{"id":27234,"date":"2016-06-21T14:30:27","date_gmt":"2016-06-21T04:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=27234"},"modified":"2016-06-21T16:05:59","modified_gmt":"2016-06-21T06:05:59","slug":"trump-traditions-american-foreign-policy-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/trump-traditions-american-foreign-policy-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and the traditions of American foreign policy (part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MMGA\"The Jacksonian foreign policy call to arms, as we argued<\/span> in part one<\/span><\/a>, isn\u2019t driven by the moral underpinnings of the Wilsonian tradition or the quest for an \u2018open door\u2019 world of the Hamiltonian tradition. Rather it\u2019s instead animated by the instinct, in the first instance, to protect members of the \u2018folk community\u2019 from threat. The influence of that attitude can be seen in a variety of historical and contemporary examples.<\/span><\/p>\n

For instance, Jacksonians were against the US intervention in Bosnia, due to limited threat this posed to direct American security interests, but were accepting of the push for US intervention against Saddam Hussein\u2019s invasion of Kuwait, as the Iraqi dictator\u2019s move was perceived as a threat to world oil supplies, and hence, a potential threat to the economic well-being of Jacksonian America.<\/span><\/p>\n

Similar rationales have been evident in Jacksonian support for American interventions in both World Wars. Here, it wasn\u2019t the atrocities committed by the Central Powers, the Nazi\u2019s nor the Imperial Japanese army but rather the sinking of American ships in the Atlantic and the attack on Pearl Harbour that assisted presidents Wilson and Roosevelt respectively to overcome the ingrained American aversion to \u2018foreign entanglements\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the latter case, as FDR biographer Jean Edward Smith<\/span> has documented<\/span><\/a>, the President, during the tense US\u2013Japanese diplomacy prior to Pearl Harbour, was \u2018like Lincoln prior Fort Sumter\u2019 in wanting \u2018Japan to be perceived as the aggressor\u2019 in the event of open conflict.<\/span><\/p>\n

That desire to be seen as the righteously aggrieved party to a conflict also speaks to the importance Jacksonian\u2019s attach to the<\/span> protection of \u2018national honour\u2019 and \u2018reputation\u2019<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Honor\u2026is not simply what one feels oneself to be on the inside; it is also a question of the respect and dignity one commands in the world at large. Jacksonian opinion is sympathetic to the idea that our reputation \u2013 whether for fair dealing or cheating, toughness or weakness \u2013 will shape the way others treat us\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Such reputational calculus has been evident throughout the history of American foreign policy from Robert Kennedy\u2019s assertion in his memoir,<\/span> Thirteen Days<\/span><\/a>, that he advised his brother, President John F. Kennedy, against a Pearl Habour-esque \u2018sneak attack\u2019 against Soviet missile sites in Cuba, to the Jacksonian opprobrium directed at President Obama after he failed to follow through on<\/span> his \u2018red line\u2019 statement<\/span><\/a> regarding Syrian President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s use of chemical weapons.<\/span><\/p>\n

All of those key themes\u2014protection of the community from direct threat, narrower definition of the \u2018national interest\u2019 and protection of American \u2018honour\u2019 and \u2018reputation\u2019\u2014have been evident in Trump\u2019s various public statements on foreign policy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Take for instance<\/span> Trump\u2019s \u2018plan\u2019<\/span><\/a> to \u2018bomb the shit out\u2019 of ISIS and \u2018take their oil\u2019. That speaks both to the Jacksonian desire to protect its community from direct threat (construed in this instance as both physical and economic) and Jacksonian conceptions of \u2018honour\u2019 (ISIS are an inherently \u2018dishonourable\u2019 adversary and therefore the US is justified in utilising any means to destroy them).<\/span><\/p>\n

Such themes pose problems for those who would have us believe that Trump is a<\/span> \u2018Nixon-Kissinger realist\u2019<\/span><\/a>. The Jacksonian tradition isn\u2019t entirely consistent with even Nixon and Kissinger\u2019s rather narrow conception of foreign policy \u2018realism\u2019. Indeed, we would do well to recall here that Nixon and Kissinger themselves spent much of their time in office assuaging (or to be unkind, pandering) to Jacksonian opinion as they attempted to extricate the US from Vietnam without losing \u2018credibility\u2019 with adversaries and allies alike. It wasn\u2019t a coincidence that Nixon and Kissinger framed their strategy of withdrawal as \u2018peace with honor\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jacksonians are also predisposed to be bloody-minded once the US is engaged in a conflict and resistant to rationales for their resolution short of \u2018total victory\u2019. Additionally, once<\/span> adversaries are defined as an \u2018enemy nation\u2019<\/span><\/a> (for instance, Iran since 1979) it becomes extremely difficult for Jacksonian opinion to be swayed to support efforts at normalisation. Conversely, Jacksonian opinion, in the absence of direct threats to American security is likely to advocate a minimalist or,<\/span> in the words of George W. Bush<\/span><\/a> during the 2000 election campaign, a \u2018humble\u2019 foreign policy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, has<\/span> rightly lambasted<\/span><\/a> Trump\u2019s disparate statements on foreign policy as \u2018dangerously incoherent\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet simply labelling such Trump assertions that the US should abandon long-standing alliances such as NATO if allies don\u2019t \u2018pay their own way\u2019 or that it wouldn\u2019t be a bad thing for South Korea and Japan or Saudi Arabia to acquire nuclear weapons as \u2018dangerous\u2019 doesn\u2019t directly address the Jacksonian sentiments that underpin their appeal to Republican voters.<\/span><\/p>\n

Clinton, along with the foreign policy establishment in Washington, would do well to recall<\/span> Max Weber\u2019s observation<\/span><\/a> that while \u2018Interests (material and ideal), not ideas, dominate directly the actions of men\u2019 the \u2018images of the world created by these ideas\u2019 have very often served as switches determining the tracks on which the dynamism of interests kept actions moving.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus far in Trump\u2019s rise as standard bearer for the GOP it\u2019s clear that the Jacksonian tradition has been the \u2018switch\u2019 that has determined the tracks on which his foreign policy will run. Hillary Clinton and the foreign policy establishment ignore its influence at their peril.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Jacksonian foreign policy call to arms, as we argued in part one, isn\u2019t driven by the moral underpinnings of the Wilsonian tradition or the quest for an \u2018open door\u2019 world of the Hamiltonian tradition. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":27241,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1428,285,31],"class_list":["post-27234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-donald-trump","tag-foreign-policy","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTrump and the traditions of American foreign policy (part 2) | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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