An examination of Donald Trump’s foreign Policy in rhetoric and what policy his administration actually implements.
By: Parsa Avaz-Barandish
In President George Washington’s farewell speech, he commanded that “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world,” arguing that “our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course.” Washington urged the future generations of American presidents to maintain this policy of isolationism by avoiding entanglements and affairs with other nations. “Why,” he argued, “quit our own to stand upon foreign ground?” For Washington, isolationism was not just to avoid conflict, but a policy of a government’s dedication to its people domestically. In the modern era, however, the United States has a far different role in the world, where avoidance of foreign “entanglements” is nearly unimaginable. While many argue that Donald Trump is reverting the US’s foreign policy to isolationism, a deeper examination demonstrates a more complex approach — transactionalism and unilateralism. Yet, one must consider: does it really matter?
Strategy: Trump’s Foreign Policy in Rhetoric
Until World War II (WWII), the United States mostly maintained a similar foreign policy, straying away from Europe’s affairs on most occasions, the benefit being that it appealed to numerous audiences across the political spectrum. As Charles Kupchan describes in Foreign Affairs, progressives and liberals saw it as a resistance to global realpolitik and defense of domestic well-being, libertarians perceived it as a limitation on the central government’s power, and conservative nationalists saw it as a patriotic preservation of sovereignty and American culture.
Keeping with America’s long standing isolationist preference, during WWII, isolationists in the U.S., fearful of getting entangled in the conflict, formed the America First Committee, which attempted to promote an isolationist agenda in American policymaking. Many perceived Europe’s war as dangerous territory for the U.S. and favored avoidance of unnecessary armed conflict at all costs. However, after the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, the group was disbanded, after the U.S. was left with no choice but to join the war. The Allies went on to win WWII and the U.S. would lead the new bipolar global order in the postwar period, along with the Soviet Union. In order to institute its policy of containment of the Soviet Union, the U.S. became increasingly internationalist, forming alliances and supplying other countries with weaponry and political aid.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the unipolar system left the U.S. a global hegemon, demonstrating its influence in all corners of the globe, including Sudan, Kosovo, Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan. As a Foreign Affairs article published January 1, 2000 proclaimed, “The vitality of America’s private economy, the preeminence of its military power, and the appeal of the country’s ideas are unparalleled,” and “America’s potential is extraordinary.”
But then, a little over a decade later, the U.S.’s seemingly omnipotent interventionist era took another turn when Donald Trump became president in 2016.
It appears that there exists a widely held belief that Trump maintained an isolationist foreign policy throughout his presidency. Articles titled “The Deep Roots of Trump’s Isolationism,” “Trump Didn’t Invent Isolationism,” “If Trump wins, will the U.S. become isolationist,” and “Trump’s isolationist foreign policy will not ‘make America great again’,” all proposed an analysis of Trump’s foreign policy. Many in this camp recognized Trump’s slightly different approach to foreign affairs, which they identified as isolationism. They point to his weak defense of U.S. allies and the free world, and his trade war with China as evidence of isolationism. However, there are challenges when making generalizations of his policies, outlined in these articles. A distinction can be made between what Trump’s foreign policy is interpreted as and what he claims it to be in rhetoric.
Reminiscent of the fears Washington had of interventionism, Trump said in his inaugural speech in 2017, “The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer… From this moment on, it’s going to be America first.” It is true that at first sight, Trump’s rhetoric appears to be quite isolationist. He speaks of the “forgotten” people of the U.S., as if the government has been placing its emphasis and priority on foreign, and not domestic, issues. It is the priority of the government, he claims, exactly as the isolationist camp during WWII would have, to put “America First.”
Yet, the actual foreign policy he claims is far more complicated.
In 1987, Trump paid $94,801 for a full page advertisement in The New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe, titled, “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.” In the advertisement, he describes how, “For decades, Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States…Why are these nations not paying the United States for the human lives and billions of dollars we are losing to protect their interests?…The world is laughing at America’s politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies who won’t help.” Trump was critical of American foreign policy and disapproving of the U.S.’s influence in the world, but this doesn’t quite qualify as isolationist. Instead, it would be far more appropriate to define Trump’s foreign policy as transactionalist and unilateralist.
Trump doesn’t call for an end to U.S. influence internationally, as an isolationist would; rather, Trump urges the U.S. to approach its foreign relationships from a more transactionalist viewpoint, meaning as a series of transactions between nations, where the U.S. should be expecting something in exchange for its hegemonic “services.”
