21. National Security Strategy (Washington, DC: The White House, December 2017), p. 2, at www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2-17/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf.
22. See Felicia Schwartz, “U.S. to Send Anti-Tank Weaponry to Ukraine, Entering New Phase of Conflict,” The Wall Street Journal, December 24, 2017; and Diana Stancy Correll, “Ex-Obama Official Lauds Jim Mattis ‘for Arming Ukraine,’” Washington Examiner, December 20, 2017. On Mitchell’s background, see “Bureau of Europe and Eurasian Affairs: Who Is A. Wess Mitchell?” August 15, 2017, at www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/bureau-of-european-and-eurasian-affairs-who-is-a-wess-mitchell-170815?news=860276; see also CEPA’s website at http://cepa.org/home.
23. On these events, see Ivan Nechepurenko, Neil MacFarquhar, and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, “Dozens of Russians Are Believed Killed in U.S.-Backed Syrian Attack,” The New York Times, February 13, 2018; “Trump: ‘It looks like’ Russia Was Behind Poisoning of Former Spy,” The Guardian, March 15, 2018, at www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2018/mar/15/trump-it-looks-like-russia-was-behind-poisoning-of-former-spy-video; Alex Ward, “The US and Three Allies Are Blaming Russia for Nerve Agent Attack on Ex-Spy,” Vox.com, March 15, 2018, at www.vox.com/2018/3/15/17124062/usa-russia-uk-france-germany-statement-full-text; U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Treasury Sanctions Russian Cyber Actors for Interference in the U.S. Elections and Malicious Cyberattacks,” March 15, 2018, at https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm0312.
24. See Jeffrey A. Bader, David Dollar, and Ryan Hass, “U.S.-China Relations, Six Months into the Trump Presidency,” Brookings Institution, August 16, 2017, at www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2017/08/14/u-s-china-relations-6-months-into-the-trump-presidency/.
25. National Security Strategy, pp. 45–46; and U.S. Department of Defense, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America: Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge, at www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf, pp. 1–2, 8–9.
26. See, for example, U.S. Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (Washington, DC, May 2017), at www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2017_China_Military_Power_Report.PDF.
27. See Ankit Panda, “South China Sea: Fourth US FONOP in Five Months Suggests a New Operational Rhythm,” The Diplomat, October 12, 2017. At his confirmation hearing in January 2017 Tillerson said, “We’re going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops, and second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed.” See Michael Forsythe, “Rex Tillerson’s South China Sea Remarks Foreshadow Possible Foreign Policy Crisis,” The New York Times, January 12, 2017.
28. Ana Swanson, “Trump Readies Sweeping Tariffs and Investment Restrictions on China,” The New York Times, March 15, 2018; Mark Landler and Jim Tankersley, “U.S. Sets $60 Billion in Punitive Tariffs on Chinese Goods,” The New York Times, March 23, 2018.
29. See David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, “Trump Inherits a Secret Cyber-War against North Korean Missiles,” The New York Times, March 4, 2017.
30. “Trump Says U.S. Will Act Alone on North Korea If China Fails to Help,” The Guardian, April 3, 2017, at www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/02/donald-trump-north-korea-china.
31. See https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/948355557022420992; and Peter Baker and Michael Tackett, “Trump Says His ‘Nuclear Button’ Is ‘Much Bigger’ than North Korea’s,” The New York Times, January 2, 2018.
32. See Jacqueline Klimas, “Trump’s North Korea Strategy: A Lot Like Obama’s,” Politico, August 8, 2017, at www.politico.com/story/2017/08/08/trump-obama-north-korea-241389.
33. The resolution took aim at North Korea’s $3 billion export earnings and would have reduced them by about one-third if fully implemented. See Adam Taylor, “What the New UN Sanctions on North Korea Mean,” The Washington Post, August 7, 2017.
34. See Connor Finnegan, “North Korea Crisis Becoming Unsolvable, Experts Warn, as Trump Heads to Asia,” ABC News, November 2, 2017, at http://abcnews.go.com/International/north-korea-crisis-unsolvable-experts-warn-trump-heads/story?id=50872436; Kori Schake, “The North Korea Debate Sounds Eerily Familiar,” The Atlantic, December 8, 2017, at www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/12/north-korea-iraq-war-george-w-bush-trump/547796/; and Helene Cooper, “Mattis Leaves the Door Open to Military Options in North Korea,” The New York Times, September 18, 2017.
