EVN Security Report: November 2024

Examining the Context

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The reigning perspective on what a potential Trump Doctrine will entail has mainly been defined by uncertainty. Leaders worldwide, particularly those in nations critical to Armenia’s security arrangements, have had to navigate the general contours of Trump’s first tenure and align it with his mercurial thinking and behavior. The assumption that Trump’s foreign policy will rupture American global hegemony through intense isolationism is an exaggeration, but at the same time, the assumption that the team around Trump will convince him to maintain the rules-based international order also entails wishful thinking. To more deeply understand and qualify the thinking within Trump’s decision-making circles, the three different groups that have the potential of influencing policy will be addressed, as well as the crystallization of a general doctrine shaping the incoming foreign and security teams.

The first group in Trump’s foreign and security policy circles are the “restrainers,” who advocate limited U.S. military commitments throughout the world and try to limit U.S. obligations or expansion of resources to allies that are deemed to be freeloaders, such as NATO or sets of European allies who underspend on defense and rely on America. Thus, they advocate for strength at home, but restraint abroad, with a general aversion to continuing support for Ukraine, and a selective retreat from U.S. global obligations. The restrainers tend to be critical of continuous interventionism, and seek to separate U.S. strategic interests from the intricacies of the global system.

The second group are the “prioritizers,” who display elements of restraint, but argue much of America’s foreign and security resources and capabilities should be concentrated on high-priority targets, most specifically, China. Prioritizers favor a forward presence in the world, but noting the problem of resource-scarcity, they argue that America’s resources should not be applied to Ukraine, Europe, or the Middle East as it has been in the past, but rather, be utilized effectively against China. Prioritizers consider Ukraine, the Middle East and NATO commitments as less critical theaters when confronted with the Chinese theater of conflict. Thus, the prioritizers who support the Asia “pivot” initiated by the Obama Administration in the early 2010s, remain critical of Biden’s refusal to be more confrontational with China. They argue that containing China should be the number one foreign and security policy priority for the United States. Since the U.S. has finite political, diplomatic, and military resources, expanding these throughout the world takes away from concentrating them on China, and for this reason, they contend that American resources must be prioritized against the growing and future China threat. 

The third group, composed of the “primacists,” contend that the United States can and should maintain American hegemony and leadership throughout the world. Primacists oppose tenets of neo-isolationism, disagree with the postulate that the U.S. must withdraw from international interventionism, and contend that a U.S. refusal for dominant engagement simply signals American weakness. This group is traditionally viewed as part of the hawkish camp, supporting increased military spending, strong support for Ukraine and NATO, robust preparations against the China threat, and active containment of Iran. The primacists argue that the U.S. must remain actively engaged in the global system to maintain its strong deterrent posture, noting that the global security architecture is not specific to China, since global security challenges are spread from the Middle East to Europe.   

What has become apparent with Trump’s formation of his potential cabinet, and the selection of nominees to head the given departments, is that the primacists, on the surface, have lost. While some may still influence specific policies, such as on China and Iran, they will have a diminished presence to shape a foreign and security policy doctrine defined by the characteristics of the primacist paradigm. At the same time, the restrainers have also struggled to find a dominant presence with the incoming Administration, since the positions for Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, Secretary of Defense, and CIA director will not be led by restrainers. The two positions that fundamentally stand out are Marco Rubio for Secretary of State and Mike Waltz for National Security Advisor, as these two positions, and their proximity to Trump’s thinking and decision-making on foreign and security policy, remain acute. In this context, when observing the totality of the competing paradigmatic schools trying to shape the developing Trump Doctrine, what is evident is that the Trump White House will be defined primarily by the prioritizer’s paradigm, yet fluctuate towards the primacists with respect to specific regions or threats. 

