This chapter is a slightly revised version of: Stanley A. Renshon. 2020 (in press). “The Trump Doctrine and Conservative American Nationalism,” in Stanley A. Renshon and Peter Suedfeld (eds.), The Trump Doctrine and the Emerging International System. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Foreign policy is traditionally a setting in which the president is said to have more discretion because the checks and balances of domestic politics don’t operate there. That has never been wholly true since the international system has its own version of restraining checks and balances—economic, political, and military consequences for serious miscalculations. Yet, that is true enough and is one major reason why presidential worldviews and foreign policy thinking weigh so heavily in assessing any president.
In my work on the G. W. Bush and Obama Doctrines,1 I have pointed out the purposes that doctrines serve and why they matter. Often they are policy guideposts for a president’s thinking that help allies and enemies alike to gauge their policies and thus further the benefits and opportunities of deterrence theories for the international community.
Doctrines often refer to specific geographical areas (e.g., The Monroe Doctrine for South America) or circumstances (e.g., the Truman Doctrine for the Cold war with the Soviet Union). The Trump Doctrine is different. It reflects a wide-ranging reassessment of what American policy will be worldwide, and how it will be carried out.
The most fitting conceptual name for the Trump Doctrine is Conservative American Nationalism. It is a framework that we argue is composed of six essential elements: (1) An America First premise in Trump policies; (2) An emphasis on American National Identity as a cornerstone of America’s elemental and dual relationship with itself and the world; (3) Highly selective involvement, with a non-exclusive emphasis on its own terms and interests in defining America’s role in the world; (4) An emphasis on American strength in all its forms, including resilience and resolve; (5) The use of maximum repeated pressure along a continuum of points in pursuit of key goals ; and (6) Maximum tactical and strategic flexibility.
All of these elements are meant to further one basic core Trump presidential purpose that I’ve conceptualized as the Politics of American Restoration. That means reversing the policies and assumptions that have resulted in decades of many Americans feeling the country is moving in the wrong direction, in foreign as well as domestic policy. To do so, Trump has pivoted away from what he sees as the failed or outdated conventional policy premises of the last four decades.
That includes pivoting away from policies about which both political parties have inaccurately assured the American public, namely that: unlimited immigration and limited enforcement of immigration laws has no downside; that low economic growth is the new normal and Americans should get used to it; that free trade is always a “win-win” for everyone; and that it is better not to insist on greater reciprocity abroad with American allies, or take a strong stance against adversaries.
The Trump Doctrine is not only controversial, but also mysterious. What is it? One headline captures an essential puzzle and feature, “Depends who you ask.”2
Not everyone believes there is a Trump Doctrine.3 Among those who do, error is rampant. Some erroneously reduce the doctrine to the views of one now former foreign policy advisor John Bolton.4 This neglects the fact that especially for this president his own views carry enormous weight,5 as President Obama’s did for him. Others erroneously see Trump as being concerned with one real foreign policy goal, one-upping President Obama.6 That characterization of a single shallow motivation neglects Trump’s decades-long publicly stated concerns with issues like trade and immigration that lie outside the conventional wisdom narratives.7
Along similar lines some NeverTrump pundits, again dismissing any policy thinking on Trump’s part, argue that8:
Defining a foreign policy theory that might merit the title of “doctrine” is difficult in the Trump administration, which is dismissive of reflection, consistency and precedent. But in practice, it is the replacement of national pride with personal vanity.
Still others reduce the Trump Doctrine to one sound bite, “America First,” which Larison notes amounts to a truism, if not an unstated premise,9 for almost every American president. Finally, there has been the attempt to rush, erroneously and prematurely, to note that Trump embraces “key pillars” of President Obama’s foreign policies.10 As Trump’s presidency has progressed, it is abundantly clear that he does not, as his withdrawal from the Paris climate accords and Iran nuclear deal demonstrate.
We argue that the Trump Doctrine is best understood as a doctrine of Conservative American Nationalism, as the president understands that phrase. The doctrine consists of a formulation of America’s role in the world, as is generally the case for presidential doctrines. Yet, it also, unusually, makes a direct statement and envisions a direct relationship between America’s role in the world and Trump’s view that there is a core American national identity that helps define it. It is at its core, a traditionally conservative nationalist view that emphasizes American strength, patriotism, and sovereignty.
As with any presidential doctrine, these views are the president’s, and in Trump’s case particularly and idiosyncratically so. For example, Trump’s emphasis on getting allies to pay their fair share is a direct by-product of Trump’s business history as a CEO, and his focus on the “bottom line.” However, unlike many other presidential foreign policy doctrines, the goals of Trump’s Conservative American Nationalism doctrine are also partially defined by the psychological capacities needed to carry them out. These include the president’s unusual, perhaps unique, leadership style. That combines bluster, unusual flexibility, determination, and equal amounts of pragmatism and hyperbole. It also includes core commitments to “strength” and persistence, and a willingness to stand apart from a conventional consensus and, if necessary, alone in pursuit of his view of American interests.
The Trump Doctrine owes as much to the president’s psychology as it does to his policies. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the later without the former. This holds implications for its historical half-life.
Impatience, Action, and Ambition: Three Psychological Sources of the Trump Doctrine
Every president experiences the frustration of having his ambitions tempered by a constitutional system designed to stymie them. Trump also has to attempt to lead and govern in political circumstances that are unprecedented in the modern presidency. A powerful array of opposition forces have signed on the premise that Trump11 “must be contained, neutralized, resisted, defeated and, if possible, humiliated. By any means necessary.”
Those circumstances are particularly vexing for this peripatetic president. Mr. Trump is able to bide his time when necessary. As noted, some of his New York City projects played out over decades.12 He has certainly been forced to adjust a number of his domestic policy initiatives to a court’s schedule, not his. President Trump has adjusted, most likely begrudgingly to these facts of presidential life, even in foreign policy.
Trade talks with China? Trumps says, “there is no need to rush.”13 Talks with North Korea? Trump says, “I’m in no rush.”14 Talks with Iran? Trump says, “I’m ready when they are, but whenever they’re ready, it’s OK. And in the meantime, I’m in no rush. I’m in no rush.”15 We could add to these examples many of Trump’s negotiations on trade with American allies. The message, and the reality is the same, what one analysis referred to as “Trump’s ‘no rush’ foreign policy.”16
Yet, it is also abundantly clear that Mr. Trump is a president who likes to get things done. Jeff Walker, a military school classmate who worked for the Trump Organization for more than a decade, had this to say about Trump’s style17:
He thought you could figure it out. That’s what made him exciting to work for—no bureaucratic red tape. You got an assignment, you went off and did it, didn’t let anything stand in your way. Move it, knock it down. He wouldn’t tolerate it, neither should you.
Years later, his former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson agreed18:
A lot of these—a lot of the early issues had to do with immigration policy, actions, implementation. And, you know, I shared the President’s endpoint objective. It was how do you want to get it done, you know. And he was—oftentimes wanted to do it: Boom, you know, this is it. Let’s issue this.
Mr. Trump’s style is to not let problems continue without doing something about them. In an early New York Times interview, President Trump had this to say about North Korea19:
SCHMIDT:
So what are you going to do [about North Korea]?
TRUMP:
We’ll see. That I can’t tell you, Michael. But we’ll see. I can tell you one thing: This is a problem that should have been handled for the last 25 years. This is a problem, North Korea. That should have been handled for 25, 30 years, not by me. This should have been handled long before me. Long before this guy has whatever he has.
Conservative American Nationalism: Implementation at Trump Speed
Trump’s peripatetic leadership style has been most evident in his attempts to quickly change the direction for American foreign policy. He has done so not just in a limited range of areas, but in a substantial number of them. This is a joint function of his full speed ahead temperament, his liking to get things done, and his circumstances. He is unlikely, however, to accomplish his presidential purposes which are to change several long-standing narratives if he only serves one term. Opting for major changes across an array of foreign policy narratives is not the typical approach of conservative nationalists who tend to emphasize incrementalism. However, Trump clearly feels that reforming the entrenched narratives he wants to change will be more likely if he is able to establish another operating set of premises.
