The Trump Era

Busy and serious people know only two types of working lunch. There are pleasant but time-consuming lunches they would prefer to skip, and then there are tedious ones they desperately wish to avoid. Today, ambassadors serving on the U.N. Security Council will endure a third category of business luncheon: One that will at best be eventful but nerve-rattling, and at worst could hasten the collapse of international diplomacy. The council is visiting Washington, where it will lunch with U.S. President Donald Trump. What could possibly go wrong? The U.S. has held the rotating presidency of the Security Council in April, [...]

Throughout its history, much of American foreign policy has been built on “doctrines” associated with the president who developed them. The Monroe Doctrine indicated that the United States would oppose additional European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. The Eisenhower and Carter Doctrines stressed the importance to U.S. vital national interests of the Middle East and the free flow of its energy. The Nixon Doctrine pledged U.S. support to nations fighting communism, but said that America would not do it for them. The George W. Bush Doctrine committed U.S. military power to pre-empting and preventing transnational terrorism. Over the past two [...]

In the information age, we can all access more information than we can absorb, so the choices we make about what sources to trust may make us dumber, not smarter. U.S. President Donald Trump is a prime example of a very casual approach to accessing information, more often from social media rather than subject-matter experts, whose influence on public policy is declining. As a result, leaders are more likely to make poor choices in responding to the international challenges they face. Watching Trump abruptly change his positions as he is exposed to more authoritative information about world problems is illustrative [...]