35. A good discussion of the limited options and the continued relevance of deterrence is Scott Sagan, “The Korean Missile Crisis: Why Deterrence Is Still the Best Option,” Foreign Affairs 96, no. 6 (November/December 2017).
36. Quoted in Choe-Sang Hun and David E. Sanger, “North Korea Moves Toward Détente with Seoul,” The New York Times, January 9, 2018.
37. See Robin Wright, “Trump Accepts North Korea’s Audacious Invitation—But Then What?” The New Yorker, March 9, 2015, at www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trump-accepts-north-koreas-audacious-invitation-but-then-what.
38. See Zack Beauchamp, “Donald Trump: Make America Great Again by Letting More Countries Have Nukes,” Vox.com, March 30, 2016, at www.vox.com/2016/3/30/11332074/donald-trump-nuclear-weapons-japan-south-korea-saudi-arabia; and David E. Sanger and Maggie Haberman, “Transcript: Donald Trump Expounds on His Foreign Policy Views,” The New York Times, March 26, 2016, at www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/us/politics/donald-trump-transcript.html.
39. For a similar assessment, see Marc Lynch, “Trump’s Middle East Policies Are Boorish and Belligerent, but Surprisingly Normal,” War on the Rocks, April 3, 2017, at http://warontherocks.com/2017/04/trumps-middle-east-policies-boorish-and-belligerent-but-surprisingly-normal/.
40. Saudi Arabia had conducted a brutal air war in Yemen since 2015 but failed to defeat its Houthi opponents. With Trump’s apparent approval, bin Salman launched an economic boycott of Qatar in June 2017, demanding that the emirate cut its ties with Iran, expel the Muslim Brotherhood, and curtail the satellite news service Al Jazeera. He followed up by forcing Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri to resign during his visit to Riyadh in November, in an attempt to weaken Hezbollah and reduce Iran’s influence, but the heavy-handed ploy backfired, Hariri reversed his decision to resign as soon as he returned home, and Hezbollah’s position was unaffected. On bin Salman’s blunders, see Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky, “Saudi Arabia’s New Crown Prince Is a Bumbling Hothead. Trump Needs to Treat Him Like One,” Politico, June 29, 2017; and Anne Barnard and Maria Abi-Habib, “Why Saad Hariri Had That Strange Sojourn in Riyadh,” The New York Times, December 24, 2017.
41. On Trump’s earlier opposition, see “Trump’s View of Syria: How It Evolved, in 19 Tweets,” The New York Times, April 7, 2007, at www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/us/politics/donald-trump-syria-twitter.html.
42. On the media response to the attacks, see Margaret Sullivan, “The Media Loved Trump’s Show of Military Might: Are We Really Doing This Again?” The Washington Post, April 8, 2017; and Adam Johnson, “Five Top Papers Run 18 Opinion Pieces Praising Syria Strikes—Zero Are Critical,” FAIR.org, April 7, 2017, at http://fair.org/home/five-top-papers-run-18-opinion-pieces-praising-syria-strikes-zero-are-critical/.
43. For a comprehensive critique of Trump’s decision, see Paul R. Pillar, “Hold the Deal-Killers Accountable,” Lobelog, May 8, 2018, at https://lobelog.com/hold-the-deal-killers-accountable/.
44. See, for example, Nicholas Burns, “The Deal Is Historic, but the US Must Now Act to Contain Iran,” Financial Times, July 14, 2015; and William J. Burns and Jake Sullivan, “The Iranian Protests Are an Opportunity for Trump—Just Not the One He Wants,” The Washington Post, January 8, 2017.
45. For example, the United States and Israel had conducted a sophisticated cyberattack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities that destroyed a large number of Iranian centrifuges. See David Sanger, Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and the Surprisin
g Use of American Power (New York: Crown, 2012), chap. 8.
46. See Stephen M. Walt, “The Art of the Regime Change,” Foreign Policy, May 8, 2018, at http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/08/the-art-of-the-regime-change/.
47. Among other things, Friedman once claimed that Barack Obama was an anti-Semite and said that supporters of the liberal, pro-peace lobby J Street were “far worse” than Nazi collaborators. See Eric Levitz, “Trump Picks Lawyer Who Says Liberal Jews Are Worse Than Nazi Collaborators as Ambassador,” New York, December 16, 2016, at http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/trumps-israel-ambassador-likens-left-wing-jews-to-kapos.html.
