The Trump Doctrine
ANALYSIS
diplomacy. Consider the North Korea crisis. The U.S. could have responded to Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons in three ways: launch a war, passively accept the situation or negotiate. Trump chose the only option he could, which was to try to reach some sort of understanding with North Korea. When it comes to Russia, Trump had a similar menu of options: aggressiveness, passivity or diplomacy. But given Russia’s involvement in Syria, an area where the U.S. is engaged, as well as the potential threat to Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, Trump had to take the diplomatic route, which explains why he is meeting with President Vladimir Putin next week. regime that has emerged since World War II as advantageous to the United States. He’s also constrained by the interests of his core constituency, which voted for him in part because he promised to get tough on trade. Given that the United States must be restrained militarily at this point, economic tools can help shape relationships with adversarial powers like China.
This policy of applying economic pressure has of course further aggravated tensions with other countries and degraded the United States’ reputation abroad. This is not new. Ever since Vietnam, and really since World War II, the United States has been condemned for a host of policies. But it’s not clear that global public opinion has any lasting effect. Trump, therefore, has chosen to be indifferent to global public opinion, which may just be his personal preference anyway. But if he’s trying to reduce military pressure by applying economic pressure, it should be expected that his actions will arouse hostility at least as intensely as military actions have in the past.
A doctrine doesn’t have to work to be a doctrine. A president doesn’t have to be aware of the consistency and logic of his position. His policies may be driven by a strategy, but the need for that strategy derives from reality. When Trump took office, he likely didn’t expect that he would be visiting Kim Jong Un more than a year into his presidency. But events compelled him to. Trump may well have wanted to impose tariffs on China even before taking office. But he ended up doing so because of the reality he was presented with. Whether or not any of these individual actions were planned by the president himself, there is a logic to Trump’s handling of foreign policy.
But that is not altogether different from other presidents or world leaders. They enter office with policies that are merely the things they would like to do. Then reality hits and they discard the policies and begin acting tactically. Since the world is coherent, the actions in due course take on a coherence as well. It is from this reality that a doctrine emerges. In Trump’s case, that doctrine involves reducing military risks, using economics as a lever and ignoring the opinions of foreign governments and the global public. The president can only react to the situation he’s presented with and from there his doctrine is established.
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