6.  HOW NOT TO FIX U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

HAD HILLARY CLINTON become president in January 2017, the central elements of U.S. foreign policy would have remained firmly in place. Clinton would have embraced America’s self-proclaimed role as the world’s “indispensable” power, continued “rebalancing” U.S. strategic attention toward Asia, been quick to counter a more assertive Russia, and remained fully committed to NATO. Relations with America’s traditional Middle Eastern clients would have continued unaltered, and Clinton would have undoubtedly sought to preserve the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran while opposing Tehran’s regional activities. She would have staffed her administration with experienced liberal internationalists and carefully vetted newcomers who shared her mainstream views. Clinton might have taken a harder line on some issues—such as the civil war in Syria—than Barack Obama had, but her overall approach to foreign policy would have been consistent with the previous quarter century of American conduct abroad. Under Hillary Clinton, liberal hegemony would have remained intact and unquestioned, despite its many shortcomings.

But Donald Trump became president instead, in part because he had campaigned against the failed grand strategy that Clinton was defending and had promised to take on the establishment that Clinton personified. And enough Americans agreed with his broad-brush indictment of past failures to power him to victory in the electoral college and into the Oval Office.

As president, Trump had a golden opportunity to place U.S. foreign policy on a sounder footing. As shown in chapter 3, there is a persistent gap between the foreign policy community’s views on foreign policy and the views of most Americans. The general public rejects isolationism, but it favors a more restrained grand strategy than most members of the foreign policy community do. In theory, Trump could have built on that base of support, sought out members of the foreign policy community who recognized that the pursuit of liberal hegemony had gone astray, and worked with America’s partners to bring U.S. interests and commitments into better balance without destabilizing key regions. On some issues—such as international trade—Trump could have pressed for the judicious updating of existing institutions and trade arrangements, at the same time preserving an open economic order and defending America’s central position within it. Properly implemented, a carefully managed shift to a more realistic grand strategy would have kept the United States secure and prosperous while freeing up the resources needed to address pressing domestic priorities.

It was not to be. Having promised to “shake the rust off American foreign policy,” Trump’s presidency began with a flurry of unconventional moves that reinforced the skepticism of the foreign policy establishment and united key elements of it against him even more strongly. Global realities and resistance from the foreign policy “Blob” began to rein Trump in, and the opportunity for a positive shift in strategy was lost. A year later, many of the policies Trump inherited were still in place and key elements of liberal hegemony were intact. In the war between Trump and tradition, tradition won most of the initial battles.1

Which is not to say that Trump had no impact. Modern presidents enjoy considerable latitude in the conduct of foreign policy, and what they say and how they say it—whether in person or on Twitter—can be as important as what they do. These powers allowed Trump to have a significant effect on U.S. foreign policy and on America’s standing in the world, despite the opposition he faced.

Unfortunately, Trump’s impact has been almost entirely negative. The United States is still pursuing a misguided grand strategy, but the captain of the ship of state is an ill-informed and incompetent skipper lacking accurate charts, an able crew, or a clear destination. The United States is still overcommitted around the world, with its military forces fighting active insurgencies in many countries. It continues to spend far more on national security than any other country does, despite recurring fiscal problems and compelling domestic needs. Long the linchpin of the global economy, its commitment to an open trading order is in serious doubt. Meanwhile, Trump’s erratic, combative, self-indulgent, and decidedly unpresidential behavior has alarmed key allies and created inviting opportunities for America’s rivals. Instead of orchestrating a well-designed move away from liberal hegemony and toward a more sensible strategy, Trump has abandoned hard-won positions of influence for no discernible gains and has cast doubt on whether the United States can be relied upon to carry out a successful foreign policy. Instead of “making America great again,” Trump has accelerated its decline.

As president, Trump ended up embracing the worst features of liberal hegemony—overreliance on military force, disinterest in diplomacy, and a tendency toward unilateralism—while turning his back on its positive aspirations, such as support for human rights and the preservation of an open, rules-based world economy. When combined with his ignorance, chaotic management style, and impulsive decision-making, the result was a steady erosion in America’s global position.

WHAT TRUMP PROMISED

In his Inaugural Address, Trump stuck to the core themes of his campaign. “From this day forward,” he pledged, “it’s going to be only America First.” No longer would the United States underwrite the security of its allies in Europe or Asia; from now on “the countries we are defending must pay for the cost of this defense, and if not, the U.S. must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves.”2

As described in the introduction to this book, Trump had gone even further during the 2016 campaign, at one point calling NATO “obsolete” and condemning longtime allies such as Saudi Arabia for supporting terrorism and various other sins.3 On his watch, he promised, the United States would “get out of the nation-building business,” convince Mexico to pay for a wall along the border, and take a tougher line against “radical Islamic extremism.” Trump had said that he would withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), label China a currency manipulator, and prevent it and other trading partners from “stealing” American jobs. Trump vowed to abandon the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change and leave the agreement halting Iran’s nuclear program, which he called the “worst deal ever.” He pledged to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and he spoke of a desire to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—calling it “the ultimate deal.” Trump also held out hope for an improved relationship with Russia and China and repeatedly expressed his admiration for Russian president Vladimir Putin, calling him a “strong leader” and telling supporters, “We’re going to have a great relationship with Putin and Russia.”4

Viewed as a whole, Trump’s initial approach to foreign policy revealed a highly nationalistic, zero-sum worldview, where the United States would pursue its own interests with little or no regard for others. Some of his pronouncements also reflected a nostalgic vision of America as a predominantly white, Anglo-Saxon, and Judeo-Christian culture that faced a growing threat from foreign influences, immigrants, and especially Islam.5 Such instincts may explain Trump’s apparent affinity for such xenophobic nationalists as Putin, Viktor Orbán of Hungary, and Marine Le Pen in France and his disdain for defenders of multicultural tolerance, including many politicians in the European Union.6

Thus, Trump’s arrival seemed to herald a sharp break with the bipartisan consensus behind liberal hegemony. The United States would no longer use its power to spread democracy or promote liberal values and would distance itself from the multilateral institutions it had helped create, nurture, and expand in the past. Instead of trying to strengthen and expand a rules-based international order, the United States would be out for itself alone. Henceforth, relations with other states would be judged solely by whether the United States benefited from them as much or more than others did.7 As Trump told the United Nations General Assembly in September 2017, in a speech that repeatedly stressed the importance of national sovereignty, “I will always put America first, just like you, as the leaders of your countries will always, and should always, put your countries first.”8

WHAT TRUMP DID

Trump’s early appointments suggested that he fully intended to shake up the status quo. Although he briefly considered such familiar figures as retired army general and former CIA director David Petraeus and the 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney for top foreign policy posts, many of his early appointments went to outsiders. Ignoring an explicit warning from President Obama, Trump chose a controversial retired general, Michael Flynn, as his first national security advisor.9 Trump made Michael Anton, a far-right critic of the liberal world order, director of communications for the National Security Council, and his White House staff included several assistants with minimal experience and dubious qualifications—such as former Breitbart commentator and self-styled terrorism expert Sebastian Gorka.10

For his cabinet, Trump picked Exxon president Rex Tillerson for the post of secretary of state, despite Tillerson’s lack of governmental or diplomatic experience. Trump also proposed a 30 percent cut in the State Department budget and was slow to submit nominees for top policy jobs there, telling Fox News in April, “I don’t want to fill many of these appointments … they’re unnecessary.”11 He was true to his word: after a year in office many top foreign policy positions were still vacant or being handled by interim officials.12

Instead of placing a civilian atop the Pentagon, as every president since Truman had done, Trump asked retired Marine Corps general James Mattis to serve as his secretary of defense. He chose another retired general, John Kelly, to head the Department of Homeland Security, and gave his thirty-six-year-old son-in-law, the real estate heir Jared Kushner, several high-profile administrative diplomatic assignments despite Kushner’s lack of political experience or foreign policy credentials.

