I have to confess that when the editor asked me to provide my thoughts about the effect President Donald J. Trump has had upon Canadians and, by projection, upon the quality of the bilateral relationship between the United States and Canada, my memory flashed back to the early 1960s, when I first read Joseph Heller’s…
Category: Policy Series
Policy Series 2021-20: Donald Trump and NATO: Historic Alliance Meets A-historic President
In the presidential election of 2020, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was given a reprieve from what could very well have been a death sentence in the four years to follow. Reelection of Donald Trump would have given the anti-NATO American president the opportunity to cancel the American commitment to the mutual defense provision of…
Policy Series 2021-19: The Ideals of 1989 Carried to the Grave
In my previous piece on this topic, I argued that the revolutions of 1989 in Eurasia had instituted a new post-Cold War global order.[1] Among its characteristics were priority for human rights, and even a willingness, at times, to reject individual states’ sovereignty in order to ensure these rights, a commitment to deregulation, privatization and…
Policy Series 2021-18: “Why Does Donald Trump Have So Much Trouble with the Truth? A Brief Update”
Why does Donald Trump have so much trouble with the truth? Not long after the beginning of Trump’s presidency, I weighed in with some thoughts on the matter, as part of H-Diplo’s “America and the World – 2017 and Beyond” series.[1] In that essay, I made two primary claims. First, with Trump it is difficult…
Policy Series 2021-17: The Trump Presidency and U.S. Workers: “America First” or America Diminished?
When the Associated Press projected Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential race on November 7, I joined in the collective sigh of relief that issued forth from millions of Americans who had come to view Donald Trump as an existential threat to democracy. Yet, like many, I remained puzzled that Trump still…
Policy Series 2021-16: Revisiting Historical Legacies of US Policy in the Middle East: The Trump Administration
It may not have been Donald Trump speaking, but it was perhaps the best possible statement of the case for his achievements in the Middle East. Addressing the Republican National Convention on August 25, 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke in front of a backdrop of the old city of Jerusalem, praising Trump’s “America…
Policy Series 2021-15: U.S.-UK Relations in the Time of Trump
In November 2016, I wrote an essay for H-Diplo on the possible impact of the Trump administration on U.S.-UK relations.[1] My first paragraph included the following sentences: “If Trump himself knows what he truly plans to do – as opposed to what he would truly like to do – he has hidden it from the…
Policy Series 2021-14: Joe Biden and the Gibbon Paradox
In early March 2018, evangelical leaders from around the world descended on Charlotte, North Carolina, for the funeral of the renowned preacher, Reverend Billy Graham. President Donald J. Trump joined the mourners. While there, Trump had a face-to-face conversation with Graham’s grandson, Edward. Graham the younger was an Army Ranger and had served for sixteen…
Policy Series 2021-13: Trump’s Foreign Policy Legacy
Four years ago, we wrote that Donald Trump’s presidency could spell the end of an already weakened liberal international order.[1] Now that the Trump presidency is in the rearview mirror, what can we make of what transpired for U.S. foreign policy and the global order? In this essay, we review what we wrote four years…
Policy Series 2021-12: What Nationalism Ended Up Looking Like
After a year of Donald Trump in the White House, and drawing on the lessons of the turn inward (by Herbert Hoover and even Franklin D. Roosevelt) during the Great Depression era, I argued that his hyper-nationalism in trade policy was inimical to U.S. economic and diplomatic interests.[1] His vocal and staged protectionism shirked decades…