Not only does President Trump want to change and reform the dominant foreign policy narratives that have served as “conventional wisdom” for the past four decades, he also wants to change the actual policies and organizational assumptions of a number of major international institutions. Reforming the United Nations is a perennial international policy, but Trump wants to go much further. He wants to change the way that WHO, WTO, and NATO are organized, along with their actual policies. He wants to change and reform the international trading system. And he wants to, as President Obama did before him, albeit with a much more battle ready set of forces, recalibrate the use of American force abroad.
In the meantime, these efforts have another consequence as well, well captured by the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s complaints20: “It’s Trump’s willingness to unravel so many longstanding policies and institutions at once—from Nafta to Obamacare to the global climate accord to the domestic clean power initiative to the Pacific trade deal to the Iran nuclear deal—without any real preparation either on the day before or for the morning after.”
Trump campaigned on exactly the policies that Friedman mentions. So, while Trump’s follow through as president may have been a surprise to some, his intentions were clear. Moreover for each change, Trump has tried to provide explanations for why he has done so.21 However, most people cannot absorb and make sense of all the changes Trump has set in motion. That probably includes the president himself.
He has put into motion so many whirling policy elements at any one time, that any president would find it difficult to explain them all. Trump’s impressionistic and associative rhetorical style exacerbates this explanation gap. Yet it is also true that his critics make little if any effort to fairly address the president’s goals or his diverse efforts to reach them.
Trump is no “hidden-hand” president, Greenstein’s accurate and insightful characterization of Eisenhower.22 Making substantial policy changes in a number of major areas, publicly and dramatically, within a short span of time can be politically, policy, and emotionally-disorienting for allies, enemies, and competitors. That is likely one strategic function of his style. Ordinary Americans are aware that the president is making a number of substantial changes to American foreign policy and that Trump opponents are upset to the point of repeated outrage about them. However, cutting though the many and varied accusations and counter-claims associated with the Trump presidency and its policies in any detail is not a primary motivation for most Americans.
It is unlikely that the president himself has been able, or interested in, absorbing all the implications of what he is doing. Trump seeks to reduce American commitments and responsibilities abroad in part by calling on allies to more fully share international leadership’s burdens. That has been difficult to accomplish. His approach in this and other foreign policy areas is to set things in motion, push hard and often publicly, and see where they lead. He is much too occupied with implementing his doctrine and scrambling to deal with the fallout out that his new policies predictably cause, than to provide detailed public education before he tries to implement them. So many goals, so little time captures some of Trump’s restoration dilemma. Trump’s presidential goals cannot afford to patiently wait decades for implementation as he did with his plans for the old Penn Central Railroad properties that he bought and developed in New York. One four-year term and out, or two terms at the most are the Constitutional rules that limit any president’s transformational ambitions.
The dilemma of the Trump presidency and doctrine is that he is really undertaking major policy reforms of long unchanged premises that are reflected in his many new policy initiatives. The composite scope and potential implications, both domestically and abroad, of Trump’s Conservative American Nationalism doctrine are potentially enormous. Yet, they are unfolding in a Constitutional system designed to frustrate major changes. They are also unfolding in the face of determined opposition. These are element of the Disrupter’s Dilemma (see Chapter 6).
One term as president is hardly sufficient time to implement Trump’s doctrine much less gain public understanding and acceptance of it. Trump’s first term is best understood then, as an audition for which he was barely selected, not a mandate of confidence that his plans would work or would be supported even if they did. In the meantime, as is Trump’s style, and the necessity of his circumstances, it’s full speed ahead.
Trump’s full speed ahead leadership style has some obvious advantages when trying to make progress within what amounts to a Constitutional system of speed bumps. It is also a decided advantage by keeping Trump on the offensive against a determined opposition. Finally, it also conveys a willingness and determination to fight for his goals, an important consideration for his supporters but also those might become supportive in the future. If the president doesn’t believe in his goals strongly enough to fight hard for them, why should anyone else take them seriously?
The Risks of Trump Speed
Trump wants to provide Americans with alternative domestic and foreign policy models based on reformulated basic premises to consider. Yet his time in office is (relatively) short and opposition to his presidency is fierce. In those circumstances full speed ahead is an understandable strategy.
Full speed ahead however is sometimes a recipe for mistakes, occasionally even substantial ones. This has been the case for some Trump initiatives as we have noted. That has raised the concern voiced by Wright,23 among others, as to whether the president is able to see beyond his latest frontline battle:
Trump is no gardener. He can’t look beyond the immediate. The very essence of America First is to say that the United States is like any other power and is essentially abandoning the long-term vision that diplomats like Acheson and Shultz believed in.
It is unclear that the president cannot “look beyond the immediate.” His focus on “getting things done” has to be understood in a context of the substantial policy changes he is attempting, almost all of which are challenges to the dominant consensus premises of American foreign (and domestic) policy. As a result, he faces enormous opposition-generated headwinds. If anything is to be accomplished in those circumstances, a great deal of presidential attention to the here and now is required.
It is true that President Trump sometimes gives, for good reason, the impression of slapdash policy thinking and implementation. The most egregious example of the latter was the implementation, very early in his presidency, of requiring additional screening from those traveling from seven Muslim-majority countries that caught everyone, including those charged with carrying out the policy, by surprise. The new restrictions applied to countries that had already been excluded from programs allowing people to travel to the United States without a visa because of terrorism concerns by the Obama administration. There was however, little advanced preparation for the policy’s roll out.
The result could fairly be described as chaotic24 and it set the stage for years of litigation25 in which Trump ultimately prevailed at the Supreme Court after numerous tweaks of that policy.26
That very flawed roll out helped establish an early narrative of the Trump presidency as “chaotic.” That narrative was in some respects accurate. That narrative was legitimately reinforced by the unusual turbulence at the top tier of Trump administration officials27 as Trump tried to find advisors who were a good fit for his style and views. Many, not always accurate anonymously sourced he said/they said “tell all” books and news reports filled with hyperbole, score settling, virtue signaling and NeverTrump invective added to the impression of a narrative of disarray.28 He has slowly been trying to update and correct that first-impression narrative ever since.
Six Pillars of President Trump’s Conservative American Nationalism Doctrine
We are now in a better position to make clearer the conceptual and strategic foundations of the Trump Doctrine noted at the start of this chapter. Recall that they consist of:
An America First premise in Trump policies;
An emphasis on American National Identity as a cornerstone of America’s elemental and dual relationship with itself and the world;
Highly selective involvement, with a not exclusive emphasis on its own terms and interests in defining America’s role in the world;
An emphasis on American strength in all its forms, including resilience and resolve;
The use of maximum repeated pressure along a continuum of points in pursuit of key goals; and
Maximum tactical and strategic flexibility.
Some of these elements, for example an emphasis on American national interests and selective international involvement are certainly not new, although their use in the Trump presidency does differ from past practices. Others, like the repeated use of maximum and often public pressure and the decided emphasis on American national identity are a new feature of the Trump presidency and doctrine. However, it is the combination of these elements into an overall working set of premises, not a single individual feature that defines the Trump Doctrine of Conservative American Nationalism.
America First
No single element of the Trump doctrine has generated more discussion, much of it mistaken, than Trump’s emphasis on America First. There is first the muddled claim that “America First” really means Trump First because, “He’s putting his own naked self-interest over what’s good for America, and prioritizing the real-world policy realization of his own prejudices and hatreds over any good-faith, fact-based effort to determine, by any discernible standard, what might actually be in the country’s interests.”29
There is also the lazy claim that America First is a barely concealed endorsement of the term’s association with, “the name of the isolationist, defeatist, anti-Semitic national organization that urged the United States to appease Adolf Hitler.”30 That racially charged accusation is inaccurate and unsustainable. It turns out that Mr. Trump was not familiar with the America First doctrine and was innocent of its historical meaning.
The term was suggested to Trump in an interview with David Sanger and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, and it resonated with his policy instincts31:
SANGER:
What you are describing to us, I think is something of a third category, but tell me if I have this right, which is much more of a, if not isolationist, then at least something of “America First” kind of approach, a mistrust of many foreigners, both our adversaries and some of our allies, a sense that they’ve been freeloading off of us for many years.
