Going Down in Flames
National Security in the Trump Era
Blade Runner 2049, Villeneuve, 2017
I’ve found it difficult to write much of anything on national security since the beginning of the second Trump administration. The problem is that American foreign policy has largely consisted of a jumbled set of uncoordinated, destabilizing, and damaging decisions that appear unmoored from any actual policymaking process.
As you’d expect, it’s hard to really make any sort of informed commentary1 around incoherency that's driven largely by day-to-day grievances. It is, however, worthwhile to look at the accumulating costs and effects of our actions across the world and catalogue what has occured.
I’d like to first provide just a summary of the major (and unilateral) decisions related to national security2 made by the Trump administration after 8 months:
We have deconstructed the National Security Council and reduced the institution responsible for coordinating national security policy across the United States Government to a borderline non-functioning entity.
Laura Loomer, a notable far-right conspiracy theorist, managed to fire the head of the National Security Agency, other NSA employees, and scores of NSC staffers.
The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Chief of Naval Operations, the commander of Naval Special Warfare Command, and the Chief of the U.S. Naval Reserves—among others—have been fired by Pete Hegseth for unarticulated reasons.
We have begun to conduct a campaign of unilateral strikes against alleged cartel-affiliated boats in the Caribbean Sea with no clear legal authorization to do so.
The National Guard and Active Duty have been deployed to multiple U.S. cities over the objections of their governors and mayors—and without clear emergencies—with the promise of more deployments.
USAID, a core component of American diplomacy and vital to our strategic competition with China, was summarily dismantled—costing thousands of lives for those who depended upon that aid.
The Office of Net Assessment—the internal Pentagon think-tank—was summarily disbanded despite being an essential component of long-term policy planning.
The United States Federal Government lost at least 148,000 employees through uncoordinated and blind layoffs engineered by DOGE.
Tulsi Gabbard has blindly purged intelligence officials and, alongside Pam Bondi, shut down efforts to combat foreign influence.
We have halted congressionally appropriated military aid to Ukraine in the midst of their fight with Russia on multiple occasions and without clear reasoning.
We have informed Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—all NATO countries that border Russia—that we will halt military assistance to them.
We have systematically tariffed every single ally and partner of the United States, in the case of our Asian partners, with rates up to 20%.
We have systematically refused to use any leverage we hold over Israel—despite the declaration of a famine in Gaza and the rapid expansion of settlements in the West Bank.
We have cut billions of dollars in research funding and harassed numerous U.S. colleges, a key source of American technological strength.
We began, and then ended, a months-long air campaign targeting the Houthis—for no discernible reason.
We engaged in strikes on the Iranian nuclear program—in the midst of negotiations over the program—with no clear outcome.
We have threatened Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO member Denmark, with forcible annexation.
We have similarly threatened to annex Canada through the use of economic coercion.
We are currently threatening the Taliban with unspecified consequences if they do not allow us to retake Bagram.
I’m sure I have missed things. This was only what came to mind when writing this, and is certainly not an exhaustive list under any circumstances. It also purposely leaves out incidents like ICE causing a major diplomatic incident by arresting South Korean citizens at a Georgia plant or obvious reputational costs from the arrest of foreign citizens at border entry points.
I say all of this to build a case3 for why global security has gradually been growing more unstable—and will continue to grow more unstable.
The Israeli strike on Doha and the Russian drone incursion into Poland did not occur in a vacuum. It is not a normal feature of our global order that hostile acts are committed against multiple U.S. security partners on the same day.
The United States has lost the ability to credibly deter hostile acts internationally. The Russians are proving this theory in Ukraine by escalating the conflict with daily sustained mass UAV strikes that have blatantly targeted civilian4 and European diplomatic sites. This all despite the much-touted invitation of Putin to Alaska to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.
We have also lost the ability to sway our allies to our positions on diplomatic initiatives. The UK, Australia, and Canada have just recognized a Palestinian State. Regardless of the merits of doing so, the United States has opposed the recognition of a Palestinian State for decades, and it appears we can no longer convince our closest partners to share our position.
These are all the actions of States that are acting within their own narrow self-interests, unconstrained by American soft and hard power. In the absence of Washington playing a role (or playing a malign role) in international affairs—other States will fill the space that was left.
With the White House either unable or unwilling to play the role of managing global coalitions and disputes, foreign leaders will act in their own perceived best interests. They will use more violence and be more prone to unilateral acts that destabilize regions. They will be less prone to side with us at the UN, and they will be less willing to provide political legitimacy to American initiatives.5 There will be more hesitation to engage in bilateral military exercises and more efforts to secure alternative security partners.
That being said, events—of course—do not occur for monocausal reasons. The world is complicated. All States have their own interests and motivations for why they act in the manner they do.
It is, however, hard to look at everything that we’ve done over the past 8 months and conclude that the world is headed towards anything other than increasing instability.
I’m not saying that I’ve made any informed commentary in my entire life. I just assume actual serious people are having this problem.
If I don’t limit this to just national security, this summary would be 10,000 words.
As if the case really needed to be built, and you wouldn’t be able to discern all of this from just observing current events.
They’ve targeted civilians since the outbreak of the conflict—including the massacre of Ukrainians at Bucha—but I think it’s worth noting that the contemporary mass UAV strikes are being expended against civilian targets.
I plan to follow this up at some point by writing more discretely about how our decisions are causing other countries to act unilaterally in their more narrow self-interest and hedge against the United States as an actor.
So, you mean, the international stage is turning back into a state of nature with no supreme arbiter, and that all nations of the earth are afforded their "separate and equal station," as the Declaration of Independence states?
Or do you intend to say that America is the rightful global sovereign, and that no other nation has the right to determine its own affairs and act in their own self interest without prior approval from the United States? And further, that American citizens should spend their lives and treasures to enforce tangential "stability" and "interests" across the globe, perpetually?
It sounds to me like you're describing the end of the "international rules-based order." I fully agree that this will have it's costs--possibly drastic--if not approached appropriately. But I think it's an open question as to whether or not the arrangement for the past 70 years ought to be the status quo forever, or whether or not the burdens the USG has taken on in that time has had a tangible benefit for American citizens, who should be its first priority.