For decades, if not centuries, scholars have debated which matters more in international affairs: structural forces, such as the relative power between states, or the ideas and decisions of individual leaders. But at least as far as the United States is concerned, President Donald Trump may put the debate to rest.
After a slow start, Trump has affected almost every facet of U.S. foreign policy. And the story to date is not an inspiring one. Trump has personalized, privatized, and deinstitutionalized foreign policy to the detriment of the national interest. That trend has accelerated in recent months, culminating in two disastrous missteps vis-à-vis Ukraine and Syria. In the process, the American public has suffered, U.S. allies have lost, and U.S. adversaries have gained—none more so than Russian President Vladimir Putin.
THE DAMAGE DONE
Trump’s assault on conventional decision-making processes has allowed him to personalize and privatize U.S. foreign policy, often in ways that benefit the Kremlin more than the White House. That fact was most glaringly and disturbingly on display during the president’s call with Zelensky in July, during which Trump offered to lift the freeze on military assistance to Ukraine and meet the newly elected Zelensky in the Oval Office. In return, Trump asked that Zelensky open new investigations into unsubstantiated allegations of corruption by Hunter Biden, former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, and purported Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. (That account, originally based on a reconstructed transcript of the call, has since been bolstered by further evidence in text messages between State Department diplomats and Ukrainian officials and testimony from U.S. officials involved in U.S.-Ukrainian relations.)
Trump has placed his private interests and ill-informed personal theories above all else.
By not even mentioning Russia’s military interventions in Crimea and the Donbas during his call with Zelensky, Trump made clear his indifference to Ukraine’s sovereignty and democratic consolidation. That’s a win for Putin. Trump’s politicization of military assistance weakened the United States’ previously rock-solid commitment to Ukraine’s defense—another gift to Putin. By recording and publishing Zelensky’s obsequiousness and flattery of Trump in the call memo, he made the new Ukrainian leader look weak—yet another deliverable for Putin. Trump’s subsequent repeated references to Ukraine as corrupt have likewise damaged the country’s reputation precisely at the moment when a newly elected president and parliament have an opportunity to break with the corruption of the past. Score one more victory for Putin.
And this list doesn’t include the damage to the United States itself: Trump’s attempt to use taxpayer money in pursuit of private goals tarnishes the United States’ reputation as the leader of the free world. Impeachment proceedings set off by the call will distract his administration from engaging in critical foreign policy issues involving China, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela.
Trump’s misguided unilateral decisions in Syria also have played into Putin’s hands: Moscow benefits from the tensions that the Turkish offensive against the Kurds has caused within NATO. The Kurds, for their part, are turning to Syrian autocrat Bashar al-Assad and Putin in their desperate search for a new protector. More generally, the U.S. retreat in Syria has strengthened other U.S. foes—Assad, Hezbollah, Iran, and the Islamic State (or ISIS)—and unnerved the United States’ closest allies in the region. Washington now looks unreliable at a time when Moscow is positioning itself as an alternative power broker in the region—not only to the Kurds but to the Saudis, the Turks, and the Israelis.
A standard process for formulating and executing U.S. foreign policy would have foreseen these dangers and worked to counteract them. Such a process no longer exists, allowing one individual to let his personal interests and misguided intuitions radically reshape U.S. foreign policy. In the two biggest arenas of U.S.-Russian conflict over the last decade—Ukraine and Syria—Trump has just handed Putin and his allies major victories, without a fight and without receiving anything in return.
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