By Punsarani Jayawardhana
On April 10 2020, United States of America (USA) became the first country in the world to record more than 2000 COVID-19 deaths in a single day. Surprisingly, the most powerful country with the strongest economy is fighting almost desperately to contain the spread of COVID-19.
It is in this most crucial time that the US President Donald Trump is making rather casual statements on wearing masks and accusing China on the spread of Corona Virus. For instance, the President announcing a ‘goal’ of deaths rising up to 240 000 deaths is beyond belief and shows the want of responsible leadership.
However, political critics remark that the US leadership triggered doubts on its success way before the spread of the virus. Trump administration coming to its end with the US presidential election being scheduled in November 2020, it is timely to see if Trump has ‘made America great again’ as he pledged during his Presidential campaign in 2016.
Being unique to his predecessors, in terms of political experience and personal traits, Trump and his administration has unprecedented remarks. Trump’s foreign policy, economic policy and his want of emotional intelligence as a nation’s leader became crucial factors that determined USA under Trump.
From the very beginning of Trump administration, his political inexperience, poor impulse control and short attention, along with turnover in government positions being higher than in any other recent administrations, were impairing his office. As per Drezner, Trump illustrates the pervasive development delay in American political history.
Although he had kept his promise of his salary being donated to various national needs and had been fairly successful in gun control, HIV AIDS relief and prison reforms, with the successful passing of only one significant legislature; Tax Bill, his leadership in general has resulted USA to be running in a track that it never did run, since being the Super power after the Cold War.
This may be why Tom Wright pronounces that Trump has few core beliefs tracing back to three decades about America’s role in the world. His overarching perception of the world is that America’s economy is declining as other nations take most of it. Trump’s modern day accusations on Chinese economic practices being predatory are only the echoes of those that he directed to Japan back in 1980s.
Trump’s policies and his audacious tweets on gender and minority communities have resulted in an increasingly polarized US community with its political institutions not doing quite well and economic inequality rising high. The USA now being the epicenter of COVID-19, it cannot be denied that at least part of the responsibility goes to the failure of leadership, lack of will and basic competence and consistence in Trump’s administration.
The inefficiency and the lack of preparedness in the Trump administration to face any kind of health issue predates the spread of the virus in China. Trump abandoned the Global Health Security Team in the National Security Council, saying “I’m a business person. I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them.” It seems to be that many of these were results of Trump’s ‘limited understanding of why the governing is different from business’, as Kamarck remarks.
Trump’s insensibility as to governance and policy making also paved the way to rather not so modern foreign policy and economic policy that focuses much on trade protectionism and restricting immigration. His slogan of ‘America First’ had led to initiatives that had been taken never before, especially after it became the super power in international politics.
Trump being obsessed with defending American borders and immigration control paid so little attention and in fact withdrew from several multilateral undertakings that the USA had been entrusting itself with the leading role. Under Trump, the USA withdrew itself from Trans-Pacific Partnerships, Iranian Nuclear Deal, Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, Paris Treaty and even UNESCO. By last week, Trump pledged that USA will put a hold on funding the WHO.
As per Dilip Hiro, the collapse of Trump’s Hanoi Summit with Kim Jong-un and the incompetent attempt to overthrow Maduro’s regime can be identified as two desperate failures in Trump’s foreign policy. As critics now enounce, his preoccupation with Iran also made him less focused on the then rising spread of COVID-19.
Trump being skeptic on multilateral treaties and USA’s leadership in long practiced international trade and security, it can be seen that Trump has not realized or pretends that he has not realized the key role China plays in being the industrial supplier to USA and Europe. According to Dilip Hiro, Trump has also failed to grasp the remarkable progress Russia has made in advanced military and the military coordination of Russia and China which challenges Washington’s claims of the super power. His economic nationalist agenda directed to protectionism and unilateralism has been a hallmark in American economy and its role in the international system as well.
We see in this day USA doing relatively good, in terms of economy, despite the alarming threat from COVID-19 and strange policies of its leadership. However, the signs of USA not anymore being the unclouded superpower in the sky of international politics seems to be lurking in, amidst a rising China and increasingly interdependent world that the USA leadership pretends not to see.
(The views expressed in this article belong only to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights).