The Trump administration is not a conventional U.S. administration, and its policies have been unconventional as well. Most of the time, a new administration enters with a set of widely shared assumptions about policy, some of which are drawn from its party’s traditional positions and some of which represent points of bipartisan consensus. Most administrations still have aspects of internal disagreement—President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was often at odds with Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who resigned as a result—but the differences within an administration have generally been narrow, and the struggling parties have understood that winning over presidential favor would resolve issues definitively.

The Trump administration does not fit this pattern. If operates differently at the highest levels, and it operates differently at the middle levels as well. Similarly, its policy toward the Middle East represents a departure from previous administrations, and this departure is even more dramatic than it appears to be. Because the administration is less tightly integrated than its predecessors, it will find it more difficult to use the instruments of U.S. power effectively. It is likely to reduce U.S. influence in the Middle East, partly by design and partly by consequence.

This paper will begin by assessing the nature of the Trump administration broadly, highlighting its departure from the norms of U.S. government behavior. One important aspect of that departure is the much larger role of individual personalities in shaping foreign policy, which, to an unprecedented degree, remains unintegrated across the government. We have seen many instances in which different individuals put forward different policies in the name of the president, who seems unmotivated to resolve inconsistencies.

To illustrate this phenomenon, the paper will describe three key personalities in foreign policy decisions making: Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and National Security Adviser John Bolton. It will then proceed to describe three key issues in Middle East policy where the administration is seeking to act, and how it is seeking to distinguish U.S. policy from its predecessor. Finally, it will analyze likely outcomes and key uncertainties in the Middle East and in U.S. policy toward the region, in hopes of being a guide to future action.

As is well known, Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign was intentionally unconventional and disruptive. The candidate, who had no public policy experience let alone electoral experience, came to dominate the Republican field through his public performances, not through his policy proposals. He was not merely contemptuous of the Obama administration, which he argued had surrendered U.S. power to its adversaries, but he was contemptuous of his Republican opponents and the Republican establishment, which argued that campaigns must been run in traditional ways with field organizers, fundraising networks and expert advisory groups that could form the basis of a new administration. The Trump campaign sought to touch donors directly, through a combination of social media and so-called “earned media,” meaning news reports that gave the candidate name recognition for free. Through colorful statements and unconventional opinions, Donald Trump dominated news cycle after news cycle, and his ability to connect emotionally with the public, even in short sound bites, became evident. He proudly lacked layers of advisers and experts delivering well-formulated policy prescriptions for what he would do after he was elected, judging that the public would not care. What they were electing was his skill at reading people and situations, his commitment to U.S. strength, and his ability to explain himself.

Trump’s unexpected victory in 2016 seems to have validated his instincts. He had become the most powerful person in the world by ignoring expert opinion on elections and on much else. He had demonstrated an ability to shape the news cycle at will, and use it to his advantage. Perhaps most importantly, he has come to believe that his unpredictability is a key element of his success. By keeping everyone else off balance, Trump sees multiple opportunities to turn situations to his increased advantage. Elaborate principles and strategies are “old-think,” and the sorts of plodding but self-defeated methods that allow adversaries to prosper and allies to parasitize U.S. efforts. The Trump approach is much more opportunistic and self-interested, and it is intended to stoke uncertainty.

As is well known, the key organizing principle of the president’s foreign policy is a greater concentration on actions that are of direct immediate benefit to the United States. Whether articulated as a manifestation of “Make America Great Again,” “America First,” or the president’s proud embrace of nationalism, the president’s approach to allies, alliance relationships, and multilateral institutions is one of skepticism and distrust. In the president’s telling, organizations such as NATO have allowed foreign governments to reap disproportionate rewards for modest contributions, while U.S. taxpayers subsidize the world. The president explicitly rejects the internationalist consensus that has steered U.S. foreign policy since at least 1940, and which has been the dominant strain in the Republican party since the beginning of the Cold War.

Rather than build consensus among partners and compromising on priorities, President Trump favors bilateral confrontations with adversaries on U.S. terms, believing that U.S. power alone is enough to ensure compliance by adversaries and allies alike. This is not only clear in U.S. policy toward Iran, which is its most famous application, but his instincts on how to approach North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and others, and his reluctance to work with others who differ with him on his approach to Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and Israel.

