“A gaping hole where a strategy should be”
Published in partnership with The Conversation,
On Wednesday night, I will be joining the panel for The Conversation’s joint event with the British Academy, “Trump: How to Understand an Unconventional President”. The discussion will be live on The Conversation’s Facebook page.
Portrayals of Donald Trump’s foreign policy are as numerous — and often as coherent — as the President’s outbursts on Twitter.
Some analyses emphasize the chaos of US policy in the Trump era. Some complement this with attention to the strain on alliances, Trump’s reworking of the US-Russian relationship to embrace Vladimir Putin, and his elevation of conflict to the point of threatening nuclear war. Some speak of “America First” as a lodestar, with its economic protectionism and rejection of international agreements, but others depict an Administration even more committed than predecessors to military intervention.
And then there are those who assert that, for all Trump’s sound and fury, not much has changed. They argue that US foreign policy, for better or worse, is maintaining methods and objectives pursued in the Obama era.
How to make sense of all the analysts — blind or otherwise — feeling different parts of the Trump foreign policy elephant?
So how can we cut through all this noise and really make sense of it all? In the interests of clarity (and perhaps sanity) the first thing is to recognise that there isn’t just one Trump foreign policy. There are several. They frustrate each other with various irreconcilable differences. And collectively, they add up not to a coherent US strategy, nor even an incoherent one, but instead a gaping hole where a strategy should be.
The Family and Friends Foreign Policy
One key difference from predecessors is Trump’s promotion in certain areas of a foreign policy set and pursued — albeit on an ad hoc basis — by his family and their business allies.
That approach has reworked, and possibly dismantled, the long-standing US approach to the Middle East — in particular, the Israel-Palestine conflict. Rather than relying on the State Department or National Security Council, or even a White House advisor with experience in diplomacy and the Middle East, Trump tapped his son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Kushner has no previous experience in Middle Eastern affairs. He has no record in negotiations. He does not even have a full security clearance because of his failure to disclose his meetings with foreign officials before Trump became President. But Trump said, with no sign of satire, ‘If you can’t produce peace in the Middle East, nobody can.”
The reckless cronyism doesn’t stop there. To assist Kushner, Trump chose Jason Greenblatt, the Executive Vice President and chief legal officer to Donald Trump and The Trump Organization. The US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, was a member of the law firm Kasowitz, Hoff, Benson, and Torres, which represents Donald Trump.
The selections raised further questions of a balanced American approach. All three men, individually or through foundations, had contributed to the support of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian bank. The Kushner Company continues to do business in Israel.
No matter. Trump continued to promote family and friends, not only over Israel-Palestine but in Kushner’s discussions with the ambitious young, de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad bin Salman.
More than a year later, the chief accomplishment of the group has been to antagonize opinion throughout the region and beyond with the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Mohammad bin Salman, bolstered by Kushner’s personal contact, has pursued the deadly Saudi intervention in Yemen’s civil war, imposed a blockade on Qatar, and detained many of Saudi Arabia’s princes and businessmen.
The “Twitter Chaos” Foreign Policy
Then there is Trump’s use of social media to propel an off-the-top-of-the-head foreign policy. His Twitter activity, often driving the news cycle, can reconfigure the American presentation in a 280-character instant — whether it be the threat of “fire and fury” over North Korea, denouncing fellow NATO members, blowing hot and cold over China, or jarring the “special relationship” with Britain by presenting Prime Minister Theresa May weakly presiding over a terrorist-infested island.
It is far from novel to describe this as a chaotic approach. What is significant is that Trump welcomes the chaos. He said in his first speech on foreign policy during the campaign, “We must as a nation be more unpredictable.”
Trump probably did not think of his statement as a reworking of the Nixon-Kissinger “madman” ploy of the 1970s. Nor is he likely to thought through its effects. What matters is capturing attention and headlines.
…Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1, 2017
The Alt-Right Foreign Policy
Before Trump’s ascendancy, the alt-right — sitting outside the mainstream Republican Party and often connected with the agitation of the Internet — had little traction in US foreign policy. But from January 2017, they had their chance to pitch their slogan of “economic nationalism”. Led by White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who came from the attack site Breitbart, they pushed for confrontation with China and detachment from NATO as well as protectionism and departure from international agreements such as the Paris accord on climate change.
This was not a coherent set of policies as much as it was the campaign for a slogan — “Make America Great Again” or the repackaging of “America First” — but it set off a series of confrontations with other factions within the Administration. Bannon put himself on a key committee of the National Security Council. His ally, Fox News commentator turned Deputy National Security Advisor K.T. McFarland and other staffers tried to take over the direction of the NSC.
The effort of the “firebreathers” was eventually checked by pragmatists. General H.R. McMaster, brought in as National Security Advisor in March, removed Bannon from the NSC. McFarland was soon despatched, nominated to become US Ambassador to Singapore. Senior staff Derek Harvey and Ezra Cohen-Watnick were dismissed.
But an important vestige of the movement remains close to Trump. Stephen Miller, who rose from e-mail spammer of Washington journalists to senior White House advisor within two years, is not only the main architect of the crackdown on immigration but is also the speechwriter behind Trump’s provocative UN performance in September — an address that railed against “a small group of rogue regimes”, threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea, and called its leader Kim Jong Un “Rocket Man”.
Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon
The Institutional Foreign Policy
So can the bedrock of US foreign policy, the agencies designing and implementing it, withstand the family, the social media earthquakes, and the firebreathers?
The alignment of Defense Secretary James Mattis, National Security Advisor McMaster, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and their respective staffs have tried to contain Trump’s unpredictability and the ambitions of some of his inner circle. They have emphasized the maintenance of alliances, including NATO. They have taken charge of US operations in areas such as Afghanistan, the battle against the Islamic State, and the Syrian conflict. They have tried to curb some of the family’s consequences, pulling back the Saudi-first approach threatening the security of the American military base in Qatar. They have replaced Trump’s fire-and-fury threats over North Korea with the discreet encouragement of a diplomatic path.
But victory is never assured against the chaotic. Trump’s agitation, fed by his early-morning viewing of Fox and Friends, can always unsettle plans. Kushner and his allies will brief the media against the pragmatists. The institutions will have to contend with a President’s lack of knowledge — a “f*****” moron”, according to Tillerson.
And there are other challenges. Tillerson’s approach to management has encouraged the depletion of expertise at the State Department, with a 12% loss of foreign service offices in nine months. The political ambitions of Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the UN, have fed her cheerleading of the Trump family approach on the Middle East and the tilt to Israel.
No Strategy, No Respect, American Sidelined
There is no resolution, of analyses or of US foreign policies, because no resolution is possible amid the competing approaches and groups. What we are left with — defying the academic and pundit search for a firm conclusion — is the uncertainty and turmoil of the unpredictable.
But we can still draw some lessons. The institutions may have issued a National Security Strategy, but it is already yesterday’s discarded paper. There is no strategy unifying the clash of policies and lack of expertise of a President.
That is an open secret, both among US foes as well as allies. So, just as Trump’s agencies try to contain him, other countries try to contain Washington by putting it to the side. Russia has seized the initiative in Syria, Iran wants it in Iraq, Saudi Arabia pursues it from Yemen to Lebanon, Turkey warns that it may walk away from the Americans. China becomes the regional focal point, from the Korean issue to economic initiatives. Even European partners think about room for maneuver with an allied approach cannot be assured.
Meanwhile, US-based analysts scramble to find some framework to maintain a sense of American primacy. “Soft power”, which had become “smart power”, now is proclaimed as “sharp power”. And all the while, US power — if measured in the respect for America at the centre of global affairs — plummets in the opinion polling of peoples across the planet.
In his UN speech in September, Trump declared, “As long as I hold this office, I will defend America’s interests above all else.” It remains to be seen, for all his “American First” front, how his multiple foreign policies are defending those interests.