6: HOW NOT TO FIX U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
1. See Patrick Porter, “Tradition’s Quiet Victories: Trump’s National Security Strategy,” War on the Rocks, December 22, 2017, at https://
2. “Trump’s Inauguration: Full Text of New President’s Speech,” BBC News, January 20, 2017, at www
3. In a presidential debate in 2016, Trump said that the Saudis were “people that push gays off buildings” and “kill women and treat women horribly.” See Adam Taylor, “Trump Once Denounced Saudi Arabia as Extremist; Now He’s Heading There to Promote Moderate Islam,” The Washington Post, May 19, 2017.
4. Andrew Kaczynski, Chris Massie, and Nathan McDermott, “80 Times Trump Talked About Putin,” CNN.com, March 2017, at www
5. An expression of this view was Trump’s speech in Poland in July 2017, when he warned darkly of the threat from “radical Islamic extremism” and said “the fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.” See “Remarks by President Trump to the People of Poland,” July 6, 2017, at www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/07/06/remarks-president-trump-people-poland-july-6-2017.
6. Trump’s chief political strategist, former Breitbart News chief Stephen Bannon, believed that the Judeo-Christian world was in great peril from a multifaceted and growing threat from Islam, whether in the form of increased immigration or violent extremism. See Paul Blumenthal, “Steve Bannon Believes the Apocalypse Is Coming and War Is Inevitable,” Huffington Post, February 8, 2017; Frances Stead Sellers and David A. Fahrenthold, “‘Why let ’em in?’: Understanding Bannon’s Worldview and the Politics That Follow,” The Washington Post, January 21, 2017; Daniel Kreiss, “Trump, Breitbart, and the Rejection of Multicultural Democracy,” Medium.com, January 29, 2017; Steve Reilly and Brad Heath, “Steve Bannon’s Own Words Show Sharp Break on Security Issues,” USA Today, January 31, 2017; and Nahal Toosi, “The World According to Breitbart,” Politico, November 28, 2016.
7. See the controversial op-ed by National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster and White House Economic Council director Gary Cohn, “America First Doesn’t Mean America Alone,” The Wall Street Journal, May 30, 2017, at www
8. “Remarks by President Trump to the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly,” at www
9. Barack Obama had removed Flynn from his post as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency for managerial failings, and Flynn joined Trump’s campaign team in 2016.
10. Anton’s views on Trump’s agenda can be found in his article “America and the Liberal International Order,” American Affairs, March 2017. On Gorka’s questionable qualifications, see Andrew Reynolds, “Stop Calling Him ‘Doctor’: The Academic Fraud of Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s Terrorism ‘Expert,’” Ha’aretz, April 27, 2017; Daniel Nexon, “Sebastian Gorka May Be a Far-Right Nativist, but for Sure He’s a Terrible Scholar,” Foreign Policy, March 17, 2017, at http://
11. See Nancy Cook, Josh Dawsey, and Andrew Restuccia, “Why the Trump Administration Has So Many Vacancies,” Politico, April 11, 2017, at www
12. See Laura Koran, Aaron Kessler, and Joyce Tseng, “Map: Trump Continues to Leave Key State Department Posts Unfilled,” CNN.com, December 8, 2017, at www
13. See Peter Baker, Maggie Haberman, and Glenn Thrush, “Trump Removes Stephen Bannon from National Security Council Post,” The New York Times, April 5, 2017; and Robert Costa, Abby Phillip, and Karen DeYoung, “Bannon Removed from Security Council as McMaster Asserts Control,” The Washington Post, April 5, 2017.