President Trump appears to have sustained his optimism about the possibility of constructive ties with Russia far deeper into his term than his recent predecessors. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all believed initially that they could put Russian relations on a better footing than their predecessors but quickly found themselves pursuing a basically adversarial policy. In part through focusing on his belief that he has a positive relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Trump has continually sought Russian cooperation on security issues, and he has dismissed calls to use U.S. power to confront Russian actions. Sanctions and punishments, when they have come, appear to have emanated from elsewhere in his administration.

By contrast, the president seems to have adopted a much more confrontational position on China while simultaneously pursuing a close personal relationship with President Xi Jinping. After almost two decades of U.S. officials pushing for China to join international institutions such as the World Trade Organization and to become a “responsible stakeholder,” President Trump has consistently threatened a bilateral trade war with China, a country that has become the United States’ largest trading partner.

At the other end of the spectrum, President Trump has put a major emphasis on confronting Iran, a country that is much weaker than the United States. President Trump has sharply enlarged the scope of Iranian behavior that the United States is seeking to change while he has abandoned the international partners whom the Obama administration had gathered to ensure that Iran turned away from developing nuclear weapons. President Trump’s willingness—and perhaps even eagerness—to renege on an international agreement and to re-impose not only U.S. sanctions on Iran, but also secondary sanctions on U.S. allies who are Iran’s trading partners, is a distillation of the president’s view toward the use of U.S. power.

Since the National Security Council (NSC) was created in 1947, the U.S. government has sought explicitly to centralize its decision-making and to integrate its actions across the government. In part a recognition of the expanding complexity of governance, the interrelationships of U.S. interests, and the awesome power that the United States has in the world, the NSC and its associated processes traditionally lay at the top of an integrated pyramid constituted by a wide range of bureaucratic actors and departments. At times in the last three-quarters of a century, the NSC put more emphasis on gathering opinions from throughout the administration and facilitating a bottom-up flow of information and options. This was true to a large extent during the administration of President George H.W. Bush. At times, such as in the administration of President George W. Bush, it has emerged as a bureaucratic actor in its own right and principally pushed ideas from the White House of the rest of the government. Under each extreme, however, strong efforts were made to ensure that the entire government was tightly coordinated.

Uniquely in the Trump administration, it has existed in something of a vacuum. It holds fewer interagency meetings, it commissions and forges agreement on fewer papers, and it clears fewer talking points.
The Deputies Committee and the Principals Committee, traditionally the meetings in which interagency differences are hashed out, appear to be meeting much less. The NSC also seems more divorced from the president, who appears to favor communicating directly through his Twitter account and to speaking extemporaneously at political rallies rather than delivering carefully honed statements that reflect the consensus of his government. While it is true that the National Security Council staff proposes tweets to be issued in the president’s name, he is averse to the guts of traditional NSC processes that result in binding decisions on the government. That means that many policies are not elaborated upon at a senior level, and even senior officials in the U.S. government seem unsure what the precise parameters of U.S. policy are. This reality has several effects. One is that it means it is harder to gauge where U.S. policy is moving, because there is less of a policy process to observe (and influence). Second, the policy is more volatile, because it is less tied to well-elaborated goals or principles, and immediate political gain plays a larger role than in the past. Third, the resultant policies are narrower than they have been for some time, because the process that allows the integration of different elements of U.S. power, as well as the accommodation of diverse competing interests, has atrophied.

One important outgrowth of this process is that individual personalities, and especially cabinet secretaries, have much more autonomy to direct U.S. policy in their own spheres, as long as they stay out of the president’s sights. Applied to the question at hand, President Trump’s relative disinterest in Middle Eastern regional events will mean the administration’s direction on Middle Eastern affairs will be subject to personnel changes. The departure of any of the principals could profoundly affect the direction of U.S. policy.

Perhaps the most autonomous actor in Trump administration Middle East policy is Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, a decorated Marine general whose appointment represented a rare departure from the principle of maintaining a bright line between the civilian leadership of the defense department and the military itself. Secretary Mattis is only the second secretary of defense in U.S. history with a long career in the military. A decorated Marine general and former commandant of the Marine Corps, Mattis’ life was forged entirely in military service. He is, like many generals, decisive and warm to the troops. He also follows the American military tradition of being very apolitical, even in an administration that is often very political. Recently the president has criticized Mattis saying, “I think he’s sort of a Democrat," but for Mattis, being accused of either being a Republican or Democrat is something of an insult. After more than four decades in the military, Mattis seems himself not as a citizen with a constitutional right to present his views, but as a soldier who supports the Commander in Chief of U.S. forces—the president, regardless of his party.

Mattis’s clear priority is rebuilding U.S. forces after what he sees as a debilitating focus on constant small-scale operations against terrorist groups that he believes has degraded U.S. readiness since 2001, distorted U.S. acquisition patterns, and diverted the U.S. military from its necessary tasks. The National Defense Strategy, which Mattis personally directed, is markedly different in both tone and orientation from the President’s National Security Strategy. It seeks to focus on what he believes the key threats to be—the possibility of war with China and Russia--and away from an orientation toward fighting terrorism. Although the two documents are intended to be complementary, the White House version is a more political document that sees a wide array of threats. The Pentagon version seeks to provide a roadmap for acquisitions, basing, recruitment, and other tasks that are the responsibility of military planners, and it clearly eschews endless low-grade warfare.

Baked into the Pentagon’s version, and largely absent from the White House version, is a priority to ensure that U.S. partners and allies feel secure and are closely integrated with U.S. operations. This also represents a contrast to the president, who has publicly questioned the utility of alliances and insisted that the United States put "America first." Mattis’ emphasis on allies and partnerships is an outgrowth of a career spent building military-to-military ties. Central to those relationships is the idea that the United States remains at the hub of a network of partners who enjoy protection because U.S. assurances deter potential adversaries. While Mattis believes in unpredictability in warfare, he believes in the necessity of predictability in peacetime.

Mattis has an often-difficult relationship to the White House, because he seems deeply committed to continuity under a president who seeks to be disruptive. The White House must be aggravated that it seems at times that the secretary defense is operating independently. Yet, the secretary’s credibility, and his ability to manage successfully a large and complex enterprise that requires both leadership ability as well as mastery of difficult technical knowledge gives him a certain amount of impunity. The secretary of defense has varying relationships with other principals in government. He appeared to have had a close relationship with former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who had a very cold relationship with the president. He had a somewhat disdainful relationship with national security advisor HR McMaster, a three-star general, who also had a strained relationship with the president. Mattis, as a retired four-star, never seemed close to someone he outranked. Even so, by outside appearances, Mattis has much bigger differences with National Security Advisor John Bolton's willingness to abandon allies and international law when it serves his interest. For Mattis, it represents a fundamental departure from the principles on which he has built his career.

Secretary Mattis is somewhat constrained in what he can do, because the greatest source of influence over the future shape of the military budget is Congress, and not the department of defense. Even so, he has an unusual alignment with the military, because he understands how the military plans and budgets. He also has an unusually strong connection to the troops. Mattis seems able to operate almost independently from the White House, which is both a strength and a weakness. While Mattis’s apolitical stance has prevented him from being an obvious target, there have been numerous rumors that he will quit out of frustration or be fired by President Trump. Were Secretary Mattis to leave, the Defense Department would lose a powerful advocate. Perhaps more importantly, The Defense Department would likely lose an apolitical leader and gain a political one. How are the troops would respond, how the civilian employees would respond, and how that would affect the broader administration remains unclear. Early in the administration, Mattis was known as being part of an "axis of adults" that introduced stability into U.S. foreign policy. His departure would not only have a tremendous impact on the military, but it would also profoundly shake allies who have come to rely on Mattis for reassuring continuity in American foreign policy in an administration that often seeks to distinguish itself from the past.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is a dramatic change from his predecessor. An outgoing conservative former congressman with strong political skills, he has won the confidence of the president in large part by adopting the president's priorities. He has also committed to rebuilding the state department and the Foreign Service after perception that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had abandoned his workforce in order to curry favor with a skeptical White House.

