The Trump presidency, Russia and Ukraine:

explaining incoherence

RUTH DEYERMOND *

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The foreign policy of the Trump presidency was unlike that of any other US
presidential administration in the modern era. What made it radically different
from foreign policies before or since was less the direction of official policy itself—
which often reflected a higher degree of continuity with the administration of
Barack Obama than was popularly assumed—than the Trump administration’s
profound failures of coherence, articulation and transparency. These failures are a
consequence of the unconventional behaviour of the administration as a foreign-
policy-making body, something which limits the ability of the foreign policy
analysis (FPA) field to explain Trump policy. This suggests that unconventional
presidencies—and Trump’s may only be the first of these—require a rethinking
of some assumptions about US foreign policy and our ability to make sense of it.
This article examines the Trump administration’s policy concerning Russian
aggression in Ukraine and the problem of incoherence in its foreign policy as artic-
ulated by the White House and the Department of State. It suggests that, contrary
to many scholarly and media accounts, the articulation of the Trump administra-
tion’s foreign policy was characterized by internal confusion and uncertainty as
well as contradictory external messaging. This undermined policy, damaged the
US’s credibility as well as its relations with other states, and had implications for
international security.
The article argues that while the incoherence on Russia and Ukraine can be
explained as a consequence of differences between official policy and the views
of senior officials—above all, those of Trump himself—the reasons for those
differences and the extent to which they were manifested in interactions with
figures outside the administration, including Russian government officials, remain
unclear because of the administration’s unprecedented lack of transparency. In
multiple ways, then, the Trump administration’s policy on Russian aggression in
Ukraine challenges not only embedded scholarly assumptions about coherence in
foreign policy articulation, but also the ability of analysts to describe and explain
the extent of that incoherence.
The article aims to contribute to the literature in two ways. The first is an
empirical contribution: to date, there has been no scholarly analysis of the Trump
* I would like to thank International Affairs’ anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier
version of this article.
International Affairs 99: 4 (2023) 1595 –1614; doi: 10.1093/ia/iiad120
© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of International Affairs. This is
an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work
is properly cited.

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 Ruth Deyermond
administration’s policy on the issue of Russian aggression towards Ukraine. This
constitutes a significant gap in the literature on Trump’s foreign policy. Even before
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it was the most significant cause
of friction or hostility in the US–Russia relationship after Russia’s annexation of
Crimea in 2014. Improving relations with Russia was often identified as one of the
administration’s foreign policy priorities; as Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex
Tillerson, noted, ‘the keystone is really Ukraine … We have to make progress in
Ukraine’.1 Beyond the importance of the issue for the Trump administration, the
US response to Russian aggression in Ukraine in this period has obvious impor-
tance for making sense of the diplomatic background to the escalation of Russian

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aggression in 2022, and thus for European security and international order more
generally.
Second, the article aims to show that existing analytical approaches, devel-
oped to explain foreign policy-making in previous presidencies, fall short when
attempting to explain presidential actions that lie outside the normal parameters of
administration behaviour. The Trump case highlights the way in which embedded
assumptions—about coherence, and about relations between the bodies inside the
executive that are involved in foreign policy-making and implementation—shape
expectations with respect to both US foreign policy itself and how research is
conducted on the topic. This article argues that some of these assumptions and
expectations need to be rethought when administration practices fall so far outside
the norms established by previous presidencies, particularly in an era when the
growth of populist, non-traditional approaches to politics means that the Trump
administration may not remain a unique case.2
The article begins by considering the FPA literature on Trump foreign
policy, focusing on the widespread attempts to understand it as coherent and the
challenges it poses to the FPA field more broadly. Through an examination of all
texts referring to Ukraine which have been produced by the Trump White House
and the Department of State, as made available through their archived websites,
it investigates several aspects of the policy on Russian aggression in Ukraine—the
status of Crimea, military aid, sanctions and the possibility of Russia’s readmission
to the G7 (or G8)—which demonstrate the incoherence of the Trump administra-
tion’s approach. It then considers possible explanations for this incoherence and
the obstacles to a clearer understanding of the issues presented by the administra-
tion’s unprecedented lack of transparency. Finally, it explores the need to rethink
approaches to the analysis of US foreign policy when analysing unconventional
presidencies.

1
US Department of State, ‘Interview with Elise Labott of CNN’, 5 Jan. 2018, https://2017-2021.state.gov/
interview-with-elise-labott-of-cnn-3/index.html. (Unless otherwise noted at point of citation, all URLs
cited in this article were accessible on 26 April 2023.)
2
Jeffrey A. Friedman, ‘Is US grand strategy dead? The political foundations of deep engagement after Donald
Trump’, International Affairs 98: 4, 2022, pp. 1289–305, https@://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiac112; Feliciano de Sá
Guimarães and Irma Dutra de Oliveira e Silva, ‘Far-right populism and foreign policy identity: Jair Bolsona-
ro’s ultra-conservatism and the new politics of alignment’, International Affairs 97: 2, 2021, pp. 345–63, https://
doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiaa220.
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 The Trump presidency, Russia and Ukraine

Making sense of the Trump administration’s foreign policy

Since the 2016 US presidential election campaign, analysts have struggled to
describe and explain the foreign policy of Donald Trump. Trump himself, as has
been widely noted, came to the presidency with neither experience nor knowl-
edge of foreign policy-making. His lack of political background, the significant
gaps in his understanding of other states—and of the practice of diplomacy—and
his apparent disinterest in learning about these things all contributed to a situation
in which it was difficult to identify a coherent foreign policy. Both the ideas and
practice of Trump’s foreign policy proved difficult to analyse because they were

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located outside most of the traditional frameworks that have been used to make
sense of US foreign policy.
Analysts generally agree that Trump’s foreign policy was characterized by
unilateralism; a disregard for, or mistrust of, alliances; the neglect of democracy
and human rights; and an affinity for authoritarian leaders.3 In its practice, it
was also characterized by short-termism, a focus on Trump’s personal relations
with other heads of government, and a disregard for both the normal practices of
diplomacy and the domestic structures of foreign policy-making, particularly the
Department of State.
The question of whether there was a Trump doctrine or any overarching
conceptual logic to Trump’s foreign policy has, however, been more contested.
The Trump administration itself identified its approach to foreign policy as
‘principled realism’;4 few analysts have agreed, although Nye has characterized
Trump himself as an ‘“idiosyncratic” realist’.5 More generally, a number of analysts
have argued for the existence of what Wright has characterized as ‘a remarkably
coherent and consistent worldview’,6 and many others have framed his policy as
one characterized by some degree of conceptual coherence. In the absence of an
identifiable doctrine or grand strategy developed by the administration itself, some
analysts effectively formulated their own; Brands, for example, suggested early in
the Trump presidency that a ‘Fortress America’ grand strategy might emerge.7
Others, while not necessarily suggesting the existence of something as explicit as
a doctrine, located Trump’s foreign policy within pre-existing traditions, notably
the Jacksonian tradition of US foreign policy.8 Ettinger argued that the central
3
Robert D. Blackwill, Trump’s foreign policies are better than they seem (New York: Council on Foreign Rela-
tions, 2019); Joseph S. Nye Jr, ‘The rise and fall of American hegemony from Wilson to Trump’, International
Affairs95: 1, 2019, pp. 63–80, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiy212; Aaron Ettinger, ‘Principled realism and populist
sovereignty in Trump’s foreign policy’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 33: 3, 2020, pp. 410–31, https://
doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2019.1659229; and Rebecca Friedman Lissner and Micah Zenko, ‘There is no Trump
doctrine, and there will never be one’, Foreign Policy, 21 July 2017, https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/21/
there-is-no-trump-doctrine-and-there-will-never-be-one-grand-strategy/.
4
Michael Anton, ‘The Trump doctrine’, Foreign Policy, 20 April 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/20/
the-trump-doctrine-big-think-america-first-nationalism/.
5
Nye, ‘The rise and fall of American hegemony’, p. 68.
6
Thomas Wright, ‘Trump’s 19th century foreign policy’, Politico, 20 Jan. 2016, https://www.politico.com/
magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-foreign-policy-213546.
7
Hal Brands, ‘US grand strategy in an age of nationalism: Fortress America and its alternatives’, Washington
Quarterly 40: 1, 2017, pp. 73–94 at p. 74, https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2017.1302740.
8
Walter Russell Mead, ‘The Jacksonian revolt: American populism and the liberal order’, Foreign Affairs 96: 2,
2017, pp. 2–7; Michael Clarke and Anthony Ricketts, ‘Donald Trump and American foreign policy: the return
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 Ruth Deyermond
role of sovereignty in Trump’s foreign policy allows observers to ‘locate coher-
ence’ in it, where it would otherwise be difficult to do so.9
Other scholars have drawn on the FPA psychology tradition to explore the
ways in which Trump’s personality and experiences shaped his approach to inter-
national affairs. Wolf suggests that Trump’s foreign policy was driven by his
‘personal obsession with winning and gaining respect’; Drezner argues that it
was damaged by Trump’s ‘quick temper, short attention span and poor impulse
control’.10 Siniver and Featherstone argue that Trump’s foreign policy was shaped
by his plutocratic world view, reinforced by a plutocratic cabinet.11
One debate has concerned the issue of Trump’s unpredictability and, in