TRUMP:
Correct. OK? That’s fine.
SANGER:
OK? Am I describing this correctly here?
TRUMP:
I’ll tell you—you’re getting close. Not isolationist, I’m not isolationist, but I am “America First.” So I like the expression. I’m “America First.”
The more interesting questions about America First concern the issues of isolationism, national selfishness, and international leadership. Those issues are captured through a narrow frame in a New York Times headline, “In Donald Trump’s Worldview, America Comes First, and Everybody Else Pays,” that reports excerpts from two major foreign policy interviews.32 According to critics,33 “‘America first’ is becoming America alone.”
That view is contradicted by the facts. Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he, and the country are very involved in the world, as his efforts to revise and in his view, reform, a number of elements of American foreign policy suggest. These include the role of NATO, international trade (reforming NAFTA), or reaching out to old adversaries (North Korea, Russia, and Iran). In these, and in his efforts to reform specific international institution already noted, the United States remains very engaged in the world. There is of course another meaning to the “America alone ” narrative that we will analyze shortly.
Trump’s view of America’s role in the world, going back almost forty years,34 is that the United States has accomplished a lot, and could do more. Yet he also thinks that the United States has been taken advantage of by others, including its allies, and the incompetence of its own “elites.” That’s a broad indictment that contains enough truth to serve as a campaign platform. More importantly, it is what Trump believes, and he has acted on those beliefs as president.
International altruism is an illusion to true realists.35 In their view, the liberal international order exists because it serves the purposes of the United States and its allies that created and make use of it. Allowing a certain degree of free riding by allies, as the United States has done over decades, is self-interested. It is the price that hegemons pay for burden sharing given the cost of international leadership. For America’s allies such an informal agreement affords not only protection in a dangerous world, but also a discount for the costs of their safety.
Problems arise in this arrangement when the imbalances of trade, burden sharing, or the increasing reach of international institutions themselves (e.g., International Criminal Court, the World Trade Organization etc.) acting as if they have, or ought to have, real power begin to really encroach on America’s power. Part of that power rests on the premises of American sovereignty. Those premises have begun to erode as some American leaders see themselves as international citizens as well as American nationals. That is precisely another major concern of President Trump and his doctrine.
Against Liberal Cosmopolitanism
President Trump is more than a conservative minded American nationalist. He is, at the core of his identity, an American from Queens coming of age in the 1950s. That is a more important and less obvious observation than it seems.
Although Trump grew up in a wealthy family, his father lived by a depression era mentality—always working hard to succeed and saving money—pinching pennies.36 He tried to teach his children by example and instilled the expectation that you succeed by working hard and paying attention to details.
Donald Trump grew up in a wealthy household, but he was not pampered. As a child he had a paper route and made money by collecting empty soda bottles and returning them for the deposit. Most importantly, on weekends, as a younger child and on through his teenage years and into his early adulthood he would often go with his father to worksites where he was expected to make himself useful. He therefore spent a lot of time around, and was comfortable with, ordinary working people. Trump’s populism has authentic roots.
Along with wealth and hard work, the most basic foundation of his identity was as an American, a kid born and raised in Queens for whom the urbane sophistication of “Manhattan” was another world. Trump grew up in the 1950s when, “America was on a roll.”37 The American dream of mobility and success was a widely accepted part of the American dream (and was being lived out every day in Trump’s own family life). The United States was the preeminent, even dominant power in world affairs. The many conflicts that began to seriously divide Americans in the decades after the 1960s, then lay beneath what seemed to be a broad, if ultimately illusionary, surface of consensus.
The assumption of an American national identity in the 1950s has dramatically changed. More recently Democratic presidential contenders speak Spanish during presidential debates to tout their bi-cultural identities. It is a political period in which Jeb Bush, a major Republican candidate for president, whose father and mother were decidedly from a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) background, said of himself, “I’m bicultural—maybe that’s more important than bilingual.”38 Bush also wrote on his voter registration card that he was “Hispanic.”39 That was meant to underscore his strong bi-cultural Spanish identity thought to be an important appeal as a modern presidential candidate in a political context in which some argued for the primacy of ethnic or racial identities.
Trump is the antithesis of an international cosmopolitan elite equally at home anywhere because of a fluid personal national identity. What distinguishes Trump is that, “The unifying thread running through his seemingly incoherent policies, what defines him as a candidate and forms the essence of his appeal, is that he seeks to speak for America.”40 The question is: what does he want to say when he speaks?
That sentiment is distilled and reflected in his CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) remarks41:
Global cooperation—dealing with other countries, getting along with other countries—is good. It’s very important. But there is no such thing as a global anthem, a global currency, or a global flag. This is the United States of America that I’m representing. I’m not representing the globe. I’m representing your country .
The Trump Doctrine and Isolationism: Standing Apart & If Necessary, Standing Alone
The president’s foreign policy initiatives are not isolationist in any meaningful sense of that term. If they were, it would be hard to explain Trump’s repeated outreach to China, North Korea, Russia, and most recently even Iran.42 It would also be hard to reconcile with his numerous repeated efforts to revise and in his view reform some of the country’s major alliance (NATO, South Korea, Mexico) relationships.
Being able when necessary to stand apart is not the same as the isolationist premise that “fortress America” must always stand alone. That basic element of Trump‘s leadership style is one area where an understanding of his doctrine and his view of America’s place in the world, rests on understanding an important element of Trump’s psychology. That ability is his capacity and comfort in being able to stand apart and alone, if necessary.
It takes a particular kind of psychology to develop and maintain such a stance. Such a person must be emotionally comfortable standing apart and be able to withstand some degree of emotional isolation. He must be able to withstand the disapproval that comes with standing against the crowd, especially if that crowd holds some degree of legitimacy and authority, as a number of Trump critics do.
It is also a highly unusual and odd set of psychological characteristics for a president to clearly have at the same time he is repeatedly accused of needing adulation for his supposedly narcissistic ego (see Chapter 6).
Recall (see Chapter 4) that at a presidential Town Hall on October 26, 2015 the following exchange took place43:
Q:
With the exception of your family, have you ever been told no?
Trump:
Oh, many times. … My whole life really has been a no and I’ve fought through it. [Re: building in Manhattan] I was always told that would never work. Even my father [said] … you don’t want to go to Manhattan that’s not our territory. ‘Cause he was from Brooklyn and Queens where we did smaller things … all my life I was told no, even for this [running for president] … they said what do you want to do that for, don’t do it, don’t it … you’ll be up against professional politicians … its always been you can’t do this, you can’t do that …
In short, Mr. Trump has spent a lifetime not accepting what other people have told him he couldn’t do, starting with his beloved father’s response to his childhood dream of building skyscrapers in Manhattan. Early in his development he learned to stand up to his strong-willed father. That ability was further developed though an adulthood of experience forging his own way, often in the face of enormous odds against him, and a great deal of conventional wisdom that advised “that can’t be done,” or you can’t do it.
Whether it is building skyscrapers in Manhattan, withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, or continuing to press to add a citizenship question to the Census (see below), Trump the man and Trump the president are comfortable standing apart. That is a key to Trump’s understanding of America’s role in the world. He is not an isolationist operating with the premise that America must stand alone. He is an engaged internationalist who believes that sometimes the United States must be willing and able to stand apart, and sometimes that requires standing alone if necessary.
Early characterizations of Trump claimed he was a president whose policy views could be bought with flattery.44 These claims were wrong.45 Trump clearly has a capacity and a willingness to stand apart, and to take and keep unpopular positions, even (perhaps especially?) if those opinions are the ones uniformly held by elite international cosmopolitans.
It is very obvious that Trump is willing to fight for what he thinks is right and what he wants to accomplish. The primary purpose of his fight club presidency is not fighting for its own sake, or to avenge some insult. It is to accomplish his purposes. If he is not willing to fight back to achieve them, how much can they be worth to him and those who do and might in the future support him?
His basic stance is well captured in two interviews. In one, asked why he would want to antagonize the judge who was handling the Trump University lawsuit, by calling him unfair for allowing the lead plaintiff in the case to withdraw after a poor performance on her deposition. He responded: “because I don’t care.”46
There is a danger in antagonizing someone you want to help you. It might be a judge, a NATO ally, or a country (China) you’ve imposed tariffs on but want their help reining in their ally (North Korea). Yet, Trump seems disinclined to suppress his views or change his policies to curry favor for short term gains, as America’s allies (Mexico, NATO) and competitors (China) have learned.
