{"id":40218,"date":"2018-06-26T14:30:55","date_gmt":"2018-06-26T04:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=40218"},"modified":"2018-06-26T13:30:00","modified_gmt":"2018-06-26T03:30:00","slug":"trump-administration-sick-of-winning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/trump-administration-sick-of-winning\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump administration: sick of winning"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-40221 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/41733986544_44d7676aae_z.jpg\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/41733986544_44d7676aae_z.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/41733986544_44d7676aae_z-205x137.jpg 205w, https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/41733986544_44d7676aae_z-332x221.jpg 332w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Fifteen months ago, I wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/president-trump-four-scenarios\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">an ASPI <em>Strategist<\/em> article setting out four scenarios<\/a> for the future of the Trump administration based on how Trump might handle two driving factors. The first factor was whether the administration would stabilise into something more like a mainstream American government or would remain true to its \u2018drain the swamp\u2019 disruptive rhetoric. The second was how the administration would behave internationally. Would it engage friends and allies as all post-war US governments have, or would a more disengaged America change the global landscape?<\/p>\n<p>The intersection of these two core strategic choices produces four scenarios:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A stable and engaged America, which I called the \u2018tougher status quo\u2019, that expects more of its allies and presses its competitors for concessions.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An unstable and engaged US becomes an \u2018unfocused ally\u2019, where policy is hard to shape and mostly reactive (and where the administration settled in its first year).<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A stable and isolated \u2018off the beat\u2019 America stops being the world\u2019s policeman. Allies get lower priority and competitors have more space to prosecute their interests.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An unstable and isolated US produces a \u2018new world disorder\u2019, where Trump struggles to get control of the levers of power in Washington and international relationships drift.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>How do the scenarios shape up after 15 months? Looking back, I got the engagement dimension slightly wrong. American disengagement from world affairs wasn\u2019t really in prospect. The issue was more about the <em>nature<\/em> of American engagement. Updating the scenarios to June 2018, I have changed that strategic driver to contrast an \u2018America First\u2019 approach with the more typical post-war norm of an \u2018engaged America\u2019 providing global leadership based on liberal international values. Trump expressed the difference in his December 2017 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/articles\/new-national-security-strategy-new-era\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">National Security Strategy<\/a>. America First means that: \u2018We are prioritizing the interests of our citizens and protecting our sovereign rights as a nation.\u2019 Any similarity to the last 70 years of \u2018engaged America\u2019 is purely coincidental.<\/p>\n<p>At the start of Trump\u2019s term, the most hopeful scenario from an allied perspective was the \u2018tougher status quo\u2019 where the \u2018adults\u2019 in Trump\u2019s cabinet would normalise the administration\u2014although, to be sure, with higher expectations of friends and allies. It hasn\u2019t worked out that way. Trump has galloped purposefully into the \u2018off the beat\u2019 scenario, championing an America First approach.<\/p>\n<p>The administration has also stabilised in the sense that we\u2019re now getting the consistently unvarnished Trump, no longer moderated by the adults. Now the president is firmly directing his team to focus on implementing his gut-instincts approach, sacking those who think otherwise, and explaining away the daily inconsistencies that arise. The chaos is deliberate, not just the product of randomness. A stabilised Trump administration is worse than a destabilised one, because it means we\u2019ll get the more purposeful pursuit of the Trumpian agenda. This agenda seems to be media management to generate a sense of action every day\u2014driven by a narrowly conceived view of American interests based on allies as costs, unilateralism without friends, and deals without details with \u2018tough\u2019 adversaries he respects.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps this wasn\u2019t that hard to predict after all, because Trump has done much of what he promised to do: not signing the trans-Pacific pact, leaving the Paris agreement on climate, abandoning the nuclear deal with Iran, renegotiating \u2018unfair\u2019 trade deals, and even continuing with plans for the \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/pictures\/wild-donald-trump-quotes\/14\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">great, great wall on our southern border<\/a>\u2019. But no one could have reasonably anticipated Trump\u2019s awkward discomfort with the European allies; his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/briefings-statements\/remarks-president-trump-marine-one-departure-8\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">casual dissing of Canadian military service<\/a> as a tactic to promote tariffs (\u2018And you know, they\u2019re trying to act like, \u201cWell, we fought with you in the war\u201d\u2019); his admiration of authoritarian bullies; his venomous hatred of American media; and the vicious way he turns on friends who stop being useful to him.