Abstract
Although “constraint” is generally not the first word that comes to mind when one is analyzing the behavior of President Donald Trump, this chapter presents the contrarian view of a president enjoying far less freedom of maneuver than he is often perceived to possess. The constraints discussed herein are of two sorts. One constraint can be said to be exogenous to the president, and the other endogenous. Each, albeit in different ways, affects both the manner in which Trump approaches his responsibilities (as he takes these to be) and the way in which others interpret his decision-making; together, the dual constraints act to shed light on the rudiments of the president’s “operational code” (or worldview), especially insofar as it concerns America’s relations with allies.
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Notes
- 1.
See Arthur Paulson, Donald Trump and the Prospect for American Democracy: An Unprecedented President in an Age of Polarization (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018). Although there have been 45 administrations, an enumerative oddity results in there having been only 44 actual human beings presiding over these administrations. This relates to the manner in which Grover Cleveland’s time in power is assessed. Because he served two discontinuous terms—elected in 1884, failing to be reelected in 1888, and regaining the White House in 1892—his reign is counted as two separate administrations, thus he is both America’s 22nd president and its 24th. In contrast, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected four consecutive times from 1932 through 1944, is counted as only one president, the country’s 32nd.
- 2.
For assessments, pro and con, see Victor Davis Hanson, The Case for Trump (New York: Basic Books, 2019); Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018).
- 3.
This latter, best exemplified in Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (New York: Henry Holt, 2018).
- 4.
Regarding those checks and balances, the locus classicus is Edward S. Corwin, The President: Office and Powers, 4th rev. ed. (New York: New York University Press, 1957). Corwin is remembered especially for observing that when it came to matters of foreign policy, the Constitution offered the executive and legislative branches of government a “permanent invitation to struggle.” Others have lately been arguing that the “struggle” has been increasingly a one-sided contest, favoring the executive; see, for example, Barbara Hinckley, Less Than Meets the Eye: Foreign Policy Making and the Myth of the Assertive Congress (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Douglas L. Kriner, After the Rubicon: Congress, Presidents, and the Politics of Waging War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); and Walter A. McDougall, The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy: How America’s Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).
- 5.
While the Mueller report ultimately found that the Trump campaign had not colluded with Russian state figures to influence the election, the president’s own reaction upon learning in May 2017 that Mueller had been appointed to lead the investigation into the collusion allegations spoke volumes about his own perception of the tenuousness of his situation. Upon discovering from his then attorney general, Jeff Sessions, of Mueller’s appointment at a meeting in the Oval Office, Trump responded dejectedly, “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.” Quoted in Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman, “A Portrait of the White House and Its Culture of Dishonesty,” New York Times, April 18, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/us/politics/white-house-mueller-report.html?emc=edit_th_190419&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=621718380419.
- 6.
On this concept, see Alexander L. George, “The ‘Operational Code’: A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and Decision-Making,” International Studies Quarterly 13 (June 1969): 190–222.
- 7.
Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, ed. and trans. Edward A. Shils and Henry A. Finch (New York: Free Press, 1949).
- 8.
John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. vii–viii.
- 9.
Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), p. 181.
- 10.
On the Trump base, see Walter Russell Mead, “The Jacksonian Revolt: American Populism and the Liberal World Order,” Foreign Affairs 96 (March/April 2017): 2–7; J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (New York: HarperCollins, 2016).
- 11.
See John William Ward, Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955); David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, The Rise of Andrew Jackson: Myth, Manipulation, and the Making of Modern Politics (New York: Basic Books, 2018).
- 12.
Although some of Trump’s harshest critics like to consider him a “draft-dodger,” he managed quite legally to avoid being sent to Vietnam, initially by availing himself of a student deferment from conscription (the famous “2-S” category) and upon its expiry, apparently managing to secure a “1-Y” medical assessment from his draft board, because of bone spurs in the heel of one foot. This condition, while exempting him from conscription for overseas service, would have placed him in a call-up category should, for instance, the Viet Cong have stormed the beaches of Long Island.
- 13.
According to Trump, the only reason McCain was considered by some war hero is because he was captured; but as far as he himself was concerned, McCain “is not a war hero…. I like people who weren’t captured.” See “Donald Trump: John McCain ‘Is a War Hero Because He Was Captured’,” Chicago Tribune, July 18, 2015, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-donald-trump-john-mccain-20150718-story.html.
- 14.
Steven Metz, “How Trump’s Anti-Wilsonian Streak May Revolutionize U.S. Strategy,” World Politics Review, April 21, 2017, https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/21914/how-trump-s-anti-wilsonian-streak-may-revolutionize-u-s-strategy.
