Personality and adherence to international agreements: The case of President Donald Trump
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117820965656 |
| Published date | 01 March 2022 |
| Author | Scott Fitzsimmons |
| Date | 01 March 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117820965656
International Relations
2022, Vol. 36(1) 40 –60
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117820965656
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Personality and adherence
to international agreements:
The case of President Donald
Trump
Scott Fitzsimmons
University of Limerick
Abstract
Although Donald Trump’s foreign policy behavior is often characterized as erratic and
unpredictable, he was remarkably consistent in his hostility toward international agreements.
The president withdrew or threatened to withdraw the United States from several agreements
and consistently characterized agreements as ‘horrible deals’ that ‘cheat’ his country. This article
explores why Trump exhibited such consistent disdain for international agreements. To address
this question, it develops propositions that draw a causal link between a leader’s personality
traits and their willingness to challenge constraints: a leader with a relatively high belief in their
ability to control events is more likely to challenge constraints than a leader with a lower belief
in their ability to control events; moreover, a leader with a relatively high level of distrust of
others is more likely to challenge constraints than a leader with a lower level of distrust of others.
The article then conducts a plausibility test of these propositions in the context of Trump’s
decisions to withdraw from agreements in three significant policy areas: trade (the Trans-Pacific
Partnership), environmental stewardship (the Paris Agreement on climate change), and nuclear
proliferation (the Iran nuclear deal).
Keywords
Donald Trump, foreign policy, international agreements, leadership traits, personality
At the time of writing of this article, the liberal international order was under assault from
within by its chief architect, the United States (U.S.) or, more specifically, its then president,
Donald Trump.1 A central pillar of this eight-decade-old order is made up of agreements that
bind countries together through a mutual pledge to abide by rules regulating a range of
Corresponding author:
Scott Fitzsimmons, Department of Politics & Public Administration, F1022 – University of Limerick,
Limerick, Ireland.
Email: scott.fitzsimmons@ul.ie
965656IRE0010.1177/0047117820965656International RelationsFitzsimmons
research-article2020
Article
Fitzsimmons 41
policy areas, from trade and security to human rights and the natural environment. These
agreements serve as constraints on the behavior of signatory countries that, in turn, foster
mutually-beneficial cooperation. Although Trump’s foreign policy behavior is often charac-
terized as erratic and unpredictable, he was, and is, remarkably consistent in his hostility
toward international agreements. The president withdrew the U.S. from the Intermediate-
Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (T.P.P.), the Paris
Agreement on climate change, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (J.C.P.O.A.),
more commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, and threatened to pull his country out of the
World Trade Organization (W.T.O.), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (N.A.T.O.), the
United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS), and the North American Free Trade
Agreement (N.A.F.T.A.).2 The language Trump used to criticize these agreements is also
consistent, characterizing them as ‘horrible deals’ that ‘cheat’ the U.S.3
Why did Trump exhibit such consistent distain for international agreements? To
address this question, this article conducts a plausibility test of propositions that draw a
causal link between a leader’s personality traits and their willingness to challenge con-
straints. First, it proposes that a leader with a relatively high belief in their ability to
control events is more likely to challenge constraints than a leader with a lower belief in
their ability to control events. Second, it proposes that a leader with a relatively high
level of distrust of others is more likely to challenge constraints than a leader with a
lower level of distrust of others. Put differently, this article argues that these personality
traits influence whether a leader is a ‘constraint challenger’ or ‘constraint respecter’ and
that ‘constraint challengers’ are more likely to withdraw from international agreements.
To explore these claims, this article analyzes Trump’s decisions to withdraw from agree-
ments in three significant policy areas: trade (the T.P.P.), environmental stewardship (the
Paris Agreement on climate change), and nuclear proliferation (the Iran nuclear deal). It
focuses on the president’s personality traits rather than those of other actors in the U.S.
government because, under U.S. law, the decision to withdraw from most international
agreements is the president’s alone.
This article can be distinguished from much of the existing literature on Trump’s
policy decision-making through its use of the leadership trait analysis (LTA) approach to
explain how individual-level psychological factors influence a leader’s willingness to
violate constraints. Scholars have used this approach to explain the decisions of a diverse
range of leaders, such as the leaders of terrorist groups, senior officials in large interna-
tional organizations, such as the European Union (E.U.) and the United Nations (U.N.),
and numerous presidents, chancellors, and prime ministers in Europe, Asia, Africa, and
the Americas.4 The existing literature includes studies of how personality traits influ-
enced decisions about whether to go to war, how to respond to financial crises, how to
approach international bargaining, and how much violence to use during military con-
flicts, among other topics. Taken together, the literature employing this approach indi-
cates that ‘strong support now exists for the argument that leaders have particular and
identifiable traits that predispose them to behave in certain ways.’5 The reliability of this
approach has been tested across dozens of studies with highly encouraging results.
Jonathan Keller and Dennis Foster conducted several studies demonstrating a plausible
link between particular leadership traits, including cognitive complexity, distrust of oth-
ers, in-group bias, task orientation, need for power, and belief in one’s ability to control
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