Tag: Trump administration

H-Diplo|ISSF Commentary: Avey, “The Biden and Trump National Security Strategies: Continuity, Change, and the Implications for Scholars”

By Paul C. Avey

Despite a sense that most formal strategy documents do not matter much, there is a great deal of attention to a President’s National Security Strategy (NSS) when it is released.[1] Scholars, think tank analysts, and pundits are quick to comment on its strengths and, more commonly, highlight its flaws. The release of President Joe Biden’s…

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Policy Series 2021-60: Trump and Russia—Less than Meets the Eye

By Angela Stent

After all the controversy, accusations, angry tweets, impeachment hearings, and conspiracy theories, how is the Trump administration’s Russia policy to be assessed? Russia consumed an unprecedented amount of domestic energy during Trump’s presidency, casting a shadow over the White House during the four years Trump lived there. And yet there has been scant systematic analysis…

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Policy Series 2021-58: Liberal Internationalism and Partisan Discontents into the Post-Trump United States

By George N. Georgarakis, Robert Y. Shapiro

We completed this article in September 2021, just as the Taliban defeated the American-supported government of Afghanistan, and the United States worked to transport all of its citizens out of the country along with the people of Afghanistan who worked for and with its troops, contractors, and officials.  On the liberal internationalism front, this is…

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Policy Series 2021-57: Riding the Rollercoaster: India and the Trump Years

By Tanvi Madan

On November 9, 2016, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called President-elect Donald Trump to congratulate him on his electoral victory.  Perhaps fittingly, news of this exchange first appeared on Twitter.[1] Subsequently, reports emerged in late November that then Indian foreign secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was in the United States to meet with members of Trump’s transition…

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Policy Series 2021-56: Death Grip Handshakes and Flattery Diplomacy: The Macron-Trump Connection and Its Larger Implications for Alliance Politics

By Kathryn C. Statler

Forewarned by a number of other world leaders, French President Emmanuel Macron was well-prepared for the infamous Donald Trump handshake.  On 25 May 2017 at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Brussels, the two world leaders met for the first time.  With cameras clicking and video rolling, President Trump praised Macron’s “tremendous victory”…

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Policy Series 2021-55: “Mr. Brexit”: Donald Trump and the UK’s Departure from the European Union

By Lindsay Aqui

The two electoral shocks of 2016 – the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union (‘Brexit’) and Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States – left observers aghast or elated.  For those who found themselves in the former category, the outcome of the Brexit referendum represented a crisis that dwarfed any other…

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Policy Series 2021-53: The Trump Administration and Economic Sanctions

By Nicholas Mulder

Evaluating the significance and effects of economic sanctions is a serious challenge for scholars.  For one thing, appraising the outcomes of sanctions raises the question of perspective: from whose vantage point do we observe their use and effects?  While U.S. policymakers often change their approach to sanctions, to targeted countries the continuities in attitude are…

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Policy Series 2021-51: “Sh*thole Countries”: Was Trump’s Foreign Policy Racist?

By William I. Hitchcock

Throughout his years in the public eye, former president Donald Trump has frequently said things that reveal his belief that the construct of ‘race’ is a valid measure of human difference and human worth.  In countless public utterances, he has used racist, derogatory language to insult, belittle, and abuse non-white people.  He has also conflated…

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