Saturday, June 23, 2018

Transactional Diplomacy Trump Style


Patricia H Kushlis, Whirled View; "Patricia H. Kushlis 27 years public diplomacy experience in Europe, Asia and Washington, DC as a US foreign service officer. International affairs writer, analyst and commentator."

image (not from article) from

Excerpt:
In May 2017, then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told State Department staff in his first of few meetings with them that he preferred to operate along the lines of transactional diplomacy which subordinates American values to a form of foreign policy based on cash-register type one-on-one trades. This way, the US could deal with the “bad guys” without having to consider whether they represented countries with ethical governments or not.

During my own Foreign Service career, I certainly worked in countries where the rule of law was nonexistent and where the US needed to base its relationship with the government in question on a transactional form of diplomacy. But that’s not what Trump’s version of transactional diplomacy is all about. ..

Trump’s own brand of transactional diplomacy ... [:] For him, it’s a narrow and personally based world view couched in bluster and incendiary Tweets sent at weird hours of the night but what’s different is that it’s not designed to further or even support US national goals and objectives – those don’t matter. Rather it’s designed to enrich Trump and/or his company and children personally. ...

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