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@realDonaldTrump
In trade, military and EVERYTHING else, it will be AMERICA FIRST! This will quickly lead to our ultimate goal: MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
(8:46 a.m., May 23, 2016)
During his campaign for the presidency, Donald Trump took a variety of shifting positions about foreign policy challenges facing the nation. But one thing never changed: his encompassing campaign slogans of “America First” and “Make America Great Again.” For him, America was always “losing” by engaging in unfair trade deals, failing to restrict illegal immigration, and acting as the world’s policeman while other nations failed to adequately fund their own defense.
Trump’s foreign policy positions during the 2016 campaign involved frequent improvisation. One example of his changing views concerned whether the United States should accept refugees from war-torn Syria. In September 2015, Trump said “yes” in a Fox News interview: “I hate the concept of it, but on a humanitarian basis, you have to. It’s living in hell in Syria. There’s no question about it. They’re living in hell, and something has to be done.” Less than a month later, the answer on Fox News was “no”: “I tell you, if they come into this country, they’re going out. If I win, they’re going out. We can’t take a chance.” By December, Trump had gone further, calling for a complete shutdown of all Muslim immigration to the United States (Berenson 2016). Candidate Trump had no governmental experience and a lot to learn about foreign policy. As he gradually gained governmental experience and knowledge as president, several of his foreign policy views underwent change.
What did “America First” and “Make America Great Again” connote during the 2016 campaign? His approach started with a harsh critique of foreign policy in recent decades, particularly under Barack Obama. To Trump, Obama’s foreign policy was a “disaster.” In an April 27, 2016, speech he identified five major foreign policy shortcomings. The Obama approach (1) overextended military resources that Obama had under-funded, (2) allowed our allies to not pay their fair share for defense, (3) caused our allies to begin to believe they can’t rely on us, (4) resulted in our adversaries no longer respecting the United States, and (5) continued the unclear foreign policy that began with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989.
In contrast, Trump promised to significantly boost military spending, demand allies pay more for their defense, demonstrate more consistent support for allies (including Israel and eastern European nations), adopt more aggressive policies toward China and North Korea, and create a more coherent foreign policy based on “American interests and the shared interests of our allies” (Beckwith 2016).
Trump framed most of his campaign discussion of foreign policy as a series of harsh disparagements of Obama and Hillary Clinton. His alternative, as the above summary indicates, was briefly summarized in a few attractive but vague principles. Trump’s foreign policy approach achieved more definition when he discussed two issues particularly important to the candidate: trade and immigration.
In 2016, Trump constantly asserted that America was a big loser in international trade agreements. In a campaign speech in Pennsylvania, he asserted, “We allowed foreign countries to subsidize their goods, devalue their currencies, violate their agreements and cheat in every way imaginable, and our politicians did nothing about it.” His list of disasters included the North American Free Trade Agreement promoted by Bill Clinton and approved by Congress in 1994, allowing China to enter the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, and Obama and Hillary Clinton’s toleration of Chinese currency manipulation. For Trump, NAFTA was “the worst trade deal in history.” Fifty thousand US factories have shuttered since China entered the WTO. Obama’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with twelve Asian nations was another trade giveaway: “It will undermine our economy. It will undermine our independence.” Trump’s solution? Better negotiated agreements supervised by the author of The Art of the Deal (Time Staff 2016).
The candidate was equally emphatic about the need for new restrictions on immigration, making it a central theme of his campaign. In August 2015 he announced a sweeping set of policy proposals. He planned to build a wall on the Mexican border, make Mexico pay for it, deport criminal aliens, enhance penalties for overstaying visas, triple the number of ICE (Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Custom Enforcement) officers, pause immigration to help unemployed Americans find jobs, and reduce the number of visas for foreign workers. By November 2015, he had proposed a “deportation force” to remove the approximately 11 million undocumented aliens. Then followed months of varying statements in which he qualified his support for various aspects of his announced plan. By Election Day 2016, Trump maintained his desire to deport many undocumented aliens and to build a border wall paid for by Mexico but had not ruled out a pathway to citizenship for some undocumented aliens (Timm 2017).
Trump’s stances on trade and immigration proved very controversial during the 2016 campaign. The US Chamber of Commerce, long supportive of GOP candidates, criticized Trump on trade on the day he gave a speech on that topic in Ohio and Pennsylvania, two states that had lost jobs to foreign competition. The Chamber countered Trump’s trade restrictionism, claiming “the benefits of trade greatly outweigh the costs. . . . the vast majority of Americans benefit from international trade and investment” (Murphy 2016). During the fall campaign, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton accused Trump of “a decades-long record of divisiveness and campaign of hate by pledging to forcibly remove every single undocumented immigrant from our country,” terming Trump’s vision “one in which immigrants are not welcomed and one in which innocent families are torn apart” (Hensch 2016).
A week after the inauguration, the Trump administration embroiled itself in a series of political and judicial controversies surrounding its first executive order restricting immigration. Labeled by its critics a “Muslim ban,” the order, titled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” took immediate effect to bar admission to the US of all people with nonimmigrant or immigrant visas from seven countries—Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Iran, Libya, Sudan, and Yemen—for 90 days. It also barred entry to all refugees from anywhere in the world for 120 days and placed an indefinite ban on refugees from war-torn Syria. It prioritized refugees from these countries if they were subject to “religious based persecution” (probably Christians). The ban initially also applied to individuals who are permanent residents of the United States (green-card holders) who were traveling overseas to visit family or for work, though criticism caused the White House immediately to suspend that provision. The order was formulated by White House aides Steve Bannon and Steve Miller. It was not examined or approved by the Departments of Homeland Security, State, or Defense (McGraw and Kelsey 2017).