48. Nicole Gaouette and Elise Labott, “Trump Backs Off Two-State Framework for Israel-Palestinian Deal,” CNN.com, February 16, 2017.
49. See Tracy Wilkinson, “Trump Threatens to Cut Off Aid to Palestinians,” Los Angeles Times, January 2, 2018.
50. Clinton, Bush, and Obama all promised to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem while campaigning for the presidency; none did so once in office.
51. See Jason Horowitz, “U.N., European Union, and Pope Criticize Trump’s Jerusalem Decision,” The New York Times, December 6, 2017.
52. See, for example, “Statement by the President on the Memorandum of Understanding Reached with Israel,” September 14, 2016, at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/14/statement-president-memorandum-understanding-reached-israel.
53. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was supposed to lead the peace process, and Kushner told a group of congressional interns in July 2017 that no new peace initiative was in the works. See Ashley Feinberg, “Kushner on Middle East Peace: ‘What Do We Offer That’s Unique? I Don’t Know,’” Wired, August 1, 2017, at www.wired.com/story/jared-kushner-middle-east/.
54. As Randa Slim of the Middle East Institute put it, “Donald Trump’s decision at least clarifies the situation—declares the peace process officially over and removes any remaining doubt about the US third party role as a fair mediator.” Quoted in Joyce Karam, “Experts React to Trump’s Jerusalem Decision: A Diplomatic Upgrade or End of the Peace Process?” The National, December 7, 2017, at www.thenational.ae/world/the-americas/experts-react-to-trump-s-jerusalem-decision-a-diplomatic-upgrade-or-end-of-the-peace-process-1.682188.
55. Ryan Teague Beckwith, “Read Trump’s ‘America First’ Foreign Policy Speech,” Time, April 27, 2016, at http://time.com/4309786/read-donald-trumps-america-first-foreign-policy-speech/.
56. See Karoun Demirjian, “House Passes Nearly $700 Billion Defense Authorization Bill,” The Washington Post, November 14, 2017.
57. Based on data from the U.S. Air Forces Central Command at www.afcent.af.mil/About/Airpower-Summaries/. I am grateful to Micah Zenko for providing this information; see https://twitter.com/MicahZenko/status/873899992901185536.
58. Trump announced the shift in policy via Twitter on July 26, catching the Pentagon by surprise. The White House issued an official order to discharge all transgender troops by March 2018, but Secretary of Defense Mattis subsequently announced that transgender troops would continue to serve pending a policy review, and a federal court struck down Trump’s proposed ban in October. See Helene Cooper, “Mattis Says Military Panel Will Study Trump’s Transgender Ban,” The New York Times, August 29, 2017; and Dave Philipps, “Judge Blocks Trump’s Ban on Transgender Troops in Military,” The New York Times, October 30, 2017.
59. See Katherine Blakeley, “The Trump Administration’s FY2018 Defense Budget in Context,” Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, August 3, 2017, at http://csbaonline.org/reports/the-trump-administrations-fy-2018-defense-budget-in-context.
60. See Nicole Gaouette and Ryan Browne, “Trump Changes Tune, Flexes U.S. Muscle Overseas,” CNN.com, July 17, 2017, at www.cnn.com/2017/07/17/politics/trump-world-policeman/index.html.
61. See Joshua Rovner, “The War on Terror as Imperial Policing,” War on the Rocks, November 2, 2017, at https://warontherocks.com/2017/11/the-war-on-terrorism-as-imperial-policing/.
62. See Hal Brands, “The Problem with Trump’s Counterterrorism Strategy? Trump,” Bloomberg View, October 25, 2017, at www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-25/the-problem-with-trump-s-terrorism-strategy-trump. Roggio is quoted in Nick Miriello, “Trump’s Military Strategy Is a Lot Like Obama’s, but with a Lot More Bombs,” Vice News, April 26, 2017, at https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/ywnj4v/trumps-military-strategy-is-just-like-obamas-but-with-a-lot-more-bombs.
