Commentary: US allies need a plan for a lame-duck Trump

Commentary: US allies need a plan for a lame-duck Trump A more reliable predictor is that US President Donald Trump will do what he believes best serves him, says Marc Champion for Bloomberg Opinion. LONDON: Conventional wisdom has it that after President Donald Trump suffered a stinging rebuke from American voters this week, losing both houses of Congress, he’s now all the more likely to lash out via foreign policy - the one area where his power remains undiluted. That has Ukrainians fretting (and Russia’s state-controlled media speculating) that Trump could blame them for his defeat, decide that his legacy depends on forcing their capitulation to Moscow or both. Iranians worry he could try to “finish” them. Israelis are concerned he may follow the shifting tide of opinion against them. And if Cuba’s leaders didn’t already assume they’re on his menu, they now should. Some of those fears may well materialise, but it’s far from clear how the least predictable US president in memory will react. The one sure bet - as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague and Trump biographer Timothy O’Brien put it on Thursday (Nov 5) - is to expect volatility. Trump, he writes, has always tended “to double down when he fails, with little regard for consequences”. ON IRAN And yet, America’s foreign partners can at least pose the question of what comes next using the correct framework, and that's not just about which powers he will keep or lose. A more reliable predictor is that Trump - who for two years has run his administration to please, glorify and enrich himself and those close to him - will do what he believes best serves him. It’s hard, for example, to see how a renewed high-intensity war with Iran would fit that bill. While Trump isn’t the type to admit mistakes, he does appear to have accepted Vice President JD Vance’s view that the war and its economic consequences were key to the Republican defeat. And if Americans resent the Iran conflict that much, it would take caring more about the policy issue than about himself to choose to go back to war. In an interview with the Financial Times, Trump indicated that the current situation is good enough for him - more Gulf state oil is getting out than Iranian oil, so on that important score, “We seem to be getting everything we want.” Plus, a return to full-scale war would be disastrous for the Middle East leaders with whom the president and his family have been making deals, and they are again pressing him to hold back. True, he didn’t listen to them the first time, thinking the Islamic Republic would collapse in days and that they would ultimately thank him. But he cannot be under the same illusion today. That doesn’t mean the war can’t escalate, because Iran’s leaders also get a vote. The risk is that they decide the current war-without-war status quo doesn’t serve their interests. And if that’s the case, they could well up the ante to make Trump choose between more disruption and the concessions he’d have to swallow to cut a deal. ON UKRAINE AND EUROPE Ukraine and Europe have even harder calculations ahead. They remain vulnerable to Trump’s ability to nonchalantly withdraw America’s critical security umbrella. They will also be (with exceptions for Europe’s own far-right populists) hostile to his views on the role of democracy and the West. In this sense, they are more Trump’s enemies than Putin, and that is unlikely to shift. Yet there’s also no change to the obstacles that have so far prevented him from securing the Ukraine-Russia deal and, with it, the peacemaker’s image that he clearly wants to be his legacy. Logically, Trump’s calculation should be that if giving Putin the Ukrainian territory and European security concessions he wants in exchange for commercial deals beneficial to the US failed even when he controlled Congress, then perhaps now is the time to try the other approach. That would mean harnessing the pro-Ukraine sentiment of the incoming US lawmakers and pressuring Putin to compromise by making it clear that he will never achieve either Ukraine’s subjugation or the dismantling of NATO. The Kremlin is betting that won’t happen. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov greeted Trump’s defeat by saying, “We sincerely count on him continuing his peace-making efforts,” for which read: attempting to force Ukraine and Europe to capitulate to Putin’s demands. Or as the state-controlled Rossiya 1 TV channel put it, the hope in Moscow is that: “Instead of a lame duck, the world might see a different bird, one more akin to an enraged eagle”. ON ISRAEL In Israel, the midterm result may have a dramatic effect on efforts to form a government after the country’s own inconclusive election on Oct 27. Trump had endorsed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and remains popular in the country. But that appreciation coincides with concern that Israel could lose the US, its most important ally, when he leaves the White House. This was the first American election in which voter hostility toward Israel has factored into the outcome. Opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot pledged on Wednesday to renew the lost bipartisan US backing. He called the Democratic wave further evidence of the danger Netanyahu’s continued rule would pose to Israel - a self-serving claim that is nonetheless true. US support is unravelling faster than anyone could have predicted - including from Trump, who on election day said he would halt the almost US$4 billion of annual American military aid to Israel by the end of the year. It isn’t just Israel that must now fundamentally recalibrate its foreign policy. Every national leader should armour themselves against Trump’s last years in office and prepare for the version of the US that will follow. For better or worse, Republican or Democrat led, it will be significantly different than Trump’s America.