Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Background and Motivation
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Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Background and Motivation
On January 20, 2017, Donald John Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States of America. The concerns about President Trump’s lack of political and military experiences invoked quite a lot of debates around the world. For example, Zachary Crockett argued in his article that “Donald Trump is the only President ever with no political or military experience.”1 The British Academy also held a penal discussion titled “Trump:
How to Understand an Unconventional President,” claiming that “From governing by Twitter to making unguarded comments about other world leaders, Trump’s campaign and presidency have established him as one of the most unconventional presidents in modern history.”2
During the past years, like or dislike, optimistic or pessimistic, supporting or opposing, experts and media in the field of international politics have been scrambling to answer questions as follows. What is the unconventional president’s worldview and how does the world view the new president? How would the unconventional president wield his political power? What impacts would his behaviors bring for the international community? Would he keep the commitments made by his predecessors toward allied nations? Can he stand strong enough to ward off rival powers of the U.S. in the world arena? What role would the U.S.
play in the anarchic and even chaotic world in the future?
1 Zachary Crockett, “Donald Trump is the only President ever with no political or military experience,” Vox Media, January 23, 2017, accessed June 5, 2017,
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/11/13587532/donald-trump-no-experience.
2 Emma Long, Scott Lucas, and Stephen Reicher, “Trump: How to Understand an Unconventional President,”
The British Academy, February 21, 2018, accessed August 27, 2018,
http://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/trump-how-understand-unconventional-president.
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However, even when so many experts and media have been working ardently and being so ready to express their ideas, few answers or debates from them seemed to have satisfied the curious minds about President Trump around the world. The author designed this project in search of a better understanding of how the unconventional American President would deal with all of those issues. Motivated by President Trump’s speech in Riyadh where he said,
“We are adopting a Principled Realism, rooted in common values and shared interests,”3 the author set forth the analysis through the lens of offensive realism. The author found that offensive realism could best represent President Trump’s perception, rhetoric, and policy choices. For instance, his catchphrases such as “Make America Great Again” and “America First” foreign policy wedge quite well into the theoretical assumptions of offensive realism that states “always act according to their own self-interest and do not subordinate their interests to the interests of other states, or to the interests of the so-called international community.”4 President Trump’s trade war with the PRC, his proposal of “a historic increase of defense budget,” and his rhetoric that “Nobody is going to mess with us. Nobody. It (budget) will be one of the greatest military build-ups in American history” are in accordance with offensive realist concepts of “state survival” and “the pursuit of power maximization.”
The author began with the examination of President Trump’s worldview and his understanding of U.S. current position which drive the mission of his administration. In a speech given at the Center for the National Interest on April 27, 2016, Donald Trump, then the presumptive Republican nominee for the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, asserted that
“After the Cold War, our foreign policy has veered badly off course” and it has “no vision, no
3 U.S., The White House, President Trump’s Speech to the Arab Islamic American Summit, May 21, 2017, accessed December 17, 2017,
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-trumps-speech-arab-islamic-american-summit/.
4 John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Company), 33.
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superpower that is struggling to uphold its position as world leader, but is overburdened with and weakened by unfitting foreign policies.6 President Trump considers the previous Obama administration’s “pragmatic internationalist” foreign policy, which embraced “partnerships, institutions, and diplomatic engagement,” as a major reason to America’s decline in power and reputation.7 Specifically, he identified five major weaknesses in Obama’s foreign policy as follows:
1) The U.S. resources are overextended, its economic potential crippled through implementing policies, and its military strength further weakened.
2) The U.S. allies are not paying their fair shares to defend their own security.
3) America’s friends are beginning to think it less dependable.
4) The U.S. is no longer respected by its rivals.
5) America no longer has a clear understanding of its foreign policy goals.
