WASHINGTON — President Trump has managed to turn America First into America Isolated.
In
pulling out of the Paris climate accord, Mr. Trump has created a vacuum
of global leadership that presents ripe opportunities to allies and
adversaries alike to reorder the world’s power structure. His decision
is perhaps the greatest strategic gift to the Chinese, who are eager to
fill the void that Washington is leaving around the world on everything
from setting the rules of trade and environmental standards to financing
the infrastructure projects that give Beijing vast influence.
Mr. Trump’s remarks in the Rose Garden on Thursday were also a retreat from leadership on the one issue, climate change,
that unified America’s European allies, its rising superpower
competitor in the Pacific, and even some of its adversaries, including
Iran. He did it over the objections of much of the American business
community and his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, who embraced the
Paris accord when he ran Exxon Mobil, less out of a sense of moral
responsibility and more as part of the new price of doing business
around the world.
As
Mr. Trump announced his decision, the Paris agreement’s goals were
conspicuously reaffirmed by friends and rivals alike, including nations
where it would have the most impact, like China and India, as well as
the major European Union states and Russia.
The
announcement came only days after he declined to give his NATO allies a
forceful reaffirmation of America’s commitment to their security, and a
few months after he abandoned a trade deal, the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, that was designed to put the United States at the center of
a trade group that would compete with — and, some argue, contain —
China’s fast-growing economic might.
“The
irony here is that people worried that Trump would come in and make the
world safe for Russian meddling,” said Richard N. Haass, the president
of the Council on Foreign Relations, who was briefly considered, then
rejected, for a top post in the new administration. “He may yet do
that,” Mr. Haass added, “but he has certainly made the world safe for
Chinese influence.”
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The
president, and his defenders, argue that such views are held by an
elite group of globalists who have lost sight of the essential element
of American power: economic growth. Mr. Trump made that argument
explicitly in the Rose Garden with his contention that the Paris accord
amounted to nothing more than “a massive redistribution of United States
wealth to other countries.”
In
short, he turned the concept of the agreement on its head. While
President Barack Obama argued that the United Nations Green Climate Fund
— a financial institution to help poorer nations combat the effects of
climate change — would benefit the world, Mr. Trump argued that the
American donations to the fund, which he halted, would beggar the
country.
“Our withdrawal from the agreement represents a reassertion of America’s sovereignty,” Mr. Trump said.
That,
in short, encapsulates how Mr. Trump’s view of preserving American
power differs from all of his predecessors, back to President Harry S.
Truman. His proposed cuts to contributions to the United Nations and to
American foreign aid are based on a presumption that only economic and
military power count. “Soft power” — investments in alliances and
broader global projects — are, in his view, designed to drain influence,
not add to it, evident in the fact that he did not include the State
Department among the agencies that are central to national security, and
thus require budget increases.
It
will take years to determine the long-term effects of his decision to
abandon the Paris agreement, to the environment and to the global order.
It will not break alliances: Europe is hardly about to embrace a
broken, corrupt Russia, and China’s neighbors are simultaneously drawn
to its immense wealth and repelled by its self-interested ambitions.
But
Mr. Trump has added to the arguments of leaders around the world that
it is time to rebalance their portfolios by effectively selling some of
their stock in Washington. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has
already announced her plan to hedge her bets, declaring last weekend
after meeting Mr. Trump that she had realized “the times when we could
completely rely on others are, to an extent, over.”
That
may be temporary: It is still possible that Mr. Trump’s announcement on
Thursday will amount to a blip in history, a withdrawal that takes so
long — four years — that it could be reversed after the next
presidential election. But for now it leaves the United States declaring
that it is better outside the accord than in, a position that, besides
America, has so far only been taken by Syria and Nicaragua. (Syria did
not sign on because it is locked in civil war, Nicaragua because it
believes the world’s richest nations did not sacrifice enough.)
But
it is the relative power balance with China that absorbs anyone who
studies the dance of great powers. Even before Mr. Trump’s announcement,
President Xi Jinping had figured out how to embrace the rhetoric, if
not the substance, of global leadership.
Interactive Graphic
The Stakes in the Paris Climate Deal: What Might Other Countries Do?
President Trump will withdraw the United States from the
first worldwide deal to address global warming. Where do other
countries stand on the agreement?
Mr.
Xi is no free trader, and his nation has overtaken the United States as
the greatest emitter of carbon by a factor of two. Only three years
ago, it was a deal between Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi that laid the groundwork
for what became the broader Paris agreement.
Yet
for months the Chinese president has been stepping unto the breach,
including giving speeches at the annual meeting of the World Economic
Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that made it sound like China alone was
ready to adopt the role of global standard-setter that Washington has
occupied since the end of World War II.
“What
the Paris accord represented, in a fractured world, was finally some
international consensus, led by two big polluters, China and the United
States, on a common course of action,” said Graham T. Allison, the
author of a new book, “Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?”
“What
you’d expect us to do is sustain our position by maintaining our most
important relationship around the world and address what the citizens of
our allies consider their most important problems: economic growth and
an environment that sustains their children and grandchildren,’’ he
added. “Instead, we are absenting the field.”
That
sentiment was evident on Thursday in Berlin. Just hours before Mr.
Trump spoke, China’s premier, Li Keqiang, stood alongside Ms. Merkel,
and used careful words as he described China as a champion of the
accord. China believed that fighting climate change was an
“international responsibility,” Mr. Li said, the kind of declaration
that American diplomats have made for years when making the case to
combat terrorism or nuclear proliferation or hunger.
China
has long viewed the possibility of a partnership with Europe as a
balancing strategy against the United States. Now, with Mr. Trump
questioning the basis of NATO, the Chinese are hoping that their
partnership with Europe on the climate accord may allow that
relationship to come to fruition faster than their grand strategy
imagined.
Naturally,
the Chinese are using the biggest weapon in their quiver: Money. Their
plan, known as “One Belt, One Road,” is meant to buy China influence
from Ethiopia to Britain, from Malaysia to Hungary, all the while
refashioning the global economic order.
Mr.
Xi announced the sweeping initiative last month, envisioning spending
$1 trillion on huge infrastructure projects across Africa, Asia and
Europe. It is a plan with echoes of the Marshall Plan and other American
efforts at aid and investment, but on a scale with little precedent in
modern history. And the clear subtext is that it is past time to toss
out the rules of aging, American-dominated international institutions,
and to conduct commerce on China’s terms.
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