Oleksandr USHAKOV

alekushakoff@mail.ru

After Donald Trump became U.S. president, international analysts went into hysterics saying that the existing status quo might be ruined. They claim Trump knows nothing about foreign policy, and therefore he will screw it up. And taking into account his isolationist sentiments said to make the United States stop policing the world, the situation depicted by the analysts is almost catastrophic. But is it so?

Beaten Path to Presidency

The American election process in the second half of the 20th century alone demonstrates that after Dwight Eisenhower, only politicians who most of all were able to win a tough fight in internal primaries to become candidates from their parties were elected presidents of the country.

It was impossible to become president without doing this, therefore, the initial period of their election campaigns was devoted to obtaining useful knowledge to succeed in that activity. They learned to handle foreign policy later, already working in the White House. Fortunately, there are a large number of highly qualified specialists at numerous U.S. universities who can quickly show any president-elect the ropes.

Power Brokers in Academic Circles

As is known from history, Franklin Roosevelt quickly created an American external intelligence service in 1942 almost from scratch – the Office of Strategic Services. Practically an amateur, a 57-year-old Wall Street lawyer, William Donovan, was tapped to head the intelligence service. A large number of academic advisers were engaged to help him, which made the U.S. special service to be one of the most powerful foreign intelligence services.

The first steps by the presidents – starting from John Kennedy and ending with Barack Obama, always lacked some confidence. However, later, as they fully assumed the post, they fell under the influence of the advisers, their confidence grew along with vision and awareness. It is fair to say that in reality America is not ruled by the president (as a rule, he acts as an amateur in international politics at the beginning), but by ideas generated by a community of analysts who serve the head of state.

Read full article — Who Rules Supreme.