Matt Johnson

*Originally published on The News Hub, February 11, 2016

Over the past few weeks, there has been a spate of articles about Donald Trump’s “doctrine.” Is he the ultra-cynical public opinion hound that he appears to be, content to say anything about foreign policy as long as it gives him a bump in the polls? Or is he something more – a consummate “realist” with a fully formed, consistent view of the world? Although the former has always struck me as more plausible, Daniel Drezner’s recent article about Trump makes the opposite case – and it’s a compelling read.

As Drezner puts it, “If realists really want to have some skin in the American foreign policy game, they will not find a better vessel than Trump” (if you don’t know what he means by “realist,” follow the link).

Trump wants the United States to drastically reduce its military presence everywhere from Europe to Japan. He thinks NATO should stop antagonizing Russia and he doesn’t care whether or not Ukraine joins the alliance. He constantly makes derisive noises about the United States’ “policing” in the Middle East and elsewhere. He opposed the Iraq War. He opposed the NATO campaign in Libya. And he doesn’t think the United States should take sides in the Syrian Civil War.

Trump doesn’t view foreign policy through the prisms of morality or internationalism. Rather, as Drezner notes, he “evinces a strong relative gains view of great power politics.” He regards the international system as an environment of Hobbesian anarchy and believes self-interest should always take precedence over humanitarianism. If this was all the information we had, we could safely call Trump the only realist in the 2016 election. I’d have to revisit my view of Trump as the arch-opportunist, Stephen Walt would scurry out to buy a “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” cap, and one of the most prominent academic theories of international relations would finally have its high-profile ambassador.

But this isn’t all the information we have. Trump may have a few guiding principles, but he’s still a fastidious servant of the opinion polls. For example, the “ban all Muslims” plank of Trump’s platform was put in place for one reason: to exploit the nativism and fear generated by the attacks in San Bernardino and Paris. To resist this perception, the co-chairman of Trump’s campaign, Sam Clovis, argued that the policy had been under exhaustive consideration for quite some time: “Do you think for a minute we would send the leading presidential candidate out, if we did not have the law, the history, and the Constitution on our side? Think it through.” Alright, I thought it through. If Clovis is being honest, it simply means that Trump’s comments are attributable to calculated malice instead of incompetence. Moreover, his crack team still decided to release this carefully crafted, long-incubated proposal less than a week after the San Bernardino attacks. This probably wasn’t a coincidence.

Of course, Trump’s naked opportunism isn’t limited to his obnoxious, chauvinistic pronouncements about Muslims.

His unwavering stance on immigration (the Great Wall of America, vulgar swipes at Mexicans, etc.) is an inexpensive way to endear himself to conservatives who might revile his demonstrably liberal positions – many of which clash with their most cherished principles. Oh, Trump doesn’t hold those anymore? I wonder why. Meanwhile, his blathering about “taking” Iraq’s oil is pure populism – an attempt to satisfy the cupidity and parochialism of people who are apparently eager to prove Michael Moore right about American motives in the Middle East. And Trump’s repellent promise to “bring back waterboarding” – along with “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding” – was a transparent appeal to the hordes of panicky cretins who’ve watched too much 24 and couldn’t care less about international law or basic human rights (a few of them were in the audience at the GOP debate last Saturday). One wonders how Sam Clovis – Trump’s painstakingly scrupulous policy pro – was able to square this blatant contempt for the Geneva Conventions with the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

So Drezner is half right. Trump has an intelligible worldview, much of which aligns with – and was possibly appropriated from – the “realist” school of thought. But he’s still a shameless opportunist who, instead of appealing to the better angels of our nature, exploits our primal fears and hatreds as a matter of course. And it works.