In another departure from past practice, Trump at first excluded the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from the National Security Council’s “principals committee” and put his chief political strategist, former Breitbart News head Stephen Bannon, on the committee instead. The economist Peter Navarro (author of the China-bashing tract Death by China) brought a protectionist outlook to Trump’s new National Trade Council, the hard-line trade lawyer Robert Lighthizer became U.S. trade representative, and former Republican governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley became ambassador to the United Nations despite her own limited background in foreign affairs.

Yet a number of these unorthodox arrangements turned out to be remarkably short-lived, and Trump’s foreign policy team soon took on a more normal character. Flynn resigned as national security advisor after only twenty-four days in the job, having lied about earlier meetings with Russian officials; and his deputy, former Fox News commentator K. T. McFarland, followed suit a few days later. Flynn’s replacement was army lieutenant general H. R. McMaster, whose foreign policy views lay firmly within the establishment consensus. McMaster soon brought in Fiona Hill of the Brookings Institution, the author of a highly critical biography of Vladimir Putin, to handle Russian affairs at the NSC, a move that signaled a more conventional approach toward this critical relationship. In April the White House announced that the political strategist Stephen Bannon would no longer attend NSC “principals committee” meetings and that the director of national intelligence Dan Coats and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford would resume their usual roles on this body.13

The major shake-up that repopulated Trump’s White House staff in the summer of 2017 represented a further step toward Beltway orthodoxy. The beleaguered White House press secretary Sean Spicer resigned in July, and Trump installed former hedge fund manager Anthony Scaramucci as his new White House director of communications, only to fire him ten days later.14 The homeland security secretary Kelly replaced Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff, and he and McMaster proceeded to clean house at the NSC, dismissing a number of Trump’s initial appointees and bringing in experienced mainstream experts.15 Increasingly isolated, Bannon departed the White House shortly thereafter, removing the administration’s most prominent proponent for a radical shift in grand strategy.

Not surprisingly, these personnel shifts helped attenuate many of Trump’s more radical inclinations. Although his behavior and rhetoric continued to defy traditional norms and expectations, the substance of U.S. policy was increasingly familiar. A new round of personnel changes occurred in early 2018—NEC director Cohn resigned and Tillerson and McMaster were dismissed and replaced by CIA director Mike Pompeo and former U.N. ambassador John Bolton respectively—but even this latest upheaval did not alter the broad direction of U.S. foreign policy, save in the area of trade policy and Iran. And as discussed below, even these shifts were not a 180-degree turn in the broad outlines of U.S. policy.

NATO ISN’T “OBSOLETE” AFTER ALL

Trump had described NATO as “obsolete” and “outdated” during the election campaign, but he reversed himself in April 2017 and said this was no longer the case “because they had changed.”16 Moreover, Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Tillerson, and Secretary of Defense Mattis all journeyed to Europe during the first half of 2017 in a coordinated effort to reassure U.S. allies. Trump prompted new concerns at the NATO summit in May, refusing to endorse the mutual defense clause (Article 5) of the NATO Treaty and berating the other heads of state attendees for failing to pull their weight, but he reversed course again the following month, telling reporters, “I’m committing the U.S. to Article 5 … absolutely.” Driving the point home, he repeated this pledge on visits to Germany and Poland in June.17 Efforts to bolster NATO’s defenses against Russia—including the European Reassurance Initiative (ERI) and the joint military exercise Operation Atlantic Resolve—continued through 2017, and the administration’s FY2018 budget called for a $1.4 billion increase in U.S. funding for ERI, a rise of roughly 40 percent. After a rocky start, the U.S. commitment to defend Europe was intact, if on increasingly thin ice.18

Moreover, Trump’s main complaint about NATO—that its European members were not contributing their fair share—was nothing new. Disputes about burden-sharing are as old as the alliance itself, and many previous presidents, secretaries of defense, and congressional leaders had raised this issue, often in language as blunt as Trump’s. In 2011, for example, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates predicted in his farewell speech at NATO headquarters that the alliance would face a “dim if not dismal future” if its European members did not increase spending, warning that “there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress—and in the American body politic writ large—to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or … be serious and capable partners in their own defense.” Barack Obama issued a similar rebuke during a visit to Poland in June 2014 and repeated it at the Warsaw Summit in July 2016.19 National Security Advisor McMaster described Trump’s approach to NATO as a form of “tough love,” and Trump was quick to claim that his hard-nosed approach was working.20 In terms of substance, therefore, Trump’s approach to NATO was not very different from that of his predecessors.

CONFRONTING RUSSIA AND CHINA

Although Trump had stated that he wanted the United States to have positive relations with Russia and China, U.S. policy toward both states remained as wary and competitive as it had been under Obama and Bush. The White House’s 2017 National Security Strategy placed Russia and China front and center among the long-term challenges facing the United States, declaring that the two countries “challenge American power, influence and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity.”21 Trump was unable to prevent the Republican-controlled Congress from imposing new economic sanctions on Russia in August 2017, which led Russian president Vladimir Putin to order the closing of two American facilities in Russia, and Trump subsequently approved a State Department recommendation to close three additional Russian diplomatic facilities (including its consulate in San Francisco). And in December, with former NATO ambassador Kurt Volker in place as special envoy to Ukraine and A. Wess Mitchell, former CEO of the hard-line Center for European Policy Analysis, serving as assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasian affairs, Trump authorized a $41.5 million sale of lethal arms—including Javelin antitank missiles—to Ukraine, earning kudos from former Obama officials and an angry condemnation from Moscow.22

The rift between Moscow and Washington widened in 2018, after a clash between Russian mercenaries and U.S.-backed militias in Syria and revelations that Russian agents had used chemical weapons in an attempt to murder a former Russian spy now living in Great Britain. The White House released a joint statement with Britain, France, and Germany condemning the attack, while the Treasury Department imposed new sanctions to punish Russia for interfering in the 2016 election.23 Although Trump and Putin sought to mend fences at a summit meeting in July 2018, U.S. policy toward Russia during Trump’s first eighteen months in office was if anything more confrontational than it had been under Obama.

Like his predecessors (and especially the Obama administration) Trump also saw China as a major long-term rival. Trump met with Chinese president Xi Jinping on two occasions in 2017 and claimed to have established a “good relationship” with him, and the two leaders authorized annual “strategic dialogues” on critical bilateral issues just as previous U.S. administrations had done.24 But Trump was disappointed by Xi’s refusal to put more pressure on North Korea and remained troubled by the unbalanced Sino-American trade relationship. Xi’s confident and proudly nationalist speech at the 19th Party Congress in October 2017 left little doubt about Beijing’s growing ambitions, and both the White House National Security Strategy and the Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy labeled China a “strategic competitor,” criticized its efforts to expand its influence and “undermine regional stability,” and declared that a “geopolitical competition between free and repressive visions of world order is taking place in the Indo-Pacific region.” The National Security Strategy also stressed the importance of U.S. allies (including Taiwan) and said that the United States “would redouble our commitment to established alliances and partnerships.”25

The Defense Department continued to see China as its principal long-term military rival, just as it had under Bush and Obama.26 The U.S. Navy increased the pace of “freedom of navigation” patrols in the South China Sea during 2017, making it clear that the United States still rejected China’s territorial claims in this important international waterway and echoing a point Secretary of State Tillerson had made in his own confirmation hearings.27 The perception of China as a serious long-term competitor also drove Trump’s March 2018 decision to impose targeted tariffs and investment restrictions in retaliation for China’s violations of WTO trade rules and theft of U.S. intellectual property.28 His tactics were different, but the effort to confront a rising China began long before Trump.