In Osaka, Japan, where the president made some remarks and answered some question the following exchange took place47:
Q (Jim Acosta-CNN):
And what is it with your coziness with some of these dictators and autocrats at these summits? With Mohammad Bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, when you were asked about the case of Jamal Khashoggi, you did not respond to that question in front of the Saudi Crown Prince.
THE PRESIDENT:
I don’t know that anybody asked me.
Q:
Were you afraid of offending him on that subject?
THE PRESIDENT:
No, not at all. I don’t really care about offending people. I sort of thought you’d know that. (Audience Laughter)
There is understandable attention paid to Trump’s public brusqueness, combativeness, and sometimes rudeness. They are real and very clearly antithetical to notions of traditional presidential demeanor. Given the all-out war declared by his opponents against the president, his policies, his administration, his supporters, and his family with few if any boundaries to what is alleged or how erroneously or vilely they are characterized, what is a president to do?
For Trump, as a matter of his psychology and history, the answer, as has been noted, is easy. You fight back hard with traditional rules of presidential decorum put aside. No modern president has ever adapted that strategy, and it is questionable whether it would be psychologically possible for them to do so.
However, unsettling as it is to many Americans, that willingness to fight sends an unmistakable signal to both Trump’s allies and opponents domestically and abroad that you had better be ready for a real fight if you attack him. It takes a great deal of personal strength and resilience to withstand the enormous, unceasing, and personal and politically brutal criticism leveled against Trump and his presidency. He has done so and it is therefore no surprise that those traits play key roles in the Trump Doctrine.
Strength and Resilience: A Foundation of the Trump Doctrine
Every American president has emphasized “strength” as a foundation of American foreign policy and Mr. Trump is no exception. However, those elements have a strong personal foundation in Trump’s life. They are also a reflection of one his most deeply held policy views, that the United States must be strong, tough, and resilient enough to survive and prosper in a dangerous world. Demonstrated strength and resilience is also a vehicle for gaining real respect. Adhering to a liberal international group consensus is a form of go along-get along respect that runs very counter to the president’s psychology. Trump is aiming for the respect, even if it is given begrudgingly, that comes from independent thinking and action and that reflects the traditionally deeply held American values of freedom, opportunity, sovereignty, and democracy.
The gain from standing up for yourself, following your own path even when many others tell you it’s not possible, and living a life in which freedom, opportunity, and a sense of personal autonomy are key, are exactly the formative experiences that defined Trump’s childhood and later his adulthood. It is no surprise that they are a basic part of his essential foreign policy doctrine.
This amalgam of strength and respect is easily seen in several Trump’s pre-presidential interviews:
Plaskin:
And how would President Trump handle it? [American foreign policy]
Trump:
He would believe very strongly in extreme military strength. He wouldn’t trust anyone. He wouldn’t trust the Russians; he wouldn’t trust our allies; he’d have a huge military arsenal, perfect it, understand it. Part of the problem is that we’re defending some of the wealthiest countries in the world for nothing. … We’re being laughed at around the world, defending Japan.
And further:
Plaskin:
Do you think George [H. W] Bush is soft?
Trump:
I like George Bush very much and support him and always will. But I disagree with him when he talks of a kinder, gentler America. I think if this country gets any kinder or gentler, it’s literally going to cease to exist. I think if we had people from the business community—the Carl Icahns, the Ross Perots—negotiating some of our foreign policy, we’d have respect around the world.
And finally48:
Costa:
Did you read Jeffrey Goldberg’s article about Obama’s foreign policy? In the Atlantic … “Real power means you can get what you want without having to exert violence.” That’s Obama on global power. Do you agree?
DT:
Well, I think there’s a certaintruth to that. I think there’s a certain truth to that. Real power is through respect. Real power is, I don’t even want to use the word, fear…
There in premise form is Trump’s theory of deterrence and international primacy. Power in all its dimensions, and the demonstrated willingness to use it leads to nations taking the United States seriously and acting accordingly. That includes an element of fear.
Instilling fear is considered by some to be an unmentionable aspect of American foreign policy. However, it has existed in the background of modern American policy since the 1950s. Opponents and enemies fearing what will happen if the United States is truly provoked is an indispensable element of deterrence. Yet for Trump, fear also plays a role with allies, not the fear of military action, but the fear of what will happen if the United States insists that its interests, as Trump understands them, be respected.
That formulation leads to the following question: If President Trump trusts no nation, ally, or opponent, how will they respond? One possibility is that for allies it might mean a more honest appraisal of the net value and real costs of their relationship. For opponents, it might lead to a more sober and realistic assessment of the risks and opportunity costs of provocative or reckless behavior. Is that not what deterrence seeks to further ?
Maximum Repeated Pressure Along a Continuum of Points in Pursuit of Key Goals
Every president has available to them a variety of tools to advance their goals and counter resistance to them. These range from outright military and economic coercion to quieter more subtle political efforts to influence the behavior of others. What distinguishes President Trump’s leadership style is that it is primarily, but not always, neither quiet nor subtle. It is weighted toward pushy, if not forceful coercion. The harsh, pejorative word used for this strategy is “bullying.” The more traditional international relations word used for this thoroughly conventional strategy is “compellence.”
The Trump doctrine is distinguished by its application of numerous tools to accomplish his purposes along a continuum of pressure points. It is the presidential leadership equivalent of a full-court press, on several policy basketball courts at once. Even though Trump is very results oriented, he views many of the major policy changes he wants to put in place as long-term projects. Trump also leads and governs by his long-standing personal premise: where there’s a will there’s a way. Trump has demonstrated what can best be described as fierce determination throughout his life and in his presidency.49
Trump is often criticized for governing by impulse, although impatience is a more accurate description (see Chapter 6). Yet, Trump has the ability to take the long view and bide his time, and find some firm policy footing from which to move forward. Recall that it took Trump more than twenty years to receive the government approvals, and be in the right economic circumstances he needed to develop the large former Penn Central railyards site on the upper west side of Manhattan.50 Enforced patience is both a difficult but necessary strategy given Trump’s Restoration ambitions and the opposition to them. However, necessary or not, Trump’s ambitions still requires substantial political dexterity and cognitive flexibility.
Consider the president’s immigration policies. He is on record as saying that American sovereignty requires enforcing immigration laws and that, “A country without borders is not a country at all.”51 It is quite clear that his effort to build a wall at the Southern border has been stymied in a variety of ways, but that he still presses on step by step and mile by mile.52 It is also clear that Trump’s long-term immigration goal is to move the United States to a more merit-based system and that he is very far away from achieving that goal.53
In 2019 a crisis developed at the Southern border that literally overwhelmed the immigration system’s capacity to successfully address it. The reasons are legion and varied. There were court orders that limited government policy flexibility, and to which the Trump administration has adhered to while in force. There was a lack of House Congressional interest in fixing the legal issues. There were economic and political issues in a number of Central American countries. There were migration opportunities exploited worldwide by those who want to be in the United States and those who assist them either for political or economic reasons.
Limited by some courts, facing determined political and legal opposition from his opposition, and having little leverage with Democrats who control the House, Trump’s options, in theory, seemed quite limited. In reality, they were as robust, within the existing law, as presidential and administrative creativity and determination could make them. In response to the crisis, Trump put into effect a host of new rules and backed them up with threats of an economic response. The new rules limited asylum claims from those “who did not apply for protection from persecution or torture where it was available in at least one third country outside the alien’s country of citizenship, nationality, or last lawful habitual residence through which he or she transited in route to the United States.”54
Trump also took a number of other initiatives including but not limited to the following: putting into place new more enforcement friendly guidelines for dealing with those not legally entitled to be in the county55; moving to expedite removals for those not legally entitled to be in the county56; revising and tightening bail requirements for asylum seekers57; cutting aid to several central American countries that he felt had not done enough to stem the tide of migrants (traveling through their countries to the United States),58 and threatening to impose tariffs on Mexico which led them to make a serious effort to stem the flow of migrants coming through their country to the United States.59 And under new Coronavirus pandemic immigration restrictions, undocumented aliens are being removed from the United States under very expedited rules.60
There have been other initiatives but these give a flavor of the range, but more importantly the seriousness of these efforts. All of these efforts have been effective in lowering the level of crisis at the Southern border. They also reflected the bedrock Trump Doctrine principles of maximum pressure along a series of policy lines to accomplish his purposes.
