How can trump fail? Let me count some ways -
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Foreign policy challenges persist for a distracted U.S. in the midst of pandemic https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/foreign-policy-challenges-persist-for-a-distracted-us-in-the-midst-of-pandemic/2020/04/10/2f72cf0a-7b45-11ea-a130-df573469f094_story.html

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In the Middle East, alliances and battlefields are being redrawn. In Asia, new powers are strengthening as new partnerships emerge. Much of Africa is descending into a deeper economic hole. The declining U.S. transatlantic leadership role has come into even sharper relief.

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The administration’s ability to manage these issues, preserving U.S. interests even as its attention and resources are sapped by the domestic pandemic fight, will help determine the starting point for its post-virus position in the world.

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Nowhere is the risk of waning U.S. global influence more visible than in its relationship with China, already strained before the pandemic. President Trump has sought to make Beijing a scapegoat, viewing the fight against the virus as a strategic competition and possible

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reelection advantage, rather than heeding the advice of some within his own administration to postpone a reckoning and assignment of blame until the immediate crisis has passed.
China has picked up the mantle, “touting its model as the best equipped . . . at a time when

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the U.S. seems to be faltering, a time when it’s struggling to project its model,” said Robert Malley, the president of the International Crisis Group, an international security think tank.
Strained relations will only grow worse as both countries experience rising

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unemployment, said Daniel Lynch, a professor of international relations at the City University of Hong Kong.
More broadly, on issues tied to the pandemic and not, the U.S. voice at times has been overwhelmed by fast-moving facts on the ground, or a dearth of information.

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Japanese officials are loath to admit that the crisis has dented U.S. leadership in Asia, but the region has largely dealt with the pandemic without looking to the United States. From wearing masks to mass testing, the West has not been part of the conversation, and close

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allies Japan and South Korea — with far more experience dealing with epidemics — have largely found their own solutions.
With the Trump administration notable by its absence, Japan has staked out its own leadership credentials, donating masks, money and medical supplies to

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China at the height of the outbreak in Wuhan. More recently, it arranged to send the antiviral, anti-influenza drug Avigan to at least 20 countries after it was found to have helped patients recover in China.
While the eyes of the world are elsewhere, North Korea has

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conducted a series of missile tests — the most in a single month in March. Even before the virus outbreak, Kim Jong Un had moved to a more hard-line position on U.S. disarmament demands. Although he still seems to see some value in his relationship with Trump, Kim has taken

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advantage of the world’s distraction to continue to develop weapons systems.
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To some extent, the wheels of U.S. foreign and national security policy continue to turn, virus or no virus. When two Russian anti-submarine patrol aircraft entered the Alaskan air defense zone

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on Wednesday, they were intercepted by U.S. F-22 fighter jets.
The State Department, with about 20 percent of its Washington workforce in the building, has released a steady stream of non-virus pronouncements over the past few weeks, celebrating International Roma Day,

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U.N. Mine Awareness Day and Senegalese Independence Day. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other officials have participated in video conferences and phone calls with foreign counterparts, sometimes involving non-virus matters.
The administration’s “maximum pressure”

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campaigns against Iran and Venezuela have continued apace, with new sanctions and reams of fact sheets. U.S. indictments against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and others in his government were followed by a proposal for an interim government and elections, one of the

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few diplomatic initiatives to emerge during the pandemic crisis.
In a recent foreign ministers meeting of the G-7, which was held virtually, the United States helped set up “very good coordinated work streams” among health ministers, finance ministers and others, said one of

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several senior European officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s performance.
But in the past, the official said, U.S. administrations would step forward in international crises to say that “we’re going to make sure all the pieces of

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the jigsaw fit together, that no one is causing trouble. . . . We are America, and we are going to do it.”
Now, despite U.S.-inspired coordination on many levels, “there’s not a lot of top-down strategic narrative around it. That’s what I find curious . . . it does leave
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everybody short.” While U.S. withdrawal from global leadership did not begin with Trump, the official said, “the temperament of this administration” seems to have exacerbated it.

In the Middle East, the pandemic descended at a moment when Turkey and the United States, after

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years of acrimony, had at last agreed on an issue — the necessity of stalling a Russian-backed Syrian government offensive in Idlib, one of the final rebel redoubts.
The Trump administration praised Turkey’s decision to send thousands of troops into the province, in the

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northwest corner of Syria, and said the United States was seeking other ways to help, short of providing boots on the ground, including by sharing intelligence.
U.S. officials, sensing an opportunity to drive a wedge between Russia and Turkey, repeatedly highlighted and

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denounced Russia’s central role in the offensive, which displaced nearly a million people and set off a humanitarian catastrophe in a matter of weeks.
But the rapprochement now appears to have stalled. Washington rebuffed a Turkish request for Patriot missile defense

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batteries, and in early March, Turkey and Russia struck a cease-fire deal over Idlib that included joint military patrols between the two nations. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that Turkey would make the S-400 missile defense system

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it has purchased from Russia “operational” this month, a move that would trigger U.S. sanctions.