Donald Trump’s scatterbrained performance as ‘statesman’ poses a formidable challenge to foreign leaders and analysts alike. The struggle to interpret meaning and purpose seems futile because the man possesses no approximation of a mind capable of coherent thought processes. Trump’s behaviour is driven by obsessive emotions unedited by thought – expressed in slogans. Those slogans sparkle in his otherwise inert grey matter. Statements and actions invariably are random, often self-contradictory, and suspectable to reversal either by mood shifts or by the manipulations of calculating persons in his entourage and stray acquaintances.

His erratic machinations defy any conventional strategic logic. How to cope with this kaleidoscope of ever-shifting words and actions?

There are three approaches. The first is based on a frank recognition that the man is mentally deranged - a (malignant) narcissist with megalomaniacal ambitions laced with sadist impulses. The idea is to play upon those former traits by offering him a stream of compliments, theatrical gestures of deference, embracing him in vague projects of cooperation that feed his need for great accomplishments.

These steps are intended to take the edge off his native hostility - thereby, allowing one to win his acquiescence to policies that serve your own interest. This is the Putin strategy. It has failed despite strenuous, persistent efforts - going so far as suggesting that Trump indeed would be worthy of a Nobel Prize if he could assist in arranging a solution to the Ukraine conflict - on terms acceptable to Russia.

Another is to align oneself with Trump’s priority projects in a manner that simultaneously advances your own interest. Israel (Netanyahu) has done this superbly; the American interest that serves his own being regime change in Tehran and the elimination of all regimes in the Middle East that don’t kowtow to Washington. Pakistan’s military leadership is now taking a similar tack by offering itself as a (nuclear armed) ally that has turned anti-Iranian.

In exchange, they expect military assistance to redress the present imbalance vis-à-vis India. Saudi Arabia’s MBS has followed a more sinuous path that entails delicate balancing of its position in the Gulf and in the region now that it has reached a modus vivendi with Iran. As for Qatar.... if you don’t succeed at first, try try and try again.

The Europeans, ever ready to toady up to the United States, have played with the overlap between their hysterical obsession with a fictive Russian threat and Trump’s continuation of the long-established American strategic objective of marginalizing and weakening Russia so long as it will not accept a subordinate position to the West. That was seemingly a match made in Heaven under Biden.

Trump’s arrival in the Oval Office, by contrast, has caused intermittent bouts of heartburn in European capitals. His public declarations of cordiality toward Putin - refusing to declare him the anti-Christ, his intermittent criticisms of Zelensky along with promoting of ‘peace’ talks raised doubts as to Washington’s commitment to the Ukrainian cause and its dedication to serving Europe by curbing Russia’s presumably hostile aims.*

What they failed to recognize is the cardinal truth Trump and his main advisers never seriously considered either wash its hands off Ukraine or abandoning Europe. In this erroneous assumption, they joined Vladimir Putin and critics of existing American policy who superimposed on the quixotic Trump (related) beliefs and purposes that never were part of his makeup.

None of these approaches perceives a crucial aspect of the phenomenon that is Donald Trump ‘statesman.’ It is concealed by the spectacle of the man’s turbulence - a maelstrom of verbal ejaculations, erratic actions, and cacophonous noisemaking. It manifestly is true that there is no discernible coherence in this quixotic behaviour. After all, he is someone who reads nothing longer than a short paragraph, cannot concentrate on a subject for more than a few minutes, is incapable of reflective thought, prizes gut feelings and slogans over knowledge about places or persons, is susceptible to having his mind seeded by wilful aides, and is blissfully untroubled by a superego.

Yet, this chaotic world in fact is contained within invisible fencing. To put it succinctly, Trump’s implicit worldview is the same as that which has guided every American President’s policy in the Cold War period. It is distinctive in setting as the long-term objective institutionalizing the country’s global dominance, using whatever means necessary. This grand strategy was first given formal statement by Paul Wolfowitz in his famous memorandum of March 1991. The version that at once inspires and inhibits Trump is, of course, rudimentary, rough and fragmented. However primitive, it is real and operative. Let us remind ourselves of the core Wolfowitz precepts:

The Wolfowitz Grand Strategy was guided by these postulates:

1)     The United States’ long-term national interest dictates that it prevent the emergence of any rival to its global supremacy, or any regional power who could challenge its friends (Israel) and interests.