In all these ways and many others in his approach to migration problems at the Southern border Trump demonstrates his bedrock template to major national and international issues: (1) Take on the problem, and don’t avoid it; (2) Keep the bottom line of your policy premises (in this case no border; no country) as your policy North Star; (3) Try every conceivable legal and legitimate solution and do not stop with what has been the norm or be deterred by what your opponents say you can’t do; (4) be prepared for the strongest political and personal accusations to be made against you, the policy, and those who help carry it out and press on none the less; (5) be prepared for legal and political setbacks as opponents marshal their forces, but continue to press on legally through every legal avenue including court appeals and executive actions that can have an impact on other countries’ behavior; and (6) use victories in any area where you’ve made an effort to gain further traction keeping in mind that large issues are rarely decided in one quick political stroke.
Repeat as necessary.
President Trump’s Governing Strategy: Maximum Flexibility to Realize Core Goals
Consistency is important in a presidential doctrine’s application. A publicly stated presidential doctrine backed up by related institutional and policy initiatives signals intent and seriousness, which are part of the underlying rationale for issuing such policy statements. Doctrines do change with time and circumstances to some degree. The Truman Doctrine and its key strategy of containment was applied across decades of diverse circumstances and developed and changed in response to them. Yet, the basic point remains: coherence and consistency are net advantages for a doctrine’s clarity and impact.
Therein lies a large set of issues for the Trump Doctrine. As one somewhat generally overwrought critic wrote,61 “the collection of impulses, deceptions, assertions, retractions, revisions and compromises that constitute President Trump’s foreign policy record are difficult to gather into a consistent doctrine.” Therein lies the issue of trying to understand the Trump Doctrine.
If you focus on his basic foreign policies and their premises, Trump has been consistent. He has slowed and tried to manage immigration. He has reframed America’s commitment to globalization. He has resisted getting into wars and committing American troops. He has downsized America’s commitment to ceding American sovereignty to international organizations.
President Trump prides himself on being unpredictable and he often is (but not with regard to his basic premises). That’s generally a plus for negotiations. However, it presents difficulties for understanding his long-term strategies. His frequent hyperbole, combativeness, and unconventional beliefs are not “mainstream.” So is his unusual way of thinking about political and policy matters. Trump firmly believes certain things are true, for example, no border-no country, and those basic understandings are the real starting point and North Stars for many of Trump’s policies.
Critics often misunderstand and misinterpret Trump’s decision-making and leadership style. Ivo Daalder, President Obama’s ambassador to NATO, now president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs writes62:
I don’t think he has a strategy. The reality is he shakes the tree, and then he walks away.
Daalder’s first point is demonstrably true; his second demonstrably false. Trump certainly “shakes the tree,” but he keeps at it trying to put his policies in place. Trump is a president who dislikes giving up, as his response to getting a citizenship question on the census and setbacks on immigration in some court jurisdictions and continuing efforts suggest.
Trump is not a president who feels the need for consistency. Indeed being “unpredictable” is one important tactic for trying to realize his goals. This tendency was clearly on display in his response to the Supreme Court’s ruling against adding a question on citizenship for the 2020 Census. Trump’s administration gave up; President Trump didn’t, seeking to find a way to add the question.63
One report, worth quoting at some length, noted,64 “The contentious issue of whether next year’s all-important head count would include a citizenship question appeared to be settled. Or more accurately it was until the president began vowing on Twitter on Wednesday that the administration was ‘absolutely moving forward’ with plans, despite logistical and legal barriers.” Mr. Trump’s comments prompted a chaotic chain of events, with senior census planners closeted in emergency meetings and Justice Department representatives summoned to a phone conference with a federal judge in Maryland.
On Wednesday afternoon, Justice Department officials told the judge that their plan had changed in the span of twenty-four hours. They now believed there could be “a legally available path” to restore the question to the census, and they planned to ask the Supreme Court to help speed the resolution of lawsuits that were blocking their way. The reversal sent the future of the census, “which is used to determine the distribution of congressional seats and federal dollars, back into uncertain territory.”
You could correctly place these efforts into Daalder’s “shake the tree” observations of Trump’s strategy, but not simultaneously to his supposed “walk away” proclivities. The Trump administration figured out another way to accomplish his census purposes and took it.65 This seems like a clear example of Trump’s pursuit of his goals, and the use of alternative innovative vehicles to accomplish them when necessary.66
Trump has many large presidential policy goals, and has made some progress in bringing a number of them to fruition. Yet in some cases, he is still at work on those efforts. Moving America’s immigration system from a more family based to a more merit-based system was, and remains, one of Trump’s most important domestic policy goals. It remains a very distant possibility, if it gets done at all.
Trump wants to move North Korea and Iran into serious new negotiations to accomplish his foreign policy goals. Yet, these two goals also remain at the level of distant aspirations and may never happen. Does this mean that he has no concrete specific strategy to reach these distant goals? That seems unlikely.
Trump’s strategy of change is nicely captured in an interview with the New York Times67:
TRUMP:
But the Democrats should come to a bipartisan bill. And we can fix it. We can fix it. We can make a great health care plan. Not Obamacare, which was a bad plan. We can make a great health care plan through bipartisanship. We can do a great infrastructure plan through bipartisanship. And we can do on immigration, and DACA in particular, we can do something that’s terrific through bipartisanship.
SCHMIDT:
It sounds like you’re tacking to the center in a way you didn’t before.
TRUMP:
No, I’m not being centered. I’m just being practical. No, I don’t think I’m changing. Look, I wouldn’t do a DACA plan without a wall. Because we need it.
SCHMIDT:
So you’re not moving. You’re saying I’m more likely to do deals, but I’m not moving.
TRUMP:
I’m always moving. I’m moving in both directions.
That movement in “both directions,” which is to say several directions at once, can easily and for some people, be a reflection of a lack of core convictions. At the March 3, 2016 GOP Debate the following exchange took place68:
KELLY:
But the point I’m going for is you change your tune on so many things, and that has some people saying, what is his core?
TRUMP:
Megyn, I have a very strong core. I have a very strong core. But I’ve never seen a successful person who wasn’t flexible, who didn’t have a certain degree of flexibility. You have to have a certain degree of flexibility.
This is not a matter of simply accepting what the president says at face value. There are numerous examples in the public record making clear that Mr. Trump has stood very fast in his core convictions (the Iran nuclear deal, the China and Mexico tariffs, the effort to add a census question, and others) even as he searched for different and improved outcomes.
This is not solely a matter of “keeping them guessing,” although there is some of that going on in Trump’s personal leadership strategy. At a much more basic level, Trump is quite certain where he wants to go, but has no deeply thought through strategy of how to get there. Trump is an improvisational president who is not afraid to try many options, as was Franklin Roosevelt before him. Many will not work, but often one or more innovative efforts, as in the case of the crisis on the Southern border, will allow him to make progress.
In theory, one might argue that it would be better if the president had one specific announced and followed plan. Perhaps, but what, realistically is the proven and effective strategy to get your allies to shoulder more of the economic burden? Ask? That’s been done for years. Remind them quietly behind the scenes and on occasion lightly and publicly? That too has been repeatedly tried. Forget about asking for more burden sharing? That is not a likely Trump approach. Publicly and privately demand a more forthcoming response? That’s Trump’s tack given the failures of other presidents to accomplish this purpose that they all thought legitimate.
What exactly is the proven long term-strategy to truly reform American immigration policy? Is it more grand bargains that wind up being repositories of every congressperson’s wish list in which a little more enforcement capacity is traded for major expansions in admissions of all kinds? That has been the leitmotif of “comprehensive immigration reform,” which is much more expansively comprehensive than it is about really reforming and reorienting American immigration policy.
