Flooding the Zone—Foreign Policy Edition

First-term White House chief strategist Steve Bannon famously recommended a “muzzle velocity” of policy initiatives to overwhelm President Donald Trump’s opponents. In Trump’s second term, we’re seeing this approach implemented not only in U.S. domestic politics but also in foreign policy, which has seen a dizzying flurry of activity in the administration’s first 100 days. Indeed, it appears that President Trump has delegated much of his domestic agenda to officials while he focuses on foreign policy, perhaps because that is where he hopes to leave his greatest mark on history— as a negotiator of deals on trade, ending the war in Ukraine, reaching a new nuclear agreement with Iran, or even becoming the first president since World War II to acquire new U.S. territories.

As many commentators have noted, the guardrails have come off in President Trump’s second term. Unified Republican control of Congress, the sway President Trump holds over his party, and the administration’s decimation of the federal bureaucracy, mean that many of the constraints he faced in his first term have fallen away. This has allowed for a volume of foreign policy change that my work with Brett Ashley Leeds suggests is unusual for a democracy but that might reflect the effects of increased polarization and democratic backsliding in the United States.

Some of President Trump’s foreign policy initiatives over the past 100 days were arguably predictable in nature, if not in extent and speed: the alignment with Russia against Ukraine, tariffs, increased confrontation with China, strikes on the Houthis, and hostility toward international organizations and multilateralism more generally. Other initiatives have been surprising, foremost the gutting of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and President Trump’s territorial claims on Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal, and the Gaza Strip. Trump’s demands for territory weaken the norm of territorial integrity—a cornerstone of international peace—at a time when it is already under threat in places as diverse as Ukraine and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Whether surprising or not, the rhetoric and actions of the Trump administration will leave their mark on the world. This is in part because of the substance of President Trump’s foreign policy, and in part because of its speed and intensity. While foreign leaders were wary of President Trump during his first term, the fast fire of U.S. foreign policy in these first 100 days has created a new urgency to adjust to a changed America. Perhaps this is the silver lining for foreign states: they simply cannot ignore what is going on and hope for a return to normal. This incentivizes them to prepare better for the future and not be caught off guard again, as Europeans seemingly were on Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine and with regard to their own standing in the eyes of the Trump administration, as revealed in Vice President Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference and the disdain expressed by government officials in the Signal chat about Yemeni strikes.

Other countries—allies and adversaries alike—have learned that U.S. commitments may not be reliable, undermining the ease with which the United States can make deals. These concerns are currently playing out, for example, regarding a possible nuclear deal with Iran. The opportunity is ripe for a new accord, given Iran’s diminished power and President Trump’s hawk’s advantage to conclude a deal. Indeed, President Trump could make a weaker agreement than President Obama’s 2016 nuclear deal and face less domestic criticism. The larger latitude for negotiation that President Trump enjoys should make a deal easier to reach (and might be exploited by Iranians who can perhaps claim they need more concessions, given their greater domestic constraint). Yet, despite these very favorable conditions, a deal may not happen because of President Trump’s lack of trustworthiness in the Iranians’ eyes. Without a deal, joint U.S.-Israeli military action to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon becomes a real possibility.

Some have argued that the United States is committing hegemonic suicide. Indeed, there is reason to believe that President Trump’s actions will undermine U.S. influence abroad. The dismantling of USAID means that the United States has lost an important foreign policy tool—instead of being able to rely on soft power to get other countries to follow the United States because they want to, Americans will need to rely more on coercion, which is far more expensive. Furthermore, even if President Trump might celebrate allies’ newfound commitment to increase their defense burden, there is a downside: as alliance scholarship shows, once allies become more self-sufficient, the patron’s influence over them diminishes. While European allies are turning away from the United States and towards each other, China is wooing other countries into its orbit. Whether China will win the global battle for goodwill is an open question—but it has become far easier for it to do so.

Michaela Mattes is a professor of political science at UC Berkeley.

Thumbnail credit: The Trump White House (Flickr)