David Adesnik
On January 6, 2021, a mob of American rioters stormed the Capitol building in Washington, DC. The ensuing melee led to the killing of a Capitol Police officer and the death of four rioters. The episode was a national disgrace. It was an assault on Congress. It was an attempt to forcibly overturn the results of a democratic election. It was a gift to foreign enemies whose main goal is to see American power and leadership laid low, riven by internal division and chaos. And it would not have happened without the encouragement of the president of the United States, Donald Trump.
The abortive insurrection was launched just as this edited volume on Trump’s national security legacy was about to go to publication. Indeed, FDD’s scholars had the unenviable task of having completed our foreign policy assessments of the most controversial president in modern memory at the very moment the most shocking events of his presidency were unfolding.
Trump’s term in office will forever be defined by the terrible events of January 6. Nothing will change that. To a lesser extent, it will be defined by his mercurial decision-making style. Trump was a “post-policy” president who vexed allies and enemies alike. And as we can attest, he vexed think tankers, too.
Yet there are foreign policy lessons to be learned from the Trump presidency. Whether challenging the Chinese Communist Party after years of accommodation and even obsequiousness, applying maximum pressure on the regime in Iran, or forging peace between Israel and no fewer than four Arab states, there are important wins to process. And even where Trump stumbled, such as by insulting NATO allies; flattering dictators such as Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin; pressuring Ukraine to advance his own re-election; attempting to help Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan avoid accountability for a massive sanctions-busting scheme; making a bad “peace” deal with the Taliban; or suddenly withdrawing troops from Syria, there are lessons to be learned. We cannot simply dismiss four years of policymaking because Trump’s legacy is now indelibly stained.
America must learn from these last four years. Given the political climate and the toxic ideologies and divisions that will persist well after Trump is gone, that will not be easy. But FDD remains committed to playing a role in the foreign policy and national security debates that are sure to come. Our hope is that those debates remain substantive and respectful and ultimately serve to defend America’s democracy. To be sure, that democracy has emerged bruised and battered after these four years, if not longer. But it still stands tall. And we have every intention of joining with our fellow Americans – Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike – in helping to keep it that way and opposing all adversaries that would threaten our nation’s constitutional order and national security.
Illustrations by Daniel Ackerman/FDD
Introduction
by John Hannah and David Adesnik
Two years after FDD published its midterm assessment of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, the job of evaluating his administration’s legacy on national security affairs has not gotten easier.1 As Trump’s presidency ends, his shortcomings as the leader of the world’s most powerful liberal democracy are starker than ever. The insults flung at longstanding democratic allies. The flattery of tyrants. The questioning of solemn treaty commitments. An oftentimes shambolic decision-making process marked by confusion, flip flops, and deep contradictions between Trump and his top advisors. The list goes on. And all of it magnified in the final months of his presidency by Trump’s unprecedented refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of his successor, President-elect Joe Biden, his extended quest to overturn the results of a democratic election, and the shocking spectacle of a pro-Trump mob storming the U.S. Capitol as Congress assembled to fulfill its constitutionally mandated duty to certify Biden’s status as the nation’s next commander in chief.
The events of January 6, 2021, will forever tarnish Trump’s place in American history. On top of all the other outrages, large and small, associated with his tenure, there will no doubt be a powerful instinct within the incoming Biden administration to recoil from everything associated with the 45th president, including the entirety of his foreign policy. But as this volume of essays suggests, that would be a serious mistake. In the 25 chapters that follow, FDD experts offer a systematic analysis of Trump’s term in office, tackling on an issue-by-issue basis the vast majority of topics of greatest significance to U.S. national security. They pull no punches in areas where they judge Trump’s efforts to have fallen short or even failed. But the authors also find many instances in which his initiatives had real merit in terms of advancing important American interests and are worthy of being maintained or built upon by the Biden administration.
Pointing out where the Trump administration may have succeeded in no way mitigates Trump’s incitement of an insurrection against our constitutional order. Rather, it is an effort to point out what can be salvaged as Biden seeks to repair the damage done at home and abroad.
All of the chapters in this volume follow the same three-part structure: 1) a factual description of the Trump administration’s policy in a given area; 2) an assessment of that policy’s successes and shortcomings; and 3) a series of recommendations for the new administration and Congress. While each chapter stands on its own and readers should not hesitate to focus on their areas of interest, taken together they paint a comprehensive portrait of Trump’s foreign policy and offer a wide menu of useful policy ideas for the Biden administration.
America First
While Trump – not always without justification – touted his unpredictability as an asset in foreign relations, he also said that his overall approach to the world could be understood by one common-sense principle: “America First.” A blend of populism, nationalism, mercantilism, isolationism, and unilateralism, this maxim helped explain his transactional view of alliances, lack of attention to human rights, and skepticism of free-trade deals and foreign military commitments.
In many instances, the results were mixed. Amid Trump’s public scolding, NATO members continued to increase their investments in collective defense. But the contempt Trump showed for his European counterparts also made it harder to mobilize some of the world’s most influential democracies to meet common threats, particularly from China.
Trump’s efforts to establish a strong personal bond with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman helped win the kingdom’s backing for the historic normalization deals that Israel struck with several Arab neighbors. But Trump’s willingness to excuse the crown prince’s worst human rights transgressions triggered a congressional backlash that threatened the broader U.S.-Saudi partnership.
Trump’s unshackling of the U.S. military helped accelerate the takedown of the Islamic State’s caliphate. But his rush to rapidly withdraw troops from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan risks giving the Islamic State a new lease on life while empowering a witches’ brew of other enemies, including Iran, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda.
In some cases, Trump’s actions fed suspicions that America First had given way to the pursuit of his own personal interests first. Whatever the constitutional implications of his “perfect” phone call with Ukraine’s new president in 2019, it created the damaging perception that Trump was withholding U.S. assistance to a critical partner unless it acted to advance his re-election prospects. Less well-known but also troubling were Trump’s efforts, at the urging of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to stop federal prosecutors from holding accountable close Erdogan associates involved in a multibillion-dollar scheme to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Iran.
Trump’s idiosyncratic decision-making style often confounded efforts to develop and execute a coherent national strategy, “America First” or otherwise. Policy by presidential tweet was a fact of life for senior administration officials, who often received no warning of major policy reversals, including their own firings. Trump showed little interest in expert briefings. He trafficked in disinformation on Twitter. Cabinet members risked online harangues if they publicly reported basic facts at odds with Trump’s preferred narrative.
It is a truism that even the best-managed process can produce bad policies. But the opposite can be true, too. In Trump’s case, there were several important achievements worth highlighting that the incoming national security team would be wise to recognize and build on.
Achievements to Preserve
Biden would be well-served by giving careful study to the Trump administration’s two foundational documents on national security affairs – its National Security Strategy, published in December 2017, and the corresponding National Defense Strategy, issued just weeks later.2
No comments:
Post a Comment