Is Trump Squandering Allies' Approval of American Leadership?

President Donald Trump has once more proven to America’s allies that he is willing to completely ignore their standpoints, by unilaterally cancelling the Iran Deal on Tuesday. Most observers were in agreement that the deal struck in 2015 by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany with Iran was one of the few international treaties actually really working.

Au contraire, Mr. Trump, without seeing the necessity to come forward with any solid proof, is of the persuasion that the deal which called on Iran to stop its nuclear weapons program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions was a “bad deal”, negotiated by his predecessor in office Barack Obama. Some suspect that this is the actual reason for pulling the plug: the fact that the deal was one of Obama’s tangible foreign policy successes.

America’s allies in Europe, among them Britain, France and Germany, had all tried to convince Trump that the agreement was sound and working. Trump’s willingness to go it alone and not take his allies’ advice into consideration is probably one of the reasons why the approval of U.S. leadership in the world has dropped significantly from 2016 to 2017 - especially among countries formally allied with America, as a worldwide poll by Gallup underscores.