Former President Trump’s crowning as the Republican presidential nominee after surviving an attempted assassination has cemented for America’s allies and partners the necessity of building goodwill with the Trump camp.
A phone call took place Friday between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, amid the former president’s assertions he can negotiate an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine.
“We agreed with President Trump to discuss at a personal meeting what steps can make peace fair and truly lasting,” Zelensky said in a post on social media platform X.
And a bipartisan delegation of Taiwanese officials were on the ground at the Republican National Convention this week interacting with GOP lawmakers and former senior national security officials from Trump’s first administration.
During his keynote address closing out the Republican National Convention, Trump repeated his promise to end the war between Russia and Ukraine — along with “every single international crisis.”
He described having good relations with leaders of America’s most dangerous adversaries as key to avoiding bad action — and said antagonism toward democratic partner nations was pushing them to spend more on their own defense.
“We have long been taken advantage of by other countries. And think of it, oftentimes these other countries are considered so-called allies. They’ve taken advantage of us for years,” Trump said.
Rachael Dean Wilson, managing director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund, said she’s hearing more from diplomats about the importance of fanning out across the U.S. to meet more with local and state politicians where Trump’s message resonates to better understand the political environment in the U.S.
“I’ve talked to a number of diplomats from different countries that are engaging in — not only going to the RNC and the DNC — but almost like listening tours in the United States,” she said.
“I think the foreign policy piece is a big question mark in what was laid out at the RNC this week, because you saw a vision and a lot of promises, ‘no new wars’ seem to be the foreign policy mantra in the speech last night. There were very scant details on how to accomplish that,” she said.
It’s common practice for foreign diplomats, politicians, and advocacy groups to attend political
convention’s each election cycle. But some attendees remarked about a striking, triumphant atmosphere among the GOP faithful – buoyed by chaos in the Democratic party calling for President Biden to step aside as the nominee.
“When you’re there, everyone is in such a good mood because it’s like they already won… among the crowd, no one’s complaining about Biden because it felt like a done deal,” said Alexandre Crevaux-Asatiani, a member of the Georgian opposition political party UNM who came to advocate in support of Ukraine and U.S-Georgian ties.
“I’m not a U.S. political expert, but I would say it’s still a little bit too early, there’s still a long way to go, no one really knows how elections are going to turn out as early as July.”
Crevaux-Asatiani welcomed Trump’s condemning Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia and 2014 occupation of Crimea in his keynote speech, which was part of the former president’s argument that “no new wars” occurred during his administration.
“What he’s saying is that Russia shouldn’t be invading any country, and that he proposes a vision that will address that, a vision that will prevent any invasions from happening — it doesn’t mean capitulation, it doesn’t mean compromise, it doesn’t mean any of that, it just means strength,” he said. “And we saw that in the Republican platform, their whole messaging of peace through strength, really resonates, and it’s a good thing for us.”
But Trump’s selection of Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate – a staunch opponent of U.S. support for Ukraine – sent immediate shockwaves through Kyiv’s supporters over whether the junior senator would influence Trump’s position on foreign policy.
Wilson of the German Marshall Fund said the pick of Vance “was definitely kind of a win for the protectionist side of the Republican Party.”
“Right now, what you’re seeing is a very real dialogue within the Republican Party about how it wants to show up in the world and I don’t think that dialogue has resolved anything yet,” said Daniel Balson, head of public engagement for the non-profit advocacy group Razom for Ukraine, who attended the RNC.
Balson said Razom’s mission was to clarify the benefits of U.S. support to Ukraine and reach individuals and communities who may not be familiar with the issue.
“A lot of it was an intelligence gathering exercise for folks who have concerns about continued U.S. support for Ukraine. I think it’s important for us to understand why.”
Trump has frequently attacked foreign allies and partners as not spending enough on their own militaries and defense budgets and relying too much on the U.S., even threatening to withdraw from the NATO alliance if other countries don’t carry more of the financial burden.
He recently turned that ire on Taiwan, saying in a June interview with Bloomberg that Taipei “should pay us for defense… we’re no different than an insurance company.”
Taipei responded that the country has directed 2.5 percent of its GDP on defense investment, what they describe as an historic high. The Taiwan delegation brough that message to its meetings at the RNC this week.
This included Trump’s former secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former national security advisor Robert O’Brien, and a handful of GOP lawmakers from the Senate and House, including Chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), according to a dispatch from the delegates of Taiwan’s ruling party, the DPP.
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), who met with the Taiwanese delegation during the convention, responded to Trump’s comments on Taiwan that the “the record is probably more important than the rhetoric,” during a panel at the Aspen Security Forum on Friday.
He pointed to an increase in weapons sales to Taiwan during the former Trump administration and visits by administration officials, which, at that time, broke an unofficial taboo of holding back public, high-level U.S. engagement.
Sullivan called for closer ties with Taipei and to telegraph consequences to Chinese President Xi Jinping to deter an invasion of the island.
“I think one of the most important things we can do — I have legislation on it — is let Xi Jinping know if he invades Taiwan that we will impose massive economic, financial and energy sanctions on him.”
Trump’s fixation on criticizing U.S. allies over their defense spending is part of increased alarm over a growing GOP inclination toward protectionist or isolationist policies in general.
While Trump has not directly committed to a 60 percent tariff on all imports from China — as proposed by his former national security advisor O’Brien — he is floating a 10 percent tariff on all imports to the U.S.
This has prompted anxiety in Ottawa – Canada’s ambassador to the U.S. Kristin Hillman said there are conversations with Trump advisors “urging them to consider what the implications of applying that would be,” during a panel discussion at the RNC hosted by POLITICO.
“I think we’ll have an important conversation, because we just negotiated something quite different,” she said, referring to the Trump-era USMCA trade pact, which the former president has touted as “the best trade deal ever made.”
Karen Pierce, the UK’s ambassador to the U.S., also pitched to the Republican convention attendees about preserving friendly economic ties with America’s allies.
“The other thing I’d say is to encourage Americans to believe that it is strategically in their interests for their close allies to have competitive healthy industries,” she said, calling for “friend-shoring” industries, as opposed to the U.S. focusing only on domestic production.
“It’s very much in America’s interest that her allies believe in free enterprise and have healthy economies and an open trading system is a key part of that,” she said.