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particular, whether his administration’s foreign policy was characterized by an
‘unpredictability doctrine’. This idea first emerged during the 2016 Republican
primary contest,12 generating significant media and scholarly discussion of the
idea that Trump’s unpredictability was a deliberate approach. Unpredictability, it
was argued, was a tactic (sometimes referred to as a doctrine or strategy) devel-
oped during Trump’s business career that aimed to extract negotiating advantage
from the creation of uncertainty about his intentions.13 Some analysts suggest that
Trump attempted to replicate Nixon’s ‘madman theory’, using unpredictability
as a tactic to render an opponent uncertain about the limits of possible action.14
Others rejected the idea that this unpredictability was deliberate, let alone the
basis of a doctrine. Featherstone and Hassan show persuasively that both Trump
and his advisers promoted the idea of an unpredictability doctrine during the
Republican primaries, but abandoned it thereafter.15 For some analysts, it was a
product of bureaucratic or organizational factors; Wright, for example, argued
in 2019 that unpredictability had been a consequence of conflict between Trump
and ‘the national security establishment’, and thus ceased to exist once recalcitrant
advisers had been replaced by those willing to enact Trump’s policy wishes.16

of the Jacksonian tradition’, Comparative Strategy 36: 4, 2017, pp. 366–79, https://doi.org/10.1080/01495933.2
017.1361210.
9
Ettinger, ‘Principled realism and populist sovereignty’, p. 411.
10
Reinhard Wolf, ‘Donald Trump’s status-driven foreign policy’, Survival 59: 5, 2017, pp. 99–116 at p. 103,
https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2017.1375260; Daniel W. Drezner, ‘Immature leadership: Donald Trump
and the American presidency’, International Affairs 96 : 2, 2020, pp. 383–400.
11
Asaf Siniver and Christopher Featherstone, ‘Low-conceptual complexity and Trump’s foreign policy’, Global
Affairs 6: 1, 2020, pp. 71–85, https://doi.org/10.1080/23340460.2020.1734953.
12
‘Transcript: Donald Trump’s foreign policy speech’, New York Times, 27 April 2016, https://www.nytimes.
com/2016/04/28/us/politics/transcript-trump-foreign-policy.html.
13
For example, Michelle Bentley and Maxine David, ‘Unpredictability as doctrine: reconceptualising foreign
policy strategy in the Trump era’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 34: 3, 2021, pp. 383–406, https://doi.
org/10.1080/09557571.2021.1877616; Reuben Steff, US foreign policy in the age of Trump (London and New York:
Routledge, 2021).
14
James D. Boys, ‘The unpredictability factor: Nixon, Trump and the application of the Madman Theory in
US grand strategy’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 34: 3, 2021, pp. 430–51, https://doi.org/10.1080/0
9557571.2020.1847042; Steff, US foreign policy in the age of Trump.
15
Oz Hassan and Christopher Featherstone, ‘Trump’s low conceptual complexity leadership and the vanishing
“unpredictability doctrine”’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 34: 3, 2021, pp. 407–29, https://doi.org/
10.1080/09557571.2020.1853054.
16
Thomas Wright, ‘Trump’s foreign policy is no longer unpredictable’, Foreign Affairs, 18 Jan. 2019, https://
www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2019-01-18/trumps-foreign-policy-no-longer-unpredictable.
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 The Trump presidency, Russia and Ukraine
Beyond the details of their individual analyses, attempts to identify a Trump
doctrine, or to locate Trump within an established foreign policy tradition, are
also attempts to identify coherence and consistency and, in the broadest sense, to
understand Trump’s foreign policy as rational. The idea of an unpredictability
doctrine is particularly attractive in this regard because it allows analysts to recon-
cile the evidence of inconsistency in Trump’s foreign policy with the desire to
make that foreign policy make sense. Even where analysts assert that the intention
is not to treat Trump’s approach to foreign policy as necessarily rational, this is
precisely the effect of identifying an unpredictability doctrine.17
This attempt to identify some form of rationality ordering Trump’s foreign

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policy is understandable, not least because the conceptual frameworks for studying
the output of US foreign policy have traditionally been grounded in the assump-
tion that it reflects such an order or intent. The literature on US foreign policy
assumes that foreign policy discourse and practice are broadly consistent with
an observable world view and reflect discernible foreign policy objectives, and
that the public articulation of foreign policy, once agreed, is coherent across an
administration’s branches. It assumes that what the president, cabinet members,
key advisers and the departmental bureaucracies say and do in public are gener-
ally consistent with one another, even if there are differences in emphasis. This,
however, was notably not the case for the Trump administration.
This does not mean that foreign policy decision-making is free from disagree-
ments or that its execution is necessarily coherent. Radical differences between
administration members or departments during the policy development process
and operational differences between government organizations are well-
established topics of the FPA literature.18 More broadly there is, of course, a very
significant body of foreign policy analysis that challenges or moderates assumptions
of rationality in the FPA literature. Recent approaches that consider limitations to
rationality include poliheuristic theory, the literature on problem representation
and cognitive institutionalism. These approaches explore the ways in which ratio-
nality in foreign policy is limited by organizational cultures or cognitive processes
prior to decision-making (the way in which heuristics or the framing of an issue
limits the choices available to decision-makers).19 Others examine the effects of
decision-makers’ personalities or their beliefs.20
17
For example, Bentley and David, ‘Unpredictability as doctrine’.
18
For example, Graham Allison, Essence of decision: explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown &
Co., 1971); James M. Goldgeier, ‘NATO expansion: the anatomy of a decision’, Washington Quarterly 21: 1,
1998, pp. 83–102, https://doi.org/10.1080/01636609809550295.
19
See, for example, Eric Stern, ‘Contextualizing and critiquing the poliheuristic theory’, Journal of Conflict
Resolution 48: 1, 2004, pp.105–26, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002703261052; Jonathan Keller and Yi Edward
Yang, ‘Problem representation, option generation, and poliheuristic theory: an experimental analysis’, Politi-
cal Psychology 37: 5, 2016, pp. 739–52, https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12283; and Chris Alden and Ammon Aran,
Foreign policy analysis: new approaches (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017).
20
For example, Ole Holsti, ‘The “Operational Code” approach to the study of political leaders: John Foster
Dulles’ philosophical and instrumental beliefs’, Canadian Journal of Political Science 3: 1, 1970, pp. 123–57,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S000842390002713X; Graham H. Shepard, ‘Personality effects on American foreign
policy, 1969–84: A second test of interpersonal generalization theory’, International Studies Quarterly 32: 1,
1988, pp. 91–123, https://doi.org/10.2307/2600414; Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, eds, Ideas and
foreign policy: beliefs, institutions and political change (New York: Cornell University Press, 1993).
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 Ruth Deyermond
As with the organizational or bureaucratic politics literature, however, these
approaches focus on the process and limitations of decision-making; they also,
explicitly or implicitly, assume that the foreign policy-making process reflects the
hierarchical structure of the executive, in which the world view, personality and
policy preferences of the president and (secondarily) the occupants of key cabinet
and adviser roles shape policy selection. The Trump administration, however, was
characterized by a publicly observable lack of coherence in the administration’s
policy articulation and by the sustained divergence of the president (and sometimes
the secretary of state) from official administration policy—a divergence which did
not necessarily lead to a later change in that policy. Fundamental aspects of policy