63. Jason Dempsey and Amy Schafer, “Is There Trouble Brewing for Civil-Military Relations in the U.S.?” World Politics Review, May 23, 2017, at www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/22222/is-there-trouble-brewing-for-civil-military-relations-in-the-u-s. See also Rosa Brooks, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016); James Fallows, “The Tragedy of the American Military,” The Atlantic (January/February 2015), at www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/the-tragedy-of-the-american-military/383516/; Gordon Adams and Shoon Murray, eds., Mission Creep: The Militarization of U.S. Foreign Policy? (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014); and Eliot A. Cohen, “The Downsides of John Kelly’s Ascension,” The Atlantic, July 31, 2017, at www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/the-downsides-of-john-kellys-ascension/535383/.
64. The order imposed a variety of restrictions on visitors from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and North Korea. See Adam Liptak, “Supreme Court Wipes Out Travel Ban Appeal,” The New York Times, October 24, 2017.
65. Miriam Jordan, “Trump Administration Says 200,000 Salvadorans Must Leave,” The New York Times, January 9, 2018.
66. For a sense of the international reaction, see Laignee Barron, “‘A New Low’: The World Is Furious at Trump for His Remark About ‘Shithole Countries,’” Time, January 12, 2018, at http://time.com/5100328/shithole-countries-trump-reactions/.
67. See Muzaffar Chishti, Sarah Pierce, and Jessica Bolter, “The Obama Record on Deportations: Deporter in Chief or Not?” Migration Policy Institute, January 26, 2017, at www.migrationpolicy.org/article/obama-record-deportations-deporter-chief-or-not; and Dara Lind, “Fewer Immigrants Are Being Deported Under Trump Than Under Obama,” Vox.com, August 10, 2017, at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/10/16119910/trump-deportations-obama.
68. See Dombrowski and Reich, “Does Donald Trump Have a Grand Strategy?” pp. 1023–26.
69. See “Trump Says Mexico ‘Eventually’ Will Pay for Border Wall,” Reuters, April 23, 2017, at www.reuters.com/aticle/us-usa-budget-trump-mexico/trump-says-mexico-eventually-will-pay-for-border-wall-idUSKBN17POQG.
70. See Julie Hirshfeld Davis, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, and Thomas Kaplan, “Trump Was Not ‘Fully Informed’ in 2016 Vows on Wall, Kelly Says,” The New York Times, January 17, 2018.
71. See Lisa Friedman, “Syria Joins Paris Climate Accord, Leaving Only U.S. Opposed,” The New York Times, November 7, 2017, at www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/climate/syria-joins-paris-agreement.html.
72. Clare Jones and Sam Fleming, “G20 Drops Vow to Resist All Forms of Protectionism,” Financial Times, March 18, 2017.
73. Trump falsely claimed, “We lose the lawsuits, almost all of the lawsuits in the WTO.” In fact, the United States has won roughly 90 percent of the disputes it has taken to the WTO, although it has usually lost the disputes brought against it by others. Rather than being evidence of WTO bias, this pattern confirms that states generally bring disputes to the WTO only when they have a strong case. See Shawn Donnen, “Fears for Global Trade as Trump Fires First Shots to Kneecap WTO,” Financial Times, November 9, 2017.
74. See Demetri Sevastopulo and Shawn Donnan, “Donald Trump Rejected China Steel Offer That His Officials Backed,” Financial Times, August 28, 2017.
75. See David Lawder, “U.S. Commerce Dept ‘Self-Initiates’ Dumping Probe of Chinese Aluminum,” Reuters, November 28, 2017; at www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-aluminum/u-s-commerce-dept-self-initiates-dumping-probe-of-
chinese-aluminum-idUSKBN1DS2S9; and Robert Zoellick, “Trump Courts Economic Mayhem,” The Wall Street Journal, January 7, 2018.
76. See John Cassiday, “Trump’s NAFTA Reversal Confirms the Globalists Are in Charge—For Now,” The New Yorker, April 27, 2017, at www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/trumps-nafta-reversal-confirms-the-globalists-are-in-charge-for-now; and Bill Scher, “Why Bannon Lost and Globalists Won,” Politico, August 18, 2017, at www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/18/why-bannon-lost-globalists-won-215506.
77. Ana Swanson and Thomas Kaplan, “Senate Panel Rejects Trump Nominee to Head Export-Import Bank,” The New York Times, December 19, 2017.
78. “Full Text: Trump Davos Speech Transcript,” Politico, January 28, 2018, at www.politico.com/story/2018/01/26/full-text-trump-davos-speech-transcript-370861.
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