The Education of Donald Trump

Slowly but surely the presidency of Donald Trump is being normalized.  By normalized it is

meant that the Trump presidency is increasingly being captured and confined by the institutional powers and realities of American and world politics.  This is something that Steve Bannon feared, and which both Trump’s supporters and distractors should recognize.

There is an old political science and political adage that declares that presidents have more authority and freedom to act internationally than they do domestically.  This is because while the structures of the Constitution–such as checks and balances and separation of powers–limit the domestic power of presidents, they are more free to act internationally, especially with either congressional acquiescence or affirmative grants of power.  This recognition that presidents have more autonomy internationally is rooted in famous Justice Robert Jackson concurrence in the 1952 Supreme Court case Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer.  Yes, in many ways this dicta is correct constitutionally, but it misses something far more powerful when it comes to defining presidential authority; specifically the political and institutional constraints on presidents and how, as Stephen Skowronek argues in Presidential Leadership in Political Time, how history and context defines presidential power.

Back in 2008 during the US presidential elections when lecturing in Europe I was asked how the presidency of Barack Obama would differ from that of George Bush in the area of foreign policy.  I argued that the best predictor of a new president’s foreign policy was to look to his predecessor’s.  Presidents really have far less freedom to depart from the past than many think.  The foreign policy establishment is big and powerful in the US and it largely bipartisan.  Geo-political forces such as  the state of the world economy, the political interests of other nations, and the overall limits on US power and reach too further define what presidents can do.  Yes some may claim some presidents made major shifts–Nixon and China–but the changing geo-political role of China in the world made such a choice inevitable.

Obama proved that.  After making numerous promises, the Obama foreign policy was defined by choices made by Bush. The war on terror continued, troops remained in Afghanistan and Iraq, Gitmo was not closed, drone attacks persisted, and the US did not fundamentally change Middle East politics even after the Arab Spring opening because entrenched support for Israel did not change.  Even Obama’s effort to make an Asian pivot has had mixed results, and he was unsuccessful in making many changes in how to handle Syria and North Korea.  Yes Obama did make some marginal changes, but fundamentally more continuity with Bush than a break.

The same is now true with Trump.   Candidate Trump disagreed with almost all things Obama.  The Iran nuclear deal would be torn up.  Trump pledged a Mexican wall, declare China a currency manipulator and impose tariffs on their products.  NATO was obsolete, the Syrian policy wrong, Putin and Russia a friend,  and global engagement must be retracted to put America first.  Great rhetoric, but the reality is tht slowly the forces that constrained Obama are constraining Trump.  

One now sees a new Trump.  The bombing of Syria, while a departure perhaps from what Obama did, is something that Hillary Clinton and most Republicans and Democrats in Congress support.  It produced a rift with Russia that now leads Trump to muse that perhaps our relations with that country are the worst ever (they are not).    Moreover, despite tough talk, trump’s options with Syria are limited, as they are throughout the Middle East.  Expect no major change in politics toward Egypt and Israel, and do not expect any major break in addressing the Palestinian quest for a homeland.

NATO is good, and China will not be declared a currency manipulator, and, in fact, if they help Trump to contain North Korea’s nuclear program, he will give them a great trade deal.  This statement is recognition that despite the show of force the US is demonstrating in sending ships to North Korea, there is little he can do along to change the politics in that country.  Gitmo will not be closed, the policy toward Cuba not reversed, and even the dropping of MOAB–the mother of all bombs–on Afghanistan–it was a policy in the works under the Obama administration.    Trump’s enhanced deportation policy and extreme vetting looks more and more like a variation of what Obama did–partly courtesy of the federal courts–and there will be no shift in the drone war

Nearly 90 days into the Trump presidency one can already seen more continuity with Obama than breaks.  Yes there are still rough edges, yes there appears to be no Trump grand strategy, but that lives a void to be filled by the bureaucracy and foreign policy establishment.  All this is exacerbated by the fact that Trump has not filled many key State and foreign policy positions, but that only means that the weight of the status quois filling the void.

The real sign of Donald Trump’s education or normalizing was the removal of Steve Bannon from the National Security Council.  Bannon saw the power of the bureaucracy and wanted to smash it.  Instead it smashed him and may soon lead to his ouster from the Trump administration in total.  That was a Trump presidency turning point.

It seemed just a few weeks ago people were talking of a failed Trump presidency, impeachment, or a major international crisis.   Yet increasingly likely is that an incompetent Trump will create the space for the bureaucracy to take over in the realm of foreign policy, for good or bad, and to the fear of delight of his supporters and detractors.

The Ethical Code of Dick Cheney

Please note:  This essay originally appeared in Politics in Minnesota.  Please consider subscribing to  that publication.

