Loose lips risk sinking Trump’s foreign policy ships
Born more than a year after World War II, he has made a career of spouting controversial comments
“Loose lips sink ships” was part of an American, British, and Allied propaganda campaign in World War II. Posters shouting that “Careless Talk Costs Lives” were plastered across the United Kingdom during its darkest hour in 1940 and throughout the remainder of the conflict.
Fast forward to today’s bite-sized populist culture of the loudest voice in the room, and it is fortunate that US President Donald Trump was not around back then. Quite simply, he never appears to know when to “keep his trap shut,” to quote the British idiom.
Born just 13 months after the surrender of Germany in 1945 and Japan a few months later, he has made a political career of spouting a torrent of controversial, and occasionally “dangerous,” comments. At times, Trump resembles a verbal volcano waiting to explode.
His visit to Beijing last week for a tête-à-tête with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, illustrated what many believe are character flaws for high office. During his flight back to the US on Air Force One, he cast doubt on the US$14 billion arms sale to Taiwan, calling it a “negotiating chip.”
Careless talk, indeed. “Trump’s public openness to negotiating with Beijing over America’s posture on Taiwan will serve as the diplomatic equivalent of a matador waving a red flag in front of a bull,” Ryan Hass, of the Brookings Institution, warned at the weekend.
“This is not just a policy shift. It is a shift from deterrence to dealmaking in a domain where there is no deal to be made, beyond offering unilateral concessions that undermine deterrence,” he wrote in a commentary for the Washington-based think tank.
Trump’s remarks resemble careless talk from a careless American president.
The art of the squeal:
- Trump’s remarks came 48 hours after Xi had warned him that the “most important issue” in Beijing’s relationship with Washington was the fate of the island democracy of Taiwan.
- China considers it a breakaway province and has threatened to take it by force. Sentiments echoed by Xi as he cautioned of “clashes and conflicts.”
Delve deeper: Trump has only added fuel to the fire with an incendiary interview with Fox News at the weekend, taking aim at Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te. “They have somebody there now who wants to go independent,” he said, referring to Lai.
Between the lines: “They’re going independent because they want to get into a war and they figure they have the United States behind them,” he added, raising concerns about the security partnership between Taipei and Washington.
Big picture: Trump also confirmed that “Xi asked him point-blank if he’d defend Taiwan, and he declined to tell him,” according to Rush Doshi, of the Council on Foreign Relations, in an X post. The right answer under Kissinger’s doctrine of “strategic ambiguity.”
China Factor comment: Still, Trump’s remarks resemble more careless talk from a careless American president who does not know when to keep his own counsel.