For example, during a campaign rally in Conway, South Carolina, Trump threatened to cut support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), criticizing many member nations for not paying their part of the alliance — essentially not contributing 2% of their GDP to defense, as a 2006 agreement established. He went on to say, “If we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will [NATO] protect us?…No, I would not protect [Ukraine]. In fact, I would encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want.”
Moreover, in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Trump said, “Taiwan should pay us for defense. You know, we’re no different than an insurance company.” Very simply, and blatantly, Trump perceives geopolitics as a series of transactions – the U.S. is like an “insurance company.” Trump identifies no responsibility or authority on behalf of the U.S. if it doesn’t directly benefit from the action.
Trump’s doctrine, in the words of James M. Lindsay, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow, is, “if you pay, we stay.” Trump approaches foreign affairs, as business, quid pro quo. He puts his perspective clearly when he says, “For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry, subsidized the armies of other countries, while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military.” Trump describes the U.S.’s international involvement as burdensome, as opposed to destructive and ineffective. This seemingly subtle difference indicates very different intentions. Trump doesn’t want to involve the U.S. in global affairs to necessarily isolate the nation, rather he believes involvement to be too much of a sacrifice — “a bad deal.”
In an NPR interview with Ian Bremmer, head of the Eurasia Group, Bremmer describes how Trump believes, “The U.S. should not be promoting its values internationally. It should not be telling other counties how they run themselves. The multilateral institutions that the U.S. has had a significant role in are part of that problem.” While appearing isolationist at first, digging deeper indicates this is just part of Trump’s unilateralist approach – pursuing goals independently, without regard for broader interests or those of other nations. In accordance with transactionalism, Trump would perceive multilateralism as inherently a “bad deal” for the U.S., since there is no direct benefit in supporting institutions that work for broader goals.
The UN, NATO, the Paris Agreement, all require significant contribution from the US, that in Trump’s eyes, it doesn’t necessarily receive back in any proportional amount. As a result, in 2017, Trump announced that the U.S. would exit the 2015 Paris Agreement. Regardless of the fact that climate change is a universal threat to humanity, Trump prioritized his own unilateralist policy above the interests of all other nations, arguing that the agreement would “undermine” the U.S. economy, putting it “at a permanent disadvantage.”
Trump’s fundamental understanding of global politics as transactionalist, plays out in his unilateralist approach to foreign policy. In other words, this policy stems from a certain perception (transactionalism) and materializes in an approach (unilateralism) that unifies to become the Trump Doctrine. Isolationism is merely a representation of Trump’s foreign policy, which coincidentally seems to fit certain modern global issues. When asking the “why” to his foreign policy, following the patterns of his rhetoric and action, a different reality appears, one of transactionalism and, sequentially, unilateralism.
Execution: The Reality of a President’s Foreign Policy
Despite how Trump describes his foreign policy, reality has created a more complicated picture. Trump’s transactionalist and unilateralist rhetoric hasn’t fully materialized on the global stage. While Trump was effectively able to implement his foreign policy in the Paris Agreement, larger scale, direct policies weren’t dramatically shifted from its already internationalist and interventionist essence.
In large part, U.S. foreign policy changed very little during the Trump administration. Trump actually provided Ukraine with numerous aid packages, some as much as $250 million in order to fight Russian separatists. In addition, he also allowed for the sale of lethal weapons to Ukraine, which the Obama administration had refused to give years earlier. By any calculation, the Trump administration only continued to support Ukraine in fighting America’s adversary, Russia, thus bringing down the narrative that a Trump win in the upcoming election would be particularly unsupportive of Ukraine. In fact, renowned international relations scholar John Mearsheimer expressed his belief that the U.S. will only continue to support Ukraine if Trump wins.
Furthermore, Trump’s administration supported NATO no differently than any other administration, despite Trump’s own criticisms of the U.S.’s support of NATO. In fact, the 2018 National Defense Strategy asserted the U.S.’s continued support of its European allies in NATO.
Even though Trump criticized American support of Taiwan, having argued that the U.S. isn’t being “paid” for its services, he supported Taiwan militarily during his administration. For example, his administration gave Taiwan billions of dollars and has taken more “assertive” steps than his predecessors, encouraging the purchase of planes and putting millions into upgrades on the U.S. embassy in Taipei, despite backlash from China.
