Trump Goes Back To the Future on Foreign Policy

Since World War Two, there has been a broad bi­par­tis­an con­sensus that Amer­ica must play an act­ive role in main­tain­ing a lib­er­al world or­der. Even if con­ser­vat­ive hawks have been more eager to pro­ject force and lib­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al­ists pre­ferred dip­lomacy, there was wide­spread agree­ment that Amer­ica had an es­sen­tial role in pro­tect­ing the peace and pro­mot­ing shared in­terests. That con­sensus was threatened in re­cent years: first, by former Pres­id­ent Obama’s in­stinct­ive op­pos­i­tion to pro­ject Amer­ic­an power over­seas; later, by Pres­id­ent Trump’s ag­gress­ively isol­a­tion­ist “Amer­ica First” rhet­or­ic that cap­tured the en­thu­si­asm of a world-weary con­ser­vat­ive base.

Trump’s de­cision to strike Syr­ia in the wake of Bashar al-As­sad’s chem­ic­al-weapons at­tack against his cit­izens sug­gests a be­lated re­turn to nor­mal­ity. It’s a con­sequen­tial mo­ment in Trump’s pres­id­ency, since the pres­id­ent’s quick in­ter­ven­tion was at odds with much of what he’s said for years about for­eign af­fairs. In 2013, he slammed Pres­id­ent Obama for con­sid­er­ing mil­it­ary ac­tion against Syr­ia. On the cam­paign trail, he con­sist­ently ex­pressed a subtle ad­mir­a­tion for au­thor­it­ari­an lead­ers. He fre­quently cri­ti­cized George W. Bush’s in­ter­ven­tion in Ir­aq. But in the Rose Garden on Wed­nes­day, he hin­ted that he was tak­ing a new tack. “If the world changes … well, I do change, and I am flex­ible, and I’m proud of that flex­ib­il­ity,” Trump said.

Trump’s ap­par­ent volte-face also sug­gests that the more ex­per­i­enced hands in the ad­min­is­tra­tion—namely, De­fense Sec­ret­ary James Mat­tis and na­tion­al se­cur­ity ad­viser H.R. Mc­Mas­ter—are gain­ing clout over those with more het­ero­dox views on for­eign policy, such as Steph­en Ban­non. And Trump’s lim­ited use of force in Syr­ia won the sup­port of our close al­lies, once-crit­ic­al hawk­ish sen­at­ors such as John Mc­Cain and Lind­sey Gra­ham, and even the grudging sup­port of lead­ing Demo­crats in Con­gress. Polit­ic­ally speak­ing, it showed there’s a broad con­sensus for strong Amer­ic­an lead­er­ship—even if it’s triggered by a Johnny-come-lately like Trump.

Obama was the op­pos­ite of Trump: fa­cile with words, but flac­cid with his ac­tions. He gave a stir­ring na­tion­al ad­dress on the need to hold Syr­ia ac­count­able for us­ing chem­ic­al weapons, but nev­er did any­thing to pun­ish As­sad. Just be­fore leav­ing of­fice, he bragged about break­ing the for­eign policy es­tab­lish­ment (a group he claimed prefers “mil­it­ar­ized re­sponses.”) His lead­ing for­eign policy ad­viser, Ben Rhodes, fam­ously dis­missed the bi­par­tis­an roster of for­eign policy ex­perts in Wash­ing­ton as a “blob” for “whin­ing in­cess­antly about the col­lapse of the Amer­ic­an se­cur­ity or­der in Europe and the Middle East.” Obama’s deep pop­ular­ity with an in­creas­ingly anti-war base re­ori­ented the Demo­crat­ic Party in his im­age. The Obama White House staff was filled with ideo­lo­gic­ally driv­en loy­al­ists eager to trans­late the former pres­id­ent’s norm-break­ing vis­ion in­to prac­tice.

It’s iron­ic that Trump is routinely (and le­git­im­ately) faul­ted for norm break­ing while his pre­de­cessor’s open con­tempt for bi­par­tis­an for­eign policy tra­di­tions was largely over­looked. What’s even stranger is that a chastened Trump is the pres­id­ent who is the one bring­ing Amer­ica closer to its bi­par­tis­an for­eign policy roots.

TRAIL MIX

1. Rep. Ann Wag­n­er is step­ping down as the Na­tion­al Re­pub­lic­an Con­gres­sion­al Com­mit­tee’s fin­ance chair, the clearest sign that she’s pre­par­ing a run against Sen. Claire Mc­Caskill in Mis­souri. Wag­n­er helped the NR­CC raise nearly $36 mil­lion in the first three months of the year, an im­press­ive haul con­sid­er­ing her statewide am­bi­tions.

If she runs for the Sen­ate, she’d be­come the party’s top re­cruit for the 2018 midterms. Wag­n­er rep­res­ents a sub­urb­an St. Louis seat, has a track re­cord of rais­ing the mil­lions ne­ces­sary to chal­lenge a sit­ting sen­at­or, and would add some needed di­versity to the GOP’s Sen­ate caucus. (Of the 52 Re­pub­lic­an sen­at­ors, only five are wo­men.)

Mc­Caskill had the good for­tune to run against blun­der­ing Re­pub­lic­an Todd Akin in her last elec­tion; she was headed for de­feat if Re­pub­lic­ans had nom­in­ated a more com­pet­ent chal­lenger. Mis­souri has only got­ten more con­ser­vat­ive since 2012, hand­ing Pres­id­ent Trump a 19-point vic­tory in last year’s elec­tion. Un­like her red-state Sen­ate col­leagues, Mc­Caskill was an en­thu­si­ast­ic sur­rog­ate for Hil­lary Clin­ton’s pres­id­en­tial cam­paign, giv­ing Re­pub­lic­ans plenty of fod­der to use against her in the up­com­ing cam­paign

2. The Cook Polit­ic­al Re­port pub­lished its an­nu­al Par­tis­an Voter In­dex this week, com­plete with a must-read ana­lys­is by House-race ed­it­or Dav­id Wasser­man. The most im­port­ant find­ing: The num­ber of swing dis­tricts has con­sist­ently shrunk over the past couple of dec­ades. Only 72 of the 435 House seats are rated com­pet­it­ive (PVI of R+5 and D+5), less than half of the num­ber of swing seats (164) in 1997. In the past four years alone, the num­ber of swing seats has de­clined 20 per­cent.

But Wasser­man wrote that ideo­lo­gic­al self-sort­ing—not ger­ry­man­der­ing—was the main cul­prit for the de­creas­ing com­pet­it­ive­ness. People are either choos­ing to live along­side like-minded people, or are chan­ging their par­tis­an views to con­form to the pre­vail­ing views of their neigh­bors. Wasser­man found that a whop­ping 83 per­cent of the swing-seat de­cline stems from “the nat­ur­al geo­graph­ic sort­ing of the elect­or­ate,” while just 17 per­cent comes from ger­ry­man­der­ing.

It’s an­oth­er re­mind­er that line draw­ing isn’t why Demo­crats have been un­able to win back con­trol of the House for the past three elec­tions. The obstacles for the minor­ity party are real, but the solu­tion to re­gain­ing a House ma­jor­ity is to win over more mod­er­ate voters—or per­haps rely on Trump’s un­pop­ular­ity to do the job for them.