Has Dick Cheney ever expressed a moral qualm about anything he ever did? 
    If his comments about the Senate torture report released late last year are any indication, the simple answer is no.  Cheney’s life, both public and private, reveal a pattern of selfishness, devoid of any sense that he has ethically reflected on any of his actions or found any regret in his behavior.  He stands as the paradigm of a public official nearly devoid of a sense of personal integrity, demonstrating a sense of self-rationalization that stands as a negative example of what ethics in public office represents.
    There is a consensus among those who teach and write on government ethics that it includes a sense of personal integrity, reflection, consistency, respect for rule of law, attention to the reality and appearance of conflicts of interest, a shunning of self-dealing, respect for truth telling, and promoting the public good.  Applying these ethical benchmarks to Cheney, how does he measure up?
    Dick Cheney’s public career is long.  He served as a member of Congress, a presidential chief-of-staff, secretary of defense, and vice-president, in addition to being the CEO of Halliburton.  He has been described as one of the most powerful vice-presidents in history.  Yet almost from the start of his adult life Cheney had evidenced a selfish approach to the world, evincing no ethical maturation over time.  He is well-known for having dodged the draft and the Vietnam War with five deferments, proclaiming in a Washington Post interview that he “had other priorities in the 60's than military service."  This is the same person who as secretary of defense sent troops to Iraq in Operation Desert Storm and later to Afghanistan and Iraq again as part of the War on Terrorism.  Military service is a noble calling for Cheney; when it is others besides him who put their life on the line.  If the mark of integrity is consistency between what one says and does, hypocrisy is the badge of unethical behavior.  As philosopher Immanuel Kant once argued, a defining trait of unethical behavior is making yourself an exception to a rule you expect everyone else to follow.  This is what Cheney has done.
    Selflessly serving his country has never been an ethical priority for Cheney.  As CEO of Halliburton he did business with the US government that often amounted to gouging the taxpayer, with recurrent allegations that his company engaged in bribes to secure business.  When he gave up that post to become vice-president the New York Times reported that he may have lied about severing his ties with his former company.  It might well be that as VP he personally profited from decisions he made when Halliburton received government contracts.  Even if he did not, the appearance of conflict of interest was something  that he ignored.  Further proof of how he was inured to the appearance or reality of conflicts of interest was his hunting trip with Supreme Court Justice Scalia and how such activity might compromise the integrity of an impartial judicial system, especially at a time when the judiciary was adjudicating many Bush administration policies.
    When it comes to his conduct in government some might argue that Cheney is the consummate Machiavellian, echoing an “ends justifies the means” ethic. His comments about torture after the recent release of the Senate report that  “I would do it again in a minute” or that as he said on Meet the Press that “I’m more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that, in fact, were innocent” clearly demonstrate an ends justifies the means mentality.  But labeling Cheney a Machiavellian acting for a noble cause gives him too much moral credit.  First, his attitude in these statements expresses contempt for rule of law and human rights, something we expect of someone in a leadership position in a constitutional democracy.  Second, his statements reflect less an appeal to some public or greater good than they speak of post hoc rationalization of illegal behavior.
    Cheney is not really Machiavellian–he is simply partisan and self-interested.  In 2004 after Bush won re-election the vice-president spoke of tax cuts and spending priorities favoring his supporters by stating “We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due.”   Cheney is less interested in appeals to the greater good than his own personal interests or that of his friends. Don’t forget, Cheney too has expressed disdain for the importance of personal ethics in guiding government policy. Time once reported him saying about energy policy that: “Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.”
    Respect for legality, patriotism, and honesty are generally hallmarks of ethical behavior. Yet Cheney’s chief of staff Scooter Libby was convicted of four counts of lying and obstruction of justice, and he and the vice-president are  tied to the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame in retaliation for her husband and diplomat Joseph Wilson writing a New York Times op-ed sharply critical of the Bush Administration’s false claims of Iraq’s efforts to obtain nuclear materials.  It was such claims about Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction that served as the pretext for the 2003 invasion.  Cheney continues to lie when it comes to Saddam Hussein, asserting in a 2014 Meet the Press interview that he "had a 10-year relationship with al-Qaida" even though all the evidence clearly refutes such a claim.
    Finally, some want to give Cheney credit for supporting same-sex marriage.  Yet such support may be less altruistic and principled than thought–perhaps based more on the fact that his daughter is a lesbian.  Therefore his views be less about ethics and more about personal or family self-interest.
    What do we learn about Dick Cheney’s ethics?  While his entire life has not been reviewed one can still learn a lot about his character based on choices he made in critical situations It is clear that by most standards regarding what would define someone as ethical, Cheney falls far short.  He is blind to conflicts of interest, real or apparent, is willing to lie for personal gain, and he is willing to make himself an exception to standards of conduct that most of us would expect others to follow.

