Donald Trump

President Donald Trump is set to deliver his first official State of the Union address Tuesday night at 9 p.m. The White House has not revealed the details of the speech yet, but it will likely hit many of the same points Trump made earlier today in his speech at Davos. You can bet he will say he had a great first year in office as he cites tax cuts, record low unemployment, and record high stock markets. Odds are also good that he will discuss trade, immigration, infrastructure, and the accomplishments of his America First foreign policy. In doing so, he will be seeking to frame the public debate in a mid-term election year where the political winds look to favor Democrats.      Vox is already out with a piece previewing what Trump might say and how you can watch online. You can expect a flood of similar pieces from the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, NPR, Politico, and just about everyone else over the next seventy-two hours. Rather than add to that onslaught, I’ll go in different direction. Here are ten facts about the State of the Union that you may not know. 1. The U.S. Constitution requires the president to deliver a State of the Union address to Congress. Article II, Section 3 stipulates: The president “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” Although the Constitution doesn’t define “from time to time,” by tradition the president conveys that message once each year. The Constitution says nothing about when the president should deliver the information or how he should deliver it. Until 1934, the State of the Union message was typically delivered in December rather than January. 2. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt popularized the use of the phrase the "State of the Union" address. Before FDR took office, presidents had called their annual message to Congress just that, the “Annual Message,” even though the words “State of the Union” appear in the Constitution. 3. For more than a century, the State of the Union was delivered to Congress in writing rather than in a speech before a joint session of Congress. George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address—or “Annual Message” if you prefer—in person and in New York. (It was the capital of the United States from 1785 to 1790.) John Adams did likewise during his one term in office. Thomas Jefferson, however, abandoned the in-person speech for the written message, perhaps because he wasn’t a great public speaker. The practice of a written message persisted until 1913, when Woodrow Wilson revived the practice of giving a speech. Ever since FDR, presidents have almost always used speeches rather than written messages to fulfill their constitutional obligation to inform Congress about the State of the Union. 4. Ronald Reagan began a tradition of not calling a president’s first speech to a joint session of Congress a State of the Union address. Presidents before Reagan had no qualms about giving a State of the Union address immediately upon becoming president. John Kennedy, for instance, gave a State of the Union speech on January 30, 1961, ten days after taking the oath of office. (That speech deserves the title of most alarming State of the Union address ever delivered. Kennedy said that he was speaking at an “hour of national peril,” that “the American economy is in trouble,” “our cities are engulfed in squalor,” and “our supply of clean water is dwindling,” but that “all these problems pale when placed beside those which confront us around the world” as “we draw nearer the hour of maximum danger.” And to think that my parents’ generation regards that time as the good old days.) Reagan, however, called his 1981 speech an “Address Before a Joint Session of Congress on the Program for Economic Recovery.” All of Reagan’s successors, including Trump, have followed that precedent and declined to call their first speech to a joint session of Congress a State of the Union address. George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush all called their messages “Administration Goals” speeches. Barack Obama and Trump both called their first speeches simply an “Address Before a Joint Session of Congress.” 5. During presidential transition years, Congress sometimes receives annual messages from two different presidents within a span of weeks. Outgoing presidents can give a State of the Union address even if the incoming president is likely to do the same. Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter all delivered an annual message in their final weeks in office, though only LBJ and Ford did it as a speech to a joint session of Congress. 6. Some presidents go short in their State of the Union addresses, some go long, very long. Washington holds the record for brevity, using just 1,089 words in 1790. That’s slightly longer than a typical newspaper op-ed. Among presidents since LBJ, Richard Nixon holds the record for shortest State of the Union speech. His 1972 address clocked in at a shade under 29 minutes. Carter holds the record for the longest State of the Union address. His 1981 address, which he (thankfully) delivered to Congress in writing rather than in person, ran 33,667 words. (That’s the last time the State of the Union was delivered in writing.) Bill Clinton holds the record for the longest State of the Union address delivered in person, whether that is measured by the number of words (9,190 in 1995) or by the time it took to deliver (one hour, twenty-eight minutes, and forty-nine seconds in 2000). Obama’s speeches averaged 6,824 words. His longest speech was 7,304 words in 2010. His shortest was 6,044 in 2016. (Obama’s 2009 speech came in at 5,902 words, but he choose not to call that speech to a joint session of Congress a State of the Union address, though he could have if he had wanted to do so.) Trump’s speech last February to a joint session of Congress, which again wasn’t called a State of the Union address, ran 5,006 words and one hour and ten seconds. 7. The prose in State of the Union addresses has gotten simpler over time. As the mode of delivering State of the Union addresses has shifted from writing to speaking and as the audience for the addresses has shifted from lawmakers to the country at large, their linguistic complexity has declined. 8. Two presidents never delivered an Annual Message or State of the Union Address. William Henry Harrison and James Garfield both died before they had the chance to deliver one, Harrison from pneumonia in 1841 and Garfield from an assassin’s bullet in 1881. 9. Technology has expanded the State of the Union’s audience. Calvin Coolidge was the first president to have his State of the Union message broadcast by radio (1923). Truman was the first president to have his State of the Union message broadcast on television (1947). Bill Clinton was the first president to have his State of the Union message broadcast over the Internet (1997). 10. While most State of the Union addresses are only remembered by those who wrote them, the ones with a lasting impact have often tackled foreign policy. James Madison announced the Monroe Doctrine in his annual message in 1823. Theodore Roosevelt added his corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in his annual message in 1904. FDR unveiled his “Four Freedoms” in his 1941 State of the Union address. And George W. Bush warned of the “Axis of Evil” in his 2002 State of the Union address. Corey Cooper and Patrice Narasimhan contributed to the preparation of this post.  

