When “Editors’ Insight” recently examined Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, we described two schools of thought on the United States’ 45th president: those who still hold out hope that Trump can be an effective leader; and those who anticipate nothing but scandal upon disaster. In the weeks since, the pessimists seem to have been vindicated, as the steady drip of damaging revelations and worrying behavior that had marked Trump’s presidency has become a nearly uninterrupted stream.

First, Trump shocked the world by brazenly firing the FBI director, James Comey, raising concerns that Trump may be guilty of obstructing justice. Those concerns deepened when it was revealed that, back in February, Trump had asked Comey (from whom Trump had sought a pledge of personal loyalty) to drop his investigation into ties between foreign governments and the former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. And the Washington Post reports that Trump also pressured the head of the National Security Agency and the Director of National Intelligence to undercut publicly the FBI’s investigation. As if that were not enough, Trump then held an Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russia’s Ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, in which he disclosed highly classified intelligence and disparaged Comey as a “nut job.

Since then, the FBI and congressional investigations into Trump’s campaign and presidency have assumed a new sense of urgency. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller has been appointed as a special counsel to lead the Justice Department’s investigation. The Senate Intelligence Committee will now hear testimony from Comey and recently issued a new round of subpoenas for Flynn’s records, after he invoked his right against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution. And the House Intelligence Committee this week heard testimony from former CIA Director John Brennan about his concerns last year that Russia was interfering in the election on Trump’s behalf.

As Trump’s domestic challenges piled up, he traveled abroad for the first time as president, visiting Saudi Arabia, Israel, NATO headquarters in Belgium, the Vatican, and Italy for a meeting of the G7. And, as one might expect, Trump’s meetings with world leaders highlighted questions about the future of America’s international role that are no less pressing than those his presidency faces at home – questions that Project Syndicate commentators have been addressing with ever greater urgency during these weeks of mounting political uncertainty.

A Comedy of Unforced Errors

In the week before Trump left for Saudi Arabia, White House staffers were “said to be in a state of near collapse,” writes Elizabeth Drew, a longtime chronicler of American politics. As they have bounced “from one presidential crisis to another, trying all the while to hide from a screaming president,” the world outside can only stand by and watch “the disintegration of a presidency.”

Drew is quick to note that “even Democrats aren’t taking much joy” in Trump’s Icarus act. “A president seemingly out of control,” she writes, “makes any thoughtful citizen uneasy at best.” To Drew, Trump’s “naive belief” that the Democrats would thank him for firing Comey – whom Hillary Clinton blames for the last-minute sandbagging of her presidential campaign – is a demonstration of his “appalling judgment.” So, too, was his decision to divulge classified information to the Russians, which, while not illegal, is a clear-cut violation of “crucial intelligence-sharing norms.”

On the latter point, Drew meets no disagreement from Kent Harrington, a former CIA Chief of Station in Asia. By demonstrating to intelligence agencies everywhere that he “cannot safely be trusted,” Harrington writes, Trump has “caused profound damage to US national security.” From an intelligence-gathering standpoint, Harrington explains, Trump’s disclosure could have far-reaching repercussions, by prompting other governments to conduct “cost-benefit analyses of the provision of sensitive intelligence to US partners.” If they deem sharing intelligence with the Trump administration to be “an unnecessary – if not unaffordable – risk,” they may start to “keep their counsel – and their insights – to themselves.”

The tumult gripping the administration in recent weeks – and the alacrity with which its senior officials leak compromising information – have evoked memories of former US President Richard Nixon, who resigned in August 1974, rather than face impeachment and criminal charges. But Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz warns against taking the Trump-Nixon comparison too far, given today’s very different political climate. Unlike Trump, Wilentz points out, Nixon faced “solid adversarial Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress,” and even some Republicans were willing to “put concerns about the Constitution ahead of concerns for their party.” While “Trump may yet fall,” that will happen only if facts “emerge that are every bit as incriminating as the evidence that felled Nixon,” which included audio recordings of Nixon’s Oval Office conversations.

French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy also does not expect Republican leaders to spearhead meaningful action against Trump, either through impeachment or by invoking the 25th Amendment, which provides for the removal of a president who cannot “discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Still, Lévy believes that Trump will be unable to evade the most important arbiter in “post-modern democracies”: public opinion.

Lévy highlights signs which suggest that “public disgust” with Trump’s performance is growing. A recent petition calling for Trump’s impeachment quickly garnered more than one million signatures. And polls show that a majority of Americans would want Trump removed were he found to have colluded with Russia during the campaign. “For Trump,” Levy writes, “the real danger will come as the crowd he captivated and captured during the campaign begins to turn on him.”

The Rudderless Republic

For many Project Syndicate commentators, a derailed Trump administration is dangerous not because it could end up in a ditch, but because it would likely keep barreling forward – inflicting lasting damage to the presidency itself. As Ana Palacio, a former Spanish foreign minister, explains, the US presidency is “a pillar of the international order” that provides “direction and guidance” and a steady hand on the tiller. For Palacio, even an administration pursuing controversial policies would be preferable to one with no discernible direction.

