The loneliest man in Washington

Increasingly isolated and embattled, President Trump is making policy by fiat, in places he barely understands, with consequences he knows he will likely not be around to deal with

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

When Defense Secretary James Mattis resigned last week, he took with him one of the last bastions of D.C.-as-usual foreign policymaking in the Trump administration. With the president determined to abruptly pull the United States out of Syria and sharply reduce our troop presence in Afghanistan, the stage is set for a radical reorientation of American Middle East policy, and perhaps a lurch toward the broader and more disruptive moves elsewhere that the president has longed to make. The combination of sudden, impulsive foreign policy shifts, Mattis' almost poignant resignation letter, and a capital city already in Christmas chaos from the president's decision to shut down the government has created fresh jitters in the markets and new fears of an unmoored, out-of-control presidency.

But what should really worry everyone isn't the departure of a single advisor, no matter how valued, nor a long-overdue reassessment of America's expensive, ruinous, decades-long regional fiasco in the Middle East and Central Asia. It's that there seems to be no one in place to fill out the details of the president's vision, let alone implement it.

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David Faris

David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. He is a frequent contributor to Informed Comment, and his work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Indy Week.