The executive order stated, “Recent history shows that some of those who have entered the United States through our immigration system have proved to be threats to our national security. Since 2001, hundreds of persons born abroad have been convicted of terrorism-related crimes in the United States . . . the entry into the United States of foreign nationals who may commit, aid, or support acts of terrorism remains a matter of grave concern” (White House 2017a).
The peremptory issuance of the order produced some disarray at airports and strong criticism from congressional Democrats and Republicans. GOP Senators Lindsey Graham (SC) and John McCain (AZ) called the executive order a “self-inflicted wound” that “may do more to help terrorist recruitment than improve our security.” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) demanded Trump rescind the “mean spirited and un-American” order. In New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Washington federal lawsuits were filed for travelers who were detained in US airports (McGraw and Kelsey 2017). By the next day, January 28, a federal judge in New York had issued a temporary ban on the order as the litigation commenced and political resistance mounted. Subsequent attempts by the administration to remove judicial bans on the initial executive order were not successful.
Despite the president’s statement on January 29 that the ban “is not about religion—this is about terror and keeping our country safe,” ex-president Obama the next day criticized the ban, responding that he “fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion” (Almasy and Simon 2017). The judicial impasse prompted the Trump administration on March 6 to withdraw the initial order and replace it with a new order titled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.” The new order differed from the January 27 order in several ways. It more clearly stated which travelers were subject to the travel ban, removed Iraq from the list of countries, no longer banned Syrian refugees indefinitely, did not rank Christians as refugees having higher priority, allowed the secretaries of state and homeland security to grant exemptions on a case-by-case basis, and required the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to create a longer chronological list of terror attacks and convictions dating back to September 11, 2001 (Neuhauser 2017).
This order also was stopped by judicial challenges. A federal judge in Hawaii on March 15 issued a restraining order against the ban, arguing that “there was significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus driving the promulgation” of the order and that “a reasonable, objective observer . . . would conclude” that the ban “was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion” (McGraw and Kelsey 2017). A series of Trump administration defeats in federal circuit courts of appeals ensued, overruling the ban on constitutional or statutory grounds. The Ninth Circuit blocked the ban on statutory grounds, holding that Trump “exceeded the scope of the authority delegated to him by Congress” (Stern 2017a). The Fourth Circuit, in an unusual interpretation, looked to Trump’s campaign statements on immigration to find an unconstitutional religious intolerance in the ban. Its majority opinion stated that the ban “drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination,” thereby violating “one of our most cherished founding principles—that government shall not establish any religious orthodoxy, or favor or disfavor one religion over another” (Stern 2017b). The administration appealed the Fourth Circuit reversal to the Supreme Court, which has ultimate jurisdiction over the judicial controversy (Jarrett and de Vogue 2017).
In preliminary rulings, the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration a partial victory. On June 29 it allowed temporary implementation of the revised ban but expanded the range of people who could be admitted. The court allowed entry to persons having “any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.” In early July the court issued a brief order indicating the Trump administration had interpreted its June 29 ruling too narrowly (de Vogue 2017). The court planned a more comprehensive consideration of the executive order later in the year.
The White House engendered great controversy with its travel ban. After six months in office, it had achieved some limited success in implementing it despite widespread criticism and a pending Supreme Court case. The ban was shaped as a temporary set of restrictions; yet the controversy now extended many days beyond the 120-day scope of much of the original order. The underlying debate, pitting concerns about national security against fears of religious discrimination, will persist well into the future because it surrounds many antiterrorism security measures.
Trump’s Department of Homeland Security announced enhanced immigration enforcement policies on February 1. The new policies broadened “the pool of undocumented immigrants” prioritized for removal, including those who have been charged with crimes but not convicted, those who commit acts that constitute a “chargeable criminal offense,” and those who an immigration officer concludes pose “a risk to public safety or national security” (Nakamura 2017). One result was an outcry from immigrant rights groups. A senior departmental spokesperson, however, stated, “We do not have the personnel, time or resources to go into communities and round up people and do all kinds of mass throwing folks on buses. That’s entirely a figment of folks’ imagination. This is not intended to produce mass roundups, mass deportations” (Nakamura 2017).
Meanwhile, Trump claimed in March that illegal border crossings from Mexico had dropped considerably. Did the arrival of his administration produce this result? According to Christopher Wilson, deputy director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center:
There’s been a clear and marked decrease in unauthorized border crossings. That’s really undeniable. How much of that is due to policy changes versus rhetoric? It’s not really easy to answer that question. My sense is that what we’ve really seen so far, the big change, has been around rhetoric, communicating. It’s been about messaging, and that’s worked, essentially. Potential migrants are convinced that this is a difficult time to come to the United States, and they have not been coming. (Lee 2017)
On January 27, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto canceled an upcoming meeting with Trump over the president’s insistence that Mexico fund the “border wall.” Funding for Trump’s wall in late April became ensnared in harsh partisan divisions surrounding a must-pass spending bill to temporarily fund the national government. An administration request for wall funding encountered harsh Democratic opposition and was jettisoned from the final legislation. Democrats were able to prevail because the congressional GOP was internally divided on spending and could not muster enough votes to pass the funding with funds for the border wall in it.
When the administration announced its fiscal year 2018 budget proposal on May 22, it requested $2.6 billion for border wall construction and enhanced immigration security. This was a small fraction of the tens of billions needed to fulfill Trump’s promise of a border along the entire 1,989-mile border. Though the president asked for 10,000 new immigration (ICE) officers and 5,000 new Border Patrol agents, the 2018 budget would fund only 500 new Border Patrol agents and 1,000 new ICE officers. The White House also requested $1.5 billion to increase detentions and deportations of undocumented immigrants by funding detention and removal efforts. Congressional prospects for approval were uncertain (Kopan 2017). The limited request reflected the austerity of many administration funding requests in the proposal due to the large projected deficit and the administration’s desire for a big tax cut.
