Chop and change is Trump's game
Defining his global strategy is a lost cause. His trial-and-error tack may have worsened things
PUNDITS in Washington have given up trying to define President Donald Trump's foreign policy doctrine, after having discovered during his first year in office that a grand design explaining his global strategy - not to mention a coherent worldview - did not exist.
Indeed, President Trump can be compared to Schrödinger's Cat - to cite the famous scientific theorem proposed by Austrian quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger in the 1930s; this theorem imagines a sealed box containing a cat that may be simultaneously both alive and dead, and which is linked to an event that may or may not happen. Likewise, Mr Trump can be simultaneously both a hawk and a dove, an isolationist who has pledged to end America's wars in the Middle East and an interventionist who stands at the ready to launch new battles.
After all, this is the same president who had threatened to nuke Pyongyang, but who is now exchanging love letters with North Korea's leader; he also pledged to stand by America's allies in the Middle East and then abandoned the Kurdish fighters in Syria to their fate. He has as well been criticised for his bromance with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but has at the next turn ordered a revocation of a major nuclear agreement with Russia.
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