With the US election campaign entering its final weeks, one of its oddities so far is that Donald Trump is saying very little about the global aspect of his mission to “Make America Great Again”. True, there are plenty of reasons to concentrate on affairs at home, but all the falsehoods and fake trails on COVID-19, law and order, the economy, wildfires and the rest are doing little but shore up his base.
What makes this odd is that the Trump team are more than skilled enough to manipulate their presentation of foreign achievements as successes if not triumphs. The thorny issue of North Korea is currently sidelined, with Trump able to argue that his deal-making skills have brought Kim Jong-un to the table, while being vague on the details, and he can claim to be a peacemaker in the Middle East with the Israel-UAE-Bahrain agreement.
On Afghanistan he can point to the current peace talks between the government and the Taliban and the steady withdrawal of US troops, with plans being to bring back almost all the uniformed troops by next May, with half of them back home before the election. As for Iraq and Syria, he can also hail the withdrawal of US troops from those countries. It all sounds a good package from his perspective, especially if the pudding is hugely over-egged by a cursory regard for facts.
