How Much Do Trump’s Personnel Choices Matter?

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is moving rapidly to nominate loyalists to key administration positions. In the past few days, he has reportedly settled on Sen. Marco Rubio to be his secretary of state and Rep. Mike Waltz to be his national security advisor. 

How much do these choices matter, in a scenario where Trump values loyalty above all else? And what does that mean for our assessments of a second Trump term? I spoke with the leading conservative scholar Kori Schake, a critic of both Trump and the Biden administration, who has previously served in key roles at the State and Defense departments as well as on the National Security Council. What follows here is a condensed and edited transcript of our discussion; the full, live version is available on the video box atop this page or on the FP Live podcast.

Ravi Agrawal: Let’s begin with an assessment of Trump’s first term. How would you characterize his foreign policy? 

Kori Schake: In the first term, there was a very high chaos premium.

I say that even though, as Tom Wright pointed out in 2016 and Elizabeth Saunders has pointed out in recent weeks, the main lines of Trump policy are quite predictable. He thinks tariffs are a useful bludgeon against friends and enemies alike. He believes allies are a burden on the United States rather than a cost-effective way to limit the risks to the United States. He thinks immigration is overwhelming the United States, culturally and economically.

Another indicator for a second term: In his first term, he actually made a lot of effort to implement what he had campaigned on. Listening to what Trump said when he was campaigning gives a sense of his priorities. As a candidate in 2016, 2020, and 2024, Trump was extraordinarily successful at using his rallies to test-drive public support for his priorities. He kept faith on immigration limits, particularly on Muslims and people coming from war-torn or poor countries. He created an enormous amount of friction with America’s allies, privately calling into question the NATO Article 5 guarantee but publicly threatening and attempting to carry out the removal of American forces from Europe and from Japan and South Korea unless the defense contributions of those governments were tripled toward the cost of American operations. 

RA: But one of the struggles in interpreting Trump is that sometimes his bark can be worse than his bite. He says things that are designed to get other actors to change their behavior. Threatening to pull out of NATO, for example—he may do that, but as his advisors and surrogates often say, “He did that to get European countries to up their spending.” 

KS: I agree with that judgment. Right now, Trump is privately saying that by threatening Europeans on American willingness to carry out our alliance obligations, he is leveling the playing field and inducing more from them. That’s true. But what Trump and his advisors do not take into account is that calling the alliance commitment into question raises uncertainty, which may cause adversaries to test our willingness to carry out our obligations. And it raises the cost of allies helping us with other policies we’re trying to carry out because if they have to focus much more on their own defense, they are much less likely to help us on our biggest priorities, like navigating China’s aggression. 

RA: Trump, of course, sees what he calls his craziness or unpredictability as a strength.

KS: Yes. 

I should have said a couple of things that were advantageous. The main achievement of that first Trump term was the Abraham Accords; he got some of the countries of the Arab Middle East and the Sahel to openly acknowledge the consistency of their interests with Israel’s interests and commit to deeper cooperation and recognition. That reset the table of the Middle East.

A second advantageous thing: We often underestimate that many allies actually prefer the Trump administration to a Biden administration—India, for example. A lot of countries in Asia that were tired of being hectored about their domestic democracy and were disappointed with promises the Biden administration made that they didn’t live up to. Beyond Europe, some allies did not think the Biden administration was an improvement.

RA: When it comes to foreign policy, what aspects of a second Trump term could we expect there to be variance on from his first term? In which areas might he be less predictable?

KS: European security is going to vary quite widely. I think we should anticipate a beauty contest among America’s NATO allies for who can overcome Trump’s dislike of most of Europe. Poland and Italy are leading candidates for Trump’s approval even while he hates Europe. Hungary, of course, and possibly Russia.

I also wouldn’t be surprised to see the Trump administration arm Israel so it can destroy the Iranian nuclear infrastructure. I’m skeptical Trump would want to do it; he has a fondness for military strikes but an aversion to attacking Iran directly. But I do think it’s likely he will sell Israel the ability to militarily prosecute the American policy of preventing Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold.