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concerning Russian aggression in Ukraine—the status of Crimea, or whether and
how Russia should be punished for its aggression, for example—were called into
question by the actions of administration members (most frequently the president)
after they had been set out in key documents, press releases or speeches. This
is not something that the existing FPA literature accounts for—understandably,
since administration incoherence on matters of apparently settled policy was not
a persistent feature of previous administrations. The lack of coherence in foreign
policy articulation and practice makes it difficult to apply conceptual frameworks
to the Trump administration that were developed to describe and explain previous
administrations’ foreign policy.
One area of FPA that has traditionally explored the problem of coherence in
foreign policy is the literature on implementation. This subfield, which remains
small compared with the large and diverse body of theorizing on foreign policy
decision-making, examines the problems of policy execution arising both from
contact with the external world and within the government organizations
implementing a given policy. As scholars have noted, the complexity of these
processes necessarily challenges assumptions about rationality in foreign policy-
making and about coherence in the execution of policy.21 However, it cannot
adequately explain the incoherence of the Trump administration’s foreign policy
for two reasons. First, although it is an aspect of the policy process that occurs
after decision-making, the public articulation of policy by the executive is not
considered in the literature as a point at which an administration’s policy may
begin to be contradicted or resisted. Secondly, it assumes that any disruption
deriving from resistance will be bottom-up—that it will come from discontent
within bureaucratic structures, directed towards policy determined at the top of
government. Thus Clarke, following Halperin, suggests that implemented policy
will most closely reflect decisions taken when a president is closely involved in
policy execution.22
As the case of policy on Ukraine shows, neither of these assumptions can safely
be held in respect of the Trump administration. Administration policy set out in
21
Michael Clarke, ‘Foreign policy implementation: problems and approaches’, British Journal of International Stud-
ies 5: 2, 1979, pp. 112–28, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210500114755; Elisabetta Brighi and Christopher Hill,
‘Implementation and behaviour’ in Steve Smith, Amelia Hadfield and Tim Dunne, Foreign Policy: Theories,
Actors, Cases, 3rd edn, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 147–67 at p. 166.
22
Clarke, ‘Foreign policy implementation’, p. 121.
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 The Trump presidency, Russia and Ukraine
documents and official statements by White House and State Department offi-
cials was undermined in public and private comments by senior administration
members. Most surprisingly, then, the incoherence in foreign policy derived not
from resistance at lower levels of government, but at the top: statements by Trump
and, at certain points, his secretary of state, repeatedly undermined their own
foreign policy. This is a highly unusual, perhaps unprecedented, situation and thus
not one that FPA literatures on implementation or decision-making address. To
describe and attempt to explain the foreign policy of the Trump administration,
then, we need to rethink embedded assumptions about where disruption to foreign
policy execution begins, and about the actors responsible for that disruption.

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Russian aggression in Ukraine: the policy of the Trump administration
In many respects, the official Trump administration policy on Russian aggres-
sion in Ukraine—the policy set out in publications, press releases and speeches—
appeared to be a continuation of the policy pursued by the Obama administration.
It recognized Crimea as part of Ukraine, and condemned Russia’s occupation and
its aggravation of the crisis through the steps it had taken to consolidate Russian
control over the peninsula. The policy maintained that Russia had primary
responsibility for the instigation, continuation and conduct of the conflict in
eastern Ukraine. It identified Russian aggression in Ukraine as part of a wider
pattern of aggression towards other states and as part of Russia’s challenge to the
fundamental principles of international order. For these reasons, it maintained
that the US should help Ukraine to defend itself and should penalize Russia both
through the application of sanctions and through the withholding of high-profile
diplomatic interactions which could be seen to imply approval, such as summit
meetings and membership of the G7 (previously the G8).
Several of these positions are considered below. In each case, however, a clear
initial policy position was rendered uncertain or inconsistent by administration
members, notably Trump himself. Yet in most cases this presidential divergence
from administration policy did not lead to a change in that policy, but was instead
denied or ignored. The result was a persistent lack of clarity and coherence about
administration policy in this area, which in turn contributed to a lack of clarity
on overall policy towards Russia.

The annexation of Crimea

The assertion that Crimea remained part of Ukraine was made frequently and
consistently in Department of State documents from the start of the Trump pres-
idency; it was reflected in comments by other administration figures, including the
vice-president.23 The unlawful status of Russia’s occupation of Crimea was asserted

23
Trump White House Archives, ‘Readout of the Vice President’s meeting with Ukrainian president Petro
Poroshenko’, 18 Feb. 2017, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/readout-vice-presi-
dents-meeting-ukrainian-president-petro-poroshenko/.
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 Ruth Deyermond
in many documents and comments across the life of the administration, including
annual ‘Crimea is Ukraine’ statements released on the anniversary of the
annexation,24 and the White House cited the Trump administration’s response to
‘Russia’s occupation of Crimea’ as evidence that it was ‘standing up to Russia’s
malign activities’.25 The central importance of the issue for Ukraine policy more
broadly was also evident from the frequent references to it in statements on Ukrai-
nian issues that were not directly related to the annexation, such as statements issued
on the anniversary of the Holodomor,26 and on religious freedom in Ukraine.27
Early White House characterizations of the president’s position on the issue of
Ukraine also reflected this policy,28affirming Trump’s commitment to ‘holding

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Russia accountable for its actions in Crimea’.29 Impromptu comments by Trump
himself, however, suggested a different position, one unrelated to his own admin-
istration’s policy but consistent with indications during the election campaign
that he might consider recognizing Crimea as Russian territory.30 During his
presidency, Trump offered no unprompted public comment on the subject of
Crimea’s status, in contrast to both Obama and Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, and
consistently refused to acknowledge the Russian government’s responsibility for
the occupation of Crimea. Instead, he typically deflected the subject to Obama’s
alleged responsibility for failing to prevent the occupation.31
At other points, Trump appeared directly to contradict his administration’s
policy on Crimea. Prior to his 2018 Helsinki summit meeting with Russian
presidet Vladimir Putin, Trump suggested that he was considering recognizing
Russia’s annexation of Crimea, saying ‘we’re going to have to see’.32 Two weeks
later, Trump was asked whether he would recognize Crimea as Russian territory;
he described it as ‘an interesting question’ and added:
[People] like to say, “Oh, Crimea.” But the fact is, they … just opened a big bridge that
was started years ago. They built, I think, a submarine port; substantially added billions of