Lastly, Trump claimed that he would remove the U.S. from Afghanistan, yet, he did not. Instead, Trump only continued to engage with a war in Afghanistan that cost the U.S. $300 million a day for two decades. Similarly, Trump maintained U.S. forces in Syria, with the goal of unseating Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, who has been in power since 2000.
Had Trump posed a real threat to the global order by isolating the U.S., he would have withdrawn from these nations and cut support to allies in Europe and Asia, yet, clearly, this is not what he did. This is in part because he doesn’t actually pursue an isolationist foreign policy, but also because of another force that impedes on all presidents’ ability to implement their own foreign policy: the “Blob.”
The American foreign policy establishment, known by its euphemism the “Blob,” a term coined by Ben Rhodes, who was the Obama administration’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, stands in the way of large scale foreign policy shifts. American foreign policy exists as a result of the U.S. national identity – a large liberalist, capitalist nation. In essence, the American foreign policy establishment approaches the international system in a realpolitik sense of large power struggles, ultimately resulting in the military as a means of resolving international dispute. Its critics will highlight the lack of innovation and effective diplomacy, while supporters argue it is a measure of international security. Regardless, in large part, U.S. foreign policy changes very little, and the president has no ability to fundamentally impact it.
In an interview conducted by The Atlantic near the end of his presidency, former President Barack Obama described “a playbook in Washington that presidents are supposed to follow. It’s a playbook that comes out of the foreign policy establishment. And the playbook prescribes responses to different events, and these responses tend to be militarized responses.” He then shared his “disdain” for the system, criticizing the U.S.’s strange obsession with “credibility,” which it often seeks through force.
Thus, while there are numerous hypotheses about how a Trump presidency will radically shift the U.S.’s place in global politics, the reality is that no administration can really defeat the establishment and fundamentally shift foreign policy.
However, one very important exception to this idea must be noted, as it was evident in Trump’s first term in office.
The Trump administration was successful in overhauling U.S. policy towards China. Since the 1970s, under the Nixon administration, the U.S. overturned its policy of containment towards China, and instituted a policy of engagement in hopes of bettering its relationship, allowing it to have greater leverage over the Soviet Union. When Trump came into power, he reversed the U.S.’s policy back to containment, starting a trade war with China by implementing large amounts of tariffs in hopes of suppressing China’s export-led economy. This by no means is isolationist, but is rather extremely hostile and hegemonic.
This particular fundamental foreign policy shift, however, is far more complex than just a single president’s policy decision. As Mearsheimer describes, with each shift in the global order and structure of the international system comes a foreign policy shift for the U.S. In the heightened era of the Cold War, a very apparent bipolar international system existed, resulting in an American foreign policy establishment taking measures to suppress its main adversary, the Soviet Union. Likewise, another dramatic shift in the international structure occurred right around the mid 2010s, by which time the Obama doctrine had long been established, when the Trump administration was the first to implement a corresponding foreign policy based on the “playbook.” This time, the U.S. saw a shift into global multipolarity with the drastic growth of China, among other nations, emerging with an even larger economy in 2016 (An article written in last spring’s issue of Animal Spirits, titled, “BRICS: A New World Order?” describes in far more depth this structural shift within the international system).
As any realist would argue, the U.S. foreign policy establishment would perceive this as a threat to American hegemony, and thus engagement was useless, rather the U.S. would have to ensure China would be contained. A distinction, therefore, must be made between the natural shift within the U.S. foreign policy establishment, as a result of a changing international system, and the very deliberate decision-making of the president. Fundamental foreign policy shifts, as in the U.S.’s containment of China, which even Biden has not reversed and only continues to implement, are not upheld by individual leaders, rather by the established institution.
Analyzing a president’s foreign policy is extremely challenging. Its complexity is enormous and the factors that play into it are numerous. From the fundamental rhetoric, to the policy decisions, to the establishments, labeling Trump with a common foreign policy term doesn’t do justice to the great realm of foreign policy analysis. Nevertheless, what is clear is that Trump is not an isolationist. His rhetoric expresses little criticism of U.S. influence internationally. Rather, he makes a different point — that the U.S. isn’t getting a fair “deal” out of its expansive support of allies across the world, and thus, he produces little concern for the interests of other nations. Yet beyond this, there exists a larger idea. The president of the U.S., and for that matter, the leader of any large, well-established nation, has little dominion over its fundamental foreign policy. Whether this is beneficial for the U.S. or not, the natural interactions of foreign relations prove this again and again as a crucial feature of international politics.