Donald Trump, American Dictator

Nothing is ever inevitable. But every political analysis needs to start from the recognition that there is an eminently plausible - and fairly straightforward - path from here to autocratic rule

Cover illustration: iStock / Credit: Douglas Rissing

Since long before Donald Trump was elected president, voices from the Left all the way to the Center-Right have tried to raise the alarm about the threat he and the forces that have fueled his rise pose to constitutional self-government in the United States. But for every warning call, there has been a column by a Very Serious Commentator condemning all this “hysteria.” And most of the time, the back and forth between those generally derided as “alarmists” and those reflexively engaging in anti-“alarmism” has been drowned out by the unbelievable level of noise Trump has produced: The nonsense, the scandals, the outrageousness.

Occasionally, however, a warning about America’s accelerating slide into authoritarianism manages to break through all that noise. Last week, the Washington Post published a long piece by Robert Kagan, almost 6,000 words, titled: “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.” It was intended as a wake-up call: “We are closer to that point today,” Kagan concluded, “than we have ever been, yet we continue to drift toward dictatorship, still hoping for some intervention that will allow us to escape the consequences of our collective cowardice, our complacent, willful ignorance and, above all, our lack of any deep commitment to liberal democracy.”

The year 2023 ends with a flurry of pieces in leading mainstream outlets emphasizing the stark reality of what a Trump victory in the next presidential election might mean for the country. Just this week, the New York Times published a long investigation of “Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First,” and The Atlantic is devoting an entire special issue to exploring what happens “If Trump Wins.”

Amidst this current wave of high-profile calls to take the threat of Trumpian autocracy seriously, Kagan’s piece received the most attention. As NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen, who has long criticized the media’s tendency to treat politics as if it were a sporting competition while neglecting the very real impact electoral decisions might have on people’s lives, remarked: “’The stakes’ have never been put as clearly as they are in this bone-chilling piece by Robert Kagan.”

There are so many factors determining the reception of a single piece and whether or not it might be able to reach a broader audience. Timing plays a big role, and Kagan’s intervention came after weeks of debate over president Biden’s bad poll numbers, priming people to believe that Trump has, at the very least, a good chance of returning to power. It certainly has something to do with the piece itself, as it stands out because of its length and framing: “dictatorship.” And then there is the author. Kagan, a Senior Fellow at Brookings, doesn’t like the label “neocon,” which has often been applied to him – fair enough, labels can obscure more than they illuminate. But it is crucial to note that this warning is not coming from the Left, but from the heart of the political power center in Washington. Kagan played an influential role in Republican politics for decades, but has been staunchly opposed to Trump since 2016. In the 1980s, he served under Reagan in the State Department. And since the 1990s, he has been one of the more outspoken proponents of “liberal interventionism,” relentlessly drumming up support for “regime change,” enthusiastically demanding and supporting the invasion of Iraq in 2003. A big reason why Kagan really doesn’t like Trump is that he sees him as a threat to the US-dominated “liberal international order” – which Kagan views as inherently good, as he conceives of U.S. influence in the world as overwhelmingly moral and benevolent. This isn’t just a Republican position, of course: More recently, Kagan served as a foreign policy advisor to John McCain’s presidential campaign – but also had close ties to Hillary Clinton’s State Department. Robert Kagan is as close as it gets to representing the ideology that has dominated the foreign policy establishment.

To his credit, his opposition to Trump and the Republican Party that elevated him has been much clearer and more consistent than what many Never Trumpers have had to offer since 2016. The fact remains, however, that his overall impact on the U.S. political discourse in general and American foreign policy more specifically has been highly problematic.

With last week’s piece, this immensely influential Never Trump Ex-Republican interventionist hawk has provided what is widely regarded as the most urgent warning and what might emerge as the central reference point and rallying cry in the democratic coalition’s defense against Trumpism. That should be reason enough to dig in: What is the actual argument Kagan is making? How plausible is it?

