Trump tests whether bulldozer can also be peacemaker
President Donald Trump has vowed to be a peacemaker in his new term, but his aggressive early actions threaten to alienate US friends in a way that could hinder his ambitions, experts say.
Trump tests whether bulldozer can also be peacemaker
President Donald Trump has vowed to be a peacemaker in his new term, but his aggressive early actions threaten to alienate US friends in a way that could hinder his ambitions, experts say.
In an inaugural address on Monday, Trump said that his "proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and a unifier" and pointed to his support for a new ceases
Trump tests whether bulldozer can also be peacemaker
Washington (AFP) – President Donald Trump has vowed to be a peacemaker in his new term, but his aggressive early actions threaten to alienate US friends in a way that could hinder his ambitions, experts say.
US President Donald Trump speaks to the press on his second day back at the White House
US President Donald Trump speaks to the press on his second day back at the White House © Jim WATSON / AFP
In an inaugural address on Monday, Trump said that his "proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and a unifier" and pointed to his support for a new ceasefire in Gaza.
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Speaking to reporters as he returned to the White House after four years, Trump also suggested he would press Russia to make a deal to end its three-year invasion of Ukraine, quipping that President Vladimir Putin -- with whom he had famously warm relations in the past -- knows he is "destroying" his own country.
But in the throwback to the bedlam of his 2017-2021 term, Trump's return was also consumed by rage over grievances at home, and the most memorable foreign-policy line of his inaugural address was a vow to take back the Panama Canal, which the United States returned in 1999 but where Trump charges that China has gained too strong a foothold.
Trump has also spoken of seizing Greenland from NATO ally Denmark, moved to send the military to the Mexican border to stop migration, vowed tariffs even against close allies and announced the withdrawal of the United States from the World Health Organization and Paris climate accord, both home to almost every other country.
"Trump's worldview seems to be contradictory. He has a streak that is pro-peace and another streak which seems more confrontational and militarist," said Benjamin Friedman, policy director at Defense Priorities, which advocates restraint.
During his first stint in power, Trump ordered a strike that killed senior Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani and vowed confrontation with China, although he also boasted of keeping US troops out of new wars and sought diplomacy with North Korea.
"In the first term, the more confrontational and militarist streak won out more often than not" on tension spots such as Iran, Friedman said.
This time, he said, at least on Ukraine and the Middle East, Trump appears to have shifted to a more progressive stance.
But on Latin America, and in his selection of aides with hawkish views on China, Trump remains hawkish, Friedman said.
He said that Trump essentially had a 19th-century philosophy in line with populist president Andrew Jackson, feeling a comfort with threatening the use of force to achieve national interests.
Such a way of thinking, for Trump, "isn't consistent necessarily with being a peacemaker or a warmonger" but rather is a mix.