The administration’s initial approach to international trade started with an expected withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations and agreement. The agreement negotiated by the Obama administration sought to reduce trade barriers among the United States and 11 Asian nations. One goal of the agreement was to enhance trade with Asian nations other than with China, which was not included in the agreement. Trump called his action “a great deal for the American worker.” Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO union federation, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-VT), House Democrat Pelosi (CA), and other liberal Democrats hailed the move. Critics included Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who called the action a “serious mistake” (Bennett 2017).
Trump’s campaign criticism of the People’s Republic of China regarding trade policies and currency manipulation temporarily vanished once Trump met with Chinese President Xi in early April. Trump indicated that he now understood the difficulties China has in dealing with the rogue regime in North Korea. The need for Chinese help with the matter meant he would not bring immediate pressure on trade and currency issues. “They’re not currency manipulators,” he said on April 17, contradicting earlier campaign assertions (Murphy 2017). Yet by the summer the president was threatening China with trade reprisals in part because of what he viewed as its inaction with the growing North Korea crisis.
The president did, however, indicate his intent to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, signaling a desire to revisit many aspects of the pact in order to, in his view, improve America’s status in the agreement. Up for renegotiation were current trade barriers, agricultural rules, customs enforcement, and dispute resolution procedures. US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer would lead the negotiations for the United States (Lu 2017).
During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised a major reconfiguration of the nation’s foreign policy. He expressed controversial positions on a variety of world trouble spots, military engagements, and diplomatic controversies. During his administration’s initial months, Trump clarified and altered many of his previous positions, often at the behest of his foreign and defense policy team. What follows is a tour Trump’s evolving positions regarding these world situations as he began conducting the nation’s foreign policy.
North Korea and Asian Affairs
In early 2016, candidate Trump viewed the government of North Korea quite negatively and expected China to take control of the North Korean regime. In a February GOP debate, he asserted, “China says they don’t have that good of control over North Korea. They have tremendous control. . . . They have total, absolute control, practically, of North Korea. . . . I would get on with China, let China solve that problem. They can do it quickly and surgically. That’s what we should do with North Korea” (Team Fix 2016). He later suggested that China should “disappear” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (CBS News 2016). Trump would revise his approach upon taking office.
As he left the presidency, Barack Obama informed Donald Trump that the most urgent problem he would face was North Korea’s attempts to build intercontinental ballistic missiles. Obama’s administration led a “cyber war” against North Korea’s missile program as a number of the nation’s test missiles failed to launch successfully (Sanger and Broad 2017). Signs soon appeared after inauguration day that North Korea was planning more missile tests. Trump’s options were limited. The United States could continue an intensified cyber and electronic warfare begun under Obama, attempt to reopen negotiations that had yielded little in the past, prepare for missile strikes on launch facilities that promise uncertain results, or encourage China to more aggressively pressure North Korea to desist (Sanger and Broad 2017).
Ten days after his election victory, Trump had met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to discuss a wide variety of issues, including North Korea. The two nations continued working to curtail the North Korean threat. On February 5, the two nations launched a successful antiballistic missile test. Six days later, however, North Korea announced a successful launch of a new ballistic missile, and on February 14 North Korean agents reportedly assassinated Kim Jong Un’s half brother in Singapore. China then announced it was suspending all exports of coal to North Korea for the remainder of the year (McKirdy 2017).
The tit for tat with North Korea continued for the next several months. North Korea fired four ballistic test missiles into the Sea of Japan on March 2. This led to the United States dispatching missile defense ships to the area later in the month. Evidence mounted of continued nuclear weapons tests by North Korea, and two unsuccessful ballistic missile launches occurred in March and April. The rogue nation was conducting missile and nuclear tests at its most rapid pace ever.
President Trump met with Chinese President Xi in early April and revised his views regarding China’s influence over North Korea. “After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy. I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power over North Korea. But it’s not what you would think” (Osborne 2017). The North Korean issue again arose at the United Nations Security Council on April 19. Russia vetoed a resolution condemning the most recent nuclear test as a violation of international arms control accords.
Trump then tried a diplomatic overture on May 1, indicating he would be “honored” to meet with Kim Jong Un in direct one-to-one talks. Moon Jae-in, newly elected as president of South Korea on May 10, advocated engagement with the North in order to denuclearize the Korean peninsula. North Korea responded with three ballistic missile launches in May and one in early June. Its first successful tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles came in July, raising a new security threat to America itself. In early August, the UN Security Council unanimously passed new sanctions targeting North Korea’s primary exports, with even Russia voting in favor this time (Roth 2017). Once North Korea threatened to strike Guam with its missiles, the president harshly countered with a guarantee of “fire and fury” if such aggression occurred (Vitali 2017). Administration officials, meanwhile, offered assurances that war with the rogue regime was not imminent.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in March indicated that years of diplomacy toward North Korea had failed to stem North Korean aggression and that it was time for the United States and its Asian allies to arrive at a new approach (Fifield and Gearan 2017). The options available to Trump when he took office, however, had not changed. The administration pursued increasing cooperation and engagement with China, Japan, and South Korea over the issue, along with development of antimissile capability and cyberwarfare activities against Kim Jong Un’s regime. That approach may buy time but does not remove the underlying problem—the expansionist aggressiveness of North Korea.
