L'État, c'est moi: Trump's Personalized Foreign Policy

As America teeters on the precipice of entering into a major war, decision-making is devoid of process and executed on whim by an ignorant commander in chief.

To Attack or Not to Attack. That is the Question

“I may do it, I may not do it,” Trump, channeling Hamlet, told reporters concerning a potential U.S. strike against Iran at the White House on Wednesday. “I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.”

In fact, the president did what he always does when he has no idea of what to do — he announced he was putting off making a decision for two weeks.

As the nation teeters on the brink of possibly entering yet another quagmire war in the Middle East, the decision rests with a commander in chief who personalizes all decision-making, is dismissive of experts and process, who is notoriously ignorant of other nations and who relies on his “gut.” In the balance lie the lives of thousands, including American military members, the state of the global economy and America’s reputation in the world.

This is another in a series of analyses I have written on national security decision-making of presidents. This one draws on my previous examinations of Trump’s performance since his first term. Before we get into the man and his administration, a succinct poli sci primer is in order.

Wonkery: The Process of National Security Decision-making

“Policymaking” is the stuff that enraptures political scientists and wonky journalists - and bores just about everyone else to death. But it is the machinery that churns out decisions, good or bad. And if your process is bad, manned by inept officials, expect disaster. While sound policy process operated by highly qualified people of integrity doesn’t guarantee positive outcomes, it at least mitigates the potential for failure.

First, the boring poli sci lesson (I’ll make it brief). Per the White House:

The National Security Council (NSC) shall be the President’s principal means for coordinating Executive departments and agencies in the development and implementation of national and homeland security policies, strategies, activities, and functions, their integration across departments and agencies within their purview, and for long-term strategic planning.

The NSC is chaired by the president and includes the vice president, the secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, Energy and Homeland Security, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, the attorney general, previously the U.S. Agency for International Development administrator, the president’s chief of staff, and the national security affairs advisor. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of National Intelligence act as advisors. The CIA director and senior White House legal counsels also participate. Senior officials from other agencies may be called to attend NSC meetings depending on the subject matter.

Below the president top decision-making is carried out by the Principals Committee, comprising cabinet heads and chaired by the national security advisor. Secondary decision-making and policy coordination is done by the Deputies Committee, consisting of sub-cabinet-level officials. Policy implementation is overseen by an array of Policy Coordinating Committees, each in charge of regional matters, such as African affairs, to functional areas like cybersecurity.

The congressionally mandated National Security Strategy document prepared by the NSC staff provides content and structure for policy — i.e., broad marching orders for relevant agencies. A complete NSS will be issued in coming months, according to White House. The Defense Department also issues its own National Defense Strategy (NDS) which keys off the NSS. The 2025 NDS is under formulation, according to the Pentagon.

It has been caustically said of the NSS that never have so many worked so hard writing something read by so few. Yet, it is no mere paper exercise. It provides the world a broad overview of the direction in which a president wants to take the country as well as the underlying values driving policies. A president who is not in sync with his NSS confuses Congress and allies and yields opportunities to adversaries.

I could plumb down into the weeds of inter-agency meetings, task forces; briefing, decision and action memos, national security presidential memorandums, intelligence findings and so on, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that meetings and paper flow lubricate the policy-making machinery. And, at the end of the day, this daily Niagara of official information ends up in permanent storage at the National Archives for posterity.

So, with National Security Decision-making 101 under your belt, let’s look at how the Trump administration makes foreign policy.

A Foreign Policy Based on Whim, Devoid of Process and Implemented By Hacks

During the 2016 presidential campaign, I reached out to Trump’s people to try to get a handle on the candidate’s worldview and foreign policy plans. I ended my quest dazed and confused, having concluded not only does he lack a worldview but also the foundation upon which to form one other than America First neo-isolationism. Once in office, Trump dissed chief of staff John Kelly and national security advisor H. R. McMaster. He and his fourth national security advisor John Bolton then ditched the NSS, principals and deputies meetings and the inter-agency process, yielding largely unstructured decision-making based on the president’s whim and temper. Four-plus years later, little has changed; in fact, with no “adults in the room,” it may be worse.

In the current Iran crisis, the Washington Post reports:

The president, who often operates on gut instinct, also is navigating the crisis without many of the support structures his predecessors have leaned on. Last month, the White House dismissed scores of professional staffers at the National Security Council, which coordinates U.S. security agencies to assess and prepare options for the president. Rubio is also serving as Trump’s national security adviser after predecessor Michael Waltz was pushed aside.

Trump, according the Post’s inside sources, has turned to a small group of low-key but experienced aides. The “Tier One” group is composed of Vice President J. D. Vance, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, CENTCOM commander Gen. Michael Kurilla, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is described as “very deferential” to Trump. He has excluded DNI Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth altogether. Gabbard has fallen out of favor with Trump because he disagrees with the intelligence community’s assessment that Iran has not yet decided to produce a nuclear weapon, while Hegseth’s recent blunders reportedly have angered the president. “Nobody is talking to Hegseth,” one official said. “There is no interface operationally between Hegseth and the White House at all.”

“The president changes his position so quickly that it is hard to keep anybody in the loop,” Sen. Jack Reed, top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the Post. “I’m sure he’s not calling any of his advisors at 1 o’clock in the morning when he says ‘unconditional surrender’ and things like that. That’s one of the problems.” Trump demanded “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” from Tehran on social media, without further elaboration and described the Iran’s supreme leader as an “easy target.”