Secretary Pompeo, a former director of the CIA, has emphasized two issues of high importance to the president. The first is North Korea, which has been an object of sustained U.S. intelligence attention for decades. There is no evidence that Pompeo objected to the president’s heightened rhetoric on North Korea in the early part of his term, nor evidence that Pompeo is concerned by the president's apparent willingness to negotiate with Kim Jong-un. Instead, Pompeo has acted as an eager emissary of the president implementing his policies and adopting his priorities.

The other priority of Secretary Pompeo's tenure is Iran. Here again, Pompeo has been an eager implementer the president’s strategy to increase pressure on the regime in Tehran. Pompeo’s 12 demands for Iran for example, articulate in detail what the president has mostly merely expressed in emotion. Similarly, Pompeo has appointed a special envoy to focus on the Iran issue, but that envoy resides within the State Department, despite having government-wide responsibility.

It is striking how Pompeo has managed to both improve his relationship with the rank-and-file the State Department while simultaneously maintaining his relationship with a White House that has nothing but mistrust for the State Department. It is a reflection of Pompeo's political skills, his adoption of the president’s agenda, and his garrulous nature that he has done successfully what eluded his predecessor.

Yet Pompeo remains a diplomat for an administration that has a unique approach to diplomacy. Reassuring allies has been a central role for secretaries of state for decades, but it is not central to Pompeo’s tenure. Similarly, Pompeo has not done what many secretaries of state have done, which is to pick an issue that is not directly on the White House agenda, and to move it forward on his own initiative. For example, he has not become deeply involved resolving the wars in Yemen and Syria, both of which involve several U.S. allies and adversaries. As will be discussed below, he has stayed further away from Arab-Israeli peace talks than any of his recent predecessors. Pompeo apparently sees his job as being a close extension of the White House rather than a compliment to it. While Pompeo can be an effective diplomat for this president, he cannot be more successful than the president himself, and the president takes his own counsel of matters of diplomacy. Tillerson's greatest weakness was that he was perceived not to have the president's support. Pompeo’s greatest weakness appears to be that he's closely tied to a president who wonders whether he really needs a State Department.

There is no reason to think that Pompeo will not last for the rest of the Trump Administration. There are no signs of tension between him and the president, and the president appears to appreciate his willingness to pursue the president's agenda, especially with troublesome adversaries. In addition, the State Department needs to rebuild, and his expressed interest in helping rebuild the Foreign Service is likely to take him through the next two years at least. He is perhaps the most predictable element in the president's foreign-policy apparatus.

National Security advisor John Bolton is the newest addition to the foreign policy team, and the one whose views are most sharply at odds with the rest of the team and with the Washington foreign policy establishment. That is perhaps one of the reasons why the president has faith in him. On the face of it, Bolton's views are sharply at variance with the president. Bolton’s record as an unrepentant neoconservative (although he dislikes the label) and an avowed interventionist make him an unlikely standard bearer for the president's agenda. But Bolton is a strong believer in American prerogatives, a deep skeptic of multilateralism and international law, and a fierce fighter who does not mind making enemies. Bolton's obvious intellect, and his passion for a large number of issues in which the president is disinterested may lead the president simply to turn issues over to Bolton for management.

At least on an emotional level, Bolton is fully on board with the idea of America first. He shares the president’s skepticism of trade deals, wonders about the utility of NATO, and is hawkish on China. He is strongly pro-Israel and skeptical of Western Europe. Bolton has been a fierce bureaucratic competitor in every Republican administration for the last two decades, and when outside of government, he has been an outspoken commentator with a strong record of disdain for the foreign policy establishment.

Yet for all of his closeness to the president, there must be aspects for President Trump strategy that unsettle him. For example, before coming into office he was deeply distrustful of the North Korean government and opposed nuclear negotiations. He also was resistant to the trend in some conservative circles to become soft on Russia. Bolton seems to have accepted parts of the strategy to which he deeply objects in order to have a free hand to implement a set of ideas that he has harbored for decades and in which the president is disinterested.

