{"id":31350,"date":"2017-04-13T14:30:51","date_gmt":"2017-04-13T04:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=31350"},"modified":"2017-04-13T16:33:33","modified_gmt":"2017-04-13T06:33:33","slug":"trump-mill-ponds-dropped-wrenches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/trump-mill-ponds-dropped-wrenches\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump, mill-ponds and dropped wrenches"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image<\/p>\n

Despite last week\u2019s cruise missile attack in Syria, the outlook for the strategic policy of the Trump administration is still deeply uncertain. After all, one missile strike doesn\u2019t make a strategic policy. And US declaratory policy remains confused. Charitably, some commentators have simply decided that the \u2018Trump doctrine\u2019 involves a deliberate decision to forsake doctrine<\/a>. Well, that\u2019s possible. But it\u2019s hard to explain why, in that case, Trump went to such lengths to articulate an explicit doctrine in his Inaugural Address\u2014namely, a doctrine of \u2018America First\u2019.<\/p>\n

True, in the days since that address, the doctrine\u2019s been blurred by messages of continuity in US strategic policy emanating from the vice-president, and the secretaries of State and Defence. But those assurances have been proffered with no attempt to reconcile them with the president\u2019s earlier vision. And Trump seems now, much as he was on the campaign trail, to be just as hostile\u2014or at best indifferent\u2014to the principles of liberalism that have defined US global leadership since World War 2. Those principles include free trade, international institutions, and support for democracy and human rights. Moreover, he seems at best a reluctant ally, categorising others as free-riders and the alliances themselves as obsolete.\u00a0(News flash: After meeting the NATO Secretary-General at the White House overnight, President Trump has declared <\/a>that NATO’s no longer obsolete because of new efforts it is making to counter terrorism.)<\/p>\n

But the problem\u2019s not just one of declaratory policy. The influence \u2018webs\u2019 around the president are both unsettled and unsettling. Where do Messrs Tillerson, Mattis, McMaster, Kushner and Bannon all fit, let alone the president\u2019s daughter? What weight can be given to statements by one of those? Decision-making within the administration is essentially a black box. Media with some access to Washington sources currently offer us a post-event description of how a particular decision<\/a> unfolded, but frequently disagree<\/a> on the key decision point. And there\u2019s a new game of \u2018spot the influencer\u2019 being played out where photographs of particular events are subject to exegetical analysis, much in the manner of the CIA\u2019s assessments of ranking within the Soviet politburo during the Cold War. What should we make of the seating arrangements<\/a> for Trump\u2019s dinner with Xi Jinping? Or of Bannon\u2019s presence in the Mar-a-Lago Situation Room<\/a> during the attack on the Syrian airfield?<\/p>\n

Then, of course, there\u2019s the question of context. US (and broader Western) relative strategic weight in the world is in gradual, long-term decline. The aggregate GDP<\/a> of the five BRICS countries is now larger than that of the G7 (in purchasing power parity terms). At the level of individual countries, China\u2019s GDP is larger than America\u2019s. An era of uneven multipolarity looms, with the former Leviathan being less omnipresent. That doesn\u2019t mean that the current order will quickly fade. Even a waning superpower makes a good strategic partner. And none of the rising powers has yet articulated a more compelling global vision. Still, the world\u2019s changing, and we\u2019d do well to remember it.<\/p>\n

What tangible actions could the US take to assure allies and partners? Well, allies are looking for evidence of consistency in the administration\u2019s foreign and strategic policy. Ideally, they\u2019d like that consistency to reflect broad continuity in the US global role, and continued US engagement at the key strategic fulcrum points around the Eurasian rimlands. That\u2019s where global order\u2019s set. Short of that goal, US allies can live with the sort of US policy we\u2019ve got now: transactional, but\u2014apparently\u2014willing to tackle individual crises on an ad hoc<\/em> basis as they arise. Such a US role in the world wouldn\u2019t be ideal, but it would be manageable.<\/p>\n

In Canberra, there are two views of the Trump administration: there\u2019s a \u2018mill-ponds\u2019 school and a \u2018trouble-at-mill\u2019 school. \u2018Mill-ponds\u2019 fans say Trump\u2019s interested primarily in trade, immigration, and terrorism, and suggest that we should expect broad areas of stability and continuity (i.e. mill-ponds) to prevail elsewhere. \u2018Trouble-at-mill\u2019 schoolers say Trumpian uncertainty will be found across the broader policy settings, and suggest that we should steel ourselves for an age of ad hoc<\/em> transactionalism. Members of that second school are acutely conscious of the extent to which a wrench dropped, even accidentally, into the machinery can disrupt production at the mill. They worry that there\u2019s an ample supply of wrenches close to hand, and that the biggest wrench of all\u2014America First\u2014has already been dropped.<\/p>\n

At the moment, the second school seems to tell a more credible tale than the first. The mill-ponders seize upon every flicker of continuity with an almost desperate urgency. The trouble-at-mill folk are more inclined to take broader discontinuity in their stride, prizing instead specific US actions and commitments\u2014all the while maintaining an eye on the opportunities provided by a more multipolar order. Of course, even if the second school is telling a more compelling narrative than the first, we\u2019ll still need, more than ever, a clear hard-headed strategic policy as Australia struggles to cope with a more complex world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite last week\u2019s cruise missile attack in Syria, the outlook for the strategic policy of the Trump administration is still deeply uncertain. After all, one missile strike doesn\u2019t make a strategic policy. And US declaratory …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":31351,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1428,427,312,274,31],"class_list":["post-31350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-donald-trump","tag-gdp","tag-grand-strategy","tag-syria","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTrump, mill-ponds and dropped wrenches | 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\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/trump-mill-ponds-dropped-wrenches\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump, mill-ponds and dropped wrenches | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Despite last week\u2019s cruise missile attack in Syria, the outlook for the strategic policy of the Trump administration is still deeply uncertain. 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