The dire North Korean situation spurred Trump to curb for a while his long-standing criticism of China’s trade practices. On April 16, he tweeted to his 28 million followers, “Why would I call China a currency manipulator when they are working with us on the North Korean problem? We will see what happens!” By the summer he was renewing trade threats against China, though, reflecting his frustration with their inability to improve the North Korea situation. China already had benefited from Trump’s decision to withdraw from Obama’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. The agreement sought to coordinate free trade agreements with eleven nations bordering the Pacific, including Canada, Mexico, Chile, and Japan—but not China. Its goal was to bring down taxes on exported goods among the nations, giving US consumers access to cheaper foreign goods but perhaps costing American jobs in the process. That cost had long inflamed Trump, who during the campaign had called it another “rape” by “special interests.” He announced US withdrawal immediately after his inauguration (Popken 2017).
The Middle East and ISIS
No region of the globe has vexed more presidents than the Middle East. Barack Obama sought to downplay the US role in the region in favor of more engagement in Asian affairs. That did not work out so well. The result was a disastrous Syrian civil war that led to unprecedented numbers of refugees fleeing across the border to safe havens, many finding sanctuary in European nations and, in the process, roiling European politics.
The Middle East presented President Trump with at least seven major foreign policy problems. First, the Syrian civil war, with Russia and Iran supporting President Bashar al-Assad clinging to power while fighting a variety of insurgent forces, including the radical Islamist movement ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) and pro-Western rebels. Assad’s forces have engaged in mass executions of his own citizens. Second, the challenge of ISIS, which seeks territorial expansion and exports terrorism while employing the most brutal methods. Third, Iran’s development of nuclear weapons, supposedly delayed by a limitations agreement negotiated with Obama’s diplomats but never submitted to the US Senate for treaty approval. Fourth, the role of ISIS and another Islamic fundamentalist movement, the Taliban, in the continuing insurgency against the Afghanistan government. The Taliban has sheltered and supported al-Qaeda, the organization responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Fifth, in recent years US relations have deteriorated with Saudi Arabia and Egypt, both Sunni Islamic regimes deeply opposed to the Shia Islamic regime in Iran. Sixth, the long-standing territorial disputes between Israel and the adjoining Palestinian territories remained unresolved. Seventh, the collapse of Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorial regime in Libya produced disorder in which Islamic radicals gained presence and resources. A hornet’s nest, indeed.
Candidate Trump offered pronouncements, many of them controversial, on the seven problems. On Syria, he renounced an earlier position in favor of accepting refugees and on the stump focused mainly on criticizing the Obama administration’s policies. He uttered harsh rhetoric about ISIS, stating on August 2, 2016, “I would do what you have to do to get rid of ISIS. It’s a horrific problem. . . . We have unleashed a monster in the Middle East. And, yes, I would bomb them—you have to do what you have to do to get rid of them” (Vladimirov 2016). The candidate indicated he would not publicize his plan in advance, letting his generals plan and execute it with the element of surprise.
Trump consistently denounced the Obama administration’s nuclear treaty with Iran. In a speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), he proclaimed, “My number one priority is to dis-mantle the disastrous deal with Iran. . . . We have rewarded the world’s leading state sponsor of terror with $150 billion and we received absolutely nothing in return. . . . The biggest concern with the deal is not necessarily that Iran is going to violate it . . . the bigger problem is that they can keep the terms and still get to the bomb by simply running out the clock, and, of course, they keep the billions.” Trump, in contrast, promised to “stand up” to Iran, dismantle its “global terror network,” and hold Iran accountable for the negotiated agreement (Begley 2016).
Though in 2013 Trump proclaimed support of withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan, he changed his tune as a presidential candidate. Critical of a broad “nation-building” effort in the country, Trump indicated that, for purposes of national security, he would keep troops in the country. His goal now was defeat of the Taliban, though during the campaign he offered no specific plan to do so (Ramani 2016). Candidate Trump also made clear his support for Fattah el-Sisi, the autocratic ruler of Egypt whose human rights record had fallen into disfavor with the Obama White House. Trump voiced support for Egypt’s cooperation in fighting terrorism. Trump met with el-Sisi at the United Nations on September 19. Also during the campaign, he had warned Saudi Arabia that he might cut off oil imports from that country if it did not enhance its efforts to combat Islamic terrorism.
Candidate Trump promised to be an ardent supporter of Israel. He met with Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, at Trump Tower in Manhattan on September 26, vowing to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a move bitterly opposed by the Palestinian Authority (Times of Israel Staff 2016). In an earlier interview, the candidate voiced support for a “two-state solution” to the border problem as long as the Palestinian Authority recognized Israel’s right to exist “as a Jewish state” (Sanger and Haberman 2016). Trump zigzagged about the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime in Libya. In February 2016 he disapproved of the removal of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, but by June he voiced approval for a “surgical strike” to remove the dictator. In his words: “I was never for strong intervention. I could have seen surgical where you take out Gadaffi and his group” (Cheney 2016).
Candidate Trump’s views on the Middle East were a “work in progress” throughout 2016. Given his frequent alterations and qualifications of previous positions, it was far from clear how he would approach the region once in the White House. Would “America First” lead to more or less engagement with the troubled region? How dramatic would the policy changes be from those of the Obama administration? As Trump, once in office, learned more about the region and his options, Middle East policies did gradually emerge regarding the seven major challenges the region presented to him.
The Syrian civil war presented President Trump with a complex set of problems that obstructed development of a clear and constructive way forward for the United States. First, the myriad factions in the conflict—Assad and his Russian and Iranian sponsors, a collection of anti-Assad rebels including the Kurdish ethnic group, and the ISIS “caliphate” occupying considerable Syrian territory—made sorting through them a big challenge, as Obama had found in previous years. Obama’s embrace of a nuclear deal with Iran made him unwilling to risk direct engagement with the pro-Iranian groups supporting President Assad. Trump had no such qualms, evident in his authorizing in early April a strike of 59 Tomahawk missiles on a pro-Assad military base in response to reports of the regime’s use of chemical weapons on unarmed civilians. This humanitarian response received widespread praise.