Bolton's tenure is uncertain. He is Trump's third national security advisor, and there are obvious points of friction with both the president and the rest of the cabinet. It is hard to imagine that the strongly disciplined Bolton and the often-freewheeling president have much personal chemistry. In addition, there must be a number of issues on which Bolton thinks the president is misguided. Bolton likely has more job security than Secretary Mattis, but probably less than Secretary Pompeo. Should he leave, the president’s instinct to strongarm the world would lose its principal implementer.

The president's team has come together and divided in illustrative ways on a wide range of foreign policy priorities. The issue of greatest unity may be Iran, where there is widespread skepticism on the team that President Obama’s strategy made the United States safer. As a candidate, the president sought to make Iran deal a key differentiator with the Obama Administration, arguing that he could have negotiated a much better deal. Politically, the issue is a winner because Iran has no natural constituency in the United States. Americans remain pained by the hostage crisis in 1979, and Israel’s supporters in the Jewish community and among evangelical conservatives are hostile to Iran. Almost 40 years of U.S. sanctions has meant that commercial ties are all but non-existent.

But as much as the administration is unified in its view of Iran, the administration is not unified on how high a priority Iran should be. For example, Iran plays a central role in the National Security Strategy, which was released by the White House about a year ago. One can also see the focus on Iran in the president's recent statements about Saudi Arabia, arguing that Saudi Arabia is a necessary ally in the struggle against Iranian influence in the Middle East. However, Iran remains virtually unmentioned in the unclassified summary of the National Defense Strategy, which argues for much more U.S. focus on near-peer competitors such as China and Russia.

Mattis has a history of seeing threats emanating from Iran from his time running the U.S. Central command, but as defense secretary he has pointedly neither surged resources into combatting Iranian threats nor allowed the drawdown of troops in places like Syria, where they are a counterbalance to the Iranian presence. Pompeo, by contrast, has been the point person on efforts to cut off Iran’s global economic ties. The State Department maintains that Iran has thus far refused negotiations, but it expects that to change once the second round of U.S.-imposed sanctions kicks in.

National Security Adviser John Bolton has taken the most hawkish view on Iran, shifting Syria policy in the process. He has led the renunciation of the JCPOA and put forward the view, surely abhorrent to Mattis, that U.S. troops will stay in Syria as long as Iranian troops are there. Bolton is a lawyer who is deeply skeptical of the utility of international law, and he is seeking to lead a multifaceted confrontation with Iran to coerce them to sharply curb their regional activities, abandon their development of missile systems, and permanently forswear enrichment activities on Iranian soil. So sweeping are Bolton’s ambitions that they have prompted speculation that his goal is to force the collapse of the Iranian regime rather than to come to an agreement with it.

President Trump has seemed ambivalent on Iran, alternately seeming to favor confrontation and engagement. Since the appointment of Ambassador Bolton, Iran has risen among U.S. priorities, at the expense of both of the president’s commitment to Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking and his impulse to limit U.S. exposure to the Middle East. For some time, an embrace of Saudi Arabia had seemed to advance all of his interests: limiting direct U.S. exposure and cost, confronting Iran, and integrating Israel into the region. The murder of Jamal Khashoggi by actors close to Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman has complicated that strategy significantly, since the crown prince had been the preeminent figure in the U.S.-Saudi rapprochement.

The president’s abandonment of the JCPOA has given the administration a free hand it in its Iran policy. However that raises more questions than answers. What will the administration seek to do directly? While it is clear that the United States will not pursue a multilateral course, what will it seek to do itself? In addition, what would a successful Iran policy look like? It is unclear what the administration thinks it can persuade Iran to do. Equally importantly, would seeming success prompting changes in Iranian behavior soften US policy or persuade the United States to pressure Iran even harder, because the strategy seem to be working? In addition, it remains unclear what the long-term consequences of the administration’s short-term strategy will be. In particular, will U.S. allies become more or less willing to partner with United States on nonproliferation priorities, and will U.S. adversaries prove able to construct alternative financial instruments that circumvent U.S. policy? In the immediate term, the worst predictions of the consequences of the U.S. policy toward Iran have not come true.
Perhaps the most important consequence of U.S. actions would be if financial pressure provoked internal instability in Iran, or even a change in government. It remains unclear if that is the goal of U.S. policy, or how U.S. policy would respond to that change.