This observation is simply a truism about how large congressional laws are put together. Trump appears to be serious about immigration reform. He wants to close a number of loopholes, bolster enforcement, and usher in bringing about a more merit-based system. Is he not better off starting out trying to put a wide range of his ideas into place until he’s in a political position, if he ever is, to have a very different kind of grand bargain focused on his own policy premises?69
Impatience Revisited: The Trump Doctrine
Glasser writes70:
Donald Trump is a really hard person to understand on foreign policy because I don’t think he actually knows what he thinks. I think he acts on impulse.
The kind of cognitive flexibility necessary to search for improvised but possibly useful alternative foreign policy solutions in order to move further toward your goals are not necessarily synonymous with impulse. A Washington Post report on Trump’s decision to target Qasem Soleimani said, “The upshot was that a president who has taken pride in rejecting collaboration and institutional processes in favor of unilateral action and impulsiveness is facing his most severe test of that approach at a crucial moment.”71 The view that the president takes pride in impulsiveness misunderstands both the president and the term.
Improvisation, one hallmark of Trump’s presidential leadership, is by nature creative and dependent on circumstances. It is therefore hard to anticipate. It may superficially resemble impulse, but it is more tethered to reality than that, since it is purposely meant to advance a goal. Trump knows what he thinks about where he wants to go; the question for his political and policy improvisations is whether they will help him get there.
As noted, impatience is a reflection of annoyance at having to wait and knowing that there is only so much you can do to move things along and limited time to do so.72 It also reflects an unwillingness, as Trumps sees it, to waste precious time, doing more of what hasn’t worked before.73 That is one reason that Trump reached out directly to Kim Jong-un.
The United States has spent fruitless decades trying for incremental progress with low level contacts. Why do more of the same? Trump tried to break the decades-long stalemate. That stalemate was definitely the status quo, but that doesn’t mean it was stable or preferable. It was simply the way things had always been done.
Trump is, and has been all his life highly oriented toward getting results and as president this has both facilitated his success74 and undermined it. In the North Korean case the two leaders are in direct contact, which represents a small improvement in the circumstances. Yet, there has as yet been no discernible movement toward a real agreement between the two countries. That by itself however is not legitimate policy reason for reverting back to an approach that hasn’t produced much if any progress since the end of the Korean War.
The Trump Doctrine and the Use of Force
One of the many paradoxes of the Trump presidency is that critics repeatedly warn that he will either blunder or drag the country into war. Indeed, recall that in Chapter 7, one of the most often repeated claims concerning Trump’s psychological fitness for office was exactly that concern. In reality, President Trump has been extremely cautious with actual military action and has used it judiciously and sparingly. Yet, he has used it.
There was the Seal Team Six counter terrorism operation in Yemen.75 There were the air strikes against President Assad’s suspected chemical warfare targets in Syria after he violated a US warning against using those weapons.76 There was the lethal bombing campaign again ISIS. There was the strike on Iran that was approved because of Iran’s role in the attacks on Saudi oil facilities, but called off at the last minute and a cyberattack ordered instead.77 The cyberattacks on Iran in response to its actions again Saudi Arabia78 reflected a series of steps away from being on a war footing with Iran.79 There was the special operations raid that killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, American-born leader and spokesperson for ISIS.80 There was the US strike against the Iranian-backed militia in Iraq and Syria.81 There was the drone strike that killed Gen. Qassim Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force.82
The use of force by the Trump administration has several elements in common. They are all focused, limited, and not part of any major military deployments. Trump clearly prefers bluster and economic sanctions, whether he is dealing with allies to get a fairer trade or immigration deal (with Mexico), or doing the same with adversaries. A Washington Post headline and analysis captured this point well: “No president has used sanctions and tariffs quite like Trump.”83
Yet, Trump is clearly comfortable with using military force when he feels it necessary. These facts undercut the narrative that Trump would involve the country in wars to satisfy his need for attention or to deflect attention away from his malfeasance. Far from the impulsive acting out, there is substantial evidence that when it comes to using military force Trump is very prudent.
Entrenched anti-Trump narratives however, die hard when they die at all. The Washington Post characterized the drone strike that killed Gen. Qassim Soleimani as follows: “The moves also underscored how Trump’s impulsive approach to the presidency can swiftly upend the status quo to produce a sense of disarray.”84 Actually, there was very little evidence that the administration or Trump’s decision was “impulsive.”
Detailed reconstructions of the decision by several news organizations described a process that took place over a number of days.85 It involved widespread debate and analysis of various options by senior officials and the president.86 It also involved presidential outreach to a number of his confidants to gauge their reactions.87 It also involved a final decision that was itself dependent on another contingency, whether or not Soleimani was or was not met as he deboarded the plane, by Iraqi officials. Had he been the strike would have been canceled.88
In another similar situation, Trump’s initial tentative decision to set airstrikes against Iran in motion in response to the Iranian downing of an American drone,89 was followed by further thinking, reflecting, and information gathering. That eventually resulted in the United States stepping back from the original plan.90 That doesn’t seem to be very impulsive.
This was not really a surprise on two counts. First, Trump has said of himself that, “I have second thoughts about everything.”91 Aides scrambled to “explain” his comments which were in response to a question about Chinese tariffs.92 Trump is extremely flexible in his approach to almost all his plans at the practical level. Trump may well be a “gut decider,” but that doesn’t forestall his revisiting his decisions.
Second, and again paradoxically if one believes the anti-Trump narratives, he apparently has deep feelings about the lethal consequences of the actions he must sometimes take. The New York Times headline captures this: “In Bracing Terms, Trump Invokes War’s Human Toll to Defend His Policies.”93
In an interview after one year in office Trump was asked about making decisions that ordered American forces into combat94:
D’Vorkin:
Is it at times lonely?
Trump:
It’s a lonely position, because the decisions are so grave, so big.
D’Vorkin:
Did business prepare you for that decision?
Trump:
No, nothing prepares you for that. Nothing prepares you for—when you send missiles, that means people are going to die. And nothing really prepares you for that.
Contrary to the “Trump is a narcissist devoid of empathy” meme that critics claim (see Chapter 6), Trump is clearly a president who, along with his hyperbole, combativeness, and frequent lack of presidential demeanor, has some of those feelings when it counts, in considering literally life and death decisions. Recall, it was the harrowing pictures of the suffering caused by Assad’s gas attack on Syrian villagers that Trump repeatedly cited as having moved him to use military force.95 Recall [Chapter 8] Trump’s thoughtful and empathetic response to the need to kill a 500 lb. gorilla to protect a small child that had fallen into the animal’s enclosure.
The Future of the Trump Doctrine
The future of any presidential doctrine, after its originator leaves office depends on his successor and their circumstances. The Truman Doctrine and containment lived on because it continued to be an effective response to unfolding circumstances. The same is true of the Bush Doctrine, although it became a smaller overall part of a much differently focused Obama Doctrine.
Mr. Trump has, in almost all essential respects, reversed the premises and policies of his predecessor. It is obvious that most, if not all, of the premises that underlie the Trump Doctrine will be discarded if Senator Biden wins the presidency in 2020. In that case the narrative will quickly become established that the Trump Doctrine was an aberrant and abhorrent deviation from long established conventions and their consensus premises and policies.
If Trump wins reelection, he would have more of a chance to firmly establish his Conservative American Nationalism doctrine as a viable conceptual, strategic, and practical alternative to the policies he campaigned against and tried to change as president. The premises and policies that are the foundation of his doctrine would have eight years to work, or not, and the same number of years for the president to better learn how to convey his understanding and rationales for what he is doing.
That outcome is possible, even plausible, if he wins reelection. The one part of the Trump Doctrine that will have trouble surviving his presidency even if he wins a second term are those elements related to his own psychology. His ability to fight back, hard; his capacity to stand apart and even alone; and his unusual combination of a tough set of core beliefs coupled with the flexibility to be able to scramble in pursuit of his goals will be difficult to replicate.
Yet it can also be said with some degree of certainty that win or lose reelection, President Trump. “is raising questions about the foreign policy of the United States—about its external purposes, its internal cohesion, and its chances of success—that may not be fully answered for years.”96
Notes
1.
