The Trump administration is off to a rocky start. Ongoing questions about the Trump campaign’s purported ties to Russia continue to bedevil the president. One of the president’s signature policies – a ban on travel from certain Muslim-majority countries – remains blocked by the courts. And a central priority of both President Trump and the GOP – repeal and replacement of Obamacare – has ended in a legislative fiasco, as House Speaker Paul Ryan has been forced to withdraw legislation in the face of certain defeat. Trump’s favorability rating – running a bit above 40 percent – is remarkably low for a president so early in his term. There is a general sense that the administration is struggling — amid constant controversy — to find its footing in forging, much less implementing, a coherent agenda.
The same is true for foreign policy. Here, too, we have seen signs of early disarray. This begins with staffing. The resignation of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn after less than a month in the job was unprecedented. So has been the glacial progress in filling senior positions at the Department of State and the Department of Defense — and, to a lesser extent, staff positions at the National Security Council. Flynn’s replacement, H.R. McMaster, is a solid choice. So is the secretary of defense, James Mattis. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former CEO of ExxonMobil, was a more controversial choice, given his lack of governmental experience. But he surely possesses the managerial skill and international experience to effectively oversee his department. All, however, need help – in the form of experienced, loyal senior staff – if they are to shape foreign and security policy. And that help has been slow in coming.
In addition to staffing problems, there also appear to be organizational shortcomings. The precise roles of McMaster, Tillerson and the president’s senior advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner (who has shown a keen interest in foreign policy, even traveling to Iraq) are thus far unclear. Any effective foreign policy requires clearly delineated areas of responsibility among decision-makers and processes (both formal and informal), both to craft policies and implement them. The division of labor between the State Department and National Security staff is not fixed in stone; it varies by administration. As a former foreign service officer, I have a soft spot for a system that gives the State Department the lead in foreign policymaking. But, at a fundamental level, what is important is not the kind of system in place but that there is a system at all. The current confusion may well be sorted out in the coming weeks and months. From an organizational standpoint, however, the Trump administration is still very much feeling its way.
Trump has, of course, placed his own indelible stamp on foreign policy. His tweets and off-the-cuff remarks continue to send outside observers (and, one suspects, many in his own administration) scurrying to divine the exact meaning and consequences of his utterances.
But, in terms of actual policy, the most unusual thing about Trump’s foreign policy may be how, well, usual it is, at least so far. Despite candidate Trump’s comments on the campaign trail, the administration has reiterated support for NATO. It has shown little taste for prompting a trade war with China. It has signaled clear support for long-standing Middle East allies like Israel and the Gulf Arabs. At the same time, it has backed off abrogating the nuclear deal with Iran. And, far from moving to revive U.S. relations with Russia, the Trump administration has directly confronted Russia’s client in Syria for the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons. Indeed, Russo-U.S. relations are probably at their lowest ebb since the Russian seizure of Crimea in 2014. (If Trump is, as some claim in the hothouse precincts of today’s polarized politics, a “puppet of Putin,” he is a very poor puppet, indeed.)
By and large, the Trump administration has resorted to the “Washington playbook” when it comes to foreign policy. The playbook is, at some simplification, the broad set of policies traditionally supported by the neoconservatives and interventionist liberals who have an outsized voice in America’s foreign policy establishment; the playbook, again at some simplification, sees an important role for force (or the threat of it) in U.S. foreign policy. President Obama famously railed against the “playbook” when it came to Syria. It is unsurprising, therefore, that President Trump received encomiums from across the political spectrum for his decision to attack the Syrian military after its deployment of chemical weapons. Many in Washington had long criticized Obama’s relatively light-touch approach to Syria; at an important level, Trump’s more forthright approach on Syria reflects U.S. foreign policy consensus more closely than did Obama’s.
Trump’s conventional approach in a number of areas is not necessarily grounds for celebration. In the Middle East, for instance, the Washington playbook has arguably led the U.S. into policies (the Iraq invasion, the Libyan intervention, support for the Gulf Arab incursion in Yemen) that have damaged its overall strategic position. But members of the U.S. foreign policy establishment – for whom the Washington playbook is something of a sacred text — can surely find some comfort in Trump’s policies.
We can draw some (very) tentative conclusions from the administration’s first 100 days. President Trump is no isolationist. But he is more comfortable with unilateral action than multilateral negotiation; his approach is more transactional than strategic. His administration is likely to emphasize “hard” over “soft” power. This is reflected in his budgetary priorities, which include significant increases for the Department of Defense but draconian cuts for the State Department. And the administration will likely make human rights a lower priority than recent administrations (though much of the earlier emphasis, it should be noted, has always been more rhetorical than real).
Still, we are only three months and change into the Trump administration. Its foreign policy remains a work in progress. And serious challenges loom: how to address the North Korean nuclear program without prompting war on the Korean Peninsula; how to amend NAFTA without destroying our economic relations with Canada and Mexico; and, not least, how to address the tragic mess of Syria without drawing the U.S. into a long-term military presence. Then there will be the crises – as yet unforeseen – that will strike without warning.
What grade should the Trump administration receive for its foreign policy? How about “Incomplete”?
Joe Barnes is the Baker Institute’s Bonner Means Baker Fellow. From 1979 to 1993, he was a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, serving in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.