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With its 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, the Trump administration expanded the scope of US nuclear deterrence, re-emphasizing the importance of non-strategic nuclear weapons, perceptively lowering the threshold for nuclear use and casting doubt on the future of arms control. The authors argue that these changes are consistent with the administration's wider ‘peace through strength’ approach that draws on traditional Republican thinking on security policy. While designed to demonstrate credibility and resolve to both allies and adversaries, however, this assertive approach to security policy and specifically nuclear policy as a necessary precursor to renewed engagement in strategic negotiations may have unintended consequences. This article focuses on European reactions to the strategy and argues that the Trump administration's nuclear posture challenges common European understandings in three principal areas. First, changes to US declaratory policy contest European assumptions on the role of nuclear weapons in defending NATO. Second, US modernization plans and their implications for intra-alliance relations risk accentuating controversial debates about the US commitment to Europe. Third, the apparent US rejection of arms control widens the scope for discord with European leaders. If European leaders assert a clear and credible alternative vision advocating nuclear restraint, risk reduction and arms control they could rebuild trust and confidence between the United States, NATO and Russia, demonstrating real strength and ultimately leading to more genuine opportunities for peace and sustainable European security.

This article explores the fascinating interactions and experiences of James Bond creator, Ian Fleming, with the real world of intelligence. It has long been known that Fleming worked in Naval Intelligence during the Second World War. However, accounts of his time there tend to portray him as a lowly and slightly eccentric administrator. Drawing on newly discovered archival materials, plus memoirs and histories, it is argued here that Fleming was a respected and influential figure in the great game of espionage for some three decades. During the war, he was a central cog in the machinery of naval intelligence, planning operations, working with partners in American intelligence and liaising with secret Whitehall departments, including the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. Before and after the war, he was involved in a range of intelligence networks, often using journalistic cover to hide his clandestine connections. Throughout his life, his social circle was a ‘who’s who’ of spies and saboteurs, including CIA Director Allen Dulles. In short, he straddled the state-private divide. Taken together, these dealings with real intelligence paved the way for and gave veracity to his fiction, which continues to shape public perceptions of intelligence to this day.\ud \ud

This article looks to answer the question of why the James Bond novels and films should matter to scholars of intelligence and national security. We argue that Bond is important because, rightly or wrongly, and not without inaccuracy, it has filled a public knowledge vacuum about intelligence agencies and security threats. On another level, this article explores the unexpected yet important interactions between Bond and the actual world of intelligence. We contend that the orthodoxy dictating that Bond and spying are diametric opposites—one is the stuff of fantasy, the other is reality—is problematic, for the worlds of Bond and real intelligence collide, overlap and intermesh in fascinating and significant ways. In short, Bond is important for scholars because he is an international cultural icon that continues to operate at the borders of fiction and reality, framing and constructing not only public perceptions but also to some degree intelligence practices. Core narratives of intelligence among not only the public but also policymakers and intelligence officers are imagined, sustained, deepened, produced and reproduced through and by Bond. We conclude that Bond and intelligence should be thought of as co-constitutive; the series shapes representations and perceptions of intelligence, but it also performs a productive role, influencing the behaviours of intelligence agencies themselves.\ud \ud

The presidency of Donald J. Trump is rather ordinary. Trump himself may be the most unusual, unorthodox and unconventional president the US has ever had. Yet, even with his extraordinary personality and approach to the job, his presidency is proving quite ordinary in its accomplishments and outcomes, both at home and abroad. Like most modern US presidents, the number and scope of Trump’s achievements are rather meager. Despite dramatic claims to a revolution in US politics, Trump simply has not achieved very much. Trump’s few policy achievements are also mostly mainstream Republican ones rather than the radical, anti-establishment, swamp-draining changes promised on the campaign trail. The populist insurgent who ran against Washington has followed a policy agenda largely in tune with conservative Republican traditions. The Ordinary Presidency of Donald J. Trump provides a detailed explanation for the discrepancy between Trump’s extraordinary approach and the relative mediocrity of his achievements. Ironically, it is precisely Trump’s extraordinariness as president that has helped render his presidency ordinary.

