Category: Policy Series

H-Diplo/ISSF Policy Series 2021-31: Donald Trump and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Deal

By Susan Colbourn

Donald Trump’s disdain for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is no secret.  Since launching his presidential bid in June 2015, he has offered up memorable soundbites and caustic tweets, touching off a steady parade of transatlantic tizzies.  On the campaign trail in 2016, the reality television star-turned-Republican presidential candidate famously lambasted the Atlantic Alliance as…

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Policy Series 2021-30: The Biden Administration and Russia: Digging Out of a Deep Hole

By Robert Legvold

After President Donald Trump’s four years in office the U.S.-Russian relationship ended where it began: hostile, recriminatory, unproductive, and disengaged.  Thus, the Biden administration starts from where roughly the Obama administration left off, only the hole is deeper, because Russia’s cyber intrusions have added a paralyzing dimension to the mix of problems.  But where precisely…

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Policy Series 2021-29: Engage?  Trump and the Asia-Pacific

By Dayna Barnes

“Engage.” This was the captain’s signature command in the liberal internationalist sci-fi classic, Star Trek, the Next Generation.  It is clear why.  Engagement is the lifeblood of diplomacy.  Maintaining dialogue and manifold ties with allies and rivals alike is the way to nourish relationships and forge new common ground.  In US foreign policy, expansive engagement…

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Policy Series 2021-27: The Trump Administration and the Middle East: Not Much Change, Not Much Success

By F. Gregory Gause, III

Much like its predecessor, the Trump administration came into office rhetorically committed to reducing the American military and political footprint in the Middle East and left office with the American role in the region largely unchanged; like its predecessor, it came into office ready to engage diplomatically on Arab-Israeli questions, with an eye toward a…

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Policy Series 2021-26: Trump’s Realism

By Randall L. Schweller

The era of Pax Americana—ushered in by President Harry Truman, put on steroids during the neoliberal wave initiated by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and seemingly cemented by the profound changes in Europe after the Cold War—led many to proclaim the arrival of a final stage of global democratic peace and liberal…

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Policy Series 2021-25: Rendezvous with Infamy

By John Milton Cooper, Jr.

“Wednesday, January the sixth two thousand and twenty-one—a date which will live in infamy—the United States Capitol was suddenly and deliberately attacked by a mob incited by President Donald Trump”—with just a few words substituted, this sentence repeats what President Franklin Roosevelt said when he asked for a declaration of war following the Japanese attack…

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Policy Series 2021-24: American Totalitarianism in the Age of Trump

By Sophie Joscelyne

In a speech at Mount Rushmore on 4 July 2020 President Donald Trump stated that the United States was under threat from a “totalitarian” “cancel culture” which was eroding American liberty, “driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees.”[1]  Trump’s invocation of ‘totalitarianism’ speaks to the lasting hold…

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Policy Series 2021-23: Aristocracy, Oligarchy, and Donald Trump: The Age of Distrust

By Arthur Eckstein

In a previous essay, I set out the thinking of political philosophers in the ancient Mediterranean concerning the differences between what they termed aristocracy and what they termed oligarchy.  These thinkers defined the characteristics of these political regimes, and gave them the names we still use for them: both “aristocracy” and “oligarchy” derive from this…

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