Expectations for a restrained foreign policy by a new Trump administration were naïve. We now have strong evidence.
Even before President Donald Trump ordered B-2 bombers to attack Iran’s nuclear sites and plunge the United States into another Middle East war, it should have been apparent that he has never been committed to a foreign policy of realism and restraint. Other actions during the initial weeks of his second term already had unsettled supporters who hoped that Trump would adopt a more sober, “America First” policy. Enthusiastic backers believed his boast that he would promptly bring the war between Ukraine and Russia to an end. Their broader underlying assumption was that the United States would no longer waste American lives and financial resources on armed ideological crusades around the world.
Trump’s subsequent waffling on the Ukraine-Russia conflict confirmed his lack of commitment to meaningful policy change that would take the United States out of the line of fire. His knee-jerk support for Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians did the same for expectations regarding a new, more balanced perspective on that issue. The president’s subsequent approval of American support for Israel’s new war of aggression against Iran, along with his demand for Tehran’s “unconditional surrender,” should have eliminated any lingering doubt about his toxic hawkishness.
As I have pointed out in multiple articles over the years, Trump’s supposed commitment to a more realistic, cautious U.S. foreign policy was largely an illusion. He fostered that illusion whenever it served his political interests, while his opponents played their own role in the political charade by insisting that Donald Trump was an evil “isolationist” who was infecting the Republican Party and thereby undermining America’s noble leadership role in the world.
His actual conduct differed little from the policies of his openly hawkish, global interventionist predecessors. During his first term, Washington’s already bloated military budget continued to grow without interruption. Despite promising during the 2016 presidential campaign to end the futile and bloody U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, Trump did not even reach a peace accord with Taliban forces until the final year of his term. Meaningful U.S. troop withdrawal did not take place until he had already left the White House.
Trump forged far closer U.S. military ties with Taiwan and embraced uncompromising policies toward the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on a wide range of economic, diplomatic, and security issues. He showed not a hint of receptivity to being more cordial toward Beijing.
Perhaps the biggest gap between illusion and reality during Trump’s first term was the issue of policy toward Russia. Trump’s political opponents created and circulated the smear that he was soft on Russia at best and an outright Russian agent at worst. Once again, the president’s track record pointed to a totally different conclusion. Even on the Ukraine issue, Trump’s stance toward Moscow was disturbingly conventional. Indeed, in some ways it was more confrontational than the policy that President Barack Obama pursued. Under Trump’s leadership, the United States transferred sophisticated weapons to Kiev, trained Ukrainian troops, and conducted joint military exercises with Ukrainian forces. Obama had prudently declined to take any of those steps.
Beyond the Ukraine issue, Trump’s policies were openly hostile to an assortment of Russia’s high-priority interests and objectives. Moscow regarded the continuation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, concluded during Ronald Reagan’s administration, as extremely important for protecting crucial Russian security needs. Trump withdrew the United States from that treaty. A similar pattern occurred with respect to the Open Skies agreement, a longstanding, confidence-building measure that had also been in effect since the Reagan administration. Trump’s dismissive treatment of arms control agreements that Russia considered essential directly contradicted the idea that he practiced appeasement toward the Kremlin.
Trump’s hostility toward both arms control and overall policies toward Iran also was evident during the president’s first term. He scuttled the multilateral agreement that the major global powers had reached to limit Tehran’s nuclear program and assure that it remained peaceful. As an additional provocation, the White House ordered the assassination of a top Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani, a killing carried out while he was on a diplomatic mission to Iraq, a supposed U.S ally.
Given Trump’s flagrant animosity toward the government in Tehran, it should not be surprising that he has chosen Iran to be an early target for militarily aggression in his second term. He fully supports Israel’s new war of aggression against its Middle East neighbor and uncritically accepted Tel Aviv’s assertion that Iran was on the brink of building a nuclear arsenal. Yet most experts, initially including Tulsi Gabbard, his own appointee as Director of National Intelligence, strongly disputed that allegation.
Trump’s supporters who backed him because of their assumption that he would pursue a foreign policy of realism and restraint need to acknowledge an egregious error in judgement. Even before the B-2 attacks, his foreign policy already resembled the approach long embraced by ultra-hawkish neoconservatives more than it did a strategy that cautious realists favor. Trump’s differences with neoconservatives are more stylistic than substantive. They prefer a more conventional, less abrasive, and less unilateral approach to international diplomacy than he does. That stylistic difference helps explain why such prominent neoconservatives as Dick and Liz Cheney ultimately supported Joe Biden and Kamala Harris instead of Trump. But Trump and his neocon critics fully share a commitment to war as the default option when dealing with any perceived adversary of the United States. His blatant act of military aggression against Iran was as predictable as it was irresponsible.
Professed realists who believed that Trump would reduce the danger of the United States becoming entangled in more ill-conceived global military interventions should have known better. Now, they are likely in for even more rude awakenings.