14. Scaramucci resigned after giving an indiscreet and vulgar interview to the reporter Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker. See “Ryan Lizza Revisits His Phone Call with Anthony Scaramucci,” The New Yorker Radio Hour, August 3, 2017, at www
15. NSC staffers Ezra Cohen-Watnick, Rich Higgins, and Derek Harvey were all dismissed during the shake-up. See Rosie Gray, “H. R. McMaster Cleans House at the NSC,” The Atlantic, August 2, 2017, at www
16. “Trump Says NATO Not Obsolete, Reversing Campaign Stance,” Reuters, April 12, 2007, at www
17. See Rosie Gray, “Trump Declines to Affirm NATO’s Article 5,” The Atlantic, May 25, 2017, at www
18. See Peter J. Dombrowski and Simon Reich, “Does Donald Trump Have a Grand Strategy?” International Affairs, 93, no. 5 (2017), pp. 1026–30.
19. See Thom Shanker, “Defense Secretary Warns NATO of ‘Dim’ Future,” The New York Times, June 10, 2011; “Remarks by President Obama and President Komorowski of Poland in a Joint Press Conference,” June 3, 2014, at https://
20. In June 2017 Trump told reporters, “Because of our actions, money was starting to pour into NATO.” In fact, pledges to increase defense spending preceded Trump’s tirade at the NATO summit and were largely a response to perceptions of a growing threat from Russia. See Ryan Browne, “NATO Members to Increase Defense Spending,” June 29, 2017, at www
21. National Security Strategy (Washington, DC: The White House, December 2017), p. 2, at www
22. See Felicia Schwartz, “U.S. to Send Anti-Tank Weaponry to Ukraine, Entering New Phase of Conflict,” The Wall Street Journal, December 24, 2017; and Diana Stancy Correll, “Ex-Obama Official Lauds Jim Mattis ‘for Arming Ukraine,’” Washington Examiner, December 20, 2017. On Mitchell’s background, see “Bureau of Europe and Eurasian Affairs: Who Is A. Wess Mitchell?” August 15, 2017, at www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/bureau-of-european-and-eurasian-affairs-who-is-a-wess-mitchell-170815?news=860276; see also CEPA’s website at http://
23. On these events, see Ivan Nechepurenko, Neil MacFarquhar, and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, “Dozens of Russians Are Believed Killed in U.S.-Backed Syrian Attack,” The New York Times, February 13, 2018; “Trump: ‘It looks like’ Russia Was Behind Poisoning of Former Spy,” The Guardian, March 15, 2018, at www
24. See Jeffrey A. Bader, David Dollar, and Ryan Hass, “U.S.-China Relations, Six Months into the Trump Presidency,” Brookings Institution, August 16, 2017, at www
25. National Security Strategy, pp. 45–46; and U.S. Department of Defense, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America: Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge, at www
26. See, for example, U.S. Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (Washington, DC, May 2017), at www
27. See Ankit Panda, “South China Sea: Fourth US FONOP in Five Months Suggests a New Operational Rhythm,” The Diplomat, October 12, 2017. At his confirmation hearing in January 2017 Tillerson said, “We’re going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops, and second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed.” See Michael Forsythe, “Rex Tillerson’s South China Sea Remarks Foreshadow Possible Foreign Policy Crisis,” The New York Times, January 12, 2017.
28. Ana Swanson, “Trump Readies Sweeping Tariffs and Investment Restrictions on China,” The New York Times, March 15, 2018; Mark Landler and Jim Tankersley, “U.S. Sets $60 Billion in Punitive Tariffs on Chinese Goods,” The New York Times, March 23, 2018.
29. See David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, “Trump Inherits a Secret Cyber-War against North Korean Missiles,” The New York Times, March 4, 2017.
30. “Trump Says U.S. Will Act Alone on North Korea If China Fails to Help,” The Guardian, April 3, 2017, at www
31. See https://
32. See Jacqueline Klimas, “Trump’s North Korea Strategy: A Lot Like Obama’s,” Politico, August 8, 2017, at www
33. The resolution took aim at North Korea’s $3 billion export earnings and would have reduced them by about one-third if fully implemented. See Adam Taylor, “What the New UN Sanctions on North Korea Mean,” The Washington Post, August 7, 2017.