As a purported outsider, disruptor, nationalist, populist and insurgent, Trump promised dramatic change. This chapter demonstrates that he has not been successful. When Trump has tried to be bold, to implement his nationalist agenda, to be disruptive and populist and to challenge elite interests, he has largely failed. It is certainly not the case that Trump’s presidency is inconsequential or has not generated any policy triumphs, but the successes are few in number and limited in scope. Moreover, the limited successes that Trump has enjoyed look very much like mainstream Republican ones. The 2017 tax bill and his two appointments to the Supreme Court are classics of the type. The idea that Trump is “draining the swamp” is fanciful. His language may at times invoke the anti-establishment discourse of his primary and general election campaigns, but underneath the populist bluster is a fairly standard Republican president. Some congressional Republicans may call out Trump on his more divisive and culturally inflammatory remarks, but they have rallied their votes behind him where there is policy agreement. Where there is not and where Trump has thus tried to circumvent Congress with his executive powers, he has found that other political actors and institutions have resisted his reform efforts. Trump’s presidency may generate lots of fire and fury but in terms of policy outputs it is fairly ordinary.

The preceding chapters lay out an innovative but straightforward argument: While Trump is an extraordinary president, his presidency is quite ordinary. The distinction between president and presidency is extremely important and one that is too often overlooked in assessments of any US administration. Since US politics is widely characterized as a presidential system, the person of the president is all too often conflated with the success or otherwise of his presidency. But distinguishing between them facilitates a more nuanced assessment of the presidency that any individual president leads.

Trump’s 2016 campaign invited a series of different readings. The outsider candidate emphasized that he was not beholden to other players, including his own party’s leadership. His nationalist campaign promised a radical new agenda, focused on trade, law and order, economic rebuilding and immigration. Classic conservative policy positions and long-established bipartisan positions and values would be challenged. Trump the disruptor seemed likely to bring a different style of presidency. Would the disruptor also bring new techniques of governance as he had new techniques of campaigning? Given Trump’s populist claim to a new base as a source of legitimacy, his ongoing relationship with his voters would surely be an important part of his attempts to lead. Trump, and his base, might prosecute class war against the establishment elite. A peasant march on Washington, complete with pitchforks, was a commonly deployed allusion. The insurgent Trump and his revolution might even undermine key democratic institutions in an empowering of the presidency. Observers read the Trump phenomenon in very different ways, but they were agreed on one thing. Trump’s would not be an ordinary presidency. The purpose of this chapter is to establish the case that the rest of the book will argue against. In many ways, what is presented here is the “conventional wisdom” about the Trump presidency. And the conventional wisdom is that it is unconventional. Subsequent chapters tackle the conventional wisdom head-on, presenting contrary evidence and arguments to make the case that Trump’s presidency should be viewed as ordinary.

Despite Trump’s promises to put America First and disrupt international alliances and his penchant for insulting foreign leaders, especially allies, the president has adopted the mainstream Republican foreign policy strategy of seeking “peace through strength” and largely pursued the same policies and priorities as previous administrations, albeit with a very different style and attitude than his immediate predecessor. While he has been more than willing to berate publicly his NATO allies for their apparently insufficient burden sharing, he is far from the first US president to do so and he shows no serious signs of withdrawing from the common defense alliance which continues to play a significant role in defense and security planning. Even his seemingly most extreme and extraordinary projection of power and rhetorical saber rattling with North Korea has operated within the bounds of a common Republican approach of upping the ante in order to negotiate from a perceived position of strength. The ideas behind Trump’s foreign policy approach are very orthodox in their view of how states interact on the international stage and most of his achievements in foreign affairs have been very modest, which is a scorecard in keeping with the track record of many post-World War II presidencies that have found it very difficult to deliver big wins and have suffered several major setbacks in their adventures overseas. Despite all the bluster and the over-confident claims of success, Trump’s foreign policy has been fairly ordinary.

Trump’s primary and presidential election victories were by any measure extraordinary and unexpected. But despite much talk of a populist uprising, his vote in the general election was fairly ordinary. Contrary to speculation and some preliminary empirical analyses, the examination presented here shows that the pattern of his support, particularly among white working-class voters, is consistent with trends observed over the last 40 years. And places most exposed to the process of deindustrialization did not swing heavily to Trump. Moreover, the Latino vote for Trump did not collapse; he may even have won a larger share of the Latino vote than Mitt Romney four years previously. And there have been no discernable shifts in which political party individual voters identify with. Their allegiances seem very stable. Finally, while Trump certainly enjoys high approval ratings among self-identified Republican supporters, deeper analysis shows that most do not share his ideological and policy positions on the key issues. In sum, the evidence in this chapter weighs heavily in favor of the Trump-is-ordinary argument.

