Chaos in the Liberal Order: The Trump Presidency and International Politics in the Twenty-First Century 9780231547789

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C H AO S I N T H E L I B E R A L O R D E R

CHAOS IN THE LIBERAL ORDER

THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY A N D I N T E R NAT I O NA L P O L I T I C S I N T H E T W E N T Y- F I R S T C E N T U R Y

EDITED BY ROBERT JERVIS, FRANCIS J. GAVIN, JOSHUA ROVNER, AND DIANE N. LABROSSE WITH GEORGE FUJII

Columbia University Press New York

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright © 2018 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Jervis, Robert, 1940- editor. Title: Chaos in the liberal order : the Trump presidency and international politics in the twenty-first century / edited by Robert Jervis, Francis Gavin, Joshua Rovner and Diana N. Labrosse; with George Fujii. Description: New York : Columbia University Press, 2018. | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018000801 (print) | LCCN 2018006707 (e-book) | ISBN 9780231547789 (e-book) | ISBN 9780231188340 (cloth: alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: United States—Foreign relations—2017– | Trump, Donald, 1946– | World politics—21st century. Classification: LCC JZ1480 (e-book) | LCC JZ1480 .C454 2018 (print) | DDC 327.73—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018000801

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America Cover design: Mary Ann Smith

CONTENTS

Introduction

ix

ROBERT JERVIS, FRANCIS J. GAVIN, JOSHUA ROVNER, AND DIANE N. LABROSSE

PART I. TRUMP AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY 1. President

Trump and International Relations Theory

3

RO B ERT J ERV I S

2. What

Is International Relations Theory Good For?

8

M I C H A EL N. B ARN ETT

3. Why

Trump Now: A Third-Image Explanation

22

RA N DALL L. SC HW EL L E R

4. The

Donald Versus “The Blob”

40

ST EP HEN M . WALT

PART II. IS LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM STILL ALIVE? 5. Has

Liberal Internationalism Been Trumped?

JOSHUA BUSBY AND JONATHAN MONTEN

49

VICO NTENTS

6. Down

but Not Out: A Liberal International American Foreign Policy

61

ST EP HEN C H AU D O I N , HE L E N V. M I L N E R, A N D DUSTI N TI NG LEY

7. Does

Structure Trump All? A Test of Agency in World Politics

98

B RI A N RAT HB U N

8. Liberal

Internationalism, Public Opinion, and Partisan Conflict in the United States

104

RO B ERT Y. SHA P I RO

PART III. WHITHER PAX AMERICANA? 9. Trump

Against Exceptionalism: The Sources of Trumpian Conduct

125

ST EP HEN W ERT H EI M

10. This

Is What Nationalism Looks Like

136

T H O M AS W. ZEI LER

11. The

Appeal of “America First”

151

J O HN A. T H O M P SO N

12. The

Waning of the Postwar Order: Historical Reflections on 2016 and the Emergence of a Twenty-First-Century World Order

158

T.G . OT T E

13. The

Failed Promises of 1989 and the Politics of 2016

172

J O N AT HA N S P ERB ER

14. Trump’s

Ascendancy as History

180

RYA N I RW I N

15. Assessing

Trump’s Emerging Counterterrorism Policy

198

DAN I EL BYM AN

16. The

“Global Order” Myth

A N D REW J. B AC EV I CH

210

CO NTENTS VII

PART IV. TRUMP AND THE WORLD 17. Donald Trump and NATO: Historic Alliance Meets A-historic President

221

STA N LEY R. SLOA N

18. The

Art of the Bluff: The US-Japan Alliance Under the Trump Administration

235

J ENN I FER LI N D

19. Latin

America: Asymmetry and the Problem of Influence

251

TOM LONG AND MAX PAUL FRIEDMAN

20. Historical

Legacies of US Policy in the Middle East

261

JAM ES R. STO C K ER

21. Donald

Trump and the Middle East

273

F. G REG O RY G AU SE , I I I

22. US-Russia

Relations Unhinged

287

RO B ERT LEGVO LD

23. The

View from the Asia-Pacific: Loose Nukes and Loose Cannons

301

PRI S C I LLA RO B ERTS

24. The

Future of the Atlantic Alliance Under President Trump

322

W I LLI AM R. K EYLO R

PART V. THE LANGUAGE AND LEGACY OF HUMAN RIGHTS 25. The

United States and the Global Human Rights Order

331

M A RK P H I LI P B RAD LE Y

26. Donald

Trump and the Irrelevance of Human Rights

SA M U EL M OYN

337

VIIICO NTENTS

PART VI. THE FOURTH ESTATE, LEAKS, AND FAKE NEWS: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES 27. Donald

Trump and the “Paranoid Style” in American (Intellectual) Politics

343

LEO P. RI B U FFO

28. Leaking

About Donald Trump in the Age of Fake News

363

SA M LEB OV I C

29. Why

Does Donald Trump Have So Much Trouble with the Truth?

373

J O HN S C H U ESSLER

30. Is

Donald Trump Jimmy Carter, or Is He Kaiser Wilhelm II?

380

N A N CY M I TC H ELL

31. Aristocracy,

Oligarchy, and Donald Trump

385

A RT HU R EC KST EI N

PART VII. IS THERE A TRUMP DOCTRINE? 32. Trumpism,

History, and the Future of US Foreign Relations

FRAN K NI NKOV I C H

About the Contributors Index 417

411

395

INTRODUCTION R O B E R T J E R V I S , F R A N C I S J . G AV I N , J O S H U A R O V N E R , AND DIANE N. LABROSSE

E

very era seems particularly turbulent to those who live through it, but this is not the entire explanation for the widespread feeling that the current world is uniquely unsettled. Because the United States remains central to so much of world politics, new developments there are likely to ramify throughout the international system. Both President Donald Trump’s defenders and his detractors agree that he is unusual, and even scholars who doubt that he will translate the bulk of his rhetoric and attitudes into policies expect some significant changes. Thus, although it is still early in his presidency, it is not premature to gather a set of essays dealing with Trump and the changing world he and the United States confront.1 This collection captures the responses of both political scientists and historians, who try to make sense of an extraordinary campaign that ended with a wildly unexpected result. Blending history with political science is always important, but today it is essential.2 The historical perspective situates current politics with those of the past, and so can address whether and how much the Trump phenomenon differs from other foreign policy upheavals. The theoretical perspective helps define the meaning of Trump’s impulses, if that is possible. Do his Tweets represent some foundational turn in American grand strategy? Do they announce the end of the decades-long American commitment to leading the so-called liberal international order? Or are they simply the product of a scattershot

X INTRO D U C TIO N

approach to policy by a leader who revels in transactional politics, hates the idea of being tied to a single point of view, and believes that cultivating a reputation for inconsistency and uncertainty is a good way to gain bargaining power? Trump is not the only, or perhaps even the main, new and disruptive element in our world. It is likely no accident that the same year that saw his election also saw the British vote to leave the European Union (Brexit), the increasing strength of right-wing populist movements in several European countries, and greater authoritarianism in various eastern European countries as well as in China and Russia. A few years ago, even observers who were not normally given to optimism believed that our political world was on a different trajectory. Even though the attempt to establish democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq did not succeed, and the Arab Spring faltered, the general tide was toward liberal democracy. Economic and political integration in Europe, which appeared to be a center of stability and perhaps a model for much of the world, seemed on track to continue. The American role in the world, although diminished by the over-assertiveness of President George W. Bush and perhaps by the excessively relaxed style of President Barack Obama, was central, and was viewed as benign by many global leaders and significant segments of world public opinion. Although there were pressing problems without apparent solutions, including the civil war in Syria, terrorism, sluggish economic growth in the developed countries, and the looming menace of environmental degradation and climate change, many of the mechanisms designed to at least ameliorate these problems, and much of the necessary leadership and public support for these efforts, seemed secure. No longer. As in much of social life, a prime rule of politics seems to be that it is easier to destroy than to build. This is clearly true of the structures for international cooperation and for the trust and the implicit norms that underpin them. It is especially worrisome for advocates of the liberal order, who believe it has been a powerful antidote to the pre– World War II politics that turned rising powers into predators and led to global catastrophe. An interlocking system of international institutions, buttressed by powerful norms, enabled deep levels of cooperation among states. Faith in a rules-based order took the edge off anarchy, even though no world government was possible. Those states that participated in this

INTRO D U C TIO NX I

framework and observed the rules benefited greatly, cooperating on a range of issues in ways that would have been difficult or impossible in the era before respect for institutional dispute resolution was accepted as normal and appropriate. Indeed, faith in the order was so deep that in some respects it became second nature. Not all leaders were equally enthusiastic about international norms and institutions, but few of them really challenged the liberal order itself. The result was a long period of relative harmony among states with a long history of acrimony, conflict, and war. If this vision is correct, Trump’s rise is a threat. His happy-go-lucky disregard for basic norms, and his gleeful challenge to the old shibboleths of postwar diplomacy, may do serious and lasting damage. His call for a transactional style of politics stands in direct contrast to the logic of international institutions, which are supposed to address the problem of transaction costs. Put another way, peace and prosperity are possible because states do not have to negotiate every deal from scratch. They have faith in the international laws and norms that have accumulated over decades. They trust each other. Trump’s rhetoric is an attack on the foundation of that trust. Not everyone believes that the liberal order was real, however. Critics suspect that the “rules” underlying the rules-based order were a useful fiction, both for the United States and its postwar partners. The United States benefited from the fact that many states were willing to let it write those rules. In so doing, it reshaped a large chunk of the postwar world in its image. Moreover, getting others to agree to this structure made it seem like they were betting their security on this order, rather than reverting to old-fashioned arms racing. This had the benefit of extending US military advantages in perpetuity. Meanwhile, other states may have believed that the liberal order itself was a way of constraining US strength. Forcing it to live up to its own rules meant stopping it from indulging in the kind of power grabs that its strength made possible. The web of institutions that Washington was so proud of could be used to tie it down. If this skeptical view is correct, the rise of Trump has revealed an unpleasant truth about international politics: the growth of the liberal order was never more than a thin veneer for American power. It made the gigantic US advantages in economic and military strength palatable to all sides. As the postwar deal became less palatable, however, the emergence of someone like Trump (or any of the nationalist notables in twenty-firstcentury Europe) became more likely.

X IIINTRO D U C TIO N

But even skeptics may have been taken aback by the speed at which longstanding relationships have been imperiled over the past two years. It was well known, for example, that any country could vote to withdraw from the European Union. But few observers took the prospect seriously, given how strong the webs of interdependence seemed to be. In parallel, it seems unlikely that many observers expected an American president to cast doubt on the commitment of the United States to defend NATO allies. It may turn out that continuity will prevail. Many in Great Britain have had second thoughts about Brexit; Trump has reaffirmed NATO’s Article 5, although only after much prodding. But the doubt cast on these commitments can never be completely lifted; the fact that these arrangements have been questioned means that even if they end up being maintained, it will be years before people will again assume their permanence. This might be a positive outcome if it leads to more explicit efforts to strengthen these institutions and relationships. But our sense of stability, once rudely shaken, cannot quickly be re-established. Perhaps it should not be. One does not have to applaud Brexit or Trump to argue that the foundations for the post–Cold War arrangements were in fact rotten in any number of ways and needed to be thoroughly reconstructed.3 Whatever one’s evaluation, the old certainties no longer hold. Support for right-wing European parties was mixed in the year after Trump’s election. Despite the narrow victory in October 2017 of right-wing anti-immigrant parties in Austria, the surprising election of President Emmanuel Macron in France in May and the reelection of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in September could strengthen the center and provide greater stability for Europe. Both Macron and Merkel have committed the EU, at least verbally, to filling the vacuum left by Trump’s “America First” policy. Macron declaimed: “To those who have become accustomed to waiting for solutions to their problems from the other side of the Atlantic, [it should now be clear that] . . . it is up to us to act where our interests are at stake and find partners with whom we will work to substitute stability and peace for chaos and violence.”4 In May 2017, Merkel similarly declared that the days when Germany and the EU could depend on the United States and the United Kingdom “are to some extent over” and “we Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands.”5 These are brave words, but recall that in 2011 British Prime Minister David Cameron and French

INTRO D U CTIO NX III

President François Hollande promised to take the lead in Libya as soon as the US had destroyed Libyan air defenses, and in the 1990s, European leaders said that Europe would take responsibility for ending the Yugoslav civil war. More may come of the sentiments this time around, in part because the situation seems more dire, although preoccupation with the Brexit negotiations limits the ability of European countries, either individually or collectively, to assume greater responsibilities. The American attitude toward a more assertive and independent Europe is likely to be ambivalent. Not only would this be a natural consequence of Trump’s stance, but American presidents starting with Dwight Eisenhower have argued that the time was coming when European recovery from World War II had progressed to the point at which Europe should assume greater responsibility for its own defense and take a more active role in the rest of the world, allowing the United States to step back. Others have argued that a more assertive European policy would provide a check on excessive American adventures as epitomized by the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Support for a larger European role can be found across the American political spectrum. Opposition is not restricted to one political wing. Although few liberals were as open in their concerns as were elements of the George H. W. Bush administration, many had serious reservations about the establishment of a potentially rival political bloc.6 The sense of American exceptionalism, which Trump has challenged, is widely shared and naturally leads to the belief that Europe cannot fill in for the United States. On the other side of the globe, China moved swiftly into the vacuum left by Trump’s abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and President Xi Jinping declared that China will provide more public goods to the region, if not to the world. Of course, these moves themselves are calling up reactions. Some of the China’s neighbors, even if they resented America’s large footprint in the region, have wondered whether a larger Chinese role might be even more fraught. As a counterweight to the United States, however, China may be increasingly welcomed as a strong presence if the US is less active in the region. The overall interactions between the US stepping back—if it does— and how others respond remain an open question. If the United States has been the world’s policeman, for better and for worse, more violence is possible. But there are good arguments both that the large role played

X IVINTRO D U C TIO N

by the US actually led to conflict and that the relative peace since the end of the Cold War can be traced to factors other than, or at least in addition to, the American role.7 In any case, this will indeed be an interaction rather than causation running in one direction only, and what the US does under (and after) Trump will depend in part on developments throughout the world. A United States that finds that it is not indispensable, as so many of its leaders and citizens believe, might be happy to assume a lower profile; the response to a more disorderly world is harder to predict. Here as elsewhere, internal and international politics cannot be neatly separated. The domestic discontent with greater exposure to globalization and increased inequality and insecurity are central to world politics. While we will be trying to understand these developments for years to come, we note the relevance of three classics in social science: Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation; Samuel Huntington’s Political Order in Changing Societies; and Peter Gourevitch’s “The Second Image Reversed.”8 These are familiar enough to require only a brief recap. Polanyi discusses the political and social backlash against industrialization and the rising primacy of market forces that overwhelmed traditional forms of community, responsibility, and fairness. Huntington analyzes the changing balance between the mobilization of mass opinion and mass movements on the one hand, and the institutionalization that guided and channelized it on the other. Gourevitch, as his title indicates, looks at the ways in which the external environment molded states’ political and social systems. The increased exposure to world economic markets without adequate means for protecting, compensating, and rebuilding the losers led to a mobilization of opinion and groups that reject the conventional wisdom of experts and the pleas of established leaders. The external environment then reshaped society and politics in a way that perhaps was predictable, but that few of us foresaw.9 Most international relations (IR) theories, especially those that can be characterized as realist or neoliberal, imply that it should be possible to contain and limit the foreign policy consequences of these developments. The clear national interests and the obvious economic benefits to powerful and widespread economic interests should provide incentives to maintain if not deepen the sorts of arrangements that have brought the United States and the West such peace and prosperity. We shall see. If the rise of Trump is a shock for policymakers who assumed that the liberal order would continue indefinitely, it is a reckoning for IR theorists

INTRO D U C TIO NXV

as well. When we conceived this project we wanted to know how those theorists would interpret the emergence of such an unexpected president. Before Trump, the major theories dealing with the nature of the international order, as well as the consequences of US power, were basically insensitive to individual leaders. The characteristics of the modern system seemed deeply entrenched, as politicians from both sides of the aisle repeatedly acknowledged. Republicans and Democrats agreed about the importance of maintaining a dominant US military capability, while also pledging fealty to longstanding multilateral alliance commitments and the importance of international institutions. Perhaps these pledges were genuine, or perhaps they simply reflected the belief that these were unchangeable facts of life. Trump broke the mold and called into question these traditional beliefs. In a sense, then, his election presents a hard test for IR theories about the durability of the liberal order. It also implicates theories about the power of transnational norms, the stickiness of alliances, and the reduced role of nationalism in international politics. A thought experiment: would the same scholars have arrived at their conclusions if they had known that Trump was going to win?

