Donald Trump has ceded global leadership to China, says Nixon trip aide
US president’s trip to Beijing is a repair mission as his policies have led to Washington’s withdrawal from the international stage, says official who helped prepare for Richard Nixon’s historic trip to China
A key figure in former US president Richard Nixon’s trip to Beijing in 1972 has criticised Donald Trump for ceding global leadership to China, calling Trump’s Asia tour “a repair mission”.
Winston Lord, who as a young foreign service officer travelled to China with former US national security adviser Henry Kissinger before Nixon to lay the groundwork for the historic visit, said Trump’s foreign policy had served to “make China great again”.
Lord took Trump to task at an Asia Society event in New York for “being tougher on allies than he is on dictators and sucking up to [China’s President Xi Jinping] … flip-flopping on Taiwan, accepting Chinese actions on North Korea as being more decisive than they really are.”
Lord said Trump’s “America first” policy meant leaving the field to China.
“The fact that his foreign policy is essentially military only – and with his trade disruption and total inattention to human rights and democracy promotion and soft power, and gutting the State Department – all of this weakens our posture,” said Lord, who served as US ambassador to China under former president Ronald Reagan, a Republican, and assistant secretary of state for Asian and Pacific Affairs under former president Bill Clinton, a Democrat. “I’ve never talked about presidents this way in sessions. [Trump] is unique.”
Trump has been criticised by many in his own party, including Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker and Arizona Senator John McCain, for his contentious attitude towards allies in Europe and Asia.