NORTH KOREA: THE ONCE AND FUTURE ENEMY

North Korea had been a vexing problem for Clinton, Bush, and Obama, and it remained a headache for Trump as well. The United States had worried about Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program since the early 1990s, and U.S. leaders had seriously considered preventive military action on more than one occasion. Yet North Korea’s nuclear and long-range missile capabilities continued to grow, leading Barack Obama to warn President-elect Trump that North Korea would be the “most urgent problem” he would face as president.29

On the eve of his first meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping, Trump threw down the gauntlet by declaring, “If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will!”30 Trump then engaged in a provocative war of words with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un throughout his first year in office, labeling Kim “Little Rocket Man” and warning that if North Korea continued to threaten the United States, it would be “met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” In December 2017, after Kim boasted that “the whole territory of the U.S. is within the range of our nuclear strike and a nuclear button is always on the desk of my office,” Trump took to Twitter to respond, saying, “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”31

Yet bluster and saber rattling aside, Trump eventually chose to rely on sanctions and diplomacy, just as his predecessors had.32 Trump had initially declared that additional North Korean missile tests “would not happen,” but the administration responded to the new round of tests not by taking military action, but by sponsoring a unanimous UN Security Council resolution that imposed a new round of sanctions on Pyongyang.33 U.S. officials continued to warn that “time is running out,” hinting that the United States did have feasible military options, but Trump still declined to roll the iron dice of war.34

The problem for Trump, as for other presidents, was that there was no way to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear arsenal or destroy its missile test facilities without risking an all-out war that might kill hundreds of thousands of people in South Korea, trigger open conflict with China, and cast doubt throughout Asia about the value of U.S. protection.35 As a result, by the end of 2017 Trump had agreed to delay joint military exercises with South Korea until after Seoul had hosted the Winter Olympics and endorsed a South Korean initiative for face-to-face talks with its counterparts from the North. As Trump told reporters in January 2018, “I’d like to see [North Korea] getting involved in the Olympics and maybe things go from there.”36

Where they went was wholly unexpected: in March, a summit meeting between Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in led to an invitation from Kim to Trump for a summit meeting to address the nuclear issue and the other points of contention between the two states. Trump promptly accepted the offer, despite widespread doubts about the wisdom of such a meeting and the lack of any preparations for it.37 The president’s impulsive response was typical, perhaps, but it also underscored his own reluctant recognition that differences with North Korea were best handled via diplomacy.

The two leaders held a brief meeting in Singapore in June and signed a vague agreement to “work toward denuclearization.” Trump subsequently claimed the threat from North Korea was over, but Pyongyang’s actual capabilities had not changed and the meeting was largely a triumph of style over substance.

Nonetheless, the priority Trump now placed on addressing the danger from North Korea differed sharply from the stance he had taken during the 2016 campaign. Before becoming president, Trump had suggested that it might be better for South Korea and Japan to develop their own nuclear weapons rather than continuing to rely on U.S. guarantees.38 Trump now recognized the United States should take the lead in finding a solution.

ON COURSE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Trump’s approach to the Middle East did not contain major departures either.39 Trump met with the leaders of Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia shortly after taking office and reaffirmed U.S. support for each of these long-standing allies. Beginning his first foreign trip in Saudi Arabia in May 2017, he abandoned his harsh attacks on Islam and his earlier criticisms of the kingdom and called instead for a unified Arab front against radicalism, terrorism, and Iran. Trump embraced the ambitious reform campaign of the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman with particular enthusiasm while turning a blind eye toward the prince’s reckless and unsuccessful attempts to counter Iranian influence in Yemen, Lebanon, and Qatar.40 But this was not a new policy either: Obama had done little to rein in Saudi adventurism either, and any U.S. president would have welcomed efforts to relax religious restrictions and diversify the Saudi economy.

Trump’s forceful response to the renewed use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime in April was also a revealing reversion to the familiar Beltway playbook. Trump had previously said that the United States should not get involved in Syria—even with airpower alone—but he surprised everyone by ordering cruise missile strikes on the airfield from which the chemical attacks had been conducted.41 This embrace of Beltway orthodoxy had no impact on the war itself—indeed, Assad’s position continued to improve throughout the year—but it won Trump enthusiastic plaudits from Republicans, Democrats, and prominent media pundits. As CNN’s Fareed Zakaria put it, “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States [last night].”42

Similarly, Trump’s policy toward Iran fits comfortably within the broad and deep anti-Iran consensus that has guided U.S. policy since the fall of the shah in 1979. The president’s opposition to and withdrawal from the 2015 multilateral agreement that blocked Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is an obvious departure from Obama’s approach, but it is not a radical position within the U.S. foreign policy community, despite the extensive criticism it has received from the other parties to the agreement and from many Democrats.43

It is important to remember that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was extremely controversial from the start, and the Obama administration had to wage an uphill fight to win grudging acceptance from Congress. A number of well-funded groups and influential individuals inside the Beltway had worked relentlessly to overturn it, and even many supporters of the deal viewed Iran as an especially dangerous adversary that the United States had to work harder to contain.44 Nor should we forget that Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama had all imposed sanctions on Iran, backed its regional opponents, authorized covert actions against it, and either flirted with or openly embraced the goal of “regime change” in Tehran.45 Trump’s decision to unilaterally abandon the deal may have been foolish, but it is hardly a radical break with prior U.S. policy. In fact, it was the JCPOA that was the real exception, and Trump’s decision to jettison it was simply a return to the policy of confrontation aimed at regime change that has long defined U.S. policy toward Iran.46

The most obvious difference between Trump and his predecessors was his approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Trump chose an unapologetic defender of the Israeli settler movement, David Friedman, as his ambassador to Israel, a clear signal that he was not going to press Israel on this issue.47 And unlike Clinton, Bush, or Obama, Trump was not personally committed to the idea of the “two-state” solution. As he told an interviewer in February 2017, “I’m looking at two-state and one-state, and I like the one that both parties like.”48 Then, in December, Trump made good on a campaign pledge to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. When Palestinian leaders protested, he accused them of failing to show “appreciation or respect” for the United States and threatened to cut off U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority.49

The Jerusalem decision broke sharply with the international consensus that the city’s status should be determined through negotiations rather than by unilateral Israeli action, which is why previous presidents had all ignored their own campaign pledges to do something similar.50 Yet Trump’s uncritical embrace of Israel and his disinclination to oppose Israel’s settlements was more a shift in appearances than a sea change in U.S. policy.51 Previous presidents had complained about the settlements on numerous occasions and had tried to nudge Israel toward a peace agreement, but none had ever tried to force Israel to comply by threatening to reduce U.S. aid or diplomatic protection. On the contrary, Clinton, Bush, and Obama had all gone to considerable lengths to demonstrate that U.S. support for the Jewish state was “unshakable.”52

Furthermore, there was no “peace process” to speak of in 2017, and the two-state solution that past presidents had favored was on life support, if not completely dead.53 And in the unlikely event that it got miraculously revived, Trump’s largely symbolic action on Jerusalem would not preclude the Palestinians from eventually having a capital of their own in East Jerusalem as well. Overall, Trump’s approach to this issue merely made plain what sophisticated observers already knew: the U.S. government was firmly on Israel’s side and was never going to use the leverage it possessed to bring about a fair settlement. At worst, his actions simply removed the pretense of American evenhandedness, a facade that no longer fooled anyone.54

DEFENSE POLICY AND COUNTERTERRORISM

As a candidate, Trump had charged the Obama administration with neglecting America’s defenses and had insisted that the United States had become a “weak country,” even though U.S. defense spending equaled the next dozen or so countries combined and was nearly three times that of China. Insisting that “our military dominance must be unquestioned,” Trump promised to “spend what was necessary to rebuild our military.”55

