Donald Trump promised to build a wall in 2016. This year he should promise to build a time machine to go back and solve all the world crises that he claims would never have happened if he hadn't lost the 2020 election.
Okay, I made up the time machine part, but I'm not kidding when it comes to Trump's habit of claiming that almost nothing bad would have happened in the world if he were still president.
For example, after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel, he told supporters: “If the elections hadn't been rigged, none of us would have even considered going into Israel,” and more recently, he told Time magazine: “It would never have happened. Hamas had no money, you know that?”
I didn’t know that. Trump’s logic seems to be that his decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and impose unilateral sanctions on Iran stopped the flow of financial support to Hamas. While Trump’s rash actions undoubtedly accelerated Tehran’s nuclear program (Iran now has enough highly enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb), there is little evidence that it has significantly reduced Iranian support for proxy groups throughout the region. In fact, Hamas has continued to build a vast network of tunnels where its fighters now hide with hostages, while regularly firing rockets into Israel during Trump’s presidency.
After Iran unleashed a barrage of missiles and drones on Israel on April 13, Trump predictably claimed that “it was a sign of great weakness on our part” and that “if we were president this would not have happened. You know it, they know it, everybody knows it.” Once again, Trump appears to know a lot of things he cannot prove.
To be sure, a direct Iranian attack on Israel would be unprecedented. But that doesn’t mean Iran didn’t attack other U.S. allies in the region during the Trump administration. In 2019, for example, Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for a massive missile and drone attack on Saudi oil facilities that sent global oil prices soaring by 20%. The U.S. concluded that the missiles were fired directly from Iran, and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemned the attack as an “act of war,” but the Trump administration did not retaliate. So the idea that Iran would attack a close U.S. ally in the Middle East, even Israel, under the Trump administration, is not far-fetched.
There is also no credible evidence that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin would have refrained from invading Ukraine if Trump were still commander in chief. Trump has repeatedly asserted that Putin “would never have done that to me…. He understood the consequences and we had a good relationship.”
Trump conveniently omits the fact that Russia was invading Ukraine throughout his presidency, with constant fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists. The Trump administration imposed sanctions on Russia and sent weapons to Ukraine, but Trump cut off arms supplies to blackmail the Ukrainian government, tried to get them to blame his political rival, Joe Biden, and used every opportunity to court Putin.
Fiona Hill, director of Russia affairs on Trump's National Security Council, told me that Putin didn't escalate his invasion of Ukraine during Trump's presidency “because he didn't have to. He did what he wanted in terms of weakening Ukraine. Everything that was done for Ukraine was a half-assed effort.” Similarly, John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, told The New York Times that “it's not accurate to say that President Trump's actions in any way deterred Russia.”
Trump is somewhat credible in suggesting that Putin may have been emboldened to launch an all-out invasion of Ukraine after seeing the failure of the US to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2021. But of course he fails to mention the “dishonorable” and “embarrassing” US withdrawal that resulted from the remarkably one-sided agreement the Trump administration negotiated with the Taliban, which required the US to withdraw all its troops but did not require the Taliban to cease fighting. Biden has simply reaped what Trump sowed.
Trump claims that the recent crisis would never have happened if he were still in power, but this is wishful thinking. He also tries to rewrite history as if his foreign policy was a great success and that Biden is to blame for many of the world's problems today. A Trump spokesman said last week, “President Trump's strong leadership secured historic peace around the world and deterred our adversaries, while Joe Biden's weakness and failure led to aggression and war in both Ukraine and the Middle East.” This is historical revisionism.
Trump has had some real foreign policy successes, including the Abraham Accords in the Middle East and the defeat of ISIS (his attempt to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria put ISIS at risk).
But Trump failed to halt or slow the nuclear programs of Iran or North Korea, or effectively counter growing threats from Russia and China. Instead, he unnecessarily alienated U.S. allies by insulting other democratic leaders and threatening to withdraw U.S. troops from those countries. Trump was more comfortable tearing up existing agreements (Trans-Pacific Partnership, Iran nuclear deal, Paris climate accord) than negotiating new ones. He prioritized style over substance; for example, he renamed NAFTA but left its content largely intact.
Biden is entirely right to say in a recent interview with Time magazine that Trump's presidency has called into question America's credibility as a partner and “seriously undermined our ability to get things done internationally.”
Biden's own track record of restoring America's credibility is mixed (partly because the whole world knows Trump could win again), but he's right to boast about his foreign policy achievements in the same interview. As he noted, “NATO is substantially stronger than when I took office,” not only because European countries have increased their defense spending but also because the alliance has expanded to include Finland and Sweden. Biden said Putin had hoped for a “Finlandization of NATO,” but instead we've seen a “NATOization of Finland.” Biden's visit to Normandy last week to mark the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings highlighted the alliance's new cohesion.
Biden is also right when he says he was able to “bring together 50 countries to support Ukraine” and promote important coalitions in the Pacific region, such as AUKUS (Australia, UK, US), Quad (US, Japan, Australia, India), the US-Philippines basing agreement, and the trilateral relationship between Japan, Korea, and the US. Additionally, he signed the Semiconductor Science Act to increase America's technological competitiveness and reduce reliance on foreign suppliers of semiconductors.
But does it matter? Voters don't seem to give Biden much credit for his impressive foreign policy record. That's partly because foreign policy is rarely a top priority for voters, and partly because the current president is less adept at boasting than his predecessor. Trump is good at touting fictitious accomplishments; Biden is not so good at touting real ones.
I fear that Trump's “it shouldn't have happened” excuses for recent events may be effective. The further we get from his presidency, the more likely it is that voters will forget his actual record of chaos and dysfunction, which did not stop at the water's edge. To avoid an even more dangerous and destructive sequel, we need to remember what actually happened, not what Trump fantasizes about.