I think you’ll see much greater personalization of international engagement. He probably won’t show up for multilateral meetings but will want bilateral engagement at the presidential level rather than letting the secretaries of defense or state manage those relationships as President Joe Biden has done.

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RA: How much power and independence will his personnel have? We’re going to be obsessing over every personnel choice that Trump makes. Does it even matter?

KS: I think personnel choices will amplify what the president already believes on issues like immigration and trade, which are at the core of his beliefs and have been consistent across decades. But, on other issues, in the first Trump administration, there was that “tyranny of the final briefer”—the last person he talks to can be extraordinarily influential on issues he cares less about. So I think one of the most important people in a Trump administration is going to be whoever controls his White House schedule, which may mean the White House chief of staff will have an outsized role compared to other administrations.

RA: Let’s switch gears a bit. You’ve been very critical of Biden’s foreign policy. Why?

KS: First, there is an enormous gap between what Biden says his policy is and the tools he’s willing to resource and the risks he’s willing to run to achieve those policies. So, for example, we have a three-theater security strategy but a one-theater military force. Congress added $25 billion to Biden’s first defense budget, $45 billion to his second, and they’re poised to add at least $23 billion to his third. So he’s not buying the military he needs.

And he’s not running the risks that it would take to carry out his strategy. The most important example is how risk-averse he has been in assisting Ukraine after the Russian invasion. American allies with more at risk—Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Britain—all moved to accept greater risk than the Biden administration has on the magnitude of weapons provided. Denmark provided the entirety of its tank inventory to Ukraine. The United States had to be shamed by its European allies before Washington was willing to run that risk. I think that’s been a huge drawback of Biden’s policy, and it has impeded the credibility of those very policies.

The president has also been unwilling to make the case to the American people about why we should run risks. For example, Biden said the United States would send troops to defend Taiwan if China attacked it four times. But he never gave speeches to change American attitudes about confronting aggression. Biden has run the risk of a declaratory policy that he can’t deliver public support on if an adversary actually challenges it.

RA: On defense spending, there’s a growing interpretation that Trump won partially because he tapped into a general sentiment that the system is broken. Part of that system is the military-industrial complex and the idea that the old political establishment just wants more war. Even the Cheney name, which Democratic nominee Kamala Harris attached herself to, is associated with warmongering. When you recommend that Biden should have spent more on the military and that Trump should do so as well, how do you reconcile that with the notion that most Americans don’t want more war?

KS: The stronger your military is, the less likely you are to get your markers called in. That’s the essence of deterrence. If you are strong, gritty, and determined enough to win wars, people are unlikely to challenge your commitments. And we are not strong enough to deter aggression that our interests may push us to reverse.

A couple of things come up when people are worried about defense spending. One is the notion that we can’t afford it. We spend 3 percent of our exorbitant GDP on defense. That is a historically low proportion for the United States. I understand that people would rather spend our money on roads and schools. I would rather spend our money on roads and schools. But our adversaries are challenging our right to be able to focus on roads and schools, and we have to do something about that. The best way to avoid fighting our adversaries is to build a military so strong that they lack confidence that they could win a war against us.

RA: Let’s get to a normative discussion. What should a conservative foreign policy look like?

KS: A conservative foreign policy should, first and foremost, make America strong enough that we can defend ourselves and our interests. That means being strong economically and politically by building public support and cohesion in our country and being strong enough militarily.

 The second thing a conservative administration should acknowledge is the fundamentals of economics. The dynamism of the American economy underwrites our other strengths. And tariffs are a tax on consumers, not a tax on producers, and they have a tendency to fuel inflation, which is what Americans just sounded the alarm about in this election.

 The third fundamental principle of conservatism is that it’s cheaper to do what we want in the world if other countries help us. The challenge of getting other countries to participate means you either have to rely on a commonality of interests or on American soft power—people wanting us to succeed and wanting our adversaries to fail. And that’s where internationalism comes in. A transactional American approach to our friends and allies makes it harder for them to support us, which makes it more expensive to do what we want to do in the world. 

RA: What, in your mind, are the biggest risks for the United States if Trump goes ahead with the plan as he laid it out?

