Surmising that opposition among the disputatious political factions closest to the president posed a significant threat of the president deciding to pull out of Afghanistan, the national-security adviser pulled the policy back from consideration. Perhaps he awaits a more propitious time. Perhaps the Cabinet has work to do with the president to immunize him against his political advisers on this crucial national-security issue. Perhaps they await developments within Afghanistan that will make the case for them (as the Bush administration awaited political developments in Iraq on so many occasions).

In any event, the president is now five months in office without having determined his policy on the war. Authority has been ceded to the Pentagon to determine force levels and operational decisions, but no policy is in place to guide the Defense Department’s judgments. President Trump seems contented with this purgatory, which allows him to take credit for any successes and blame “the generals” for any failures. But it is bad policy, and bad policy making.

And it seems to be business as usual in the Trump administration. Policy processes produce sensible policies that are then upended by the president’s decisions—tweets whipping up sentiment against Qatar as GCC relations approach the precipice, which have to be hurriedly managed by the secretaries of state and defense, or, as yesterday, comments to the press diametrically opposed to the position Secretary Tillerson is simultaneously announcing about the Gulf crisis; advance assurance by U.S. diplomats to European governments that the president would explicitly endorse NATO’s Article 5 made false by West Wing excisions from the speech, leaving the national-security adviser and others holding the president’s coat and insisting that even if the president didn’t say it, he meant it, until the president finally relented two weeks later.

The national-security adviser sits in the West Wing of the White House. That, too, seems fitting, since Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster has aligned himself more with the president than with the rest of the U.S. government. General McMaster is not simply providing analysis and coordination of national-security issues, he has crossed the road to become the president’s defender. When President Trump shared highly classified information with the Russians, General McMaster described the president’s actions as “wholly appropriate.” When the president’s overseas trip drew criticism, General McMaster and National Economic Council director Gary Cohn published the clearest statement of the president’s approach to national security, one that considers no alliance more than temporary alignment of policies. This is how the liberal order ends, with the United States disavowing it.

Germany’s chancellor drew considerable attention for her statement that Europe must rely more on itself because others (meaning the U.S.) are no longer reliable. Australia’s prime minister said basically the same thing at the Shangri-La defense dialogue, as did Canada’s foreign minister in a speech to parliament. America’s closest friends are in agreement that the width of West Executive Avenue has made the United States an unreliable ally.

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