Rather than operating as leader of the executive branch, Trump has personalized his presidency to serve his strategy of communicating with the base. This modus operandi centralizes power with Trump personally as his tweets and public statements intervene in all processes of governance as and when he wants. The office of the presidency is a phenomenally useful institution designed to support the president, but by refusing to see himself as part of that institution, Trump has failed to commit the time and effort to making sure that its processes run effectively. Those processes include policy planning, liaising with interest groups and Congress, running an effective communications strategy—the means to get things done in Washington. With careful management, the president can use the office of the presidency to maximize his impact on other players. Trump has been offered the levers of power, but he ignores them. Instead, he tweets a flow of poorly considered statements from the Oval Office, damages his capacity to lead as he shifts the agenda, and actively sabotages his White House’s efforts. His failure to oversee the appointments process, another vital managerial task that his personalized approach has compromised, has installed a substantial traditional Republican resistance within the White House, creating a chaotic fight over the very nature of the Trump presidency on his own doorstep. His unusual conduct as president means that he is less able to lead Washington.

Donald J. Trump is an extraordinary president but his presidency is ordinary. The president, in the character traits that he brings to the office and in the way that he approaches and executes this most difficult of jobs, is unquestionably extraordinary. But in terms of achievements, policy and promises kept, Trump’s presidency is far from extraordinary. Indeed, it is rather ordinary. Most notably, Trump policy outputs have been meager, but meager is the norm for US presidents. Trump, like most of those in the White House before him, is constrained by the separation of powers and checks and balances. But Trump is also constrained by himself. He is simply not very good at being president. The White House is in chaos, his communications strategy disjointed and misguided, and his legislative strategy muddled and ineffective. His approach to the job—his methodology of being president—constantly undermines his own efforts and the efforts of those around him to achieve policy “wins”, as Trump likes to call them. Trump’s presidency is also ordinary in the sense that the few policy achievements that he can genuinely lay claim to are largely mainstream Republican ones. The anti-establishment, disruptive populist of the campaign trail has turned into a rather ordinary Republican in office.

Trump did not manage to convince the 115th Congress to adopt his radical agenda. He has not taken over the party or won the influence to impose his reforms. To some degree, this reflects personal failings: Trump’s skills have not proved very effective in influencing legislators. More, though, his failings have been strategic. He began his term with an extraordinary delegation of power to Congress at the expense of his radical agenda by choosing conventional Republican priorities: healthcare and tax reform. Additionally, Trump’s core approach of appealing to his base with a divisive communications strategy has translated poorly from campaigning to governing. His base strategy may have won him substantial support within his own party, but Trump has not won mass support for his radical policy positions or his presidency. He has not even sold all of his own party on his radical vision. Instead, Trump’s combative and divisive style and his contentious values and policy positions have actively alienated moderates, both among the public and in Congress. That failure has cost Trump dearly as his governing strategy has failed to deliver him influence in Washington. He can call on much of his party’s support but in a finely balanced Congress where Republicans held only marginal majorities that was not enough to pass radical reforms.

While the previous two chapters provided evidence for the proposition that Trump’s presidency is ordinary, this and the next two chapters turn to explaining why it is ordinary. Chapter 5 focuses on the president’s flawed communications and base strategies. Trump cultivates the idea that the American public love him and that he has an extraordinary appeal among voters. He concentrates enormous time and effort on communication, deploying techniques he learnt in business and television to command media attention and bring across core messages of personal leadership and his ongoing conflict with the establishment. Nearly all of Trump’s communication efforts are concentrated on keeping his electoral base on side in the belief that he can utilize their support to leverage policy wins in Washington. Trump has certainly been successful in winning media attention, but much of the coverage has been profoundly negative. He has had notable success in maintaining the enthusiasm of his core supporters, but the outcomes for his presidency have been less than impressive. The problem is that his base constitutes a minority of American voters. In shoring up his base, Trump has driven away moderates and been unable to extend a hand to Democrats. He has been unable to construct a broad-based coalition in support of his radical agenda. In going public with a divisive base-focused communications strategy, Trump has sabotaged his attempts to pass his own agenda through Congress.

At the beginning of his presidency, Barack Obama vowed to fight terrorism with greater effectiveness and moral rectitude than his predecessor. He insisted that ‘we must adhere to our values as dili...