34. See Connor Finnegan, “North Korea Crisis Becoming Unsolvable, Experts Warn, as Trump Heads to Asia,” ABC News, November 2, 2017, at http://abcnews.go.com/International/north-korea-crisis-unsolvable-experts-warn-trump-heads/story?id=50872436; Kori Schake, “The North Korea Debate Sounds Eerily Familiar,” The Atlantic, December 8, 2017, at www
35. A good discussion of the limited options and the continued relevance of deterrence is Scott Sagan, “The Korean Missile Crisis: Why Deterrence Is Still the Best Option,” Foreign Affairs 96, no. 6 (November/December 2017).
36. Quoted in Choe-Sang Hun and David E. Sanger, “North Korea Moves Toward Détente with Seoul,” The New York Times, January 9, 2018.
37. See Robin Wright, “Trump Accepts North Korea’s Audacious Invitation—But Then What?” The New Yorker, March 9, 2015, at www
38. See Zack Beauchamp, “Donald Trump: Make America Great Again by Letting More Countries Have Nukes,” Vox.com, March 30, 2016, at www
39. For a similar assessment, see Marc Lynch, “Trump’s Middle East Policies Are Boorish and Belligerent, but Surprisingly Normal,” War on the Rocks, April 3, 2017, at http://
40. Saudi Arabia had conducted a brutal air war in Yemen since 2015 but failed to defeat its Houthi opponents. With Trump’s apparent approval, bin Salman launched an economic boycott of Qatar in June 2017, demanding that the emirate cut its ties with Iran, expel the Muslim Brotherhood, and curtail the satellite news service Al Jazeera. He followed up by forcing Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri to resign during his visit to Riyadh in November, in an attempt to weaken Hezbollah and reduce Iran’s influence, but the heavy-handed ploy backfired, Hariri reversed his decision to resign as soon as he returned home, and Hezbollah’s position was unaffected. On bin Salman’s blunders, see Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky, “Saudi Arabia’s New Crown Prince Is a Bumbling Hothead. Trump Needs to Treat Him Like One,” Politico, June 29, 2017; and Anne Barnard and Maria Abi-Habib, “Why Saad Hariri Had That Strange Sojourn in Riyadh,” The New York Times, December 24, 2017.
41. On Trump’s earlier opposition, see “Trump’s View of Syria: How It Evolved, in 19 Tweets,” The New York Times, April 7, 2007, at www
42. On the media response to the attacks, see Margaret Sullivan, “The Media Loved Trump’s Show of Military Might: Are We Really Doing This Again?” The Washington Post, April 8, 2017; and Adam Johnson, “Five Top Papers Run 18 Opinion Pieces Praising Syria Strikes—Zero Are Critical,” FAIR.org, April 7, 2017, at http://
43. For a comprehensive critique of Trump’s decision, see Paul R. Pillar, “Hold the Deal-Killers Accountable,” Lobelog, May 8, 2018, at https://
44. See, for example, Nicholas Burns, “The Deal Is Historic, but the US Must Now Act to Contain Iran,” Financial Times, July 14, 2015; and William J. Burns and Jake Sullivan, “The Iranian Protests Are an Opportunity for Trump—Just Not the One He Wants,” The Washington Post, January 8, 2017.
45. For example, the United States and Israel had conducted a sophisticated cyberattack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities that destroyed a large number of Iranian centrifuges. See David Sanger, Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and the Surprising Use of American Power (New York: Crown, 2012), chap. 8.
46. See Stephen M. Walt, “The Art of the Regime Change,” Foreign Policy, May 8, 2018, at http://
47. Among other things, Friedman once claimed that Barack Obama was an anti-Semite and said that supporters of the liberal, pro-peace lobby J Street were “far worse” than Nazi collaborators. See Eric Levitz, “Trump Picks Lawyer Who Says Liberal Jews Are Worse Than Nazi Collaborators as Ambassador,” New York, December 16, 2016, at http://
48. Nicole Gaouette and Elise Labott, “Trump Backs Off Two-State Framework for Israel-Palestinian Deal,” CNN.com, February 16, 2017.