Trump’s perceptions of the status quo are in line with offensive realists’ interpretation of the ascend and descent of American hegemony which emphasizes the pursuit of self-interests and “balance-of-power.” Looking back on history, the U.S. weathered through difficult times and achieved the position of global supremacy by focusing on increasing its own national capabilities. American political leaders first balanced against European colonialists to gain dominance in the Western Hemisphere in the nineteenth century. Once the U.S. attained the position of regional hegemon, it became “free to roam around the globe and interfere in other regions of the world.”8 But even as a hegemon, its primary concern remains to be preserving
5 Donald J. Trump, “Trump on Foreign Policy,” The National Interest, April 27, 2016, accessed on December 27, 2017, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/trump-foreign-policy-15960.
6 Donald J. Trump, Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America (New York: Threshold Editions).
7 John G. Ikenberry, “Obama’s Pragmatic Internationalism,” The American Interest, April 8, 2014, https://www.the-american-interest.com/2014/04/08/obamas-pragmatic-internationalism/.
8 John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Company), 365.
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its edge in relative power by containing the other revisionist states that also seek dominance in their vicinity. If rising powers are left unchecked, they could grow strong enough to encroach upon America’s sphere of influence. The U.S. had thus spent much of the twentieth century balancing against four major powers—Wilhelmine Germany, imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union.9 During these periods, the American foreign policy had a clear-cut goal which is to increase its own power and undermine that of its enemies.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended the Cold War and also led to the culmination of U.S. power as it became the leader of the “unipolar” international system. Yet the triumph over their enemy deprived America of the eminent threat to state survival, and the U.S. leaders had, as President Trump put it, “lost sight of their core interests.”10 Unable to determine who or what the enemies are in this seemingly peaceful post-war interlude, the U.S. policymakers became lax in checking and balancing against the rise of potential adversaries. The U.S. foreign policy which was long guided by realist principals become
“misguided” by internationalist belief that perpetual peace could be achieved through diplomatic engagement, economic cooperation, and multilateral institutions.
The belief that the realist explanation of international politics has become obsolete was shattered by the September 11 terror attacks (9/11 attacks) on the U.S. in 2001. However, as President George W. Bush searched for the perpetrators in the Middle East, America’s attention was further diverted away from guarding against the rise of potential great powers and seemed to turn a blind eye to the fact that its old-time rivals like the PRC has been accumulating strength and capability to challenge its hegemonic position in Asia. In fact,
9 John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Company), 367.
10 Donald J. Trump, “Trump on Foreign Policy,” The National Interest, April 27, 2016, accessed December 27, 2017, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/trump-foreign-policy-15960.
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“Engagement.”11 This internationalist strategy has largely dominated the U.S. approach to great power politics until President Trump came along.
With the commitment to amend what he alleged as the “misguided” post-Cold War U.S.
foreign policy, President Trump came to office with the promise to “Make America Great Again” through a new set of foreign policy that puts “America first” again.12 By prioritizing American national interests over internationalist agenda, Trump claimed that the U.S. will be able to maintain maximum flexibility in defining and carrying out new strategies instead of being shackled by the outdated commitments made to allied states. In order to formulate a clear-cut and relevant foreign policy, President Trump designated three groups of challengers that threatens the U.S.: the revisionist powers of China and Russia, the rogue states of Iran and North Korea, and transnational terrorist organizations.13 Trump accentuated the need to deal with these menaces and attain “peace through strength.”14 Besides, he pronounced that he would advance American interests through “sharp bargaining and deal making skills” and would not resort to military solutions unless no other alternatives were available.15 In this sense, the foreign policy of Trump administration will once again be based on what Trump described as “principled realism.”16
11 Yeong-Kuang Ger, “From Congagement to Engagement: The Changing American China Policy and Its Impact on Regional Security,” American Journal of Chinese Studies, vol. 11, No. 2, October 2004, 159-180.
12 Joseph V. Micallef, “Trumpism, Globalism and US Foreign Policy,” Huffpost, May1, 2016, accessed August 28, 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-v-micallef/trumpism-globalism-and-us_b_9817174.html.
13 U.S., The White House, National Security Strategy of the United States of America, December 2017, accessed December 20, 2017,
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf.
