Trump’s Blunt-Force Foreign Policy

A quarter century before he ran for the Presidency, Donald Trump lobbied to be the chief U.S. negotiator with the Soviet Union on a deal to mutually limit their nuclear arsenals. It was in the late eighties, shortly after his book “The Art of the Deal” was on the Times best-seller list for fifty-one weeks. The George H. W. Bush Administration instead tapped Richard Burt, who had spent much of his career in national security. Burt was the Ambassador to West Germany in the run-up to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. According to a story circulating in Washington, Trump and Burt later met at a society wedding in New York. Trump approached Burt and offered advice on how he would deal with the Soviets. He said that he would initially be the gracious host and ask the Soviet delegation to get comfortable around the table. Then, Trump told Burt, he would stand up, shout “Fuck you!,” and immediately walk out of the room. Burt’s team subsequently concluded the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, one of the largest and most complex arms deals in history. (When I asked Burt about the wedding conversation, he would neither confirm nor deny it. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)