Diplomats win America friends so we don’t have to go it alone in a competitive world. That’s how my colleagues and I were able to rally the United Nations to impose crippling sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program and ultimately force Tehran to stop its progress toward a bomb — something Trump’s bluster has failed to do. (He actually defunded inspectors keeping an eye on Iranian research sites. Dumb.)
Diplomacy is cost-effective, especially compared with military action. Preventing wars is cheaper than fighting them. Trump’s own former secretary of defence, Jim Mattis, a retired Marine Corps four-star general, told Congress “if you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition”.
Our development assistance has always been a small portion of the federal budget, but it also has an outsize impact on international stability, especially paired with effective diplomacy. When American aid dollars help stop a famine or an outbreak, when we respond to a natural disaster or open schools, we win hearts and minds that might otherwise go to terrorists or rivals such as China. We reduce the flow of migrants and refugees. We strengthen friendly governments that might otherwise collapse.
I don’t want to pretend that any of this is easy or that American foreign policy hasn’t been plagued by mistakes. Leadership is hard. But our best chance to get it right and to keep our country safe is to strengthen our government, not weaken it. We should invest in the patriots who serve our nation, not insult them.
Smart reforms could make federal agencies, including the State Department and USAID, more efficient and effective. During the Clinton administration, my husband’s Reinventing Government initiative, led by Vice President Al Gore, worked with Congress to thoughtfully streamline bureaucracy, modernise the workforce and save billions of dollars. In many ways, it was the opposite of the Trump administration’s slash-and-burn approach. Today they are not reinventing government; they’re wrecking it.
All this is dumb and dangerous. And I haven’t even gotten to the damage Trump is doing by cosying up to dictators such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, blowing up our alliances – force multipliers that extend our reach and share our burdens – and trashing our moral influence by undermining the rule of law at home. Or how he’s tanking our economy and blowing up our national debt. Propagandists in Beijing and Moscow know we are in a global debate about competing systems of governance. People and leaders around the world are watching to see if democracy can still deliver peace and prosperity or even function. If America is ruled like a banana republic, with flagrant corruption and a leader who puts himself above the law, we lose that argument. We also lose the qualities that have made America exceptional and indispensable.
If there’s a grand strategy at work here, I don’t know what it is. Maybe Trump wants to return to 19th-century spheres of influence. Maybe he’s just driven by personal grudges and is in way over his head. As a businessman, he bankrupted his Atlantic City casinos. Now he’s gambling with the national security of the United States. If this continues, a group chat foul will be the least of our concerns, and all the fist and flag emojis in the world won’t save us.
Hillary Clinton is a former secretary of state and US senator and was the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 2016.