NOTES 1.

2. 3.

4. 5. 6.

Most of the chapters in this volume, in addition to many other essays of high quality, originally appeared in the “Trump and the World” series on H-Diplo/ISSF. H-Diplo, which was founded in 1993, is part of the H-Net Social Sciences and Humanities online network; please see https://networks.h-net.org/h-diplo. ISSF, the International Securities Studies Forum, was created in 2008 and is part of the H-Diplo network. To consult the other essays, please visit https://networks.h-net.org/h-diplo or https://issforum.org/tag /trump. Indeed, this is the mission of H-Diplo/ISSF. For an interesting European argument along these lines that predated the recent events see Bertrand Badie, Humiliation in International Politics: A Pathology of Contemporary International Systems (London: Bloomsbury, 2017). Quoted in Natalie Nougayrède, “France’s Gamble: As America Retreats, Macron Steps Up,” Foreign Affairs 96, no. 5 (September/October 2017): 7. Quoted in Stefan Theil, “Berlin’s Balancing Act,” Foreign Affairs, 96, no. 5 (September/ October 2017): 10. Patrick Tyler, “US Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop A One-Superpower World,” New York Times, March 8, 1992; Robert Art, “Why Western Europe Needs the United States and NATO,” Political Science Quarterly 111 (Spring 1996): 1–39.

XVIINTRO D U C TIO N

7.

8.

9.

Nuno Monteiro, Theory of Unipolar Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Christopher Fettweis, “Unipolarity, Hegemony, and the New Peace,” Security Studies 26 (July-September 2017): 423–51. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon, 1957); Samuel Huntington, Changing Order and Political Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973); and Peter Gourevitch, “The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics,” International Organization 32 (Autumn, 1978): 881–912. For an account that did, see Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

C H AO S I N T H E L I B E R A L O R D E R

I TR U M P AND INT ERNATIONAL R E LAT IO NS T HEORY

F

1 PRESIDENT TRUMP AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY ROBERT JERVIS

W

hatever else is true of Donald Trump’s presidency, it offers a great opportunity to test theories of international relations (IR). Scholars bemoan the fact that this subfield cannot draw on the experimental method. Well, now we can. Although Trump’s election was not a random event, much about America’s external environment remained the same after 20 January 2017, even if the country gained a president who espoused foreign policy views that are radically different from those of any of his predecessors. Now that he is in office, will he carry out radically different policies? Or will domestic and international constraints prevail? We are in the process of running an experiment, and even if the results are not likely to be entirely unambiguous, they should provide us with real evidence. One (analytical) problem, however, is that except for his longstanding beliefs about trade and immigration, Trump’s other views may be only weakly held, making any continuity that occurs merely an inadequate confirmation of theories that stress constraints. Perhaps the best way to think about this situation is to use the organizing scheme of levels of analysis that grew out of IR theorist Kenneth Waltz’s classic Man, the State, and War.1 (Waltz actually used the term “images,” but J. David Singer’s review essay on Waltz’s book used the term “levels,” which has proved to be more popular.)2 For Waltz and Singer, the three levels are individuals, the nature of the state, and the international system, although I think that at least a brief mention of the level of bureaucracy is also in order.

4  T R U M P AND INTERNATIO NAL RE LATI ON S THEORY

Waltz’s analysis of the individual level focuses on human nature, but most subsequent interpretations look at the extent to which the personality and political preferences of the leader affect the state’s foreign policy.3 Of course, each time a new leader comes to power we get to test this proposition, but I think what makes the current situation so valuable for theory-testing is that Trump is more of an outlier than has been the case with past American presidents. Although many presidential campaigns in the post–World War II era were characterized by sharp differences in foreign policy views, there was an underlying consensus on key matters such as the importance of allies, the need for deep involvement abroad not only to contain the USSR in the Cold War but also to maintain institutions for order and stability, the advantages of reducing barriers to trade and investment, and some respect for human rights. So it is perhaps not surprising that we find more continuity than one would have expected from campaign rhetoric. Republican Party nominee Dwight Eisenhower campaigned on “rollback” as opposed to “containment,” but once in office, he maintained the latter. Skipping ahead to our last transition, the difference between the first four or five years of President George W. Bush’s foreign policies and those he followed in the remainder of his term is greater than that between his final years and President Barack Obama’s time in office. The combination of agreement on fundamentals and constraints imposed by domestic politics and the external environment limited the degree to which a new president would pursue policies that sharply broke from the past. When Obama was asked whether Trump could really carry out a radically different foreign policy he replied that “once you’re in the Oval Office, once you begin interacting with world leaders, once you see the complexities of the issues, that has a way of shaping your thinking.”4 We are in the process of seeing whether this will be as true in the coming years as it was in the past. Trump’s decision in August 2017 to stay in Afghanistan essentially continued Obama’s policy, but the new president’s attitudes on many issues continue to reflect a sharp break from the previous consensus. In questioning the value of America’s alliances, at least as they are presently structured, and in doubting the value of other multilateral institutions, Trump has articulated a narrower conception of the American national interest than that held by any previous president. Relatedly, the

P R E SID E N T TRU M P AND INTE RNATIO NAL R ELATI ON S THEORY5

centerpiece of his campaign, which continued in his rhetoric as president, was that the United States was getting a raw deal in many of these arrangements and that he could renegotiate them, especially in the economic arena. These stances reflect an important orientation toward world politics, and perhaps toward all human relations: politics and relationships are transactional, based on specific bargains rather than thinking about the long run and creating conditions that will be valuable over time. Furthermore, unlike other presidents, Trump sees relations, even with allies, as a zero-sum game. In any bargain, there are winners and losers. To take just one example, his approach to renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement does not appear to look for changes that would render all three countries in a better position. Raising the question of whether there will be radical change brings to the surface a tension between its descriptive and prescriptive aspects. That is, many realist theories imply not only that states should follow the imperatives of the international system, at least on issues concerning national security, but that they usually do so. If Trump is able to basically alter American policy, this not only contradicts realist prescriptions but also calls into question its explanatory virtues. Of course people who label themselves as realists often differ in their policy preferences, and the realist community has vigorously debated the extent and type of international engagement that is most appropriate. Indeed, Trump’s apparent aversion to humanitarian intervention and democracy-building fits with the prescriptions of many realists, as does his belief that bad relations with Russia are partly the fault of previous American policies that disregarded Russian interests.5 Nevertheless, a Trump foreign policy that follows his campaign statements would be hard to square with realism, although it would be difficult to say which alternative theory, if any, it vindicated, Trump’s claim in his first United Nations speech to be following “principled realism” notwithstanding.6 One potential check on an idiosyncratic leader is the state’s bureaucracy, even if this does not fit neatly into the traditional levels of analysis. What will be tested by Trump is less the work on bureaucratic politics that elaborated on Miles’s law of “where you stand depends on where you sit,” but rather the broader view that in modern societies it is the permanent government that rules or at least has enormous influence. To take just one extreme example, would the Central Intelligence Agency carry

6  T R U M P AND INTE RNATIO NAL RE LATI ON S THEORY

out orders to resume waterboarding? Less dramatically but with broader impact, the bureaucracy provides most of the information and options that the president receives. It has been difficult to prove the role of this influence in the past because the views of the president and of the permanent bureaucracy have been fairly closely aligned, even in the case of President Richard Nixon, who exaggerated the bureaucracy’s hostility toward him. With Trump as a real outlier, we will have a test of the extent to which the bureaucracy can socialize—or trap—the president. Many of Trump’s supporters fear that the first year of his presidency demonstrated the bureaucracy’s ability to do just that, and their references to it as the ominous “deep state” encapsulate the view that its strength undermines rather than underpins democratic government. The second or domestic level of analysis may be the most interesting, and it enters in two ways. First, if foreign policy does change drastically, causation may be best located not at the level of the individual but in the domestic coalition that put Trump into power. For some of Trump’s proposed policies, however, this is an implausible argument. His proposed rapprochement with Russia probably cost him votes and certainly was not the main reason his supporters were drawn to him. If he is able to carry out such a policy, we could not attribute it to domestic pressures. Similarly, although the electorate widely shares the desire to have allies take some of the economic burden off American shoulders, public support for the basic alliance structure remains strong. In fact, core national security policies of the type that were central to presidential campaigns during the Cold War were relatively unimportant in the 2016 election, and any changes in this area would be attributable more to Trump’s personal views than to domestic pressures. This is not true, however, of his proposed policies on trade and immigration, where his stance tapped into the deep dissatisfaction and insecurity of many millions of Americans who felt left behind by the economic developments of the past thirty years. The perception that the economic, political, and social elites were gaining at their expense and lacked respect for them and their way of life was compounded by the feeling that immigrants and minorities were receiving undeserved benefits and attention. Trump’s triumph and the strength of Senator Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) presidential campaign showed how many people believed that their government had failed to shield them from an

P R E S ID E N T TRU M P AND INTERNATIO NAL R ELATI ON S THEORY7

unrestrained global economy and were no longer willing to follow the admonitions of political and opinion leaders. Similar trends are clear in Europe as well, even if they have abated somewhat. On the level of the interaction among nations rather than one country’s foreign policy, theories about the strong propensity of democracies to cooperate with each other are also challenged by the election of Trump and the rise of parallel movements in Europe. In a way, this should not be surprising: there is nothing incompatible between democracy and nationalism, and the latter is rarely propitious for cooperation. Many commentators have argued that Trump’s administration will test the strength and character of the American government and society. Perhaps it will. But for the field of political science, it also will test many of our theories of international relations and politics.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6.

Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954). J. David Singer, “The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations,” World Politics 14, no. 1 (October 1961): 77–92. My own discussion can be found in “Do Leaders Matter and How Do We Know,” Security Studies 22, no. 2 (May 2013): 153–79. Avery Miller and Ali Rogin, “Obama Tells the World Not to Prejudge Trump’s Policies Before He Takes Office,” ABC News, 20 November 2016, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics /obama-tells-world-prejudge-trumps-policies-takes-office/story?id=43677921. See Randall L. Schweller’s essay in this volume (chapter 3); and H-Diplo/ISSF Policy Series, 8 February 2017, https://issforum.org/roundtables/policy/1-5m-third-image. Greg Jaffe and Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, 19 September 2017. “In Trump’s U.N. Speech, Emphasis on Sovereignty Echoes His Domestic Agenda,” https://www .washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-trumps-un-speech-an-emphasis-on -sovereignty-jostled-with-threats-of-intervention/2017/09/19/98a7a13e-9d3b -11e7-8ea1-ed975285475e_story.html?utm_term=.65f23770dd62.

2 WHAT IS INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY GOOD FOR? MICHAEL N. BARNETT

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e want different things from our theories at different times. In moments of historical change and great uncertainty, we want our theories to provide some sense of what lurks around the corner. But international relations (IR) theory, at least so far, has not been up to the challenge regarding the Age of Trump. Where is IR theory when you really need it? There are several possibilities for its failing. One is to argue that IR theory is backward looking, not forward looking. It offers explanations, not predictions. Maybe so, but most IR theorists I know have employed their theories to cautiously chart out a scenario or two based on probabilistic assessments and historically bounded generalizations. This time, though, many IR theorists have backed away from the challenge, and those who took it up have limped back in retreat. Arguably one reason why President Donald Trump escapes our theories is because Trump is an outlier, in every sense of the world. Or, to use methodological jargon, he is outside most scope conditions. Our theories were never meant to explain the Madness of King Donald. IR theories are of little use for understanding this White House. Instead, we are better off with a team of psychiatrists from Bellevue. This assertion is not a joke, as I will suggest later in the essay. There is one last reason why our theories are so anemic—Trump seems to be a man who exists in a separate ontological realm. Before we can offer predictions or explanations, we need to have some sense of the structure

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of world politics, the actors, and the relationship between the two. IR theories assume that there is a structure to world politics, although they make different claims about its elements, from the material to the social. No structure is so totalizing that it determines what actors do, but if structure is a cheesecloth, then it has no utility as a constraint. They also impute rationality to actors, though they make different assumptions about rationality, differentiating between thick and thin, value and instrumental, and firm and bounded. The combination of structure and rationality is essential for understanding enduring patterns of world political and international order. And, where there are parameters, there is the possibility of speculating about the future. Trump seems oblivious to structure, which also indicts the assumption of rationality. One implication of this claim is that we should not be so hard on IR theory. It was never built for Trump.1 But the Age of Trump also poses the possibility that notions of structure and rationality are not as disciplining as assumed. Following Robert Jervis’s organization of theory in his essay in chapter 1 of this volume around the images-of-analysis framework pioneered by theorist Kenneth Waltz, I want to explore this very possibility.2

I MAGE THREE: THE STATE SYST EM

Of all the IR theories, realism and its namesakes make the most, and the most elegant use, of structure and rationality. Realism presumes that states are unitary, rational actors who seek security and wealth. The shorthand for such interests is the “national interest.” Why states are wired this way is a matter of dispute; states are sinful, reside in bad neighborhoods, live in an existential fear because of anarchy, are offensive, and so on. The precise reasons do not matter, and the identified patterns of world politics, in fact, are consistent with most of them. States pursue their interests under constraints defined by the distribution of material power and their position in this pecking order. Because of these interests and constraints, states will select those strategies that maximize benefits and minimize costs in the pursuit of their interests. And, like the conception of the structure, these benefits and costs are generally defined in material terms.

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Trump’s foreign policy can be read as falling within the bounds of realism, but possibly because realism is so elastic, it is appropriate for any circumstance. Let us begin with interests. Trump wants to “make America great again,” which could be interpreted as bolstering American security and power, improving America’s economic position in the world, and reclaiming American superiority. These are all within the ballpark of realism. But realists, like many theorists, rely on behavior to reveal preferences. The problem is that Trump’s behavior has provided few clues. Does he think that Russia is a friend of the United States? He has argued that the US has no interests at stake in Crimea, Georgia, Ukraine, or anywhere else that the Russians seem to covet. When Russian President Vladimir Putin evicted 755 American staff members from the Moscow embassy, Trump thanked him for saving the United States money.3 He might believe that Russia is not a major threat and, therefore, conclude that an expensive American presence is an unnecessary and exorbitant expense. It might also say something of his low opinion of the intelligence community’s intelligence. Trump has reversed American policy on Syria, concluding that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is a greater threat to the United States than Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, so allying is the way to go. My point is not to judge Trump’s interpretation of the national interests, but to point out that realists define these interests exclusively in terms of power and security, which can cover nearly any scenario. Trump might act as if the world is his for the ignoring, but he has acted in a manner that suggests he recognizes constraints when they thump him on the forehead. He might sound like a half-hinged demagogue, but he is a pragmatist at heart. Trump has threatened a trade war with China, but thus far he has adopted a much more moderate course of action. Trump trashed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), calling it a good-for-nothing deadbeat. He is not the first American official to call out the allies’ willingness to free ride or raise the question of NATO’s usefulness. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld referred not so long ago to the United States’ chief NATO allies as part of the “old Europe.”4 Trump threatened to rain biblical-like fury on North Korea, and even hinted at a willingness to launch a preventive war with nuclear weapons, but he has not done so (at least as of this writing). His campaign rhetoric on Israel made Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sound like a dove, but he backed away from the most provocative promises. The American

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embassy is still in Tel-Aviv. He told Netanyahu to cool it on (or at least be less vocal about) settlement expansion. For all his bluster, Trump acts cautiously and is respectful of constraints. But how sturdy are these constraints? If we really believe in the power of these constraints, why are we so worried about what he might do? And, if he did actually make mincemeat of these constraints, I am willing to wager that realists would explain that he is an offensive realist. Trump should be constrained by the national interest and the distribution of material power, but, according to structural realists, he should ignore values.5 States should pursue their interests and not let values get in the way. Trump was apparently raised by realists. He exhibits contempt for values, laws, ethics, rights, or morality. He does not acknowledge any higher authority—not God, natural or positive law, everyday ethics, or common morality. He has disparaged the American tradition of moralizing, crusading, and trying to radiate America’s light on the rest of the world. He likes deals, not ideals. He is a man absent of ideology. But, nevertheless, many realists miss a world in which the American president displayed some manners and civility. Trump might be that classic case of “be careful what you wish for.” Realists, despite all their bravado, apparently have a sentimental side. Trump also escapes the grasp of institutionalist theory.6 Like realists, institutionalists treat states as rational actors that pursue wealth and security. But unlike realists, they imagine that states do not need to worry about extinction most of the time, recognize that they have convergent interests that can advance their mutual interests, and have a long shadow of the future. States cooperate, and much more often than most realists predict. Institutions play a critical role. Additionally, states also want to cultivate a reputation for being trustworthy. If not, others will not play with them. Institutions and reputational effects help explain why states comply with their commitments. I don’t think that international relations scholar Robert Keohane’s After Hegemony is on Trump’s bedside table.7 As a businessman, Trump certainly knows the benefits of cooperation. He is not anti-globalization, per se, but rather accuses American negotiators of making the very worst deals for the US because they are dim-witted and corrupt. He argues that he can do better because he makes the best deals. These deals, moreover, should give the United States maximum flexibility to renegotiate or exit.

