Back To The Future

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Back to the Future: Post-Cold War US National Security Strategy and American
Hegemony under the Trump Administration
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DOI: 10.18848/1835-4432/CGP/v11i03/1-25
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B F P C W US
N S S A
H T A
Benedict E. DeDominicis, 1 Catholic University of Korea, Republic of Korea
bstra t aluatin international oliti al strate in ludes riti uin the desired uture i lied in the strate
oliti al strate o uses on trend alteration re ardin re ailin olit er e tions elite o osition olit attitudes
and olit alues to a tuali e a desired oliti al uture re ardin the nature o the tar et o the strate riti al
e aluation o a strate o uses on the assu tions and a abilities under innin this e ort b the initiator state at trend
alteration S se urit hallen es in urasia are le a issues ro the old ar The old ar ontain ent strate
instru ents and interests ori inall tar etin the So iet threat that the S reated and de elo ed ontinue to sha e the
oliti al dis ourse re ardin se urit hallen es in the re ion o rehension o the oliti al alues institutionali ed in
these bureau rati ilitar and e ono i ested interests is use ul or understandin the oliti al o uni ation
to o ra h toda These ested interests e bod the international oliti al trends that set the lobal oliti al ra e or
or hat is toda alled lobali ation The S Tru ad inistration s onser ati e o ulis oliti all o els it to
aintain and intensi the ost old ar eneral thrust o S orei n oli in urasia and the orld de ense and
e ansion o unilateral S lobal he e oni oliti al redo inan e t is ani ested in the intensi i ation o ressure
a ainst er ei ed hallen ers to S lobal in luen e Tru s o ulist rhetori o radi al han e ser es essentiall a
le iti ation un tion to rein or e the ri a o these ested interests in the S orei n oli a in ro ess thus
intensi in this eneral thrust
e ords old ar Strate nited States
T he US and the USSR engaged in competitive interference in the internal politics of third
states as a primary means for conducting their intensive Cold War competition for
influence. The advent of the nuclear era meant that avoiding direct military confrontation
between the two actors was a necessity. Cold War containment-era US national security
bureaucratic instruments included development of organizational capacities for interference in
domestic political processes within other states.
Military actions aside, US national security operations mandating secrecy expanded greatly
to comprise the array of tactics that constituted the Cold War containment strategy. Intelligence
gathering, covert political regime change operations, and the diplomatic correspondence of
fighting the Cold War all became sensitive, and therefore classified, information. The US polity
collectively views itself as a strong supporter of national self-determination (Harrelson-Stephens
and Callaway 200 ). Discreteness became important in protecting these bureaucratic instruments
of intervention from political retribution by public opinion (Carson and Yarhi-Milo 2017). The
justification for these operations was a variant of just war theory, i.e. the USSR was an
intensively aggressive actor, unconstrained by human rights considerations in expanding its
influence through subversion. The US had to commit lesser evils by overtly and covertly
supporting right-wing authoritarians to suppress this Communist subversive imperialism. It was
necessary in order to avoid the greater ultimate evil of totalitarian Soviet communist world
domination (Farer 2008). This logic was made explicit, for example, in Jeane J. Kirkpatrick s
1
Corresponding Author: Benedict E. DeDominicis, 43 Jibong-ro, International Studies Department, Catholic University
of Korea, Bucheon, Gyeonggi-do, 14662, Republic of Korea. email: bendedominicis@gmail.com