49. See Tracy Wilkinson, “Trump Threatens to Cut Off Aid to Palestinians,” Los Angeles Times, January 2, 2018.
50. Clinton, Bush, and Obama all promised to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem while campaigning for the presidency; none did so once in office.
51. See Jason Horowitz, “U.N., European Union, and Pope Criticize Trump’s Jerusalem Decision,” The New York Times, December 6, 2017.
52. See, for example, “Statement by the President on the Memorandum of Understanding Reached with Israel,” September 14, 2016, at https://
53. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was supposed to lead the peace process, and Kushner told a group of congressional interns in July 2017 that no new peace initiative was in the works. See Ashley Feinberg, “Kushner on Middle East Peace: ‘What Do We Offer That’s Unique? I Don’t Know,’” Wired, August 1, 2017, at www
54. As Randa Slim of the Middle East Institute put it, “Donald Trump’s decision at least clarifies the situation—declares the peace process officially over and removes any remaining doubt about the US third party role as a fair mediator.” Quoted in Joyce Karam, “Experts React to Trump’s Jerusalem Decision: A Diplomatic Upgrade or End of the Peace Process?” The National, December 7, 2017, at www
55. Ryan Teague Beckwith, “Read Trump’s ‘America First’ Foreign Policy Speech,” Time, April 27, 2016, at http://
56. See Karoun Demirjian, “House Passes Nearly $700 Billion Defense Authorization Bill,” The Washington Post, November 14, 2017.
57. Based on data from the U.S. Air Forces Central Command at www
58. Trump announced the shift in policy via Twitter on July 26, catching the Pentagon by surprise. The White House issued an official order to discharge all transgender troops by March 2018, but Secretary of Defense Mattis subsequently announced that transgender troops would continue to serve pending a policy review, and a federal court struck down Trump’s proposed ban in October. See Helene Cooper, “Mattis Says Military Panel Will Study Trump’s Transgender Ban,” The New York Times, August 29, 2017; and Dave Philipps, “Judge Blocks Trump’s Ban on Transgender Troops in Military,” The New York Times, October 30, 2017.
59. See Katherine Blakeley, “The Trump Administration’s FY2018 Defense Budget in Context,” Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, August 3, 2017, at http://
60. See Nicole Gaouette and Ryan Browne, “Trump Changes Tune, Flexes U.S. Muscle Overseas,” CNN.com, July 17, 2017, at www
61. See Joshua Rovner, “The War on Terror as Imperial Policing,” War on the Rocks, November 2, 2017, at https://
62. See Hal Brands, “The Problem with Trump’s Counterterrorism Strategy? Trump,” Bloomberg View, October 25, 2017, at www
63. Jason Dempsey and Amy Schafer, “Is There Trouble Brewing for Civil-Military Relations in the U.S.?” World Politics Review, May 23, 2017, at www
64. The order imposed a variety of restrictions on visitors from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and North Korea. See Adam Liptak, “Supreme Court Wipes Out Travel Ban Appeal,” The New York Times, October 24, 2017.
65. Miriam Jordan, “Trump Administration Says 200,000 Salvadorans Must Leave,” The New York Times, January 9, 2018.
66. For a sense of the international reaction, see Laignee Barron, “‘A New Low’: The World Is Furious at Trump for His Remark About ‘Shithole Countries,’” Time, January 12, 2018, at http://
67. See Muzaffar Chishti, Sarah Pierce, and Jessica Bolter, “The Obama Record on Deportations: Deporter in Chief or Not?” Migration Policy Institute, January 26, 2017, at www
68. See Dombrowski and Reich, “Does Donald Trump Have a Grand Strategy?” pp. 1023–26.
69. See “Trump Says Mexico ‘Eventually’ Will Pay for Border Wall,” Reuters, April 23, 2017, at www
70. See Julie Hirshfeld Davis, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, and Thomas Kaplan, “Trump Was Not ‘Fully Informed’ in 2016 Vows on Wall, Kelly Says,” The New York Times, January 17, 2018.