Since taking office, United States President Barack Obama has attempted to refocus and revitalize the US war against terrorism. The centrepiece of this effort has been an increased emphasis on the war in Afghanistan, which he has characterized as the real frontline of the war on terror—as opposed to the ‘distraction’ of the Iraq war. After years of fighting under the Bush administration, Obama has had to ‘sell’ to the US public the renewed effort in Afghanistan and bordering Pakistan in order to maintain support for his policy. In speeches and other public pronouncements, Obama has drawn heavily on the idea of ‘sacrifice’ to justify the deepening of the commitment to the war, arguing that the costs of the war are necessary in order to keep the US safe from further terrorist attacks. This article explores this symbolic engagement with the sacrifices being made in the name of keeping the United States ‘safe’ from terrorism. It considers whether this approach resonates with public and elite opinion; it also considers the sustainability of underlying public support for the war and analyses how Obama has adapted his approach in order to fulfil his goal of drawing the US intervention to a close. While Obama appears to have judged well the price that the US public is willing to pay to defend against terrorism, it is argued that there are major risks involved in using the central principle of sacrifice when justifying the war. Obama has risked creating a ‘sacrifice trap’ whereby the more emphasis is placed on the sacrifices being made, the more necessary it becomes to demonstrate outcomes that make those sacrifices worthwhile. Obama's ultimate objective of withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan may yet be undermined, therefore, by the justifications he has given for the continued importance of the commitment.

Ten years after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC on September 11, 2001, the United States remains embroiled in a long-term struggle with what George W. Bush termed the existential threat of international terrorism. On the campaign trail, his successor as US President, Barack Obama, promised to reboot the ‘war on terror’. He claimed that his new administration would step back from the rhetoric and much of the Bush administration policy, conducting a counterterrorism campaign that would be more morally acceptable, more focused and more effective—smarter, better, nimbler, stronger. This article demonstrates, however, that those expecting wholesale changes to US counterterrorism policy misread Obama's intentions. It argues that Obama always intended to deepen Bush's commitment to counterterrorism while at the same time ending the ‘distraction’ of the Iraq War. Rather than being trapped by Bush's institutionalized construction of a global war on terror, the continuities in counterterrorism can be explained by Obama's shared conception of the imperative of reducing the terrorist threat to the US. The article assesses whether Obama has pursued a more effective counterterrorism policy than his predecessor and explores how his rhetoric has been reconstituted as the actions of his policy have unfolded. By addressing his policies toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, Guantanamo Bay and torture, the uses of unmanned drone attacks and domestic wire-tapping, this article argues that Obama's ‘war’ against terrorism is not only in keeping with the assumptions and priorities of the last ten years but also that it is just as problematic as that of his predecessor.

The Republican Party nomination for president of the United States of America in 2008 was considered by some observers a poisoned chalice.1 Only once since the 1950s had a party maintained control of the White House for more than two consecutive terms, when George H. W. Bush won a single term in office after eight years of Ronald Reagan. Bush had been vice president for those eight years, however, and Reagan had left office with a higher approval rating than any U.S. president since polling began in the 1930s. In 2008, in contrast, the outgoing two- term Republican president, George W. Bush, had among the lowest public approval ratings of any U.S. president. As the primary season began in January 2008, support for Bush was at a mere 32 percent.2 This time there was also no heir apparent, because the equally unpopu- lar vice president Richard (“Dick”) Cheney was not interested in the nomination. The Republican Party had already suffered at the hands of the electorate in the 2006 congressional elections, largely as a reac- tion against Bush’s policies. Republican fortunes appeared to be at a distinctly low ebb. Meanwhile, Democrats were getting fired up not only in anticipation of finally ushering Bush out of the White House but also by the prospect of electing either the first woman or the first African American to the highest office in the land.