Once in office, he immediately proposed a 10 percent increase in base military spending, and the House of Representatives eventually authorized an even bigger budget than the president had requested.56 As noted above, senior military officers occupied key policymaking positions—including secretary of defense, national security advisor, and White House chief of staff—and Trump gave regional commanders greater latitude to initiate combat operations without White House approval. The Pentagon responded by ramping up combat activities in several theaters, and U.S. forces launched six times more air strikes in Trump’s first 142 days in office than they had by Obama’s last 142.57 Trump also tried to reverse the Obama administration’s decision to permit transgender Americans to serve in uniform—apparently without consulting senior military officers or his secretary of defense—only to have his executive order struck down in federal court.58

Even so, these actions hardly added up to a significant shift in defense policy. Neither Trump nor Secretary of Defense Mattis proposed major shifts in U.S. overseas commitments, military strategy, or the day-to-day management of the vast Pentagon bureaucracy. And though Trump tried to portray his budget hike as an unprecedented move to strengthen the armed forces, a careful comparison by the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments showed that it was smaller than ten previous defense buildups and “far short of an historic increase.”59

Nor did Trump alter the broad outlines of the ongoing war on terror. The U.S. military campaign against ISIS continued to follow the strategy conceived and implemented under Obama—albeit at a slightly accelerated pace—and Trump also approved slight increases in U.S. force levels in Somalia, Syria, and several other theaters.60 In most respects, however, U.S. counterterror policy stuck closely to the blueprint Trump had inherited: the Defense Department continued to conduct training missions for foreign military forces, perform air and drone strikes on suspected extremists, and launch occasional raids by U.S. Special Forces. According to Joshua Rovner of American University’s School of International Service, “the Trump administration’s approach to counter-terrrorism resembles that of its predecessors.”61 Hal Brands of Johns Hopkins University agreed, saying, “the military component of Trump’s counterterrorism strategy is not fundamentally different than what President Barack Obama pursued in the final stages of his administration.” Or as Bill Roggio, the editor of the counterterrorism publication Long War Journal, put it, “[Trump] has basically done what President Obama has done, maybe just a little bit more forcefully.”62

In any case, unwavering support for America’s armed forces was hardly a novel political stance for a U.S. president. Every president since Truman had pledged to maintain U.S. military primacy, and uncritical support for “the troops” had become de rigueur for American politicians ever since 9/11 (if not before). As noted in previous chapters, the military role in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy had been expanding for decades; one might even see the overabundance of generals in Trump’s inner circle as the culmination of trends that have been under way for some time.63 On the whole, therefore, Trump’s handling of defense policy was simply “business as usual,” with a bit more money and a few more bombs.

PROTECTING THE BORDER

After making lurid warnings about foreign terrorists, criminals, and other “bad hombres” during the campaign and repeatedly promising to build a wall on the Mexican border, it was no surprise that Trump took a hard line on immigration and the need to protect the U.S. homeland from unwanted foreign entrants. It took the administration three tries to come up with an executive order to restrict travel from six Muslim-majority countries that could survive judicial review, but the Supreme Court eventually agreed to let the administration’s third attempt stand, pending its own examination of the issue.64 Trump pushed the Justice Department to accelerate deportations of illegal immigrants and rescinded a 2001 program that granted “temporary protected status” to some two hundred thousand people from El Salvador admitted under humanitarian visas, making them eligible for deportation as well.65 And in January 2018 Trump ignited a new furor when he referred to several developing nations as “shithole countries” and questioned whether the United States should admit immigrants from any of them.66

Yet with the exception of his controversial “zero tolerance” policy (which sought to deter migration by separating detained children from their parents), Trump’s actions were not substantially different from those of his predecessors. Homeland security had been an overriding priority since 9/11—as every air traveler knows—and the federal budget for customs and border security had increased by 91 percent from 2003 to 2014. Barack Obama had expanded the ranks of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement service significantly, and his last Department of Homeland Security budget had called for hiring more than two thousand additional customs and border patrol officers. Indeed, Obama had deported more than five million people during his two terms, and the pace of deportations in Trump’s first year was actually lower than in 2016.67 After reviewing Trump’s policies on immigration and border security, Peter Dombrowski and Simon Reich conclude, “When judged against U.S. operations since 9/11, [Trump’s] goals and language alike do not represent a fundamental change in U.S. strategy.”68

Nor was Trump the first president to propose a border wall with Mexico, or the first to have trouble getting it built. George W. Bush had also sought to build a barrier along the Mexican border, but Congress balked at the multibillion-dollar expense, and only seven hundred miles of fencing were ever constructed. Trump’s experience was much the same: neither Mexico nor the GOP-controlled Congress agreed to provide funds for the wall, forcing Trump to assert, unconvincingly, that Mexico would pay “eventually, but at a later date.”69 By January 2018 Trump was telling congressional leaders that the wall would not be needed, with White House chief of staff John Kelly explaining that the president had not been “fully informed” when he originally promised to build a wall and that his views had “evolved.”70

On a wide variety of important foreign policy issues, therefore, Trump’s actions did not constitute a sharp break with the past. There were several areas where he did depart from the establishment consensus, but even here, the shifts may not be as far-reaching as he had originally promised.

GLOBALIZATION ON PROBATION

The United States had long sought to promote a rules-based international order, largely by bringing other states into multilateral institutions in which the United States played a central role. Consistent with his “America First” mantra, Trump had repeatedly questioned the value of these institutions—especially in the economic realm—which he saw not as tools of American influence, but as “bad deals” that limited Washington’s freedom of action, undermined U.S. sovereignty, and crippled the U.S. economy.

Trump did not hesitate to put this new agenda into action. On his third day in office he announced that the United States was withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the ambitious multilateral trade pact that had been a key element of the Obama administration’s “rebalancing” strategy in Asia. He followed this step by taking the United States out of the multilateral Paris Agreement on climate change in April, a move that left the United States as the only country in the world that rejected the accord.71 The final communiqué from the G20 summit in March 2017 dropped its previous vow to “resist all forms of protectionism” at U.S. insistence, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin reminded reporters afterward, “We do have a new administration and a different view on trade.”72

Trump continued to rail against the NAFTA trade treaty with Canada and Mexico, calling it a “one-sided deal” that had caused a $60 billion trade deficit. Claiming that “the [World Trade Organization] was set up for the benefit [of] everybody but us,” Trump blocked new nominees to the WTO’s seven-person appeals board, a move that threatened to cripple the organization’s ability to resolve future trade disputes.73 In July 2017, Trump overruled his advisors and rejected a Chinese offer to voluntarily cut steel capacity, reportedly urging U.S. officials to find reasons to impose broader tariffs.74 Threats to abrogate the 2011 Korea-U.S. trade agreement forced Seoul to agree to a minor revision, and by September 2017 the Commerce Department had opened up more than sixty investigations of alleged import subsidies, preparing the ground for possible imposition of punitive tariffs.75 The official National Security Strategy released in December 2017 said that the United States would still “pursue bilateral trade and investment agreements with countries that commit to fair and reciprocal trade,” but it made no mention of broader multilateral agreements.

