April 17, 2017
The President Doesn’t Need a Trump Doctrine
Foreign policy doctrine season has come to the nation’s capital. In the wake of President Donald Trump’s forcible response to Bashar Assad’s gas attack in Syria, observers are rushing to characterize the new approach. It may be barely 75 days into his term, but already Washington seems convinced that the outlines of a “Trump Doctrine” are emerging. By launching missiles at a Syrian air base, this thinking goes, the president has set himself on a definitive foreign policy course that can be readily discerned and described.
The problem is that no one agrees about what the Trump Doctrine is, whether it’s good or bad, or if one even exists. The administration itself should avoid trying too hard to fill in the intellectual gap. Perhaps the worst thing the president’s team could do this early in its term would be to embrace a rigid doctrine that constrains its choices in a fluid world. A Trump Doctrine, if one should ever emerge, will arise from events and choices made over a period of time. It should not be the premature product of an administration still finding its feet.
Read the full article at Politico.
More from CNAS
-
Iran Shows the Emerging Crisis of the U.S. Airborne Battle Management Fleet
Commentary
The ABM force structure crisis comes at an acute moment for US air operations....
By Philip Sheers
-
Hellscape Taiwan: A Porcupine Defense in the Drone Age
Commentary
This article was originally published in War on the Rocks It is 2029. General Secretary Xi Jinping has given the order for the People’s Liberation Army to forcibly take Taiwan...
By Stacie Pettyjohn & Molly Campbell
-
Negotiations With Iran Are Likely 'DOA,' Says Wasser
Video
President Donald Trump is telling Iran it "better get serious" about negotiations, but Becca Wasser, defense lead for Bloomberg Economics and adjunct senior fellow at the Cent...
By Becca Wasser
-
Video
Defense / Middle East Security
CNN: 1,000 Army Paratroopers Deploy to Middle East in DaysBecca Wasser, adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security joins CNN to discuss the deployment of troops to Iran and the status of negotiations.Watch the fu...
By Becca Wasser
