Alexander Cooley (Claire Tow Professor of Political Science at Barnard College and Senior Nonresident Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs) and Daniel Nexon (Professor in the Department of Government and the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University) have published a new article in Foreign Affairs – “The Age of Kleptocracy: Geopolitical Power, Private Gain.”

In the article, Cooley and Nexon argue that analysts have been unable to settle on a coherent account of U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy because of a systematic ‘category error’ – the assumption that the Trump administration’s goal is to advance the United States’ core national interests.

The Trump administration, however, has destroyed this premise. Especially in his second term, Trump has instead wielded U.S. foreign policy principally to increase his own wealth, bolster his status, and personally benefit a small circle of his family members, friends, and loyalists. U.S. foreign policy is now largely subordinate to the private interests of the president and his retainers. These interests may, from time to time, align with some plausible understanding of the public good. Much more often, however, the Trump administration invokes U.S. national interests to deflect from its self-dealing by eroding the distinction between its private interests and those of the American people.