79. Damian Paletta, “Trump Insists ‘Trade Wars Are Good, and Easy to Win’ after Vowing New Tariffs,” The Washington Post, March 2, 2018.
80. See Ana Swanson, “Peter Navarro, a Top Trade Skeptic, Is Ascendant,” The New York Times, February 29, 2018.
81. See Jim Tankersley and Natalie Kitroeff, “U.S. Exempts Some Allies from Tariffs, but May Impose Quotas,” The New York Times, March 22, 2018; see also Ana Swanson and Kenneth P. Vogel, “Trump’s Tariffs Set Off Storm of Lobbying,” The New York Times, March 16, 2018; and Jack Ewing, “U.S. Allies Jostle to Win Exemptions from Trump Tariffs,” The New York Times, March 9, 2018.
82. National Security Strategy (2017), p. 4.
83. See Steven Erlanger, “‘Fake News,’ Trump’s Obsession, Is Now a Cudgel for Strongmen,” The New York Times, December 12, 2017.
84. See Barry R. Posen, “The Rise of Illiberal Hegemony: Trump’s Surprising Grand Strategy,” Foreign Affairs 97, no. 2 (March/April 2018).
85. National Security Strategy, p. 41.
86. The memorandum to Tillerson was written by the senior aide Brian Hook in May 2017 and leaked to Politico in December 2017. It can be found at www.politico.com/f/?id=00000160-6c37-da3c-a371-ec3f13380001.
87. Amanda Erickson, “Trump Rails Against Iran Over Its Human Rights Record. But He Spares Allies,” The Washington Post, January 4, 2018.
88. See “Press Statement: Peaceful Protests in Iran,” U.S. Department of State, December 29, 2017, at www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2017/12/276811.html.
89. See Alex Shashkevich, “U.S. Wants Peace, Stability in Syria, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Says in Policy Speech at Stanford,” Stanford News, January 18, 2018, at https://news.stanford.edu/2018/01/18/secretary-state-rex-tillerson-discusses-u-s-strategy-syria-stanford/.
90. See “Donald Trump’s Administration Is Promoting Democracy and Human Rights,” The Economist, December 6, 2017.
91. In his speech to the conference, Sen referred to Trump as “a great person who I respect the most,” praised his “non-interference policy,” and called upon the president to rebuke U.S. diplomats, whom he accused of trying to topple his government. In response, the White House expressed “strong concerns over recent steps that challenged the country’s democratic progress.” See David Boyle, “Cambodian Strongman’s Trump Outreach Falls Flat,” Voice of America News, November 14, 2017, at www.voanews.com/a/cambodia-strongman-trump-outreach-falls-flat/4114717.html.
92. See “Remarks by President Trump on the Strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia,” August 21, 2017, at www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-strategy-afghanistan-south-asia/; and John Haltiwanger, “The Forever War: U.S. Military Now Has 15,000 Troops in Afghanistan and That Number Could Soon Increase,” Newsweek, November 9, 2017, at www.newsweek.com/forever-war-us-military-now-has-15000-troops-afghanistan-706573.
93. See Laura King, “No Nation-Building in Afghanistan? Easier Said Than Done, Experts Say,” Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2017, at www.latimes.com/nation/la-fg-afghanistan-nation-building-20170822-story.html.
94. Quoted in Susan Glasser, “Donald Trump’s Year of Living Dangerously,” Politico (January/February 2018).
95. See Doyle McManus, “Trump Just Compared the U.S. Intelligence Community to Nazi Germany. Just Let That Sink In,” Los Angeles Times, January 11, 2017; Cristiano Lima, “CIA Chief Called Trump Nazi Germany Comparison ‘Outrageous,’” Politico, January 15, 2017, at www.politico.com/story/2017/01/cia-brennan-trump-nazi-germany-233636.
96. Philip Wagner, John Rucker, and Greg Mitchell, “Trump, in CIA Visit, Attacks Media for Coverage of His Inaugural Crowds,” The Washington Post, January 21, 2017.
97. See Eliot A. Cohen, “The Worst Secretary of State in Living Memory,” The Atlantic, December 1, 2017. See also Julia Ioffe, “The State of Trump’s State Department,” The Atlantic, March 1, 2017; Roger Cohen, “The Desperation of Our Diplomats,” The New York Times, July 28, 2017; Max Bergmann, “Present at the Destruction: How Rex Tillerson Is Wrecking the State Department,” Politico, June 29, 2017, at www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/29/how-rex-tillerson-destroying-state-department-215319; and Nicholas Burns and Ryan Crocker, “Dismantling the Foreign Service,” The New York Times, November 27, 2017.