24
For example, US Department of State, ‘Crimea is Ukraine’, 14 March 2018, https://2017-2021.state.gov/
crimea-is-ukraine/index.html.
25
Trump White House Archives, ‘President Donald J. Trump is standing up to Russia’s malign activities’,
6 April 2018, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-stand-
ing-russias-malign-activities/.
26
US Department of State, ‘Marking the 84th anniversary of the Ukrainian Holodomor’, 14 Nov. 2017,
https://2017-2021.state.gov/marking-the-84th-anniversary-of-the-ukrainian-holodomor/index.html.
27
US Department of State, ‘Religious freedom in Ukraine’, 25 Sept. 2018, https://2017-2021.state.gov/religious-
freedom-in-ukraine/index.html.
28
For example, Trump White House Archives, ‘Press briefing by press secretary Sean Spicer’, 14 Feb. 2017, https://
trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/press-briefing-press-secretary-sean-spicer-021417/.
29
Trump White House Archives, ‘Readout of President Donald J. Trump’s meetings with Italian president
Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni’, 24 May 2017, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.
gov/briefings-statements/readout-president-donald-j-trumps-meetings-italian-president-sergio-mattarella-
prime-minister-paolo-gentiloni/.
30
‘We’ll be looking at that. Yeah, we’ll be looking.’ Robert S. Mueller, III, Report on the investigation into Russian
interference in the 2016 presidential election, Vol. I (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, 2019), p. 19.
31
For example, Trump White House Archives, ‘Remarks by President Trump in press conference after midterm
elections’, 7 Nov. 2018, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-
trump-press-conference-midterm-elections/.
32
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, ‘Trump doesn’t rule out recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea’,
30 June 2018, https://www.rferl.org/a/trump-doesnt-rule-out-recognizing-russian-annexation-ukraine-
crimean-peninsula/29328403.html.
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 The Trump presidency, Russia and Ukraine
dollars. […] What will happen with Crimea from this point on? That I can’t tell you. But
I’m not happy about Crimea.33

This deeply ambiguous statement appeared to raise the possibility that Trump
thought that Russian governmental spending on Crimean infrastructure gave
legitimacy to its territorial claims, and, furthermore, that he might be willing to
recognize Crimea as Russian. Much more explicit than this were the reports from
the 2018 G7 summit in Charlevoix, Canada, according to which Trump told the
assembled heads of government that ‘Crimea is Russian because everyone who
lives there speaks Russian.’34 When asked whether this was Trump’s view, the

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White House press secretary refused to comment.35
Significantly, however, Trump’s public and private comments did not lead to a
change of administration policy on Crimea; the Ukrainian status of Crimea and
the need for Russia to end its occupation remained the stated policy of the Trump
administration. Less than a month after Trump’s comments, the Department of
State published the ‘Crimea Declaration’, frequently cited by officials as evidence
of the strong and consistent position taken by the Trump administration on the
issue. It asserted that ‘the United States rejects Russia’s attempted annexation of
Crimea and pledges to maintain this policy until Ukraine’s territorial integrity is
restored’.36 This position was reiterated shortly afterwards by Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo to Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko and repeated by Pompeo
and State Department officials to members of the Ukrainian government.37
White House officials adopted the same position. Immediately after Trump’s
public comments, both the White House press secretary and her deputy reaffirmed
that ‘we don’t recognize Russia’s attempts to annex Crimea at all’.38 A White
House document released the day after the Helsinki summit emphasized the
administration’s use of sanctions against those involved in the ‘ongoing occupa-
tion of Crimea’.39 Thus, not only did Trump’s comments fail to reflect or change
33
Trump White House Archives, ‘Remarks by President Trump at press conference after NATO summit’,
12 July 2018, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-press-
conference-nato-summit-brussels-belgium/.
34
Alberto Nardelli and Julia Ioffe, ‘Trump told G7 leaders that Crimea is Russian because everyone speaks
Russian in Crimea’, BuzzFeed News, 14 June 2018, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/albertonardelli/
trump-russia-crimea.
35
Trump White House Archives, ‘Press briefing by press secretary Sarah Sanders’, 14 June 2018, https://trump-
whitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/press-briefing-press-secretary-sarah-sanders-061418/.
36
US Department of State, ‘Crimea Declaration’, 25 July 2018, https://ru.usembassy.gov/statement-by-secre-
tary-pompeo-crimea-declaration/.
37
US Department of State, ‘Secretary Pompeo’s call with Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko’, 7 Aug. 2018,
https://2017-2021.state.gov/secretary-pompeos-call-with-ukrainian-president-petro-poroshenko/index.
html. For later statements of the position see, for example, US Department of State, ‘Secretary Pompeo’s
meeting with Ukrainian foreign minister Klimkin’, 16 Nov. 2018, https://2017-2021.state.gov/secretary-
pompeos-meeting-with-ukrainian-foreign-minister-klimkin/index.html.
38
Trump White House Archives, ‘Press gaggle by deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley’, 3 July 2018,
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/press-gaggle-deputy-press-secretary-hogan-
gidley-070318/ and Trump White House Archives, ‘Press briefing by press secretary Sarah Sanders’, 2 July
2018, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/press-briefing-press-secretary-sarah-sand-
ers-070218/.
39
Trump White House Archives, ‘President Donald J. Trump is protecting our elections and standing up to
Russia’s malign activities’, 17 July 2018, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/presi-
dent-donald-j-trump-protecting-elections-standing-russias-malign-activities/.
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 Ruth Deyermond
the direction of policy in this area, they produced an immediate reaffirmation of
the policy by the Department of State and by the White House itself.

Military aid to Ukraine

Like the Obama administration, the Trump administration typically framed
Russia’s annexation of Crimea and involvement in eastern Ukraine both as an
instance of the Russian government’s aggressive treatment of the post-Soviet
space as Russia’s sphere of interest, and as part of an ongoing challenge to the
fundamental principles of the post-Second World War international order. For

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these reasons, and because of the US’s longstanding security relationship with
Ukraine, the administration’s policy was ‘to help Ukraine defend itself … and
regain its territorial integrity and sovereignty’.40 Trump administration policy was
presented as a continuation of the pre-existing approach of providing financial
assistance for Ukrainian defence and assisting Ukraine ‘on the path to NATO and
Euro-Atlantic integration’.41
In fact, the provision of military assistance was the only Ukraine-related issue
area in which early Trump administration policy departed significantly from that
of the Obama administration in more strongly supporting Ukraine against Russia.
Although the Obama administration had permitted the commercial export of
weapons to Ukraine, it had declined to provide weapons directly. The Trump
administration reversed this decision and announced in December 2017 that it was
providing ‘enhanced defensive capabilities’ to Ukraine.42 Members of the admin-
istration regularly emphasized both the scale of this aid and the contrast with
policy under the Obama administration. Vice-President Mike Pence, for example,
claimed that ‘approving the largest provision of defence weapons to Ukraine in
years’ was evidence that the Trump administration was ‘holding Russia account-
able for its attempts to redraw international borders by force’.43
Although the administration’s position on military aid to Ukraine seemed clear,
it was dramatically undermined by the actions of the president himself. Trump
had reportedly been reluctant to authorize military assistance to Ukraine until he
was told it would benefit US business, but had eventually done so.44 However, by
early 2019, reportedly persuaded by his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others,
he (wrongly) claimed that the Ukrainian government had acted to undermine him

