Before John Kerry was America’s top diplomat, he was the Democratic nominee for president. But of course Kerry’s 2004 campaign against incumbent George W. Bush didn’t turn out all too well. Bush received over 50 percent of the popular vote, after successfully painting Kerry as a “flip-flopper.” But if Kerry was the conventional politician changing positions for political expediency, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump is the anti-politician who runs around like a chicken with his head cut off. From his stances on abortion and his support for the 2011 intervention in Libya to his slight relaxation on immigration and his donations to Democrats, Trump is now the ultimate flip-flopper.
Exhibit A is Trump’s stance on waterboarding and torture. He is asked “Do you support the use of torture on suspected terrorists in order to gain intelligence on future plots?” The question has been consistent throughout the campaign, but his answers have been all over the map.
Before over 121 Republican national security officials and experts called out Trump for his “inexcusable” support of torture techniques on militants captured by U.S. forces on the battlefield, the billionaire was so gung-ho about waterboarding that it would have made the most pro-military, hawkish Republican blush.
A month ago, Trump heralded waterboarding not only as an appropriate tool to acquire information from terrorists swooped by U.S. authorities, but as a form of punishment and reprisal for daring to plot against the United States. “I would bring back waterboarding,” Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, “[a]nd I would make it a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding … I would certainly approve waterboarding. They laugh at us. Our enemies laugh at us, George. They say waterboarding, they don’t even think it’s a form—you know, they don’t even view that as real torture.”
During the March 3 presidential debate, Trump expanded upon his endorsement of torture techniques. Asked whether he would order the U.S. military to utilize interrogation methods currently prohibited under domestic statute and international law, Trump scoffed at the question and unleashed his inner-dictator: “They [military leaders] are not going to refuse me. Believe me.”
A day later, Trump sought to clarify those remarks, perhaps recognizing that his tough-guy attitude and support for war crimes wasn’t the best approach when campaigning. In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, Trump said that “I will not order a military officer to disobey the law. It is clear that as president I will be bound by laws just like all Americans and I will meet those responsibilities.”
So, that’s the end of the story, right? Trump is against violating the laws of war? Well, not quite. A day after he released his statement to the Journal, Trump changed his tune again during a press conference at his West Palm Beach resort. “I will obey the laws, but I will try and get the laws extended,” Trump told reporters. “I will try and get the laws broadened.”
Changing the law as Trump proposes, however, would be a nearly impossible undertaking. Domestically, it would require Congress to go against its better judgment by overriding the War Crimes Act, a McCain-Feinstein amendment banning torture (which was passed just last summer on a bipartisan basis), and a rescission of the U.S. as a signatory to the Geneva Conventions. Trump may believe that he could accomplish all of this through force of will, but he would be mistaken; there isn’t a pro-war crimes caucus on Capitol Hill that “the Donald” can tap into. None of these reservations even comes close to the heart of the matter: that torture is illegal, against everything the United States stands for (the rule of law and respect for human rights), and ineffective according to professionals who have interrogated some high-profile al-Qaeda terrorists.
The whole torture debate may seem innocuous to most Americans. Voters will mark their ballots on pocket-book issues like wage stagnation and the loss of manufacturing jobs—not on how the president will comply with the intricacies of international law.
But Trump’s reversals on torture over the past month do in fact reveal something that should concern Americans, regardless of politics or ideology: either the leading Republican candidate for president truly believes that the benefits of torture outweigh the reputational costs, or he is completely uninformed about U.S. and international law on this subject. The former exposes a dark, Hobbesian side of Trump that would make the most authoritarian of leaders proud. The latter demonstrates his lack of knowledge of the very laws that he would be tasked with enforcing if elected president.
Daniel R. DePetris is an analyst at Wikistrat, Inc., a geostrategic consulting firm and a freelance researcher. He has also written for CNN.com, Small Wars Journal and the Diplomat.