Sometimes when you return home after a very long trip, you may discover that things have gone awry in your absence. A waterpipe may have burst causing flood damage or the power may have gone out leaving you with a refrigerator full of spoiled food. In all cases, a cleanup is necessary after your absence. This relatively short post is one of several housekeeping cleanup post to come after my extended absence.
Back in January 2017, I made three foreign policy predictions about former President Trump. Reader’s digest version of the predictions were that:
1. Mr. Trump will use the U.S. military as his personal property police when his real estate and personal property are attacked.
2. China would test Mr. Trump early by engaging with gunfire any U. S. aircraft or ship in the South China Sea area. The engagements will continue until Mr. Trump publicly acknowledges there is only one China and that it controls access to the South China Sea.
3. Mr. Trump will remove all of the economic sanctions put in place by President Obama, including those because of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, despite vigorous Congressional disapproval and remove U. S. troops from the NATO rotation in Poland. The missiles in Romania will stay for the moment, but don’t be surprised if the U.S. pulls out of the NATO “anti-missile shield” program before the end of 2018.
Of all of the prediction posts, I’ve written over the last 16 years, I’ve not missed the mark by as wide a margin as I missed on these three predictions. First, no Trump owned property came under attack on foreign soil, so there was no opportunity to test the validity of the prediction of using military troops to protect his personal property. Secondly, China is a known military threat, not just an economic one. However, former President Trump never wanted to acknowledge China’s control of the South China Sea (despite a Chinese warship conducting aggressive maneuvers at an U.S. Destroyer in those waters) or get to implement his touted “two China” policy as I had predicted. Finally, Congress in late 2017 passed legislation, which was signed by Trump, that limited Trump’s ability to remove President Obama’s imposed sanctions on Russia. President Trump did remove troops, but not from Poland. Rather, he removed troops from Germany which is our “staging hub” into Europe to counter Russian aggression.
All of this is to say my days of making predictions relative to the unpredictable Trump administration are over – in more ways than one. But I needed to post this in order to clean up a promise I made on this site in December 2018 to revisit these Trump foreign policy predictions. So, I’ve done it. I can clear my calendar and you can take it for what it’s worth. Another post on Friday.