Because of the role he has played in American politics, what Kagan is saying will be met – understandably and justifiably so! – with a lot of skepticism on parts of the Left; because he is making such a forceful case against Trump, much of the center-left and liberal America will be very much inclined to believe him; and because he is a former Republican with impeccable “centrist” credentials, the center-right will happily accept what he has to say, especially since anti-Trump arguments from these quarters have often come with a hefty dose of “both sides” obfuscation that serves to legitimize the status quo. For all of us, whether we are dispositioned to accept or reject Robert Kagan’s wisdom, this is a good opportunity for a self-check: Many of us have adopted similar stances publicly – I certainly have. But not everything that comes under the “Trump dangerous!” umbrella has held up analytically. Let’s examine Kagan’s case: Are we headed for Trumpian dictatorship?  

Not inevitable – but increasingly plausible

Let’s start with the headline of this piece – which is stupid. Trump’s victory and ascension to autocratic rule are very much not a foregone conclusion. You know who agrees? Robert Kagan himself, who explicitly rejects the idea of inevitability in his piece: “Is descent into dictatorship inevitable? No. Nothing in history is inevitable.” Headlines matter, and we would have to ask Kagan’s editor why they went with something that is contradicted in the text. Since we can’t, dwelling on it is much less interesting than engaging with the actual argument presented here.

Kagan sees the United States on a trajectory towards a Trump dictatorship. That doesn’t mean we can’t change course; but unless we do, that’s where we will end up. He believes it’s indisputable that “the odds of the United States falling into dictatorship have grown considerably because so many of the obstacles to it have been cleared and only a few are left.” Just a few years ago, Kagan reminds us, most people, including almost all who consider themselves savvy, serious observers, found the idea that Donald Trump could win the presidency fanciful; before the 2020 election, they declared it alarmist to be concerned about what Trump would do in case he lost; and immediately after January 6, those same people would have declared you an irredeemable pessimist at best, and a fearmonger more likely, had you told them that the Republican Party was going to remain largely united behind the man who had just attempted a coup. One reason why it is difficult to dismiss Kagan’s dire warning is that the whole Trump experience has provided a rather robust body of evidence that American politics is evidently not bound by the limits of what polite society is willing to entertain as “realistic.” And Kagan is very effective at reminding his audience of this very fact.

The piece generates plausibility by outlining in detail the steps that could take us from where we are right now to what Kagan calls a dictatorship. How does Trump get back to power? Kagan has little doubt that Trump will be the Republican nominee again, and that Republicans will largely fall in line once he is. Soon, Kagan argues, the “magical-thinking phase” in which people concoct far-fetched scenarios of Ron DeSantis dethroning Trump, or maybe Nikki Haley, will end: “There will be no more infighting, only outfighting; in short, a tsunami of Trump support from all directions.”

Meanwhile, Kagan has little hope that an equally unified (small-d) democratic front will coalesce behind Joe Biden. Kagan is concerned that the support of young and non-white voters will continue to wane, that “The Democratic coalition is likely to remain fractious as the Republicans unify and Trump consolidates his hold.” More generally, the national mood reminds Kagan of Weimar Germany shortly before the fall of the republic: A pervasive “bipartisan disgust with the political system in general” – and it does not matter who is actually responsible, only that the man in charge, the man who is currently president, will be blamed; and that Trump offers a compellingly simple solution to all the dysfunction: himself – the autocratic leader who alone can fix it all. The courts, Kagan contends, will not stop Trump – on the contrary: “The likeliest outcome of the trials will be to demonstrate our judicial system’s inability to contain someone like Trump and, incidentally, to reveal its impotence as a check should he become president.”

What happens once Trump is back in power? Should he return to the White House, the guardrails will not hold, Kagan warns, not this time. Trump will be largely unconstrained by what usually holds presidential power in check. Congress has already proved its unwillingness to handle him after January 6. And this time, Trump and his allies will be much better prepared to go after the “deep state,” purge all resistance in the federal government, turn it into a revenge machine dominated by loyalists. And they won’t have to do it alone either: In their quest for revenge, Kagan argues, they will be helped and supported by a “new McCarthyism” that has taken hold of the Republican Party – a party dominated by forces obsessed with fighting back against the leftist/socialist/communist/“woke” enemy within.