olume 11, Issue 3, 2018, http://onglobalization.com
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THE GLOBAL STUDIES JOURNAL
1 82 monograph, i tatorshi s and ouble Standards. This book was published while
Kirkpatrick was the Reagan administration s first-term UN ambassador.
In the post-Cold War world, the US leadership highlights threats from terrorism. The US
links terrorism to support by rogue states as officially designated state sponsors of terrorism. The
Islamic Republic of Iran temporarily gained a reprieve from some of the sanctions of this
designation because of its important role in opposing pan-Arab and non-Arab Sunni Muslim
militancy in the Greater Middle East ( arif 2017). Israel, as a major US Middle Eastern Cold
War ally for the Cold War containment strategy, continues to play a security ally role for the US
in the US global war on terror (Bergman 2017). Its supporters portray Israel as being a front-line
picket defending Western democracies against their shared, common enemies in a region beset
by chaos (Booth and Morello 2016, para. 13). Israel s present role began before the fall of the
Shah s regime in Iran, a client that the US helped install through the CIA-led Operation Ajax in
1 53 (Kinzer 2003). The Shah s 1 7 overthrow enhanced Israel s role in the late Cold War-era
containment strategy.
Iran s large market and resources as economic incentives have not been sufficient to override
US vested security interests in post-September 11, 2001 US targeting of the so-called axis of evil
states. Yet, those pre-revolutionary interests that bound the Shah s Iran tightly to the US
developed an Iranian preference for buying Boeing civilian aircraft, which the Obama
administration eventually permitted (Erdbrink 2017a). During South Korea s rapid economic
development under its 1 61 87 military junta, it had thriving economic relations with Iran for
decades prior to the imposition of US and UN Security Council sanctions (Ramirez 2016). 2
South Korea was among the first Western-allied countries to reach infrastructure investment
deals with Iran following the removal of UN Security Council nuclear program-related sanctions
in 2015 (Business Monitor International 2017).
These military and civilian bureaucratic and associated economic interests significantly
shaping today s foreign policies of the great and lesser powers have their foundations in the Cold
War (Cottam 1 77). The accumulated resources the US and its allies devoted to creating the
instruments for the containment strategy towards Communism were very large. The Soviets
reciprocated, leaving their own set of bureaucratic and political economic legacies throughout the
former Communist bloc.
This article is a deductive case study of the evolution of postwar US grand strategy applying
the neoclassical realist foreign policy systems analysis theoretical framework developed by the
late Richard W. Cottam (1 67, 1 77, 1 88, 1 4 Cottam and Gallucci 1 78 Cottam and Cottam
2001). Cottam s framework fits squarely within the neoclassical realist school of international
relations theory. Neoclassical realism highlights intrastate-level political factors of analysis for
explaining state behavior in international relations (Smith 2017 Wivel 2005 S rensen 2013).
Neoclassical realist foreign policy analysis emphasizes the factors that shape collective polity
perception of the international political environment (Wivel 2005). Cottam s (1 77) framework
includes a typology of tendencies in collective patterns of simplification in perception of the
international environment, i.e. stereotyping. The polities of nation states such as US, Russia, and
China are more prone to engage in stereotyping as a foreign policy decision-making process
pathology than the polities of multinational or multiethnic states (Cottam and Cottam 2001).
This exploratory case study employs a qualitative exploratory methodological approach,
which is appropriate for generating new insights (Creswell and Poth 2017). It aims to engender
comprehension of the foreign policy behavior of the first-term, unique Trump administration in
terms of its continuities and discontinuities with US grand strategy since 1 45. Its deductive case
study methodology selects illuminative postwar historical and contemporary empirical data in
2
Reciprocally named in 1 77, Teheran Street in Seoul runs through the wealthy Gangnam district, and Teheran s Seoul
Street was joined by Seoul Park in 2003 (Kang, Lee, and Choi 2016). In spring 2010, one retired South Korean
diplomat formerly stationed in Iran noted ruefully to the author that South Korean export products prominent market
share in Iran was lost as a result of US-led sanctions on Iran, replaced by Chinese goods.
2
DEDOMINICIS BACK TO THE FUTURE
accordance with the applied theory as part of a heuristic thought experiment application of
Cottam s framework (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2014, para. 1 , 26). The public
record is deductively analyzed to generate inferences, conclusions, and predictions that can be
tested for validity by subsequent observations of contemporary and future US Trump
administration foreign policy process behavior.
The Cold War containment strategy policies and instruments originally targeting the Soviet
threat that the US developed continue to overshadow the discourse regarding security challenges
in Eurasia politically. Comprehension of the political values institutionalized in these
bureaucratic, military, and economic vested interests is useful for understanding political
discourse fissures today. These vested interests embody the international political trends that set
the global political framework for what is today, called globalization. The thesis of this article is
that the US Trump administration is politically compelled to accelerate the general thrust of US
foreign policy in Eurasia and the world that emerged in the latter stages of the Cold War. This
general thrust is the defense and expansion of US global hegemonic political predominance
despite the decline and disintegration of the original target of the US global containment strategy,
the USSR (Hook 2017). It is manifested in the intensifying unilateral assertion of US influence
against perceived challengers, e.g. not only rogue states and China, but also Europe (Erlanger
2018). Trump s rhetoric of radical foreign policy change serves essentially a domestic
legitimation purpose. It functionally reinforces the association of American conservative
populism with the primacy of vested national security interests in the US foreign policy making
process. Trump s appeals to conservative populist stereotyped threats to American sovereignty
thereby reinforces this American foreign policy thrust. This thrust functionally displays the goal
of US unilateral global predominance at the expense of established multilateral international
coordination institutions (American Society of International Law 2018). The roots of this thrust
were planted long before Trump s inauguration.
This article begins with a discussion of the Cold War and the key assumptions that shaped
the development of this extensive national security establishment. Those vested interests today
continue more than a generation after the Cold War s end. The next section elucidates and
critiques these assumptions in terms of foreign policy motivations of the US and USSR and the
prevailing perceptions of them. The subsequent section focuses on the institutionalization of
these assumptions in the US foreign policy process as well as in other great powers and on the
political difficulty in challenging them. The next section critiques the policies of the Trump
administration from this perspective. The conclusion includes a discussion of the implications of
the rise of China within this context.
C W C S A
Through containment, George Kennan (1 47) wanted a change in the governing elite in the
USSR with greater authority going to those segments who oriented the focus of their policies
inward. Authority would shift away from those segments which favored costly, failed efforts at
expanding Soviet influence abroad. The Soviet Union would become internally preoccupied,
concentrating on Soviet economic reconstruction and indifferent to enhancing Soviet world
influence.
3
Table 1: Early Cold War National Security Strategy of the US: Containment
A C S U
1. Develop a military deterrence system.
a. Nuclear deterrence to be developed in anticipation of a USSR nuclear
capability.
b. Halt demobilization and create a conventional arms deterrence system.
2. Create economically and militarily strong allies.
a. Western Europe
1) Aid in economic reconstruction and recovery.
2) Provide military and technical aid and move toward a military alliance
system.
b. Japan
1) Aid in economic reconstruction and recovery.
3. Encourage the non-communist stability of other countries.
a. Provide overt and covert political assistance to non-communist elements in
Italy and other European countries with large communist parties.
b. Provide overt and covert political assistance to non-communist elements in
strategic areas of the third world.
1) Work to keep Greece, Turkey, and Iran in the hands of anti-communist
leaders.
2) Give assistance to the anti-communist forces in China.
c. Provide economic and technical aid to underdeveloped countries outside the
Soviet bloc.
d. Provide overt and covert political assistance to non-communist elements in
under developed countries.
B S
U S
1. Build the overt and covert bureaucratic institutions needed for a major world role for the
United States.
2. Strengthen and restructure the military institutions of the United States.
3. Assure sufficient access to essential raw materials, including and especially oil supplies,
necessary for a strong defense industrial base for the United States and allies.
C A
1. Take the diplomatic lead in generating an alliance of states willing to and capable of
halting the advance of world communism.
2. Take the lead in furnish protection to vulnerable third world countries.
D S A
1. Provide aid and assistance necessary for the security of the state of Israel.
2. Give protection to American investments abroad.
3. Give reasonable assistance to the efforts of American financial, commercial, and industrial
elements to invest and trade abroad.
otta
4
Strategies derive ultimately from perceptions regarding state target foreign policy
motivations and relative capabilities. In the case of the Cold War, these two different components
produce four US ideal typical strategies.
Table 2: American Cold War Assumptions of Russian Motivation and

American Relative Capabilities, and Derivative Strategies
SS ussia
Essentially Imperialist Essentially Status uo
Overextended a b
S
Not Overextended c d
Derivative US Foreign Policy/National Security Strategy:
a: Fortress America
b: International Organization-based Collective Security
c: Containment (Extreme: Roll back)
d: Pax Americana (Post-Cold War Extremes: New World Order, War on Terror, America First)
ata da ted ro otta
Public opinion has a role particularly in the discourse regarding target motivations where it
is framed during election debates. Regarding Russia, the US general public today has little
interest in this issue, so engaging the mass public in this post-Cold War discussion has not been
practicable. The Trump presidential campaign s involvement with Russian interests is today
primarily an elite concern as demonstrated by his 2016 election victory.
This study applies the theoretical framework presented in Cottam (1 77) to disaggregate and
analyze the drives, i.e. polity values, which contribute to imperialist versus status quo foreign
policy behavior of a state:
Table 3: An Inclusive Typology of Foreign Policy Motivations of a State