Even so, Trump’s initial retreat from globalization was more tentative than his fiery campaign rhetoric had promised. Trump declined to label China a “currency manipulator” or to eliminate the Export-Import Bank (as he had promised to do during the campaign), and he ultimately chose to renegotiate both NAFTA and the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement instead of simply abandoning them. These shifts were partly due to opposition from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and from business interests that benefited directly from these agreements (including agriculture producers in key “red states”), but it also reflected deep divisions within the administration itself. Although Bannon, Lighthizer, and Navarro had continued to push a more protectionist agenda, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, Secretary of State Tillerson, and National Economic Council chair Gary Cohn were wary of sparking a punishing trade war and disrupting ties with key U.S. allies.76

Trump’s “America First” economic agenda suffered another setback in December, when the Senate Banking Committee rejected his nominee to head the Export-Import Bank, Scott Garrett, a longtime opponent of the bank who was vehemently opposed by the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and other business interests.77 And then, in January 2018, Trump struck a moderate tone in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the high temple of the globalist internationalism he had previously scorned, saying “America First is not America alone,” reiterating his support for free but fair trade, and emphasizing that “America is open for business.”78

Trump had not become a convert to unfettered globalization or an unabashed proponent of free trade, however, and he no doubt understood that supporters expected him to deliver on his promises to bring lost jobs back from overseas. These instincts returned to the fore in February 2018, when Trump rejected Cohn and Tillerson’s advice and announced stiff tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, tweeting out that “trade wars are good and easy to win.”79 Cohn resigned in protest and Tillerson was fired several weeks later, giving trade representative Robert Lighthizer and National Trade Council head Peter Navarro—both staunch economic nationalists—greater influence.80 Their ascendance opened the way for a more direct assault on the existing trade order, beginning with the March 2018 imposition of punitive tariffs on China for its alleged trade violations and theft of U.S. intellectual property, followed by stiff tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the EU, Mexico, and Canada in June. By midsummer, the possibility of an all-out trade war could not be ruled out.

Yet even here, Trump’s growing assault on the existing trade order must be seen in a broader context. The decision to impose steel and aluminum tariffs prompted a widespread outcry at home and abroad, and the administration soon announced that the measures would be administered “selectively,” sparking a frantic wave of lobbying for exclusions and making it clear that the initiative was not as far-reaching as it initially appeared.81 Nor was Trump the first president in recent times to play this card: George W. Bush had also imposed tariffs on imported steel back in 2002 and Richard Nixon had imposed a 10 percent surcharge on foreign imports in 1970.

It is also important to recognize that free trade has always been somewhat controversial in the United States. Although most members of the foreign policy establishment support reducing barriers to foreign trade and investment, this principle is the one component of liberal hegemony that faces well-organized and politically potent opposition. Domestic industries and labor unions whose positions are threatened by foreign competition have long been wary of free trade and eager for government protection, and they can usually win support from members of Congress whose districts might be adversely affected by a specific trade agreement. For this reason, major acts of trade liberalization—such as NAFTA or TPP—have always been a hard sell. It is not surprising, therefore, that this element of liberal hegemony was under more or less constant pressure under Trump despite the pushback he faced from some of his advisors. Even so, Trump’s first year and a half in office showed that reversing globalization was neither as easy nor as painless as he had promised.

DEMOCRACY PROMOTION, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND NATION-BUILDING

Trump’s second clear departure from liberal hegemony was his minimal commitment to promoting democracy or human rights and his closely related aversion to nation-building. Trump had said little about democracy and human rights during the 2016 campaign, and he declined to raise these issues when meeting with such leaders as King Salman of Saudi Arabia, Xi Jinping of China, and Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines. The 2017 National Security Strategy mentioned human rights but once, going so far as to say “the American way of life cannot be imposed upon others.”82

Moreover, Trump’s sometimes scathing attacks on the free press and his disregard for established democratic norms suggested that his personal commitment to traditional liberal values was paper-thin, and a number of foreign autocrats were quick to invoke Trump’s frequent denunciations of what he called “fake news” to justify their own illiberal practices.83 Overall, his diminished interest in actively spreading U.S. ideals and institutions was perhaps Trump’s most obvious break with the core principles of liberal hegemony. As Barry Posen suggests, Trump’s grand strategy might be termed one of “illiberal hegemony”: the United States still sought primacy and its global military role was undiminished, but it was no longer strongly committed to promoting liberal values.84

Yet even here, Trump did not accomplish a 180-degree reversal of U.S. policy or lead Washington to abandon these concerns completely. The 2017 National Security Strategy insisted that the United States would continue to “champion American values” and maintained that “governments that respect the rights of their citizens remain the best vehicle for prosperity, human happiness, and peace.” Indeed, in a passage that could just as easily have been written for Clinton, Bush, or Obama, it declared that the United States “will always stand with those who seek freedom” and remain “a beacon of liberty and opportunity around the world.”85

These universal principles would be applied selectively, however. As an internal memo written for Secretary of State Tillerson made clear, as far as human rights were concerned, the administration believed that “allies should be treated differently—and better—than adversaries.”86 In other words, human rights was an issue the United States could use to undermine and embarrass rivals such as China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, but one it should downplay when dealing with friendly regimes that denied citizens full democratic rights or were guilty of significant human rights abuses.

This selective approach was clearly in evidence in December 2017, when antigovernment demonstrations broke out in Iran. Suddenly an administration that had paid scant attention to these issues rediscovered them with a vengeance. Trump launched his usual blizzard of tweets, saying the “great Iranian people had been oppressed for years” and denouncing the government’s “numerous violations of human rights.”87 The State Department issued an official statement condemning the arrest of “peaceful protestors” and included in it congressional testimony by Secretary Tillerson declaring his support for “those elements inside of Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of government.”88 Other administration officials, most notably the CIA director Mike Pompeo (who later succeeded Tillerson as Secretary of State) also favored continued efforts to foster regime change in Iran.

Regime change and democracy promotion remained the ultimate U.S. objective in Syria as well. In a public address at Stanford University in January 2018, Secretary of State Tillerson announced that U.S. troops would remain in Syria for an indefinite period following the final defeat of ISIS, noting that “a stable, unified and independent Syria ultimately requires post-Assad leadership in order to be successful.”89

Moreover, Trump’s personal indifference to human rights or democracy did not stop other arms of the government from continuing to promote them.90 The State Department suspended nearly $200 million worth of economic and military aid to Egypt in August 2017, citing human rights concerns, and its annual report on religious freedom offered blunt criticisms of China, Bahrain, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and several other countries. Members of Congress and U.S. diplomats openly criticized the ongoing assault on press and academic freedoms in Hungary, and the White House itself issued a statement condemning rising political repression in Cambodia, despite Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen’s blatant attempt to curry favor with Trump at the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in November 2017.91

Democracy promotion and human rights had been downgraded, but these goals had not vanished entirely from the U.S. foreign policy agenda. Neither had regime change, at least when dealing with acknowledged adversaries such as Iran or the Assad regime in Syria. The administration’s public stance was clearly at odds with the idealistic rhetoric of Bill Clinton’s commitment to democratic “enlargement” or George W. Bush’s “Freedom Agenda,” but it was also a reasonably accurate description of what the United States had done in the past. In fact, earlier administrations had often been embarrassingly inconsistent in defending these principles, and one could argue that Trump’s appointees were merely stating openly what their predecessors had tried to obscure.

Perhaps the most dramatic sign of Trump’s capture by the status quo was his decision to increase U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan in August 2017. Despite his repeated insistence that the United States needed to “get out of the nation-building business,” a reluctant Trump bowed to military pressure and agreed to increase U.S. force levels in Afghanistan to more than fifteen thousand troops. In his speech announcing the decision, Trump insisted that U.S. forces would focus on counterterrorism rather than on nation-building, and he justified the increased troop presence as necessary to prevent a vacuum that terrorists “would instantly fill.”92 Preventing Afghanistan from again becoming a safe haven for terrorists was the same rationale Barack Obama had invoked to justify his own “surge” there back in 2009.

Trump claimed that U.S. military commanders had a “new strategy” for the seventeen-year-old conflict, one that would be guided by conditions in the field rather than by arbitrary deadlines. There was no new strategy, however, and no way to deny terrorists a “safe haven” in the absence of an effective and legitimate Afghan government. As Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution observed after Trump’s speech, “It’s fine to oppose ‘nation-building,’ but you can’t have it both ways … There’s no way to ‘defeat’ the Taliban without much-improved governance.” In any case, the United States was still committed to providing several billion dollars in annual aid to the Afghan military and central government, much of it devoted to “capacity building.”93 Under Trump, therefore, the United States was still trying to use military power, economic aid, and political advice to create a workable democracy in Afghanistan. However reluctant Trump was to admit it, “nation-building” was still occurring on his watch.

