Another day, another change in direction for the Trump Administration? Was the missile attack on the Syrian Air Force base just a blip on the course of the President’s ‘America First’ policy? Or was it a shift to something akin to the hopeless, non-violent “regime change” policy of the Obama Administration in Syria? After the debacle of the last week’s attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (called “Obamacare” by Trump and his Republican allies to implant a pejorative connotation in the public mind), was the President serious when he thought of working with the Democrats to craft an updated version of Obamacare?
In foreign and domestic policy will the Trump government turn out to be an extension, and clearly not a very competent or coherent one, of the government it replaced? After over 70 days of very uncertain governance and uninterrupted policy setbacks, it seems fitting to begin another piece on the “Trumpian” era with question marks.
The confusing signals that the missile attack on Syria sent are already the talk of the town; media warlords are growing fat on parsing the meaning of this act which seems contradictory to what Mr. Trump said on the campaign trail as well as the policy concepts he professed in his inauguration speech. Just days earlier, Trump had blamed Obama for the continuing Syrian tragedy, citing his 2013 back-down after setting a red line for using chemical weapons. Just days later, moved almost to tears it seems by the heart-rending television scenes of children who were gassed, he ordered a missile strike as punishment for the wantonly brutal act, while his subordinates, Secretary of State Tillerson and UN Ambassador Nikki Healy seemed to be saying that Assad must go before the Syrian imbroglio can end.
Back in 2013, a Trump tweet pleaded President Obama not attack Syria after the Assad government used a nerve gas to attack rebels leading to unfortunate civilian “collateral damage” in an area near Damascus, which killed many more than the latest gas attack did. He had seen the same kind of pictures then, yet they did not spur him to want an attack. In the campaign, Trump repeatedly said that the US priority in Syria should be to crush ISIS, and not to become entangled in its civil war. Assad would be an ally in that regard, he said, and could be part of the solution to the civil war not part of the problem. Only a few weeks ago Secretary Tillerson said that Assad’s future was to be decided by the Syrian people. After the missile attack, he said it seemed there would be no role for Assad in Syria’s political future (but not to think that his words implied any change in US military strategy).
President Trump was meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping when the attack occurred. Some observers have opined that, perhaps, the timing of the attack was to show the Chinese leader that he could be tough and unpredictable. But it is more likely that this very unlikely interpretation is designed to draw attention from a “softball” summit with a country that Trump pledged to play hardball with during his campaign.
Concurrent with the news of the missile attack and with the summit meeting with China, comes also the news that Mr. Trump’s eminence grise, Steve Bannon has fallen on hard times, having been removed by Trump from his seat on the Principles Committee of the National Security Council, and the permanent seat of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has been restored. One hears excited rejoicing that the globalists are winning the civil war in the White House over the nationalists/populists whose leader is Mr. Bannon. America First doctrines, which the administration brought into the White House, and were clearly enunciated by Mr. Trump in his inauguration speech, may be leavened, or so it is hoped.
But the excitement seems premature and misplaced. What “globalists” are we talking about: leading a short list are three Generals, who seem the only functional members of his team, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, whose list of responsibilities in the administration keeps growing as Bannon’s seems to shrink, but whose globalism seem to centre on one country: Israel. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson may also be on the “globalist” list, but I find it hard to discern on which list he belongs, as he appears to be deconstructing the State Department part of the administrative state, a Bannon priority. But how much confidence should we have in a globalist core of government, if one is developing, in which the military members outnumber the civilians? And where is the globalist check on a President who clearly acts on impulse and whose main advisors are military whose instinct is to salute and attack.
More worrisome, however, is the report of a “civil war” in an administration that has become increasingly paranoid and chaotic. This is not only apparent in the actions taken against Syria, which are contrary to everything Mr. Trump said in the campaign and his inauguration speech but also in the divergences over China and trade policy in general. This ‘civil war’ now seems to extend to the government as a whole. Reports from federal agencies flood in of these agencies being paralyzed by the backbiting and lack of direction, glacially slow hiring as candidate after candidate for senior positions is nixed by one side or the other in the White House.
More unnerving is a President who is clearly unmoored ideologically, and who could very well flip-flop from the globalist to the nationalist/populist/nativist, depending on what he has seen on television that day. It is hard to believe that his well-known nationalist/populist/nativist inclinations could all disappear in one day. Nor do I think he could abandon those inclinations completely and precipitously without a huge outcry from his core supporters who voted for him because they approved of the policies—America First, building the wall, getting tough on illegal immigrants, as well as getting rid of Obamacare, minimizing foreign interventions, and others that flow from those ideological inclinations. (I do not mean here to imply that all of his base embraced all of his policies based on those inclinations; many just voted for change no matter what it meant.)
It seems to me, however, that something big is coming that will either pull the administration together on one ideological track or the other, or will cause its downfall. “Something big” are the words David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, used a few days ago, and since I suspect that the present dysfunction and ideological schizophrenia are unsustainable in a government, It will take something big to change it. This could be many things—a war, an attempt by the President to override a constitutional block to one of his policies by Congress or the judiciary, or perhaps great scandal (and on this I think of the possible connection of the Trump campaign to Russian interference in the election). It ain’t over ’til it’s over, as Yogi said.