ECONOMIC COMMUNAL MESSIANISM GOVERNMENTAL DEFENSE
L N I B V
I BVI
Independence Foreign Policy and
Defense Bureaucracies
Unity- Non-Defense
Irredentism Bureaucracies
Dignity Military ested
Interests (M I)
Grandeur
D P C P P
E I
E V F R S
I EVI D R
Defense
Trade Domestic
Investments
Foreign Economic P P
ested Interests E
ata da ted ro otta
5
Desired Future of Containment
arious international relations theorists subsequently hailed the US role in successfully

containing the USSR, which needed imperial successes to thrive (Gaddis 1 2). According to
this perspective, containment denied the USSR the rapid imperial expansion comparable to its
immediate postwar achievements up to 1 50. Denied sufficient imperial glory to mobilize its
otherwise oppressed citizenry, the USSR authorities faced the growing imperative to transition
into a status quo actor in international relations. Thereby, it might gain the benefits of
international trade through participation in the global production chain to offer material lifestyle
improvements to pacify its citizenry. USSR Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail
Gorbachev attempted this transition. His erestroi a (rebuilding) and lasnost (openness)
domestic policy strategy relied upon his new thinking in foreign policy to create a more
hospitable international environment (Is i 2015, 103). The devolution both of political control
and policy decision-making that his domestic strategy required undermined the coercive
component of the domestic regime. As in Yugoslavia, it allowed heretofore suppressed ethnic
nationalism to gain political expression (Cottam and Cottam 2001). The fumbling reactionary
effort to reassert central control in 1 1 instead intensified these nationalist political separatist
trends, leading to the end of the USSR itself. According to this Cold Warrior view, containment
succeeded better than most could have expected. The USSR expired without the West directly
engaged in violent conflict with the so-called empire of evil that US President Ronald Reagan
described in 1 83.
The containment strategy defenders claimed credit for the relatively peaceful victory over
and collapse of the Soviet nuclear-armed totalitarian threat. One commentator specifically claims
this credit for the predominant, conservative strain in the US Republican Party (Kesler 2017).
Presumably, the latter s steadfast will and determination under Nixon and Reagan stands in
contrast to liberals such as Jimmy Carter and George W. Romney, overly swayed by the ietnam
debacle. The one-term Democratic president and Republican presidential candidate, respectively,
questioned longstanding containment strategy assumptions of US foreign policy with the
ietnam War.
As Moscow evolved into a status quo power, an unchanged American containment strategy
risked evolving into an attempt to implement a global Pax Americana. The consequent, necessary
strategy for peaceful conflict resolution would then consist in negotiation with Moscow and other
status quo great powers utilizing multilateral institutional coordination frameworks, i.e. collective
security (Deudney and Ikenberry 2011).
Containment s desired future as a national security strategy relates to the US motivational
system, which during the early Cold War was the following:
Table 4: US Foreign Policy Motivation: Early Cold War

A) 0 Defense
B) 7 Military ested Interests (M I)
Bureaucratic ested Interests (B I) Defense/Foreign Policy
Economic ested Interests (E I) Defense
C) 3 National Grandeur
otta
By the late 1 80s, the American motivational system had evolved to include a greater emphasis
on economic, bureaucratic, cultural, and grandeur interests.
6
Table 5: US and Soviet Foreign Policy Motivations: Cold War s End 3

Motivational System (1 88)
USA USSR
A) 75 Defense A) 50 Defense
E I Defense
B I Foreign Policy
B) Grandeur B) E I Domestic, Trade
C) Messianism C) B I, E I Defense
e o ini is
The US containment-desired future in 1 88 would be different than the one of two generations
earlier because it would reflect those US polity values that had become more important as US
foreign policy motivations.
US foreign policy drives in 2018 have built upon the Pax Americana strategy that prevailed
in 1 8 : defense and expansion of the now global security system, which the US founded, led,
and developed during the Cold War. Underpinning this strategy are US-extensive military and
civilian political and economic vested interests that promote a US defense budget alone that is
more than one-third of total world annual military expenditures (McCarthy 2017 Uchitelle
2017). The US polity grandeur predisposition to support leadership decisions to destroy so-called
rogue state regional military challenges to Cold War-founded global American interests was
evident before the collapse of the USSR itself (Cottam and Cottam 2001). American Pax
Americana messianism included promotion of global trade and financial flow liberalization.
Trump s nascent unilateralist America First strategy rejected the 2015 Paris Accords on
limiting global greenhouse gas emissions while attacking international legal obligations that limit
American autonomy (Seib 2018). It highlights revising or rejecting postwar global trade
liberalization agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans Pacific
Partnership while raising American combat troop deployments. It also includes American
sectarian and ethnic community support for Israel and Christian evangelical policy positions, e.g.
promoting globally US predominant evangelical positions on family planning.
Table 6: USA Foreign Policy Motivation Underlying Trump s America First Strategy (2018)
A) 50 Defense
B I (i.e. large numbers receive promotions and vest their career interests in is the
expansion of US influence, e.g. in the Greater Middle East and throughout Eurasia)
M I (including Cold War legacy global military alliance commitments)
E I (including the so-called military-industrial complex)
B) 30 Personal Power internal (i.e. maintaining Trump s domestic political primacy)
C) 20 Grandeur (i.e. more important than prestige or credibility)
Messianism
e o ini is
P C W US S F P M
Stereotypes as pattern simplifications of perception of political reality are a source of conflict.
Perception equals that view of reality, implicit and explicit, conscious or unconscious, within
which one identifies and chooses among alternatives. The stereotypical scale derives from three
component perceptual elements regarding the target state: 1) intensity of perceived threat or
opportunity from the target 2) perceived power capability distance and 3) perceived cultural
3
Tables 5, 6, and 8 are the author s personal assessments as part of this case study heuristic thought experiment
applying Cottam s framework (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2014, para. 1 , 26).
7
distance (Cottam and Cottam 2001). The US prevailing Cold War view was that the aggressive
USSR was roughly equivalent in capability and cultural level to the US. In the modern era, the
perceived ability to master and create technology is the definition of cultural distance.
US Early Cold War Prevailing iew Perception of the USSR:
Enemy-- --------------------------------Complex
US Cold Warriors tended to view the USSR as a monolithic enemy, a militantly imperialist
nuclear-armed superpower seeking to dominate the world (Cottam 1 77). In sum, the USSR was
perceived as a Russian version of Nazi Germany, espousing a more appealing ideology for much
of the postwar world in the nuclear era, socialism (Brands 1 ). The US Cold Warrior saw the
Soviet foreign policy making process in stereotypical enemy terms.
Table 7: The Enemy Stereotype

M T A simple, single-minded, and aggressive motivation.
D L T A monolithic decisional structure.
D S T Characterized by a high degree of rationality, sufficient to plan
and orchestrate elaborate conspiracies.
C T A capability advantage that derives from one s own lack of
resolve, which is rooted in a na ve projection of one s own
goodness onto the enemy. However, if the true nature of the
enemy is understood and the requisite will and determination
to oppose it is mustered, the highly rational enemy will
understand. It will comprehend that it has lost, at least
temporarily, its capability advantage and will wait for a return
to the previous naivet .
T C W D Those citizens who fail to understand this picture of the enemy
A P T are either outright traitors or na ve dupes of traitors.
ata da ted ro otta and otta
According to the ideal typical US Cold Warrior (Table 8), the USSR governmental monolith
was messianic in its commitment to spreading global Communism under Moscow s imperial
leadership.
Table 8: 1 80s US Cold Warrior (Mis)Perception

of Soviet Foreign Policy Motivation
A) Ideological Messianism
B) (Nothing)
C) M I, B I, Defense E I, Foreign Policy I
e o ini is
Within prevailing 1 80s American public discourse, verbalization about Soviet motivation
was at (A) (Reagan 1 83). US government foreign policy choice patterns reflected, in effect,
awareness that the Soviet polity did manifest political diversity and policy making complexity
within it (B). Administration officials spoke in evil empire terms to their domestic and
international public audience. The US government did not support policies, conforming to such a
portrayed threat in terms of the resources and US lives necessary to confront it.
8
US Prevailing iew of the USSR, Cold War, End Stage:
Evil Empire--- --------------- ---------------Complex

