William D. James
Does the Trump administration have a grand strategy? Many are sceptical, regarding the president’s brand of populism as incompatible with the very notion. Searching for coherence is certainly challenging given his mercurial style. Will he arm Taiwan and Ukraine, or abandon them in grand bargains with China and Russia? One moment he hails Europeans’ defence investment pledges; the next, he muses about annexing Greenland. Some suggest that such inconsistencies are part of a ‘deliberate strategy’ to keep allies and adversaries off balance. Others argue that, beneath the bluster, there is clear ‘prioritisation’, with the Indo-Pacific fully eclipsing Europe. The appointment of Elbridge Colby at the Department of War and the early berating of NATO allies suggest as much. Still, another view holds that Trump will focus on the Western Hemisphere, freeing China and Russia to carve out their own regional spheres of influence. The military build-up around Venezuela, the Golden Dome project, and Washington’s diplomatic overtures to Beijing and Moscow add ballast to this thesis.
There is clearly much debate but little consensus. Part of the challenge for those seeking to discern order in Trump’s actions is the sheer volume of competing statements and examples of contradictory behaviour. The bombing campaigns in Yemen and Iran, for example, hardly suggest a narrow focus on either East Asia or the Western Hemisphere. Meanwhile, the recently announced drawdown of troops from Romania might imply broader retrenchment from Europe, but the rude health of the US-Poland alliance suggests otherwise.
Yet to dwell on Trump, or any single administration for that matter, is to miss the deeper question. Trump’s presidency is emblematic of a perennial puzzle: how to interpret coherence in statecraft amid the turbulence of domestic and international affairs. The more enduring question is: where do grand strategic ideas come from? Are they the work of one leader, or the product of the wider machinery of state and society that surrounds them?
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