Preliminary considerations of the contours of Trump’s doctrine can be triangulated within a set of policy positions. First, the United States will not relinquish its leadership role in the world, and while it will demand more from its allies, such as increased spending by NATO members or more acquiescence from friends and allies to Trump’s foreign policy priorities, the Trump White House, led by a combination of prioritizers and latent primacists, will continue viewing U.S. allies as assets. Second, in the domain of military intervention and role of allies, the importance of NATO members in containing China and finding a solution to the Ukraine war will be intertwined. Third, the Trump Administration is going to be interventionist and hawkish on China and Iran, while relying on strategic partnerships and allied regional actors to take the lead in establishing stability in various regions. And fourth, the Trump Doctrine is going to prioritize and demand stability from regional actors, since any distractions from concentrating attention on China will be deemed by the Trump White House as obstructionist and contradictory to American interests. In the confluence of these policy postures, two main points will stand out: which regional actors will align with the U.S. in containing China, and the extent to which destabilizing behavior by given regional actors will be deemed by the Trump Administration as harmful to America’s overarching global policies of weakening Iran and containing China. 

The “peace through strength” postulate is not a new concept, and was used extensively by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and by Franklin Roosevelt before him. It is, in essence, some iteration of the primacist doctrine, which primarily holds that the United States will impose its terms by displaying strength, yet seeking peace. Or, as one prominent scholar has put it, it basically has the same logic of “peace through war.” For the incoming Trump Administration, what makes their approach not sufficiently primacist is the fact that the postulate will be applied to priority areas, as opposed to the entire global system. In this context, the Trump Doctrine of “peace through strength” will fluctuate between the primacist and prioritizer schools of thought, where the tools of the primacists will be used to achieve the priorities of the Administration. 

In situating the strategic interests of the countries in the South Caucasus within the Trump Doctrine, and more specifically, what this means for Armenia and its security, three important elements stand out. First, the role of the South Caucasus and its member countries in the broader U.S. endeavor of containing China and Iran, and how the Trump Administration situates the positions of each country within its hierarchy of priorities. Second, the collective drive to establish peace and stability in the Eurasian continent as part of U.S. strategic interests, and how this will play out with the Ukraine War and the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. And third, the roles that the incoming Secretary of State and National Security Advisor will play in qualifying and determining the importance of the South Caucasus, and specifically of Armenia, within the strategic interests of Trump’s foreign policy agenda. 

In its hierarchy of priorities, China remains the number one priority for the incoming Trump Administration, taking precedence over Iran. When observing the South Caucasus, Armenia has managed to maintain a strategically ambiguous posture towards China, while signing a Strategic Partnership with the U.S. Azerbaijan, on the other hand, has proceeded to sign a strategic partnership with China, while methodically weakening its partnership with Washington. The decline in inter-institutional relations between Baku and Washington is not simply specific to the American administration in power, but rather, a growing pattern of diverging interests between the two countries, especially after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan (which diminished Azerbaijan’s strategic importance to the U.S. as a military transport route), and followed by Azerbaijan’s continuous refusal to play a constructive role in the region by engaging in conflict-persistence. While the Trump Administration’s approach to Iran will be defined by the “maximum pressure” principle, the assumption that Azerbaijan will be regionally crucial to this policy no longer holds. The extent to which Baku may be minimally instrumental remains secondary to the Trump team’s concerns of prioritizing the growth of Chinese influence in the region, which elevates the potential prioritization of U.S.-Armenia strategic engagement.  

With respect to the second element, a range of actors within Trump’s team have made clear that the incoming Administration will seek out stronger ties with free-market oriented democracies around the world, from Hungary to Poland to Argentina. In the South Caucasus, Armenia remains perfectly situated for being absorbed into this notion of U.S. global partnerships. This stipulates that regional peace and stability be maintained, which is an important priority of the “peace through strength” doctrine, and noting Armenia’s current and potential capacity as a strategically important partner for the U.S., it will be in the policy interests of the Trump Administration to deter the Aliyev regime from bellicosity. Just as importantly, a big part of the thinking within the Trump team revolves around not only ending the Ukraine War, but also combating what they consider to be the Beijing-Moscow-Tehran axis through an “Arsenal of Democracies.” Within the confluence of these converging policies and doctrinal leanings, what has become clear is that the “restrainers” will not play a role in the Administration’s thinking on Russia and the region. Rather, the prioritizers and moderate primacists will dominate foreign and security policy thinking with respect to the Ukraine War, and by extension, matters of conflict and instability in the South Caucasus.