How will the American people react? Kagan is not optimistic: “Will they rise up in outrage? Don’t count on it.” Some won’t feel the oppression in their everyday lives, they will accommodate. Others will want to resist, as the Democratic opposition in Congress is evidently unable to stop the Trumpian takeover. There will be mass protests, Kagan is sure, but who is to stop Trump from using his awesome power, including through the Insurrection Act, to suppress them? About half the states are in Democratic hands, yes, but they are not monolithically blue and Kagan believes they will have to face their own intrastate opposition, which will weaken and ultimately doom their campaign against a tyrannical federal government. At that point, there is no more hope for the next election cycle to turn things around: “Should Trump be successful in launching a campaign of persecution and the opposition prove powerless to stop it, then the nation will have begun an irreversible descent into dictatorship. With each passing day, it will become harder and more dangerous to stop it by any means, legal or illegal.”

This path towards dictatorship is not inevitable. But that is the trajectory America is on, Kagan is adamant.

A “dictatorship,” really?

Until last week, the term “dictatorship” had not figured prominently in the mainstream discourse surrounding the Trumpian threat. I certainly haven’t used it much, or at all, in my own writing. That Kagan chose it is a big part of why this piece received so much attention. The term evokes the greatest monsters and horrors of history. Now Trump himself is actually adopting the label: A dictator? Nah, he told Sean Hannity on Tuesday – well, “Except for day one.” And who knows after that, right?

Donald Trump, American dictator. Is the situation really *that* dire?

I have seen some criticism of Kagan’s use of the term. Isn’t it far more likely that Trump will erect an autocracy? An authoritarian regime in the style of what Victor Orbán has done in Hungary? Those are broader terms than “dictatorship”: A dictatorship is a form of autocratic government, but not every autocratic regime is a dictatorship. The term dictatorship also usually implies a higher degree of power in the hands of the ruling individual or group, with less restrictions, and suggests a higher degree of coercion and suppression. Victor Orbán is not generally described as a dictator, for instance: His is an autocratic regime, no doubt, but Hungary is currently in a state that political scientists sometimes describe as competitive authoritarianism: There are still opposition parties and elections, though they are anything but fair. The reasonable case against using the term “dictatorship” is that Trump America will be closer to Orbán Hungary than to Putin Russia – at least in the beginning. But let’s not forget that all of those concepts represent approximations of realities, and not only are their definitions fluid, reality itself is fluid and evolving. America is unlikely to go from democracy to dictatorship on the day of Trump’s inauguration in January 2025 – that’s usually not how that works, and it’s not what Kagan argues. But what about a year into Trump’s second reign? Discussing terminology is important – as long as the discussion focuses on whether or not certain terms and concepts adequately convey the substance of the matter at hand. And substantively, I find it hard to identify any major issues with what Kagan outlines as a *plausible* (not inevitable!) path towards authoritarianism. Let’s not get bogged down in labeling fights.

Pitfalls of predicting a path to Trumpist rule

Not every aspect of Kagan’s diagnosis is entirely convincing. The author certainly suggests that Trump is the heavy favorite to win the 2024 presidential election – an interpretation mirroring a discussion that has recently been dominated by Biden’s weak polling numbers. But polling a year out from the election – good or bad! – simply doesn’t have much predictive value. Not only might things change between now and November 2024; people also understand the difference between participating in a poll and voting in an election. And in actual elections, Democrats keep winning. Almost every time since Trump won the presidency in 2016, an anti-MAGA majority in blue and purple states has come out to defeat Trumpist candidates and push back against the reactionary assault on equal rights and civil liberties. Both the 2022 midterms and the most recent election just a few weeks ago defied conventional wisdom, as an unprecedentedly high percentage of people who say they don’t like the current president and judge the economic situation harshly still decided to vote Democratic. These results are a manifestation of more than a mere disdain for Trump, although that is certainly a big part of the explanation for this dynamic. Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in the summer of 2022, the anti-MAGA coalition is no longer animated just by abstract concerns over American democracy: As Republican-led states are turning the clock back to before the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, the choice between two fundamentally incompatible visions of what America should be is now playing out in the real world, which has raised the stakes dramatically in people’s minds.