<\/p>\n<p>The Trump\u2013Kim summit highlights five key traits of an America operating in the \u2018off the beat\u2019 scenario. First, Trump\u2019s sole focus is \u2018the base\u2019\u2014those who voted for him\u2014when he makes public comments. So, Trump tells the base that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/briefings-statements\/press-conference-president-trump\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">cancelling \u2018war games\u2019 between the US and South Korea was to save money<\/a>: \u2018[T]he war games are very expensive. We pay for a big majority of them. We fly in bombers from Guam \u2026 I know a lot about airplanes; it\u2019s very expensive. And I didn\u2019t like it.\u2019 It doesn\u2019t matter to Trump that this type of language infuriates <em>New York Times<\/em> writers. In fact, the sight of frothing liberals reassures the base that Trump is doing the right thing.<\/p>\n<p>Second, allies are dispensable. Trump\u2019s outrageous performance at the G7 in Canada and his failure to discuss the exercise cancellations with Japan and South Korea show that even the closest ally can be thrown under a bus if it suits the president\u2019s daily political agenda.<\/p>\n<p>Third, inconsistency is the new consistency. Trump is not bothered that his comments aren\u2019t consistent from one day to the next, blaming the \u2018fake news\u2019 for inaccurate reporting. The expectation of accuracy confuses and slows down his opponents. Trump appreciates that dominating the media cycle is what matters and the challenge is to keep moving so everyone else is reacting to his statements.<\/p>\n<p>Fourth, Trump\u2019s leadership model is about breaking rules. This jars America\u2019s checks-and-balances political system but it explains Trump\u2019s admiration for dictators who make their own rules. Thus, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/briefings-statements\/press-conference-president-trump\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Trump thinks<\/a> Kim is \u2018very talented\u2019 because he was able to \u2018take over\u2019 North Korea \u2018and run it tough\u2019. Trump is running America like his television program <em>The Apprentice<\/em>, with deal-making and gut instinct rather than coalition building and planning followed by implementation (that boring stuff, that gets things done).<\/p>\n<p>Fifth, it\u2019s all about the Donald. As Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/briefings-statements\/press-conference-president-trump\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">asked a <em>Time<\/em> magazine reporter<\/a> in Singapore: \u2018Hi, Brian. Am I on the cover again this week? Boy, have I\u2014so many covers.\u2019 He presented <a href=\"http:\/\/time.com\/5309671\/donald-trump-video-kim-jong-un\/\">a video<\/a> to Kim Jong-un\u2014\u2018Destiny Pictures presents a story of opportunity. A new story. A new beginning. Out of peace. Two men, two leaders, one destiny.\u2019 We are all bit players in Trump\u2019s personal movie: \u2018Global Security presents Trump: The presidency, a story of risk-taking, chutzpah and unsinkable ego.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>An America off the beat is a bad outcome for the world. It\u2019s a scenario where China has more scope to consolidate global power and influence, masking to some extent the Communist Party\u2019s intrinsic Leninist nastiness. It\u2019s a world in which America\u2019s traditional allies\u2014let\u2019s call them the axis of decency\u2014lack the leadership instinct and financial capacity to fill the global policing void left by the United States. It\u2019s possible that America will self-right, but not for two or maybe even six years. That\u2019s a long time for the international order to drift while being mauled by an increasingly confident cabal of authoritarian thugs.<\/p>\n<p>What does Australia do? Time to pull on the big-boy pants and start talking and acting like we are the masters of our own strategic destiny. That will take more money and political decisiveness than we have seen in a long, long time. Our own domestic red clown brigade argues that bowing down to our new imperial overlords in Beijing is the solution, but that\u2019s unlikely to wash with the vast bulk of the Australian population who don\u2019t have a permanent hold on seat 1A on Qantas Flight 1.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.malcolmturnbull.com.au\/media\/keynote-address-at-the-16th-iiss-asia-security-summit-shangri-la-dialogue\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Malcolm Turnbull said<\/a> in Singapore last year, \u2018[I]n this brave new world we cannot rely on great powers to safeguard our interests. We have to take responsibility for our own security and prosperity\u2019. He\u2019s right of course, but we are just at the beginning of understanding how costly and difficult this lonely path will turn out to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fifteen months ago, I wrote an ASPI Strategist article setting out four scenarios for the future of the Trump administration based on how Trump might handle two driving factors. The first factor was whether the &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":40221,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1428,181],"class_list":["post-40218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-donald-trump","tag-international-order"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Trump administration: sick of winning | 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-administration-sick-of-winning\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump administration: sick of winning | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Fifteen months ago, I wrote an ASPI Strategist article setting out four scenarios for the future of the Trump administration based on how Trump might handle two driving factors. 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