Palacio fears that Trump’s administration has already called the “very functioning” of the presidency into question. Like a child ruler, Trump must defer to various regents to manage the complexities of foreign and domestic policymaking. But Palacio is doubtful that any of these advisers “can survive as independent voices of reason.” And even if they can, American allies will be left wondering who speaks for the US: the president or his surrogates? Whether or not Trump realizes it, he represents what Palacio calls “a singular voice in world affairs,” such that “when a US president speaks, people listen.”

But, as Michael Mandelbaum of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies notes, world leaders cannot ignore Trump’s domestic travails. “The threat posed by Russia is the main feature of European international relations today,” Mandelbaum argues. As a result, the president’s political baggage – his election campaign’s suspected ties, if not collusion, with Russian officials – is weighing especially heavily on NATO leaders, with whom Trump met on Thursday. American allies in Europe need to know that Trump “is aware of the basic facts of European affairs,” Mandelbaum writes; and they need to see “signs that he is prepared to exercise the kind of leadership that NATO needs now.”

Such leadership, Mandelbaum argues, “does not involve stirring speeches, and certainly not impetuous tweets.” Rather, “the US president’s task is to set goals that will make NATO stronger, more united, and better able to deal with the new threats it faces.” And after that, Trump will need to “establish direct relations with European leaders,” so that he can “coax, cajole, and sometimes bribe them to do what is necessary to reach those goals.” Mandelbaum laments that this “is not a description of the style of leadership Trump has displayed thus far, either as a candidate or as president.” But he hopes the meeting with NATO leaders in Brussels will have served as a wake-up call for the US president.

And yet even if the Trump administration can get its act together to provide practical leadership within existing alliances, it seems to be abdicating America’s other traditional leadership roles. For Aryeh Neier, the president emeritus of the Open Society Foundations, this is especially evident in the area of human rights. In Neier’s view, “Trump has made his affinity for authoritarian leaders abundantly clear,” first by praising them, and then by abandoning human-rights promotion as a goal of US foreign policy.

Neier, a founder of Human Rights Watch, cites a recent speech that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson delivered to State Department employees in which he “indicated that the US will no longer emphasize human rights when it interacts with other countries on security and economic issues.” In Neier’s view, condoning authoritarian governments’ repressive practices is not only immoral; it “could damage US national-security and economic interests over the long term, by undermining America’s global respect and prestige.”

Re-clenching the Fist?

Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that Saudi Arabia – an authoritarian monarchy with one of the world’s worst human-rights records – was Trump’s first official foreign destination. While Trump was in Riyadh, he addressed a meeting of representatives from predominantly Sunni Muslim countries, delivering a speech in which he railed against Shia-led Iran.

Trump’s hardline approach to Iran has fueled fears that his administration could scuttle the nuclear deal concluded in 2015 by Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany). And yet, despite Trump’s rhetoric, his administration was recently “forced to admit” Iran’s compliance with its commitments under the deal, notes Javier Solana, a former European Union High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy and a former Secretary General of NATO, who negotiated with Iran in the early 2000s.

Still, even if Trump is all bark and no bite, the fate of the nuclear agreement will also depend on what happens in Iran in the coming years. Many Project Syndicate commentators agree that the Islamic Republic could be approaching a turning point. With Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei battling cancer, “the battle to choose a new supreme leader is not far off,” notes Robert Harvey, a former member of the British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.

On the same day that Trump departed for the Middle East, Iranians reelected their pragmatic president, Hassan Rouhani, rejecting the hardline politics of his opponent, Ebrahim Raisi, whom many believed would use the presidency as a springboard to succeed Khamanei (who also rose to Supreme Leader after serving as president). But while Rouhani won by a larger margin than expected (avoiding a second-round runoff), the election, argues Abbas Milani of Stanford University, turned out to be a “surprisingly heated referendum on the country’s future,” in which “two competing political paradigms were fighting for the soul of the Islamic Republic.”

In important respects, the political battle within Iran resembles that playing out in many Western countries recently. Those who oppose economic openness and rapprochement with rivals are pitted against reformers like Rouhani. The reformers, Milani writes, want to bring about “a more open society” with “less censorship,” ensure that Iran has “a government managed by competent technocrats,” achieve “a more conciliatory relationship with Iran’s vast and powerful diaspora,” and promote “greater equality for women and marginalized religious and ethnic minorities.”

But the fact that Iranians, especially the young (who comprise a majority of the electorate), voted overwhelmingly for reform does not mean that Rouhani will have an easy second term. As is so often the case, much will depend on the economy. During his first term, Rouhani managed to bring inflation down to single digits, stabilize the exchange rate, and get many international sanctions lifted under the nuclear deal. But, as Djavad Salehi-Isfahani of Virginia Tech notes, Iran’s projected growth rate is declining, and poverty and unemployment – especially among young people – have both increased under Rouhani.