A B
Policy analysis should use verbalization and policy choice patterns together as the basis of
content analysis for determining prevailing perceptions within the initiator of a target s foreign
policy motivation.
In the ideal typical US Cold Warrior worldview, the Soviet leadership saw great opportunity
for foreign influence expansion despite US potential power capabilities. It saw this opportunity
because it stereotypically perceived the US polity policy making process as lacking consistent,
effective leadership, i.e. it was comparatively degenerate:
Degenerate-- --------------------------------Complex
Table : The Degenerate Stereotype

M T An uncertain, confused, and inconsistent motivation reflecting
the loss of national purpose.
D L T A highly diffuse decisional structure, which mirrors very well
the lack of a purposeful central policy direction.
D S T A decisional style that is not only incremental but one whose
increments fail to add up to any discernible strategic direction.
C T An inability to mobilize resources to deal with a challenge and
a lack of will to employ existing power instruments.
T C D One s own citizenry in this intensely aggressive, imperialist
A P T state who fail to appreciate this marvelous opportunity have
become similarly degenerate.
ata da ted ro otta and otta
Therefore, Washington must show the necessary will and determination to contain the Soviet
governmental monolith so that it clearly realizes that the US is not a paper tiger. The US must
implement effective containment wherever Moscow s subalterns attempt to expand Moscow s
subversive control, e.g. sending US forces to support allies in Korea and ietnam. The tragic
irony of 1 30s appeasement of Nazi Germany s expansion was that it appeared to confirm and
strengthen among the German authorities Hitler s degenerate stereotype of Germany s imminent
foes. Appeasement thus strengthened the authoritarian populist Nazi regime that required
external imperial expansion as part of its legitimation formula for its rule domestically (Cottam
and Gallucci 1 78). Especially in the nuclear era, the US must avoid repeating the same mistake
in confronting the Soviet overt and covert imperial challenge.
One late 1 80s right-wing commentator, Constantine Menges (1 87), associated with the
Reagan Administration, warned that Gorbachev s so-called new thinking d tente strategy was a
ruse. It was designed to lull the West into complacency. It reflected this diabolical enemy
stereotype of the USSR, while reinforcing the imperative not to portray degeneracy to the enemy
by being lulled into complacency by this ruse. After Carter, the possibility that the Cold War
Soviet leadership did not reciprocate in seeing as serious a challenge (whether threat or
opportunity) from the West as the US saw from Moscow was not seriously considered. In the
1 80s USSR, the dissident ethnic nationalist intelligentsia s perception of the West was generally
much closer to the complex pole relative to the apparatchiks dominating this authoritarian system
(Suslov 200 ). Today, Russian modal public opinion is more in accordance with the more
complex, prevailing perception in Moscow governing circles regarding the US foreign policy
making process. The consistently highly positive public opinion ratings of Putin are evidence of
this congruence (Weir 2016).
9
US Polity Institutionalization of the Cold War Conflict Spiral
In Tables 4 and 5, the decline in the hierarchical intensity of rankings for primary, secondary, and
tertiary US foreign policy motivations occurred over the course of the Cold War. The more
intense prevailing perceived threatening challenge to the US polity from the USSR at the height
of the Cold War is reflected in the greater commitment to defense. During the Korean War, US
allocation of its economic resources to military expenditures and other national security
instruments constituted more than 10 percent of US GDP (Chantrill 2018). In 2015, it stood at
3.3 percent of US GDP (The World Bank n.d.). On the eve of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the
US defense department budget stood at 5 percent (Ibid.). By 1 88, the general intensity of threat
collectively perceived within the US polity from the USSR had clearly declined. 5 percent of
GNP in 1 8 still reflected a defense budget allocation of hundreds of billions of dollars.
According to one estimate, 1 48 8 US military expenditures constituted ten trillion US dollars
in 1 2 dollars (Higgs 1 4). 4 These resources had been translated into national security
bureaucratic organizational entities as the instruments of containment. They employed millions
of individuals, including the private sector contractors supplying them with goods and services as
well as their media allies. This vast national security establishment consequently became an
institutionalized set of vested interests in the continuation of the containment strategy. When the
original target of containment itself disintegrated, these vested interests sought other challenges
to justify their continued government budget allocations and perceived the post-Cold War
environment accordingly.
The collapse of the Cold War left as a legacy an extensive array of governmental and private
sector vested interests that emerged, institutionalized, and expanded throughout the world. The
USSR had its own vast array of bureaucratic vested interests that emerged to fight the Cold War.
Whether or not the USSR was indeed an intensely imperialist Great Power in the mold of Nazi
Germany is a vitally important question. Washington s prevailing view is that the US saved
humanity from this Russian aggressive actor cloaking its imperialism in the guise of world
socialism. Washington s supposed Cold War success is a justification for today s US global
hegemony (Is i 2015). The international regimes and their corresponding organizations that
developed within the containment framework share in this positive political association. For
example, in the view of establishment Washington, post-Cold War NATO is certainly not to be
dismantled. It should be expanded into the post-Soviet environment in which disgruntled Russian
post-Soviet authorities are presumed to seek to regain the international status they have lost. US
global leadership is assumed to have unprecedented hard and soft power ideological, economic,
and military capabilities as foundations. As Jervis (2008) critiques, this view sees US liberal
international hegemony differing critically from other, failed efforts by Nazi Germany and Soviet
Russia. The Cold War globalization of US economic liberalism is seen as a critical factor
supporting the postwar national economic miracles that blossomed in Western Europe and in
East Asia (Tarzi 1 8). Capability self-image determines the range of perceived policy options.
The post-Cold War American prevailing view arguably sees US options globally as transcendent.
The vast array of vested interests that collectively took credit for defeating supposed Russian
global imperialism without direct hostilities adapted their worldview to the post-Cold War world.
Immediate post-Cold War crises in Yugoslavia and the Middle East witnessed the US adopt a
global leadership position atop these vested interests, to be expanded and adapted to new
4
These budget figures of course do not include Cold War expenditures for all intelligence gathering and covert
operations, information dissemination, and foreign development programs. They also do not include US domestic
security and counterintelligence budgets as well as infrastructure, education, research, and training programs for
developing human, informational, and material resources to support and staff these containment-era programs and
organizations.
10
circumstances. 5 The supposed, astonishingly successful containment of the dire global