These dynamics significantly shape the political landscape in the battleground states that will decide the 2024 election – yet they do not figure in Robert Kagan’s interpretation. Still, the fact remains that the 2024 election will be very, very close. That is actually the best and arguably most fundamental reason why paying too much attention to polls right now is rather futile. As Michael Podhorzer keeps stressing, the polls cannot tell us anything we don’t already know, since no poll will ever be precise enough to predict a clear winner in a race this tight. That, however, also means that Robert Kagan’s key argument stands: Donald Trump *could* absolutely win the presidency in 2024.  

Could the military act as a bulwark against encroaching dictatorship? Robert Kagan dismisses the idea entirely: “Those who hope to be saved by a U.S. military devoted to the protection of the Constitution are living in a fantasyland.” In fact, the military might actively help Trump quell the mass mobilization of civil society that his power grab would likely cause: According to Kagan, “active-duty troops and reservists are likely to be disproportionately more sympathetic to a newly reelected President Trump than to the ‘Radical Left Thugs’ supposedly causing mayhem in the streets of their towns and cities.”

I cautiously disagree with this assessment. It is true that the military strongly favored Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and he remains the clear favorite among veterans. But the situation has significantly changed among active-duty troops. Not only have active and former military leaders like former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley emerged as outspoken critics of Trump and even defied him while he was in office. The regular troops also have shifted away from him rather dramatically, and already by the time of the 2020 election, even before Trump’s frontal assault on democratic self-government, they clearly preferred Joe Biden. There are many reasons for why that is the case: The military is an exceedingly diverse institution, and there certainly is reason to believe that many soldiers regard defending the constitution from a wannabe-autocrat as a priority. Contrary to what Kagan suggests, indications are that the majority of active-duty troops do not seem to be buying into the idea that leftwing protesters are the key threat to the country – Trump is.

But then again, even if we can trust the available evidence, who knows what would happen if a president Trump were to order the troops to restore order in the streets? And beyond all speculation, that we even have to think through these questions is indicative of how severe the threat actually is. In a democracy, a situation in which the survival of the system might depend on what side the military decides to come down on should not be an eminently realistic short-term scenario.

Finally, what will Democratic-led states do? Kagan does not think they will be able to resist effectively: In his interpretation, they will be more likely to be mired in chaos, facing violent protests from the Right, if they decide to refuse the authority of a Trump regime. Maybe. But I find the relative certainty with which he outlines this course of events rather unpersuasive. If we extrapolate recent tendencies, we might expect something else as more likely: An accelerated disintegration of the United States into red America and blue America. Already, the country is divided into a multiracial, pluralistic “blue” part that accepts the changing social, cultural, and demographic realities vs. a white Christian nationalist “red” part that is led by people entirely devoted to rolling back those changes. Kagan predicts a Trump regime at the federal level would swiftly install dominance over blue America. But whereas he is quite specific about the concrete steps that take us into dictatorship in other parts of the essay, he remains rather vague and abstract here. And yet, I find it hard to find much solace in what is perhaps a less well-thought-out part of his argument. Among all the realistic scenarios still on the table in case Trump returns to the White House, even the “best” one – the one in which blue states manage to persevere as bastions of pluralistic democracy, at least for a while – has the country falling apart completely. That does not mean we will replay the Civil War with large armies dressed in either blue or gray facing off on the battlefield. But such a completely dysfunctional situation could evidently not be sustained for long – it would have to be resolved, one way or the other, with disastrous levels of disruption and, quite certainly, political violence along the way.  