40
US Department of State, ‘On Secretary Tillerson’s upcoming travel to Brussels, Belgium for the NATO
foreign ministers meeting’, 28 March 2017, https://2017-2021.state.gov/on-secretary-tillersons-upcoming-
travel-to-brussels-belgium-for-the-nato-foreign-ministers-meeting/index.html.
41
US Department of State, ‘Department press briefing—May 3, 2018’, 3 May 2018, https://2017-2021.state.gov/
briefings/department-press-briefing-may-3-2018/index.html.
42
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, ‘US says it will enhance Ukraine’s defensive capabilities; Russia derides
move’, 23 Dec. 2017, https://www.rferl.org/a/us-ukraine-enhanced-weapons-javelin-missiles-russia-separa-
tists/28934551.html.
43
Trump White House Archive, ‘Remarks by Vice President Pence at NATO Engages: the alliance at 70’,
3 April 2019, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-vice-president-pence-
nato-engages-alliance-70/.
44
Amy Mackinnon, ‘Trump resisted sale of Javelins to Ukraine’, Foreign Policy, 15 Nov. 2019, https://foreign-
policy.com/2019/11/15/trump-resisted-ukraine-sale-javelin-antitank-missile/.
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 The Trump presidency, Russia and Ukraine
and to protect Hunter Biden, son of then-Democratic Party presidential primary
candidate (and former Vice President) Joe Biden, from criminal investigation.45 In
retaliation, Trump—who reportedly told advisers, on the issue of aid, ‘Ukraine
tried to take me down. I’m not f**king interested in helping them’,46 suspended
almost $400 million of congressionally mandated military aid.
In July 2019, in an action that would lead to his first impeachment, Trump asked
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to reopen an investigation into the
activities of Hunter Biden. Although denied by Trump, this was widely under-
stood to be a partial quid pro quo in exchange for releasing the suspended aid,
something that Trump’s acting chief of staff appeared to confirm.47

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In response to the evolving scandal, Trump himself began to emphasize the
policy of providing weapons to Ukraine, contrasting it favourably with the policy
of the previous administration, claiming: ‘We’ve done more for Ukraine than
President Obama. He sent them pillows and sheets and we sent them very powerful
weapons … We send a lot of money to Ukraine. We send a lot of armour.’48
This approach was subsequently adopted by other members of the administra-
tion, who asserted that the withholding of aid to Ukraine had not been an attempt
to coerce the Ukrainian government but had instead been a result of concerns
about Ukrainian corruption. This did not appear to be consistent with earlier
statements about the need to provide military aid to Ukraine, but appeared instead
to be a post facto justification of the suspension of aid.49 It did not explain why the
aid was released to Ukraine two days after the start of Congressional investigations
into the Biden affair.50
Trump’s actions undermined the stated policy of his own administration and
created significant uncertainty about the degree of US support for Ukraine. This
was compounded by the apparent decision of the secretary of state and other
officials to adjust their public position on the issue in order to reconcile Trump’s
actions with policy.

Punishing Russia
Two mechanisms were used by the US government and its allies to punish the
Russian government for its actions in Ukraine: sanctions and exclusion from
prestigious diplomatic interactions such as G8 membership. Both were inherited
45
See, for example, Sharon LaFraniere, Andrew E. Kramer and Danny Hakim, ‘Trump, Ukraine and
impeachment: the inside story of how we got here’, New York Times, 29 July 2021, https://www.nytimes.
com/2019/11/11/us/ukraine-trump.html.
46
John Bolton, The room where it happened: a White House memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020), p. 462.
47
Trump White House Archives, ‘Press briefing by acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’, 17 Oct. 2019, https://
trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/press-briefing-acting-chief-staff-mick-mulvaney/.
48
Trump White House Archives, ‘Remarks by President Trump after Coast Guard briefing on Tropical Storm
Imelda’, 22 Sept. 2019, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-
trump-coast-guard-briefing-tropical-storm-imelda-houston-tx/.
49
See, for example, Pompeo’s comments on the issue in US Department of State, ‘Secretary Michael R. Pompeo
with George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s This Week’, 20 Oct. 2019, https://2017-2021.state.gov/secretary-
michael-r-pompeo-with-george-stephanopoulos-of-abcs-this-week//index.html.
50
NBC News, ‘Timeline: the curious release of military aid to Ukraine’, 14 Nov. 2019, https://www.nbcnews.
com/politics/donald-trump/curious-release-military-aid-ukraine-n1082256.
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 Ruth Deyermond
from the Obama administration and were the subject of unsuccessful attempts by
Trump to overturn them.

Sanctions
The official position of the US administration, which remained consistent
throughout the Trump presidency, was that sanctions against Russia would
remain until Crimea was returned to Ukrainian control and Russia halted its
aggression in eastern Ukraine;51 another Department of State formulation held
that sanctions would remain until Russia ‘fully implements its commitments in

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the Minsk agreements’.52 However, background issues and comments in other
settings created uncertainty about the administration’s intentions. One of the
first and most significant problems concerned Tillerson, Trump’s first secretary
of state, who had dealt extensively with Russia during his ten years (2006–16) as
CEO of the energy company ExxonMobil and who had been awarded the Order
of Friendship by Putin in 2013. Tillerson denied having lobbied against Ukraine-
related sanctions and emphasized his support for their continuation.53 Neverthe-
less, perceptions that he opposed them and had a personal interest in their removal
were strengthened by incidents such as the report, not denied by the Department
of State, that Tillerson had asked other G7 foreign ministers in 2017 ‘why American
voters should care about the conflict in Ukraine’, and by the mid-2017 fining of
ExxonMobil for violating sanctions against Russia while Tillerson was CEO.54
His comments about the possible need for ‘flexibility’ and the undesirability of
being ‘handcuffed’ to the Minsk agreements if Russia and Ukraine resolved the
conflict outside the agreements’ parameters also raised questions about whether
he favoured a relaxation of sanctions.55
This position appeared to be reversed by Tillerson’s later assertions that ‘Minsk-
related sanctions will remain in place until Russia reverses the actions that triggered
them’.56 Nevertheless, Department of State officials sometimes adopted a more
equivocal position on the relationship between sanctions and the Minsk agree-
ments after Tillerson’s remarks, which appeared to be an attempt to reconcile exist-
ing policy with his comments.57 Remarks were also sometimes accompanied by a
51
For example, Trump White House Archives, ‘Press briefing by press secretary Sean Spicer’, 3 Feb. 2017, https://
trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/press-briefing-press-secretary-sean-spicer-020317/; US
Department of State, ‘Remarks to NATO-Ukraine Commission’, 31 March 2017, https://2017-2021.state.
gov/remarks-to-nato-ukraine-commission/index.html.
52
US Department of State, ‘Secretary Tillerson’s call with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’, 23 April 2017,
https://2017-2021.state.gov/secretary-tillersons-call-with-ukrainian-president-petro-poroshenko/index.
html.
53
For example, US Department of State, ‘Interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s This Week’, 9 April
2017, https://2017-2021.state.gov/interview-with-george-stephanopoulos-of-abc-this-week/index.html.
54
US Department of State, ‘Department press briefing—April 11, 2017’, 11 April 2017, https://2017-2021.state.
gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-april-11-2017/index.html; BBC News, ‘Exxon-Mobil fined by US
for Ukraine sanctions violations’, 20 July 2017, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40673791.
55
Patricia Zengerle, ‘US doesn’t want to be “handcuffed” to Ukraine agreement’, Reuters, 14 June 2017, https://
www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-diplomacy-tillerson-idUSKBN19528J.
56
Rex Tillerson, ‘The U.S. and Europe: strengthening western alliances’, 28 Nov. 2017, https://2017-2021.state.
gov/the-u-s-and-europe-strengthening-western-alliances/index.html.
57
For example, the comments on Minsk in US Department of State, ‘Press briefing—June 15, 2017’, 15 June
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 The Trump presidency, Russia and Ukraine
statement on the general desirability of improving, or Trump’s wish to improve,
relations with Russia, undercutting the credibility of the sanctions commitment.58
This focus on improved relations with Russia also generated significant Congres-
sional concern about Trump’s intentions in relation to sanctions, leading Congress
to pass the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA),
primarily intended to prevent the relaxation or removal of sanctions against Russia
by the president without Congressional approval.59 Despite initial administration
opposition, Trump eventually signed CAATSA, though only after a delay and
while criticizing it.60 The effect of this opposition, delay and criticism was to
reinforce perceptions that the administration had favoured a relaxation or removal

