If You Thought 2017 Was Bad, Just Wait for 2018

Last year, Trump corroded U.S. foreign policy, but avoided disaster. This year, there are powerful reasons to think that matters will worsen.

BY HAL BRANDS | JANUARY 8, 2018, 2:10 PM

Is 2018 the year when President Donald Trump finally pulls it together in the realm of foreign policy, or is it the year when the train goes fully off the rails, with potentially disastrous consequences? As I argue in my new book, American Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump, the first year of Trump’s presidency has been plenty corrosive to U.S. power and influence, because Trump has steadily undermined a number of qualities that made American statecraft effective in the past. Trump has often seemed determined to erode longstanding pillars of U.S. diplomacy: America’s reputation for steadiness and reliability, commitment to a positive-sum global order in which all countries that play by the rules can prosper, soft power and identification with the advancement of universal values, and image as a dependable ally and a country committed to solving the world’s toughest problems. Meanwhile, the administration has struggled (to say the least) with systematic policy formulation and execution. The combination of internal disorganization and understaffing, erratic presidential behavior, and very public disputes between Trump and his cabinet secretaries has made 2017 one of the messiest first years ever.

What can nonetheless be said for this administration is that it has so far avoided some of the most disastrous outcomes that were widely — and quite reasonably — feared when Trump took office. The president’s tweets have often proved beyond irresponsible, but so far there has been no preventive war with North Korea. Symbolically decertifying the Iran nuclear deal was a bad idea, but Trump did not commit the far worse error of unilaterally withdrawing from the accord. The White House reportedly flirted with lifting sanctions on Russia and bringing back torture and CIA black sites, but internal and congressional resistance apparently blocked those ideas. The president withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, thus making a major strategic misstep, but he has so far refrained from initiating trade wars or pulling out of existing agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement.

On all these issues, Congress and other outside actors in some cases and his own advisers in others have blocked the president from carrying out his own worst ideas. For all the pyrotechnics associated with the first year of his presidency, then, the damage has been more the result of a slow bleed than an instantaneous blowup.

To put it more bluntly, Trump’s first year has been quite bad, but it could easily have been far more damaging still. The key question for 2018 is whether things are likely to get better or worse.

For those inclined to be charitable, there are, perhaps, some reasons to think the trajectory might improve. Advisers such as Secretary of Defense James Mattis have largely proven to be pillars of responsibility, managing a volatile president and restraining some of his potentially more destructive impulses. If anything, the internal balance of power seems to be swinging toward the adults, as true-believing, America-first firebrands such as former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn were gradually pushed out of the administration over the first year, and the lower ranks have been populated — albeit at a glacial pace — with more mainstream figures. Chief of Staff John Kelly has reportedly brought somewhat greater order to the running of the White House, mainly by controlling information and thereby reducing the quantity of wild ideas that make their way to the top. (The wild ideas that originate at the top are another matter, unfortunately.)

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https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/01/08/if-you-thought-2017-was-bad-just-wait-for-2018-trump-united-states-foreign-policy/