Another important regional issue for the president has been in Israel. Aside from the rhetoric, support for Israel has not been central to the president’s worldview. But the president enjoys being unconventional, and he has defied conventional thinking on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict since early in his tenure, moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and abandoning the idea that the United States should strive to find an intermediate position between Israelis and Palestinians. The negotiating team he has appointed consists of three men who are personally close to him who share a worldview with each other that is deeply understanding of Israel, and “open” to hearing Palestinian views. Unlike in the Clinton administration, which made a major push on Arab-Israeli peacemaking, the negotiating team does not work closely with large cadres of experts in the State Department, the military, and the intelligence community.

While some of the president’s view toward Israel is a result of political calculation, in some ways, the president’s affinity for Israel is because he feels validated by Israel’s worldview. Israel is hostile to many of the same countries that Trump is, and has the same skepticism toward political Islam, toward Iran, and toward the policy of emphasizing human rights in U.S. foreign policy. For their part, Israelis feel relieved to have a president who will not judge them, which was often an issue in the Obama demonstration.

The president’s strategy on Israel is more about how the president feels about the Middle East than what he will do about the Middle East. Israel’s official isolation in the region makes it an awkward partner for most U.S. military operations and diplomatic initiatives, and there are few regional efforts that require Israeli support. But the president’s feeling of isolation in solidarity with Israel has made Israelis and the president feel more connected to each other. It is unusual for the Secretary of State to be almost wholly removed from Arab-Israeli diplomacy, as he is in this administration. For generations, the issue has taken a large amount of the Secretary of State’s time when it is moving forward, because it is of such high interest to so many governments around the world, and administrations have judged that winning diplomatic support is a vital part of any agreement. The Trump administration seems to treat that approach as a feature of what has failed in the past, and has left principal responsibility with his son-in-law, his former bankruptcy attorney whom he also named ambassador to Israel, and his former lead real estate attorney. The team has been working for two years on a plan that remains secret, and the present turmoil in Israeli politics suggests they will not release it for some time. There is no evidence that the administration is likely to pressure Israel or feel special urgency pushing forward on an Arab-Israeli peace agreement.

Perhaps most difficult issue facing the president is his policy in Syria. In this case, he seems sympathetic too many of the policy decisions made by his predecessor. His instinct is to follow the Obama policy of not being drawn deeper into endless Middle East conflicts. He seems particularly hostile to the doctrine of accepting a “responsibility to protect” civilian populations, which was part of the explanation for the U.S. joining an effort to oust Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddhafi. However, Iran’s deep engagement in Syria and the presence of thousands of jihadi fighters has persuaded the president to contradict his earlier policy of insisting on the rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops. It appears that President Trump believes that the Russians can play a constructive role stabilizing Syria without extensive U.S involvement.

Last spring, Secretary Mattis seemed to be on the losing end of an argument counseling patience in Syria. National Security Adviser McMaster was sympathetic to the idea of putting in a larger force, and the president was hostile to the idea, insisting on a rapid removal of U.S. forces from east of the Euphrates. At times, Mattis seemed to bluntly contradict the president on the issue. But National Security Adviser Bolton seems to have linked Syria in the president’s mind to Iran, winning support for the idea of a sustained presence in order to bolster the U.S. in negotiations over the future of the Iranian presence in the country.

Overall, though, the president hopes to have an impact on Syria without investing resources there. In fact, one of the things that is most striking about Syria is that the United States seems to care less than any of the other parties what the long-term outcome is. This is been manifested by the 65-country coalition that the United States put together being outmaneuvered by a three-country coalition whose interests are not aligned with those of the United States. In the last six months, the United States has reversed its policy towards Syria, committing to a long-term trip presence but maintaining opposition to supporting Syrian reconstruction. As a consequence, both the U.S. endgame, plus the resources that the United States is willing to devote to Syria, remains unclear.

Taking all of this, it is useful to chart out the likely outcomes of the Trump administration’s approach to Middle East. For the foreseeable future, Iran is likely to be a key focus of the strategy. It is politically successful, and it represents a point of unity within the administration. A focus on pressuring Iran could lead to negotiations, war, or political upheaval, and the president has advertised his willingness to follow any of those courses. If anything, the clearest goal the president has in Iran is to create uncertainty.