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of sanctions against Russia (a perception that was strengthened by the administra-
tion’s reluctance to implement new sanctions required under CAATSA).61 Perhaps
because of this, both the Department of State and the White House regularly
emphasized the continued application of sanctions against Russia for Ukraine-
related actions as evidence of the Trump administration’s toughness on Russia.
The issue of sanctions became less significant in the second half of the Trump
presidency, after Tillerson had been dismissed as secretary of state in March 2018 (to
be permanently replaced in late April by Pompeo), and CAATSA had constrained
Trump’s ability to remove sanctions unilaterally; in this period, the Department
of State routinely referenced sanctions as evidence of US support for Ukraine and
willingness to oppose Russia. On this issue, then, coherence was achieved not by
coordination across the administration but by the effect of an externally imposed
constraint on Trump’s freedom of action.

Russia and the G7

Following the annexation of Crimea in early 2014, Russia was expelled from the
G8 (afterwards, the G7). This was not an issue that received much attention in the
early period of the Trump administration, but the continued non-membership of
Russia appeared to be administration policy in April 2018, when John J. Sullivan,
the acting secretary of state, noted that ‘it’s no longer the G8 for a reason’.62
By June 2018, however, Trump began to express a desire to readmit Russia;
in his memoir, former national security advisor John Bolton claims that Trump
was ‘fixated’ on Russia’s readmission.63 Immediately before the 2018 G7 summit,
2017, https://2017-2021.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-june-15-2017/index.html.
58
See, for example, US Department of State, ‘On “Meeting the foreign policy challenges of 2017 and beyond”’,
12 Dec. 2017, https://2017-2021.state.gov/on-meeting-the-foreign-policy-challenges-of-2017-and-beyond/
index.html.
59
Emily Tamkin, ‘Trump finally signs sanctions bill, then adds bizarre statements’, Foreign Policy, 2 Aug. 2017,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/02/trump-finally-signs-sanctions-bill-then-adds-bizarre-statements.
60
Trump White House Archives, ‘Statement by President Donald J. Trump on the signing of H.R. 3364’, 2 Aug.
2017, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-donald-j-trump-sign-
ing-h-r-3364/.
61
Patricia Zengerle, ‘Trump administrations holds off on new Russia sanctions, despite delay’, Reuters, 29 Jan.
2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-sanctions-idUSKBN1FI2V7.
62
US Department of State, ‘Press availability in Toronto, Canada’, 23 April 2018, https://2017-2021.state.gov/
press-availability-in-toronto-canada/index.html.
63
Bolton, The room where it happened, p. 101.
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 Ruth Deyermond
Trump stated that ‘in the G7, which used to be the G8, they threw Russia out.
They should let Russia come back in’.64 Although he claimed after the summit that
the idea had been supported, it reportedly caused friction with other G7 heads of
government and was publicly rejected by German chancellor Angela Merkel.65
Strikingly, when reasserting the desirability of Russian readmission, Trump
made no mention of the reason for Russia’s expulsion, claiming that ‘something
happened a while ago, where Russia is no longer in. I think it would be an asset
to have Russia back in. I think it would be good for the world … I think the G8
would be better.’66
That this was not agreed administration policy was evident from the response

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of the Department of State. Asked whether Pompeo agreed with Trump about
the readmission of Russia to the G7, the press spokesperson claimed not to have
asked him, referred journalists to the White House, and asserted, incorrectly, that
reports of Trump’s remarks were all based on anonymous sources.67
When the issue resurfaced in 2019, Trump continued to be evasive about the
reasons for Russia’s expulsion, stating that Russia had been expelled for ‘outsmart-
ing’ Obama and wrongly claiming that Russia had been a member for most of
the group’s existence.68 When challenged about the fact that Russia still occupied
Crimea, and thus the grounds for expulsion remained, Trump avoided answering.
These repeated public statements by Trump contradicted administration policy
on Russia’s presence in Ukraine, which created obvious difficulties for officials.
When asked whether Russia should be readmitted, Pompeo replied that ‘the presi-
dent thinks so’. Asked whether he agreed with Trump, he failed to answer, saying
instead that ‘the president thinks that’s what we should do. I work for the presi-
dent. Of course we’re going to work towards that end.’69 Trump’s acting White
House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney was similarly circumspect, neither denying
that it was Trump’s preference nor endorsing it.70 Ultimately, although Trump’s
comments showed that he continued to favour Russia’s readmission, this did not
advance any further as administration policy. As with sanctions relaxation, the
ability to enact change on this issue was blocked by an external body—in this case,
the other members of the G7.
64
Trump White House Archives, ‘Remarks by President Trump before Marine One departure’, 8 June 2018,
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-marine-one-depar-
ture-8/.
65
Bolton, The room where it happened, p. 103; BBC News, ‘G7: Trump isolated over trade and Russia on first day’,
9 June 2018, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44409775.
66
Trump White House Archives, ‘Press conference by President Trump after G7 summit’, 9 June 2018, https://
trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/press-conference-president-trump-g7-summit/.
67
US Department of State, ‘Department press briefing—June 19, 2018’, 19 June 2018, https://2017-2021.state.
gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-june-19-2018/index.html.
68
Trump White House Archives, ‘Remarks by President Trump and President Iohannis of Romania before
bilateral meeting’, 20 Aug. 2019, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-
president-trump-president-iohannis-romania-bilateral-meeting/; Trump White House Archives, ‘Remarks
by President Trump before Marine One departure’, 21 Aug. 2019, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/
briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-marine-one-departure-60.
69
US Department of State, ‘Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo with Dan Spehler of FOX 59 WXIN and
CBS4 WTTV’, 27 Aug. 2019, https://2017-2021.state.gov/secretary-of-state-michael-r-pompeo-with-dan-
spehler-of-fox59-wxin-and-cbs4-wttv//index.html.
70
Trump White House Archives, ‘Press briefing by acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’.
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 The Trump presidency, Russia and Ukraine

Explaining incoherence
As these issues show, the Trump administration’s policy on Russian aggression
in Ukraine was not merely flawed or inconsistent over time, it was profoundly
incoherent. Policy articulated by the Department of State was generally endorsed
by White House officials but might be undermined by the ad hoc comments of
the president, by other officials, or by the influence of figures outside the admin-
istration. On some issues, Trump’s comments were implicitly rejected by officials
reaffirming the original policy; in these cases, policy did not change even though
the president’s position contradicted it. On others, members of the administration

