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Trump says North Korea 'gift' may be a 'beautiful vase'
01:05 - Source: CNN

Editor’s Note: David A. Andelman, executive director of The RedLines Project, is a contributor to CNN where his columns won the Deadline Club Award for Best Opinion Writing. Author of “A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today,” he was formerly a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News in Europe and Asia. Follow him on Twitter @DavidAndelman. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

CNN  — 

Donald Trump is facing sources of profound instability in the final year of his first presidential term, arguably more so than any of his predecessors going back at least 100 years. And most of these crises are largely of his own making.

Let’s take a look around the world as the 2010s wind to a close, and we embark on a new decade of the 2020s:

North Korea

In their one and only meeting in the Oval Office in November 2016, former President Barack Obama warned his successor that the utterly unpredictable North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his burgeoning nuclear arsenal was his single most dangerous and intractable problem.

Going into Trump’s final year of his first term, it still is.

Trump’s first gambit was simply to bluster and bait the Korean despot. “Fire and fury,” Trump threatened, as Kim tested increasingly lethal and long-range weapons. Then, receiving nothing in return, Trump pivoted and delivered to the leader of a floundering nation desperate for attention much of what he wanted – a global platform, a smile and a handshake.

Now, Trump can only await the so-called Christmas gift that Kim had promised (or threatened) weeks ago. Alternatively, it could turn out to be a New Year’s present or even a birthday gift on Kim’s birthday on January 8.

Regardless, much of the world is on tenterhooks wondering when this gift might be delivered and what form it might take. Still, Trump continues to make light of a situation that is more likely than any other to touch off a new round of escalating tensions.

Meanwhile Trump is still in a battle over how much he can extract from South Korea for the cost of American forces stationed there as a check on Kim’s worst impulses. Trump’s demand for about a 400% increase in that fee seems to be one stumbling block.

China

Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have still not signed the first-round trade pact that will put a hold on new tariffs, trim some existing duties on Chinese products and open markets in China to some American farm products. Even though that will likely happen in the early weeks of 2020, as Trump himself suggested, there may be no real prospects for a broad agreement before the November elections.

Though the first round may help ease some pressure on American farmers, retailers and consumers, it still does not return either country to the level of trade before Trump launched the trade war. Indeed, the trade pact is likely to leave in place tariffs on $360 billion in goods.

Meanwhile, China is continuing its realignment and rapprochement with a host of other partners, including Southeast Asian nations like Japan, and especially countries that have joined its Belt and Road development initiative.

Russia

Poised to wreak havoc on many fronts, Russian President Vladimir Putin is about to have a key Mideast country (Syria) within his grasp, as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad may be one big bombing run away from seizing the last real rebel stronghold in Idlib. This, in turn, will allow Putin to cement a toehold in the eastern Mediterranean, where the American Sixth fleet based in Naples has long held sway. For Putin, such a prize would cap a quest by Russian rulers back to Peter the Great. And it would be a direct challenge to American sea power.

Brexit

With Britain likely finally leaving the European Union, Trump will begin a host of critical trade talks, first with a newly independent Britain, then with the rest of the European Union. But with Trump holding the sword of Damocles over at least some of the participants, the key question is who he might hang out to dry first. On the continent, he’s already threatened two longtime allies – France, with tariffs on wine, cheese and handbags, and Germany with tariffs on auto imports. So really the open question is not how many friends will be left in Europe, but how much Trump really cares.

Realignments

At the same time, Trump is facing a host of changes, including the formation of new alliances and partnerships, that will largely leave the United States on the sidelines.

Already, Xi and Putin have been crisscrossing Africa selling trade and arms respectively to a continent Trump has never visited and where he has threatened to pull out US troops, which could allow terrorists to run rampant. And Russia and China are in the throes of an historic rapprochement with the opening of a new gas pipeline network linking their two countries.

China and Russia have also found an ally in Iran, with the three countries launching a series of joint military maneuvers last week in the northern Indian Ocean. And Iran is clearly on the hunt for new partners – and new markets for its oil and gas – as Trump’s sanctions begin to bite. This could also very well be the year when Iran finally decides it has nothing further to lose and moves toward a nuclear weapon. It has already taken some initials steps at its Fordow nuclear facility and confirmed it has breached the levels of enriched uranium it is allowed under the agreement from which the United States has withdrawn.

What will Trump – and the West – do then?

Turkey

Meanwhile, Turkey has become the first NATO member to adopt a major Russian weapons system – the S-400 anti-aircraft missile, in a tilt toward Moscow. Its troops are fighting alongside Russian and Syrian forces as Assad enters the final phase of ending the civil war.

The last time the world entered a decade of the twenties, a hundred years ago, America was in much the same position as today. Beginning in 1920, America had rarely before seen such prosperity. But it was equally isolated. The utterly protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff, designed to protect US industry against foreign competitors but which eventually choked off trade and growth, and America’s refusal to enter the League of Nations isolated the nation and laid the foundations for the decade to follow, with the deepest Depression the world has ever known and one of the most brutal wars.

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    What does Trump have to do to right the ship and prevent this perverse history from repeating itself? He must start by acting less nationalist and more global (or at least regional). Otherwise, he will begin to give bad actors around the world more license to act in their own self-interest.

    Above all, he must choose his friends more carefully – less according to how powerful and in control they are than how closely they hold core American values of freedom and democracy. If not, his universe risks spinning utterly out of control into a world order where the US is little more than a spectator – or victim – in a far corner of the bleachers.