Trump’s broader Syrian policy, however, was tentative and populated by various voices not always in agreement. How could he work with Russia and Iran to defeat ISIS while also opposing the atrocity-prone Assad government? And what sort of government could ever bring peace to Syria? Secretary of Defense Mattis reportedly twice refused policy recommendations to broaden the anti-ISIS military offensive to take on pro-Iranian forces. This was proposed by National Security Council staff, but the Pentagon voiced no desire to directly combat pro-Assad forces (Brannan, De Luce, and McLeary 2017). The one imperative of the policy, often voiced by Trump, was the defeat of ISIS, to which he had allowed the Pentagon to devote additional military efforts beyond those permitted by Obama.
The battle against ISIS encountered complications because the United States backed anti-Assad rebels while Iran and Russian supported Assad, while all three nations fought against ISIS. The ground battle against ISIS enjoyed progress with the battle for Raqqa, the only major Syrian city still under ISIS control, commencing in early June. Attacking ISIS were Russian forces alongside a variety of Syrian Democratic rebel forces supported by the United States and its allies. Yet complications arose for the United States. A US warplane shot down an Iranian drone that had attacked US forces on patrol with allied Syrian rebels on June 8 as the battle for Raqqa commenced and on June 18 downed a Syrian government jet attacking US-backed rebels. Russia suspended cooperation with US air forces over parts of Syria as a result and threatened to attack any US planes hitting Assad’s forces (Associated Press 2017a). Trump met with Putin in early July, resulting in an agreed ceasefire and “de-escalation zone” in southwest Iraq, auguring better cooperation between the nations in their fight against ISIS (Cohen and Liptak 2017).
The future of the civil war and Syria itself remains murky as the United States tries to defeat ISIS while also trying to find a way to remove Assad from power and install a better regime in his place. Trump has delegated military planning and tactics to his generals, but the diplomatic challenges for his administration remain great in this conflict. Can he continue to work with Russia effectively while it still props up the Assad regime that the United States opposes?
Trump, meanwhile, decided not to “tear up” the Iran nuclear deal as he had promised to do as a candidate. On May 17, his administration renewed the sanctions relief provided Iran under the accord and on July 17 reluctantly “recertified” Obama’s Iran agreement. His administration had in recent months, however, announced new, narrower sanctions beyond those mentioned in the accord, placing sanctions on Iranians and Chinese companies and individuals supporting Iran’s antiballistic missile program (De Luce 2017). The administration continued to label Iran as a leading “state sponsor of terrorism” and began a comprehensive review of its Iran policy.
Trump’s tendency to delegate to his generals was again evident in the administration’s Afghanistan policy. In June Secretary of Defense Mattis announced the additional deployment of a few thousand troops to the nation and promised an overall strategy by midsummer. He described his policymaking role as follows: “The president delegated the authority to me to turn the numbers up and down as necessary, but this came at the end of a very long discussion—months of discussion with the president as we looked at what the strategy is that would then guide how those numbers are decided. In other words I’ve been given some carte blanche to—to draw up a strategy or a number that’s out of step with the strategy” (Gibbons-Neff and Lamothe 2017). By that point, the stalemate between the Afghan government and its Taliban-ISIS foes had been long standing. The long-term deployment seemed certain to continue under Trump, along with its steady stream of US casualties.
The president underscored his interest in improved relations with the Sunni Islamic government during a visit to Saudi Arabia in late May. This was part of the president’s first extended foreign trip, which also took him to Israel, the Vatican, a NATO meeting in Brussels, and the G-7 summit of other industrial world powers in Italy. In Saudi Arabia, he met with Egyptian President el-Sisi and Saudi King Salman and promised to visit Egypt soon. President Trump announced a $110 billion sale of weapons to the Saudi monarchy and the opening there of a Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology. He showered praise on Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates, all of which Trump views as allies in combating terrorism. In a public speech, he dramatically insisted, “A better future is only possible if your nations drive out the terrorists and extremists. Drive. Them. Out. DRIVE THEM OUT of your places of worship. DRIVE THEM OUT of your communities. DRIVE THEM OUT of your holy land, and DRIVE THEM OUT OF THIS EARTH” (CNN 2017). He was warmly received by the Saudi government, which had difficult relations with the Obama administration and strongly objected to Obama’s Iranian nuclear accord.
Saudi Arabia, along with Egypt, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, in early June announced a trade and diplomatic embargo of the Gulf nation of Qatar for its alleged support of Islamic extremism. The countries cut air, sea, and land links with Qatar. Several ordered Qataris in their countries to return home, and their citizens to leave the country within two weeks (Hennessey-Fiske 2017). President Trump tweeted his way into the controversy, first with this: “During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!” Then a second tweet: “So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding . . . extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!” Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), when notified of the tweets by reporters, was unpleasantly surprised and responded, “It’s been my policy that we work with all of our—we work with everybody in the region in a way that’s constructive” (Kheel 2017).
Trump had complicated peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in February by claiming the United States was no longer committed to the establishment of a Palestinian state on Israel’s border—a big departure from previous US policy. In May, his visit to Israel included meeting with Israeli president Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. During his stopover, he again declined to specifically advocate a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian border conflict. After returning to the United States, Trump delayed recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which he had promised to do during the campaign. His wariness on both issues may have been a tactic to open up wide-ranging peace negotiations, which he enthusiastically seemed to support when in Israel (Gray 2017). His interest in negotiations was evident in June, when he sent son-in-law Jared Kushner to the region to facilitate Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in June.