71. See Lisa Friedman, “Syria Joins Paris Climate Accord, Leaving Only U.S. Opposed,” The New York Times, November 7, 2017, at www
72. Clare Jones and Sam Fleming, “G20 Drops Vow to Resist All Forms of Protectionism,” Financial Times, March 18, 2017.
73. Trump falsely claimed, “We lose the lawsuits, almost all of the lawsuits in the WTO.” In fact, the United States has won roughly 90 percent of the disputes it has taken to the WTO, although it has usually lost the disputes brought against it by others. Rather than being evidence of WTO bias, this pattern confirms that states generally bring disputes to the WTO only when they have a strong case. See Shawn Donnen, “Fears for Global Trade as Trump Fires First Shots to Kneecap WTO,” Financial Times, November 9, 2017.
74. See Demetri Sevastopulo and Shawn Donnan, “Donald Trump Rejected China Steel Offer That His Officials Backed,” Financial Times, August 28, 2017.
75. See David Lawder, “U.S. Commerce Dept ‘Self-Initiates’ Dumping Probe of Chinese Aluminum,” Reuters, November 28, 2017; at www
76. See John Cassiday, “Trump’s NAFTA Reversal Confirms the Globalists Are in Charge—For Now,” The New Yorker, April 27, 2017, at www
77. Ana Swanson and Thomas Kaplan, “Senate Panel Rejects Trump Nominee to Head Export-Import Bank,” The New York Times, December 19, 2017.
78. “Full Text: Trump Davos Speech Transcript,” Politico, January 28, 2018, at www
79. Damian Paletta, “Trump Insists ‘Trade Wars Are Good, and Easy to Win’ after Vowing New Tariffs,” The Washington Post, March 2, 2018.
80. See Ana Swanson, “Peter Navarro, a Top Trade Skeptic, Is Ascendant,” The New York Times, February 29, 2018.
81. See Jim Tankersley and Natalie Kitroeff, “U.S. Exempts Some Allies from Tariffs, but May Impose Quotas,” The New York Times, March 22, 2018; see also Ana Swanson and Kenneth P. Vogel, “Trump’s Tariffs Set Off Storm of Lobbying,” The New York Times, March 16, 2018; and Jack Ewing, “U.S. Allies Jostle to Win Exemptions from Trump Tariffs,” The New York Times, March 9, 2018.
82. National Security Strategy (2017), p. 4.
83. See Steven Erlanger, “‘Fake News,’ Trump’s Obsession, Is Now a Cudgel for Strongmen,” The New York Times, December 12, 2017.
84. See Barry R. Posen, “The Rise of Illiberal Hegemony: Trump’s Surprising Grand Strategy,” Foreign Affairs 97, no. 2 (March/April 2018).
85. National Security Strategy, p. 41.
86. The memorandum to Tillerson was written by the senior aide Brian Hook in May 2017 and leaked to Politico in December 2017. It can be found at www.politico.com/f/?id=00000160-6c37-da3c-a371-ec3f13380001.
87. Amanda Erickson, “Trump Rails Against Iran Over Its Human Rights Record. But He Spares Allies,” The Washington Post, January 4, 2018.