WHY TRUMP FAILED

In several key respects, therefore, Trump’s intended revolution in U.S. foreign policy was stillborn. Although his conduct as president defied convention and raised eyebrows at home and abroad, his impact on the substance of policy was more limited. Unfortunately, to the extent that Trump did initiate real change, he weakened the U.S. position instead of strengthening it.

What had gone wrong? To be fair, Trump faced an inescapable dilemma from the moment he won the election. His strident criticisms of liberal hegemony had alienated most of the foreign policy community, leaving him with few powerful or experienced allies inside or outside government. If he had tried to staff his administration solely with people who shared his worldview, dozens of jobs would have been left unfilled and the people he did appoint would undoubtedly make lots of rookie mistakes. But if he turned to more experienced foreign policy experts who knew how to make the machinery of government work, they would still be committed to most aspects of liberal hegemony, and the foreign policy revolution Trump had promised would never get off the ground.

And that is in fact what happened: once Trump’s more extreme foreign policy appointees had flamed out and been replaced, the people around him worked overtime to tame his worst instincts. As Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution observed as Trump’s first year in office neared its end, “It’s the first time, maybe in history, key advisors have gone into the administration to stop the president, not to enable him.”94

Nor was Trump able to win over skeptics or play “divide and rule” within the foreign policy community. This failure was not surprising, as he did not hesitate to malign key elements of the foreign policy and national security bureaucracy—including the intelligence agencies, the State Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation—whenever it suited him. Not surprisingly, this approach kept much of the inside-the-Beltway “Blob” united against him.

For example, Trump repeatedly disparaged the intelligence community’s nearly unanimous conclusion that Russia had tried to influence the 2016 election by promoting false news stories and releasing a trove of embarrassing emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee’s computers. Trump believed that these reports tarnished his victory over Clinton, cast doubt on his legitimacy as president, and were fueling the growing suspicions of collusion between his campaign and Russia. Angered by the persistent rumors, Trump told reporters before his inauguration that “it was disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information [out] that turned out to be so false and fake. That’s something that Nazi Germany would have done and did.” Needless to say, his suggestion that the CIA or other intelligence agencies were acting like Nazis provoked a furious response, with former CIA director John Brennan denouncing Trump’s remarks as “outrageous.”95

Trump’s visit to CIA headquarters the day after his inauguration made a bad situation worse. Speaking in front of the memorial wall honoring CIA personnel who had died in service, Trump offered a brief statement of support for the agency and its mission but devoted much of his speech to a rambling attack on the media and a defense of his claim that the crowd attending his inauguration was larger than that of Obama. A senior intelligence official later described it as “one of the most disconcerting speeches I’ve ever seen.”96

Trump’s handling of the State Department didn’t help either. Proposals for steep budget cuts and Tillerson’s decision to launch a protracted, top-to-bottom reorganization led to a wave of resignations, and morale within the department quickly hit rock bottom. A bipartisan chorus of critics began lambasting Trump for gutting a critical department, and former State Department counselor (and prominent Trump critic) Eliot A. Cohen judged Tillerson to be “the worst Secretary of State in living memory.”97 The president seemed unconcerned, however; when asked by reporters in November about the raft of diplomatic positions still waiting to be filled, Trump replied, “Let me tell you: the one that matters is me. I’m the only one that matters.”98

Yet Trump’s failure to fully staff the State Department with like-minded disciples may have crippled his efforts to shake up U.S. foreign policy, for it left key policy areas in the hands of interim officials from the career civil service rather than being guided by outsiders who shared Trump’s views. Ironically, Trump and Tillerson had managed to weaken a critical instrument of U.S. foreign policy while failing to convert it to Trump’s own worldview. Nor was Tillerson’s replacement by CIA director Mike Pompeo, a hawkish former congressman, likely to restore the department’s fortunes, given Pompeo’s own fondness for military responses and apparent disregard for traditional diplomacy.

Not surprisingly, well-placed neoconservative and liberal internationalists lost no time in bemoaning the waning of U.S. global leadership, and media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post offered consistently critical views of Trump’s foreign policy initiatives.99 By the summer of 2017, even the more sympathetic Wall Street Journal was publishing hard-hitting articles and commentaries questioning Trump’s handling of foreign policy and his overall leadership style.100 Trump’s approval rating fell steadily throughout his first year despite decent economic growth and a sky-high stock market, at one point hitting the lowest levels recorded by any first-year president since the advent of modern polling.101

HIS OWN WORST ENEMY

Orchestrating a major shift in U.S. grand strategy would have challenged the political gifts of a Roosevelt or a Lincoln, and Trump was a far cry from these canny, subtle, and farsighted leaders. He had come to high office late in life, after an up-and-down business career roiled by lawsuits and bankruptcies, with a long list of disgruntled clients and former partners and what might charitably be described as a flexible attitude toward truth.102 These traits were all on full view once he became president, and a management style that may have worked tolerably well in a family-run real estate business proved to be poorly suited to the Oval Office. More than anything else, Trump turned out to be his own worst enemy.

For starters, he was a poor judge of talent. He had repeatedly promised that he would hire “the best people,” but no previous president had to fire his first choice as national security advisor after twenty-four days, replace his handpicked White House communications director after less than two weeks on the job, or remove his “chief political strategist” after less than eight months. Five months into his first term, Trump had earned a reputation as the “worst boss in Washington,” and numerous insider accounts described him as uninformed, capricious, disinterested in detailed policy discussions, acutely sensitive to criticism, and having an inexhaustible need for adulation.103 His own secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, reportedly referred to Trump as a “moron” during a meeting with senior national security officials, and Tillerson refused to explicitly deny the story.104 One senior Republican insider described the White House as a “snake pit,” and an unnamed White House staffer called it “the most toxic work environment on the planet.” By the end of Trump’s first year, turnover among senior aides was a remarkable 34 percent, an all-time record.105

The turmoil continued into Trump’s second year: Tillerson was fired by tweet in March; National Economic Council chair Gary Cohn was replaced by Lawrence Kudlow, a conservative TV pundit with a checkered past and minimal policy experience; and national security advisor McMaster was eventually removed in favor of former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, a hard-line senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Trump defended the revolving door of departures and new appointments by saying “there will always be change. I think you want to see change.” Having described his initial team as “one of the finest groups of people ever assembled as a Cabinet,” Trump now claimed the various dismissals meant he was “close to having the Cabinet he wanted” after more than a year on the job.106

Moreover, Trump was embroiled in potential scandals even before he took the presidential oath, some involving conflicts of interest with his business holdings and others revolving around the possibility that Trump, his sons, or members of his campaign staff had colluded with Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election. Whatever the merits of the accusations, Trump’s defensive responses made things worse. In particular, his decision to fire FBI director James Comey in May 2017—after Comey refused to halt an FBI investigation of former national security advisor Michael Flynn—led Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel, former FBI chief Robert Mueller, to investigate possible connections between Russia and the Trump campaign.107 Trump’s political opponents may have rushed to judgment on this tangled set of issues, but the president and some of his closest associates had stoked the accusations by consistently behaving as if they had something to hide.108 The end result was a persistent distraction that further undercut Trump’s ability to govern effectively.109

Furthermore, while Trump’s compulsive, boastful, insulting, juvenile, and frequently inaccurate tweets may have helped him retain support among his political base, they reinforced concerns about his judgment and lent credence to continuing concerns about his fitness for office.110 So did his penchant for lying; by one estimate, Trump made six times as many false statements in his first ten months in office as Barack Obama had in eight years.111 Making matters worse, Trump later boasted openly about having lied to Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, an admission not likely to encourage other politicians to trust him.112 No one expects politicians to tell the whole truth all of the time, but how could foreign leaders have any confidence in assurances given by a man who lied with such facility and frequency?113

