Donald Trump's Very Weird Theory of International Relations

Data point #2496 that Trump does not understand world politics.

Photo by Lucas George Wendt on Unsplash

In the ten days since Kamala Harris entered the race, she has pretty much wiped out Donald Trump’s lead in the polls, injecting enthusiasm and fundraising into the Democratic ticket. Trump’s running mate JD Vance is the Velcro candidate, with every little piece of negative detritus sticking to him like, um, lint on a couch. Furthermore, things are likely to get worse for Trump over the next few weeks. In less than a week Harris will announce her VP choice, after which they will go on a barnstorming tour. Then the Democratic National Convention will happen. And then the Fed is poised to cut interest rates in September, signaling that it is satisfied inflation has been tamed.

After Labor Day, when any DNC convention bump fades, the race might very well reset to the toss-up. But Trump is in for a rough few weeks. And he is lashing out in the most predictable way possible: trying to denigrate Kamala Harris’ ability to lead due to her race and gender.

The Washington Post’s Isaac Arnsdorf writes up Trump’s latest display of misogyny:

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump suggested that Vice President Harris wouldn’t be able to stand up to world leaders because of her appearance, adding that he didn’t want to spell it out but viewers would know what he meant.

“She’ll be like a play toy,” Trump — who has a history of using sexist attacks and stereotypes in campaigns against women — said in a Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham, a portion of which aired on Tuesday night. “They look at her and they say, ‘We can’t believe we got so lucky.’ They’re going to walk all over her.”

Trump then turned to look directly at the camera and added: “And I don’t want to say as to why. But a lot of people understand it.”

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said he was not referring to race or gender and went on to criticize Harris over her record on immigration and other Biden administration policies.¹

As repugnant as Trump’s suggestion, it is worth noting the following:

1. One of Trump’s consistent throughline in his foreign policy thinking is the belief that individual leaders can manipulate international relations. He started his first term convinced that his dealmaking savvy, subterfuge, and bluster would yield positive foreign policy results. He really bought into the “madman theory” of international relations. Even though these beliefs proved to be falsified, it is hardly surprising that he has not changed his mind. As a world-class misogynist, it is unsurprising that Trump, in a classic case of projection, thinks that other leaders would view Harris as weak.

2. Let’s be honest: there are countries *COUGH* Russia *COUGH* and leaders *COUGH* Putin *COUGH* who likely would look down on Harris because of her race and particularly her gender. There is ample evidence from that Russian officials denigrated both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton during their tenure as Secretary of State.

3. Trump managed to say things that were even more repugnant less than 24 hours later; tomorrow’s rhetoric from Trump will likely be even worse.

So with this out of the way, is there any validity to Trump’s claim? No, of course not. Even Trump’s troglodyte brain is likely aware that other leaders have been thrown off balance because of a female U.S. policy principal. Meanwhile, Trump likes to project himself as exuding masculinity and yet other world leaders laughed at him — multiple times — while he was the sitting president!

First, there was his 2018 speech at the United Nations General Assembly:

And then there was the 2019 laughter he inspired among NATO allies.²

He was literally the object of derisive laughter yesterday in Chicago!

The most important point to make is that while individual-level theories can explain some factors of international politics, most of those theories work against Trump rather than Harris. Inexperienced and uninformed world leaders have difficulty reining in subordinates — and even after four years as president, both of those adjectives apply to Trump. The madman theory does not really work well in international relations — but Trump believes that it does. Credible commitments are pretty important in international politics — and Trump has never signed a deal that he then did not try to break.

It is noteworthy that Trump did not try to claim that Harris’ lack of foreign policy experience is a problem. That might be because Harris is more experienced in that area than the typical post-Cold War presidential nominee. She is no George H.W. Bush or Joe Biden. Compared when they ran for office, however, Harris’ national security experience exceeds that of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump by a country mile.

Trump is incapable of thinking in such abstract terms, of course. He always reduces people to their simplest descriptors — and gets frustrated, as he has with Harris, when reductionism does not work. The important thing to realize is that however one wants to appraise Kamala Harris on foreign policy, the notion that foreign leaders are going to walk all over her is premised on the crudest form of misogyny. And Trump’s premise is, as per usual, completely wrong.

1. I am so looking forward to Karoline Leavitt moving on from the Trump campaign to being the chief spokesperson for Boeing on airplane safety and then Twitter on customer safety.

2. SNL did a whole cold open about it!