Not Without Incident: Questioning Big Brother's Platitudes

“For a Tragedy and a Comedy are both composed of the same alphabet.” -Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption, Book I, Part II

“I get these lightweights like Marco Rubio, he gets up and says ‘Oh, Donald Trump didn’t talk about foreign policy’.”- Donald Trump

This project is more than a single assignment or thesis. It will be lifelong. My thesis is the beginning of what I intend to be a storied career. This may lead to a role in advising on foreign policy, or it may continue to expand my personal platform into a podcast and magazine. I have chosen to research the Trump administration because ever since Donald Trump announced his candidacy and ascended to the presidency, which led to four years of chaos, buffoonery, and press conferences that seemed like reality TV outtakes, I have been both fascinated and astonished, although I have been reluctant to side myself with one position on Trump and his administration. This is research I have been doing on my own since 2015. My first degree, which I began in 2017, was in English Literature. I was considering a PhD pathway analyzing hip hop culture and rap lyrics. During my undergraduate studies, I had always taken mostly all my electives in political science. Much of my reading has been in politics, economics, and philosophy. For my final year in my undergraduate degree, I embarked on a year abroad in Australia. During this time, I became more and more interested in pursuing my Trump legacy project idea. After discussing it with one of my professors I had in a course on Australian foreign policy, I made the decision to make the switch and last year I began a master’s degree in international relations, in which I will complete a thesis and move into a PhD in the US. I’m currently in my master’s program and am about to begin my literature review. I will be reading the entire literature on the Trump administration and related topics.

My purpose with this project is to explore and interpret the Trump administration’s legacy, particularly in foreign policy in Asia. However, I will also focus on domestic issues, and topics such as populism and corporatism that are written about when analyzing Trump and his rise to power. I will be reading literature from across the political spectrum, right, left, pro-Trump, anti-Trump, and everything in between. A wide reading will produce a nuanced and well-rounded analysis, and will help avoid the selective researching and partisan arguments that pervade many works on the Trump administration. My personal politics are not irrelevant, but they will be set aside as much as possible in favor of a more nuanced approach that takes into consideration arguments that I may otherwise disagree with outright. In my academic work I will be focusing on foreign policy in Asia and the Indo-Pacific. Much of the literature on the Trump administration tends to analyze domestic politics and culture. I will thus be reading literature on US foreign policy and foreign policy in Asia that is not directly related to Trump, but will inform my research focus and will be integral in adding to and bolstering the literature on the Trump administration’s foreign policy,

There is a growing volume of literature on Trump and his administration. There is literature focusing on the man himself, such as biographies, his tweets, his own books, and in house reporting informed books that read like dramas. These are books such as the trilogies of Michael Wolff and Bob Woodward, the sets of books by Carol Leonnig and Phillip Rucker and Jonathan Karl. These books have a the distinct disadvantage that is the immediacy and innate lack of reflective thought pervading in the moment reporting, pieced together through the gathering of hearsay by nameless aides or senior advisers. Books that are written and published within a few years of Trump’s election, especially during Trump’s presidency, inherently lack any reflection or thorough insight. This can result in the use of misreporting. In the moment literature will inevitably be a mish mash of West Wing gossip, hearsay, and particular interpretations of events. Whether, from a Trump voter, Democrat, CNN reporter, or Trump adviser, they will each have different viewpoint.

It is essential that people be open to all points of view, as that is what presents the whole picture. Any one viewpoint will be selective in its analysis. Those vehemently opposed to Trump will see him and his administration a certain way, and those who support him will see something else, and there are various views in between these two extremes. My approach is more concerned with policy and ideas than Trump the man or the character of those in his administration and orbit, many who are shady and reprehensible. Specific to my focus on foreign policy is Asia, it is not Trump who is drafting policy and he is not the sole executor of policy ideas. Officials such as Robert O’Brien, Matt Pottinger, and Mike Pompeo, among others, are the minds behind much of the Trump administration’s foreign policy.

Literature and commentary written during Trump’s presidency are often struggles to interpret how such a maniac could possible have ascended to the presidency. My approach will work to shift the focus and create more fruitful discourse on the impact of the Trump presidency in three key ways. These are, firstly, a shift from centering Trump in my research to centering his administration. This will not diminish Trump’s influence, but will look at the work done by his administration as a whole to remove the more emotional and personal arguments and attacks that result from discussions about him. Secondly I will focus on ideas, not people. This applies not just to Trump, but applies to any member of the current administration or those which came before or followed. I will be looking at the texts of policies, executive orders, reports, and the entirety of the literature from a pragmatic perspective. Thirdly is the inclusion of tweets in my literature review and research. Twitter was Trump’s main podium, and the entire administration communicated and continues to communicate through tweets. Tweets are as much a part of the literature on Trump and his administration as any other text. These three elements of my approach will result in a nuanced and thoughtful analysis of the Trump administration’s legacy.

I will also be reading literature on topics that are not directly centered on Trump or his administration. This will further bolster the depth of my analysis. Topics such as populism, authoritarianism, US foreign policy, the Indo-Pacific and Asia Pacific will be explored and woven into the analysis. There is a lot of literature written about US foreign policy in Asia since Richard Nixon’s opening up to China but not as much is specifically focused on the Trump administration’s foreign policy.

As well as focusing on ideas and policy, I will be starting with questions, not conclusions. Many of the books I will be reading and have read so far evidently begin with presumptions regarding Trump and his administration. It is often in the titles of books, using words such as chaos, peril, fire and fury, and betrayal. Several books in the Trump administration literature take an overly dramatic angle. Starting with questions helps with being open to all arguments, and in contrast, starting with a conclusion narrows the literature I would need to make my case. I will categorize the texts in four main sections. These sections are the pro-Trump literature, which is usually far right leaning but not always. These can also include figures on the right who recognize Trump’s flaws but commend policy successes. The second section is the critical right, which can include figures just mentioned, who are critical of Trump’s conduct while commending his administration’s achievements. The critical right is intended to accommodate thinkers on the right who may be highly critical of Trump and some in his administration but laud its accomplishments and strive to ground right leaning thought about Trump. The third section is the critical left, which can include left leaning figures who are critical of Trump’s opposition, sycophants, and the Democratic party. The critical left often offer commentary that critiques Trump but that is also critical of the reaction to Trump and how underlying factors in America such as deindustrialization and a disconnected political class led to Trump’s election. Fourth is the anti-Trump section, which can include reactionary pundits, figures both on the left and the right who ally themselves with the #resistance, and the reporters and writers who strayed from objectivity in overseeing the Trump presidency. None of this in any of these descriptions is meant to disparage any of these arguments. These views will all be analyzed fairly and critically. This is my contribution to the discourse. What I am proposing may be a revolutionary stream of thought- a different approach that sparks an openness to new perspectives on the Trump administration.

The future of my work and this more nuanced methodology is multifold. I hope to someday apply it to other figures such as Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill. I am open to all questions, calls to have a discussion, or suggestions for books to read and literature or media to check out. The first book I will be analyzing more closely and making posts about over the next three or four weeks is Carlos Lozada’s What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era. I also have a reading list section on this blog, which contains a continuously updated list of relevant texts by category.