Trump’s unguarded comments sometimes undercut other U.S. officials, as when he tweeted in October that Secretary of State Tillerson was “wasting his time” trying to negotiate with North Korea.114 At other times, they simply sowed doubt, as no one could tell when Trump’s tweets were genuine statements of U.S. policy or when he was just blowing off steam. Over time, these unpresidential antics had a decidedly negative effect on U.S. credibility. As Pierre Vimont, former French ambassador to the United States and former aide to the EU commissioner for foreign affairs, put it in January 2018, Trump’s tweets made it harder to grasp “the real policy line from Washington … we have difficulty understanding where U.S. leadership is, what they are really looking for.”115

Compounding these problems was Trump’s reflexively combative personality. As he had with his domestic opponents, Trump did not hesitate to insult or demean foreign leaders who disagreed with him. For example, what were intended as friendly “get-acquainted” phone calls with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto and Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull quickly degenerated into testy arguments over trade and immigration policy, with Trump telling Turnbull that their conversation “was the most unpleasant call all day … This is ridiculous.”116 An early meeting with British prime minister Theresa May went smoothly, but Trump lashed out after May said he had been wrong to retweet a set of inflammatory anti-Muslim videos, telling May to “focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom!”117 Britons were equally incensed when Trump misrepresented a statement by London mayor Sadiq Khan following a terrorist attack there and used it to falsely accuse Khan of being complacent about terrorism.118

Trump’s petulant disregard for allied leaders reached new heights at the G-7 meeting in June 2018, where he reportedly tossed candy on the table in front of German chancellor Angela Merkel and told her, “Don’t say I never give you anything.” He left the meeting early, removed his signature from the official communiqué, and called Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau “very dishonest” after Trudeau expressed disappointment with the new U.S. tariffs on Canadian aluminum and steel. 119

Finally, although Trump may have instinctively grasped the worst flaws of liberal hegemony, he did not have a well-thought-out alternative to offer in its stead. He saw world politics as a purely zero-sum contest in which there are only winners and losers, but he seemed to have no clear sense of (1) what America’s core strategic interests are, (2) what regions matter most (and why), or (3) why a world of sovereign states still needs effective rules to manage key areas of joint activity. And some of his deepest convictions about international affairs—such as his neo-mercantilist views on international trade or his denial of climate change—were simply wrong.

By contrast, the foreign policy community (aka “the Blob”) that Trump had disparaged during the 2016 campaign did have a worldview: liberal hegemony. It also had the capacity to defend it. As Patrick Porter notes, “The Blob enjoys a number of advantages. As well as influence within the security bureaucracy, it can attack the legitimacy of measures that offend tradition. It can act through the courts and the quiet resistance of civil servants, and articulate alternatives through well-funded think-tanks. It has strong institutional platforms in Congress, links to a powerful business community, and a network of Nongovernmental Organizations.” The “Blob” could not prevent Trump from altering policy in certain areas—sometimes significantly—but it was a constant brake on his worst instincts.120

Together with Trump’s limitations as a manager and leader, these features produced a parade of blunders large and small. Some of the mistakes were minor ones, such as getting names and titles of foreign leaders wrong in official communiqués or releasing official statements with elementary spelling mistakes, factual errors, or displays of ignorance.121 In July 2017, for example, a White House press release at the G20 summit mistakenly identified Chinese president Xi Jinping as the leader of Taiwan and erroneously referred to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan as “president.”122 Trump also made some embarrassing slips of his own, such as his unwitting disclosure of sensitive classified information in a May 2017 meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.123

Other mistakes were more consequential. Trump clearly saw China as a serious economic and military rival, for example, as did the other top U.S. officials, and he understood that the United States needed to counter China’s rising power and growing ambitions. But if so, then abandoning TPP was an enormous misstep that undermined the U.S. position with key Asian allies, gave Beijing inviting opportunities to expand its influence, and brought the United States nothing in return. It was also a mistake on purely economic grounds, as TPP’s remaining members went ahead with the agreement, depriving U.S. exporters of more open access to a large and growing market and giving Washington no say over the health, regulatory, or labor standards embedded within the agreement.124

Similarly, Trump and his advisors correctly understood that North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs were a serious problem that required close attention, but his bluster, empty threats, and childish tweets were unlikely to persuade North Korea that it had no need for a powerful deterrent. Instead, Trump’s saber rattling merely alarmed U.S. allies in the region unnecessarily. Furthermore, given the importance of maintaining a united front against Pyongyang, it made no sense for Trump to quarrel with South Korea over trade or over who would pay for a missile defense system that Washington had previously agreed to provide. It was equally foolish to renege on the nuclear agreement with Iran (which had never built a nuclear weapon), while at the same time trying to persuade North Korea to agree to give up the nuclear bombs it had already produced.

And, though encouraging America’s Middle East allies to do more to combat extremism or to counter Iran was a reasonable objective, Trump’s handling of this complicated task was inept. In particular, giving the reformist crown prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia unconditional support was a mistake, as the young Saudi leader’s reckless gambits undermined the united front Trump said he wanted to create. To make matters worse, Trump’s tweeted suggestion that he had inspired the Saudi boycott of Qatar in June 2017 jeopardized U.S. access to a critical air base in the emirate and forced Secretaries Mattis and Tillerson to step in to smooth things over.125

For that matter, if Trump genuinely believed that Iran was a looming threat that had to be contained, then his decision to violate the multinational deal that had rolled back its nuclear program was a strategic blunder. In addition to sowing broader concerns about the reliability of American promises, tearing up the nuclear deal (or even chipping away at the spirit of the agreement) would eventually dissolve the coalition of major powers whose pressure on Iran had helped convince its leaders to compromise. Doing so would strengthen hard-line factions within Iran, give Tehran more reason to want its own nuclear deterrent, and ultimately leave Washington with the choice of accepting a nuclear-armed Iran or starting a preventive war. From the purely self-interested “America First” perspective that Trump supposedly championed, his approach made little sense.

Finally, Trump’s controversial decision on Jerusalem (reportedly made to fulfill a pledge to Sheldon Adelson, a passionate Zionist who was also the largest contributor to Trump’s presidential campaign) did nothing to make the United States safer or richer, or to advance U.S. values.126 Previous presidents understood that recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the U.S. embassy there was a valuable carrot that might one day be used to clinch a final peace agreement, but Trump gave it up for nothing. All the United States got in return for Trump’s move was nearly universal international criticism, including a UN General Assembly resolution condemning the move, which passed 135–9 even after UN ambassador Haley threatened a reduction in U.S. funding were the resolution to be approved.127

Some observers have seen the reshuffling of Trump’s foreign policy team that began in February 2018 as evidence of a desire to escape the constraints his more mainstream advisors had imposed on him and to return to the more radical approach he had articulated as a candidate.128 This assessment is clearly correct regarding trade policy, but the departures of Tillerson, Cohn, McMaster, etc., and the appointments of Pompeo, Haspel, and Bolton were hardly a rejection of establishment thinking or a radical alteration in U.S. strategy. Each of these individuals occupied respected positions within the mainstream foreign policy community, and their views on key foreign policy issues, while clearly from the hawkish end of the spectrum, were still within the “acceptable” Washington consensus.129 None of them were likely to favor less reliance on military force, greater emphasis on multilateral diplomacy, or a significant reduction in U.S. commitments abroad.

If anything, these appointments were less a triumph of Trumpism in its original form than a return to the confrontational unilateralism of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the neoconservatives. As such, these appointments offer additional evidence to support the claims made in the previous chapter: the United States frequently fails to learn from past errors and tends to forget any lessons it may temporarily absorb. Hardly anyone is held accountable, and officials with abysmal track records often receive new chances to repeat past mistakes.130

THE IMPACT OF INCOMPETENCE

Viewed as a whole, Trump’s efforts to “shake the rust off of U.S. foreign policy” turned out to be a giant step backward. Instead of lessening the burden on America’s overstretched armed forces and reducing the nation’s overseas obligations, he had kept every one of America’s existing commitments, increased troop levels in Afghanistan, accelerated the pace of operations in several distant theaters, and stoked fears of new wars with North Korea and possibly Iran.