14 Peter Navarro, “The Trump Doctrine: Peace Through Strength,” The National Interest, March 31, 2016, accessed on April 5, 2017, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-trump-doctrine-peace-through-strength-15631.
15 Joseph V. Micallef, “Trumpism, Globalism and US Foreign Policy,” Huffpost, May 1, 2016, accessed August 28, 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-v-micallef/trumpism-globalism-and-us_b_9817174.html.
16 Anne Gearan and Steven Mufson, “Trump Sets Out National Security Strategy of ‘Principled Realism’ and Global Competition,” The Washington Post, December 18, 2017, accessed December 20, 2017,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-sets-out-national-security-strategy-of-principled-realism-and-gl
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Since President Trump’s worldview is in line with the theory of offensive realism, he is likely to find the rise of China “the most important geopolitical development of the twenty-first century.”17 The so-called “Rise of China” began with its former leader Deng Xiaoping’s “economic reform and opening-up” policy which led to the explosive economic growth and military build-up over the past forty years. Offensive realists have predicted that if its economic power continue to grow, China will “fundamentally alter the architecture of the international system” which the world has come to know since the end of the Cold War.
Today, the PRC seems to be more and more assertive on the international stage under President Xi Jinping who is actively proclaiming Chinese national interests and projecting economic and military influences abroad as a leading great power. For instance, President Xi claimed that “the Chinese people are now confident in providing a “Chinese Solution” to mankind’s exploration of better social systems” on the 95th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on July 1, 2016.18 Similarly, he told the assembly at the 2017 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that China should “guide economic globalization.”19 However, Chinese economic development and military assertiveness from President Trump’s rhetoric and policy towards China, it appears that he considers to be major threats to the American hegemony. As political consultant Alex Castellanos put it, “Trump is the first President that takes the China Threat seriously.”20
obal-competition/2017/12/18/7edcb0be-e412-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.
628d4e488efe.
17 John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Company), 361.
18 “95 Years on, ‘Never Forget the Past,’” Shanghai Daily, July 2, 2016, https://archive.shine.cn/nation/95-years-on-Never-forget-the-past/shdaily.shtml.
19 “Full Text of Xi Jinping Keynote at the World Economic Forum,” CGTN America, January 17, 2017, accessed March 30, 2017,
https://america.cgtn.com/2017/01/17/full-text-of-xi-jinping-keynote-at-the-world-economic-forum.
20 Tim Hains, “Castellanos: Trump is the First President to Take the China Threat Seriously,” Real Clear Politics, May 26, 2019, accessed June 1, 2019,
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/05/26/castellanos_trump_is_the_first_president_to_take_the_chin a_threat_seriously.html?spot_im_scroll_to_comments=true.
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From the perspective of offensive realism, President Trump’s commitment to “Make America Great Again” bears striking resemblance to President Xi’s call for a “Chinese solution.” Both leaders are apparently dissatisfied with their status quo position and the power distribution in the international system. As China accumulates strength, it threatens to stymie America’s power projection and ability to exert influence on the global scale. Out of the fear of China’s underlying revisionist or even expansionist intentions, the U.S. will instinctively enhance its own response capabilities. Realists have warned that should the two great powers become caught in “spirals of fear” lose control between, war is most likely to ensue.21
Today, America and China are looking to almost opposite worldviews. The U.S. seems to retreat from global responsibilities—either out of reluctance or inability to provide public goods—while determined to maintain its hegemonic position; the PRC, on the other hand, appears to be bolstering its image as a generous and ardent leader while seeking to expand its regional and global influences incrementally. Besides, while China is strong and politically united under the communist party, President Trump sees a relatively divided society with various parties and interest groups championing different beliefs at home and abroad. To understand how the unconventional president and his administration are navigating in this shifting world, the author designed this thesis to scrutinize the Trump administration’s foreign policy towards China through the theoretical lenses of offensive realism. The author explores individual, domestic, and structural level factors that led to America’s fear of the rise of China, President Trump’s corresponding strategy to balance against it, and how his policy can maintain the American hegemony.
21 John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Company), 346.