superpower Soviet threat reinforced the institutionalization of these stereotypes of self and other
within the American establishment. The US polity is predisposed to see remaining, lesser power
challengers in accordance with these stereotypes, modified in the form of their derivative for
troublesome, minor power former Soviet clients, i.e. the rogue stereotype (Cottam and Cottam
2001, 116 17).
Perceived as criminal in nature, but inferior in power and cultural level, the regimes led by
Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein were categorized as backlash states, threatening the
new benign US-led post-Cold War world order (Lake 1 4). The September 11, 2001 attacks
provoked American outrage at the calamity encouraged by rogue actors supposedly germinated
by the Cold War and allowed to metastasize. George W. Bush s axis of evil summarized the
categorization of the targets, which included North Korea, but inclusion in this category was a
political determination (CNN 2002, para. 26). Muammar Gadhafi s fossil fuel-rich Libya
temporarily avoided targeting for regime change by pursuing rapprochement with the West by
cooperating to end its own nuclear weapons program (Leverett 2004). The Obama
administration s political decisional latitude restrictions by these same substantial vested interests
became evident Libya became a target of opportunity for regime change with the Arab Spring
uprising there. North Korea s acquisition of nuclear weapons delivery capability is explicable.
Apparently, a critical obstacle to North Korea being targeted as well is its de facto alliance with
China Russia proved unable to defend the Libyan regime (unlike the Syrian regime). By
inference, should the US see North Korea as useful in its competition with rising China for
regional influence, then the likelihood of US military action against North Korea regarding its
nuclear program would decrease. Communist ietnam s shared antipathy towards increasing
Chinese regional assertiveness has shielded it.
The US alliance with traditional monarchies in the Middle East is significantly a legacy of
the US Cold War containment strategy (Davidson 2011). US authorities continue to portray Iran
as an aggressive, rogue threat to these US allies and foreign policy aims in the Middle East, a
challenge that began with the Islamic Revolution in 1 78 7 (Doran 2017). US President Jimmy
Carter s National Security Adviser, bigniew Brzezinski, viewed the Iranian Revolution
primarily in terms of the US-Soviet Cold War (Cottam 1 88). Media reports claim that the
Trump administration s national security officials are on record as viewing Iran as responsible
for most of the challenges to US interests in the Middle East (Erdbrink 2017b, para. 8). This
conclusion echoes Ronald Reagan s assertion in 1 83 that the USSR was responsible for most of
the threats to Western alliance interests globally.
The perceived Iranian challenge predates the rise of al- aeda and the Islamic State, whose
Sunni Muslim, pan-Arab-anchored militancy is antithetical to Shia Muslim, Persian-Azeri Iran.
The shared antipathy of Iran and the US towards these Sunni militant non-state actors is
evidently not sufficient to override Washington s vested interests in maintaining containment and
pressuring regime change in Iran. Iran as a nation-state actor has a far greater power capability
than non-state actors like the Islamic State but does not yet possess nuclear weapons delivery
capability.
F P I
Incrementalism characterizes foreign policy decision-making trends incremental adjustment of
existing policies constitutes policy adaptation to the changing international environment. In sum,
US foreign policy makers tend not to cross organizational and conceptual boundaries to
challenge the Cold War legacy of striving for global primacy. Policy makers are significantly
5
E.g. in 1 4 200 , the author was on the political science faculty at the American University in Bulgaria, a 1 1
regional higher education project initiative of the US Agency for International Development and the Bulgarian
government (www.aubg.bg), with support from other donors including George Soros.
11
constrained by their organizational-political milieu in favor of expansion. To address