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Trump is the maker and breaker of deals. And, apparently, he does not worry about the reputational effects, wants to cultivate the reputation of being a mercurial hard-ass, and/or believes that the US has “goit-alone” power.8 Accordingly, institutions to Trump are unnecessary at best or harmful at worst. The long negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership lasted only a few days in the Trump administration. He withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement. The World Trade Organization? Harmful to the American economy. The United Nations? Worse than worthless. Market failures do not seem to worry him so long as he gains from the failure, or at least comes out ahead of others. Public goods? He seems to know only the private ones. With an unusually high discount rate, a make-and-break view of deals, and concern for both absolute and relative gains, Trump is outside the scope conditions of institutionalism. Liberalism appears to be the biggest loser. Liberal internationalism was already showing signs of fragility, and then came Trump. He seems not to care about either liberalism or its values. He has buried the Wilsonian tradition in American foreign policy. Liberal states no longer get much respect. He reserves his highest praise for leaders who reject human rights, the rule of law, and democracy. He has expunged the American from American foreign policy. But credit him with consistency: he also is illiberal at home. During his campaign, he ran against traditional American values. He has been gnawing at the fundamental institutions of American democracy, or what his former adviser Stephen Bannon pejoratively calls the “deep state.”9 He shows little appreciation, or even knowledge, of how government works. He favors ethnic nationalism, not civic nationalism. He likes his America white. Immigrants? They are criminals, rapists, a drain on the economy, and a diluter of a “pure” America of his imagination. The only immigrants he tolerates are those who either have money to buy into luxury high-rise condominiums being built in New Jersey by Kushner Properties or who bus tables at his resorts. He openly courts and defends racists, white nationalists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis. Does this make him one? I do not know, but he certainly seems to enjoy their company and approval. He has been reluctant to disavow them and looks physically uncomfortable when he is forced to do so. Regardless of whether he is a card-carrying or convenient member of hate groups, the result is the

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same: these homegrown extremists and terrorists have never felt more accepted in American society or the Oval Office. The conversation since the election concerns not the permanence of American values and the US system of government, but rather its very fragility. Because constructivism also relies on structure and rationality, it too fails the Trump test. Constructivism injects the social into social structure, recognizing the constituting effects of values, ideas, and discourses. The social is not just an additional variable that constrains actors, because it also helps to construct the material and shapes the meanings actors give to the world. Like realists, institutionalists, and liberal internationalists, constructivists do not credit structure with being so all-powerful that actors are nothing more than cultural dupes. They still have agency, and if they did not think so, then the “agent-structure” problem would not be a problem.10 And also like the previously discussed theorists, constructivists impute rationality to actors, though they take the additional step and distinguish between instrumental and value rationality. The instrumental is comparable to means-ends calculations and strategic reasoning. The value considers how society generates actors’ subjectivity, identity, interests, and ways of making the world meaningful. Constructivism does not fare much better than the other theories, but I can hear many constructivists crying “foul.” Constructivism is not a substantive theory but a social theory. It is more comparable to rational choice than to realism. It tells us how to think about how the world hangs together, not the substance of what makes it hang together or fall apart.11 In other words, constructivism is being asked to do something it never sought to do, which is like criticizing a scholar for not writing the book that you wanted to read. But constructivists have been doing more than simply playing around with ontology all these years. They also have been filling in the details, offering explanations for why global politics is moving in the direction that it is. In other words, they have some ideas about the normative in these normative structures, which often orbit around principles of sovereignty. These normative structures demonstrate considerable resilience in the face of rogue states. The United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq did not create a new precedent in favor of preventive war, but it led to a decline of US legitimacy in part because it violated the norm of war only in self-defense.12

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Yet constructivists are hard-pressed to offer much insight into the near future because their fundamental concepts of identity, interests, and structure are in considerable flux. Identities are shaped by both international and domestic society. Constructivists are best able to assess what actors might do if they can work with fixed identities. But the American identity seems to have become a color-coded battleground for the last several years, intensifying with Trump’s election. And if identity is in flux, then so too are beliefs and interests. If the international does not have the same force as the domestic, it suggests that however “thick” the former is, it is quite thin when compared to the latter. If domestic society is thicker, and Trump just ripped through it, then international society might be nothing more than a Maginot Line. Does this mean that Trump is going to shred the structure of international society? Maybe for the moment, but it might bounce back. But it could be that anarchy is what Trump makes of it. Or maybe, Trump makes anarchy. To summarize, Image Three from Waltz’s analysis falls short because of the porousness of structure and the inability to rely on rationality. Trump has never met a structure that he does not fail to recognize, and if he cannot recognize structures, then they probably will be less effective than they would be on others without such blinders. But maybe we are looking at this all wrong. The structures are not constraining— they are enabling. Trump is not a disrupter of the times—he is a sign of the times. He is not a cause—he is an effect. We should be thinking of Trump as an accelerant—a chemical that turns embers into an inferno. After all, Trump did not intrude on a world of stability; he only added to the uncertainty. For several years the international order has been characterized as unstable and filled with known unknowns and unknown unknowns. What will be the lasting impact of the decline of the United States and the rise of China? What will be the long-term effects of the Russian dream of a return to empire? Now that the Arab Spring has turned to mud, and created its own golem, when will the Middle East ever settle down, and what does settling look like? The old international institutions are too sclerotic to handle the change and the new ones seem like placeholders rather than fit for purpose. Globalization creates its winners and losers, and the losers are in revolt and demanding a change. And Trump is, for many of them, that change agent, the moral entrepreneur of these times.

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I M AG E TWO: INTERNAL STAT E P OLI T I C S

What about Waltz’s Image Two: the domestic level of analysis? The second image incorporates various facets of domestic politics—public opinion and audience costs, interest groups and ethnic lobbies, economic blocs and classes, and national ideologies and societal values. But these enduring variables did not seem to help American politics experts anticipate that Trump would go from fringe candidate to leader of the free world. Trump shattered nearly every conventional wisdom of electoral politics. The experts predicted his political death on dozens of occasions, and Trump seemed to get more powerful with every act they predicted would be his last. According to them, his candidacy should have ended: when he went to the Mexican border to announce his candidacy and declare that he would protect the American people from the know-nothing American political class and Mexican rapists; when, at every single Republican debate, he turned the event into a combination of reality-television show, demolition, and junior-high detention room; when he demonized Muslims and immigrants; when he mocked the disabled; when he openly consorted with white supremacists; when he made outrageous campaign promises; when he showed little knowledge or respect for the rule of law, even vowing to lock up his Democratic opponent for who-knows-what; and when he boasted that the secret of his success with women is owed to Tic-Tacs and assault. The major newspapers covered each outrage above the fold. And below the fold, they kept running articles that attempted to understand the Trump phenomenon. After his election, the experts smartened up. Now it was all so obvious: Trump’s success was fueled by a white rage against the machine, by a large minority of the American (not only male) population that feels forgotten, alienated, and ridiculed by Washington and Wall Street. Trump became their voice. The accomplished huckster and the marketing genius, Trump tapped into a zeitgeist that east-coast elites could not see. In the search for historical analogies to make sense of this period, many scholars have referenced the interwar period and Weimer Germany. If they do travel down this historical path, they might also want to revisit the theories that emerged in response to the crisis—critical theory and the Frankfurt School. Deeply schooled in Marxist theory and influenced by modernist traditions, theorists such as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkeimer,

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Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Ernst Bloch attempted to wrestle with how seemingly rational, modern, and civilized societies might go mad.13 And they tried to understand such madness not as an alien being but rather as a product of the very same forces that were also responsible for enlightenment and visions of progress. Rationality produced its own form of irrationality. If IR theorists turn to critical theorists, it will not be the first time. Hans Morgenthau, the grand master of realism, and other World War Two-era scholars, moved in a similar direction to try and understand a world that descended into self-destruction.14

IMAGE ON E: THE IN DIV I DUA L

And so, we are left with Image One, the individual, which includes the key decision makers and their supporting cast. Many Image One theories recognize the presence of constraints, but they typically shift our attention away from external structures and toward rationality and beyond. Ever since Graham Allison’s The Cuban Missile Crisis, analyses of foreign policy decision making line up rational actor, organizational, and bureaucratic models.15 Although there is continuing debate regarding whether the latter two are outside the reach of rational choice, the prevailing view is that they depart from the standard, unitary rational actor model. And rationality is more than a descriptive model, because it also is treated as the gold standard of decision making. In contrast, bureaucratic politics, the “where you stand depends on where you sit,” organizational processes, and standard operating procedures hinder a rational policy process. One of the striking features of the postelection period, though, is the extent to which these otherwise-irrational forces are viewed as potential lifesavers. The prospect of Trump consolidating power and dominating the policy process is truly horrifying. Bureaucracies and organizations might still be irrational, but they are more rational than Trump. And, at least for the moment, defenders of democracy have placed their hopes in these nondemocratic processes. Even more unusual is the fact that because the traditional foreign policy branches, such as the State Department, are so clearly neutered, one of the remaining safeguards is the military and the generals who surround Trump. Who needs the civilian control of the

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military? IR scholars should take a pledge: rational actor models should never be applied to the Trump administration—not by us and not by the students we teach and advise. Not ever. So where does this leave us? Trump, the man. What are Trump’s interests? He has them, but the national interest is probably at the bottom of the list. Instead, experts advance a range of alternative hypotheses. Trump is all about self-interest, promoting his brand and using the presidency as one big product placement. His presidency represents nothing more than a hostile takeover of the White House by Trump enterprises. If that means climbing into bed with the Russians, then so be it. He is the typical politician who cares about his approval rating and maintaining a loyal base of supporters. If this means playing the anti-Muslim, racist, sexist, antiSemitic card, so be it. But is this nothing more than politics at its worst? Is Trump solely instrumental and absent values? I am not so sure. To an unprecedented extent in modern American politics, the president has a soft spot for white extremists, especially the most fringe, violent, and vile. He cultivates their support, seems genuinely pained to condemn them, and only does so when forced. Although he might not be a card-carrying white extremist, his support goes beyond convenience and opportunity. To watch his August 2017 post-Charlottesville news conference is to witness a man who allows his ideology to smother his immediate interests.16 Trump is the teaching tool for irrational information processing. This is a man who has said that daily intelligence briefings should be weekly and that the intelligence community mistook a “four-hundred-pound guy” for a sophisticated corps of Russian hackers.17 He boasts that he does not need to listen to anyone or anything but his gut. His aides report that he has the attention span of a thirteen-year-old boy. He does not make decisions—he just reacts. Bounded rationality? He is without discipline or bounds. Can his decision-making process be understood with socio-psychological theories, most famously those associated with the pioneering work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky? Is this nothing more than bias?18 We are way beyond System I thinking, bias, or prospect theory. There is a growing body of literature on emotions and decision making. Trump is clearly a man of many emotions, but which ones seem to matter most and under what conditions? Instead, the debate has increasingly focused on the psychiatric. During the campaign, some observers described him as “unfit for office”

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and not possessing the right “temperament.” These seemed to be polite euphemisms for instability. The psychiatric community raised the distinct possibility that he was a man of many disorders and chemical imbalances. Their professional norms, though, restrained them from speaking too loudly. They felt constrained by the so-called Goldwater rule. During the 1964 presidential campaign, many mental health professionals questioned the Republican candidate Barry Goldwater’s stability. Goldwater successfully sued the magazine that polled the psychiatrists and ran the story, and the American Psychiatric Association subsequently established a rule that prohibited psychiatrists from diagnosing public figures they have not personally examined. Behind the scenes, however, many psychiatrists were speculating about which of the many psychiatric disorders, listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, applied to Trump. Narcissistic personality disorder, but with more extremes than the average politician, business leader, or academic, is one idea that was floated. His rage is consistent with narcissism, and paranoid personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and a mood disorder. He has severe problems with impulse control—just look at his Twitter account or watch a new conference. He exhibits pathological feelings of grandiosity. Also possible is oppositional defiant disorder—his first instinct when confronted by disagreement is to escalate. He displays the symptoms of a sociopath: he exhibits no remorse when he hurts others, and, in fact, seems to enjoy doing so. He is a certified serial liar. He displays a thin grasp of reality at various moments. He might have had these sorts of disorders his entire life, but they can worsen with age, stress, and dementia. For many psychiatrists, the Goldwater rule is conflicting with the other admonition that they have a professional responsibility to warn the public of an individual who poses a threat to society. And many psychiatrists (and quite a few politicians and pundits) who refuse to label him nevertheless recommend that we approach him as if he is mentally ill.19 His history with women vividly encapsulates these behavioral tendencies. He might be, in his words, “a great friend to women,” but, as the saying goes, “with friends like these . . .”. The photos of cabinet meetings display his phallocentric worldview. Although Trump is a man of the 1960s, commenters have observed that Trump was not part of the Woodstock generation but rather the Hugh Hefner generation, more

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likely to visit the Playboy mansion than go to a Grateful Dead concert. He instrumentalizes and objectifies women. He judges women (and men) on their looks. He exhibits a need to dominate women in every possible way, including harassment and sexual assault. He treated his ownership of the Miss Universe competition as a license to grope. He has admitted to assaulting women on numerous occasions.20 The reasons probably have more to do with his need for power than with lust. He makes former President Bill Clinton look like a choirboy. If professional athletes acted like he did, they would be permanently suspended. These are ominous times. During the Korean crisis of August 2017, foreign policy experts had an easier time predicting how the purportedly crazy North Korean President Kim Jong-un would act than how Donald Trump would. And an enduring human instinct is to retreat to forms of denial when confronted by the otherworldly. Acts of denial spiked after his election. Some argued that while he campaigned as a demagogue, he would govern as a pragmatist. Those who called him unfit for office during the campaign now mused that he would grow into the job as he realized the enormous challenges and importance of the presidency. He would pick “the very best” advisers, which gave hope that they might constrain him. Others offered even more optimistic scenarios: Trump would recapture a spirit of bipartisanship. Here was a former registered Democrat who is now a Republican but who ran against the Republican Party during the primaries.21 But his behavior since the election has exposed these acts of denial for what they are—illusions. Seventy-year-olds do not change. He is exactly the person he revealed himself to be during the campaign. He is not a pragmatist. He has not grown into the job but rather has transfigured the job to fit him. His advisers come and go with the season, and those who have hung on have sacrificed their dignity to do so. He might still bring about some bipartisanship, but it will be because Democrats and Republicans join in opposition. What is IR theory good for? Certainly not prediction. There is neither sufficient structure nor rationality to get a stable lookout. What is the explanation? At some future point when Trump has departed from the scene, I suspect IR theorists will retrofit their theories to explain what happened. But when they do so, this will also be an act of denial, a way of saving their theories or willfully ignoring their limits. So, again, what is IR

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theory good for? It makes us feel better, helping us get through this very dark moment. In this regard, the IR community is like a religious community. Scholars of religion note the importance of theodicy. All religions must be able to make sense of evil and incredible suffering; otherwise, suffering becomes meaningless. Like religious communities, the IR community needs to make sense of Trump, and our theories need to find a way to do so. Otherwise, we, too, will be lost. IR theory, in this case, acts as the opium of the discipline. At this moment, I am reminded of an old joke retold by Woody Allen at the end of his classic film Annie Hall. In the same way that times like these make me question IR theory, Allen is trying to make sense of why we seek relationships. “A guy walks into a psychiatrist’s office and says, hey doc, my brother’s crazy! He thinks he’s a chicken. Then the doc says, why don’t you turn him in? Then the guy says, I would but I need the eggs. I guess that’s how I feel about relationships. They’re totally crazy, irrational, and absurd, but we keep going through it because we need the eggs.”22

NOTES 1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6.

7. 8.