The Lessons of Vietnam: Why Obama’s, McCain’s, and All the Other ISIS Plans will Fail

Listening to Obama’s speech Wednesday outlining his ISIS strategy was deja vu’ all over again.    It regurgitated the same failed strategy to deal with terrorism that Bush first gesticulated; but more importantly it uncomfortably demonstrated yet again the failed lessons of Vietnam that American leaders have yet to learn in the 40 years since that war ended.  His speech, along with the other plans proposed by the neo-cons and warmongers such as John McCain and Graham Lindsay, aptly confirmed one of the greatest lines by Karl Marx who stated once in his The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
    In a nutshell, Obama’s strategy is simple and simpleminded–America will drop tons of bombs on ISIS, expand the war to Syria, and rely upon ground troops provided by Iraq and other countries to replace Americans on the ground. It is a military strategy devoid of a political solution, emphasizing that it may take years (and into the next presidency) to succeed.  Obama inherited a failed war and is now passing it onto the next president.
    How much this reminds me of Vietnam, except not Obama is both Johnson and Nixon at the same time. President Johnson inherited a nascent war from Kennedy only to escalate it and then in  the waning year of his presidency to express remorse about its efficacy after the Tet Offense in 1968 where any confidence of US victory was destroyed by a massive North Vietnamese offense in January of that year.  The war cost Johnson a second term as president.  Nixon took over, again escalated it, including expanding the war illegally and secretly with bombings into Cambodia.  When  that did not work, Nixon’s peace plan was the “Vietnamization” of the war–replacing American ground troops with those of the South Vietnamese–hoping that the latter would be able to continue the war and delay America’s indignant and inevitable loss for a few years. 
    Obama’s expansion of the bombings and reliance upon Iraq or other ground troops is just Cambodia and Vietnamization warmed over.  But so was Bush’s response to 9-11, or to the invasion of Iraq in pursuit of the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.  In all these cases the assumption was that American military might will overwhelm the enemy, liberating the people to form their own democratic societies.  It worked really well in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
    Alone the factual parallels to Vietnam should be instructive to why the Obama, McCain, et al plans will fail.  But dig deeper, there are two major lessons or reasons why any of the plans currently proposed are farces.  First, consider Powell Doctrine.  General Colin Powell in 1990 stated that the use of US military force needs to answer several questions, including asking whether there is a vital US interest at stake?  Are there clear objectives for the use of force?  Is there a clear definition of success?  And is there an exit strategy?  On all accounts, what Obama described in his Wednesday speech missed the mark.  About the only real rationale for going back to war is that we failed before  and that now we need to do more of the same to postpone failure even longer.  It is not clear what the US interest is, and even if there is one, we have no benchmarks for success or a strategy for leaving.  Quagmire was the word once used to describe Vietnam–that is the new word now for Iraq.
    But even more profoundly, the failure of Obama’s strategy lies in perhaps the most important lesson of Vietnam–the limits of US military power.  The single greatest book on Vietnam remains  Frances FitzGerald’s Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam.  In describing the failed war she describes of the US escalation into Vietnam:

    It was entering into a moral and ideological struggle over the form of the state and the goals of the society.  Its success with the chosen contender would depend not merely on US power but on the resources of both the United States and the Saigon government to solve Vietnamese domestic problems in a manner acceptable to the Vietnamese.  But what indeed were Vietnamese problems, and did they even exist in terms in which Americans conceived them?  The unknowns made the whole enterprise, from the most rational and tough-minded point of view, risky in the extreme.   (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1972), 6-7.

The tragic failure of Vietnam was that it was really a battle for the hearts and minds of the people–not a war that could be one on the battlefield with bombs.  The US did understand that the problem of Vietnam was not a geopolitical one between communism and democracy, but a more indigenous cultural battle among the people there.  The same is true in Iraq and Syria.  This is not a global battle over terrorism and freedom but a problem that has to be solved by the people in that part of the world.  Dropping bombs does little to resolve the fight, especially if as in Vietnam it hurts  civilians and pushes them to the other side or continues to prevent people from solving their own problem.
    Missing from Obama’s and all the other plans is an asking of the question to why ISIS is so successful in recruiting supporters.  There is no plan to ascertaining why, for example, individuals from the Minnesota Somalian community are joining terrorist groups or why British citizens are becoming ISIS members who are beheading Americans.  Until such time as the focus shifts to asking these questions, to realizing that a strategy in place since Vietnam will not work, the current plans too will fail in farcical ways.