For those concerned about the future of secondary sanctions, they’re likely to be a function of their impact on Iran. If any imperfect sanctions regime promotes change in Iranian behavior, the administration is likely to be willing to tolerate the imperfection. But if Iranian behavior continues unabated, the administration is likely to double down on its approach. Iranian behavior is likely to have a much more profound effect on the future of U.S. sanctions policy than the behavior and actions of U.S. trading partners. This will be frustrating for partners trying to predict what will be allowed and what will be banned under future U.S. policy.

A second consequence of the Trump administration’s approach is likely to be sustained a lack of coordination in the execution of foreign policy. Traditionally, the interagency process has been extremely robust coordinating and aligning different elements of the government. Diminished efforts at coordination, and a president who often acts independently, suggests that U.S. policy both will be less ambitious and less thoroughly prosecuted than the past. This not only is likely to have the effect of weakening American influence, but it will also make it harder for U.S. allies to cooperate with it.

The third likely outcome of this strategy is a continued focus on avoiding U.S. overextension in the Middle East. While the Trump administration has seemingly warmed to allies who felt estranged by the Obama administration, President Trump is likely to sustain the most important strategic decision that President Obama made in the Middle East, which is to avoid getting sucked into it.

Well several outcomes seem likely, much remains uncertain. The first is what a Trump administration war might look like. So far, the president’s strategy has not required the use of overwhelming force. His military confrontations have either been low-grade warfare against terrorist groups, or limited strikes such as the missile attack on Syria after its use of chemical weapons. The president’s seeming willingness to use overwhelming force appears to have deterred adversaries. In the case of North Korea, sharply escalating rhetoric in the fall of 2017 appears to have played a role bringing North Korea to the bargaining table; while in the case of Iran, a more aggressive military posture has created more risk-averse behavior by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy in the Persian Gulf. What would happen if an adversary miscalculated, or if an adversary decided to test the president? If the president is in a war, how will he get out of it? Might he become a captive of his own rhetoric and finds himself locked in an escalatory cycle that he cannot escape? In addition, would new personnel make war more likely? Secretary of Defense Mattis has fought wars and is cautious of engaging in them except at the time and place of his choosing. A new secretary of defense may be less averse to war or less able to advise on its consequences.

Another uncertainty is whether the president will seek other diplomatic negotiations. So far, the president has talked about his eagerness to engage in Arab-Israeli negotiations, but he avoided directly engaging in them. That seems likely to persist. The most likely negotiating partner that is currently an adversary is Iran, and the Iranian leadership seems reluctant to engage in negotiations with the president. But in fact, the group likely to be most hostile to the idea of the president negotiating with Iranians is probably his own staff. The North Korea experience must be chilling for them, because the president’s eagerness to declare victory despite a lack of North Korean concessions would be equally damaging if he did the same with the Iranians.

A third uncertainty is what the administration’s future attitude toward allies will be. So far, the president has adopted a strategy that assumes that allies will seek to comply with U.S. wishes. But if he encounters resistance, will he become more conciliatory toward allies or will he seek to go it alone even more often? It seems clear that U.S. allies are changing their strategies toward the Trump administration as they have gotten used to him and his strategies. Whether the Trump administration will change its own strategies toward allies is an open question.

Perhaps the greatest uncertainty is whether the president will seek some sort of clear victory in order to advance his reelection in 2020. That could come in terms of a triumphal negotiation, a war, or some other confrontation with a foreign adversary. Worsening political prospects for the president could make him more willing to take risks that have lasting consequences for the United States and world.

This uncertainty is not unintentional. If there is a central feature of the Trump presidency, it is the determination to be unconventional, to do the unexpected, and to keep adversaries off-balance. It has the consequence of making allies less comfortable as well, but in the world in which the president believes that having the initiative gives him an advantage, and in a world in which he believes that allies are limited utility, keeping the world off-balance is not a bug in his administration, but instead it’s a key feature in his approach to the U.S. place in the world.