However, it does a better job calculating how other states respond to the havoc caused by Trump. See Robert Jervis, “President Trump and International Relations Theory,” chapter 1 in this volume, and at https://issforum.org/roundtables/policy/1-5b-jervis. Neil MarFarquar, “Putin, Responding to Sanctions, Orders US to Cut Diplomatic Staff by 755,” New York Times, 30 July 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/30/world/europe /russia-sanctions-us-diplomats-expelled.html?mcubz=0. “Outrage at ‘Old Europe Remarks’, ” BBC, 23 January 2003, BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2 /hi/europe/2687403.stm. Shibley Telhami, “An Essay on Neorealism and Foreign Policy,” in Perspectives on Structural Realism, ed. A. Hanami (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 105–18. Lisa Martin and Beth A. Simmons, “International Organizations and Institutions,” in Handbook of International Relations, 2nd. ed., ed. W. Carnealis, T. Risse, and B. Simmons (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2014), 26–351; Robert Keohane, “Neoliberal Institutionalism: A Perspective on World Politics,” in R. Keohane, International Institutions and State Power (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989), 1–20. Robert Keohane, After Hegemony (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). Peter Baker, “Trump Praises Putin Instead of Critiquing Cuts to US Staff,” New York Times, 10 August 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/world/europe/putin-trump

W H AT IS IN TERNATIO NAL RE LATIO NS TH EORY GOOD FOR ?21

9.

10.

11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19.

20.

21.

22.

-embassy-russia.html?mcubz=0; Lloyd Gruber, Ruling the World: Power Politics and the Rise of Supranational Institutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, “Why Steve Bannon Wants You to Believe in the Deep State,” Politico, 21 March 2017, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03 /steve-bannon-deep-state-214935. Alexander Wendt, A Social Theory of International Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999); David Dessler, “What’s at Stake in the Agent-Structure Debate?” International Organization 43, no. 3 (1989): 441–73. John Ruggie, “What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-Utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge,” International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998): 855–85. Ian Hurd, After Anarchy: Power and Legitimacy in the U.N. Security Council (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007). Stuart Jeffries, The Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School (London: Verso, 2016); Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, The Dialectic of Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007). Richard Ned Lebow, “German Jews and American Realism,” Constellations 18, no. 4 (December 2011): 545–66. Graham Allison and Phillip Zelikow, The Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Longman, 1999). Natalie Jennings and Peter W. Stevenson, “The Fix: Trump’s Off-the-Rails News Conference on Charlottesville, the ‘Alt-Left’ and Infrastructure, Annotated,” Washington Post, 15 August 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/08/15/trumps-off-the-rails -news-conference-on-charlottesville-the-alt-left-and-infrastructure-annotated. Rob Price, “Donald Trump Suggests the DNC Was Hacked by ‘Someone Sitting on Their Bed That Weighs 400 lbs’,” Business Insider, 27 September 2016, http://www.businessinsider .com/donald-trump-presidential-debate-dnc-hacked-400-lb-cybersecurity-hillary -clinton-guccifer-2-2016-9. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice,” Science 211, no. 4481 (January 1981): 453–58. Jeannie Suk Gerson, “Will Trump Be the Death of the Goldwater Rule?” New Yorker, 23 August 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/will-trump-be-the-death -of-the-goldwater-rule; and Jeannie Suk Gerson, “How anti-Trump Psychiatrists Are Mobilizing Behind the 25th Amendment,” New Yorker, 16 October 2017, https://www .newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-anti-trump-psychiatrists-are-mobilizing -behind-the-twenty-fifth-amendment. Jia Jalentino, “Trump and the Truth: The Sexual Assault Allegation,” New Yorker, 20 October 2016, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trump-and-the-truth-the-sexual -assault-allegations. Yousef Saba, “Obama: Trump Is Pragmatic,” Politico, 14 November 2016, http://www .politico.com/story/2016/11/obama-praises-trump-pragmatic-231361; Gary Shapiro, “How Trump Can Heal a Divided Nation,” Fortune, 9 November 2016, http://fortune.com /2016/11/09/donald-trump-divided-america-heal/. Annie Hall, dir. Woody Allen (1977).

3 WHY TRUMP NOW A Third-Image Explanation R A N DA L L L . S C H W E L L E R

I

suspect that I was asked to contribute to this collection because of my remarks about Donald Trump to the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos, which appeared in the 26 September 2016 issue: “I think we’re just at a point in our history where he’s probably the right guy for the job. Not perfect, but we need someone different, because there’s such calcification in Washington. Americans are smart collectively, and if they vote for Trump I wouldn’t worry.”1 Yes, there it is, I am an academic who, like sixty-three million Americans, supported Trump for president. Indeed, as both a Republican and a political realist, I am not only untroubled by his election, I look forward to the next four years with great expectations. “This is,” as political scientist Daniel Drezner put it, “realism’s moment in the foreign policy sun.”2 In this essay, I offer a structural-realist explanation for what I meant by the United States having arrived “at a point in our history” where the phenomenon of President Donald Trump or someone like him is, if not inevitable, highly probable. The short answer is that the world is becoming more competitive and tightly coupled as it transitions from unipolarity to emerging multipolarity—which, if and when it arrives, will be the first truly global multipolar system in history.3 For decades, American citizens, in stark contrast to their leaders, have been more realist than liberal in their foreign policy orientation. There is now sufficient compulsion in the United States’ external environment to demand a more narrowly

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self-interested foreign policy. They insist on a president who unabashedly puts American interests first; who, as a billionaire businessman with highly touted deal-making skills, will fight as an economic nationalist to keep manufacturing jobs in the United States rather than letting the vagaries of markets and globalization decide the fates of working-class Americans. More generally, the old rationale for America’s deep engagement with the world, which took hold in the wake of World War II and persisted through the Cold War, has been rejected by many Americans, who wonder why Uncle Sam needs to play such an outsize and, too often for their taste, “other-regarding” role on the world stage. According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in April 2016, more Americans say the United States does too much (41 percent) than too little (27 percent) to solve world problems, with 28 percent saying it is doing about the right amount; and they are just as wary about US participation in the global economy. “Nearly half of Americans (49 percent) say US involvement in the global economy is a bad thing because it lowers wages and costs jobs; fewer (44 percent) see this as a good thing because it provides the US with new markets and opportunities for growth.”4 In short, Americans want a hard-boiled realist for president. Robert Jervis claims that “a Trump foreign policy that followed his campaign statements would be hard to square with realism, although it would be difficult to say what alternative theory, if any, it vindicated.”5 I disagree. Trump’s views conform to both the political economy and geopolitics of realism, and they represent a sea change from those of his predecessors. Since 1945, but most especially since the end of the Cold War, US foreign policy has been captured by liberal internationalism—a creed that sees multilateral regimes, democratic institutions, economic interdependence, and the export of American values and norms as the most effective and appropriate means to advance US interests and to get others to do and want what Americans want.6 This is the logic behind Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s vision of an emerging “multipartner,” as opposed to multipolar, world. “It does not make sense to adapt a nineteenthcentury concert of powers or a twentieth-century balance-of-power strategy. We cannot go back to Cold War containment or to unilateralism,” Clinton said in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in July 2009. “We will lead by inducing greater cooperation among a greater number

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of actors and reducing competition, tilting the balance away from a multipolar world and toward a multipartner world.”7 It is a view based on the assumption that history moves forward in a progressive direction—one that is consistent with the metaphor of time’s arrow.8 But while this Lockean worldview retains an ideological stranglehold over US policy elites, the American body politic embraces an essentially realist understanding of international relations. As Drezner points out, “surveys about foreign policy world views and priorities, the use of force, and foreign economic policies all reveal a strong realist bent among the mass American public. The overwhelming majority of Americans possess a Hobbesian world view of international relations.”9 If, as survey data show, America’s realist attitude toward foreign policy has been consistent for decades, the puzzle is not why Americans have finally decided to elect a president who campaigned on an “America First” brand of realism, but rather why it took so long to close the breach between elites and the public. International structure provides a powerful explanation. While the United States has, since the last half of the twentieth century, consistently adhered to a grand strategy of deep engagement with the rest of the world, its motivations have changed. This shift can be explained by the differing structural incentives of bipolar and unipolar systems. Likewise, the current movement from unipolarity to a system of more diffused power has sparked yet another, more dramatic shift in American grand strategy. Now, after decades of extroverted US foreign policy, the American electorate finally perceives a sufficiently compelling reason— namely, emerging multipolarity that brings renewed concerns over global competitiveness—to demand an end to liberal internationalism and its replacement with a foreign policy of global restraint, retrenchment, and a return to realist principles rooted in narrow self-interest. In stark contrast with liberal hegemony, which holds that the United States must use its power not only to solve global problems but also to promote a world order based on international institutions, representative governments, open markets, and respect for human rights, “Trump’s narrow definition of the national interest does not include things like democracy promotion, humanitarian intervention, the responsibility to protect people from atrocities or the advocacy of human rights abroad. . . . He doesn’t think the US government should spend blood or treasure on trying to change other countries’ systems.”10

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Indeed, the Trump administration represents an opportunity to base US foreign policy on the real interests of the American people as they themselves perceive them to be rather than what Washington elites take to be the interest of US global primacy. To achieve this goal, Trump must override a generation or more of US policymakers and advisers—who have touted deep engagement, whether for neoconservative or liberal internationalist reasons, and have been responsible for one disaster after another—and chart a new course on the basis of Trump’s essentially realist philosophy.11 But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me, instead, start at the beginning. Under bipolarity, the motivation was to contain and, if possible, defeat the Soviet Union and its allies. Thus, the United States bestrode the world as an institution builder, providing public goods in the form of, inter alia, security guarantees, trade liberalization, and monetary stability to its allies. Because the Cold War was fueled by both the bipolar distribution of power and a deep rift between two universalistic ideologies, realist and liberal prescriptions mostly overlapped. When there were contradictions—for instance, whether to support an anti-Communist but otherwise repugnant regime or, instead, promote human rights and democracy—realist power politics usually triumphed over American ideals.12 The key point is that, once the Cold War started, there was no longer a US debate centered on internationalism versus isolation: competition with the Soviet Union was global, and so the periphery was no longer seen as peripheral.13 In this zero-sum game, America’s deep engagement, whether driven by a grand strategy of liberal hegemony or the global distribution of capabilities, became axiomatic. Put differently, the social purpose of American hegemony and power politics tended to complement each other. After the Cold War, the United States remained deeply engaged with the world, but its intent was very different: revisionism in the guise of liberal hegemony. As an unchallenged Mr. Big, America would now endeavor to remold large swaths of the world to fit its image of international order. All states, including authoritarian major powers such as Russia and China, would become supplicants in an American-dominated world order. The shift from a status quo to a revisionist power is easily explained by structural-realist theory in both its Waltzian and Gilpinian variants. From a Waltzian perspective, the structural incentives of unipolarity—unchecked

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power—provided powerful external compulsion for the United States to pursue grand revisionist policies on a global scale, even though it was free to choose a foreign policy of retrenchment and restraint and such a strategy would have better served its national interests. The logic is that of Arnold Wolfers’s “racetrack analogy” wherein individuals, who cannot see the horserace clearly because of the crowds who arrived before them, can be expected to rush to fill an opening that occurs in front of them— thus illustrating compulsive action arising not from external danger but from an irresistible opportunity for gain.14 From a Gilpinian perspective, America’s victory over the Soviet Union, though peaceful, served with one exception all the same systemic functions as victory in a hegemonic war: it did not entirely obliterate the old order; that is, it did not wipe clean the old institutional slate so that a new global architecture could be built from ground zero. It did, however, concentrate enormous power in the hands of one dominant state possessing the capabilities, will, and legitimacy to transform the world and enforce its preferred order.15 Remember, the core logic behind Robert Gilpin’s theory of hegemonic war is that major powers will attempt to change the international system if the expected benefits exceed the expected costs. In Gilpin’s words, “As the power of a state increases, the relative cost of changing the system and of thereby achieving the state’s goals decreases (and, conversely, increases when a state is declining).  .  .  . Therefore, according to the law of demand, as the power of a state increases, so does the probability of its willingness to seek a change in the system.”16 Prior to the end of the Cold War, this logic seemed to pertain only to rising challengers. There is no good reason, however, why it should not apply equally well to a hegemon that outlasts a rising challenger in a failed power transition. After all, the collapse of the Soviet Union ushered in a major power shift in the United States’ favor, increasing the net expected benefits of system change. This explains not only why the United States remained deeply engaged with the world but, more importantly, why it did not emerge as a powerful defender of the international status quo—one committed to preserving the global arrangements that suited it so well.17 Instead, the United States became, as Robert Jervis argues, “a truly revolutionary power, [seeking] not only to shape international politics but, as both a means to that end and a goal in itself, also to remake domestic regimes and societies around the world.”18 The motive for deep

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engagement was no longer system maintenance (containment) but system transformation. Predicting a short life for unipolarity, Waltz writes, “Those who refer to the unipolar moment are right.”19 Here, the structural-realist logic is twofold. First, the misuse of power follows inevitably from its concentration; a unipolar power is, therefore, prone to take on too many tasks beyond its own borders, weakening it in the long run. Second, excessive power, no matter how it is wielded, is inherently dangerous to others: “With benign intent, the United States has behaved, and until its power is brought into a semblance of balance, will continue to behave in ways that annoy and frighten others.”20 But after a decade of unipolarity (and then another decade), the puzzle for realists became how to explain the absence of any meaningful semblance of pushback against unchecked US power. International relations scholar William Wohlforth argues that the enormous disparity in relative power between the United States and other major powers prevented the return of a global balance of power. Stephen Walt agrees, adding that, consistent with his balance-of-threat theory, the “formation of a cohesive anti-American coalition is not inevitable, and may not even be likely,” so long as the United States does not act in ways that needlessly threaten others.21 Journalist and political writer Josef Joffe explains how the United States managed to keep the world off-balance through the genius of its grand strategy. Unlike prior hegemons that were in business only to enrich themselves, the United States provides global public goods that not only project American power and influence but also serve the needs of others. American leaders have understood that the proper maxim for an unchallenged number one is: “Do good for others in order to do well by yourself.”22 The United States’ transcendence of narrow self-interest, and its willingness to take on global obligations and responsibilities, has allowed it alone among hegemons to “defy history” by overcoming the law that power will always beget power. Then came the global financial and economic crisis of 2007–2008. The world no longer seemed unipolar as far as the eye could see. The Great Recession—coupled with the rise of China, India, and a resurgent Russia—cast doubts on the state of American relative power that found official expression in the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends

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2025 (2008) and Global Trends 2030 (2012) reports. It has become commonplace to claim that the unipolar era is over or fast winding down. Predictions of continuing unipolarity have been superseded by premonitions of American decline and emerging multipolarity.23 Indeed, a February 2016 Gallop poll found Americans evenly split when asked whether the United States was No. 1 in the world militarily, with 49 percent saying “yes” and 49 percent saying “no.” The poll also showed that half of Americans see the US as one of several leading military powers.24 This widely held perception of coming structural change largely explains the appeal of Donald Trump’s “America First” doctrine. Joffe may indeed be correct that the proper maxim for an unchallenged number one is to do good for others to do well by yourself. But the United States is no longer an unchallenged number one—or, at least, many Americans no longer perceive the United States as a lone hyperpower without peer competitors. They realize what many of their leaders seem unable to accept: that even if the United States remains the strongest global power, and there are good reasons to believe that it will, that Washington will be unable to exercise the influence it once enjoyed. Simply put, the American era is over, and Washington must devise a new grand strategy to deal with this new situation.25 Realism, which the American body politic has supported for decades, offers just such a strategy. Americans rightly see emerging multipolarity as a more competitive realm than the unipolar world that the United States has enjoyed since 1991. They rightly see America’s dismal record in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. A majority of Americans now say that the United States should be less engaged in world affairs and, for the first time in recorded history, believe that their country has a declining influence on what is happening around the globe. Americans are rejecting hard power and high politics; in their eyes, history is shaped more by networks of peoples spontaneously gathering in squares than by the military capabilities of powerful states. An April 2016 Pew poll found that 57 percent of Americans agree that the United States should “deal with its own problems and let others deal with theirs the best they can.”26 Little wonder, then, that Trump found receptive audiences whenever he argued that the costs of preserving the international liberal order outweighed its benefits and “that Washington would be better off handling its interactions with other countries on a case-by-case transactional basis,