incrementalism in the foreign policy making process, the task is not only understanding
perception of threat a focus on perception of opportunity is necessary. The foreign policy
making process of a target state is vulnerable to stereotyping tendencies by initiator state policy
makers, tending towards viewing the target as if it is evil (threat) or degenerate (opportunity).
Decision-making pathologies emerge from organizational actors promoting stereotypical target
views, lessening the potential for peaceful conflict resolution.
Classical realism as articulated by Hans J. Morgenthau holds that states act as if relative
power increase and international influence optimization is itself a state s primary foreign policy
motivation (Pin-Fat 2005, 223 24). Absent a crisis, state behavior tends toward incrementalism,
i.e. bureaucratic national security vested interests will demonstrate rivalrous organizational
tendencies. They will seek competitively and opportunistically to expand their functional and
geographic areas of responsibility and authority. They will seek to do so domestically, as well as
externally. Their external influence expansion will be checked by other state actors displaying
similar tendencies. Their areas of respective dominance will constitute their respective spheres of
influence. The geographic boundaries between them will be the primary areas of contestation.
Yet, the classical realist notion of sphere of influence collapsed with the advent of nuclear
weapons. The US acquiesced to the Cuban pro-Soviet regime off its southern shore, while the
Soviets tolerated the loss of Romania and Yugoslavia. Influence optimization patterns changed
radically with the development of nuclear weapons. The diplomatic purpose of acquiring nuclear
weapons is enhancing the state leadership s leverage in crisis bargaining from threat of accidental
war (Cottam and Gallucci 1 78 Nagourney, Sanger, and Barr 2018). Neo-realist theory does not
assist in overcoming incrementalism because it does not deal with leadership quality. Neo-
realism focuses on hard factors, e.g. industrial, population, military (Waltz 1 7 ). In the Cold
War nuclear era, the CIA versus KGB had been the fulcrum of conflict. The nuclear war that the
nuclear powers fought had been at the level of the largely sub-violent through competitive
interference in the politics of third states (Cottam 1 67).
The as if assumption in classical realism is an attempt at theoretical conceptualization of
national security strategy (Kadercan 2013, 1018 20, 27 28, 30, 32 Kirshner 2015, 165). Making
the as if assumption is an attempt to bypass the complexity of the foreign policy making
process. The as if notion assumes that the international political system produces the outcomes.
The so-called system is a challenge to conceptualize. Morgenthau maintained he would do it by
teasing out patterns, claiming they are strong and virtually immutable, i.e. states act
opportunistically as if power and influence optimization in the external environment is their
foreign policy motivation. These interacting great powers produce so-called spheres of influence.
But these patterns of behavior almost never are immutable, as the Cold War nuclear era
illustrates. Addressing the foreign policy making process is unavoidable giving up some
theoretical parsimony and finding an essential feature that focuses on the national polity itself is
necessary. The essential feature is perception of opportunity or threat. It corresponds with the
systemic tendency of a particular governing apparatus to demonstrate a behavior pattern that
displays risk-adversity versus a pattern that displays risk-propensity. ariations emerge within
general value trend directions. For example, Khrushchev may have seen an opportunity to
respond to a new, young US president. The US polity may have been perceived as imperialistic,
but Kennedy was an untried decision maker. If true, then the Cuban missile deployment by the
Soviets was a defensive act to contain a perceived encroaching, aggressive US, which had
deployed the nuclear missiles in Turkey and Italy in 1 61. The Soviets willingness to work with
Kennedy to defuse the crisis was evidence, according to prospect theory, that they were risk-
averse in terms of expansion but risk-prone to avoid loss (Kornprobst 2011). In sum, the Soviets
were acting as a status quo power responding to a (mis)perceived aggressive threat from the US.
A belligerent target state may be either risk-prone or risk-averse. Polities in which the
politically prevailing constituency view is one of perceived external opportunity tend towards
12
risk propensity to increase influence, e.g. the US must provide necessary global leadership,
targeting the so-called axis of evil states after the September 11, 2001 attacks, which Europe,
Russia, and China failed to provide. 6 States that perceive threat to their existing influence may
also tend towards risk propensity, e.g. Moscow s 2014 move to dismember Ukraine following
the Western-supported popular uprising against the pro-Russian president (Lakomy 2016).
C W C L US T A
This vast set of Cold War-era national security vested interests, domestically and transnationally,
have significant political capabilities to influence and shape the US foreign policy making
process. The maverick Donald J. Trump is finding himself politically constrained by these vested
interests, which together constitute political reality (Baker 2017b para. 11 Trump 2017).
Pressures for the Trump administration to accommodate are a familiar pattern. US presidential
campaigns expressing skepticism towards globalism have typically triumphed in elections, only
to accommodate once in office (Mead 2017). Trump enthusiasts advocating significant changes
to the status quo foreign and domestic policies that characterize globalization portray these
vested interests as constituting the deep state (Davis 2017). President Trump has broadcast
disruptive comments while his administration s actual national security policy actions are more
conventional, indicating to observers an exceptional lack of internal policy coordination (Thrush
and Landler 2017 Landler 2018). The Trump administration confronts strong national and
international systemic factor resistance to Trump s individual efforts at changing the
international status quo (Waltz 1 5 ).
Until disruptive moves regarding trade, the global corporate business community has
generally demonstrated comfort with the Trump administration during its first months in office
(Kelly 2017 Krugman 2017). The e or Ti es reported that Trump removed Stephen
Bannon, former far-right Breitbart editor-in-chief and Trump presidential campaign chairman,
from the principals list of the US National Security Council. Trump apparently did so at the
request of his second NSC Adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster ( e or Ti es Editorial Board
2017). Bannon s removal follows the earlier forced resignation of Trump s first NSC adviser, Lt.
Gen. (ret.) Michael T. Flynn. Flynn resigned following revelations of previously concealed
meetings with Russian government representatives days after Trump s electoral victory. Status
quo vested political interests resist threats to defend what these interests portray as a competent,
alliance-focused policy approach (Fisher 2017a). The Trump administration s high-profile
hostility to immigration, appealing to its populist base, has faced strong political resistance
(Baker 2017a Jordan et al. 2018). The Trump administration echoes a familiar Cold Warrior
preference for the hard components of US power capability rather than the greater soft power
focus in US diplomacy that the US State Department articulates (Gardiner 2017a). Even here, US
bureaucratic standard policies have reasserted themselves to a degree (Gardiner 2017b). This
counterattack of the status quo against Trump s appeals to American right-wing ethno-populism
transpires notwithstanding the rise of populism in the West since the 1 60s (Fisher and Taub
2017). This trend emerged concomitantly with the long-term decline in intensity of the Cold
War. Competent expertise may be a partisan descriptor for stabilization of the status quo, i.e.
policy preferences that disrupt this status quo are irresponsible and perilous. Threats to this status
quo from elements within the Trump administration generate trepidation (Friedman 2017). This
status quo is not necessarily peaceful it includes what one commentator described as perpetual
war in Afghanistan (Bacevich 2017).
6
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld portrayed France and Germany as old Europe, i.e. degenerate, for their
resistance to the impending US-led 2003 Iraq invasion (Hooper and Black 2003, para. 7). Positive responses to the US
request for Iraq occupation participation came from the young democracies of Eastern Europe, recently freed from Soviet
Communist oppression thanks to US-led victory in the Cold War.
13
The postulate that the Cold War may have been at its heart a conflict spiral is a critically
important question. If true, then both, albeit defensively motivated, superpowers were each
striving to contain the other, each misperceived by the other as ultimately aggressively
motivated. Each side s belligerence was misread as evidence of aggression, rather than assertive
defense. Such a scenario is not unprecedented the outbreak of the First World War followed a
comparable systemic pattern (Christensen 1 7). Dyadic conflict spirals reinforced each other
while alliance security commitments and mobilization imperatives underpinned panic among
decision makers in frontline European capitals. This analogous First World War conflict spiral
narrative is not the one that predominates in postwar Washington. Rather, the failure of 1 30s
appeasement in dealing with Nazi Germany prevailed as the historical analogy at the start of the
Cold War (Offner 1 ). It dominated the thinking of two generations of postwar policy makers