The new president indicated far less interest in relations with factious post-Gaddafi Libya, declaring on April 21 that “I do not see a role in Libya. I think the United States has right now enough roles. We are in a role everywhere” (Kirchgaessner 2017). The president then indicated that he was concerned with Libya to the extent that it figured into efforts to combat ISIS. The United States at the time was on record as a strong supporter of the Tripoli government led by Fayez al-Sarraj. A rival government in eastern Libya, led by Khalifa Haftar, an anti-Islamist military strongman, had support from some parts of the Egyptian and Russian governments. US policy remained unclear in May as a leader of a rival Libyan faction traveled to Washington seeking support (Pecquet 2017).
Trump’s early Middle East policies did not result in the dramatic changes he had proclaimed on the campaign stump. The Iranian peace deal was not “torn up,” Jerusalem was not yet recognized as the capital of Israel, ISIS was not yet “destroyed,” and only incremental change appeared in policies toward the US military involvement in Afghanistan and the Libyan situation. Certain presidential statements roiled the waters but did not yet seem tied to firm new policy directions—the Qatar tweets and disavowal of a two-state solution for the Israel-Palestinian dispute being examples of that. Initially, Trump in office was proving more cautious when handling the tinderbox region.
Europe
Probably no region of the world was more shaken by Trump’s foreign policy direction than Europe, particularly the European Union (EU). The president managed to roil standing policies concerning the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a decades-old mutual defense pact, and the Paris Climate Accord negotiated by President Obama. New arguments over transatlantic trade with European nations also erupted in the new Trump administration. Trump’s initial immigration executive orders also received a cold reception from several European leaders.
A number of Trump’s campaign positions were not welcomed by European officials. The candidate declared in a major foreign policy speech in late April, “In NATO, for instance, only 4 of 28 other member countries besides America, are spending the minimum required 2 percent of GDP on defense. . . . The countries we are defending must pay for the cost of this defense, and if not, the US must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves” (Diamond and Collinson 2016). He stated in early May that he supported the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, a diplomatic and economic coalition of which the nation had long been a member. In an interview in July 2016, the candidate indicated that he would not automatically come to the aid of Baltic nations if they encountered a Russian attack. Instead, he would first examine whether the nations had “fulfilled their obligations to us,” probably through funding their militaries along NATO guidelines (Sanger and Haberman 2016). The candidate’s opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership also augured poorly for the creation of a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TIPP) with European nations. TIPP talks had been ongoing under Obama, but Trump’s trade stance made their successful conclusion unlikely (Maher 2016).
When the Obama administration agreed to the Paris Climate Accord on October 5, 2016, Trump issued a statement labeling it a “bad deal” that would “impose enormous costs on American households through higher electricity prices and higher taxes” (Ballotpedia 2016). All European governments had signed the accord. Trump officially withdrew the United States from the accord on June 2. In the wake of his withdrawal, many state and local governments agreed to voluntary alliances to try to fulfill the goals of the Paris agreement.
Trump in office backtracked on his hostility to NATO. Though he declared it “obsolete” on January 17, by April 12 he admitted that he had made his January comment “not knowing much about NATO” and assuming it did little to fight terrorism. He had since learned otherwise: “They made a change and now they do fight terrorism. I said it was obsolete. It is no longer obsolete” (Mitchell 2017). But he stirred controversy during his late May visit to NATO headquarters by calling out most European nations for failing to maintain a NATO military contribution of 2 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) while refusing in his speech to reaffirm the United States’ commitment to Article 5 of the NATO charter, which binds all member nations to join in the common defense of any nation under military attack. This very conspicuous omission surprised national security advisors and staff, who had expect Trump to verbally support Article 5 (Glasser 2017).
German chancellor Angela Merkel in response stated that Europe must “take its future into its own hands.” The idea that Europe could depend on others—meaning the United States—was “over to a certain extent. This is what I have experienced in the last few days” (Farrell 2017). Trump fired back at Merkel in a tweet about trade on May 30: “We have a MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on NATO & military. Very bad for U.S. This will change.” Trump eventually recanted his earlier NATO statement and in June gave verbal endorsement to the US obligations under Article 5 during a June press conference at the White House with the Romanian prime minister and later reaffirmed that commitment in a speech in Poland on the eve of July’s G-20 summit (Associated Press 2017b).
Trump’s provocative remarks and changing policy approaches contrasted with statements from his State and Defense Departments. Secretary of Defense Mattis, visiting Europe in February, consistently reassured European nations about the US commitment to NATO (Lamothe 2017). Secretary of State Tillerson looked forward to establishing environmental agreements with other nations in the wake of the rejection of the Paris climate treaty, a treaty he personally supported (Cama 2017). Whether these views would prevail with the president over time remained uncertain.
It became clear that “America First” to Trump does not involve the same sort of close diplomatic alignment with Europe that had characterized the Obama administration. Trump also has criticized the open immigration policies of Germany, Sweden, and other European nations, while touting the tighter immigration restrictions of eastern European nations like Hungary. Trump’s approach to Europe suggests a more unilateral and much less multilateral orientation toward international relations. That unpredictability, he believes, is an asset for the United States internationally in that it keeps opponents guessing. It also makes Europe quite nervous about differences with his administration over common defense, climate change, immigration, and trade. That’s no small list.
Russia
No aspect of Trump’s foreign policy has attracted more media attention and public controversy than the president’s relations with Russia. A widespread but unproven allegation holds that candidate Trump colluded with the Russian government in order to win the presidency. Trump himself fueled such suspicions through his offhand comments during his campaign and early months in the White House. The controversy, driven by a big wave of media coverage, has produced an investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and inquiries by four congressional committees.
