Consistent Chaos: Trump’s Leadership Style And US Foreign Policy

U.S. foreign policy concerns a wide range of highly complex issues. It requires consistency, integrity and long-term strategy. President Trump demonstrates none of these characteristics in his presidency. Accordingly, foreign policy experts grow concerned about the direction of U.S. diplomatic relations. Does Trump have the leadership skills to recognize the weight of the office? Is his erratic behavior on social media a harbinger for isolationism? And what is the impact of Trump’s leadership style on U.S. foreign policy? It turns out: there is a method to this chaos.

tl;dr

This article examines President Trump’s foreign policy behavior as a product of a leadership style that is entrenched in a plutocratic worldview. We apply elements of Hermann’s leadership traits framework to Trump’s engagement with NATO, and characterize him as a low-conceptual complexity president, enabled by limited search for information and advice, a confrontational and insensitive approach to his environment, and proclivity to violate international norms and rules. We show that Trump’s low- conceptual complexity is underpinned by a plutocratic worldview which is transactional and money-first. We argue that while this signals change between Trump and his predecessors, this plutocratic approach has been one of the most significant sources of consistency within Trump’s administration.

Make sure to read the full data memo titled Low-conceptual complexity and Trump’s foreign policy by Asaf Siniver and Christopher Featherstone at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339911972_Low-conceptual_complexity_and_Trump’s_foreign_policy

When Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States, I began to wonder what his Presidency will mean for our country, then in pursuit of a grand strategy of primacy. The Donald Trump the world knew until 2016 seemed to be oblivious to pursuing long term objectives. His entertainment persona was crafted for instant gratification, quick returns and scorched earth when necessary. Isolationism seemed inevitable as promised in his campaign. How would he handle this dichotomy? I am fascinated with human behavior. In particular in leadership positions. I believe responsibility and public pressure does shape the character, but the outcome might be one leader becoming a beacon for hope and progress while another will be remembered as the demise of democracy as we know it. Which is President Trump? An intriguing paper by researchers from the University of Birmingham analyzed the influence of Trump’s leadership style on U.S. foreign policy. They argue that Trump follows a plutocratic worldview, basically placing a higher value on individual wealth than on social welfare, which in conjunction with his mercurial nature and often unpredictable decision-making has led him to conflate complex foreign policy with his simple transactional leadership style. 

The Trump administration struggled from inauguration day with filling important cabinet and senior staff roles. A polarized election campaign produced the highest rate of staff turnover in the history of the U.S. government. As Trump’s campaign promises centered around domestic issues, a rigor negligence of foreign policy was omnipresent. The nature of America’s presidential system places Trump as the head of state and the head of government in a unique position to shape U.S. foreign policy based on his personality and his conduct. This resulted in a high degree of uncertainty of U.S. foreign policy and left allies as well as trade relationships in a suffocating limbo. This paper examined the degree of conceptual complexity present as observed in the President’s cognitive behavior over the course of his first term as President of the United States. Conceptual complexity refers to an individual’s ability to identify and differentiate several degrees of information. It indicates prowess to structure complex information using critical thinking and reflection. Magret G. Herman presented conceptual complexity as part of the seven leadership traits that can be analyzed based on what they (leaders) say. The researchers extrapolate this definition onto leaders, who 

“understand reality through a multi-dimensional prism. They are sensitive to contextual variables and rely on information gathering and deliberation before making decisions. “

Within international and diplomatic relations this might encompass an ability to identify cultural nuances, economic dependencies and access to natural resources of one country in conjunction with multilateral trade agreements, historic alliances or geopolitical tensions and conflict zones. A leader’s soft skills to compare, weigh and reflect this plethora of competing information under pressure defines high-conceptual complexity leaders. This is in contrast with 

“low-complexity leaders (who) generally do not differentiate the dimensions of their environment. They view the world in binary terms (e.g good/bad, friend/enemy), and are thus more likely to make decisions based on intuition and emotion“

Even the most lenient interpretation of it cannot suppress the immediate notion of Trump’s leadership style being drenched in low-conceptual complexity. Here, this paper is building a case that Trump effectively deceived his electorate of blue-collar workers who bought into the idea that a businessman with noble interests has arrived to ‘drain the swamp’. Through divisive and polarizing rhetoric, Trump disguised his administration of unprecedented wealthy staff as equals with the disenfranchised poor citizens in this country. Therefore creating a plutocratic rule by the few over the many – an American tendency with a rich history. Taking this together, the researchers find Trump’s decision-making process with regard to U.S. foreign policy is largely driven by plutocratic interests to allocate wealth of the many to a few wealthy. It places U.S. foreign policy in a transactional environment. In this environment, Trump allows few critical voices in his short process of deliberating foreign policy measures with little information at hand and an approach of keeping his hands close to the chest rendering complex diplomatic processes next to impossible to implement.    

“His advisers didn’t know whether he was an isolationist or a militarist, or whether he could distinguish between the two.“

The result is a catastrophic U.S. foreign policy that creates fertile ground for political and diplomatic repercussions on the internal stage and is an invitation for threats against U.S. national security. Trump’s contradictions are further observed in the debate around climate change. In 2009, the private citizen Trump and other business leaders lobbied for decisive investments into clean and renewable energy. Ironically this is an acknowledgment of climate change, which Trump has later denied and is persistently questioning on social media. In 2017, then President Trump initiated the exit of the United States from the Paris Climate Accord rendering it as detrimental to U.S. economic interests. In another example of Trump exhibiting plutocratic low-conceptual complexity, the tradition of paying a first diplomatic visit to our neighbors in Canada or Mexico was set aside to ‘make a deal’ with Saudi Arabia. Incidentally, Trump did not hide his personal business interests in Saudi Arabia. Such insensitivity to diplomatic nuance is low-conceptual complexity fueled by the pursuit of increasing individual wealth (or here his personal brand value as dealmaker). The paper closes with the relationship of President Trump and NATO. Trump operates with a small staff and wealthy cabinet members. He possesses little to zero knowledge of details of fiscal procedures of NATO or the overarching purpose of NATO. Further, Trump, a native of New York City did not seem to be aware that the infamous Article 5 was invoked in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. And while all these examples imply erratic cognitive contradictions, the researchers were able to identify consistency in the chaos that is Trump’s leadership. Viewed through a prism of plutocratic worldview established in his business endeavors, Trump exhibits strong signals for a leadership style governed by low-conceptual complexity. His transactional mindset based on limited information and suppressing critical voices applied to U.S. foreign policy is a threat to the foundations of peace.