'Deserves more blame': Historian reveals why Trump is in a 'deeply structural bind'

During Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, many supporters pointed to his 1987 book "The Art of the Deal" as evidence that he should be president. Trump's book, they argued, demonstrated that he was a dealmaker who knew how to cut through red tape and get things done.

Trump's critics, however, countered that what worked for Trump in high-end real estate wasn't necessarily applicable to politics —and that "running the government like a business" works better in theory than it does in practice because the federal government has a much different structure from a business.

Trump, voted out of office in 2020 but narrowly elected to a second term in 2024, is now six months into his second presidency. In an op-ed published by the New York Times on July 22, historian Stephen Wertheim (an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) argues that Trump is facing a major challenge in the White House: a "structural bind" that is at odds with his "thoroughly situational" approach.

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"At the start of Mr. Trump’s second term," Wertheim writes, "history didn't merely repeat; it doubled down. This time, the president evinced greater determination to be a 'peacemaker and unifier,' as he put it. Once again, the guardians of foreign policy orthodoxy in Washington fretted that he might dismantle their project. For the same reason, advocates of less American military intervention in the world, myself included, held out a bit of hope…. 'We will measure our success,' Mr. Trump announced in his inaugural address, 'not only by the battles we win, but also, by the wars that we end — and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.'"

The historian continues, "This is a laudatory standard, which Mr. Trump deserves credit for setting. But six months into his presidency, he deserves more blame for failing to meet it. He has delivered no peace, whether in Europe or in the Middle East. His strike on Iran sums up his struggles: a frantic, fumbling attempt at negotiation cut short by a risky attack that sets the stage for further war.

According to Wertheim, "inartful dealings" are "only half the trouble" Trump is facing half a year into his second presidency.

"Mr. Trump is a thoroughly situational man in a deeply structural bind," Wertheim laments. "Year after year, the United States stations its military forces on geopolitical fault lines in Europe, Asia and the Middle East simultaneously. And year after year, it gets exactly what it has placed itself to receive, inheriting distant conflicts as its own and lurching from crisis to crisis at times of its many adversaries’ choosing."

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Wertheim adds, "If Mr. Trump is to reduce the country's exorbitant defense burdens, as he claims to want, he must take the United States out of the position that guarantees them. But for all of Mr. Trump's talk, and his critics' fears, it remains uncertain whether he will even really try."

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Dr. Stephen Wertheim's full New York Times op-ed is available at this link (subscription required).