in confronting the USSR and continues in the post-Cold War era (Preston 2014). The apparent
success in eliminating the (mis)perceived threat without a superpower nuclear war seemed to
confirm the wisdom of containment.
Geis and Wunderlich (2014) note that in the view of some Washington elite factions, the
peaceful Soviet collapse confirmed assumptions that US international hegemony is uniquely
benign, historically. The establishment vested interests that they today represent have
institutionalized within themselves the assumption of Russian aggressiveness. It is the foundation
for a Pax Americana post-Cold War strategy. Some Russian observers portray these interests
today as constraining Trump s wish to interact with Russia on an equal, partnership level in
addressing international crises (MacFarquhar 2017).
Russian efforts to overcome these politically predominant, Cold War era-rooted vested
interests rely on a tactical economic incentive approach. Their appeals to Trump associates
reflect an effort to coopt economic interests that channel globalization to cooperate with Moscow
while loosening their control by Washington (Phillips 2017). Washington s ability to control the
behavior of transnational economic resources is one component of US global diplomatic
bargaining leverage (Cottam and Gallucci 1 78). Moscow s efforts to infiltrate the US
government via the Trump presidential campaign aims to change the thrust of US policy towards
Moscow (Ackerman 2018). It can also serve to reduce US bargaining leverage towards Moscow.
A high-level strategic goal for this effort is to avoid the institutionalization of the subordination
of Moscow to secondary power status in Eurasia (Luxmoore 2014). This relegation is likely to
occur as long as capitalist economic development requires integration in global trade and
financial patterns that Pax Americana Washington now dominates. Moscow and China are
concomitantly seen in the Washington national security establishment as revisionist challengers
(Trump 2017). Cold War-era vested interests with an institutionalized focus on containment and
subordination of Russia and Iran to American regional goals dominate policy making in
Washington (Flegenheimer and Sanger 2017). The Trump administration offers a possible
vehicle for counteracting them.
The Trump administration s approach to foreign policy in East Asia reflects these economic
interests that developed during the Cold War. Despite China s rule by the Communist Party, it
remains a critical trade partner with the US. China achieved this puzzling status during the latter
Cold War. Following the humiliating US defeat in Southeast Asia, US President Jimmy Carter
initially came into office proclaiming a new US foreign policy emphasizing human rights. By the
end of the Carter administration, the US had reverted to its previous containment approach to
national security strategy (Mc uade 2014). The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1 7
sealed this re-emergence of the strategy that prevailed since the late 1 40s. Beijing exploited this
tactical prospect to boost political and economic cooperation with the US by becoming a de facto
ally of the US in the reinvigorated containment strategy. China first appealed to American
nationalist sensitivities deriving from the recent US defeat by ietnam. In early 1 7 , Chinese
leader Teng Hsiao-ping visited the US, and China launched a punitive war against Communist
ietnam for its intervention in neighboring Cambodia to oust the Chinese-allied Khmer Rouge
14
( hang 2005). China helped arm the Afghanistan Mujahideen after the December 1 7 Soviet
invasion amidst the Iranian revolution and the humiliating November 1 7 seizure of the
American embassy in Teheran (Sidky 2007). Carter administration officials earlier made high
profile diplomatic visits to China. NSC Adviser bigniew Brzezinski visited the Great Wall in
May 1 78 and used full normalization of relations to supplant the Secretary of State, Cyrus
ance (Schram 1 7 ). Relative to Brzezinski, ance saw more complexity in Soviet intentions
and therefore saw US relations with both the USSR and China in more distinct and multifaceted
terms (Walker 200 ). The US business community collectively saw enormous business
opportunities opening up and accelerated their investments along with Chinese economic policy
liberalization.
Two generations later, the lobbying influence of these economic interests to protect their
investments is evident in the Trump administration s post-campaign challenge in revising trade
relations. Trump withdrew the US from the ratification process for the Trans Pacific Partnership
(TPP) (Harding, Mitchell, and Peel 2017). The Chinese leadership has also been apprehensive of
the TPP, perceived by some security analysts as part of US containment strategy against China s
so-called rise (Huang 2015). Other Chinese analysts have viewed possible Chinese membership
in the TPP positively in terms of China s economic development (Tso 2016). In the light of
Trump s post-election communication with the Taiwanese leadership, China s response to a US-
led TPP might have been more volatile (Craig, Becker, and Drucker 2017). The profound
interconnections between the Chinese and American economies implies that the Trump
administration s US tax overhaul policies will lead to even deeper interdependency between the
two (Appelbaum 2017). These interdependencies may instigate a global competitive response to
the changes in the international political economic status quo that Trump s appeals to American
populist economic nationalism may signify (Stevenson and Ewing 2017).
Incrementalism and Legitimation in the US Foreign Policy Making Process
The development of the extensive national security establishment pushes foreign policy making
initiative capacity in the direction of organizational incrementalism. It contrasts with traditional
theoretical conceptualizations of democratic policy making, which highlight citizens banding into
interest groups with an emphasis on a supposedly autonomous civil society. It corresponds rather
more with the elite paradigmatic portrayal of policy making (Danziger 2007). According to C.
Wright Mills, as the political influence of these vast vested interests increases, the public and
foreign policy making process becomes opaque to the general public (Summers 2006). Interest
group and populist politics comes to serve primarily a legitimation function, supporting the
strategic goals of predominant organizational actors (Wallace 2017). Recruitment of new
members and their constituencies into the elite political establishment, such as the Trump family
and its associates, is necessary to maintain its long-term hegemonic control (Kinneging 2016).
As Whitfield highlights, scholarly fascination with The o er lite continues. Mills died at
age forty-five, six years after its 1 56 publication, during which his interest focused on elite
recruitment rather than testing and defending his empirical claims. Mills assertion of small
groups of decision makers at the pinnacle of what Eisenhower later called the military-industrial
complex dominating even crisis decision-making is dubious (Whitfield 2014). Mills continuing
scholarly provocation lies rather in his portrayal of the political cooptation of new elite members
via social mobility. They thereby assimilate into the core cultural establishment that dominates
and defines appropriate norms of American political behavior. Long dominated by White Anglo-
Saxon Protestants, members of previously disdained groups, e.g. Jews, European-American
Catholics, have assimilated into the US polity core culture (Gordon 1 64). Assimilation
mechanisms include mobilization against perceived threats from more disenfranchised groups,
i.e. progressive African- and Hispanic-Americans. The Trump US presidential campaign
exploited these mechanisms. Mills insights may be rather in the legitimation mechanisms that lie
at the heart of the military-industrial complex in the post-Cold War era. Mills resented the self-
15
glorification of the US during the height of the Cold War, calling it the American Celebration
(Whitfield 2014, 540). Mills warned of the degeneration of self-government with the decline
of the professional politician, the executive branch no longer overshadowing the warlords and
the corporate rich (Whitfield 2014, 543). Mills warnings appeared empirically doubtful at least
after the Eisenhower administration, until November , 2016 and the victory of Donald J. Trump.
The 2016 Trump presidential campaign exploited American white conservative sentiments to
mobilize the populist Tea Party base (Maskovsky 2017). His administration s public profile
initially highlighted the senior-level representation of current and former senior military officials
(Ryan and Jaffe 2017). Conservative multi-millionaires were favored cabinet-level appointees
(Cohan 2016). Mills may have been insufficiently attentive to the Cold War conflict itself as a
constraint on US domestic political behavior (Horowitz 2012). The Cold War s political
economic and bureaucratic legacies, minus the perceived threat a generation after the USSR s
collapse, call renewed attention to Mills warnings. Robert Michels iron law of oligarchy
becomes more transparent when the distracting threat of a supposedly intensely aggressive global
threat leaves the scene (Piturca 2012). McMaster s departure and replacement by John R. Bolton
as Trump s NSC adviser signifies the intensifying challenge of nationalist populism to the more
multilaterally oriented US foreign policy establishment (Clark 2018).
Incrementalism relates to nationalistic universalism insofar as state organizations
collectively justify their influence expansion to the international political environment
(Morgenthau 1 3, 242 43). I.e. they do so by state leaders publicly cloaking their national
foreign policy behavior in broadly appealing ideological or religious symbols (Ross 2013). Ross
highlights how Hans J. Morgenthau s theory of realism includes emotion as a critical aspect in