“Policy comes from the top down rather than percolate up from the bottom,” former president of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass told the Post, adding that while “this reinforces the sense of an extraordinarily forceful and powerful president… it’s also an inconsistent one…the policies change constantly. There’s an improvisational quality.”

A Vandalized and Damaged Foreign Affairs Bureaucracy

Making things worse is the Trump administration’s mindless demolishing of national security agencies, which started with the insane overnight destruction of USAID — a key tool of soft power, scrambling the FBI, ending cybersecurity programs, closing down foreign broadcasting and deep reductions in force at the intelligence agencies and the State Department. Following the pattern of his first term, Trump fired his first national security advisor, Michael Waltz, after only weeks into the job and has carried out two mass purges of NSC staff. He then appointed Secretary of State Rubio to also be his national security advisor — an impossible burden. The NSC is barely working, if at all functional. One Trump official, reflecting the derangement that permeates the administration, told Axios, “The NSC is the ultimate Deep State. It’s Marco vs. the Deep State. We’re gutting the Deep State.” Overall, foreign affairs agencies have been slashed by a third.

The Foreign Service has been reduced by 20 percent since Trump’s inauguration, according the American Foreign Service Association, with another 15 percent reduction planned; dozens of diplomatic posts are slated to be closed. Over 43 percent of ambassadorships are now occupied by non-career people, primarily campaign donors and political cronies. Historically, that number is about a third. Of the 55 ambassadorial appointments made thus far, none are career diplomats.

Recently retired U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, career diplomat Bridget Brink, described to the New York Times a “shadow of fear” that has enveloped the State Department under Trump, discouraging professionals from offering any views that differ from MAGA orthodoxy for fear of reprisal. “That’s very deeply concerning,” she said. “I think it puts our democracy at risk because our government and our civil servants, our public servants, are scared because they won’t speak up.”

Why the Wonks Are Right: Process is Important

Most historians and political scientists hold up the national security mechanism set up under President George H. W. Bush as the best one since the modern national security decision-making system was established during the Truman administration. Bush’s national security advisor, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, put in place a smoothly functioning apparatus manned by technocrats and almost devoid of oversized egos. The watchword was “no drama.”

Bush and his foreign policy team handled the U.S. role in the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, dissolution of the Soviet Union, and German unification masterfully. Their high risk stewardship of the First Gulf War proved to be a smashing success as well.

By contrast, there essentially is no structured decision-making process in the Trump administration. He is known for not reading his briefs and displays hostility toward the intelligence agencies. He has appointed to the most sensitive senior positions an array of unqualified cranks and toadies. That he cuts out the incumbent defense secretary and intelligence chief is likely for the better, though even the best and most brilliant analyses and expert counsel given to a fool likely won’t result in sage decisions. National security policy formulation doesn’t even reach Rube Goldberg standards with the current administration. Typical of an autocrat, strongman-wannabe Trump makes decisions based on whim and often delivers them by tweet or public outburst. Congress and our allies are seldom consulted, as seen by Trump’s bailing out of the recent G7 meeting in Canada after only one day. Finally, a wrecked bureaucracy makes effective policy formulation challenging, to say the least, even with a competent leader at the helm.

Trump’s Mental Health and Criminality Constitute a Clear and Present Danger

The nation’s fate and global stability lie in the hands of a madman and convicted felon and sexual abuser.

Just before last November’s election, 233 psychiatrists and mental health professionals stated in an open letter their conviction that “Trump exhibits behavior that tracks with the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s (DSM V) diagnostic criteria for ‘narcissistic personality disorder,’ ‘antisocial personality disorder,’ and ‘paranoid personality disorder,’ all made worse by his intense sadism, which is a symptom of malignant narcissism.”

Last year, over 3,000 licensed medical and mental health professionals signed an open letter attesting that Trump shows clear signs of “probable dementia.” And in the 2017 bestseller, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health experts described the “clear and present danger” that Donald Trump’s mental health poses to the “nation and individual well-being.”

Trump’s deranged rantings on seizing Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal bear this out. His brazen monetization of the presidency reflects his innate criminality. And his suspiciously consistent siding with Vladimir Putin is further troubling.

The Risks

Given the above, we are in exceedingly dangerous territory under this president. As conflict rages in Ukraine and Gaza, with China becoming more menacing by the week and now with Israel and Iran attacking each other by air, global stability is increasingly fragile. Other tinder boxes, potentially nuclear in nature, include India-Pakistan and the Korean Peninsula. Russia could implode like a house of cards at any time, repeating what occurred in 1991.

All this while American society continues to fray, potentially leading to widespread domestic violence.

What such circumstances require is for the world’s greatest power, traditionally a bastion of democracy, to judiciously exert its traditional stabilizing influence, assisting friends and opposing tyrants in tandem with its allies, mainly through its soft power and moral example, but with military force, if necessary. The U.S. has stumbled at times, but usually has gotten it right.

As a former national security professional and now an independent analyst, I fear more for the future than at any other period of my lifetime — not because of the nature of the crises that face us, as much as for the lack of competence in our leadership. If conflagration ensues, we can only blame ourselves.

The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent official positions of the U.S. government.