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adjusted their position to reflect Trump’s public statements. The causal relation-
ship between administration policy and the president’s position was thus unclear
and inconsistent.
Several factors have been identified as possible causes of poor foreign policy-
making in the Trump administration and may help to explain incoherence in
policy articulation. One is the effect of the high turnover of, and radical policy
differences between, individuals occupying foreign policy and defence positions
in the administration. During his single term as president, Trump appointed two
permanent secretaries of state; two permanent secretaries of defense and two who
occupied the role on an acting basis for a significant period; and four permanent
national security advisors. These appointments appeared to be made (and unmade)
on the basis of personal loyalty to Trump rather than on any shared approach
to policy—as a comparison of, for example, national security advisors Michael
Flynn, H. R. McMaster and Bolton indicates. Other frequently identified factors
damaging foreign policy effectiveness include the effect on Department of State
morale and competence of deep budget cuts, hiring freezes and political firings,
and the connected issue of the marginalization of Department of State officials in
White House policy-making.71
A further significant problem was what Hassan and Featherstone identify as
the ‘low conceptual complexity’ of Trump himself, and the problem, noted by
Drezner, that Trump lacked ‘the attention span to handle the day-to-day rigours
of the presidency’.72 These problems of knowledge and capacity were perceived
by Trump’s own cabinet members and advisers as creating problems for coherent
foreign policy-making: Tillerson, for example, referred to Trump as a ‘moron’;
Secretary of Defense James Mattis reportedly claimed that Trump had the under-
standing of ‘a fifth or sixth grader’; and National Security Advisor McMas-
ter allegedly described him as an ‘idiot’, and a ‘dope’ with the intelligence of a
‘kindergartener’.73
71
Drezner, ‘Immature leadership’; William J. Burns, ‘The lost art of American diplomacy: can the State Depart-
ment be saved?’, Foreign Affairs 98: 3, , 2019, pp. 98–107, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/lost-
art-american-diplomacy.
72
Hassan and Featherstone, ‘Trump’s low conceptual complexity leadership’; Drezner, ‘Immature leadership’.
73
Carol E. Lee, Kristen Welker, Stephanie Ruhle and Dafna Linzer, ‘Tillerson’s fury at Trump required an
intervention from Pence’, NBC News, 4 Oct. 2017, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/tiller-
son-s-fury-trump-required-intervention-pence-n806451; Mark Landler and Maggie Haberman, ‘Jim Mattis
compared Trump to “fifth or sixth grader”, Bob Woodward says in book’, New York Times, 4 Sept. 2018,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/us/politics/woodward-trump-book-fear.html; Joseph Bernstein,
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 Ruth Deyermond
Beyond these well-known factors, however, there are additional issues that may
have contributed to incoherent policy-making on Ukraine, Russia and foreign
affairs more widely. Because they are not directly observable by analysts and
evidence concerning them is not in the public domain, their effect on policy is
unknown.
As discussed above, analysts have noted the effect of factors including Trump’s
plutocratic world view and his approach to business interactions on his approach
to foreign policy. It has also been widely suggested, however, that Trump’s private
interests significantly influenced his approach to Russia. One example of this is
the suggestion of a link between Trump’s opposition to sanctions against Russia

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during his campaign period and his plans to build a Trump Tower project in
Moscow.74 A second is the speculation about the impact of Trump’s possible debts
to Russian individuals with connections to the Russian intelligence services.75
Beyond the potential influence of his business interests, there is persistent specu-
lation about the possibility that Russian government possession of ‘kompromat’
[compromising information] on Trump shaped his policy towards Russia.
Whatever the credibility of each of these suggestions, they illustrate the way in
which the character of Trump’s approach to Russia—radically different from that
of much of his own party and administration, and not explicable on the basis of
world view or foreign policy ideas—raised the possibility that policy was being
driven by Trump’s private interests. This appears, for example, to have been a
decisive factor in the issue of military aid to Ukraine. The withholding of aid and
the unofficial conditionality tying it to investigations into members of the Biden
family in what was (though Trump publicly rejected the term) a quid pro quo
linked Ukraine-related policy to Trump’s electoral interests.
Evaluations of the administration’s foreign policy are also limited by a second
set of problems, relating to transparency and record-keeping, which marked a
sharp departure from the practices of previous presidential administrations. One
of these was the reduced engagement with the press by administration officials.
In contrast to the daily press briefings in previous administrations, Department
of State briefings were infrequent and short, an issue that was the subject of
regular complaint by journalists.76 Although Trump himself frequently spoke to
selected media on subjects of his choosing, the White House record on providing
routine briefings to journalists on matters of policy was even worse than that of
the Department of State. In 2019–20 no formal press briefing was held by the

‘Sources: McMaster mocked Trump’s intelligence at a private dinner’, BuzzFeed News, 20 Nov. 2017, https://
www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/sources-mcmaster-mocked-trumps-intelligence-in-a-
private.
74
Jan Wolfe, ‘Why an unbuilt Moscow Trump tower caught Mueller’s attention’, Reuters, 18 March 2019,
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-tower-explainer-idUSKCN1QZ159.
75
Elaine Kamarck, ‘Does Trump owe Russia? The Supreme Court’s ruling on the president’s taxes may eventu-
ally give us answers’, Brookings, 10 July 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/07/10/does-
trump-owe-russia-the-supreme-courts-ruling-on-the-presidents-taxes-may-eventually-give-us-answers.
76
See, for example, exchanges between journalists and the State Department press spokesperson in US Depart-
ment of State, ‘Department press briefing—June 13, 2017’, https://2017-2021.state.gov/briefings/department-
press-briefing-june-13-2017/index.html.
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 The Trump presidency, Russia and Ukraine
president’s press secretary for more than 400 days; this lack of transparency was
unprecedented in the post-Cold War period.77
More seriously, opacity and gaps in record-keeping characterized read-outs of
meetings between the US and Russian government during the Trump adminis-
tration. Official records of conversations between Trump and Russian officials,
including Putin, frequently included only the most minimal summary of issues
discussed, with little or no detail on the position taken on the issues by Trump.
In some cases this lack of detail appears to be a result of Trump’s decision to meet
without officials, or to suppress the official record of meetings. In at least two
cases of meetings between Trump and Putin, no US officials were present at all.78

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Following another meeting, Trump reportedly confiscated the US translator’s
notes; as a result, no White House memorandum of the meeting was made avail-
able to other administration members or retained for official records.79 Finally,
it is unclear whether records of some meetings and other documents relating to
Russia and Ukraine were destroyed, as appears to have been Trump’s practice.80
Taken together, these factors help to explain the incoherence of Trump admin-
istration foreign policy on Russia and Ukraine, as well as the difficulty in evaluating
the extent of, and explaining, that incoherence. The first set of problems appears
to have created incoherence in policy formulation; by restricting the information
recorded and disseminated, the second set limits analysts’ ability to make sense of
what otherwise resembled erratic decision-making and contradictions between
official policy and the position of the president. It is possible that routine engage-
ment with the press on policy issues, and clearer and more detailed accounts of the
interactions between senior US and Russian officials (particularly those involving
the US president) might enable analysts to make more sense of Trump’s policy
on Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine, and on Russia more generally. In their
absence, however, analysis will remain difficult, and dependent on less reliable
sources such as the memoirs of Trump administration members.