- 15.
Wilson has longtime been considered by many scholars to have been the most frankly representative example of a racist president since before the Civil War. See Kathleen L. Wolgemuth, “Woodrow Wilson and Federal Segregation,” Journal of Negro History 44 (April 1959): 158–173; Nancy J. Weiss, “The Negro and the New Freedom: Fighting Wilsonian Segregation,” Political Science Quarterly 84 (March 1969): 61–79; Morton Sosna, “The South in the Saddle: Racial Politics During the Wilson Years,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 54 (Autumn 1970): 30–49; and Richard M. Abrams, “Woodrow Wilson and the Southern Congressmen, 1913–1916,” Journal of Southern History 22 (November 1956): 417–437.
- 16.
See for this psychoanalytical critique, Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, Twenty-Eighth President of the United States: A Psychological Study (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), as well as the somewhat less vitriolic but still harsh assessments of Alexander L. George and Juliette L. George, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House: A Personality Study (New York: John Day, 1956); and Bernard Brodie, “A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Woodrow Wilson,” World Politics 9 (April 1957): 413–422. Other writers have located what they took to be the problem not in Wilson’s psychological condition but in his neurological one; for examples, see Edwin A. Weinstein, “Woodrow Wilson’s Neurological Illness,” Journal of American History 57 (September 1970): 324–351; as well as Weinstein, James William Anderson, and Arthur S. Link, “Woodrow Wilson’s Political Personality: A Reappraisal,” Political Science Quarterly 93 (Winter 1978–1979): 585–598. A judicious summary of the contending camps—the psychoanalytical versus the neurological—is found in Dorothy Ross, “Woodrow Wilson and the Case for Psychohistory,” Journal of American History 69 (December 1982): 659–668. Finally, it should not be imagined Wilson has lacked for defenders against the charge that he was wrong in the head, with his most notable defender remarking wryly that for “a mentally unbalanced person, Wilson had a remarkable career. Somehow, he managed to make distinguished contributions to the four separate fields of scholarship, higher education, domestic politics, and diplomacy.” Arthur S. Link, “The Case for Woodrow Wilson,” Harper’s Magazine 234 (April 1967): 85–93, quote at p. 93.
- 17.
Illustratively, see Brandy Lee, et al., The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Discuss a President (New York: St. Martin’s, 2017).
- 18.
Quoted in A. Scott Berg, Wilson (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2013), p. 397.
- 19.
For useful assessments of the impact of America First at the time, see in particular two books by Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle Against Intervention, 1940–1941 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953); Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against American Intervention in World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974). Also see Manfred Jonas, Isolationism in America, 1935–1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966).
- 20.
On collective security as the “essence” of Wilsonianism, see John A. Thompson, “Wilsonianism: The Dynamics of a Conflicted Concept,” International Affairs 86 (January 2010): 27–47.
- 21.
Lloyd E. Ambrosius, “Wilson, the Republicans, and French Security After World War I,” Journal of American History 59 (September 1972): 341–352. Wilson agreed, only reluctantly, that the tripartite alliance so desired by France should be incorporated into the Versailles treaty, but when the US Senate failed to ratify the latter, the former also became a dead letter. See Louis A. R. Yates, The United States and French Security, 1917–1921: A Study in American Diplomatic History (New York: Twayne, 1957); Walter A. McDougall, France’s Rhineland Diplomacy, 1914–1924: The Last Bid for a Balance of Power in Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).
- 22.
Associated with the American psychologist, Walter B. Pitkin, Life Begins at Forty (New York: McGraw Hill/Whittlesey House, 1932). William Wordsworth’s 1802 poem, My Heart Leaps Up, is the source of the line, “the Child is father of the Man.”
- 23.
Readers interested in a sprightly review of the recurring bouts of “declinism” in America should consult Josef Joffe, The Myth of America’s Decline: Politics, Economics, and a Half Century of False Prophecies (New York: Liveright, 2014).
- 24.
Donald J. Trump, with Tony Schwartz, Trump: The Art of the Deal (New York: Ballantine Books, 1987).
- 25.
Ibid., 45–63.
- 26.
Some scholars hold diffuse reciprocity to be one of the three defining characteristics of a multilateral order, with the two other stipulatory elements being indivisibility and nondiscrimination. See Lisa L. Martin, “Interests, Power, and Multilateralism,” International Organization 46 (Autumn 1992): 765–792; John Gerard Ruggie, “Multilateralism: The Anatomy of an Institution,” International Organization 46 (Summer 1992): 561–598.
