Trump's World Is More Dangerous and Uncertain for Ex-NATO Chief

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. President Donald Trump has made the world a more dangerous place and his lack of global leadership will be exploited by the likes of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, according to former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Trump is a “fully fledged American isolationist” who has disrupted the international order fostered by the U.S. and its allies after World War Two, Rasmussen said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Berlin on Wednesday.

“The world is on fire. Wherever you look you have conflicts,” said Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister who now runs his own consultancy, Rasmussen Global. The world needs “a policeman to restore international order” and the U.S. is the only nation that can successfully fulfill such a role, but is derogating its duty, he said.

“Now you are lacking American global leadership and this is why autocrats have a more easy game to play than before,” Rasmussen said. “When the U.S. and the democratic world retreats, they will leave behind a vacuum and that vacuum will be filled by the bad guys.”

Since taking office, Trump has pulled the U.S. out of international accords on climate change and Iran’s nuclear program, ignited a global trade conflict with key U.S. trading partners including the European Union and publicly slammed allies like Germany for not spending enough on defense.

That largely fulfills campaign pledges Trump made on his way to the White House. In a fact sheet published June 4 to mark 500 days of the Trump administration, the White House said that “America is winning on the world stage.”

“President Trump has re-asserted American leadership on the world stage and is achieving results for the American people,” according to the statement, which was tweeted by Trump.

The leaders of Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada will have a chance to air their grievances with the U.S. administration at the G-7 summit in Canada later this week.

To contact the reporters on this story: Matthew Miller in Berlin at mtmiller@bloomberg.net;Iain Rogers in Berlin at irogers11@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net, ;Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net, Richard Bravo

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