In a new postscript published in Foreign Affairs, I analyze the evidence of countries hedging against the United States after one year of President Trump’s “America First” agenda. At the dawn of the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, I predicted in Foreign Affairs that Trump’s “America first” agenda would set in motion tectonic forces beyond his control. As the ground shifted beneath their feet, longtime U.S. allies would lose confidence in U.S. leadership and credibility. They would adapt by hedging their bets, moving away from alignment with a United States no longer willing to promote and defend the liberal world order that it had sustained since 1945. The evidence for this hedging would be in adjustments by U.S. allies to their approaches toward geopolitics, economics, and climate change. One year after Trump’s inauguration, the liberal order has not collapsed. But it is in distress as the president turns his back on the world the United States made to embrace a nationalist and isolationist foreign policy. Read the full article here.

The United States must respond to Russia's interference in the 2016 elections by pursuing a strategy of containment. Without a comprehensive response, Russia's meddling will continue.

President Donald Trump’s January 11 comments denigrating African countries has produced a fierce, continent-wide reaction. The concern must be that Africans will take the president’s comments as reflecting the views of most Americans, rather than merely his own and that of his small political base. In the aftermath of the president’s comments, the Department of State’s Africa bureau tweeted that “the United States will continue to robustly, enthusiastically and forcefully engage” with Africa, a weak response to African anger that reflects the reality that it is a part of the Trump administration, not independent of it. It becomes imperative that Americans who do not share the president’s views and are independent of the administration make explicitly clear the value of Africa to the United States. To that end, seventy-eight former U.S. ambassadors to African countries (including me) have signed a public letter to the president. (There were an additional seven signatures after the letter was delivered to the White House on January 16.) The letter affirms the importance of the multidimensional partnerships the United States has with most African states, which range from business to security to conservation. It makes the point that a close partnership with Africa is a matter of U.S. national security. The letter calls on the president to reassess his views of Africa and to acknowledge the importance of African contributions, and those of the African diaspora. As of January 18, there has been no substantive White House response. Those who signed the letter represent much of the Africa expertise once found at the U.S. Department of State. The letter is already being carried by some American and African media outlets, and it is to be hoped that more will do so in the coming days, especially those with an African audience. The letter has been distributed to the relevant majority (Republican) and minority (Democratic) congressional members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle had strongly criticized the president’s comments.  

Far from dissipating, African anger is building over President Donald Trump’s negative characterization of Africa on January 11. African leaders are rejecting President Trump’s denials that he used gutter language, and a media review shows there is an emerging consensus among African opinion leaders that he is a flat-out racist. There is indignation among Africans when Americans seem to tip-toe around what they regard as the overwhelming evidence of his racism. Over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend, Botswana, Ghana, Haiti, Namibia, Senegal, and the African Union have made formal diplomatic protests. Botswana, with among the best social and economic statistics on the continent, has asked the administration “to clarify if Botswana is regarded as a ‘shithole country.’” Cyril Ramaphosa, the new president of South Africa’s governing African National Congress, has characterized the president’s remarks as “really, really derogatory, and highly offensive.” Nigeria’s foreign minister has called in American diplomats to explain the president’s remarks, characterizing them as “deeply hurtful, offensive and unacceptable.” Over the coming days, there are likely to be more official African responses. Nigeria and South Africa are the continent’s economic and political powerhouses. With Botswana, Ghana, Namibia, and Senegal, the five are on a democratic trajectory, albeit at different stages. U.S. cooperation with Nigeria in the fight against terrorism had been growing. While the bilateral relationship with South Africa is no more than “correct,” relations among the other four with Washington have been close—up to now.  According to the New York Times, the State Department has instructed its missions not to deny that the president made the remarks attributed to him, but merely to listen. Given African fury, that approach is wise. In Africa as in the United States, there is skepticism that the president tells the truth, and his denials are discounted. The president’s comments have damaged the interests of the United States in the world’s second largest continent with more than one billion people. The political and security consequences are likely to be negative, especially in multilateral fora such as the United Nations or the World Trade Organization. Alienation of Africans can have consequences on issues where the administration is seeking to rally world opinion, like North Korea, for example. Further, this racist and anti-African rhetoric is likely to strengthen the hand of those in Africa that would see their countries turn away from the West and towards more authoritarian governments, like those of Russia and China. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was expected to travel to Africa sometime in the near future, even though there is still no assistant secretary of state for Africa in place. If he does make the trip soon, his reception is likely to be frosty.

American media is reporting that, during a bipartisan meeting with members of Congress on immigration matters on January 11, President Donald Trump asked why the United States should accept immigrants from Haiti and African states, which he characterized as “shithole countries.” Instead, he said he wanted more immigrants from countries such as Norway (he had met with the Norwegian prime minister the previous day). As the New York Times pointed out, this presidential discourse was similar to that in 2017, when he allegedly said that Haitian immigrants all had AIDS and that Nigerians in the United States would never go back to their “huts.” In the 2017 case, the White House denied that the president ever made those alleged remarks. This time, the White House did not deny what he said on January 11, and it has been confirmed by some members of Congress present. However, in tweets, the president is now saying that “this was not the language used.” His Deputy Spokesman, and the president himself in  after-hours tweets, sought to portray the episode in the context of “America First.” Predictably, the president’s comments have produced a storm of criticism and indignation from both parties. Some members of Congress directly characterized the president’s remarks as racist. Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) said, “We can now say with 100 percent confidence that the president is a racist who does not share the values enshrined in our Constitution or Declaration of Independence.” Congresswoman Mia Love of Illinois, a fellow Republican and who is of Haitian descent, said that the president’s comments were unkind, divisive, elitist, and fly in the face of the nation’s values. “This behavior is unacceptable from the leader of our nation.” The White House deputy spokesperson is trying to put the president’s comments in the context of the debate over changes to the immigration system. There are proposals, most from the Republican Party, to shift immigration criteria from family unification to skills, the latter sharing similarities with the Canadian system. There are also proposals, supported by the president, to eliminate the visa lottery. The immediate context is the debate over the future of the “Dreamers,” children who came illegally to the United States with their parents. That issue is also connected to federal financial issues, which, if unresolved, risk shutting-down the federal government next week. The president consistently advocates the reduction of immigration to the United States. For the record: African immigrants have higher levels of educational attainment than Americans and much lower crime levels. Often arriving with little other than their education, they move rapidly into the middle class. I have written before about African immigration to the United States, here and here. Also for the record: there is virtually no Norwegian immigration to the United States. Norway consistently outranks the United States in most measurements of national economic and social well-being, and its per capita income is higher. Americans would be naïve if they thought that Africans would pay little attention to what the president said or put it in a more favorable or understandable context. Popular African outrage—which is likely to be all but universal—is bound to have a negative impact on the image of the United States in Africa and on American political, security, and even economic interests. It is fair to say that the United States has suffered a serious setback in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Trump administration's decision to repeal Temporary Protected Status for thousands of Salvadorans presents them with a difficult choice, writes Edward Alden.

The following is a guest post by John B. Bellinger III, adjunct senior fellow for international and national security law at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Richard Fontaine, president of the Center for a New American Security. In a series of tweets on New Year’s Eve, President Donald J. Trump expressed strong support for Iranians protesting against their autocratic regime. He added that the United States would be “watching very closely for human rights violations!” The president’s pronouncements have been valuable in emphasizing the importance of human rights in Iran. They also mark something of a departure for an administration that has only episodically expressed concern for the protection of fundamental freedoms abroad. Given the president’s recent focus on human rights, it’s disappointing that the administration’s National Security Strategy, which was released on December 18, gives human rights such short shrift. The NSS emphasizes many familiar Republican foreign policy themes, like the need to deal with China and Russia, confront North Korea and Iran, protect against terrorism and increase military strength—and for those supportive of U.S. global leadership, there is much to like. But the omission of any mention of promoting human rights as a national security priority is striking, and unfortunate. The human rights effort has long been a priority in Republican as well as Democratic administrations. Done right, supporting human rights strengthens, rather than weakens, American national security. The National Security Strategy is not wholly silent on issues like freedom and democracy. Indeed, a small portion of the document commits the administration to support individual dignity, freedom, and the rule of law. Such good things, however, are cast as “American values,” rather than rights to which all people are entitled. The strategy does make several references to “individual rights” but the term “human rights” appears just once  to warn  that the United States will deny admission to “human rights abusers.”  Yet acknowledging the existence of universal human rights, and America’s critical role in protecting and promoting them, is more important today than in many years. In its latest 2017 report, Freedom House observed the eleventh consecutive year of decline in global freedom. Sixty-seven countries suffered net declines in civil liberties and political rights, against just thirty-six that posted gains. And the human rights situation has deteriorated not only in the usual dictatorships but also among friends and allies like Turkey, Ethiopia, Hungary, Bahrain and Azerbaijan. Where the NSS does reference a U.S. role in expanding democracy and freedom, it is largely one of inspiration rather than active promotion. This is America as city on a hill, a shining beacon but little more. “We are not going to impose our values on others,” the document assures readers. “The American way of life cannot be imposed upon others, nor is it the inevitable culmination of progress.” It precisely because such freedoms are not inevitable that America must play an active role in protecting and advancing them. This requires their vigorous promotion—the United States as actor as well as exemplar. Embracing the cause of basic rights and freedoms gives purpose and direction to America’s role in the world, beyond its narrowly-construed national interests. And it is consonant with precisely those American values that the National Security Strategy is at pains to highlight. Standing up for fundamental rights abroad does something more: It makes the world safer for Americans and makes us stronger. The NSS acknowledges this implicitly, noting, “Governments that respect the rights of their citizens remain the best vehicle for prosperity, human happiness, and peace.” Given Trump’s repeated emphasis on the importance of national strength and restoring international respect for the United States, his administration should recognize that America is respected around the world not merely for its military might and strong economy but equally for its commitment to human rights and the rule of law.  As the Trump administration begins to implement its new strategy, there are three reasons why it should embrace, rather than reject, a human rights agenda. First is to resist growing restrictions on freedom in the world. U.S. leadership is necessary to reverse this trend. Human rights will never represent the America’s only foreign policy objective and often will not be the top agenda item in key foreign relationships. But efforts to promote human rights should be interwoven with all else we seek to achieve. The decline in freedom will very likely accelerate the longer America is out of the game. Second is the general disillusionment with human rights and democracy promotion at home and abroad. Disasters in Iraq and Libya, the Arab Spring’s failures, China’s combination of power and repression, and backsliding in places like Myanmar have all increased doubts about both liberalism’s staying power and America’s ability to aid it. There have been deep disappointments but great successes as well, and Washington should examine the drivers of that distinction and act on the lessons. The third reason is about us. The NSS argues that “America First” means more than safeguarding our security and prosperity at the expense of any others. But the world—and many Americans—genuinely wonder about the Trump administration’s lack of international altruism. A fulsome embrace of human rights would demonstrate to all the country’s nobility of purpose at a time when confidence in the United States is shaky. All this would require a shift of presidential emphasis and philosophy. We must hope that the president’s support for freedom in Iran reflects a new recognition of the role that the United States—and the president himself—play in championing human rights around the world. If the president declines to play this role, Congress and civil society will need to increase their own efforts to ensure that the United States continues to promote international human rights. It’s critical that they do so. Few efforts could be better tailored to making America great again. This post originally appeared on Lawfare, published in cooperation with the Brookings Institution.

In an op-ed recently published in the Hill, I contrast President Donald J. Trump’s transactional and cynical diplomacy with President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, which turn one hundred today. One year into his presidency, Donald Trump’s worldview is clear. He has abdicated global leadership and renounced the international order that America made. His purely transactional, nakedly cynical diplomacy rejects longstanding U.S. support for collective security, multilateral trade, and democracy. How different from the idealistic Woodrow Wilson, the prophet of internationalism who issued his famous blueprint for a liberal world order, the Fourteen Points, exactly a century ago. Wilson had reluctantly taken the nation to war in April 1917. But once the United States was engaged, he renounced traditional war aims, insisting that the nation pursue a new world order informed by American principles. Read the full op-ed here.  

The New Year has brought a rash of new articles and proclamations to the effect that the retreat of the United States has left the door open for China to walk through and assume the mantle of global leadership. Let me offer an alternative argument: We suck, but China does too. The truth is that neither the United States nor China is currently up to the job of forging the type of consensus that addresses global challenges and advances the international system writ large. The only difference is that the United States now has a leader who makes clear that he simply doesn’t care about the rest of the world while China has a leader that at least pretends to care. So what is the case for Chinese leadership? China’s claim is strongest on the purely economic front. It is investing heavily in all forms of technology from clean energy to artificial intelligence, and despite massive waste and fraud can be counted among the world’s top performers. China has also set out a grand-scale vision for global connectivity, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), that could, in fact, transform the international landscape. The fact that the BRI is self-serving—what better means of off-loading Chinese overcapacity in heavily polluting industries than by building infrastructure elsewhere—is somewhat beside the point. There is the opportunity for “win-win” cooperation as the Chinese like to say; it is up to other countries to tell China when projects don’t meet their needs (as Pakistan and Nepal have done recently). There will be many white elephants along the way, but there is a lot of leadership demonstrated in conceptualizing a worldwide infrastructure project to facilitate trade and investment globally. (As a reality check, it is noteworthy that while China is the largest trading partner for much of the world, it is not the largest investor in any overall region.)  Most analysts raise the example of climate change in discussing Chinese leadership. I have written before about why China should not be considered a climate leader—at least not yet. But to sum up my argument briefly, China continues to develop significant numbers of carbon emitting coal-to-chemical plants that, if completed, are equal to roughly 10 percent of its current CO2 contribution and more than Germany’s total carbon emissions in 2015. (This doesn’t even include its planned export of more than 100 coal-fired power plants through its Belt and Road Initiative.)  In 2018, the independent monitoring groups German Watch and Climate Action Network ranked China 41st in terms of how much it has done to avoid climate change and how much it plans to do. But most important, for real leadership on climate change, China should be rallying other countries to take on even more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets or leading the charge on transparency in monitoring and reporting—yet China is doing neither of these things and is even a drag on the transparency front. Of course, no discussion of world leadership should ignore the quality of governance that a country brings to the table. President Xi suggested at the October 2017 19th Party Congress that China could serve as a model for—or at least advise—other countries on their development. Yet with its facial and voice recognition software, social credit system, and renewed effort to persuade Chinese citizens to report on each other, China is well on its way to becoming a police state. Watching Beijing’s adoption of repressive new political measures, as well as the gradual encroachment of mainland political norms on Hong Kong citizens, is devastating. Would any society in the world willingly subscribe to a political model such as China’s? Moreover, China behaves as a bully—wielding its economic leverage not to advance global goods such as containing nuclear proliferation but instead to punish other countries for perceived political infractions. Norway, South Korea, the Philippines, and even tiny Palau have all felt the economic wrath of China in the recent past for making decisions with which Beijing disagreed. (Interestingly, none of the countries reversed course in the face of Chinese sanctions.) Finally, part of being a world leader means that others will follow. Yet even in China’s own backyard, there is little indication that many countries are excited at the prospect of Chinese leadership.  A quick look at the most recent Pew Poll suggests that among the larger countries in Asia, most citizens are far from willing to jump on the China express. Responding to a question of “How much confidence do you have in Chinese President Xi Jinping to do the right thing regarding world affairs?,” the response “a lot” was voiced by 12 percent in the Philippines and 0 percent in Japan. The rest of the countries—Australia, South Korea, Indonesia, India, and Vietnam—ranged from 3 to 4 percent.  Astonishingly, in India, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines, confidence in President Trump was higher than in President Xi. There is little doubt that President Trump is sharply diminishing U.S. standing globally. His erratic tweets and impulsive policy pronouncements make the United States appear an unreliable partner—no matter how hard his cabinet tries to mitigate the damage. He is harming U.S. innovative capacity through his mean-spirited policies on immigration. And the impending explosion in the U.S. deficit will burden generations of Americans to come. Yet even as the United States loses standing, China is not the natural stand-in. China has yet to demonstrate the essential elements of global leadership—a willingness and ability to bring others to the table to forge consensus, and to align and, if necessary, subordinate its own narrow interests to those of the larger international community. China could one day fill the role—but until it does, let’s look to Europe, Canada, and perhaps Japan for the type of leadership the world needs in the absence of the United States.