The Trump-Russia chronology reached back to December 2015, when retired Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, whom Trump would appoint as his national security advisor, received payment from the Russian government for participation in a panel discussion on the tenth anniversary for the Russia Today media operation. On March 28, 2016, veteran lobbyist Paul Manafort became Trump’s campaign manager. In 2008, Manafort had lobbied for an ally of the Russian government and later assisted Russian-backed interests in Ukraine.
Then came the leaks. On June 15, 2016, a hacker calling himself “Guccifer 2.0” released the Democratic National Committee’s research file on Donald Trump. Russian hackers may have been the source of the leak. By July, the FBI had begun an investigation of possible links between the Trump campaign and Russian government. Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page, with Trump campaign approval, delivered a lecture in Moscow. The FBI began secretly tracking Page’s communications. Also in July, the Trump campaign got the Republican convention’s platform committee to remove language calling for rearming Ukraine in response to Russian aggression. WikiLeaks on July 22 began leaking damaging emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee.
Trump then encouraged speculation about Russian involvement in his campaign by urging Russia to find 30,000 emails missing from Hillary Clinton’s server. At a press conference in Florida, he proclaimed, “I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press” (Crowley and Pager 2016). Following disclosures of possible secret Ukrainian payments to Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign fired him as its manager on August 19. Four days later, campaign advisor Roger Stone communicated with hacker Guccifer 2.0 privately over Twitter.
Congressional leaders in September received CIA briefings over the agency’s belief that the Russian government was trying to help the Trump campaign. On October 7, the director of national intelligence and head of the Department of Homeland Security released a public statement warning of possible Russian interference in the election and involvement in the WikiLeaks disclosures.
In the wake of the election, President Obama warned Trump against hiring General Michael Flynn. Obama had fired Flynn in 2014 as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency because of his disruptive leadership style (Miller and Goldman 2014). Appointed as national security advisor on November 18, Flynn was told by the Trump transition team that his communications with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, with whom he had been in contact in recent months, would henceforth be monitored by US intelligence agencies. In early December, Flynn and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner met with Kislyak at Trump Tower, and Flynn had repeated conversations with the Russian ambassador in December. Obama placed additional sanctions on Russia in response to reports of their interference in the 2016 US elections. Trump then lauded Putin for not replying in kind to Obama’s sanctions.
After Trump’s inauguration, the FBI interviewed Flynn about his December conversations with Kislyak. Flynn then got himself in trouble by contradicting public statements by Vice President Pence regarding an FBI interview concerning Russia. The contradiction caused the White House to lose confidence in him, and he was forced to resign on February 13. Meanwhile, former senator (R-AL) and new attorney general Jefferson Sessions found himself involved in a controversy over his public statements about meetings with Russian officials in 2016. Sessions explained that two meetings with Kislyak occurred during his duties as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and not as an emissary of the Trump campaign.
Trump on February 14 met with FBI director James Comey, who had confirmed that an FBI investigation of Russian hacking and possible links to the Trump campaign was underway. In the meeting, Trump, according to Comey, called Flynn a “good guy” and hoped Comey, regarding an investigation of Flynn, could “let this go.” Sessions recused himself from any role in the FBI investigation because of reports of his 2016 meetings with Russians. As the FBI and congressional investigations proceeded, Trump abruptly fired Comey on May 9, calling the Russia probe a “made-up story,” and then raised suspicions by conducting a meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and Kislyak the next day. On May 17, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller to examine the Russian role in the Trump administration and 2016 elections (Bump 2017). Evidence then emerged of a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and several Russians in June 2016. Trump acquaintance and music promoter Bob Goldstone promised damaging information regarding Hillary Clinton if he would meet with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. Trump Jr. responded in an email, “If that’s what you say, I love it.” Campaign director Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Trump Jr. attended a June 9 meeting with Veselnitskaya and three other Russians. Trump Jr., when releasing his emails about the meeting, described it as brief and unproductive and primarily concerned with changing US policy toward Russian adoptions. All of those at the meeting were likely to appear before congressional and Robert Mueller’s investigators (Kinery 2017). Kushner in his July congressional testimony asserted, “I did not collude, and did not know anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government” (Kushner 2017).
There is much suggestive smoke in the above narrative, but no firm evidence of fire. Russia has a long history of attempted involvement in US elections (Walton 2016), and communications between the Russian government and an incoming administration is a routine part of transition business. Trump raised eyebrows with his campaign references to Russia’s election involvement and his firing of FBI Director Comey. Michael Flynn quickly destroyed his credibility as national security advisor, and Paul Manafort’s Ukrainian ties remain under investigation. Yet Manafort lost his job in August, and Flynn was quickly sacked in February.
Donald Jr.’s aspirations for campaign “dirt” on Hillary Clinton prompted his meeting with Russians, but so far there is no clear evidence that such “dirt” was discussed or delivered during the meeting. Beyond these serious concerns, no indisputable evidence of sustained and successful campaign collusion with Russia has been established despite months of ongoing investigations. Trump, however, created the media specter of possible obstruction of justice in his sacking of Comey, even though the president has full legal authority to remove the director.
Russia has dominated media headlines about the new administration due to the ongoing FBI and congressional investigations. Trump himself has created political problems regarding the matter with his constant stream of tweets about the “fake” Russia story, in effect helping to keep alive a controversy damaging to his presidency. It’s a curious case of self-destructive presidential behavior.
How has policy toward Russia shifted in the early Trump presidency? The administration has coordinated a more aggressive military response to ISIS with Russia. Yet the White House has also directed bombing against Syrian President Assad, a Russian client, in response to evidence of humanitarian atrocities by Assad’s regime. Congress overwhelmingly passed enhanced sanctions on Russia, which the president signed (Lardner 2017). Trump met with President Putin twice during the G-20 meetings in early July. The two agreed on clear military borders for their Syria operations, but no further signs of enhanced cooperation emerged. In short, no major redirection in Russian policy has yet appeared despite the president’s repeated statements of willingness to work with Putin on issues of mutual interest.
