What America’s allies want from Trump

There are three global challenges and another three local challenges that President-elect Donald Trump will have to address.

The foremost of the local challenges is the U.S. national debt, which currently exceeds $19 trillion and is rising. The second challenge is to strike a balance in taxes and business regulations in order to create a thriving economic environment that encourages investments and job creation. The third challenge is to reinstitute bipartisanship in the American political fabric, as the fissure between the right and the left has grown even wider in the wake of the U.S. presidential election.

{mosads}When it comes to the three global challenges that the new president will face, they are arguably more foreboding, as they call for more diplomatic finesse from the new commander in chief than any other challenge that the U.S. has faced in recent memory.

This is because the first of these challenges is to restore trust with America’s allies, while the second is to restore trust with America’s allies, and the third would be to restore trust with America’s allies.

I can assure you that the above was no typo. I deliberately and purposefully repeated the same challenge three times to underscore the incontrovertible importance of maintaining the security, stability and economic growth of the United States and maintain its international standing, which took upon an increasingly downward spiral under the Obama administration.

This administration caused a gaping chasm in diplomatic relations with nearly all of America’s trusted allies, from the European Union to the Gulf States to even some Southeast Asian countries.

A recent example is the Philippines, which has taken some unprecedentedly large steps away from the U.S., which will inevitably affect a lot of American interests in the Southeast Asian region as a whole. The former ally has decided to discontinue its association with the U.S., which had lasted for more than 70 years, reaffirming Japan and South Korea’s concerns over losing American protection.

The unexpected message was announced to the United States from within China as a means to send a clear message to Washington, which had strategic, economic and security-related implications.

As for the European Union, it has grown weary of Washington’s polarizing attitudes toward its allies, as it has condemned the highly controversial Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which effectively lifts sovereign immunity, a time-honored cornerstone of diplomatic relations. A plan for reciprocity was not only hinted at by the EU but also by the Gulf Cooperation Council states, all Muslim countries, in addition to U.S. adversaries such as Russia and China.

Taking the lead of Saudi Arabia, Gulf States felt that they were subject to unprecedented betrayal by the United States, especially with regard to the unexpected shift in American foreign policy toward Iran. The Obama administration unshackled the hands of the extremist Iranian government, which is internationally classified as a global sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East, and were subsequently provided with enormous amounts of financial resources.

Some of these resources are linked to the nuclear deal, while others had to do with some sort of confidential agreements that ultimately amounted to the payment of a ransom, which is explicitly against American foreign policy.

This is rather confounding, given the fact that Washington is the most informed about all illicit business and terrorist activities carried out by Tehran, whether it is through its militias in the region, such as Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Quds Forces, the Badr Organization and Iranian-sponsored al Qaeda operatives, as designated by the U.S. Treasury department this past July.

Iran also repeatedly conducted ballistic missile tests, to which the U.S. turned a blind a eye by failing to implement any significant response. Worse yet, Iran went as far as firing missiles at U.S. Navy destroyers via Houthi militias. It was responded to rather embarrassingly by the Pentagon, which I have no doubt are quite upset by the lack of any substantive orders issued from the White House to take on this matter in a decisive and resolute manner.

To get back to my main point, it is not only the entire and unmitigated responsibility of the next president of the United States to restore the confidence of their trusted allies, but more importantly, to restore America’s confidence in itself. Russia and its allies such as Iran are working around the clock to take advantage of the clear lack of will on the part of the current U.S. administration, which will have tremendous and potentially irreparable implications in the very near future if not corrected by the forthcoming U.S. president.

I’m optimistic about Trump’s willingness to swiftly address Obama’s foreign policy shortfalls and the concerns of America’s allies. Because unlike the outgoing American administration, he has clearly demonstrated the will to do so.

Salman Al-Ansari is the founder and president of the Washington-based Saudi American Public Relation Affairs Committee (SAPRAC).

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