Donald Trump’s admirers like to trumpet his unpredictability as his diplomatic superpower. Keeping your enemies and allies on their toes can indeed work to your advantage. In his first year back on the world stage the US president has clearly enjoyed playing up the impression of a whimsical approach to the world to keep his aides, too, guessing about his thinking. But this was the week when any ambiguity surely disappeared. The true cynical, money-grabbing and self-interested nature of his world view was laid bare.
First came the White House reception for the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman: a glorification of deals worth up to $1tn accompanied grotesquely by Trump’s implicit ridiculing of concerns about the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents. Realpolitik if not cynicism has of course usually won the day over idealism in US foreign policy. But there is a huge difference between an implicit and understood sometime hypocrisy, and an outright trampling over the core democratic and ethical principles that the US, in better days, has enshrined.
When asked by a journalist about Khashoggi’s murder, Trump replied “things happen”. Anyone with a shred of conscience on his staff should be appalled by such callous public disregard for the values the US has long liked to promote. The clear message to autocracies and fragile democracies alike seemed to be that they can disregard America’s history of promoting justice and liberty; all that matters is money.