2)    The United States should marshal all of its resources, including military forces, to enforce this strategy.

3)    The United States should be prepared to intervene in ‘failed’ or ‘rogue’ countries who harbour enemies of the United States.

4)    The United States should aggressively back friendly political forces (preferably but not necessarily democratic) abroad by helping to install and maintain them in office.

5)    The United States should expand NATO eastwards to embrace most of the former Soviet Union so as to ensure that Russia could not regain the position of a great power.

6)    American efforts to impress its vision on other governments are not tainted by imperial ambition. America’s rectitude and civic virtue validate its role as guide and prophet.

7)     The United States, therefore, is not a ‘global Leviathan’ that advances its selfish interests at the expense of others. It is, rather, the benign producer of public goods.

8)    The privilege of partial exception from the international norms, including the right to act unilaterally, is earned by an historical record of selfless performance. 

When the memorandum leaked, it was disowned by the Bush I administration. Gradually, it became assimilated as the definitive perspective on the American place in international affairs by the foreign policy community and then the country’s political class generally. Today, it is not far-fetched to say that nearly all of us are disciples of Wolfowitz - or, to put it somewhat differently, we are all Neocons - with only a few exceptions. Trump is not among them.

It is against this background that we can better understand why Trump could never accept terms of a Ukraine that met Russian concerns since that would mean an intolerable, humiliating defeat for the United States - and the Collective West. That is why there was no substance to last month’s headlines that the President was set to abandon Europe, that “Trump Washes His Hands Off Ukraine.” When the serfs on some distant estate are grumbling their discontent, you don’t abandon it – you teach the ungrateful miscreants a lesson by tightening the screws on them. Exactly what Trump is doing to the European vassals.

This underlying truth that Trump is adhering to the post-Cold War orthodoxy has been obscured by the Trump antics, by his whacky moves to annex Greenland and to integrate Canada, and by his off-the-wall tariff wars which, while conforming to the ultimate ambition to dominate the world, are counterproductive in provoking universal antagonism while damaging the national economy. Most important is that none of the Wolfowitz precepts have been questioned, qualified or contradicted by Trump’s actions. What are the implications?

1)     All of the implicit constraints are on accommodation, power-sharing with rising powers, arms control, multilateralism or restructuring of international institutions.

2)    The coercive use of American power – any place, any time, by whatever means – is given blanket permission in the name of strengthening and preserving American global dominance.

3)    For Trump specifically, he has a free hand to continue his madcap conduct so long as it conforms – however loosely - to the stipulations above. Tactical fiascos or embarrassing rebuffs are simply recast as successes in the virtual reality where he, his entourage and supporters reside.

4)    In wider systemic terms, the Trumpites’ tacit acceptance of the Wolfowitz guidelines means that the United States already has made an irrevocable historic choice to war against emerging powers in campaigns to enforce their subordination instead of fashioning new configurations that entail influence/leadership sharing.

5)    Trump’s style of belligerency, insult and intimidation is entrenching the developing bifurcation of the international system between the United States + vassals and the Rest. It also weakens the American position in that contest. Furthermore, the intangible element that historically enhanced the United States’ status in the world, its Constitutionally grounded democracy, has evaporated in Trump’s systematic dismantling and perversion of all the country’s civic institutions. Trump’s capers punctuate the vulnerability of the United States as it girds itself for the struggle.

Notes

*President Trump’s policies toward Russia have been no different in their essence than those of Bush /Obama /Biden: sanctions, arming Ukraine, no adjustment of European security architecture. The seeming difference in attitude toward Putin the man derives from Trump’s abiding faith in and relishing of deal-making. To do so with somebody as formidable as Putin serves his voracious narcissistic ego. The goal of neutralizing Russia as an international force has remained a constant in Washington - unchallenged from George Bush through Obama, Trump I, Biden, and now in Trump II. It is a goal whose premises and purposes are agreed by the near totality of the country’s political class. Trump’s fulminations cannot hide the cardinal fact that the United States is locked in a self-declared combat with Russia – and all who are associated with it. Russia is a pebble in the American imperial boot.