effect of the domestic legitimation function in the foreign policy making process. Domestically it
takes the form of manipulation of romantic national stereotypical symbols of self and other.
Thereby, the authorities seek to persuade the public to accept the outcomes of the policy making
process. These outcomes may require public sacrifices of material wealth and personal freedom
during hot and cold wars, e.g. military service. In the era of mass public opinion and nationalism,
they do so comparative more effectively within nation states (Kostagiannis 2013).
Incrementalism corresponds in critical aspects to the behavior patterns highlighted by Hans
J. Morgenthau, i.e. states act as if optimization of power and influence is their foreign policy
motivation. The nuclear setting encourages sphere of influence creation to include the realm of
competition in the area of globalization through developing best practices for national economic
and technological primacy. National security and economic policy become increasingly
interdependent in terms of diplomatic negotiations and political legitimation. Power acquisition
and legitimation, internationally and domestically, operates simultaneously. State leadership
allowing policy constraint by their own ideological propaganda statements claiming universal
benefit as the primary motivation for their state s policy behavior is foolhardy (Kagan 2008).
The Trump phenomenon both reflects and opposes these interests and imperatives. Fisher
notes the legitimation function is evident in his appeals to populism that emerged in response to a
political establishment viewed as unresponsive by much of the US mass public. After assuming
office, Trump often seems to confirm the power of some vested bureaucratic, military, and
economic interests, while also opposing others (Fisher 2017b).
Putin s core constituencies also consist of the legacy of Soviet-era security organizations
(Illarionov 200 ). One Western writer cites a Russian study that nearly 80 percent si of
Russia s elite have ties to the security services (Abrams 2016, 17). The ongoing Russian
utilization of political subversion opportunities in foreign targets developed during the Cold War,
but today Moscow is liberated from ideological considerations (MacFarquhar 2016).
A test of the fissures within these globalization vested interests is the Trump
administration s stance on the US commitment to the 2015 Paris Accords on global climate
change. These vast vested interests include fossil fuels and US alliances with the conservative
authoritarian oil sheikhdoms in the Middle East (Drucker and Kelly 2018). They tend to see a
16
security threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran and seek cooperation with Israel accordingly
(Barnard and Halbfinger 2017). They are accommodative towards ionism and greater Israel
(Barnard, Halbfinger, and Baker 2017). Their publics are more hostile, requiring discrete
economic and security cooperation (Hubbard and Fisher 2017). The Putin administration in
Russia uses these fossil fuel vested interests to incentivize the West towards more cooperative
relations with Russia. The Paris Accords conceivably lessens the incentive to cooperate for
mutually profitable cooperation in fossil fuel resource development plans in Russia and the oil
sheikhdoms. American populist trends and their representatives ally with fossil fuel energy sector
representatives viewing the Paris Accords negatively. Global multinational corporations such as
ExxonMobil reflect the pressures from multiple state governments to maintain the Paris Accords.
The result is subdued support from the former employer of Trump s first US Secretary of State,
Rex W. Tillerson, because of the desire for stability and predictability of the future global
business environment (Sargent 2016). 7
The evolution of the American political regime towards primary reliance upon consumption-
based, normative habitual influence over the public as a control mechanism is a feature of a
highly-industrialized society (Stanfield, Ronald, and Carroll 2004, 364 Cottam and Gallucci
1 78, 16 17 Gunderman 2006, 11). It is a concomitant of this rise of bureaucratic incremental
domination of policy making throughout an industrialized, national society by governments and
organizations. The post- ietnam era US domestic control regime was stable until the 2008 deep
global recession, which undermined the utilitarian elements of the control regime. These
utilitarian control elements ideologically promised a continually improving mass public standard
of living in return for obedience to the authority norms articulated by the power elite. As
globalization seemed to undermine delivery of this implicit promise to many, the rise of
majoritarian ethnic populism was a response. Trump exploits traditional American white ethnic
majoritarian populist collective discontent stemming from multiple perceived threats (Morgan
and Lee 2018). The Trump administration risks intensifying American polity polarization,
thereby concomitantly increasing the nationalistic and coercive elements in the American
domestic political control regime (Connolly 2017). As 1 30s Germany, Italy, and Japan
illustrated, this political dynamic concomitantly increases the propensity towards external
unilateralism that intensifies domestic populist regime support through imperial aggrandizement
(Cottam and Gallucci 1 78 Cottam and Cottam 2001).
C
US strategy towards East Asia focuses on China because of the latter s large and growing power
potential base. The Chinese authorities express suspicion that the US seeks to contain China
(Pant and Joshi 2015 BBC 2017). US strategy towards China under the George W. Bush
administration had been characterized as engagement (Christensen 2006, 82). In the early
Obama administration, it had been characterized as strategic reassurance (Currie 200 , para. 1).
The so-called pivot to Asia occurred later in the same administration as the perceived intensity of
challenge from China increased. What it will be under Trump remains to be seen, but its
foundations have already been laid due to bureaucratic incrementalism inherited from the Cold
War (Brands and Cooper 2018). It also has its bases in the Second World War experience, e.g.
strategic reassurance could not be called appeasement because the latter label applies to the
1 30s dismal failure as a strategy. The prevailing view of United States policy makers was that
the Soviet Union was a Russian version of Nazi Germany that the US successfully contained. It
affirms US leadership of the international community on the basis of this assumption while
7
Trump replaced the gravely unpopular Tillerson with former CIA Director, Republican Tea Party 2010 wave
congressman and first-ranked West Point graduate Mike Pompeo, who quickly rescinded his predecessor s hiring freeze
and other policies that had contributed to an exodus of professional diplomats from the State Department (Jones et al.
2018).
17
targeting rogue states. China came to play a key role in this perceived victory by de facto allying
with the US against the USSR in the late 1 70s. The vast bureaucratic instruments created to
implement containment against the USSR and their associated economic interests continue to
exist. Their incremental tendency to seek new justifications for their US government budget
allocations include identifying new challenges on the basis of their supposed earlier success.
Despite extensive US economic vested interests in collaboration, China is vulnerable to being so
targeted due to American populist reactions to globalization. Beijing and Moscow exploit or
respond to the volatility of American incrementalism combined with populism. They confront
tactical challenges in working with different national security, business-focused, and
conservative populist senior-level Trump administration officials and their respective
constituencies. In this context, the distinctive foreign policy motivation of the Trump
administration is its own domestic legitimation within this broader globalization environment.
A
This paper was produced with the support of the Research Fund of the Catholic University of
Korea. The author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful critiques,
his students at the American University in Bulgaria, Wright State University Lake Campus, and
the Catholic University of Korea, and Hannah Werner at Common Ground Research Networks
for her editorial guidance. Any mistakes and omissions are solely the responsibility of the author.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Benedict E. DeDominicis: Associate Professor of Political Science, International Studies
Department, Catholic University of Korea, Bucheon, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea
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e ords old ar Strate nited States

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Table 2: American Cold War Assumptions of Russian Motivation and

Table 3: An Inclusive Typology of Foreign Policy Motivations of a State

Desired Future of Containment

arious international relations theorists subsequently hailed the US role in successfully

Table 4: US Foreign Policy Motivation: Early Cold War

Table 5: US and Soviet Foreign Policy Motivations: Cold War s End 3

US Early Cold War Prevailing iew Perception of the USSR:

Table 7: The Enemy Stereotype

Table 8: 1 80s US Cold Warrior (Mis)Perception

US Prevailing iew of the USSR, Cold War, End Stage:

Evil Empire--- --------------- ---------------Complex

Table : The Degenerate Stereotype

US Polity Institutionalization of the Cold War Conflict Spiral

circumstances. 5 The supposed, astonishingly successful containment of the dire global

constrained by their organizational-political milieu in favor of expansion. To address

Incrementalism and Legitimation in the US Foreign Policy Making Process

. 1 4. The eturn o oliti s to nternational Strate . Unpublished Manuscript.

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