Parents of future political science students should think twice before sending their children to Tulane University, whose faculty includes political science professor Christopher Fettweis. Fettweis has written in The National Interest a mindless screed about President-elect Donald Trump, who he calls “Dear Leader” in a not-so-subtle comparison to North Korea’s communist dictator Kim Jong Un. Fettweis asserts that a second Trump administration will not prove to be good for those like him who advocate a foreign policy of restraint. Trump, instead, Fettweis writes, is a “dire, existential threat” to restraint in foreign policy.

Predictably, Fettweis offers no factual basis for his anti-Trump hissy fit. He simply asserts that Trump in his second term will be “unrestrained by archaic constitutional notions of checks and balances.” Trump, he writes, “is likely to produce catastrophe and disgrace beyond the imagination of reasonable people.” MAGA, he predicts, will wither and be “rendered anathema” after Trump leaves office. “By 2034,” according to Fettweis, “it will be hard to find any serious Americans who will admit to having supported Trump,” including the proponents of strategic restraint, which will become “a casualty of the poisonous Trump legacy.”

Fettweis opposes Trump’s anti-illegal immigration stance, promotion of tariffs, throwing more money at the Pentagon, and “drawing lines between enemies and friends abroad.” He also opposes a military buildup in the Pacific to deter Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. He accuses Trump of being a “myopic, Manichean nativist” leader. And he expresses “horror at Trump’s slate of unserious nominees for very serious jobs,” without, of course, naming those nominees. Perhaps he means Pete Hegseth, who commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he won two Bronze Stars and was awarded the Combat Infantryman’s Badge. Perhaps he means Elbridge Colby, who foresaw, unlike Fettweis, the return of great power competition and conflict while drafting the 2018 National Defense Strategy. Perhaps he means Pam Bondi, who served as a very successful attorney general of Florida. Or, maybe he means Kash Patel, whose national security experience and background dwarfs anything experienced by Professor Fettweis.

Back in 2010, this same Christopher Fettweis confidently predicted that we had reached the end of major wars, and perhaps the end of war itself in his book Dangerous Times. In that tome, Fettweis asserted that history “seems to be unfolding as a line extending into the future — a halting, incomplete, inconsistent line perhaps, one with frequent temporary reversals, but a line nonetheless.” The world, he wrote, was “growing more liberal and more reliant upon reason, logic, and science.” The leaders and people of the major powers (except the United States), he argued, had accepted the idea that major war was unthinkable. Events, of course, proved Fettweis wrong. There is a major war in Eastern Europe, a war in the Middle East, and a storm gathering in the western Pacific. Fettweis’ book was academic nonsense then, just as his anti-Trump screed is academic nonsense now.

Trump, after all, has a record of restraint in his first term. He launched no wars. He tried to better relations with Russia, China, and North Korea. He resisted calls within his Cabinet to become militarily involved in Syria and Iran. His administration successfully negotiated the Abraham Accords. He improved relations with India and Japan. He called on our allies in Europe and elsewhere (including Taiwan) to provide more for their own defense. Russia did not invade Ukraine when Trump was president, and he has called for a negotiated settlement to that conflict. Trump also rightly shifted the nation’s strategic focus to the Indo-Pacific.

Fettweis concludes his anti-Trump tirade by urging restrainers not to “sell their souls” to Trump because “sulfur does not quickly wash off” and “its odor will stick to whatever Trump touches.” Tulane, one would think, can do better than this. So can The National Interest, which should be embarrassed to have published such drivel. It is better fitted to an MSNBC program. Trump Derangement Syndrome is alive and well in academia.

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