Donald Trump is embarking on a week of diplomacy and preparation for his first foreign trip as president, aimed at demonstrating that his personal charisma can override longstanding global divisions and conflicts of interest with old allies.
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| Donald Trump will begin his first foreign trip as president on Friday, with visits to Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, Brussels and Sicily. Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP |
Starting on Friday, the president’s world tour is seeking to recast Trump as a world statesman at a time when the legitimacy of his election victory is under greater attack than ever following his dismissal of the FBI director, James Comey, who was overseeing an investigation into the Trump campaign’s links to Russia.
The national security adviser, HR McMaster, was deployed on Friday to highlight the presidential trip during the daily White House briefing, with the press more interested in asking questions about Trump’s tweeted hint he had taped his conversations with Comey.
In describing Trump’s first foreign excursion – which takes in Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, Brussels and Sicily – McMaster outlined the ethos of the president’s approach to foreign affairs, modelled on the visit last month by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, to the president’s private club at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
“The president prioritizes building strong relationships, as you see here, every day with world leaders as a way to strengthen our alliances. And he’s been successful,” McMaster said.
He laid out the agenda for Trump’s trip, which starts with visits to the ancient capitals of Islam, Judaism and Christianity and culminates in Nato and G7 summits at the end of the following week, describing it in almost messianic terms.
“This trip is truly historic. No president has ever visited the homelands and holy sites of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslims faiths all on one trip,” McMaster said. “And what President Trump is seeking is to unite peoples of all faiths around a common vision of peace, progress, and prosperity.
“[T]he President’s leadership has been welcomed – welcomed enthusiastically,” McMaster added. “There was a perception that America had largely disengaged from the Middle East in particular, and that disengagement coincided with this humanitarian and political catastrophe in the region.”
On Tuesday, Trump will meet another regional strongman, the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, with the White House hoping that personal chemistry will assuage a clash over the two countries’ security interests in Syria.
Trump will seek Erdoğan’s acquiescence to the US plan to drive Isis out of its Syrian stronghold in Raqqa, a plan that hinges on arming the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Kurdish force that Ankara has long denounced as a terrorist group for its links to the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) insurgents in Turkey.
Reliance on the YPG to take Raqqa was an Obama administration plan that Trump put on hold while he reviewed other possible options. Turkey argued it could train and deliver sufficient Syrian Arab forces to take and hold Raqqa but they failed to materialise. This is referred to inside the Pentagon as Erdoğan’s “ghost army”.
“The US arming the Kurds is the last thing Turkey wants, but the Turks didn’t come up with another plan. There was no plan B,” said Hassan Hassan, an expert on Isis and Syria at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington. “The Americans have told them this is something we need to do and we need to do it now.”
“The US arming the Kurds is the last thing Turkey wants, but the Turks didn’t come up with another plan. There was no plan B,” said Hassan Hassan, an expert on Isis and Syria at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington. “The Americans have told them this is something we need to do and we need to do it now.”
From The Guardian
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