After Trump: foreign policy analysis and the challenge of unconventional

presidencies
The twin problems of incoherence and lack of transparency in the Trump admin-
istration are important for both analysts and practitioners. One immediate reason
for this is the possible impact of US policy incoherence on the Russia–Ukraine
77
Andrew Solender, ‘White House holds first formal press briefing in over a year’, Forbes, 1 May 2020, https://
www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/05/01/white-house-holds-first-formal-press-briefing-in-over-
a-year/.
78
Alex Ward, ‘Trump met Putin without staff or notetakers—again’, Vox, 29 Jan. 2019, https://www.vox.
com/2019/1/29/18202515/trump-putin-russia-g20-ft-note.
79
Greg Miller, ‘Trump has concealed details of his face-to-face encounters with Putin from senior officials
in administration’, Washington Post, 13 Jan. 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/
trump-has-concealed-details-of-his-face-to-face-encounters-with-putin-from-senior-officials-in-administrat
ion/2019/01/12/65f6686c-1434-11e9-b6ad-9cfd62dbb0a8_story.html.
80
Jacqueline Alemany, Josh Dawsey, Tom Hamburger and Ashley Parker, ‘National Archives had to retrieve
Trump White House records from Mar-a-Lago’, Washington Post, 7 Feb. 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.
com/politics/2022/02/07/trump-records-mar-a-lago/.
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 Ruth Deyermond
issue in light of the 2022 Russian war against Ukraine. The effect of the discon-
nection between official administration policy and the expressed views of both
Trump and Tillerson was to send a mixed message to Russia about the commit-
ment of the US to supporting Ukrainian sovereignty in the face of Russian aggres-
sion. On every issue, Trump took a significantly more conciliatory position with
Russia than that to which his administration was committed: he avoided having
to acknowledge Putin’s responsibility for the annexation of Crimea; talked up the
material benefits of that annexation; sought to withhold military aid to Ukraine;
may have intended to lift sanctions; and pushed to have Russia readmitted to the
G7/8. Given the way that power in Russia is concentrated overwhelmingly in the

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hands of the president, the impromptu, off-script comments of Trump himself
may have been treated more seriously than official administration policy by the
Russian government. The lack of clarity in US policy, and particularly the possi-
bility that the US president was understood to be undermining his own admin-
istration, may have strengthened longer-term Russian governmental perceptions
about the lack of significant risk involved in extending its campaign of aggres-
sion towards Ukraine. It may also have reinforced pre-existing Russian views
about structural weakness and decline in US foreign policy—views that seemed
to be confirmed by the performance of the Biden administration, particularly in
Afghanistan. Thus, there are questions to be asked about the extent to which the
mixed messaging and incoherence of the Trump administration helped to create
a long-term, permissive environment for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—the most
serious threat to European security since the end of the Cold War.
Beyond this particular presidency and this specific issue, the case of the Trump
administration demonstrates the need to think more broadly about the challenges
to rationality and the problems of incoherence than the literature on US foreign
policy has done to date. The FPA field has generally assumed that the foreign
policy-making process reflects the hierarchical structure of the executive, and that
both this and norms of presidential behaviour have shaped the making of foreign
policy and—even more so—its implementation.
As a result, analysis of the Trump administration has assumed that its foreign
policy can be made to make sense even when it appears not to do so. It has been
characterized by the methodological assumption that the content of Trump admin-
istration foreign policy can be inferred from the analysis of its most high-profile
documents and from presidential speeches. This derives from yet another, prior,
assumption—which previous presidencies have not caused analysts to question—
that statements by senior administration members and documents published by the
White House and the Department of State reflect agreed policy and are consistent
with one another. None of this holds true in the case of the Trump presidency.
Although the problem of incoherence in the Trump administration is closely
connected to the character of Trump as president, this is not simply an issue of
personality, and not therefore resolvable through a more detailed examination
of his world view or psychology (though that would undoubtedly be useful). A
striking feature of Trump administration policy on Russian aggression in Ukraine

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 The Trump presidency, Russia and Ukraine
was the extent to which the link between presidential preferences and administra-
tion policy was broken—the president’s views often seemed unconnected to the
administration’s foreign policy as publicly articulated by other members. This does
not, however, seem to be evidence for the operation of a ‘deep state’ operating out
of the control of the president and his cabinet—those contradicting or ignoring
Trump’s stated views included individuals appointed by him. The result was that
there appeared to be no clear authority in the making or articulation of foreign
policy; the president was not the authority, but neither was anyone else.
Although Trump was clearly an outlier on the making and articulation of
foreign policy, as on so much else, there is no reason to assume that his 2017–21

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administration will be unique in the challenges it poses to assumptions of coher-
ence and rationality. Even if he himself does not return to the presidency, which
he might do, US politics has been transformed since 2016. The Republican Party
is now dominated by populist politicians who share Trump’s demagogic style,
disregard for political convention and suspicion of the so-called ‘deep state’. If a
Republican candidate is elected president, some of these problems of coherence
and transparency may return as the president encounters institutional norms and
constraints, and interacts with the bureaucratic structures and media of which they
are profoundly suspicious. The case of the Trump presidency suggests that where a
president lacks experience and knowledge of domestic politics and foreign policy;
disregards the conventions and structures of foreign policy-making; appears to
place a relatively low priority on policy agreement in the appointment of officials;
and lacks the interest or ability to ensure that administration policy on an issue
does not conflict with their own views, incoherence will result. For analysts, this
will make it difficult to understand and explain policy using the existing tools of
FPA; for practitioners, it will generate uncertainty about the actual foreign policy
of the US.
There is, then, a need to recognize that unconventional presidencies can engage
in foreign policy-making and practices that exceed the explanatory capabilities
of the existing frameworks because they are grounded in the study of previous,
more conventional presidencies. Even those areas of FPA not concerned, or less
concerned, with questions of organizational politics make explicit or implicit
assumptions about the guiding or constraining effects of roles and norms in
administration foreign policy-making. A situation in which the public views of
the president contradict administration policy over an extended period is not one
the literature has been designed to explain.
Although a single case may challenge existing frameworks, attempting to
construct new ones purely on the basis of that case would, of course, be deeply
problematic. Nevertheless, the possibility of further, similar presidencies means
that we need to start to consider what some aspects of a framework for the analysis
of unconventional presidencies might look like. It is likely that it will involve a
higher degree of complexity and openness to uncertainty in several areas. First,
assumptions about the relative importance of roles within the executive will need
to be reconsidered. For example, even where the president expresses strong views

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 Ruth Deyermond
about an issue, this may not shape policy on it. If a president runs an alternative
policy to that of his own administration, largely without it affecting the future
direction of administration policy, analysts and practitioners will have to decide
to which policy they most need to direct their attention.
Second, a new framework will need to draw upon a wider range and larger
volume of evidence than is normally thought necessary to evaluate US foreign
policy on individual issues. Analysts will need to know if the positions of the
president, the secretary of state or the press secretaries, and the position set out in
official documents align with one another, and will have to consider the implica-
tions of any disagreements. The case of Ukraine suggests that it will not always

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be the position of the president that matters most. Paradoxically, it may mean
that understanding the foreign policy of populist or ‘strongman’ presidents will
necessitate closer attention to the position(s) of other individuals and organiza-
tions inside an administration.
Finally, analysts need to recognize that they may simply be able to see less of
the decision-making and implementation process than they have been able to do
with previous presidents, even once documents have been archived and declassi-
fied. This will require those with an interest in understanding US foreign policy
to find new ways to work around these obstacles. In circumstances where an
administration looks less like a traditional US presidency and more like other, less
transparent and rule-bound forms of government, the conceptual and method-
ological tools for understanding those other forms may prove increasingly useful.
The approaches of Kremlinology, now experiencing a renaissance,81 may help
observers to negotiate the uncertainties, opacity and incoherence of a similar
presidency in the future.
The Trump administration’s approach to Russian aggression in Ukraine and
its fundamental failures of transparency expose the ways in which FPA struggles
to address the challenge of an unconventional president in the White House. It is
a challenge to which the field will have to respond in order to make sense of US
foreign policy in the future.

81
For example, Alexander Baturo and Jos Elkink, The new Kremlinology: understanding regime personalization in
Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).
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