Trump did, however, institute partial policy change toward the former Russian client state of Cuba. He reversed aspects of Obama’s diplomatic and commercial opening to Cuba. Trump kept the US embassy open but placed new travel and commercial restrictions on Cuba. He prohibited commerce with companies owned by Cuban intelligence services and the military and more strictly enforced the granting of travel exemptions to the island, making it much harder for US citizens to visit the island. Trump asserted he would “expose the crimes of the Castro regime” (Merica 2017). Trump’s action came despite an interagency review by the State Department that recommended keeping the policy in place. Trump’s new approach would not “have a nuclear impact to Obama’s policies,” according to one former State Department official, “but it will add a lot of uncertainty to an already uncertain environment” (Gramer 2017).
It may seem strange to conclude by noting how Obama and Trump share a common perspective on foreign policy. Trump’s nationalistic and brash style contrasts with Obama’s more cerebral and temperate approach to foreign affairs. Yet both can be labeled as “realists” in their approach to foreign policy.
Realism is rooted in several assumptions. First, the international order is made up of nation-states, each concerned with its own power and security. Military and economic power are the prime guarantors of national security. A stable international order results from a stable balance of power between nation-states. Realism is best understood in its contrast with the rival approach of liberalism, which argues that ever more complex ties between nations have made it increasingly difficult to define national interest and have decreased the usefulness of military power. Foreign policy liberals seek to build strong multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations and European Union, in order to lessen the primacy of the nation-state in international affairs and, correspondingly, to reduce the use of military force. International human rights and international law are much more important goals to liberals than to realists (Stanford Encyclopedia 2017).
Trump is an exuberant realist who thinks of the world in terms of America’s national interest. “America First” means employing the nation’s economic and military power to improve the life of its citizens. Other nations are useful to the extent that they contribute to Trump’s primarily national goals. Trump’s tools include employing negotiation and unpredictability in pursuing national ends. Former Obama Defense Department appointee Rosa Brooks summarizes Trump’s view:
Trump has little . . . time for multilateralist diplomats: they’re too willing to compromise, trading away American interests in exchange for platitudes about friendship and cooperation. And he has no time at all for those who consider long-standing U.S. alliances sacrosanct. To Trump, U.S. alliances, like potential business partners in a real-estate transaction, should always be asked: “What have you done for me lately?” In his inimitable way, Trump is offering a powerful challenge to many of the core assumptions of Washington’s bipartisan foreign-policy elite. (Brooks 2016)
Trump believes Obama failed at protecting the nation’s interests—“total failure” is how he described his predecessor’s foreign policy in a tweet. Obama’s trade policy failed to stop the export of jobs overseas, with the Trans-Pacific Partnership an example of that misguided approach. He has tolerated unacceptable trade practices by China. His attempt to disengage from the Middle East led to a disastrous civil war in Syria and the rise of the ISIS caliphate, a new and dangerous threat to America’s national security. Obama’s Iran nuclear deal boosts the power of a main sponsor of international terrorism and won’t stop that nation from eventually gaining nuclear weapons. His North Korea policy was ineffectual. And so on.
Given this criticism, how can Obama also be termed a foreign policy realist? He admittedly differed from Trump in his choice of both strategy and tactics toward the globe. Barack Obama, however, professed an admiration for the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush and his national security advisor, Brent Skowcroft, in office from 1989 to 1993. Their foreign policy was realist, but with a greater emphasis on predictability, diplomacy, and multilateral cooperation than Trump has thus far pursued. This Obama statement contradicts Trump’s now evident tactics: “I think that the best argument you can make on the side of those who are critics of my foreign policy is that the president doesn’t exploit ambiguity enough. He doesn’t maybe react in ways that might cause people to think, Wow, this guy might be a little crazy ” (Goldberg 2016).
Obama’s realist approach is reflected in many of his strategies, including “deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it were . . . adapt to differences in different situations . . . pay heed to geopolitics . . . states have no permanent friends or allies, only permanent interests” (Pillar 2016). These are approaches evident in Trump’s view of the world as well. Both believe that the world is a collection of nation-states each primarily concerned with its own interests and often in competition with each other.
It’s easy to overstate the foreign policy differences between the two realist presidents. After six months in office, Trump’s actual shifts from the previous administration’s foreign policies are less than comprehensive in scope. A Washington Post policy survey at the end of Trump’s first six months in office found that he had altered greatly Obama’s foreign policies in only four areas: the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Syrian war, the travel ban, and Paris Climate Accord. Limited or no change had occurred in eleven foreign policy areas: Russia, North Korea, the ISIS war, NATO, the North American Free Trade Agreement, China, Afghanistan, the Mexican border wall, Cuba, the Iran nuclear deal, and the Israel-Palestinian conflict (Fischer-Baum and Vitkovskaya 2017).
What distinguishes Trump from Obama, however, is his differing empirical assessment of America’s status in the world. Obama saw climate change, Russian aggression, and a growing Asia as immediate national concerns. For Trump, the United States faces trade disasters, nations that need to pay more for their own defense, and the strong threat of international terrorism.
Obama believed in cautious pursuit of national interest through diplomacy and multilateral agreements, when possible. Trump is more prone to rely on military and commercial power in pursuit of those interests. That produced a Trump foreign policy diverging from that of Obama. The divergence stems from Trump’s different view of the threats facing America and contrasting choice of strategies and tactics to address those threats. The presidents are two realists with dissimilar conceptions of America’s national interests and how to pursue them.
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