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making sure it ‘wins’ rather than ‘loses’ on each deal or commitment.”27 Some interpret this to mean that Trump wants to transform the United States into a mercenary superpower, protecting only those countries that pay, so that it can turn inward and make itself great again. Perhaps. But selfishness is not always a shameful thing, as Adam Smith pointed out in The Wealth of Nations (1776). After all, the United States suffers from massive accumulated debt, enormous trade and current-account deficits (the US economy imports half a trillion dollars more a year than it exports), eroding infrastructure, and a persistently sluggish economy, in which business startups are happening at half their rate of fifteen years ago and ordinary workers’ wages have been stagnant (in real terms) for decades. It is high time that America devoted more attention to getting its own house in order. The shift from deep engagement—in both its liberal internationalist and neoconservative incarnations—to a more realist US grand strategy did not start with Trump. When the financial crisis hit and murmurs of emerging multipolarity began, Americans voted for the “restraint and retrenchment” candidate, Barack Obama. In terms of his general foreign policy philosophy, President Obama proved to be a bit of a compromise between realism and liberal internationalism, which explains why his foreign policy often fell between two stools. His administration was split between realists and idealists, and their debates tended to break down along gender lines: realists who viewed foreign policy as a chess game and emphasized the importance of India and China (National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates) versus idealists who championed human rights and democracy promotion (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Special Assistant to the President Samantha Power, the US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, and Director of Policy Planning Ann-Marie Slaughter). On most issues, the realist camp triumphed, but Obama often seemed to want to have it both ways. Thus, in a June 2009 speech at Cairo University, he said, “I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation by any other.”28 But two years later, during the Egyptian

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“January 25 revolution” that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak, Obama seemed to have abandoned a loyal autocratic ally in favor of the people’s choice, the Muslim Brotherhood. An Obama advisor declared, “Obama didn’t give the Tahrir Square crowds every last thing they sought from him at the precise moment they sought it. But he went well beyond what many of America’s allies in the region wished to see.”29 In the end, Barack Obama, as Secretary of State Henry Kissinger put it, was a realist at the prudential level but his vision was more ideological than strategic.30 His realist-inspired prudence—speaking of “hitting singles” and “passing the baton”—struck many observers as strangely detached and minimalist. His own advisor described his approach to the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza as “leading from behind.”31 To be sure, much of what annoyed the foreign policy elite about Obama’s grand strategy is structural in nature: global power is more diffused today and is wielded in different ways by various kinds of actors; as this structural complexity increases, American influence declines.32 But, whereas Trump told his wildly enthusiastic crowds that he would make America great again, Obama struck a pose of denial about American decline. In his last State of the Union speech, he said: “. . . anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about. . . . America remains the one indispensable nation in world affairs–and as long as I’m President, I intend to keep it that way.”33 Trump’s successful campaign themes—that America needs its allies to share responsibility for their own defense, better trade deals, and protection from currency manipulation—stem from the political economy of realism, sometimes called neomercantilism or, more appropriately, economic nationalism.34 Trump is an economic nationalist. He believes that political factors should determine economic relations; that globalization does not foster harmony among states but rather creates yet another arena of interstate conflict; that economic interdependence increases national vulnerability and constitutes a mechanism that one society can employ to dominate another; and that the state should intervene when the interests of domestic actors diverge from its own. We see Trump’s support for economic nationalism when, in February 2016, he called for a boycott against Apple until the technology giant helped the Federal Bureau of Investigation break into the iPhone of one

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of the San Bernardino shooters. We see it in his intended use of tax policy to support particular companies, like tax incentives to Carrier to keep jobs in Indiana, and regulatory policy to assist entire industries, such as repealing Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. §7401 et seq., 1970) regulations to help the coal industry; in his proposals to unilaterally impose 35–45 percent tariffs and to renegotiate trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement; in his embrace of industrial policy and federal efforts to promote certain industries; and in his coercing companies— recriminating Ford, Carrier, and Toyota—to get them to change their ways. “We’re gonna get Apple to start building their damn computers and things in this country, instead of in other countries,” he declared during a speech at Liberty University.35 On Toyota, Trump tweeted: “Toyota Motor said will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for US NO WAY! Build plant in US or pay big border tax.”36 As these examples suggest, Trump’s economic philosophy could scarcely be more in opposition to traditional Republican conservatism and its core philosophy that financial markets, not the federal government, do the best job of allocating investment capital where it will be most productive. It is not surprising, however, that economic nationalism resonates with middle- and working-class Americans, who think that China, among other countries, has taken advantage of US free trade policies and lack of protection for domestic industries to steal jobs and manufacturing businesses that should be those of Americans. As the former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon told the Hollywood Reporter after Trump’s victory over Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton: “I’m not a white nationalist, I’m a nationalist. I’m an economic nationalist.” He went on to say, “The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f—ed over.”37 President-elect Trump expresses similarly realist views—unambivalently so, to the dismay of his many critics—in the realm of high politics. At various times during the campaign, he not only showed disdain for the European Union by supporting Brexit but called into question the very relevance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance as well as the US commitment to abide by the Article 5 obligation to come to the aid of allies under attack. In an interview with the New York Times in March 2016, Trump said, “The question was asked of me a few days ago

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about NATO, and I said, well, I have two problems with NATO. No. 1, it’s obsolete. When NATO was formed many decades ago we were a different country. There was a different threat. Soviet Union was, the Soviet Union, not Russia, which was much bigger than Russia, as you know. And, it was certainly much more powerful than even today’s Russia.” He went on to say, “NATO is unfair, economically, to us, to the United States. Because it really helps them more so than the United States, and we pay a disproportionate share.”38 This skepticism about NATO’s continued existence in the post–Cold War world and its benefits for US national security relative to the costs to American taxpayers shocked the foreign policy establishment and commentariat. How, they wondered, did Trump have the temerity—along with ignorance and reckless judgment that befitted someone clearly lacking the temperament to be commander in chief—to call into question the Atlanticist consensus that US administrations and European governments have supported for more than seventy years now? Epitomizing the appalled reaction of the political punditry, James Kirchick of The Daily Beast responded: For a man who assesses everything in terms of dollar signs, it’s no surprise President-elect Donald Trump sees global alliances as just another form of deal-making. One of the few consistent themes in Trump’s rhetoric going back decades has been a belief that America is being ripped off by the rest of the world. Trump’s conception of the national interest is an extremely narrow and pecuniary one with no time for considerations like common values. Trump fails to grasp that while you can certainly put a price tag on military commitments to our allies, the value of preserving the liberal world order—which the United States built after World War II and has sustained ever since—far outweighs the numbers on any balance sheet. Indeed, even if our allies in Europe and Asia paid substantially less, or even nothing, toward their own defense, our alliances with them would still be worthwhile.39

In equally alarmist and condescending tones, Nicholas Kristof, an op-ed columnist for the New York Times who refers to Donald Trump as “the Russian Poodle,”40 opined on MSNBC that “Trump doesn’t

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understand the complexities of what may happen in the Baltic Republics, which, I think, is one of the things that worries a lot of us the most—that there could be some kind of disturbance by Putin in Latvia or Estonia to test NATO—and, um, that Trump has deeply undermined NATO, the basis for the post–Cold War order in Europe.”41 Precisely—a disturbance by Russian President Vladimir Putin or any other Russian leader in Latvia or Estonia could trigger war between the United States and Russia. To Kristof, this state of affairs seems perfectly fine; indeed, it is the “basis for the post–Cold War order in Europe.” The problem, as he and the media, and the foreign policy titans within both the GOP and Democratic Party see it, is not that NATO has expanded right up to Russia’s border, has deployed components of a missile-defense shield in Poland and Romania, and has flirted with offering both Georgia and Ukraine membership in the Western military alliance despite the fact that both of these countries have traditionally been within Russia’s sphere of influence. The problem is not Western encroachments in the past two decades that necessarily threaten Russia, and that such a beleaguered former superpower can be expected to aggressively push back, even if it means war. No, the problem, in their eyes, is that Trump “recklessly” questions America’s unwavering support for such a state of affairs twenty-five years after the Soviets were vanquished; that he wants friendly relations with Putin and Russia; that he has empathy for Russia as a great power with sovereign interests; and that he respects Putin as a strong and popular leader of a major power, which he clearly is. In 2016, Donald Trump was the only presidential candidate who championed “a policy prescription designed to reverse the West’s provocative eastward expansion, reduce tensions and test Russia’s true intentions.”42 On these issues, he is firmly within the realist camp. The wrongheaded idea to expand NATO by bringing in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic nations was first proposed by Richard Holbrooke, then an assistant secretary in the State Department, in 1996. In response, a prominent group of fifty leading Americans, conservative and liberal alike, signed a letter to President Clinton opposing NATO expansion, calling it “a policy error of historic proportions.” Among the signers were Robert McNamara, Sam Nunn, Bill Bradley, Paul Nitze, Richard Pipes, and Marshall Shulman.43 Yet, Congress, the media, and the foreign policy establishment barely debated the issue, much less seriously considered its long-run ramifications. For all intents and purposes, there

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was no national discussion whatsoever about one of the most momentous (realists would say “utterly foolish”) foreign policy gambits in American history—one that risked triggering a new cold war with potentially catastrophic consequences. In contrast, realists immediately decried NATO expansion as monumentally imprudent and dangerous. “I think [NATO expansion] is the beginning of a new cold war,” George Kennan, the American diplomat and historian known best for having formulated the policy of “containment” in 1947, told the New York Times in 1998. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way.44

Expecting NATO to dwindle at the Cold War’s end and ultimately to disappear as had every other past grand coalition once its principle adversary was defeated, Kenneth Waltz explained NATO’s growth as a pathology that springs from the structure of unipolarity—the vice to which the lone superpower in a unipolar world succumbs is overextension. “The reasons for expanding NATO are weak,” he asserted, “most of them the product not of America’s foreign-policy interests but of its domestic political impulses. The reasons for opposing expansion are strong.”45 Most important, NATO expansion would push Russia toward China rather than drawing Russia toward Europe and the United States. More recently, political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt maintain that “once the Soviet Union collapsed” the “United States should have steadily reduced its military presence, cultivated amicable relations with Russia, and turned European security over to the Europeans. Instead, it expanded NATO and ignored Russian interests, helping spark the conflict over Ukraine and driving Moscow closer to China.”46 Likewise, Barry Posen argues that “the United States should withdraw from [NATO’s] military command structure and return the alliance to the primarily political organization it once was.” Pointing out that the United States spends 4.6 percent of its GDP on defense, whereas its NATO allies in Europe

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spend 1.6 percent and Japan spends 1.0 percent, Posen calls this “welfare for the rich” at a time when “the US government considers draconian cuts in social spending to restore the United States’ fiscal health.”47 The views of these prominent realists are entirely consistent with Trump’s remarks about NATO and Russia’s response to it. Moreover, realists seem to also agree with Trump’s suggestion that the United States should let Russia deal with the problem of Syria. On this point, Mearsheimer and Walt remark: “In Syria, the United States should let Russia take the lead. . . . If the civil war continues, it will be largely Moscow’s problem, although Washington should be willing to help broker a political settlement.”48 Indeed, Trump’s foreign policy approach essentially falls under the rubric of “offshore balancing”—a grand strategy first articulated by Christopher Layne in a 1997 article in International Security that has been adopted over the years by many prominent realists, including John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, Barry Posen, Robert Pape, and Andrew Bacevich.49 That approach asserts that, “instead of policing the world,” Washington should “encourage other countries to take the lead in checking rising powers [in Europe, Northeast Asia, and the Persian Gulf], intervening itself only when necessary.”50 Prescribing that the United States calibrate its military posture according to the distribution of power in the three key regions and allow regional forces to be its first line of defense should a potential regional hegemon emerge, offshore balancing “would preserve US primacy far into the future and safeguard liberty at home.”51 The trick, however, is implementing the strategy—how to wean the world off of American power while avoiding a hard landing (e.g., regional arms races and intense security dilemmas). Even with the most skilled leadership, we can expect a very bumpy ride.

NOTES 1. 2.

3.

Randall Schweller quoted in Evan Osnos, “President Trump: What Would He Do?” New Yorker, 26 September 2016, 40. Daniel W. Drezner, “So When Will Realists Endorse Donald Trump?” Washington Post, 1 February 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/02/01/so -when-will-realists-endorse-donald-trump/. While a full-blown multipolar system composed of several great powers of roughly equal strength remains decades away, the current distribution of power resembles what the late Samuel P. Huntington called “uni-multipolarity.” Samuel P. Huntington, “The Lonely Superpower,” Foreign Affairs 78, no. 2 (March/April 1999): 36.

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4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

14. 15.

Pew Research Center, “Public Uncertain, Divided Over America’s Place in the World,” 5 May 2016, http://www.people-press.org/2016/05/05/public-uncertain-divided-over -americas-place-in-the-world/. Robert Jervis, chapter one of this volume, and “Policy Series: President Trump and IR Theory,” H-Diplo/ISSF Policy Series, 2 January 2017, https://issforum.org/ISSF/PDF /Policy-Roundtable-1-5B.pdf. For a recent example, see G. John Ikenberry and Anne-Marie Slaughter, Forging a World of Liberty under Law: US National Security in the 21st Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Project for National Security, 2006). Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Foreign Policy Address at the Council on Foreign Relations,” US State Department, Washington, DC, 15 July 2009, http://www.state .gov/secretary/rm/2009a/july/126071.htm. See Stephen Jay Gould, Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987); Robert Jervis, “The Future of World Politics: Will It Resemble the Past? International Security 16, no. 3 (Winter 1991–92): 39–73. Daniel W. Drezner, “The Realist Tradition in American Public Opinion,” Perspectives on Politics 6, no. 1 (March 2008): 63. Josh Rogin, “The Trump Doctrine Revealed,” Bloomberg View, 31 January 2016, https:// www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-01-31/the-trump-doctrine-revealed. See, for instance, Anatol Lieven, “What Next for Donald Trump?” The National Interest 147 (January/February 2017): 15. For the dilemmas that American policymakers faced as they tried to balance security and reform goals, see Douglas J. Macdonald, Adventures in Chaos: American Intervention for Reform in the Third World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). On this point, Waltz’s structural realist theory contains an important contradiction. The theory explains bipolar stability as a result of the two superpowers’ reliance on internal balancing; simply put, in bipolar worlds, unlike multipolar ones, the two polar powers are unfettered by the structural uncertainty associated with alliances—who will align with whom—and the dangers of entrapment, that is, being dragged into war by reckless partners. That said, Waltz also claims that bipolarity, though not plagued by the danger of miscalculation, encourages the danger of overreaction—because, in a two-power competition, a loss for one appears as a corresponding gain for the other. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979), 170–72; Waltz, “The Stability of a Bipolar World,” Daedalus 93 (Summer 1964): 881–909; Robert Jervis, System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 118–22. Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962), 14. Like a hegemonic war, the end of the Cold War also clarified the bargaining situation among the great powers—confusion over which is the root cause of war in the first place. For these global functions served by hegemonic wars, see Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

W H Y TRU M P NOW 37

16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32.

Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics, 95. Indeed, “realist theory would predict that the revitalized hegemon will have every incentive to exercise its newfound power to extract whatever concessions it can from the defeated challenger. In so doing, the hegemon will bring the international system back in to equilibrium—albeit, an equilibrium that is likely to differ markedly from the ‘status quo ante’.” Randall L. Schweller and William C. Wohlforth, “Power Test: Updating Realism in Response to the End of the Cold War,” Security Studies 9, no. 3 (Spring 2000): 84. See also William C. Wohlforth, “Gilpinian Realism and International Relations,” International Relations 25, no. 4 (December 2011): 505–506. Robert Jervis, “Unipolarity: A Structural Perspective,” World Politics 61, no. 1 (January 2009): 205. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Structural Realism after the Cold War,” International Security 25, no. 1 (Summer 2000): 30. Kenneth N. Waltz, “America as a Model for the World? A Foreign Policy Perspective,” PS: Political Science and Politics 24, no. 4 (December 1991): 69. Stephen M. Walt, “Keeping the World ‘Off-Balance’: Self-Restraint and US Foreign Policy,” in America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power, ed. G. John Ikenberry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), 153. Josef Joffe, “Defying History and Theory: The United States as the ‘Last Remaining Superpower’ ,” in Ikenberry, America Unrivaled, 180. See Christopher Layne, “This Time It’s Real: The End of Unipolarity and the Pax Americana,” International Studies Quarterly 56, no. 1 (March 2012): 203–13; National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2008); National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2012). Gallup, “Americans Less Likely to See US as No. 1 Militarily,” 15 February 2016, http:// www.gallup.com/poll/189191/americans-less-likely-no-militarily.aspx. See Stephen M. Walt, “The End of the American Era,” The National Interest, no. 116 (November/December 2011): 6–16. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, “The Case for Offshore Balancing: A Superior US Grand Strategy,” Foreign Affairs (July/August 2016): 70. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Will the Liberal Order Survive? The History of an Idea,” Foreign Affairs 96, no. 1 (January/February 2017): 12. Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at Cairo University,” 4 June 2009, https:// www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-cairo-university-6-04-09. Quoted in Ryan Lizza, “The Consequentialist: How the Arab Spring Remade Obama’s Foreign Policy,” New Yorker, 2 May 2011, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011 /05/02/the-consequentialist. Henry Kissinger, “A Conversation with Henry Kissinger,” The National Interest 139 (September/October 2015): 17. Lizza, “The Consequentialist.” See Randall L. Schweller, Maxwell’s Demon and the Golden Apple: Global Discord in the New Millennium (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014); Walt,

3 8  T RU M P AND INTERNATIO NAL RE LATI ON S THEORY

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

42. 43.