98. See Bill Chappell, “‘I’m the Only One That Matters,’ Trump Says of State Dept. Job Vacancies,” NPR.org, November 3, 2017, at www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/03/561797675/im-the-only-one-that-matters-trump-says-of-state-dept-job-vacancies.
99. See for example Eliot A. Cohen, “The Rudderless Ship of State,” The Atlantic, February 14, 2017, at www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/no-one-at-the-helm-of-the-ship-of-state/516591/; G. John Ikenberry, “The Plot Against American Foreign Policy: Can the Liberal Order Survive?” Foreign Affairs 96, no. 3 (May/June 2017); and Hal Brands, American Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2018). The critical stance of the Times and the Post is described in James Warren, “Is the New York Times vs. the Washington Post vs. Trump the Last Great Newspaper War?” Vanity Fair, July 30, 2017, at www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/new-york-times-washington-post-donald-trump.
100. See, for example, Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky, “Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Is ‘America Only,’ Not ‘America First,’” The Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2017; Bret Stephens, “The Vertigo Presidency,” The Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2017; and Peggy Noonan, “Trump Is Woody Allen Without the Humor,” The Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2017.
101. See Jen Kirby, “Trump Has Lowest Approval Rating of Any Modern President at the End of His First Year,” Vox.com, December 21, 2017, at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/21/16798432/trump-low-approval-december-first-year.
102. During his business career, Trump admitted to engaging in what he called “truthful hyperbole.” See David Barstow, “Trump’s Business Dealings Rely on Being Creative with the Truth,” The New York Times, July 16, 2016.
103. In early June 2017, for example, the White House released a video of cabinet secretaries and top White House aides telling Trump that he was doing a wonderful job and it was a “blessing” to serve him. See Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “Trump’s Cabinet, with a Prod, Extols the ‘Blessing’ of Serving Him,” The New York Times, June 12, 2017; and Chris Cillizza, “Trump Just Held the Weirdest Cabinet Meeting Ever,” CNN.com, June 13, 2017, at www.cnn.com/2017/06/12/politics/donald-trump-cabinet-meeting/index.html.
104. See Julian Borger, “Rex Tillerson Says He Won’t Quit but Doesn’t Deny Calling Trump a ‘Moron,’” The Guardian, October 4, 2017, at www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/04/rex-tillerson-trump-moron.
105. See Glasser, “Donald Trump’s Year of Living Dangerously”; Jonathan Swan and Mike Allen, “The Most Toxic Work Environment on the Planet,” Axios, March 14, 2018, at www.axios.com/the-most-toxic-working-environment-on-the-planet-1521061118-87211185-63b7-468b-aa1b-880f3dcaf524.html; Britt Peterson, “Donald Trump Is the Worst Boss in Washington,” The New York Times, June 9, 2017; and Jeff Shesol, “A Year into the Trump Era, White House Turnover Is ‘Off the Charts,’” The New Yorker, December 15, 2017, at www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-year-into-the-trump-era-white-house-staff-turnover-is-off-the-charts.
106. Michael D. Shear and Maggie Haberman, “‘There Will Always Be Change,’ Trump Says as More Personnel Shake-Ups Loom,” The New York Times, March 15, 2018; Associated Press, “Cabinet Chaos: Trump’s Team Battles Scandal, Irrelevance,” March 14, 2018, at www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/03/14/us/ap-us-chaos-in-the-cabinet.html.
107. Trump fired Comey after he failed to pledge his “loyalty” to Trump in a one-on-one meeting at the White House and refused to curtail the FBI investigation into Russia’s role in the election. Detailed accounts of Russia’s alleged activities include Evan Osnos, David Remnick, and Joshua Yaffa, “Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War,” The New Yorker, March 6, 2017; and Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima, and Adam Entous, “Obama’s Secret Struggle to Punish Ru
ssia for Putin’s Election Assault,” The Washington Post, June 23, 2017.
108. A useful guide to these events is Philip Bump, “An Interactive Guide to Key Moments in the Trump Russia Investigation,” The Washington Post, July 19, 2017, at www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/19/an-interactive-timeline-of-key-moments-in-the-trump-russia-investigation/?utm_term=.04939963181b.
109. On the latter point, see Micah Zenko, “Trump’s Russia Scandal Is Already Swallowing His Foreign Policy,” Foreign Policy, June 6, 2017, at http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/06/trumps-russia-scandal-is-already-swallowing-his-foreign-policy/.
