ABSTRACT
This chapter uses the individual and domestic levels of analysis to explain how key aspects of President’s Trump’s personality and behavior, and domestic political factors, inform his administration’s foreign policy. The former has continued to influence the administration’s tactics, methods, and strategy (examined in Chapters 3 and 4) since the start of his presidency. It contains three segments. The first explains how the president’s behavior is more rational – in terms of achieving his ends – than his critics are often willing to recognize. The second catalogues the president’s long-established views on international affairs and his belief that he has unique deal-making skills and a ‘genius’ that allows him to shift international arrangements in Washington’s favor. To Trump, the end justifies the means as he utilizes lies, deception, and misdirection consistently. This, in turn, is married to a brutal, transactional view of social behavior; a perspective he believes accurately reflects state interactions throughout the international system. As such, he rejects America’s liberal ideology as an impediment to pursuing US interests. The third segment identifies how domestic political factors, such as public opinion favorable to parts of his agenda, the philosophical inspiration of Andrew Jackson and emergence of a ‘restraint constituency’ in American politics, inspire his policies. Ultimately, the chapter establishes a platform for the rest of the book by making the case that any consideration of contemporary US foreign policy must consider the operating style and personal preferences of the president, and the virtually unlimited set of amoral tactics his worldview affords him.
