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Opinion

Is Trump’s Foreign Policy Inept, or Radical? It’s Both

National Security Adviser Mike Flynn at a press briefing on Wednesday said he was “officially putting Iran on notice.”Credit...Nicholas Kamm/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In just two weeks in office, President Trump has embarked on a foreign policy that is literally all over the map: insulting the Australian prime minister, threatening a trade war with Mexico and imposing a ham-handed refugee ban that has drawn global condemnation.

Missteps by new administrations are to be expected. But their number and nature this time have left analysts wondering whether they represent a deep incoherence and ineptitude on the part of the administration, or the first steps in the rollout of a radical and dangerous new foreign policy vision. The answer, if the evolution of Mr. Trump’s National Security Council is any indication, may be both.

In terms of personnel, until last week the most troubling sign of this had been Mr. Trump’s appointment of Michael T. Flynn, a retired Army three-star general, as national security adviser. For the foreign policy establishment, Mr. Flynn had two major strikes against him. First, he was seen as an incapable and overbearing manager; in 2014 he was dismissed as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency because so-called Flynn facts — such as his obsessive notion that Iran was complicit in the 2012 attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya — did not square with his own agency’s assessments.

Second, he holds imprudently extreme views on policy. He believes the United States must engage in a multifront war on terrorism, support hard-line anti-Islamist allies like Egypt, downgrade ties with counterterrorism partners like Saudi Arabia and thwart Islamists who supposedly would impose Shariah in the United States by exploiting American religious freedoms.

For a time, it looked as if Mr. Flynn was indeed in charge. Mr. Trump’s pre-inauguration foreign policy moves — especially the apparent rejection of the longstanding “One China” policy and the dubious courtship of Russia as a counterterrorism partner — reflected the national security adviser’s incautious approach to strategic affairs.

Over the last week, things took a turn for the worse. Rumors circulated that Mr. Trump, like Barack Obama before him, had already grown tired of Mr. Flynn’s imperiousness. Perhaps to counter the general, President Trump elevated Stephen K. Bannon, his closest political adviser, to a full seat on the National Security Council’s “principals committee,” its primary policy-making mechanism. Mr. Flynn, at least, had a long career in military and foreign affairs; the foreign-policy credentials of Mr. Bannon, an alt-right ideologue who used to head Breitbart News, amounts to a stint as a junior officer in the Navy that ended in 1983.

It would be bad enough if Mr. Trump had merely brought in a political guru to check an unruly policy adviser (whatever happened to “You’re fired!”?). But at the same time, he downgraded the customarily permanent seat of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — the president’s primary military adviser — to a merely discretionary participant.

In other words, Mr. Bannon may now be a de facto co-national security adviser, confirming that Mr. Trump plans to tie the national security decision-making process more closely to political ideology than strategic sense and operational feasibility. Which is why we may be looking at a more radical, and more inept, foreign policy than anyone expected from Mr. Trump, even two weeks ago.

Scholars from Samuel P. Huntington to Eliot Cohen to H. R. McMaster have argued that American foreign policy depends on a judicious balance between military input and civilian control, with political influence kept to a minimum. Huntington, in “The Soldier and the State,” held that civilian leaders should set strategy but defer to the military on operational matters; General McMaster’s classic study of the Vietnam War, “Dereliction of Duty,” shows what happens when that balance tilts too far away from the military.

The National Security Council doesn’t just advise the president; by coordinating among the State Department, the Pentagon and other agencies, it is supposed to maintain that balance. Doing so requires collegial open-mindedness and the input of a generous range of viewpoints and perspectives. The job of a national security adviser is to set and coordinate the foreign policy agenda in consultation with the president, eliciting the input of key agencies through layered interagency deliberations, and giving those agencies the job of carrying out the policy so formulated. It is highly improbable that either Mr. Bannon or Mr. Flynn will foster that kind of probing outreach.

Both apprehend the world through the lens of Islamophobia, brook no dissent and have recruited correspondingly obsequious minions as staffers. Their tendency will be to make policy according to jingoistic shibboleths and to turn the council into a kind of ideological echo chamber, issuing decrees and leaving them to be carried out by operational actors — mainly the State Department, service branches and law enforcement agencies — insufficiently consulted about the advisability of a given course of action.

This bent was in evidence when the executive order barring Muslims, based on a vain and reckless campaign promise, became effective without having been vetted by the State, Defense or Homeland Security Departments.

Other major mistakes that would be harder to reverse could be on the horizon. Mr. Trump has requested Saudi and Emirati assistance in establishing “safe zones” in Syria. But the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs have long opposed such measures as impractical and unstable — they likely require expensive no-fly zones, which would call for effective acts of war like the destruction of Syrian antiaircraft defenses, necessitate the deployment of 15,000 to 30,000 troops, and involve the exposure of American aircraft to adversaries, including Russia. Would Mr. Bannon and Mr. Flynn include Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, in those plans, knowing he would likely argue against them?

There is still some hope that Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis will act as a counterweight. He has been critical of several ideas embraced by Mr. Trump and his inner circle, having persuaded the president not to reinstate torture and apparently gaining traction in forging a tougher administration stance toward Russia on Ukraine, support for a two-state solution on Israel-Palestine and a measured approach to Iran.

And while Mr. Bannon and perhaps Mr. Flynn have the president’s ear, Mr. Mattis has offsetting assets. As defense secretary, he is the chief custodian and proximate controller of the nation’s military resources, which affords him considerable clout in the interagency process, and he has strong ties in Congress. As a former four-star Marine Corps general and Central Command commander, his military assessments are apt to be more compatible with those of General Dunford, creating a strong alliance in the administration.

Mr. Mattis could well win the looming struggle. In meetings, the national security adviser has to marshal some degree of consensus on security council action items. Mr. Bannon and Mr. Flynn can spout ideology, Flynn facts and fake news; Mr. Mattis can speak authoritatively to capabilities, threat assessments, global and regional trade-offs and operational outcomes.

It may not take long for Congress and other officials to side decisively with Mr. Mattis and against an unhinged Mr. Bannon or an eccentric Mr. Flynn, increasingly resisted and isolated by the Pentagon, the State Department and the intelligence community.

The question is whether that would be enough. Ordinarily, an unpopular, unreliable national security adviser would be ousted quickly. But Mr. Trump could defiantly double down on one or both loyalists. Having both worked on the National Security Council staff and watched “The Apprentice,” I would guess Mr. Trump will eventually jettison a liability as long as he can save face. Until then, it remains soberingly perverse that any hope for a sound foreign policy may rest on the wider national security bureaucracy’s opposition to its own president and his closest advisers.

Jonathan Stevenson is a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library. He was director for political-military affairs, Middle East and North Africa, at the National Security Council from 2011 to 2013.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section SR, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: A Radically Inept Foreign Policy. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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