Hal Brands defines grand strategy as “the intellectual architecture that gives form and structure to foreign policy.”

Donald Trump’s threat to rain “fire and fury” on North Korea as punishment for its military provocations is the epitome of irresponsible leadership. By invoking the prospect of apocalyptic destruction, Trump risks alienating U.S. allies, distracting attention from North Korean misbehavior, and escalating an already fraught situation.

A recent post by Hal Brands in War on the Rocks sums them up well. Trump has moved away from a cooperative approach to dealing with other nations, ditched long-standing commitments to the free world in favor of a transactional approach, removed purpose from American power, stepped back from a leadership role, ignored steadiness and reliability, exhibited remarkable incompetence, snubbed soft power, and pledged to be unexceptional. 

Regardless of which candidate had won the 2016 election, the tenure of the 45th president was bound to represent a pivotal moment in the historical arc of the American superpower

But that regional approach may be part of the delay, said Hal Brands, a professor at John Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.  “Pakistanis can read the writing on the wall as well as anyone can,” Brands said.  Without a commitment from the U.S. to maintain their presence in Afghanistan and keep India from increasing its influence there, Pakistan is “really not going to break in a fundamental way with their longstanding proxies there,” Brands said. 

The president’s penchant “to delegate blame when things go wrong” is the negative flip side of the Pentagon’s freedom, said Hal Brands, a defense official in the Obama administration and now a senior analyst at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.