- 27.
The principal source for conceptualizing NATO as the “democratic alliance” par excellence is Thomas Risse-Kappen, Cooperation Among Democracies: The European Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
- 28.
See Thomas Risse, “‘Let’s Argue!’: Communicative Action in World Politics,” International Organization 54 (Winter 2000): 1–39.
- 29.
Julia E. Sweig, Friendly Fire: Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti-American Century (New York: Public Affairs, 2006). Also see, for that era’s wave of criticism of American foreign policy, Peter J. Katzenstein and Robert O. Keohane, eds., Anti-Americanisms in World Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007).
- 30.
Stephen G. Brooks, and William C. Wohlforth, “International Relations Theory and the Case Against Unilateralism,” Perspectives on Politics 3 (September 2005): 509–524; and Idem, “The Once and Future Superpower: Why China Won’t Overtake the United States,” Foreign Affairs 95 (May/June 2016): 91–104, quote at p. 91.
- 31.
For one such assessment, see Richard Wike et al., “Trump’s International Ratings Remain Low, Especially Among Key Allies,” Pew Research Center, October 2018.
- 32.
The survey was conducted by pollster Nik Nanos in the last week of April 2019; see Michelle Zilio, “Canadians More Positive About Ties with Europe Than with the U.S., China: Poll,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), May 3, 2019: A6.
- 33.
Luca Ratti, A Not-So-Special Relationship: The US, the UK and German Unification, 1945–1990 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), p. 52.
- 34.
See David N. Schwartz, NATO’s Nuclear Dilemmas (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1983).
- 35.
Article 13 of NATO’s founding treaty stipulates that “[a]fter the Treaty has been in force for twenty years [viz., after 1969], any Party may cease to be a Party one year after its notice of denunciation has been given to the Government of the United States of America, which will inform the Governments of the other Parties of the deposit of each notice of denunciation.” “The North Atlantic Treaty,” in The NATO Handbook: 50th Anniversary Edition (Brussels: NATO Office of Information and Press, 1998), p. 399.
- 36.
As is argued by David G. Haglund and Maud Quessard-Salvaing, “How the West Was One: France, America, and the ‘Huntingtonian Reversal’,” Orbis 62 (Fall 2018): 557–581.
- 37.
See Rebecca Friedman Lissner and Mira Rapp-Hooper, “The Day After Trump: American Strategy for a New International Order,” Washington Quarterly 41 (Spring 2018): 7–25.
- 38.
Alex Danchev, “Shared Values in the Transatlantic Relationship,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 7 (August 2005): 429–436, quote on p. 433.
- 39.
See the “transactionalist” assessment of John J. Mearsheimer, “Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order,” International Security 43 (Spring 2019): 7–50, quoting from pp. 48–49: “Most of the countries in Europe, especially the major powers, are likely to become part of the U.S.-led bounded order, although they are unlikely to play a serious military role in containing China. They do not have the capability to project substantial military power into East Asia, and they have little reason to acquire it, because China does not directly threaten Europe, and because it makes more sense for Europe to pass the buck to the United States and its Asian allies. U.S. policymakers, however, will want the Europeans inside their bounded order for strategically related economic reasons. In particular, the United States will want to keep European countries from selling dual-use technologies to China and to help put economic pressure on Beijing when necessary. In return, U.S. military forces will remain in Europe, keeping NATO alive and continuing to serve as the pacifier in that region. Given that virtually every European leader would like to see that happen, the threat of leaving should give the United States significant leverage in getting the Europeans to cooperate on the economic front against China.”
References
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Heidler, David S., and Jeanne T. Heidler, The Rise of Andrew Jackson: Myth, Manipulation, and the Making of Modern Politics. New York: Basic Books, 2018.
Hinckley, Barbara. Less Than Meets the Eye: Foreign Policy Making and the Myth of the Assertive Congress. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
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Ruggie, John Gerard. “Multilateralism: The Anatomy of an Institution.” International Organization 46 (Summer 1992): 561–598.
Thompson, John A. “Wilsonianism: The Dynamics of a Conflicted Concept.” International Affairs 86 (January 2010): 27–47.
Trump, Donald J. with Tony Schwartz, Trump: The Art of the Deal. New York: Ballantine Books, 1987.
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Haglund, D.G. (2020). America’s Surprisingly “Constrained” Presidency: Implications for Transatlantic Relations. In: Quessard, M., Heurtebize, F., Gagnon, F. (eds) Alliances and Power Politics in the Trump Era. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37258-3_2
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