World sees US paying high diplomatic price for Trump's Iran deal withdrawal
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last January, President Trump insisted that his trademark America First policy “does not mean America alone.”
But when Mr. Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal last week, he ignored and antagonized Washington’s oldest and closest allies; he reneged on an international agreement enshrined in a United Nations resolution; and he displayed a bluntly unilateralist outlook that suggested he cares little whether or not the US is isolated.
That left friends and foes alike around the world scrambling to figure out the shape of the new world order that Trump is fashioning.
“Trump’s policies have really forced a lot of countries that have alliances with the US to start thinking about how their security arrangements would look without the US and what are the alternatives,” says Lauren Richardson, head of the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy at Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. “It could really end up being America alone.”
The president’s disdain for a commitment made by his predecessor had international observers shaking their heads. “It tells other countries … that the US can’t be trusted to keep its word from one administration to another,” says Makau Mutua, chairman of the Kenyan Human Rights Commission. “That is not how great powers conduct policy.”
Washington’s threats to punish foreign firms that continue to do business with Iran, as their governments seek to keep the nuclear deal alive, has prompted
Going it alone, but where?The (nuclear) falloutWho needs allies?Carrots or sticks?