KS: I worry most about the politicization of the American military. We have an unbroken, nearly 250-year record of the American military not threatening democracy in our country. We are unique in the world in having a military strong enough to win our wars that chooses not to engage in domestic politics in the United States.

In his first term, Trump sought to corrode that neutrality in several ways. He previously tried to reach around the chain of command by pardoning war criminals convicted at courts martial and by disparaging the generals. This time, he is threatening to fire every general involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan, even though it was the policy that he himself had negotiated with the Taliban and set in motion, and threatening to fire the “woke” generals. People around Trump are also saying that every senior appointee will be vetted based on their willingness to say that Trump was actually elected in 2020. If you make military leaders participate in that kind of political falsification, eventually somebody will do it just as they have in other areas of American civic life. That’s going to be a very different military, and we are not going to like what that military becomes. The biggest fallacy of the people working to corrode institutions in American democracy is that you can change the rules to advantage you and they’re not going to advantage your adversaries.

RA: Let’s hopscotch around the world a little bit. How do you think Trump will approach the war in Ukraine? He’s reportedly already had calls with Presidents Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin. What do you think the first few months of his presidency will look like in terms of trying to resolve the conflict there?

KS: In general, a Trump administration is going to be largely indifferent to the fate of Ukraine. They’re going to want to get this over with as quickly as possible. That means they will pressure both sides into an early agreement. I hope Trump sticks to his threat to Putin that unless Russians come to the table and make a deal for peace in Ukraine, Trump will lift all restrictions and pile aid onto Ukraine so it can continue prosecuting the war. But to the extent Vice President-elect J.D. Vance will be influential in policy, he is also not just indifferent but actively hostile to the efforts of Ukraine to regain its internationally recognized territory.

RA: Your last piece for FP was about how North Korea joining Russia’s war in Ukraine is a sign of Western weakness. Do you think Trump could or would change anything on that front?

KS: I am hopeful that a Trump administration will take up the need to restore deterrence. A great place to start will be threatening the North Korean regime that unless they withdraw their soldiers that they committed to Russia’s war effort, there will be consequences on the Korean Peninsula. But Trump’s weird, personal love affair with Kim Jong Un could drive that off the rails.

RA: Let’s get to the Middle East. How might things change with Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza and Lebanon? What about with Iran? It strikes me that his advisors are in two extreme constituencies: a group that wants to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities and another that just wants to end U.S. military action abroad.

KS: That’s why it is likely that the United States will sell or give Israel the ability to take out the Iranian nuclear programs. Israel’s success in the decimation of Hezbollah and Hamas has reset the equation in the Middle East because it punctured Iran’s strategic depth of using proxies to destabilize neighboring states and be a threat to Israel.

I absolutely agree with your assessment that there are contradictory frictions between the desire to stay out of wars and the desire to reestablish deterrence or to assist the Israelis’ war effort. I think we’re likely to see a lot of strikes like the assassination of Iran’s Qassem Suleimani, the strikes in Syria against Russian mercenaries operating there, as a way to resolve that internal tension.

The other thing that will be different, of course, is there will be even less sympathy or interest in the plight and affairs of Palestinians in a Trump administration.

RA: Kori, we’ve been talking about some version of a post-American world for well over two decades now—or, you know, a post-Bretton Woods order. If you put together Trump’s first term, Biden’s term, and now a second Trump term, how do they all contribute or accelerate a shifting world order in which the United States just has less influence?

KS: That is such an important question. In fact, it may be the most important question about the international order right now. I don’t see evidence we are moving toward a post-American world. The American economy is not only outpacing China’s economy now but is poised to outpace it with more speed if the administrative state is reined in, if regulation is repudiated in some areas, if energy production becomes a U.S. priority. The American economy is not only outpacing China’s, but it’s outpacing all the other G-7 economies. Dollar supremacy is likely to even be reinforced. People don’t hold dollars because they like the United States or they like American foreign policy—they hold it as a storehouse of economic value. And I think that’s likely to be reinforced by the stability and dynamism and inventiveness of the American economy. It’s unlikely that even a clumsy performance of American allied and foreign policy will dent that very much.

What we are at risk of isn’t an international order of diminished American power but of an international order of increased but more heavy-handed and unwelcome American power in the international order.