Realism, “alarmism,” and the road ahead

The main reason why the general thrust of Kagan’s argument – that America is on a trajectory towards authoritarianism, that there is a clearly identifiable and eminently realistic roadmap from here to Trumpian autocratic rule – is so plausible is that he gets the big stuff right. His essay stands out for the complete lack of “both sides” obfuscation. Kagan does not waste time or energy on indulging in false equivalencies or lamentations over polarization. His focus is where it should be, certainly from a (small-d) democratic perspective: On the radicalization of the Right.

Perhaps most importantly, Kagan understands how the Right is giving itself permission to radicalize, to escalate, to embrace authoritarianism. He is alert to the combination of an extreme demonization of the political opponent and an entrenched siege mentality that has basically eliminated moderation or restraint as even potential options. It manifests in what Kagan derides as a new form of McCarthyism that has taken hold of the Republican Party and the Right more broadly. He presents Josh Hawley as an example of how this extremism provides the foundation for the Right’s descent: As Kagan outlines, according to the senator from Missouri, “there is a whole cabal determined to undermine American security, a ‘Uniparty’ of elites made up of ‘neoconservatives on the right’ and ‘liberal globalists on the left’ who are not true Americans and therefore do not have the true interests of America at heart.”

Here it is, the permission structure that governs rightwing politics: It states that “Real Americans” are constantly being victimized, made to suffer under the yoke of crazy leftist politics, besieged by “Un-American” forces of leftism; “we” have to fight back, by whatever means. In the minds of conservatives, they are never the aggressors, always the ones under assault. Building up this supposedly totalitarian, violent threat from the “Left” allows them to justify their actions within the long-established framework of conservative self-victimization. It permitted them to support Donald Trump in the first place; it remained fully intact even after January 6; it doesn’t allow for lines that can’t be crossed. It has proven remarkably adaptable, fully capable of handling the most outlandish transgressions, even crimes. And there is no reason why it shouldn’t be able to justify and legitimize the erection of dictatorial rule – as a patriotic act to defend and preserve “real America.”

There is a segment of people among America’s political commentariat who have built their public standing, have built successful careers on deriding all of this as liberal / leftwing “alarmism.” In fact, every time a worst-case scenario doesn’t quite materialize, they feel vindicated. Reflexive anti-“alarmism” had its finest hour after the 2022 midterm elections: The fact that democracy did, indeed, not end on election day was presented as “proof” that all the warnings of encroaching authoritarianism had been nothing but partisan hysteria – and the idea that democracy itself was on the line, we were told, should henceforth be disregarded entirely. But where are we now, a little over one year later? The “alarmists,” it would seem, were right. They certainly demonstrated a much clearer sense of where things were headed.  

Restoration vs transformation

Those who take offense at the idea of Trumpian inevitability are correct: His victory is not preordained, America is not destined to sink into authoritarianism. I agree we must not surrender to fatalism. But the defense of democracy must be based on an unflinching diagnosis of where we are and how acute the threat is – or it will fail.

Over the past few years, the Biden-led anti-MAGA coalition has brought together groups and people from a wide ideological spectrum, ranging from Never Trump conservatives all the way to Bernie Sanders and AOC,with vastly different ideas of what needs to be done to prevent this dark autocratic future. This is the defining conflict within the – nominally, at least – pro-democracy camp: Is the call to defend democracy ultimately just a fig leaf behind which a coalition of restoration is determined to merely restore the pre-Trump “normal”? Or is the resistance to Trumpism under the banner of “democracy in crisis” tied to a transformative vision that could actually move us beyond the status quo ante? Kagan does not weigh in on this question. But if his diagnosis is correct, the answer can’t possibly be to merely restore the deeply deficient pre-2016 type of “liberal” democracy, to just turn the clock back to a situation that resulted in Trump’s rise in the first place. If the danger is truly as great as Robert Kagan says, we need to look for a response that is commensurate with such an immense threat – one that propels America forward and transforms it into something closer to the kind of egalitarian multiracial, pluralistic democracy it never has been yet.