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…
Tag: 2021
Policy Series 2021-26: Trump’s Realism
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…
Policy Series 2021-25: Rendezvous with Infamy
“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…
Policy Series 2021-24: American Totalitarianism in the Age of Trump
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…
Policy Series 2021-23: Aristocracy, Oligarchy, and Donald Trump: The Age of Distrust
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…
Policy Series 2021-22: The Trump Presidency: Trump 1, IR Theory 0
Four years ago I was asked to address whether IR theory might help us understand the coming Trump presidency. I answered “no” for several reasons. IR theory is better at explanation than prediction. Even if it was reasonably good at prediction, its theories were completely outmatched by Donald Trump. Most IR theories are premised on…
Policy Series 2021-21: Canada and Trump Revisited, Revisited
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…
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…