88. See “Press Statement: Peaceful Protests in Iran,” U.S. Department of State, December 29, 2017, at www
89. See Alex Shashkevich, “U.S. Wants Peace, Stability in Syria, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Says in Policy Speech at Stanford,” Stanford News, January 18, 2018, at https://
90. See “Donald Trump’s Administration Is Promoting Democracy and Human Rights,” The Economist, December 6, 2017.
91. In his speech to the conference, Sen referred to Trump as “a great person who I respect the most,” praised his “non-interference policy,” and called upon the president to rebuke U.S. diplomats, whom he accused of trying to topple his government. In response, the White House expressed “strong concerns over recent steps that challenged the country’s democratic progress.” See David Boyle, “Cambodian Strongman’s Trump Outreach Falls Flat,” Voice of America News, November 14, 2017, at www
92. See “Remarks by President Trump on the Strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia,” August 21, 2017, at www
93. See Laura King, “No Nation-Building in Afghanistan? Easier Said Than Done, Experts Say,” Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2017, at www
94. Quoted in Susan Glasser, “Donald Trump’s Year of Living Dangerously,” Politico (January/February 2018).
95. See Doyle McManus, “Trump Just Compared the U.S. Intelligence Community to Nazi Germany. Just Let That Sink In,” Los Angeles Times, January 11, 2017; Cristiano Lima, “CIA Chief Called Trump Nazi Germany Comparison ‘Outrageous,’” Politico, January 15, 2017, at www
96. Philip Wagner, John Rucker, and Greg Mitchell, “Trump, in CIA Visit, Attacks Media for Coverage of His Inaugural Crowds,” The Washington Post, January 21, 2017.
97. See Eliot A. Cohen, “The Worst Secretary of State in Living Memory,” The Atlantic, December 1, 2017. See also Julia Ioffe, “The State of Trump’s State Department,” The Atlantic, March 1, 2017; Roger Cohen, “The Desperation of Our Diplomats,” The New York Times, July 28, 2017; Max Bergmann, “Present at the Destruction: How Rex Tillerson Is Wrecking the State Department,” Politico, June 29, 2017, at www
98. See Bill Chappell, “‘I’m the Only One That Matters,’ Trump Says of State Dept. Job Vacancies,” NPR.org, November 3, 2017, at www
99. See for example Eliot A. Cohen, “The Rudderless Ship of State,” The Atlantic, February 14, 2017, at www
100. See, for example, Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky, “Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Is ‘America Only,’ Not ‘America First,’” The Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2017; Bret Stephens, “The Vertigo Presidency,” The Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2017; and Peggy Noonan, “Trump Is Woody Allen Without the Humor,” The Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2017.
101. See Jen Kirby, “Trump Has Lowest Approval Rating of Any Modern President at the End of His First Year,” Vox.com, December 21, 2017, at www
102. During his business career, Trump admitted to engaging in what he called “truthful hyperbole.” See David Barstow, “Trump’s Business Dealings Rely on Being Creative with the Truth,” The New York Times, July 16, 2016.
103. In early June 2017, for example, the White House released a video of cabinet secretaries and top White House aides telling Trump that he was doing a wonderful job and it was a “blessing” to serve him. See Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “Trump’s Cabinet, with a Prod, Extols the ‘Blessing’ of Serving Him,” The New York Times, June 12, 2017; and Chris Cillizza, “Trump Just Held the Weirdest Cabinet Meeting Ever,” CNN.com, June 13, 2017, at www
104. See Julian Borger, “Rex Tillerson Says He Won’t Quit but Doesn’t Deny Calling Trump a ‘Moron,’” The Guardian, October 4, 2017, at www
105. See Glasser, “Donald Trump’s Year of Living Dangerously”; Jonathan Swan and Mike Allen, “The Most Toxic Work Environment on the Planet,” Axios, March 14, 2018, at www
106. Michael D. Shear and Maggie Haberman, “‘There Will Always Be Change,’ Trump Says as More Personnel Shake-Ups Loom,” The New York Times, March 15, 2018; Associated Press, “Cabinet Chaos: Trump’s Team Battles Scandal, Irrelevance,” March 14, 2018, at www
107. Trump fired Comey after he failed to pledge his “loyalty” to Trump in a one-on-one meeting at the White House and refused to curtail the FBI investigation into Russia’s role in the election. Detailed accounts of Russia’s alleged activities include Evan Osnos, David Remnick, and Joshua Yaffa, “Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War,” The New Yorker, March 6, 2017; and Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima, and Adam Entous, “Obama’s Secret Struggle to Punish Russia for Putin’s Election Assault,” The Washington Post, June 23, 2017.