On September 11, 2001, following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC, United States President George W. Bush declared that: ‘America was targeted for the attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining.’ Americans would never forget this day but, Bush assured them, the US was ‘a great nation’ that would ‘go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world’.1 In the midst of a horrific tragedy, the president was drawing upon a long tradition in American public rhetoric that is informed by a belief in American exceptionalism.2

‘My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.’1 With these words, Gerald R. Ford signalled to the American people that, after years tainted by civil unrest, a divisive war, the assassinations of major public figures, and widespread political scandal, his presidency would offer the United States ‘a time to heal’. Ford recognized that the nation was ‘caught up in a crisis of confidence’ and that, like Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War, it was his job to ‘bind up the wounds’.2 As Ford’s transition team concluded, the ‘Restoration of confidence and trust of the American people in their political leadership, institutions and processes’ would be the first priority of the new administration.3

When Ronald Reagan took office in January 1981, the domestic challenges of inflation, unemployment, interest rates and energy shortages dominated the American political agenda. Despite the American hostages in Iran being released as he was inaugurated, Reagan was also confronted with problems on the international scene that had contributed to his predecessor’s failure to secure a second term. The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan continued and Soviet troops now seemed poised to cross the Polish border to curb the growing power of Solidarity. In the US, the Committee on the Present Danger, of which Reagan was a member, warned of an alleged window of vulnerability in US strategic strength and pressed for a more vigilant and aggressive focus on the perceived Soviet threat to American security interests. The Reagan administration was determined to meet these challenges and thereby restore American power and strength in world affairs, resolve the economic crisis at home, and renew the self-confidence of the American people. To achieve these ends Reagan would appeal, not unlike his predecessors, to the traditional belief in American exceptionalism to which he subscribed wholeheartedly.

George Herbert Walker Bush came to the White House in January 1989 determined to consolidate the achievements he believed his predecessor had made. During his presidential campaign, Bush made clear that he saw no need to ‘remake society’ or take the country in ‘radical new directions’. No doubt eager to maintain the votes of Reagan’s supporters, Bush emphasized his dedication to completing ‘the mission we started in 1980’ when he had become Reagan’s choice for vice president. Bush would be what David Mervin has termed a ‘guardian president’: one who seeks to protect and preserve the status quo while recognizing the need for only marginal change.1 Americans expected their new president, with his emphasis on prudence and caution, to be far more pragmatic and competent than they perceived Reagan to have been. Bush was more interested in the detail of policy than his predecessor and had a preference for political compromise, while Reagan had placed ideological considerations first.2

In 1941, Henry Luce published an influential essay in Life magazine in which he declared that the twentieth century should be considered ‘the American Century’. Luce portrayed a vision of America that continued the long tradition of regarding the United States as an exceptional nation with a special destiny. He argued that the US must ‘accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world and in consequence to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence’. He insisted that ‘our vision of America as a world power’ must include ‘a passionate devotion to great American ideals’ such as freedom, equality of opportunity, self-reliance and independence, but also cooperation. The time had come for the US to cast aside isolationism and become ‘the powerhouse from which these ideals spread throughout the world and do their mysterious work of lifting the life of mankind from the level of the beasts to what the Psalmist called a little lower than angels’.1

Jimmy Carter was elected President of the United States largely because he was a Washington outsider, untainted by the years of torment surrounding Vietnam and Watergate. Indeed, before he sought the Democratic nomination for presidential candidate, few people outside his native Georgia had heard of this former naval officer, nuclear engineer, and peanut farmer. Carter made it clear in his election campaign that he understood and shared the people’s pain, doubt and failing confidence following the defeat in Vietnam and the Watergate scandals. He believed America’s moral compass had been lost, that traditional beliefs at the very heart of what it meant to be an American had been thrown into question by years of government lies, failure and corruption. Carter, though, was not about to give up on those beliefs. He was confident that by rededicating the nation to the principles upon which it was founded, Americans could once again believe in themselves and the special role their nation had to play in human history.

William Jefferson Clinton defeated George Bush in the 1992 presidential election largely by focusing on the nation’s troubled domestic agenda. The Democrats’ rallying cry against Bush was ‘It’s the economy stupid!’ Clinton entered the White House in January 1993 promising to focus on the domestic problems facing Americans, and particularly the failing US economy. Nonetheless, Clinton also had to address an international agenda that was much changed from that faced by other post-Vietnam presidents. With the Cold War now firmly consigned to history, scholars, analysts and practitioners alike attempted to provide a comprehensive framework through which a far more unpredictable and potentially unstable international system could be understood. During his two terms in office, President Clinton would give an increasingly greater emphasis to foreign policy and preside over more uses of military force than any of his post-Vietnam predecessors. As a result, he would face many of the same questions regarding the continuing influence of the legacy of Vietnam. He would also draw upon the belief in American exceptionalism in an attempt to pursue a foreign policy that he claimed was not divorced from ‘the moral principles most Americans share’.1