44.

45. 46. 47.

“The End of the American Era”; Richard Haass, World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order (New York: Penguin Press, 2017). Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President in State of the Union Address,” 24 January 2012, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/01/24/remarks-president-state -union-address. See Jonathan Kirshner, “The Political Economy of Realism,” in Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies After the Cold War, ed. Ethan Kapstein and Michael Mastanduno (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), chap. 3. Donald Trump, speech at Liberty University, 18 January 2016, quoted in T. C. Sottek, “Donald Trump Says He Will Get Apple to ‘start building their damn computers and things’ in the US,” The Verge, 18 January 2016, http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/18/10787050 /donald-trump-apple-fantasy. Donald Trump tweet, quoted in David Shepardson, “Trump Hits Toyota in Latest Broadside Against Carmakers and Mexico,” Reuters, 6 January 2017, http://www.reuters .com/article/us-usa-trump-toyota-idUSKBN14P27S. Steve Bannon quoted in Louis Nelson, “Steve Bannon Hails Trump’s ‘Economic Nationalist’ Agenda,” Politico, 18 November 2016, http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11 /steve-bannon-trump-hollywood-reporter-interview-231624. Donald Trump in an interview with Maggie Haberman and David E. Sanger, “Transcript: Donald Trump Expounds on His Foreign Policy Views,” New York Times, 26 March 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/us/politics/donald-trump-transcript.html. James Kirchick, “Why Donald Trump Keeps Dissing America’s Allies in Europe and Asia,” Daily Beast, 29 December 2016, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/29 /why-donald-trump-keeps-dissing-america-s-allies-in-europe-and-asia.html. Nicholas Kristof, “Donald Trump: The Russian Poodle,” New York Times, 17 December 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/17/opinion/sunday/donald-trump-the-russian -poodle.html. Nicholas Kristof comments to Lawrence O’Donnell on The Last Word, “What Foreign Leaders Know About Trump,” MSNBC, 29 December 2016, http://www.msnbc.com /the-last-word/watch/what-foreign-leaders-know-about-donald-trump-844354115540. Robert W. Merry “What Next for Donald Trump?” The National Interest 147 (January/ February 2017): 19. A full text of the letter and a full list of signers are available at “Former Policy-Makers Voice Concern Over NATO Expansion,” Global Beat, 26 June 1997, http://www.bu.edu /globalbeat/nato/postpone062697.html. George Kennan as quoted in Thomas L. Friedman, “Foreign Affairs; Now a Word from X,” New York Times, 2 May 1998, http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/02/opinion/foreign -affairs-now-a-word-from-x.html. Waltz, “Structural Realism After the Cold War,” 13. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, “The Case for Offshore Balancing: A Superior US Grand Strategy,” Foreign Affairs (July/August 2016): 76. Barry R. Posen, “Pull Back: The Case for a Less Activist Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs 92, no. 1 (January/February 2013): 121, 125.

WHY TRUMP NOW39

48. 49.

50. 51.

Mearsheimer and Walt, “The Case for Offshore Balancing,” 82. Christopher Layne, “From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing: America’s Future Grand Strategy,” International Security 22, no. 1 (Summer 1997): 86–124; and Christopher Layne, “The Global Power Shift from West to East,” The National Interest 119 (May/June 2012): 30–31. Mearsheimer and Walt, “The Case for Offshore Balancing,” 71. Mearsheimer and Walt, 72–73.

4 THE DONALD VERSUS “THE BLOB” S T E P H E N M . WA LT

D

onald Trump presents the most formidable challenge to the foreign policy consensus that has prevailed in the United States since World War II. We do not yet know how US foreign policy will evolve over the duration of the Trump administration, and it is already exhibiting greater continuity with past practice than many people expected. Trump, however, ran for president pledging a radically different approach toward the rest of the world, and some of his early appointments and pronouncements suggest that this is still what he seeks to accomplish. Think back to what happened in 2016. Trump defeated a large field of Republican rivals with ease, even though most of them had far more political experience than him and represented a range of genuine conservative views that should have appealed to GOP voters. He repeatedly defied many established norms of political campaigning and survived well-documented accounts of sexual predation as well as the release of an audiotape that revealed his misogynistic attitudes. Most remarkable of all, he won in the face of fervent opposition from established political figures in both political parties, with the most strident warnings coming from the ranks of America’s professional foreign policy elite. Opposition from foreign policy experts in the Democratic Party was to be expected, but antipathy to Trump was probably more vehement among Republicans. In March 2016, for example, 122 former GOP national security officials released an open letter denouncing Trump’s

TH E D O NALD VERS U S “TH E B LOB ”41

views on foreign policy and describing him as “fundamentally dishonest” and “utterly unfitted to the office.”1 In August, a second letter signed by fifty top GOP foreign policy experts—including former Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill and former World Bank Chief Robert Zoellick— announced that they would not vote for Trump, because he “lacks the temperament to be president.”2 It was hardly surprising that Trump’s ascendancy alarmed the establishment, because he had repeatedly challenged many enduring shibboleths about US foreign policy. He openly questioned the value of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and said he might not fulfill US treaty obligations to America’s allies if they did not spend more on defense. He suggested it might not be a bad thing if Japan or South Korea acquired nuclear weapons; praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as “very much a leader . . . with strong control of his country”; and refused to condemn Russia for its seizure of Crimea, its support for the Bashar alAssad regime in Syria, and its alleged cyber-attacks on the United States.3 He called the agreement capping Iran’s nuclear program “the worst deal ever negotiated,” vowed to reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in Asia, and threatened to launch trade wars with China, Mexico, and Canada.4 He also gave lengthy interviews during the campaign that revealed a sketchy, if not ill-informed, knowledge of international affairs.5 Despite having taken dead aim at the grand strategy of “liberal hegemony” that Republicans and Democrats alike have embraced since the end of the Cold War, Trump won. Liberal hegemony seeks to expand and deepen a liberal world order—one based on free markets, democracy, human rights, and strong international institutions—under benevolent American leadership. This strategy led both Republican and Democratic administrations to pursue a highly revisionist foreign policy: expanding US security commitments in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, confronting or overthrowing dictatorships, and using military force and economic clout to force others to conform to US values and preferences. Unfortunately, the results of this strategy have been dismal, as the failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen attest; indeed, liberal democracy is now in retreat in many regions. Instead of disqualifying him from office, Trump’s “America First” rhetoric and his implicit rejection of liberal hegemony resonated with an electorate that is increasingly skeptical about America’s hyperactive global role.

4 2  T RU M P AND INTE RNATIO NAL RE LATI ON S THEORY

Foreign policy was not the main issue in the 2016 campaign, but neither was it irrelevant. A consistent theme in Trump’s message was opposition to globalization, which he claimed had cost Americans millions of good jobs, opened the door to dangerous immigrants, and made America weaker. Equally important, a long series of foreign policy failures under the previous three presidents reinforced Trump’s anti-establishment message and undercut Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s claims to be a savvy and experienced leader who was ideally suited to sit in the Oval Office. How could someone who had supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and backed the ill-advised toppling of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011 counter Trump’s charge that US foreign policy “was a complete and total disaster?”6 In fact, she could not. The track record of US foreign policy under presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama was extremely difficult to defend, and certainly not in a way that American voters could relate to and embrace. So why did liberal hegemony remain the default condition of US grand strategy, despite its numerous failings? Part of the answer—but only part—is the vast power the United States still possesses and the favorable geopolitical position it has long enjoyed. The US economy produces roughly a quarter of the world’s goods and services and leads the world in scientific and technological innovation. The United States is the only country that has global military capabilities, that thousands of nuclear weapons that can deter any major attack, and is insulated from foreign dangers by two vast oceans. This favorable position cannot protect the United States from every conceivable threat, but it has allowed the United States to intervene with near impunity all over the world. Because the United States is so rich, powerful, and secure, it could afford to follow a misguided grand strategy without bankrupting itself completely or opening itself up to foreign invasion. Yet these overwhelming advantages also imply that the United States has little to gain from ambitious efforts to remake the world. Indeed, because the United States is already so wealthy, strong, and secure, it also has the option of reducing its overseas commitments somewhat; passing more of the burden of regional security onto local allies; and devoting more time, money, and attention to improving the lives of its citizens back home.

TH E D O NALD VERS U S “TH E B LOB ”43

Thus, while America’s favorable position made pursuing liberal hegemony possible, it also made doing so less necessary. Liberal hegemony remained the default strategy, however, because most of the foreign policy establishment was deeply committed to it. Open-ended efforts to shape the world gave the foreign policy establishment plenty to do, appealed to its members’ self-regard, and maximized their status and power. It bolstered the case for maintaining a military establishment that dwarfed all others and allowed special interest groups with narrow agendas to lobby for their preferred policies. In short, liberal hegemony has been a full-employment policy for the Beltway foreign policy bureaucracy and the penumbra of think tanks, public policy schools, lobbies, and corporations—that is, the various groups that Deputy National Security Advisor Benjamin Rhodes once derided as “the Blob”7—that dominates policy debate in Washington and benefits from an expansive grand strategy. Moving away from liberal hegemony forced Trump to take on the “Blob” directly, and here he faced an unavoidable dilemma. If he put experienced foreign policy officials in key positions, they would favor the status quo and resist a serious effort to reshape the key elements of US foreign policy in the ways Trump advocated during the campaign. But if Trump relied on the insight of new faces who shared his instincts, they were bound to make lots of rookie mistakes. Trying to combine the two groups would be a recipe for endless infighting and make it harder to formulate or implement a coherent and successful foreign policy. What happened after Trump became president? His inaugural address emphasized the principle of “America First,” and he began his presidency by making unorthodox appointments to top foreign policy positions, leaving many others vacant, and openly disparaging the intelligence community. As promised, he withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership on his third day in office, insisted US allies would have to pay for American protection, and proposed a 30 percent cut in the State Department budget. He later withdrew from the Paris Agreement on climate change, highlighted the supposed threat from Islam, and proposed a travel ban directed at six Muslim countries. He continued to send out undiplomatic tweets on a daily basis and relied on loyal insiders like his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to handle tricky diplomatic assignments. Trump paid scant attention to human rights considerations, and at times seemed more comfortable with autocrats and strongmen than defenders of democracy.

4 4  T RU M P AND INTE RNATIO NAL RELATI ON S THEORY

In many ways, Trump’s early decisions were a clear break from the past three US administrations. It did not take long for a backlash to emerge. Trump proved to be a chaotic manager, and his administration was soon embroiled in a growing scandal over Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 election campaign and suspected ties between Russian officials, some of Trump’s associates, and possibly Trump himself. His controversial national security advisor, retired General Michael Flynn, resigned after a mere twenty-five days and was replaced by the more mainstream figure General H. R. McMaster. A few months later, Trump replaced his chief of staff Reince Priebus with retired general John Kelly—yet another experienced mainstream official—and canned handpicked White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci after only ten days on the job. Trump did not immediately abrogate the North American Free Trade Agreement, reversed his earlier claims that NATO was “obsolete” and that China was manipulating its currency, and eventually told reporters he was fully committed to NATO (including Article 5, on Collective Defense). Trump embraced the same Middle East allies that his predecessors had supported, and his controversial decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was more an acknowledgment of America’s long-standing “special relationship” with the Jewish state than a radical departure from it. Trump ramped up military operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, and authorized the Pentagon to send more troops back to Afghanistan to prevent a Taliban victory. Relations with Moscow remained in the deep freeze, the nuclear deal with Iran remained in force, and there was no sign that Trump was going to shrink the US military footprint abroad to devote more resources to nation-building at home. One can easily imagine President Hillary Clinton doing most—though not all—of these things, albeit in a more familiar and dignified fashion. Nonetheless, Trump’s chaotic and at times incompetent management of key foreign policy issues has had an effect. Key US allies are no longer confident that Washington knows what is doing, and a number of them—including Germany, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Canada— are beginning to hedge or, in the words of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, “chart their own course.”8 The end result may be the worst of both worlds: the United States will still be deeply engaged in costly overseas

TH E D O NALD VERS U S “TH E B LOB ”45

commitments, but the ship of state lacks an able helmsman and other states are less and less inclined to follow its lead. Who will win the battle between the Donald and the Blob? It is still too soon to tell, but the outcome will determine whether the 2016 election was a genuine turning point in US foreign policy or simply another vivid demonstration of the foreign policy establishment’s deep roots and impressive staying power.

NOTES 1.

2.

3.

4.

5. 6. 7.

8.

See “Open Letter on Trump from GOP National Security Leaders,” War on the Rocks, 2 March 2016, https://warontherocks.com/2016/03/open-letter-on-donald-trump-from -gop-national-security-leaders/. See “Statement by Former National Security Officials,” in “A Letter from G.O.P. National Security Officials Opposing Donald Trump,” New York Times, 8 August 2016, http:// www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/08/us/politics/national-security-letter-trump .html. Allan Smith, “Donald Trump Praised Putin on the National Stage Again—Here’s What It All Means, Business Insider, 10 September 2016, http://www.businessinsider.com/donald -trump-vladimir-putin-strong-leader-obama-2016-9. See “Trump Election Puts Nuclear Deal on Shaky Ground,” Reuters, 9 November 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-iran-idUSKBN13427E; Vicki Needham, “Trump Vows to ‘Rip Up’ All Trade Agreements,” The Hill, 3 March 2016, http://thehill.com/policy/finance/271723-trump-vows-to-rip-up-all-trade-agreements. “Transcript: Trump Expounds on His Foreign Policy Views,” New York Times, 26 March 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/us/politics/donald-trump-transcript.html. “Transcript: Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Speech,” New York Times, 28 April 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/us/politics/transcript-trump-foreign-policy.html. David Samuels, “The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru,” New York Times Magazine, 5 May 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine /the-aspiring-novelist-who-became-obamas-foreign-policy-guru.html. Angela Merkel, “Keynote. Breaking the Walls of the 21st Century (2009),” Falling Walls Foundation, http://falling-walls.com/videos/Angela-Merkel-1242.

II IS LIBE R AL I NT ERNAT IO NALISM ST ILL  AL IVE?

F

5 HAS LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM BEEN TRUMPED? J O S H U A B U S B Y A N D J O N AT H A N M O N T E N

L

iberal Internationalism: 1945–2016. The election of Donald Trump to the US presidency may mean that liberal internationalism, already on life support, has finally met its maker. The liberal order had a good run. Nearly a decade ago, drawing on the work of political scientist Eugene Wittkopf, we argued that the animating ideas of liberal internationalism included a mix of cooperative tools (such as support for foreign aid and free trade) and coercive instruments (such as defense spending and the willingness to use force).1 After examining party platforms, key congressional votes, and State of the Union addresses, we concluded that these ideas still had rhetorical power but that growing partisan polarization led Republicans to increasingly support only coercive tools while Democrats primarily embraced cooperative ones.2 When comparing changes in the attitudes of the US public and US foreign policy leaders over the period from 1982 to 2004, we found that foreign policy leaders were more internationalist than the mass public on both dimensions of internationalism, although elements of internationalism still resonated with the mass public (such as cooperation with allies) in part because of concerns about burden-sharing.3 We concluded that although the consensus underpinning liberal internationalism had been eroded by partisan polarization and other forces, its central ideas still attracted support among a majority of US citizens and leaders.4

50 IS LIBE RAL INTE RNATIO NALISM STI LL A LI VE?

Donald Trump’s election throws a number of those core animating principles and commitments into doubt. His statements doubting the virtues of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), his opposition to free trade, and his embrace of authoritarian leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin all constitute fundamental challenges to the Western liberal order.5 More broadly, Trump appears to favor a transactional approach to foreign policy, suggesting that he will seek the best “deals” without regard for long-standing US economic and security commitments. The threat Trump poses to the global liberal order is worsened by the fact that the United States is not an isolated case. Confidence in liberal democracy and the wider order is under strain around the world, reflected in the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union, the drift to authoritarianism in countries like Turkey and the Philippines, and the growing electoral strength of right-wing nationalist parties throughout Europe.6 In light of Donald Trump’s victory, what can we say about support for liberal internationalism in the United States? We argue that the results of the 2016 election underscore the extent to which American support for the liberal order can be understood as an elite pact between the two political parties.7 Over the past several decades, US elites contained their disagreements so that a few core foreign policy commitments—such as support for NATO and the benefits of a liberal trading order—were never fundamentally questioned. Although there were partisan disagreements in the past, the strength of the dominant narrative of US foreign policy limited the range of acceptable policies elites could defend.8 Even if the notion of politics stopping at the water’s edge was overwrought,9 the contours and boundaries of the liberal order were sustained by elites from both political parties. That order endured despite the failure in Vietnam and even held together in frayed fashion after the end of the Cold War diminished the exigency of its origins. The Trump era threatens to politicize the core terrain of the liberal order, namely, (1) the relevance of alliances, like NATO, and with countries like South Korea and Japan, (2) democracy as the most desirable system of governance that supports human freedom and US interests, and (3) the importance of fostering a more open global economy. This chapter is organized as follows. First, we review the survey evidence on support for liberal internationalism among the US public and

H AS L IBERAL INTE RNATIO NALIS M BEEN  TR UMPED?51

foreign policy leaders. Second, we outline the risks Trump poses to this consensus, focusing in particular on whether the “elite pact” underpinning liberal internationalism can survive an era of Trump-fueled hyperpartisanship. Third, we identify two lines of future research that may help scholars better understand changing US foreign policy attitudes in the Trump era.

