'Our Brand is Chaos': The Trump Doctrine at One Year
By Austin Mistretta
The Diplomatic Pouch
Just hours before President Trump arrived on Capitol Hill to deliver his first State of the Union address, a panel of experts convened at the Cato Institute’s headquarters in D.C. to discuss the past year of American foreign policy. Their conversation hit upon a variety of important issues, from the latest in global political turmoil to America’s stewardship of the liberal international order, but mainly revolved around Trump’s performance so far as the primary executor of U.S. policy abroad. The reviews were unfavorable. “Let’s just start out by saying, this is a man whose own secretary of state called him a bleeping moron,” said Politico’s Susan Glasser. “This is a guy who, the chairman of his own party, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that he’s going to ‘lead the world into World War III and nuclear Armageddon’ folks.”Another panelist, Kathleen Hicks of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, joked that the administration’s foreign policy approach reminded her of “a movie title, which is ‘Our Brand is Chaos.’”
America’s diplomatic influence has indeed withered under Trump’s leadership. Since February 2017, the State Department, lacking top-down direction from the president or his seemingly estranged secretary of state, has been steadily losing top diplomats and fighting hard to stave off a looming sense of anomie. Numerous key ambassadorial and administrative positions remain vacant.Those vacancies are problematic and in some cases downright dangerous. As Trump ramps up his rhetoric against the North Korean regime, whose nuclear capabilities have grown exponentially, the top American posting in South Korea remains empty. Trump’s leading pick to fill that position was recently sidelined over his discomfort with the prospect of a “bloody nose” strike against the North. With no clear runner-up, American diplomacy lacks a regional figurehead.
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“To the extent that a Trump doctrine has emerged, it’s basically an awkward, unstable and frequently incoherent blend of traditional and narrowly nationalistic approaches,” Brands argued.
http://www.washdiplomat.com/PouchArticle/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=629
“Incoherent and unstable” is the slogan for Cheeto’s 2020 campaign!
