Australians' trust in the United States has plummeted, largely due to the unpredictable and self-serving policies of President Donald Trump, according to former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans.
In an exclusive interview on Friday with China Global Television Network (CGTN) in Beijing, Evans voiced serious concerns about the Trump administration's impact on international trust and global stability.
Referencing a recent Lowy Institute survey that shows Australians' trust in the U.S. has dropped to its lowest point in two decades, with just 36 percent of respondents saying they trust the country to act responsibly, Evans firmly attributed the downward trend to Trump's approach.
"That's a dramatic falling away of some 20 percentage points, I think, in just a year. And obviously, it's very directly attributable to President Trump. There is no affection in Australia at all for what people perceive to be Trump's approach to international relations, Trump's approach to democracy, Trump's approach to internal respect and protection, for civil liberties, for human rights. This is not a country that we've always believed in under the current administration. And it's no surprise that confidence has dropped away. I mean, nobody knows what to expect from the Trump administration when it comes to international relations. There are three different strains at work," said Evans.
He said the U.S. foreign policy under Trump's leadership has become unpredictable and driven by conflicting agendas.
"There's the America First isolationist divisions of spheres of influence - you do your thing, we'll do ours, and we don't want to get into any confrontational node. That's one stream. Then this 'Make America Great Again' stream, which is restoring American preeminence, primacy, all that stuff, with all that follows from that in terms of willingness to use force aggressively and in breach of international rule. Then there's the purely transactional, ego-driven dimension where there are no obvious principles that are applicable at all, except personal self-interest," said Evans.
The former top diplomat warned that even members of Trump's own administration seem unsure about the president's direction, causing wider instability and apprehension among allies.
"So, this is an environment which everybody is finding rather spooky. Trump's own advisers don't know which way he's going to jump, so how can the rest of us know which way to jump? Obviously, there's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of unhappiness with the way the United States is going. Hopefully, with the passage of time, a number of these policy decisions that Trump has been making will come back to bite him, including the economic ones, in his own constituency. So hopefully over time, we'll see some modification of behavior," he said.
Australians' trust in the U.S. falls dramatically: former FM
