Trump’s Tower of Babel?

I thought I would get the New Year off to a productive start by participating in the first few days of January in a two-day meeting billed as an informal “Track 2” dialogue between experts from Pakistan and the United States. The discussion among American and Pakistani public intellectuals was creative, interesting, occasionally scintillating; but there was an elephant in the room that constrained the discourse and will foreshadow whatever conclusions emerge. That was the election of November 8 and the as yet very unclear politics and policies of the incoming Trump administration.

The specific subject of this unofficial meeting was, of course, how to improve Pakistan-US relations. The participating experts were very familiar with and very worried by the apparently muddled state of Pakistan-US relations, and were looking for areas of activity and issues, in which common interests could be uncovered and areas of cooperation could be opened. Some were dismayed by the description of those relations as essentially “transactional,” which is how I described them in three previous articles in this space in the weeks before the US election. Other participants (including me) believed there is nothing wrong with transactional relations as long as they are truly transactional. A few areas of possible collaboration between the US and Pakistan were discovered during the discussion and, I am sure, whatever report comes out of this meeting will have a positive spin to it.

But the elephant in the room, constraining the discussion, which had remained mostly unnoticed in the opening session, became especially visible when the subject turned to Afghanistan. I think most of us viewed US policy in Afghanistan as the key predictor of Pakistan-US relations. Yet, the Trump Administration’s position and policies on Afghanistan are unknown. And despite some who thought they saw precursors to a more activist policy, there were persuasive arguments as to what might lead the Trump Administration to abandon Afghanistan.

Trump Administration’s learning curve is going to be much steeper than in most transitions in the past, and the room for false starts (or stops) will be very large

This seemed to me almost a metaphor for the entire range of foreign policy issues that Trump will face as President. With his inauguration five days away (at the time of this report), we are seeing in their testimonies during Senatorial confirmation hearings that his picks for the cabinet are not not only on different pages than the President-elect on the important issues he campaigned on, but they are not even in the same book. More and more evidence emerges that the Trump Administration’s learning curve is going to be much steeper than in most transitions in the past, and the room for false starts (or stops) will be very large.

It might be better to say that the incoming administration is speaking with a multitude of voices. The chaos that has seemed to characterize this transition from the start has actually worsened. While prospective cabinet officers are grilled by Senators on their positions on the issues that the election campaigned raised—Russia and its clear intervention into the election campaign, China, Mexico and the fabled Wall, immigration—the President-elect faces off against opponents, by which he primarily means the media and US intelligence agencies, on two potentially wounding issues: his defense of Russia and Vladimir Putin despite the now-certain fact that Russia intervened to disrupt the election; and the conflict of interest problem the President has raised himself by refusing to follow the customary practice of divesting his corporate assets, an issue he has tried to steamroll, but won’t go away. The dissonance flowing from the cabinet designates in their replies to questions about these issues has been almost drowned out in the media frenzy over the President-elect’s refusal to toe the line on Russia and conflict of interest.

On Afghanistan, I have not heard any dissonance so far. But it remains to be seen if this means that there will be no strong signal for change. Trump’s national security lineup, General Mattis at Defense, General Flynn as National Security Advisor, and General Kelly at Homeland Security would seem to be a team more likely than not to push to ramp up the US effort in Afghanistan. There is an argument that there are others high up in the Trump team who will argue for a pullout, saying it was Obama’s war, and while the US can continue to spend large amounts to improve and equip the Afghan National Army, there is little reason to keep US troops in harm’s way. Give the growing presence of ISIS in Afghanistan, I would bet on the generals winning the argument, but perhaps only to maintain what we have there now.

Five days before an inauguration and it is still impossible to determine the new administration's policy on the longest overseas war in US history

Five days before an inauguration and it is still impossible to determine the new administration’s policy on the longest overseas war in US history. This is unbelievable. Nor can we predict how the Trump Administration will operate. History shows that there have been several alternatives, but history may have no meaning in this case. If it operates in as disjointed a fashion as the Trump team has operated during the transition, there are no historical precedents or models that help us much.

Given the disparate positions his cabinet designates have taken publicly without riposte from Trump, there are some analysts who imagine that the Trump government will operate as a “Team of Rivals,” much as Lincoln’s cabinet did during the civil war. I take this to mean that Trump would take a consensual approach to governance, not with rivals for political power as Lincoln did, but by using his cabinet to discuss issues and work out a consensus policy on them.  Lincoln’s cabinet met often and argued policy out in long and sometimes rancorous meetings. However, it was the genius of Lincoln that made his team of rivals government work. Mr. Trump does not seem to fit that mold. He has not picked powerful and aggressive rivals, but intelligent and opinionated men and women who will owe their position to him. This is not to say they will not offer their opinions and argue for their positions on various issues, but the stories indicating that Trump’s inclination to decide issues heuristically, his short attention span, and dislike of dissent, make it unlikely for this sort of rational policy formulation to be his choice.

A more likely scenario is that Trump will preside over a relatively incoherent government in which the issues he campaigned on will get his attention, and others will be delegated to the cabinet departments. One important actor in this kind of governance would be Congress. The Republican Congress is chomping at the bit to push its conservative agenda through, starting with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and has moved in that direction even before Trump has taken office. This is a symbolic issue on which, as on many others, the Republicans are not completely coherent. Their goal has been to repeal Obamacare since it was enacted. More moderate Republicans (in this case including Trump) realize that repealing the AAC without installing a replacement health care plan would immediately divest 20 million Americans, many of them Trump voters, of health insurance. But devising a replacement will take time as health care is a seriously complicated issue. Yet other Republicans are hell-bent on repealing it now.

There are many other issues for which the devil is in the details, and which are likely to cause serious strains in the Republican Congress and divisions between Trump and his party in congress. The bottom line is that incoherent and gridlocked governance will continue, at least for a while. Trump promised his followers that he would stop the gridlock; how he would do so remains to be seen and, frankly, that is the most worrisome aspect of his election.

The author is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, and a former US diplomat who was Ambassador to Pakistan and Bangladesh