LI BE RAL I N TERN ATION A L ISM AND P U B LI C OP I N I ON : A REVIEW OF THE EVI DEN C E

Since 2011, we have carried out four sets of surveys with US foreign policy leaders. For two of those surveys, we partnered with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in 2014 and 2016 to field similar surveys with the US public and a cross section of US foreign policy opinion leaders drawn from a range of internationally oriented professional sectors. Four key empirical findings emerge from this survey evidence. First, public opinion polls continue to show relatively robust support for elements of liberal internationalism, including a willingness for America to play an active role in the world, support for multilateral institutions like NATO, and support for globalization. In the 2016 Chicago Council survey, 64 percent of the public favored the United States playing an active role in global affairs, including majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and independents. Super-majorities favored keeping or even increasing the country’s commitment to NATO. Majorities of all partisan attachments agreed that globalization was mostly good for the United States.10 Second, surveys of US foreign policy leaders consistently show that elites are more internationalist than the public. In a 2012 survey of approximately 50 Democratic and 50 Republican elites who had served in the executive branch, we found that “strong majorities of both Republican and Democratic respondents said they believed that working closely with other nations serves US interests and makes the country’s foreign policy more effective,” and that “foreign policy leaders from both parties agreed that international economic institutions and free trade agreements are valuable, and that working with regional and global multilateral organizations such as NATO and the UN is important.”11

52 IS LIBE RAL INTE RNATIO NALIS M STI LL A LI VE?

TA B L E 5.1  Partisan

Differences Among Foreign Policy Leaders on Principles of Multilateralism

Principle

Democrats

Republicans

It is more efficient to act alone than it is to cooperate with others.

19%

50%

It is important to protect US sovereignty.

58%

95%

We need to preserve our freedom of action.

75%

100%

“Coalitions of the Willing” are usually preferable to acting through formal multilateral institutions.

10%

65%

Most international problems cannot be solved alone.

100%

70%

We need to enlist others to have international legitimacy.

100%

60%

Notes: Table reports percent agreement with each principle.

However, we also found key differences between partisans on their approach to multilateralism. Republicans were more focused on preserving US sovereignty and freedom of action, whereas Democrats were more concerned about enlisting others to help solve international problems (see table 5.1).12 In 2013, we examined the results of a follow-up survey of nearly 90 congressional staff. While there were partisan differences on issues like climate change, many of the traditional elements of the liberal order retained bipartisan support. This survey evidence revealed “a reservoir of bipartisan support for a number of international organizations, alliances, and treaties—such as NATO, the World Bank, the WTO [World Trade Organization], and the IMF [International Monetary Fund]—as well as for the importance of multilateral action on issues such as nonproliferation and international trade.”13 In 2014, to accompany a public survey, we carried out a survey of nearly 700 foreign policy leaders from diverse professional groups with the Chicago Council, helping to revive their leader surveys that had been dormant since 2004.14 Despite the Great Recession, the survey yielded robust

HAS LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM BEEN TRUMPED?53

support among the public and elites for globalization and new trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Although the public was less enthusiastic than elites about international engagement, a majority of the public—58 percent—still wanted the United States to play an active role in the world. NATO also retained the support of elites and publics of both parties. On questions such as support for key US allies like Japan and South Korea, the American public was more lukewarm than elites.15 On other issues like the United Nations, the Republican public was actually more supportive than Republican leaders (see figure 5.1). The same pattern was observed for several multilateral treaties, such as small arms, disabilities, the law of the sea, and climate. Gaps were smallest on issues like the United Nations and climate change, on which Republican elites have converged in opposition. This finding suggests the default position of most Americans is to support most initiatives to solve problems with international partners, barring partisan politicization.

30% 45% Agree (%)

78% 74% 58% 54% 59%

Republican leaders Democratic leaders

Republican public Democratic public

Independent leaders

Independent public

Overall public FIGURE 5.1  Making

decisions within the United Nations. Please select whether you agree or disagree with the following statement: When dealing with international problems, the United States should be more willing to make decisions within the United Nations even if this means that the United States will sometimes have to go along with a policy that is not its first choice.

Source: Dina Smeltz, Craig Kafura, Joshua Busby, Gregory Holyk, Jonathan Monten, and Jordan Tama. “United On Goals, Divided by Means: Opinion Leaders Chicago Council Survey Results 2014.” (Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 2015).

54 IS LIBERAL INTE RNATIO NALISM STI LL A LI VE?

A third empirical finding is that although US foreign policy elites are more internationalist than the US public, elites underestimate the level of public support for international engagement, globalization, and immigration. In a 2016 Chicago Council survey, we again repeated the leader surveys alongside a public survey.16 For a few questions, we not only asked leaders to provide their views but also to assess what they thought public attitudes were as well. Here, the results were striking.17 The 2016 leader survey found overwhelming support among leaders for the United States to play an active role in the world, a view shared by more than 90 percent of Democrats, Republicans, and independents. The public survey found that 64 percent of the public said the United States should play an active role in world affairs, a view shared by a majority across party lines, including 70 percent of Democrats, 64 percent of Republicans, and 57 percent of independents. Interestingly, only half of the people who supported Donald Trump in the Republican primary supported this view. When we asked leaders their views of public opinion, however, they substantially underestimated public support (see figure 5.2). We observed similar results for attitudes toward globalization. More than 80 percent of Democrats, Republicans, and independent leaders all said that globalization was mostly good for the United States. While lower, 65 percent of the American public shared this view, including 74 percent of Democrats, 59 percent of Republicans, and 61 percent of independents. Only 49 percent of Trump primary voters held this view.

Republican leaders’ perception

51%

Democratic leaders’ perception

45%

Independent leaders’ perception

46%

Actual public opinion

64%

FIGURE 5.2  Leaders’ perception of public opinion: support for active role in world affairs.

Source: Dina Smeltz, Ivo Daalder, Karl Friedhoff, and Craig Kafura, 2016 Chicago Council Survey: America in the Age of Uncertainty (Chicago Council on Global Affairs, October 2016).

H AS L IBERAL INTE RNATIO NALIS M BEEN  TR UMPED?55

Republican leaders’ perception Democratic leaders’ perception Independent leaders’ perception Actual public opinion

FIGURE 5.3  Leaders’

20% 31% 33% 65%

perception of public opinion: globalization is mostly good for the

United States. Source: Dina Smeltz, Ivo Daalder, Karl Friedhoff, and Craig Kafura, 2016 Chicago Council Survey: America in the Age of Uncertainty (Chicago Council on Global Affairs, October 2016).

Again, leaders’ views of the public were wide of the mark. Only 29 percent of leaders thought the public response would be positive. Republican leaders were the least likely to gauge public opinion accurately (see figure 5.3). We find similar results for attitudes on immigration, where the public was more supportive of more open immigration policies than leaders expected. One puzzle raised by these results is how to reconcile survey evidence that the US public remains broadly supportive of components of liberal internationalism with an election in which the more nationalist and protectionist candidate won the White House. One possible explanation is that these survey results are accurately capturing the views of the American public—the most traditionally internationalist candidate, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. A fourth empirical finding suggests a possible alternative explanation—public opinion polls may overstate the strength of public attitudes on foreign policy, both in terms of issue salience and the stability of the public’s foreign policy views. Although the public may express support for liberal internationalism, these surveys provide little information about the salience or importance of foreign policy relative to other issue areas. Outside of crisis moments, voters usually do not care or seek information about foreign policy concerns.18 For example, in the 2016 Chicago Council survey, 60 percent of the public supported the TPP, including 58 percent of Republicans, 70 percent of Democrats, and 52 percent of independents. A September 2016

56 IS LIBERAL INTE RNATIO NALIS M STI LL A LI VE?

survey from Politico and Harvard, however, found that 70 percent of the public had not heard or read anything about the TPP, and among the 29 percent who had, attitudes were mostly negative.19 As a result, there may be a number of foreign policy issues where the wider public holds moderate but weak opinions, while a politically active minority holds stronger and more extreme opinions. On so-called intermestic issues like trade and immigration, those who care most passionately may hold more extreme views, may be more politically engaged, and may be the most visible. If leaders’ assessments of public opinion were based on the loud, extreme views of a passionate minority, this might explain why they believed the public was much less enthusiastic about globalization, immigration, and international engagement than surveys actually show.20 In addition, because it is a low-salience issue about which citizens may be weakly informed, public foreign policy views may be unstable, and, in particular, highly sensitive to partisan cueing or framing effects. As political scientists Alexandra Guisinger and Elizabeth Saunders have recently found, whether informational or partisan effects dominate depends on the degree of polarization. In cases where elites are united on foreign policy goals, publics can be persuaded, but where they are divided on issues like climate change, the public tends to rally around the positions of partisans.21 For example, the recent swing in Republican attitudes toward Vladimir Putin demonstrates that public views can potentially shift quickly with changes in partisan framing. The Republican Party was the bedrock of hardcore anti-Communism, yet it is now increasingly warming to Vladimir Putin, the former head of the Soviet Union’s lead spy agency the KGB, with more than a fifty-point swing in six months according to polls from YouGov/Economist.22 At the same time, Democratic views toward Russia hardened.23 This dynamic also occurred on other issues such as climate change and trade. In a 2016 Politico-Harvard poll, 47 percent of Republicans said that trade agreements had hurt their families compared to 24 percent of Democrats. This difference represents a reversal from ten years ago. In a 2006 Pew poll, 41 percent of Democrats said trade agreements had hurt their families compared to only 27 percent of Republicans.24 One trend that may be magnifying the effect of partisan cueing on public attitudes is the decline in the public’s trust in elites, experts, and institutions.25 Because many members of the public perceive conventional

H AS L IBERAL INTE RNATIO NALIS M BEEN  TR UMPED?57

elites of both parties to have failed on both the international and domestic fronts, the public may be more vulnerable to alternative elites, even singular individuals, who frame new narratives about foreign policy issues. Arguably, President Barack Obama benefited from this dynamic as a relative unknown who quickly rose, leapt to the US Senate, and toppled a preferred party standard-bearer in then-Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) to become the Democratic Party nominee and win two presidential elections. The same is true of Donald Trump, who won the electoral college and the presidency, despite having no government experience.

L I BE RA L I N T E R N AT I O N A L I S M I N T H E T RU MP E RA

This combination of foreign policy opinion trends described above—the low salience of foreign policy, a public that is weakly informed about foreign policy issues, rising partisan polarization, and rising extremist voices around issues such as trade and immigration—does not bode well for the health of liberal internationalism. Although public support buttressed the foundations of liberal internationalism, an important mechanism sustaining the liberal internationalist consensus may have been the bounded nature of elite opinion. Partisan disagreements on core issues like NATO and trade were largely contained by elites, even as conflicts like Vietnam and Iraq were extremely divisive. The speed with which partisan divides on important questions such as Russia and globalization have emerged over the past year suggests that this elite pact may finally be breaking down. As Thomas Wright argues, Trump has distinct views that are at odds with the foundations of the liberal order, most notably on alliances, trade, and the virtues of liberal democracy itself.26 While he may face pushback from elite members of his own party, partisanship is a powerful force, and the Republican public may continue to rally around Trump’s worldview, reinforcing the global resurgence of populist nationalism where zero-sum logics, mercantilism, and zealous regard for sovereignty and spheres of influence prevail. By politicizing foreign policy terrain that had previously been outside the bounds of partisan competition, Trump risks undercutting the foundation of the liberal internationalist compact in the United States, even if he does not act on his most extreme foreign policy statements.

58 IS LIBE RAL INTE RNATIO NALIS M STI LL A LI VE?

F UT URE RES E A R C H O N U S FO R E I GN PO LICY AT T IT U DE S

The unexpected election of Donald Trump raises a number of research questions about the relationship between the foreign policy attitudes of the US public and US foreign policy elites. One set of questions relates to our understanding of partisan and elite cues. A large portion of the Republican foreign policy establishment was opposed to Trump, who committed a number of Republican foreign policy heresies, such as praising Putin and criticizing the war in Iraq. And yet, Trump succeeded in shifting the Republican base in his direction. Why are certain types of foreign policy elite cues more effective than others? Are there limits to the effects of elite cues, both informational and partisan? To what extent can large policy failures, like Iraq or the 2008 financial crisis, create ideational change among a public that is resistant to or independent from elite attitudes? A second set of questions relates to the strength of public support for liberal internationalism. We have imperfect measures of public support for liberal internationalism and an inadequate understanding of the extent to which public attitudes are or were important for its durability. On balance, public opinion surveys appear to indicate continuing public support for key elements of US international engagement. Yet, the size and electoral strength of anti-internationalist constituencies, and the visibility of anti-internationalist messaging, appear to be growing in US media and politics. What explains this apparent contradiction? If public support for internationalism is high but weakly salient, what does this say about the public underpinnings of liberal internationalism? If public support is in fact declining, how can a consensus in favor of a pro-internationalist strategy be rebuilt? Recent survey evidence has given us a better picture of the relationship between public and elite foreign policy opinion and the potential malleability of public opinion. That said, we still have much more to learn. In the meantime, the Trump administration provides a massive stress test for the durability of the international order and may yet remake the landscape of public opinion in unforeseen ways.

NOTES 1.

Eugene R. Wittkopf, Faces of Internationalism: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990).

HAS LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM BEEN TRUMPED?59

2.

3. 4.

5.

6.

7. 8.

9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

14.

