Tag: Trump

Policy Series: “Donald Trump and the Limits of International Law”

By Matthew Evangelista

One of the most common words associated with the candidacy and then presidency of Donald Trump has been ‘unprecedented.’ The President himself has even tweeted it, although his spelling (“unpresidented”[2]) occasioned some ridicule. We hear that Trump has an unprecedented amount of billionaires in his cabinet, an unprecedented number of business conflicts of interest, an…

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Policy Series: Trump and Latin America: Asymmetry and the Problem of Influence

By Tom Long, Max Paul Friedman

Despite its proximity and importance, Latin America usually does not receive a lot of attention in U.S. elections. After Donald Trump’s shocking and ultimately successful campaign for the presidency, the region may miss being out of the limelight. Somewhat atypically, many of Trump’s campaign promises related to Latin America. Mexico was, and remains, Trump’s villain…

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Policy Roundtable 1-9 on U.S.-China Relations and the Trump Administration

By Joshua Rovner, Dingding Chen, M. Taylor Fravel, Mira Rapp-Hooper, Joseph M. Siracusa, Toshi Yoshihara, Zhu Feng

Nearly twenty years ago, Robert Ross wrote an influential article on the sources of stability in East Asia. He argued that while the United States and China were destined to engage in great-power competition, geography and structural factors would lead to a stable regional bipolar balance. The United States would focus on maintaining its maritime…

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Policy Series: Trump and Europe – An Inauspicious Start

By Piers Ludlow

European public opinion has a problem with U.S. Republican Presidents. Ronald Reagan was deeply mistrusted in his early years in power;[1] George W. Bush was regarded as a disaster and liability well before the crisis-scarred end of his term.[2] Barack Obama, meanwhile, continued to enjoy excellent approval ratings on this side of the Atlantic.[3] As…

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Policy Series: Expertise and Naïveté in Decision-Making: Theory, History, and the Trump Administration

By Lori Helene Gronich

Donald Trump has never claimed to be a foreign policy expert.[1] He does not like in-depth reading, and prefers one-page policy option papers with “lots of graphics and maps.”[2] He claims to have a “very good brain,” and promises to be a strong leader who puts “America first” and makes it “great again.”[3] Should we…

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Policy Series: Will Trumpism increase the Danger of War in the International System?: IR Theory and the Illiberal Turn in World Politics

By Benjamin Miller

This short piece focuses on mapping and evaluating some of the expectations of International Relations (IR) theory with regard to the potential effects of Trumpism and the illiberal turn in world politics on war and peace.[1] Obviously, there is a high degree of uncertainty here, but that does not mean that such an intellectual exercise…

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Policy Series: “The Art of the Bluff: The U.S.-Japan Alliance under the Trump Administration”

By Jennifer Lind

Tell us this cannot happen, the Japanese said to their American friends, listening to Republican Party nominee Donald J. Trump during the 2016 campaign. Trump attacked Japan as an economic predator, disdained American allies as free riders, and broadly rejected the U.S. grand strategy that had benefited Japan tremendously. Friends in Boston and Washington D.C….

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Policy Roundtable 1-8: Immigration and Refugee Policy in Donald Trump’s America

By Joshua Rovner, Terri E. Givens, James F. Hollifield, Assaf Moghadam

Donald Trump made immigration and refugee policy central to his presidential campaign. According to Trump, radical Islamic extremism and the massive refugee flows out of the Middle East combined to created unacceptable risks. Following the December 2015 mass shooting in San Bernadino, California, the Trump campaign called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims…

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