108. A useful guide to these events is Philip Bump, “An Interactive Guide to Key Moments in the Trump Russia Investigation,” The Washington Post, July 19, 2017, at www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/19/an-interactive-timeline-of-key-moments-in-the-trump-russia-investigation/?utm_term=.04939963181b.
109. On the latter point, see Micah Zenko, “Trump’s Russia Scandal Is Already Swallowing His Foreign Policy,” Foreign Policy, June 6, 2017, at http://
110. In January 2018, for example, when the journalist Michael Wolff published Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, an unflattering portrait of Trump that questioned the president’s intelligence and mental stability, the White House first tried to block the book’s publication (which raised public interest in it even more). The administration then released a statement declaring that former chief strategist Stephen Bannon (one of Wolff’s inside sources) had “lost his job, and then lost his mind,” and Trump took to Twitter to proclaim “my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart … I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius … and a very stable genius at that!” Unfortunately, the tweet contradicted the message it sought to send and lent credence to the embarrassing anecdotes in Wolff’s book.
111. See David Leonhardt, Ian Prasad Philbrick, and Stuart A. Thompson, “Trump’s Lies vs. Obama’s,” The New York Times, December 14, 2017, at www
112. See Bess Levin, “Trump Openly Brags about Lying to Justin Trudeau’s Face,” Vanity Fair, March 15, 2018, at www
113. On this point, see Keren Yarhi-Milo, “After Credibility: American Foreign Policy in the Trump Era,” Foreign Affairs 97, no. 1 (January/February 2018).
114. See https://
115. Quoted in Steven Erlanger, “Trump’s Twitter Threats Put American Credibility on the Line,” The New York Times, January 7, 2017.
116. The transcripts of the two calls were leaked in August 2017 and can be found at www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/politics/australia-mexico-transcripts/?utm_term=.07b5af8a2b68/.
117. See “Donald Trump Hits Back at Theresa May after Re-Tweeting British Far-Right Group’s Anti-Muslim Videos,” The Telegraph, November 30, 2017, at www
118. Khan had told Londoners not to be alarmed by the heightened security presence following the attacks. Taking his remark out of context, Trump tweeted, “7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack. Mayor of London Says ‘there’s no reason to be alarmed!’” See Martin Pengelly, “Donald Trump Berates London Mayor Over Response to Terror Attacks,” The Guardian, June 4, 2017, at www
119. See Christina Maza, “Donald Trump Threw Starburst Candies at Angela Merkel, Said ‘Don’t Say I Never Give You Anything,’” Newsweek, June 20, 2018, at www
120. See Porter, “Why U.S. Grand Strategy Has Not Changed.”
121. In January 2017 the White House issued a press release that misspelled the name of British prime minister Theresa May. In April, Press Secretary Sean Spicer suggested that the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad was worse than Hitler because the latter “hadn’t used chemical weapons.” Shortly thereafter, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross told an interviewer that Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia was going well because there had been no public protests there, Ross apparently being unaware that the kingdom suppresses such forms of dissent.