The Trump Administration’s approach to the Ukraine War, and more specifically to Russia, will be defined by some iteration of the “escalate-to-deescalate” principle, as articulated by Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, who Trump appointed as his Special Envoy to Ukraine and Russia. The underlying logic is based on the notion of escalation as a mechanism of leverage, designed to compel Russia into agreeing to the terms of peace, or at least a ceasefire, as envisioned by the Trump Administration. In this context, unlike the Biden Administration’s aversion to escalation, and a general policy of providing Ukraine with enough resources just to keep Kiev in the game, the Trump approach will seek to rupture the stalemate: either Russia agrees to the offered terms, or the U.S. will escalate by providing more advanced weaponry to Ukraine. At the same time, either Ukraine agrees to the offered terms, or the U.S. will cut off funding for the war effort. In both iterations, the strategic value of escalation is defined by compelling both parties to agree to peace, with escalation serving as the mechanism of leverage. From the lens of U.S. strategic interests, a sovereign and democratic Ukraine, “anchored in the West and capable of defending itself,” which, by extension, represents a “strategic defeat for Russia and a strengthening of American national security and the Western alliance,” lies at the heart of the set objectives that a ceasefire, and a potential peace, will produce. Whether the terms of the ceasefire are agreeable to Ukraine, for example, such as foregoing Luhansk, Donetsk and Crimea, are besides the point as far as this modality of thinking is concerned: the fundamental objective is to stop the war, strengthen Ukraine as a robust buffer, and eventually bring about the Polandization of Ukraine, in whatever iteration. 

For the South Caucasus, and especially for Armenia, this produces two continuous developments. First, Russia continues to be preoccupied with Ukraine, either disagreeing with Trump’s terms and seeking to defy the “escalate-to-deescalate” model, or, temporarily agreeing to a ceasefire and concentrating much of its resources on rebuilding capabilities in the Ukrainian front. Second, the halt to the fighting is not the same as victory or the attainment of Russia’s strategic objectives, which means Russia’s continued preoccupation with the Ukrainian front and the deprioritization of the South Caucasus as an area of resource-allocation. Thereby, Russia’s capacity to re-establish itself as the regional hegemon will continuously suffer due to its preoccupation with Ukraine.      

With respect to the third element, the roles that Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor appointee Mike Waltz will play in further articulating and operationalizing the Trump Doctrine remains crucial. Waltz represents the wing of the Trump team that is hawkish on China, Iran and Russia. He has advocated for robust support for Ukraine, yet has tempered this support when prioritizing the allocation of resources to the China threat. Waltz is a moderate primacist who agrees with the basic tenets of the prioritizer, but strongly supports a proactive U.S. presence in strategic regions, which inevitably includes Eurasia and the South Caucasus. Ideationally, he supports the continuous strengthening of U.S. global hegemony, which entails the further deepening of institutional and strategic interests with partner countries, especially of democratic countries in priority regions. Waltz’s healthy relationship with Armenian issues while a Member of Congress, his support for the strengthening of the Transatlantic presence in vital regions, and the growing role that Armenia has been playing as an important strategic partner in the South Caucasus, all indicate a cautiously positive trajectory with respect to the NSC’s approach towards Armenia.     

Finally, when assessing the extraordinarily important, and in many cases dominant, role that the State Department will play in shaping and implementing the foreign policy goals of the Trump Administration, the position of the Secretary of State remains unequivocally critical. It is no secret that Marco Rubio is highly sympathetic to Armenian interests, and considering that he is ideologically a moderate primacist with hawkish views on China, Russia and Iran, his consideration of Armenia’s importance to American interests in the South Caucasus will allow for Armenia to be situated within the set of priorities driving the Trump Doctrine. Namely, since Eurasia, and more specifically, the South Caucasus, remain strategic priority areas due to the confluence of the competing interests of China, Russia and Iran against the United States, the prioritization of the region, under a Rubio State Department, will very likely seek to prioritize the role of Armenia as a strategic partner. Further, considering the depth and scope of growing inter-institutional relations between Yerevan and Washington, Rubio’s State Department will hit the ground running with the existing programs and strategic goals mutually developed by both sides. In relation to all other organs of the U.S. Government, the State Department remains the best situated to proceed with a policy of continuity when it comes to Armenia, the need for diplomatic pressure on Azerbaijan, and the overarching U.S. endeavor of securing stability in the region while supporting Armenia’s development as a strategic partner. 

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