If Rouhani cannot deliver more jobs and higher incomes, populist hardliners promising state handouts could gain an edge in the future. Making matters worse, Rouhani will have very little room to maneuver as he tries to boost the economy. For starters, observes Hassan Hakimian of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, restoring growth will require investment, and “foreign investors have remained cautious, owing to lingering US non-nuclear sanctions and banking restrictions.”

Rouhani will also have to overcome decades-old structural obstacles that cannot simply be willed away. The Iranian economy is still far too dependent on oil revenues, and desperately needs to be diversified. But, to implement far-reaching structural reforms, Hakimian notes, Rouhani will have to navigate Iran’s “unique institutional makeup,” which requires reconciling twenty-first-century economic and social policies with “the traditional values of spiritual leaders and aging clergymen.”

Solana, for his part, is confident that Rouhani’s “rhetoric about openness is not mere politics.” He believes that Rouhani will continue to uphold the nuclear deal, and work “toward international engagement” in his second turn. But whether Rouhani will encounter even more resistance from the Trump administration than from Iran’s hardline clerics remains to be seen. “[T]he world cannot afford the breakdown of the Iran nuclear deal,” insists Harvey. “If Trump attempts to resume America’s pas de deuxwith Iran, the result may be a dance of death.”

Taking the Baton

Further east, China, too, is stepping up its international engagement. In the days before Trump’s trip, China hosted a summit to launch a new, Chinese-led era of global development. On May 14-15, world leaders from North Africa to Central Asia and the South Pacific met for a summit on China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative, a large-scale infrastructure and investment program that is meant to connect Asia, Africa, and Europe. Despite mixed reactions to OBOR so far, notes Keyu Jin of the London School of Economics, there is a “strong economic case for the project,” because “efficient infrastructure enhances productivity, fosters investment, and lowers the costs of trade.”

Moreover, according to Justin Yifu Lin and Yan Wang of the Center for New Structural Economics at Peking University, by combining trade and investment with official development aid, OBOR represents a significant improvement on the traditional model of economic development. The more comprehensive approach taken by OBOR, they argue, allows “donor and recipient countries alike” to benefit, by playing to their respective strengths. For example, because China can “achieve economies of scale that other countries simply cannot,” it has a “clear comparative advantage in infrastructure construction,” which it can then export to lift up its neighbors.

For Jin, accusations that China is trying to “wrest greater control over the developing world, and even to replace the United States as the dominant global superpower” are overwrought. Insofar as China is “advancing its own agenda,” she argues, so, too, was the US when it implemented the Marshall Plan. But Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, points out that OBOR, at “more than 12 times the size of the Marshall Plan,” has “no parallel in modern history.” And many of China’s neighbors are not on board with OBOR. “Territorial disputes in the South China Sea,” says Yale University’s Stephen Roach, “loom particularly large, but China’s footprints in Africa and Latin America are also drawing heightened scrutiny.” And this scrutiny has raised questions about “the biggest issue of all – whether China fills a hegemonic void created by the isolationist ‘America first’ approach adopted by Trump.”

Rather than simply replacing the US as the guardian of the liberal international order, Chellaney thinks Chinese President Xi Jinping is “attempting to remake globalization on China’s terms, by creating new markets for Chinese firms, which face a growth slowdown and overcapacity at home.” But, regardless of whether Xi is driven by necessity or blind ambition, Chellaney suspects that he “may be biting off more than he can chew.” By extending so much low-interest credit to other governments to finance infrastructure projects built by Chinese state-owned firms, OBOR risks aggravating Chinese banks’ already-severe burden of nonperforming loans.

Minxin Pei of Claremont McKenna College sees three alternatives for countries as China’s outward reach expands: submission to Chinese economic and strategic expansionism; partnership with China alongside traditional allegiances; or formation of an alliance to constrain China. Asia’s other two economic powerhouses, India and Japan, belong to the third camp. If they can “show that they are ready and willing to bear the costs of maintaining the region’s balance of power,” Pei writes, they can “prevent the emergence of a Sino-centric Asia.”

For Pei, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is a prime example of a leader who is challenging the conventional wisdom that Trump’s presidency marks the advent of Chinese hegemony. By launching an effort to resuscitate the Trans-Pacific Partnership – which Trump abandoned immediately upon taking office – Abe is laying the groundwork for an alternate future. Pei points out that if the 11 remaining TPP signatories can form a new free-trade bloc, their combined GDPs will almost equal China’s. And he predicts that other countries such as “South Korea and Indonesia will be tempted to join” should such a project get off the ground.

Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump chastised America’s allies for depending too heavily on the US, and for not seeing to their own economic and security affairs. But Trump and his supporters should be careful what they wish for. Just a few months into Trump’s presidency, some of those allies seem to be rising to his challenge, not because they are intimidated by his negotiating prowess, but because his ineffectiveness as a leader has left them no other choice.

Donald Trump’s Flying Circus

PS Editors

Project Syndicate   May 26, 2017