Stanley A. Renshon. 2010. National Security in the Obama Administration: Reassessing the Bush Doctrine. New York: Routledge; Stanley A. Renshon. 2012. “Foreign Policy Legacies of American Presidents,” in Timothy J. Lynch (ed.), Oxford Encyclopedia of American Military and Diplomatic History. Cambridge and New York: Oxford University Press; Stanley A. Renshon. 2013. “Understanding the Obama Doctrine,” White House Studies, Vol. 12, No. 13, pp. 187–202; Stanley A. Renshon. 2017. “Doing Well vs. Being Great: Comparing the Bush and Obama Doctrines,” in Meenekshi Bose (ed.), The Constitution, Politics, and Policy Making in the George W. Bush Presidency, Vol. 1, pp. 101–118. Washington, DC: Nova Press; see also Stanley A. Renshon and Peter Suedfeld (eds.). 2007. Understanding the Bush Doctrine: Psychology and Strategy in an Age of Terrorism. New York: Routledge.
2.
Michael Warren, Zachary Cohen, and Michelle Kosinski. 2019. “What’s the Trump Doctrine? Depends Who You Ask,” CNN, February 22.
3.
Rebecca Friedman Lissner. 2017. “There Is No Trump Doctrine, and There Will Never Be One,” Foreign Policy, July 21; Daniel Larison. 2019. “There Is No ‘Trump Doctrine’,” The American Conservative, April 23.
4.
Fareed Zakaria. 2019. “Does a Trump Doctrine on Foreign Policy Exist? Ask John Bolton,” Washington Post, May 2.
5.
Eliza Collins. 2016. “Trump: I Consult Myself on Foreign Policy,” Politico, March 16.
6.
Thomas L. Friedman. 2019. “Trump’s Only Consistent Foreign Policy Goal Is to One-Up Obama,” New York Times, June 18.
7.
Charlie Laderman and Brendon Simms. 2017. Donald Trump: The Making of a World View. London: Endauvour Press.
8.
Michael Gerson. 2018. “Trump Replaces National Pride with Personal Vanity,” Washington Post, June 16.
9.
Larison 2019.
10.
Mark Lander, Peter Baker, and David E. Singer. 2017. “Trump Embraces Pillars of Obama’s Foreign Policy,” New York Times, February 2.
11.
Andrew Ohehir. 2019. “Had Enough Debate About Donald Trump? Me Too: He’s a Tyrant and a Killer: He Must Be Stopped,” Salon, July 8.
12.
Gwenda Blair. 2005. Donald Trump: Master Apprentice. New York: Simon & Schuster, pp. 59–93.
13.
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1126815126584266753.
14.
Trump quoted in Jeffrey Mason. 2019. “Trump Says He Is ‘in No Rush’ to Make a Nuclear Deal with North Korea,” Reuters, June 12.
15.
Trump quoted in Christina Wilkie. 2019. “Trump: If Iran Blocks the Strait of Hormuz, ‘It’s Not Going to Be Closed for Long’,” CNBC, June 14.
16.
Andrew Restuccia. 2019. “Trump’s ‘No Rush’ Foreign Policy,” Politico, June 22.
17.
Walker quoted in Gwenda Blair. 2018. “Trump Has the White House He Always Wanted,” Politico, April 5.
18.
“Transcript of Interview with Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.” 2019. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, June 27, p. 117, emphasis added.
19.
New York Times. 2017. “Excerpts from Trump’s Interview With The Times,” December 28.
20.
Friedman undercuts his observation by introducing it with an ad hominem attack, “… the most frightening thing about the Trump presidency. It’s not the president’s juvenile tweeting or all the aides who’ve been pushed out of his clown car at high speed or his industrial-strength lying.” Lisa Friedman. 2017. “Trump Adviser Tells Ministers U.S. Will Leave Paris Climate Accord,” New York Times, September 18, emphasis added.
21.
Cf., Donald J. Trump. 2017. “Statement by President Trump on the Paris Climate Accord,” The White House, June 1.
22.
Fred I. Greenstein. 1994. The Hidden Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
23.
Quoted in Henry Farrell. 2019. “Trump Has No Long-Term Foreign Policy Vision: Here’s How That’s Hurting America,” Washington Post, June 17; see also Thomas J. Wright. 2017. All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the Twenty-First Century and the Future of American Power. New Haven: Yale University Press.
24.
Aaron Blake. 2017. “Trump’s Travel Ban Is Causing Chaos—And Putting His Unflinching Nationalism to the Test,” Washington Post, January 29.
25.
Wesley Lowry and Josh Dawsey. 2018. “Early Chaos of Trump’s Travel Ban Set Stage for a Year of Immigration Policy Debates,” Washington Post, February 6.
26.
Adam Liptak and Michael D. Shear. 2018. “Trump’s Travel Ban Is Upheld by Supreme Court,” New York Times, June 26.
27.
Kathryn Tenpas Tapas. 2019. Tracking Turnover in the Trump Administration. Washington DC: The Brookings Institution, July.
28.
Michael Wolff. 2018. “Donald Trump Didn’t Want to be President,” New York Magazine, January 3; Cliff Simms. 2019. Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House. New York: Thomas Dunne Books.
29.
Greg Sargent. 2018. “No, Trump Isn’t Putting ‘America First:’ He’s Putting Himself First,” Washington Post, November 21.
30.
Susan Dunn. 2016. “Trump’s ‘America First’ Has Ugly Echoes from U.S. History,” CNN, April 28.
31.
David E. Sanger and Maggie Haberman. 2016. “Transcript: Donald Trump Expounds on His Foreign Policy Views,” New York Times, March 26, emphasis added.
32.
Sanger and Haberman 2016; see also “Transcript: Donald Trump Interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa,” 2016. Washington Post, April 2.
33.
Brian Klaas. 2017. “‘America First’ Is Becoming America Alone,” Washington Post, June 28.
34.
Reelin’ in the Years Production. 1980. “Trump Interview with Rona Barrett,” October 6.
35.
Hans J. Morgenthau. 1948. Politics Among Nations. New York: McGraw Hill.
36.
Blair 2005, p. 3.
37.
Blair 2005, p. 2.
38.
Quoted in David Frum. 2015. “Is Jeb Bush a Republican Obama?” The Atlantic, February 4.
39.
David Rappaport. 2016. “I Feel a Deep Sense of Remorse, Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter Says,” New York Times, July 18.
40.
Julius Krein. 2015. “Traitor to His Class,” Weekly Standard, September 7.
41.
Donald J. Trump. 2017. “Remarks by President Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference,” Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, February 24.
42.
Laura King. 2019. “Trump Says He’s Open to Iran Talks Without Preconditions,” Los Angeles Times, June 23.
43.
Emphasis added https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXEOFHf1q9A.
44.
Zeeshan Aleem. 2017. “China Isn’t the First Country to Flatter Its Way to Trump’s Heart: It Won’t Be the Last,” Vox, November 8; Evelyn Farkas. 2018. “Putin Has Already Won,” Politico, July 11.
45.
Peter Nicholas. 2017. “Trump’s ‘America First’ Policy Proves to Be an Immovable Object at G-20,” Wall Street Journal, July 9; Katie Rogers and Motoko Rich. 2019. “For Trump’s Japan Trip, Abe Piles on the Flattery: But to What End?” New York Times, May 24.
46.
Chris Cillizza. 2016. “Donald Trump Perfectly Summed Up His Life Philosophy in Just 6 Words,” Washington Post, June 1, https://www.c-span.org/video/?410401-1/donald-trump-holds-news-conference-donations-veterans-groups&start=1868.
47.
Donald J. Trump, 2019. “Trump in Press Conference Osaka, Japan,” June 29, emphasis added.
48.
Transcript 2016, emphasis added.
49.
Michael Kranish. 2017. “A Fierce Will to Win Pushed Donald Trump to the Top,” Washington Post, January 19.
50.
Blair 2005, pp. 182–201.
51.
Donald J. Trump. 2018. “Remarks by President Trump at a Meeting with the National Space Council and Signing of Space Policy Directive-3,” The White House, June 18.
52.
