By the seventh month of Donald Trump’s presidency a surreal quality to U.S. foreign policy decision-making had become evident.  It is at odds with both the theoretical model and historical practice.

When we talk of the “behavior” of states, what we have in mind is the process of decision-makers defining objectives, selecting specific courses of action conducive to their attainment, and allocating resources proportionate to the perceived value of those objectives.  All along it is assumed that the state—especially a great power—is a rational and unitary actor.  Decisions and their implementation may be on the whole good (the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, defending Korea, the Cuban missile crisis) or bad (the Bay of Pigs, Tonkin/Vietnam, interventions in the Balkans and the Middle East), but the process of framing problems, reaching decisions, and implementing them had been based on a standard mechanism, known and accepted as both legal and legitimate.

In today’s Washington, the foreign policy decision-making process has become arguably more diffuse than ever before in this nation’s history.   Last July, Congress enacted legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia and limiting Trump’s authority to lift them on his own.  This was done despite objections from the White House.  On a key foreign-policy issue, the President was thus barred from acting as a rational decision-maker.  Worse still, systemic incoherence bordering on schizophrenia reigns inside Trump’s own camp.  To wit, on the very day he said that it was “time to move forward in working constructively with Russia” (July 10), U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley flatly contradicted him.  “We can’t trust Russia and we won’t ever trust Russia,” she declared. This is unprecedented.

In late July it was announced that the CIA would discontinue its program of arming and training “moderate” anti-Assad rebels in Syria.  Ostensibly, this was a welcome and long-overdue decision: The “Free Syrian Army”—always jihadist-friendly—was ineffective at best; the program carried the danger of mission-creep in a multifaceted civil war, in a country of little consequence to America’s strategic interests; and it increased the risk of needless confrontation with Russia.  The move appeared to be a logical extension of the ceasefire agreement covering southern Syria, which the U.S. and Russia announced in Hamburg on July 7.

It soon became obvious, however, that the decision to terminate the program was not the result of a strategic executive directive to disengage from Syria that all organs of the state would duly implement.  It was, in fact, bureaucratic politics at its worst: a victory for the Pentagon over Langley in a long-standing interdepartmental contest.  Whatever Trump may have discussed with Putin, American arms, equipment, and money will continue to flow into Syria—but from now on they will be channelled solely to the Kurdish YPG militia.

It is preferable to support nationalists over jihadists, but any continued U.S. engagement in this conflict is bound to create complications.  Support for the Kurds may yield short-term tactical dividends in the battle against ISIS; in the long run it will cause further friction with Ankara.  Erdogan may act to prevent the establishment of an autonomous Kurdish statelet in northern Syria, which he sees as a major threat to Turkey’s stability and territorial integrity.  If he does, Washington would be forced to choose between abandoning its Kurdish protégés and risking terminal breach with a major regional power and NATO partner.

An even more dangerous mix of forces is at work vis-à-vis Iran.  “Iran must be free,” Newt Gingrich says. “The dictatorship must be destroyed.  Containment is appeasement and appeasement is surrender.”  This is nonsense—the U.S. defeated the Soviet Union in the Cold War by following the strategy of containment—but in Washington the drumbeat of belligerent oratory is creating a sense of near-inevitability.  John Bolton assures us that, “before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran.”  This is reminiscent of the propaganda blitz before the 2003 attack on Iraq: An exaggerated threat is coupled with the false assertion that nonviolent options are not viable, and the assurance that invasion will be a cakewalk.

Trump is aware of the huge risk, his Persophobic rhetoric notwithstanding.  The danger is that he may succumb to pressure in order to improve his own domestic standing.  The praise he received from otherwise unfriendly quarters for launching cruise missiles against a Syrian-government airfield in April illustrates the temptation.  The same systemically catastrophic but politically functional calculus may apply to his dealings with North Korea.

Domestic restraints on the conduct of foreign policy are always present, but they are now becoming extreme.  We have often remarked in these pages that the permanent state is trying to impose its agenda on a President who wanted to chart a new course.   It now seems more accurate to say that a mutinous President has tried, and so far failed, to alter the course of the permanent state.