It’s time to put an end to debates about whether U.S. President Donald Trump is some sort of foreign-policy realist or “restrainer.” Admittedly, his mercurial approach to policymaking and his penchant for saying one thing and doing the opposite make his views hard to pin down, especially when he flip-flops from one extreme to another for no apparent reason (see under: Ukraine). Although some of his statements and actions might appear to be compatible with the label, a realist/restrainer he is not.
I raise this issue because labels matter, and who gets associated with different approaches or schools of thought can affect how different ideas and policy proposals are received. And to be fair, Trump has sometimes sounded like a proponent of restraint, as in his criticisms of “forever wars,” his distrust of the foreign-policy establishment, his desire to get wealthy U.S. allies to do more to defend themselves, and his obvious disinterest in defending liberal values abroad. (Here he is unusually consistent, as he is equally hostile to those pesky liberal values like freedom of speech and the rule of law in the United States, too.) If you looked at the style and not the substance, in short, you might conclude that Trump is a card-carrying member of the realist/restraint community.
The other reason we’re having this discussion is that labeling Trump a realist/restrainer is sometimes used to score political points. For some MAGA types, such as Vice President J.D. Vance, embracing the label of restraint signals that Trump is living up to his earlier pledges and keeping the United States from being bogged down in costly overseas commitments. (During Trump’s first term, swaggering Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tried a similar gambit, no more convincingly.) By contrast, opponents of restraint sometimes try to pin the label on Trump in order to discredit the individuals or organizations—such as the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft—that oppose the militarization of U.S. foreign policy and have been critical of U.S. interventions around the world. (Full disclosure: I am a member of Quincy’s board of directors and occasionally write for its publications.)
At this point, however, Trump has a track record that allows us to resolve the issue. To do this, we need to be clear on what restrainers are advocating, and the obvious place to start is the book that gave the movement its name: Barry Posen’s Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy. One might add an earlier article by Daryl Press, Eugene Gholz, and Harvey Sapolsky; several noteworthy essays by Christopher Layne; and later works by John Mearsheimer, Monica Toft and Sidita Kushi, and yours truly.
The idea of U.S. foreign-policy restraint emerged in opposition to the grand strategy of liberal hegemony, which sought to use American power to spread democracy, markets, the rule of law, and other liberal values around the world, and to bring as many states as possible into institutions dominated by the United States. Restrainers believe that trying to spread democracy with military force is a fool’s errand, and that threatening or bullying other states usually backfires, making adversaries more suspicious and turning allies or neutrals into enemies. For this reason, they believe diplomacy should be America’s first impulse and the use of force its last resort. They are neither isolationists nor pacifists, because they believe that the United States has an interest in helping maintain favorable balances of power in key regions, that allies are useful but should pull their weight, that force is sometimes necessary to defend vital interests, and that well-designed international institutions can facilitate cooperation even as states compete. And while restrainers recognize that the world can be a dangerous place and that the United States has serious conflicts of interest with some countries, they oppose the relentless threat inflation used to justify excessive U.S. military spending and the overuse of force abroad.
Restrainers do not agree on every issue—for example, some favor confronting China more vigorously while others favor greater efforts to accommodate its rise—but they are united in their opposition to the self-indulgent hubris that has characterized U.S. grand strategy under recent Democratic and Republican administrations. Above all, restrainers oppose the capricious use of military force and believe the United States could be more secure and more prosperous if it spent less on national security and used its still considerable power more judiciously.
So why is Trump not a true restrainer? Let me count the ways.
First, Trump continues to favor unnecessary increases in the U.S. defense budget, which recently topped $1 trillion and still dwarfs that of every other country. Even worse, he is diverting some of these vast sums from their true purpose—defending the United States against foreign dangers—and using them to go after fictitious domestic enemies. Instead of deflating threats, Trump is using imaginary enemies at home and abroad to justify expanding presidential authority to dangerous levels. Restrainers have long warned that excessive militarization would eventually threaten civil liberties here in the United States, and Trump has proved them right.
Second, restrainers believe the United States should reduce its military footprint in Europe and the Middle East and adopt a more even-handed posture in the latter region. Trump has had ample opportunity to do both things and has yet to do either one. The U.S. presence in both regions remains largely unchanged, and Trump has doubled down on America’s “special relationships” in the Middle East and refused to engage seriously with opponents there.
Third, although Trump has been wary of committing U.S. ground forces to battle in potentially open-ended conflicts, he is perfectly comfortable using airpower in visible but strategically dubious acts of military theater. Since retaking office in January, he has struck targets in Yemen and Iran, and ordered the military to sink several boats in the Caribbean that were supposedly smuggling illegal drugs. In addition to the dubious legality of these actions, none of them are likely to accomplish any significant or lasting strategic purpose. The Houthis remain defiant, Iran has not ended its nuclear program, and anyone who thinks that sinking a few boats will reduce the flow of illegal narcotics to the United States is living in a dream world. Along with Trump’s tariffs, such pointless military displays are the opposite of foreign-policy restraint, and I can’t help but wonder what the handful of genuine restrainers still serving the Trump administration—and they know who they are—think of these antics.
Fourth, Trump has neither reached a grand bargain with China on economic and security issues—as some restrainers recommend—or made a serious effort to strengthen a coalition to balance China in Asia and prevent it from achieving regional dominance there (as other restrainers favor). Instead, the administration has picked fights over trade with critical U.S. partners like Japan, South Korea, and India; undermined relations with South Korea further by mistreating South Korean workers at a battery plant in Georgia; and is systematically undermining America’s ability to compete with China in key areas of science and technology.
Fifth, a key recommendation of the restraint camp—and especially organizations such as the proudly trans-partisan Quincy Institute—has been to reinvigorate U.S. diplomacy and deemphasize the reflexive use of military power. But as I’ve written before, Trump and his minions are the poster children for poorly prepared, incompetently staffed, inconsistently pursued, and ultimately unsuccessful diplomatic engagements. Trump and Secretary of State/National Security Advisor Marco Rubio have gutted the State Department, discarded the normal interagency process, and turned critical negotiations on Gaza and Ukraine over to a real estate lawyer with no obvious qualifications and some potential conflicts of interest. Is it any wonder that they have achieved so little?
As for Trump’s own approach to diplomacy, I suggest you watch his utterly bizarre performance in front of the United Nations General Assembly last week. You don’t have to love the United Nations or dislike Trump to be disturbed by the spectacle he put on there, and what it told the world about our country and its leader. Exceeding his allotted 15 minutes by almost three-quarters of an hour, Trump subjected dozens of world leaders to a rambling, self-pitying, falsehood-filled, and frequently insulting rant that undoubtedly left U.S. adversaries grateful that the world’s most powerful country was in such incompetent hands and left America’s remaining friends worried for the same reason.
So, no, Trump is neither a restrainer nor a realist. There are several other labels that would be more apt, but I’m too polite to list them here.