The author is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, and a former US diplomat who was Ambassador to Pakistan and Bangladesh
In foreign and domestic policy will the Trump government turn out to be an extension, and clearly not a very competent or coherent one, of the government it replaced? After over 70 days of very uncertain governance and uninterrupted policy setbacks, it seems fitting to begin another piece on the “Trumpian” era with question marks.
The confusing signals that the missile attack on Syria sent are already the talk of the town; media warlords are growing fat on parsing the meaning of this act which seems contradictory to what Mr. Trump said on the campaign trail as well as the policy concepts he professed in his inauguration speech. Just days earlier, Trump had blamed Obama for the continuing Syrian tragedy, citing his 2013 back-down after setting a red line for using chemical weapons. Just days later, moved almost to tears it seems by the heart-rending television scenes of children who were gassed, he ordered a missile strike as punishment for the wantonly brutal act, while his subordinates, Secretary of State Tillerson and UN Ambassador Nikki Healy seemed to be saying that Assad must go before the Syrian imbroglio can end.
How much confidence should we have in a globalist core of government, if one is developing, in which the military members outnumber the civilians? And where is the globalist check on a President who clearly acts on impulse and whose main advisors are military whose instinct is to salute and attack
Back in 2013, a Trump tweet pleaded President Obama not attack Syria after the Assad government used a nerve gas to attack rebels leading to unfortunate civilian “collateral damage” in an area near Damascus, which killed many more than the latest gas attack did. He had seen the same kind of pictures then, yet they did not spur him to want an attack. In the campaign, Trump repeatedly said that the US priority in Syria should be to crush ISIS, and not to become entangled in its civil war. Assad would be an ally in that regard, he said, and could be part of the solution to the civil war not part of the problem. Only a few weeks ago Secretary Tillerson said that Assad’s future was to be decided by the Syrian people. After the missile attack, he said it seemed there would be no role for Assad in Syria’s political future (but not to think that his words implied any change in US military strategy).
President Trump was meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping when the attack occurred. Some observers have opined that, perhaps, the timing of the attack was to show the Chinese leader that he could be tough and unpredictable. But it is more likely that this very unlikely interpretation is designed to draw attention from a “softball” summit with a country that Trump pledged to play hardball with during his campaign.
Concurrent with the news of the missile attack and with the summit meeting with China, comes also the news that Mr. Trump’s eminence grise, Steve Bannon has fallen on hard times, having been removed by Trump from his seat on the Principles Committee of the National Security Council, and the permanent seat of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has been restored. One hears excited rejoicing that the globalists are winning the civil war in the White House over the nationalists/populists whose leader is Mr. Bannon. America First doctrines, which the administration brought into the White House, and were clearly enunciated by Mr. Trump in his inauguration speech, may be leavened, or so it is hoped.
But the excitement seems premature and misplaced. What “globalists” are we talking about: leading a short list are three Generals, who seem the only functional members of his team, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, whose list of responsibilities in the administration keeps growing as Bannon’s seems to shrink, but whose globalism seem to centre on one country: Israel. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson may also be on the “globalist” list, but I find it hard to discern on which list he belongs, as he appears to be deconstructing the State Department part of the administrative state, a Bannon priority. But how much confidence should we have in a globalist core of government, if one is developing, in which the military members outnumber the civilians? And where is the globalist check on a President who clearly acts on impulse and whose main advisors are military whose instinct is to salute and attack.
More worrisome, however, is the report of a “civil war” in an administration that has become increasingly paranoid and chaotic. This is not only apparent in the actions taken against Syria, which are contrary to everything Mr. Trump said in the campaign and his inauguration speech but also in the divergences over China and trade policy in general. This ‘civil war’ now seems to extend to the government as a whole. Reports from federal agencies flood in of these agencies being paralyzed by the backbiting and lack of direction, glacially slow hiring as candidate after candidate for senior positions is nixed by one side or the other in the White House.
More unnerving is a President who is clearly unmoored ideologically, and who could very well flip-flop from the globalist to the nationalist/populist/nativist, depending on what he has seen on television that day. It is hard to believe that his well-known nationalist/populist/nativist inclinations could all disappear in one day. Nor do I think he could abandon those inclinations completely and precipitously without a huge outcry from his core supporters who voted for him because they approved of the policies—America First, building the wall, getting tough on illegal immigrants, as well as getting rid of Obamacare, minimizing foreign interventions, and others that flow from those ideological inclinations. (I do not mean here to imply that all of his base embraced all of his policies based on those inclinations; many just voted for change no matter what it meant.)
It seems to me, however, that something big is coming that will either pull the administration together on one ideological track or the other, or will cause its downfall. “Something big” are the words David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, used a few days ago, and since I suspect that the present dysfunction and ideological schizophrenia are unsustainable in a government, It will take something big to change it. This could be many things—a war, an attempt by the President to override a constitutional block to one of his policies by Congress or the judiciary, or perhaps great scandal (and on this I think of the possible connection of the Trump campaign to Russian interference in the election). It ain’t over ’til it’s over, as Yogi said.
The author is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, and a former US diplomat who was Ambassador to Pakistan and Bangladesh