Department of Homeland Security. 2019. “Press Release: CBP Completes Construction of 50 Miles of New Border Wall,” July 11.
53.
Donald J. Trump. 2018. “Remarks by President Trump in Meeting with Bipartisan Members of Congress on Immigration,” The White House, January 9; Jordyn Hermani. 2019. “Trump Pitches His ‘Merit-Based’ Immigration Proposal,” Politico, May 16.
54.
Department of Homeland Security. 2019. “DHS and DOJ Issue Third-Country Asylum Rule,” July 15; Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Elisabeth Malkin. 2019. “Most Migrants at Border with Mexico Would Be Denied Asylum Protections Under New Trump Rule,” New York Times, July 15.
55.
Department of Homeland Security. 2019. “Enforcement of Immigration Laws to Serve the National Interests,” February 17.
56.
Department of Homeland Security. 2019. “Notice: Designating Aliens for Expedited Removal,” July 23.
57.
Michael D. Shear and Katie Benner. 2019. “In New Effort to Deter Migrants, Barr Withholds Bail to Asylum Seekers,” New York Times, April 16.
58.
Leslie Wroughton and Patricia Zengerle. 2019. “As Promised, Trump Slashes Aid to Central America over Migrants,” Reuters, June 17.
59.
Kirk Semple. 2019. “Mexico Cracks Down on Migrants, After Pressure from Trump to Act,” New York Times, June 3; Peter Orsi. 2020. “Mexican Guardsmen Break Up Migrant Caravan Along Highway,” Associated Press, January 23.
60.
Nick Miroff. 2020. “Under Coronavirus Immigration Measures, U.S. Is Expelling Border-Crossers to Mexico in an Average of 96 Minutes,” Washington Post, March 30.
61.
Michael Gerson. 2018. “Trump Is Smashing the Hopes of Oppressed People Everywhere,” Washington Post, July 19.
62.
Quoted in Nahal Toosi. 2019. “Inside the Chaotic Early Days of Trump’s Foreign Policy,” Politico, March 1.
63.
Michael Wines and Adam Liptak. 2019. “Trump Considering an Executive Order to Allow Citizenship Question on Census,” New York Times, July 5.
64.
Michael Wines, Maggie Haberman, and Robert Rappeport. 2019. “Justice Dept. Reverses Course on Citizenship Question on Census, Citing Trump’s Orders,” New York Times, July 3.
65.
Katie Rogers, Adam Liptak, Michael Crowley, and Michael Wines. 2019. “Trump Says He Will Seek Citizenship Information from Existing Federal Records, Not the Census,” New York Times, July 11.
66.
Wang, Hansi Lo. 2020. “To Produce Citizenship Data, Homeland Security to Share Records with Census,” NPR, January 4.
67.
New York Times 2017, emphasis added.
68.
Team Fix. 2016. “The Fox News GOP Debate Transcript, Annotated,” Washington Post, March, 3, emphasis added.
69.
Sarah Pierce. 2019. “Immigration-Related Policy Related Changes in the First Two Years of the Trump Administration,” Migration Policy Institute, May.
70.
Susan Glasser. 2019. “Just How Dangerous Is Donald Trump?” Politico, April 16.
71.
David Nakamura and Josh Dawsey. 2020. “Amid Confusion and Contradictions, Trump White House Stumbles in Initial Public Response to Soleimani’s Killing,” Washington Post, January 7.
72.
Keith Bradsher Keith. 2018. “Trade Deals Take Years: Trump Wants to Remake Them in Months,” New York Times, March 28.
73.
Dan De Luce, Courtney Kube, and Mushtaq Yusufzai. 2018. “Impatient Trump Drives U.S. Push for Peace Talks in Afghanistan,” NBC News, July 30; see also John Hudson, Josh Dawsey, and Carol D. Leonnig. 2018. “In Private, Trump Vents Frustration over Lack of Progress on North Korea,” Washington Post, July 22.
74.
Peter Nicholas, Gordon Lubold, and Dion Nissenbaum. 2018. “For Trump, a Hectic Week of Planning to Organize Syria Strike,” Wall Street Journal, April 13.
75.
Eric Schmitt. 2017. “U.S. Commando Killed in Yemen in Trump’s First Counterterrorism Operation,” New York Times, January 29.
76.
Daniel Arkin, F. Brinley Bruton, and Phil McCausland. 2018. “Trump Announces Strikes on Syria Following Suspected Chemical Weapons Attack by Assad Forces,” NBC News, April 14.
77.
Michael D. Shear, Eric Schmitt, Michael Crowley, and Maggie Haberman. 2019. “Strikes on Iran Approved by Trump, Then Abruptly Pulled Back,” New York Times, June 20.
78.
Julien Barnes and Thomas Gibblons-Neff. 2019. “U.S. Carried Out Cyberattacks on Iran,” New York Times, June 22.
79.
Michael C. Bender, Jessica Donati, and Lindsay Wise. 2019. “Trump Steers Clear of War Footing Toward Iran,” Wall Street Journal, September 18.
80.
Eric Schmidt, Maggie Haberman, and Rukmino Callimachi. 2019. “Special Operations Raid Said to Kill Senior Terrorist Leader in Syria,” New York Times, October 27.
81.
Barbara Starr, Kevin Bohn, and Ross Levitt. 2019. “US Strikes 5 Facilities in Iraq and Syria Linked to Iranian-Backed Militia,” CNN, December 30.
82.
Falih Hassan, Alissa J. Rubin, Michael Crowley, and Michael Schmitt. 2020. “Trump Orders Strike Killing Top Iranian General Qassim Suleimani in Baghdad,” New York Times, January 2.
83.
Adam Taylor. 2018. “No President Has Used Sanctions and Tariffs Quite Like Trump,” Washington Post, August 29.
84.
Toluse Olorunnipa, Robert Costa, and Anne Gearan. 2020. “Trump Plunges Toward the Kind of Middle Eastern Conflict He Pledged to Avoid,” Washington Post, January 4.
85.
Elaina Moore. 2019. “Timeline: How The U.S. Came to Strike and Kill a Top Iranian General,” NPR, January 4.
86.
Jennifer Jacobs and Jordan Fabian. 2019. “How Trump Planned the Drone Strike with a Tight Circle of Aides,” Bloomberg, January 4; see also MIssy Ryan, John Dawsey, Dan Lamothe, and John Hudson. 2019. “How Trump Decided to Kill a Top Iranian General,” Washington Post, January 3.
87.
Daniel Lippman, Wesley Morgan, Meredith McGraw, and Nahal Toosi. 2019. “How Trump Decided to Kill Iran’s Soleimani,” Politico, January 3.
88.
Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Maggie Haberman, and Peter Baker. 2020. “For Trump, a Risky Decision on Suleimani Is One Other Presidents Had Avoided,” New York Times, January 3.
89.
Joshua Berlinger, Mohammed Tawfeed, Barbara Star, Shitzad Boxorgmehr, and Frederik Pleitgen. 2019. “Iran Shoots Down US Drone Aircraft, Raising Tensions Further in Strait of Hormuz,” CNN, June 20.
90.
Peter Baker, Eric Schmitt, and Michael Crowley. 2019. “An Abrupt Move That Stunned Aides: Inside Trump’s Aborted Attack on Iran,” New York Times, September 21.
91.
Trump quoted in Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman. 2019. “POLITICO Playbook: Trump: ‘I Have Second Thoughts About Everything’,” Politico, August 25.
92.
John Dawsey. 2019. “Trump Admits to Having ‘Second Thoughts’—A Scramble Ensues to Explain What He Meant,” Washington Post, August 25.
93.
Michael Crowley. 2019. “In Bracing Terms, Trump Invokes War’s Human Toll to Defend His Policies,” New York Times, October 19.
94.
Randell Lane. 2017. “Trump Unfiltered: The Full Transcript of the President’s Interview with Forbes,” Forbes, November 14, emphasis added.
95.
Ashley Parker, David Nakamura, and Dan Lamothe. 2017. “‘Horrible’ Pictures of Suffering Moved Trump to Action on Syria,” Washington Post, April 7.
96.
Stephen Sestanovich. 2017. “The Brilliant Incoherence of Trump’s Foreign Policy,” The Atlantic, May.