Trump’s handling of U.S. foreign economic policy was equally inept. He raised fears of a trade war but brought scant positive results: the “beautiful” trade deals he promised had yet to materialize, and by the end of his first year the trade deficit he had vowed to reverse had reached its highest level since 2012.131 And while Trump was correct in wanting to get tough with China over its predatory trade and investment practices, his approach to the problem was incoherent. As Ely Ratner of the Council on Foreign Relations observed, “Trump is right to be saying enough is enough. But his administration is going about it all wrong.” Instead of relying solely on unilateral U.S. sanctions, it would have made more sense to assemble a coalition of other major world economies to press China and work within the existing WTO system. But Trump had already abandoned TPP (which was designed in part to counter Chinese trade practices) and then alienated potential partners by threatening to impose tariffs and quotas on them too. He also repeatedly criticized the WTO and took steps to weaken it, thereby making it a less powerful tool for challenging China. Trump may have been serious about wanting China to change its behavior, but his bumbling approach to the issue was far less effective than it might have been.132

Trump had long portrayed himself as a hard-nosed negotiator who had mastered the “art of the deal,” but his approach to foreign policy was, in the words of the New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, more accurately described as “the art of the giveaway.”133 His decisions on Jerusalem and the TPP withdrawal were obvious examples, as was his impulsive decision to accept Kim Jong-un’s invitation to a summit meeting without first establishing terms for the discussions. Simply by meeting with Kim, Trump had given him a status and legitimacy that North Korea’s leaders had long craved. Trump went even further at the meeting itself, agreeing to cancel annual military exercises with South Korea without first informing Seoul. And what did Trump get in return for these twin concessions? Only a vague promise to “work toward” eventual denuclearization.

Trump and his supporters believe that increased U.S. pressure—in the form of ever-tightening sanctions and threats of military action—have forced Kim to change his behavior. Finally getting tough with North Korea, they think, caused Kim to offer to meet with President Trump, stop testing missiles that can hit the United States, pursue a peace agreement with South Korea, and abandon his nuclear weapons. North Korea has agreed to talks on many occasions in the past, however, and Kim’s willingness to do so in 2018 is more likely the result of the progress North Korea has recently made in refining its nuclear warhead designs (including testing a hydrogen bomb) and long-range missile capabilities, which give the regime a more potent nuclear deterrent. In any case, it is hard to imagine Kim ever accepting the United States’ definition of “complete denuclearization,” which means a rapid, irreversible, and fully verified dismantling of North Korea’s entire nuclear infrastructure.

Moreover, even if the two sides reached a more modest interim deal—such as a temporary halt in long-range missile tests—it would still leave America’s allies in Asia vulnerable to a North Korean nuclear attack and raise doubts about the U.S. commitment to their security. North Korea has long insisted that meaningful reductions in its arsenal have to be accompanied by the removal of external threats to the regime, which implies substantial cuts in the U.S. military presence in South Korea and perhaps the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from the peninsula. Even if accompanied by a formal end to the Korean War, an agreement of this sort would undermine the U.S. role in Asia and constitute a major victory for North Korea and its Chinese patron. Trump’s handling of North Korea has definitely succeeded in stirring things up, but the net effect is a further weakening of the U.S. position in Asia.

Worst of all, Trump almost singlehandedly squandered the remaining confidence other states had in America’s judgment. Reasons to doubt U.S. wisdom and competence had increased since the end of the Cold War, as the quest for liberal hegemony foundered and the financial crisis tarnished Wall Street’s reputation for integrity and acumen. Partisan wrangling and political gridlock at home had raised further doubts about America’s ability to address problems at home and challenges abroad, doubts only partially allayed by the Obama administration’s relatively successful management of the postcrisis economic recovery. But Trump raised these nagging concerns to unprecedented heights: suddenly leaders and publics all over the world had reason to question whether the American president had any idea what he was doing. And the contrast with some other countries—especially China—was hard to miss.134

Near the end of Obama’s second term, for example, a survey of thirty-seven countries found that roughly 64 percent of respondents still had confidence in U.S. leadership. After less than six months under Donald Trump, the percentage with “confidence” had fallen to 22 and countries like Japan and South Korea showed especially sharp declines. Even more remarkably, more people around the world believed that Chinese president Xi Jinping and Russian president Vladimir Putin were “more likely to do the right thing in world affairs” than the current president of the United States.135 The results one year in were no better: a Gallup poll of 134 countries released in January 2018 showed that “global approval of U.S. leadership” had dropped from an average of 48 percent in 2016 to only 30 percent in 2017, a historic low, with some of the biggest declines occurring among longtime U.S. allies.136

As the wobbles and inconsistencies and embarrassing episodes multiplied, other countries started hedging their bets and making deals with each other that excluded the United States. The EU and Japan signed a major trade pact in July 2017, and leaders from Germany to Canada spoke openly about their lack of confidence in the United States and the need to take responsibility for their own fates.137 Meanwhile, China continued to advance its ambitious One Belt, One Road initiative in Central Asia and to negotiate a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) with sixteen Asian countries (but not the United States). RCEP was China’s original response to the U.S.-led TPP, but Trump’s decision to withdraw from the latter gave China “an irresistible opportunity.”138 And the blame for all of these worrisome developments lay squarely with Donald J. Trump.

CONCLUSION

Looking back on Trump’s first year, one could easily imagine Hillary Clinton pursuing many of the same policies if she were in the White House. Clinton almost certainly would have used military force when the Assad regime used chemical weapons, and she undoubtedly would have reaffirmed U.S. support for NATO and for America’s traditional Middle Eastern allies, just as Trump did. Unlike Trump, she would have kept the nuclear deal with Iran in place, but she would have taken a hard line toward Iran in other respects and no doubt would have kept up the military campaign against ISIS and continued America’s far-flung counterterror operations. Clinton would have been highly critical of North Korea’s missile tests but open to negotiations, and there is little reason to think she would have opposed increased defense spending or rejected military requests to increase U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan.139 She would have spoken more openly about the importance of democracy and human rights but looked the other way when close U.S. allies fell short. One suspects that Clinton would have walked back her own opposition to TPP in order to balance more effectively against China, but one can easily see her pushing for minor changes in that agreement, as well as seeking to update NAFTA and reform the WTO.

But it is much harder to imagine Clinton pursuing these goals as ineptly as Trump has. She would never have used Twitter to pick fights with adversaries, allies, the media, and entire agencies of the U.S. government, as he has done repeatedly. She would have staffed her administration with experienced insiders from the beginning and avoided the intense and ceaseless turmoil that characterized the Trump White House from Day One.140 The United States would still have pursued a flawed grand strategy under Clinton and there would have been few successes, but there is no question that she and her colleagues would have done a much better job of implementing that misguided approach.

As this chapter shows, Trump’s rhetoric and outlook were in many ways at odds with with liberal hegemony, but his administration’s actual policies were a continuation of its worst tendencies. The United States continues to embrace a flawed grand strategy, but its implementation is now in the hands of the least competent president in modern memory. The results of this deadly combination of foolish policy and inept statecraft are already apparent: U.S. influence and status is declining, but its global burdens are not. And he may yet provoke a global trade war that would inflict additional harm on the United States and almost every other country in the world.141

Sadly, Trump’s presidency thus far provides a textbook case for how not to fix U.S. foreign policy. It also reminds us that no matter how bad things might be, they can always get worse. In the final chapter, I explain what must be done to turn things around.