110. In January 2018, for example, when the journalist Michael Wolff published Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, an unflattering portrait of Trump that questioned the president’s intelligence and mental stability, the White House first tried to block the book’s publication (which raised public interest in it even more). The administration then released a statement declaring that former chief strategist Stephen Bannon (one of Wolff’s inside sources) had “lost his job, and then lost his mind,” and Trump took to Twitter to proclaim “my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart … I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius … and a very stable genius at that!” Unfortunately, the tweet contradicted the message it sought to send and lent credence to the embarrassing anecdotes in Wolff’s book.
111. See David Leonhardt, Ian Prasad Philbrick, and Stuart A. Thompson, “Trump’s Lies vs. Obama’s,” The New York Times, December 14, 2017, at www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/14/opinion/sunday/trump-lies-obama-who-is-worse.html.
112. See Bess Levin, “Trump Openly Brags about Lying to Justin Trudeau’s Face,” Vanity Fair, March 15, 2018, at www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/trump-openly-brags-about-lying-to-justin-trudeaus-face.
113. On this point, see Keren Yarhi-Milo, “After Credibility: American Foreign Policy in the Trump Era,” Foreign Affairs 97, no. 1 (January/February 2018).
114. See https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/914497877543735296.
115. Quoted in Steven Erlanger, “Trump’s Twitter Threats Put American Credibility on the Line,” The New York Times, January 7, 2017.
116. The transcripts of the two calls were leaked in August 2017 and can be found at www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/politics/australia-mexico-transcripts/?utm_term=.07b5af8a2b68/.
117. See “Donald Trump Hits Back at Theresa May after Re-Tweeting British Far-Right Group’s Anti-Muslim Videos,” The Telegraph, November 30, 2017, at www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/29/trump-shared-muslim-crimes-videos-tweeted-british-far-right/.
118. Khan had told Londoners not to be alarmed by the heightened security presence following the attacks. Taking his remark out of context, Trump tweeted, “7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack. Mayor of London Says ‘there’s no reason to be alarmed!’” See Martin Pengelly, “Donald Trump Berates London Mayor Over Response to Terror Attacks,” The Guardian, June 4, 2017, at www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/04/trump-berates-london-mayor-sadiq-khan-terror-attacks.
119. See Christina Maza, “Donald Trump Threw Starburst Candies at Angela Merkel, Said ‘Don’t Say I Never Give You Anything,’” Newsweek, June 20, 2018, at www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-threw-starburst-candies-angela-merkel-dont-say-i-never-give-you-987278.
120. See Porter, “Why U.S. Grand Strategy Has Not Changed.”
121. In January 2017 the White House issued a press release that misspelled the name of British prime minister Theresa May. In April, Press Secretary Sean Spicer suggested that the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad was worse than Hitler because the latter “hadn’t used chemical weapons.” Shortly thereafter, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross told an interviewer that Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia was going well because there had been no public protests there, Ross apparently being unaware that the kingdom suppresses such forms of dissent.
122. See Nicole Lewis and Kristine Phillips, “The Trump White House Keeps Mixing Up the Names of Asian Countries and Their Leaders’ Titles,” The Washington Post, July 10, 2017, at www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/07/08/white-house-press-office-misidentifies-japanese-prime-minister-abe-as president/?utm_ term= .fe4eafac8774.
123. The information was highly sensitive intelligence about ISIS obtained from an Israeli double agent operating inside the terrorist group. See Carole E. Lee and Shane Harris, “Trump Shared Intelligence Information in Meeting with Russians in Oval Office,” The Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2017; and Jack L. Goldsmith, “Bombshell: Initial Thoughts on the Washington Post’s Game-Changing Story,” Lawfare, May 15, 2017, at https://lawfareblog.com/bombshell-initial-thoughts-washington-posts-game-changing-story.
124. See Jeffrey Kucik, “The TPP’s Real Value—It’s Not Just About Trade,” The Hill, December 7, 2016, at http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/309088-the-tpps-real-value-its-not-just-about-trade; and Robert D. Blackwill and Theodore Rappleye, “Trump’s Five Mistaken Reasons for Withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” Foreign Policy, June 22, 2017, at http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/22/trumps-five-mistaken-reasons-for-withdrawing-from-the-trans-pacific-partnership-china-trade-economics/.
