Temperament Matters in Foreign Policy

The last few weeks have seen a surprisingly activist foreign policy from the Trump administration. Since the inauguration, the rate of U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, the willingness to launch special operations raids in countries like Yemen, and the use of taunting rhetoric towards adversaries had all increased in comparison to the Obama administration.But this month things seems to have been put into hyper-drive. Trump authorized a symbolic punitive airstrike on a Syrian military base –a serious escalation that had no legal authority. The administration alsothreatened to engage in preventive war against North Korea if it should move forward with a sixth nuclear test. Trumpordered an aircraft carrier strike group to sail within 300 miles of North Korea ’s coastline in a show of force meant to bolster this threat. And finally, Trump’s penchant for militarism was on display when the biggest non-nuclear bomb in America’s arsenal, never before used in active combat, was dropped in Afghanistan.It ’s hard to say whether these are signs of a clear Trump Doctrine emerging, or whether this intensification of military activism abroad simply reflects Trump’s character. One can easily recall warnings from candidate Trump’s opponents, on the Democratic side but also from many in his own party, that he was temperamentally unfit for office.In the latest edition of  Survival, Francios Heisbourg, Chair of the International Institute for Strategic Studies Council, which publ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs