Fuel to the Fire: How Trump Made America’s Broken Foreign Policy Even Worse (and How We Can Recover)

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump broke not only from the Republican Party but also from the bipartisan consensus on U.S. foreign policy. Trump’s “America First” vision called for a reassertion of American nationalism on the economic front as well as in foreign affairs. Since Trump took office, it has become clear that “America First” was more of a campaign slogan than a coherent vision of American grand strategy. Fuel to the Fire, a new book from Cato scholars Christopher A. Preble, John Glaser, and A. Trevor Thrall, characterizes and explains Trump’s foreign policy doctrine and the effect that he likely will have on U.S. foreign policy during his tenure.

Statement Regarding Trump’s Syria Announcement

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President Trump’s decision amounts to a green light for Turkey to conduct military operations in northern Syria against a group, the Syrian Defense Forces, that the United States has previously supported. It is a stark reminder of the conflicting -- and, at times, contradictory -- nature of America’s commitments to foreign actors, both state and non-state.

The 2019 Arms Sales Risk Index

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The United States has long been the world’s leading arms exporter. Between 2002 and 2018 the United States notified Congress of over $560 billion in sales of major conventional weapons to 167 different nations. Though arms sales can play an important role in American foreign policy, the risks involved with sending billions of dollars of deadly weapons to all sorts of places are significant.To help improve decision making around arms sales, scholars A. Trevor Thrall and Caroline Dorminey created the Arms Sales Risk Index. By identifying the factors linked to negative outcomes like dispersion, diversion, and the misuse of weapons by recipients, the index provides a way to measure the risk involved with arms sales to every nation. We invite scholars and policy makers to read the report and to download the data for further analysis.

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