more and maximize regional contributions — for example, his diplomacy urged Germany, Japan and others to commit more to defense, and he relied on Iraqi and insurgent forces to combat ISIS and Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
Similarly, through diplomacy Obama sought to open foreign markets in Asia to rev up U.S. exports and growth.
By and large Obama failed.
The Germans, Japanese and others still spend too little and expect America's military to stand in harm's way to defend their freedoms. Russia is extending influence by exploiting the increasing void left by the United States in the Middle East. China is seizing sovereignty over vast areas in the South China Sea.
Americans and Western Europeans have been subjected to terrorism by Islamic extremists. Meanwhile Obama failed to open foreign markets, accelerate economic growth and create enough decent paying jobs.
Trump is taking a much harder line with friend and foe alike, save Russia. By warning Europe to do more for its own defense or risk losing American protection, seeking a deal with Russia on power sharing in Europe and the Middle East, and threatening China with huge tariffs and other economic sanctions, Trump is posing existential threats to NATO and the WTO, which are foundational arrangements of the Western alliance.
All this may be necessary to finally shake loose change and win concessions vital to American interests. But the Trump administration has not told us much about what the brave new world order to follow should look like.
Without goals, brinkmanship can easily serve destructive purposes — international security and economic arrangements do not function well in chaos.
Trump's reckless fits of policy could easily take much of the world, and America, into dystopia.
Peter Morici is an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland.
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