125. On this incident, see E. A. Crunden, “Trump, Tillerson Offer Conflicting Statements on Qatar Crisis Within 90 Minutes,” ThinkProgess.org, June 9, 2017, at https://thinkprogress.org/qatar-tillerson-trump-saudi-incoherent-8d7e180d650d; and also Noah Feldman, “Fixing Trump’s Qatar Blunder (He’s Not Helping),” Bloomberg View, June 11, 2017.
126. On Trump’s promise to Adelson, see Mark Landler, “For Trump, an Embassy in Jerusalem Is a Political Decision, Not a Diplomatic One,” The New York Times, December 6, 2017.
127. In addition to the United States and Israel, the only countries that opposed the resolution were Micronesia, Nauru, Togo and Tonga, Palau, the Marshall Islands, Guatemala, and Honduras. Thirty-five countries abstained. See Nicole Gaouette, “Despite Haley Threat, UN Votes to Condemn Trump’s Jerusalem Decision,” CNN.com, December 22, 2017, at www.cnn.com/2017/12/21/politics/haley-un-jerusalem/index.html.
128. See Toluse Olorunnipa and Nick Wadhams, “Trump Moves Closer to a Presidency of One with Tillerson Firing,” Bloomberg News, March 14, 2018, at www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-14/trump-moves-closer-to-presidency-of-one-with-tillerson-firing.
129. The appointment of John Bolton provoked considerable alarm, but he is hardly a fringe figure in contemporary America. He is a graduate of Yale University and Yale Law School, worked at Covington & Burling, a venerable D.C. law firm, and has spent many years as a senior fellow at the conservative but mainstream American Enterprise Institute. He served as Ambassador to the United Nations under George W. Bush and writes for such “radical” publications as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Foreign Policy. See Stephen M. Walt, “Welcome to the Dick Cheney Administration,” Foreign Policy, March 23, 2018, at http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/23/welcome-to-the-dick-cheney-administration/.
130. See Joshua Keating, “John Bolton and Gina Haspel are the Consequences of Our Failure to Reckon with the Bush Years,” Slate, March 23, 2018, at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/john-bolton-and-gina-haspel-are-the-consequences-of-our-failure-to-reckon-with-the-bush-years.html.
131. See “U.S. Trade Gap Highest Since 2012,” at https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/balance-of-trade. For a critical evaluation of Trump’s handling of U.S. trade policy, see Phil Levy, “2017: Trump’s Troubled Year in Trade Policy,” Forbes, December 29, 2017, at www.forbes.com/sites/phillevy/2017/12/29/2017-trade-year-in-review/#6f74ad7a482b.
132. Ely Ratner, “Trump Could be Bumbling Into a Trade War with China,” The Atlantic, March 22, 2018, at www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/trump-china-trade-war/556238/; Paul Krugman, “Bumbling into a Trade War,” The New York Times, March 22, 2018.
133. Thom
as L. Friedman, “Trump, Israel, and the Art of the Giveaway,” The New York Times, December 6, 2017.
134. See Evan Osnos, “Making China Great Again,” The New Yorker, January 9. 2018.
135. These results are especially striking insofar as Xi and Putin were not especially well-regarded in most countries. See “U.S. Image Suffers as Publics Around the World Question Trump Leadership,” Pew Research Center, June 26, 2017, at www.pewglobal.org/2017/06/26/u-s-image-suffers-as-publics-around-world-question-trumps-leadership/; and “Publics Worldwide Unfavorable Toward Putin, Russia,” Pew Research Center, August 16, 2017, at www.pewglobal.org/2017/08/16/publics-worldwide-unfavorable-toward-putin-russia/.
136. Julie Ray, “World’s Approval of U.S. Leadership Drops to New Low,” Gallup News, January 18, 2018, at http://news.gallup.com/poll/225761/world-approval-leadership-drops-new-low.aspx?g_source=WORLD_REGION_WORLDWIDE& g_medium=topic&g_campaign=tiles.
137. After the NATO summit in May, German chancellor Angela Merkel and Canadian foreign minister Chrystia Freeland both gave speeches indicating diminished confidence in the United States and the need to act more independently. See James Masters, “Merkel Reiterates Call for Europe to Take Fate into Our Own Hands,” CNN.com, May 31, 2017, at www.cnn.com/2017/05/30/europe/merkel-europe-fate-modi-india/index.html; and Paul Vieira, “Canada Says It Will Chart Own Course, Apart from U.S.,” The Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2017, at www.wsj.com/articles/canada-says-it-will-chart-its-own-course-apart-from-u-s-1496780439.
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