Trump Might Not Lead a U.S. Retreat from the World Stage After All

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

 

His early personnel choices indicate his incoming administration would be willing to use sticks as well as carrots to deal with Russia.

 

It’s axiomatic that personnel is policy. That can be overstated, but Donald Trump’s cabinet picks do provide us with some clues about how his next administration will govern.

 

What is the through line that connects Marco Rubio and Michael Waltz, Elise Stefanik and Kristi Noem, Susie Wiles and Stephen Miller? It’s not their many shared ideological tendencies — certainly not when it comes to foreign affairs (which is the portfolio many of these nominees will manage). It’s not their complementary managerial styles or their personal demeanor. It’s loyalty. That’s what they can lay a convincing claim to, and that’s what was lacking in Republicans, such as Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley, who’ve been shown the door.

 

If loyalty matters more than the contours of any one particular policy item, we can assume that Trump’s second term will look a lot like the first. Beyond trade and immigration — areas where his passions lie — Trump’s appointees will probably have latitude to set U.S. policy. That’s making some of Trump’s true believers nervous. They thought they were electing the architect of America’s grand retreat from the world stage. But Trump’s cabinet picks suggest that something else is in the offing.

 

There is no question that Rubio, Waltz, and Stefanik are Israel supporters. As such, they are also hostile toward Iran and the terrorist networks it commands. Likewise, all are more inclined to take a confrontational approach toward China, with the aim of rolling back its malign influence inside the West and deterring it from engaging in expansionist aggression in its neighborhood. It’s a safe bet that the Trump administration will take a proactive approach to securing U.S. interests in the Middle East and in East Asia, not just because his staff are so inclined but because the Republican Party’s voters support those projects.

 

But what about Europe? What will become of Ukraine’s fortunes and the NATO alliance that has sought to safeguard Kyiv’s sovereignty against absorption into the Russian Federation? That’s a trickier question.

 

Like so many of their colleagues, these lawmakers have spent the past eight years trying to thread a needle. Their goal was to avoid betraying as much as possible their empirical conception of Russia as hostile to U.S. interests and their understanding that its violent expansion undermines America’s position and that of its allies. They reached the vague conclusion that the GOP’s activist class now regards containing the Kremlin as a fool’s errand.

 

At the outset of Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine, Rubio cast himself as a stalwart supporter of Kyiv’s righteous cause. But his outlook shifted as the war dragged on. “At the end of the day, what we are funding here is a stalemate war,” he told an NBC reporter in September following his vote against another tranche of U.S. military aid for Ukraine. He advocated a “negotiated settlement” to the war that “ends hostilities” in a way that “is favorable to Ukraine.”

 

Waltz’s political evolution followed a similar trajectory. U.S. commitments to Europe’s deteriorating security are delaying America’s forever-stalled pivot to Asia, he told an audience last month. “Is it in America’s interest? Waltz asked. “Are we going to put in the time, the treasure, the resources that we need in the Pacific right now badly?”

 

So how, exactly, does the U.S. engineer that happy outcome? In remarks to NPR’s Steve Inskeep, Waltz outlined the Trump team’s strategy to achieve the president-elect’s goal of putting an end to the Ukraine conflict on or about Inauguration Day.

 

Step 1 involves enforcing energy sanctions against Russia and secondary sanctions against the entities that do business with Moscow. Step 2 entails unleashing American energy and ramping up U.S. exports of liquid natural gas to drain the Kremlin’s coffers and to liberate America’s partners who depend on Russian energy exports. Step 3 culminates in a standoff. “We have leverage, like taking the handcuffs off of the long-range weapons we provided Ukraine as well,” he said. “And then, of course, I think we have plenty of leverage with Zelenskyy to get them to the table.”

 

Steps 1 and 2 are desirable on their own merits, but they are unlikely to force Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table. The Biden White House balked at a robust secondary sanctions regime against Russian oil importers like China and India because it would be difficult to enforce, complicate bilateral relations, and put upward pressure on global energy supplies. It takes time and money to introduce enough U.S.-produced fossil fuels into the market to offset the associated costs, so these are not quick fixes.

 

The same cannot be said for step 3. Threatening Vladimir Putin with the prospect of increased U.S. support for Ukraine’s defense beyond the point at which Russia can easily absorb the risk doesn’t just speak Putin’s language — it is the essence of deterrence. Waltz’s comments also dovetail with Trump’s pledge to provide Ukraine with “more than they ever got” if Putin proves a recalcitrant negotiating partner.

 

Now in its third year, Russia’s war of conquest in Ukraine looks very little like the one that erupted in February 2022. Kyiv’s forces are under increasing strain amid a Russian advance, which is now augmented by North Korean combat troops. As a reward for its assistance, Russia will reportedly provide North Korea with access to sophisticated nuclear technology and weapons platforms. Ukraine has decimated Russia’s naval presence in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, limiting Moscow’s freedom of action on the high seas and truncating its access to its Middle Eastern allies like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. And Kyiv’s troops still occupy portions of Russian sovereign territory, an offensive push that was likely designed to complicate any effort to freeze the current lines of contact separating Russia and Ukrainian forces in place. Rolling all this back at the negotiating table would be quite a feat.

 

The status quo on the battlefield is too fluid and the conditions that pertain today too undesirable for both parties to this conflict to envision either of them willingly slouching their way toward peace talks. There will have to be inducements. It’s easy to see how the Trump administration can twist Volodymir Zelensky’s arm, but not Putin’s. Carrots won’t be enough. The Trump team will have to produce sticks, too. And Trump’s personnel preferences suggest he’s open to that prospect.

 

All this is nerve-wracking to those who believed they were getting in Trump a capitulatory advocate for global retrenchment. Elon Musk, who has not left Trump’s side since Election Day, is firing off posts credulously indulging the revisionist fantasy that Russia was forced into a ruthless campaign of mass murder, rape, and ethnic cleansing by the heedless Americans. His fellow entrepreneur and GOP convention speaker, David Sachs, appears equally unnerved. “The simplest path to peace in Ukraine is to go back to the draft deal signed in Istanbul at the beginning of the war but with realities on the ground (Russia has annexed the 4 oblasts),” he wrote. “Everything else is a non-starter. Further delay only loses more lives & territory.” The plan, put simply, consists of surrender on Ukraine’s behalf. And if the Ukrainians balk at being condemned to unimaginably brutal foreign subjugation, they’ll just have to be made to comply.

 

That all sounds perfectly feasible when you’re surrounded with like minds in a cloistered environment like social media. But the real world rarely comports with fashionable theories about how it should operate, and the geopolitical landscape always looks far more dangerous from the perspective of the Resolute Desk. These are still early days, and Trump’s own posture could shift toward something less ambiguous tomorrow. But for now, it seems like those who convinced themselves they were electing a president who would wash his hands of American global hegemony were misled.