122. See Nicole Lewis and Kristine Phillips, “The Trump White House Keeps Mixing Up the Names of Asian Countries and Their Leaders’ Titles,” The Washington Post, July 10, 2017, at www
123. The information was highly sensitive intelligence about ISIS obtained from an Israeli double agent operating inside the terrorist group. See Carole E. Lee and Shane Harris, “Trump Shared Intelligence Information in Meeting with Russians in Oval Office,” The Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2017; and Jack L. Goldsmith, “Bombshell: Initial Thoughts on the Washington Post’s Game-Changing Story,” Lawfare, May 15, 2017, at https://
124. See Jeffrey Kucik, “The TPP’s Real Value—It’s Not Just About Trade,” The Hill, December 7, 2016, at http://
125. On this incident, see E. A. Crunden, “Trump, Tillerson Offer Conflicting Statements on Qatar Crisis Within 90 Minutes,” ThinkProgess.org, June 9, 2017, at https://
126. On Trump’s promise to Adelson, see Mark Landler, “For Trump, an Embassy in Jerusalem Is a Political Decision, Not a Diplomatic One,” The New York Times, December 6, 2017.
127. In addition to the United States and Israel, the only countries that opposed the resolution were Micronesia, Nauru, Togo and Tonga, Palau, the Marshall Islands, Guatemala, and Honduras. Thirty-five countries abstained. See Nicole Gaouette, “Despite Haley Threat, UN Votes to Condemn Trump’s Jerusalem Decision,” CNN.com, December 22, 2017, at www
128. See Toluse Olorunnipa and Nick Wadhams, “Trump Moves Closer to a Presidency of One with Tillerson Firing,” Bloomberg News, March 14, 2018, at www
129. The appointment of John Bolton provoked considerable alarm, but he is hardly a fringe figure in contemporary America. He is a graduate of Yale University and Yale Law School, worked at Covington & Burling, a venerable D.C. law firm, and has spent many years as a senior fellow at the conservative but mainstream American Enterprise Institute. He served as Ambassador to the United Nations under George W. Bush and writes for such “radical” publications as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Foreign Policy. See Stephen M. Walt, “Welcome to the Dick Cheney Administration,” Foreign Policy, March 23, 2018, at http://
130. See Joshua Keating, “John Bolton and Gina Haspel are the Consequences of Our Failure to Reckon with the Bush Years,” Slate, March 23, 2018, at https://
131. See “U.S. Trade Gap Highest Since 2012,” at https://
132. Ely Ratner, “Trump Could be Bumbling Into a Trade War with China,” The Atlantic, March 22, 2018, at www
133. Thomas L. Friedman, “Trump, Israel, and the Art of the Giveaway,” The New York Times, December 6, 2017.
134. See Evan Osnos, “Making China Great Again,” The New Yorker, January 9. 2018.
135. These results are especially striking insofar as Xi and Putin were not especially well-regarded in most countries. See “U.S. Image Suffers as Publics Around the World Question Trump Leadership,” Pew Research Center, June 26, 2017, at www
136. Julie Ray, “World’s Approval of U.S. Leadership Drops to New Low,” Gallup News, January 18, 2018, at http://news.gallup.com/poll/225761/world-approval-leadership-drops-new-low.aspx?g_source=WORLD_REGION_WORLDWIDE& g_medium=topic&g_campaign=tiles.
137. After the NATO summit in May, German chancellor Angela Merkel and Canadian foreign minister Chrystia Freeland both gave speeches indicating diminished confidence in the United States and the need to act more independently. See James Masters, “Merkel Reiterates Call for Europe to Take Fate into Our Own Hands,” CNN.com, May 31, 2017, at www
138. See Osnos, “Making China Great Again.”
139. On Clinton’s hawkish tendencies and habitual deference to the military, see Mark Landler, “How Hillary Became a Hawk,” The New York Times Magazine, April 21, 2016.
140. Clinton’s presidential campaigns were not well-managed affairs, but they still fell well short of the feuds and backstabbing that have been commonplace between Trump and his present and former aides.
141. See Tom Nichols, “Trump’s First Year: A Damage Assessment,” The Washington Post, January 19, 2018, at www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/trumps-first-year-a-damage-assessment/2018/01/19/0b410f3c-fa66-11e7-a46b-a3614530bd87_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-d%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.ade2121af895.