Joshua Busby and Jonathan Monten, “Without Heirs? Assessing the Decline of Establishment Internationalism in US Foreign Policy,” Perspectives on Politics 6, no. 3 (2008): 451–72. On growing partisan polarization around foreign policy issues, see also Charles A. Kupchan and Peter L. Trubowitz, “Dead Center: The Demise of Liberal Internationalism in the United States,” International Security 32. no. 2 (Fall 2007): 7–44; and Robert Y. Shapiro and Yaeli BlochElkon, “Foreign Policy, Meet the People,” The National Interest 97 (Sept./Oct. 2008): 37–42. Joshua Busby and Jonathan Monten, “Republican Elites and Foreign Policy Attitudes,” Political Science Quarterly 127, no. 1 (2012): 105–42. Joshua Busby and Jonathan Monten, “Off-Center: Misplaced Emphases in Debates About Liberal Internationalism,” H-Diplo/ISSF Roundtable 2, no. 4 (2011): 6–14, https:// issforum.org/roundtables/2-4-is-liberal-internationalism-in-decline. For a review of Trump’s views, see Thomas Wright, “Trump’s 19th Century Foreign Policy,” Politico, 20 January 2016, http://politi.co/1Jjdhxy; and Thomas Wright, All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the Twenty-First Century and the Future of American Power (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017). Gregor Aisch, Adam Pearce, and Bryant Rousseau, “How Far Is Europe Swinging to the Right?” New York Times, 5 December 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive /2016/05/22/world/europe/europe-right-wing-austria-hungary.html. We were inspired by a tweet from Paul Musgrave for this formulation: https://twitter .com/profmusgrave/status/811697475698429953. See Ronald R. Krebs, Narrative and the Making of US National Security (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Krebs might disagree about how long this dominant Cold War narrative endured. Brian C. Rathbun, “Was There Ever a Bipartisan Ideological Consensus?” H-Diplo/ ISSF Roundtable 2, no. 4 (2011): 32–35, https://issforum.org/roundtables/2-4-is-liberal -internationalism-in-decline. Joshua Busby, Craig Kafura, Jonathan Monten, Dina Smeltz, and Jordan Tama, “How the Elite Misjudge the US Electorate on International Engagement,” RealClearWorld, 7 November 2016, http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2016/11/07/how_the_elite _misjudge_the_us_electorate_on_international_engagement_112112.html. Joshua W. Busby, Jonathan Monten, and William Inboden, “American Foreign Policy Is Already Post-Partisan,” Foreign Affairs, 30 May 2012, http://www.foreignaffairs.com /articles/137669/joshua-w-busby-jonathan-monten-and-william-inboden/american -foreign-policy-is-already-post-partisan. Busby et al., “American Foreign Policy Is Already Post-Partisan.” Joshua W. Busby, Jonathan Monten, Jordan Tama, and William Inboden, “Congress Is Already Post-Partisan,” Foreign Affairs, 28 January 2013, http://www.foreignaffairs.com /articles/138791/joshua-w-busby-jonathan-monten-jordan-tama-and-william-inboden /congress-is-already-post-partisan. Dina Smeltz, Craig Kafura, Joshua Busby, Gregory Holyk, and Jonathan Monten, “United in Goals, Divided on Means: Opinion Leaders Chicago Council Survey Results 2014,” Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 2 June 2015, http://www.thechicagocouncil.org /publication/united-goals-divided-means.

6 0 IS LIBERAL INTE RNATIO NALISM STI LL A LI VE?

15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

Smeltz et al., “United in Goals.” The public survey is discussed in more detail in Dina Smeltz, Ivo H. Daalder, Karl Friedhoff, and Craig Kafura, “2016 Chicago Council Survey: America in the Age of Uncertainty,” Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 6 October 2016, https://www.thechicagocouncil .org/publication/america-age-uncertainty?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium =post&utm_campaign=ccs-report. The leader survey was conducted with the support from the Texas National Security Network. Busby et al., “How the Elite Misjudge the US Electorate on International Engagement.” Busby and Monten, “Republican Elites and Foreign Policy Attitudes.” Doug Palmer, “POLITICO-Harvard Poll: Americans Say ‘TPP Who?’” Politico, 23 September 2016, http://politi.co/2cNCpQf. Busby et al., “How the Elite Misjudge the US Electorate on International Engagement.” Alexandra Guisinger and Elizabeth Saunders, “Mapping the Boundaries of Elite Cues: How Elites Shape Mass Opinion Across International Issues,” International Studies Quarterly 61, no. 2 (2017): 425–41. On the effect of elite cues, see also John Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Gabriel S. Lenz, Follow the Leader? How Voters Respond to Politicians’ Policies and Performance (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2012); and Adam J. Berinsky, In Time of War: Understanding American Public Opinion from World War II to Iraq (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). Allan Smith, “There’s Been a Breathtaking Swing in Putin’s Popularity Among Republicans in the Trump Era,” Business Insider, 14 December 2016, http://www.businessinsider.com /putin-poll-favorability-trump-2016-12. Between April 2016 and January 2017, the percentage of Democrats and Lean Democrats who said Russia was a major threat increased thirty percentage points, from 37 to 67 percent. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “The World Facing Trump: Public Sees ISIS, Cyberattacks, North Korea as Top Threats,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 12 January 2017, http://www.people-press.org/2017/01/12 /the-world-facing-trump-public-sees-isis-cyberattacks-north-korea-as-top-threats. Benjamin Oreskes, “POLITICO-Harvard Poll: Amid Trump’s Rise, GOP Voters Turn Sharply Away from Free Trade,” Politico, 24 September 2016, http://politi.co/2crrqJp; Palmer, “POLITICO-Harvard Poll.” Chris Hayes, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy (New York: Broadway Books, 2012); and Tom Nichols, “The Death of Expertise,” The Federalist, 17 January 2014, http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/. Wright, All Measures Short of War, 224.

6 DOWN BUT NOT OUT A Liberal International American Foreign Policy S T E P H E N C H A U D O I N , H E L E N V. M I L N E R , A N D D U S T I N T I N G L E Y

INTRODUCTION

An ongoing debate among prominent scholars of international relations concerns the future direction of American foreign policy.1 In particular, scholars, pundits, and commentators wonder whether the United States will continue to pursue a liberal internationalist stance. At its core, liberal internationalism entails international engagement, not isolationism. And despite the “liberal” terminology, it is not a policy skewed toward Democrats or political liberals and away from Republicans and political conservatives. Instead, the liberal component of internationalism embodies many bipartisan principles: support for freedom, democracy, human rights, a free press, as well as an open world economy for the movement of goods, services, people, and ideas. Not surprisingly, an amazing amount of ink has been spilled over what the election of Donald Trump as president means for the trajectory of US foreign policy and a possible break from liberal internationalism. In this chapter, we argue that the Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Congress will find it in their own interests to maintain many existing elements of US foreign policy, which will continue to have substantial liberal internationalist components. In part, this is because liberal internationalism still advances America’s vital national interests. America’s many allies help it coordinate its defense and security and, for

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a price, make America more powerful; they help extend American influence and assist in the fight against global problems like terrorism. The trade and investment agreements the United States has negotiated and its World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments help ensure a fairer and more open world economy in which the American economy can prosper. The international institutions the United States created after World War II, such as the United Nations (UN), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Bank, still enable it to influence—though not determine—the structure of all international economic and political relations. Exiting or ending these agreements will not enhance US power or security; renegotiating them may give the United States a bit more leverage in the short run, but in the longer run may also destroy any goodwill the country possesses. Moreover, disengaging from the world will only leave it more susceptible to the influence of other powerful countries that might not have America’s interests at heart, like China or Russia. Some scholars have argued that liberal internationalism is no longer in the United States’ national interest2 and that the government should pull back from its foreign commitments, abandoning its allies and treaties, and even pursue a policy of economic nationalism. While these policies may appear cheaper in the short run, it is not clear that they will provide more security, prosperity, or peace in the medium to long run. One can imagine a world of spheres of influence where Russia and China dominate much of the world, leaving the United States with few friends or markets. The many problems the Trump administration seeks to remedy are least of all caused by global forces and most of all self-inflicted by domestic politics. The financial crisis had few international sources; inequality is deeply related to tax and fiscal policy in the US and also technological change; the Iraq war was one of choice. Changing America’s international relations is unlikely to fix any of these problems, and most likely to make dealing with the interdependent world even more costly. America’s allies and its multilateral engagements help it project its influence and make the country more secure and prosperous. The crux of our argument concerns two sets of constraints on Trump’s foreign policy actions. First, domestic politics and the institutions that shape American foreign policy will be powerful constraints on Trump’s ability to depart completely from a liberal internationalist foreign policy. The individuals who have influence over American foreign policy have a

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wide array of heterogeneous policy preferences, and they inhabit institutional positions that give them powerful tools to resist radical changes. No matter the energy of the president and his policy team, politics in the American democracy, with its many checks and balances, is hard and time consuming, and policy directions that are deeply ingrained are difficult to change. Second, structural factors of the international system will continue to position the United States as most likely to benefit from liberal internationalist policies. The US occupies a favored position in many international institutions, which already allow it to enjoy favorable policies. Abandoning these institutions will be costly and painful for the United States—for its public, its economy and firms, its military, and its political elites. The loss of a leadership position in world affairs will not be costless, and the loss of legitimacy abroad will have consequences that make achieving American goals harder. Moreover, countries can retaliate if the United States adopts extreme policies that hurt them. The importance of international pressures has been evident many times before and after the end of the Cold War. We note at the outset that we are intentionally optimistic, much more so than many of our colleagues. On those who are optimistic about American foreign policy in the wake of Trump’s election, political commentator Philip Stephens recently quipped that “there are precious few of them around these days.”3 We simultaneously recognize that Donald Trump, as president of the United States of America, along with the millions of Americans that voted for him, desires change. But as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. So we would urge the executive branch and all policymakers to recognize the tremendous opportunities available to President Trump (i.e., not candidate Trump) and to continue the ongoing process of engagement that continues to make America great. Our intentional optimism might turn out to be misplaced. Many of our arguments and predictions emerged in the early months of the Trump presidency. The first eight months of the Trump presidency, while undoubtedly tumultuous and fast-paced, have, on balance, made us feel confident in our stance. More often than not, the constraints we describe have blunted efforts to move away from liberal internationalism. We lay out a set of arguments that we hope provide positive reasons for following a path forward that recognizes America’s important role in

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the world. The United States has a mandate: not just for making America great, but also for making everyone else great. We recognize that this is a tall order. We also recognize that in the coming years, bipartisan and nonpartisan forces in Congress, in the courts, in cities, and in dining rooms will be necessary to check, and guide, the awesome power of the president of the United States of America. Democracy is about disagreement, reasoned argumentation, and the upholding of core principles that are not beholden to one set of partisans. Our analysis unfolds as follows. First, we provide a brief overview of the concept of liberal internationalism and then discuss whether or not it declined during the Barack Obama presidency. Then we point out the domestic and international constraints that make deviating from liberal internationalism more difficult for any American president. We analyze several policy areas, like trade and immigration, to explore whether or not we should expect a retreat from liberal internationalism. We consider this first from a domestic political-economy perspective and then from a more international strategic view.4 We then consider an issue area that might seem particularly imperiled by the Trump administration: global climate change.

LI BERAL INTERNATIONAL ISM: A N OV ERV I EW

Often lost in prognostications about Trump’s future foreign policy is that Trump’s election is but the latest data point in an ongoing debate among academics and pundits over the past, present, and future of liberal internationalism.5 This debate seems especially urgent today because Trump’s election has also coincided with watershed events like Brexit, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s failed referendum, and the rise of populist movements in a range of Western countries, such as France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Denmark. As is often required of debates over concepts that have been used over long periods of time, it is helpful to first isolate what we mean by liberal internationalism. First, there is the internationalist component of liberal internationalism. Many scholars seem to agree on what this element of the concept means.6 Does the United States engage abroad or not? Is it

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willing and does it feel responsible for dealing with the major problems around the world, or should it let others take care of their own problems? Such engagement is the opposite of isolationism and a retreat from global affairs. A key question is: how much of what type of engagement? The US has many policy instruments it can use.7 And it can employ these singly or in combination to pursue many different types of goals. An internationalist foreign policy is one that actively tries to use those policy instruments to deal with myriad problems outside the country, and even ones that do not directly threaten its core national security. Internationalism in today’s context is similar to what it meant in President Woodrow Wilson’s time. The question then is whether the internationalist foreign policy the United States has followed since World War II will continue. Will the US maintain its alliances and build coalitions or will it leave others to fend for themselves and go it alone? Will it maintain its commitments to international institutions or abandon them? Will it support an open world economy or turn to protectionism? The liberal component has been more contentious to define, but is essential to understanding the direction of policy. Russian President Vladimir Putin today seems to be following a much more internationalist foreign policy than at any time since the fall of the Soviet Union, but it is not a liberal one. As discussed earlier, this is not an antonym to conservatism. Instead, we take the term to derive from the traditional political theory notion of liberalism, and thus in foreign policy to be about valuing and promoting democracy—especially liberal democracy—as well as human rights broadly construed and an open world economy. A liberal internationalist policy is actively trying to use policy tools to forward these types of goals. We further add that liberal internationalism does not foreclose the use of military force when it comes to protecting and promoting these values. In light of this, how should we interpret Trump’s expressed foreign policy views? Are Trump’s expressed positions the antithesis of liberal internationalism? A useful starting point is to ask: does his slogan of “America First” mean isolationism? The answer is no. Trump is often talking about renegotiation, not withdrawal. Wanting a “better deal” does not mean abandoning all existing agreements or severing all relations. On many occasions, he and his policy team have emphasized searching for better deals within existing international institutions. For example, he has

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expressed, at times, a desire to take disputes with China to the World Trade Organization. And while calling for an end to US intervention abroad, Trump agreed in August 2017 to deepen US involvement in Afghanistan by increasing American troops there.8 Domestic political pressures and the international system may prevent Trump from any hasty move to end American engagement with the rest of the world. Similarly, his evaluations of existing foreign policies have focused on transactional cost–benefit analysis. As evidenced by the approach of his transition teams, he has asked, “what does this foreign policy cost us and what do we get in return?” While that question often shows a belief that the benefits may not justify the costs, the question itself does not imply a departure from liberal internationalism. As much as past politicians might have protested otherwise, liberal internationalism in American foreign policy has never been about benign charity for the world beyond US borders. It has been a calculated policy to protect and advance American interests. It might be argued that Trump’s view is antithetical to liberal internationalism because he sees the world in purely zero-sum terms and only wants a short-term transactional relationship with other countries that entirely benefits the United States. In contrast, liberal internationalism, it is argued, implies a positive-sum worldview and a more diffuse, longterm reciprocity among countries. Political scientist John Ikenberry’s work on liberal internationalism might be construed this way.9 However, as any businessperson who has made deals knows, voluntary agreements occur only if both sides gain something. How much each side gains is a matter of negotiating power, but both sides must get enough to accept the agreement. And as we note, characterizing liberal internationalism as failing to maximize the gains the United States gets from any agreement seems naïve. The US built the postwar system to maximize its influence over the long run. Hard but polite bargaining with other countries has been the norm, despite Trump’s unsupported claims to the contrary. Trump’s commitment to liberal policies is less clear. Promoting democracy and human rights has not to date been a cornerstone of Trump’s foreign policy remarks. He does not appear likely to support the International Criminal Court (ICC), especially if it moves forward with its investigations into torture committed by US forces in Afghanistan. Trump also appears unlikely to commit the United States to new obligations, such

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as the long-standing UN Convention on the Law of the Seas or a new climate change treaty. He has been unmoved by criticism of his positive overtures toward those with poor human rights records, like President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines. Yet, even during purported periods of the “heyday” of liberal internationalism, the United States regularly violated principles of democracy promotion and human rights in its policies.10 Even before Trump, the United States had failed to ratify international agreements like the UN Law of the Sea Convention, the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the Kyoto Protocol. These failures to engage have largely been due to domestic politics and the failure of Congress to ratify the agreements.11 Casting Trump’s policies as a major deviation might be a mistake.

T H E D EC L INE OF L IBERAL INTE RN AT I ON A LI SM? THE OBAMA A DMINIST R AT I ON

During the decades of debate over liberal internationalism, there has been a strong temptation to select particular windows of time or events and extrapolate from them broad temporal trends and predictions. This approach discounts the extremely slow-moving nature of ideological changes in American foreign policy. Our entries into previous debates12 over liberal internationalism were well-timed to demonstrate this phenomenon. In 2010, we wrote about trends in the politics of liberal internationalism, ending in the mid-to-late years of the George W. Bush administration. We revisited this debate in 2011, with greater emphasis on predictions regarding the Obama administration. In 2011, many predictions were dire. One side of the debate (not ours) argued that deepening political polarization meant that American foreign policy was turning its back on liberal internationalism. For example, political scientists Charles Kupchan and Peter Trubowitz argue: “In contrast, the Obama administration has backed away from this [liberal internationalist] agenda. As we predicted in “Dead Center,” growing income inequality and economic troubles at home have curtailed the appetite for further liberalization of US foreign trade, particularly among Democrats sensitive to trade union support.”13

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The fear was that Obama was abandoning America’s long-standing role in world politics. Ironically, much angst over Trump’s current trade policy surrounds his willingness to roll back the gains of the Obama administration’s later years. President Barack Obama received trade negotiating authority from Congress (admittedly after a drawn-out fight with Republicans), negotiated several major free trade agreements, and ratified several preferential trade agreements.14 To be fair, our own prediction was also wrong, because it was so understated. In early 2011, we wrote that Obama’s ability to “avoid rampant protectionism against the backdrop of the current global economic climate” was evidence that his administration would stay the course on free trade.15 Clearly, he far surpassed that low hurdle with his concrete actions to deepen free trade, even as the economic recovery remained less than stellar. In terms of international institutions, Obama forged ahead in some areas and resisted retrenchment in others. For example, the New START treaty with Russia was ratified with bipartisan support, as thirteen Republicans crossed the aisle to vote for it. He decreased the leftover animosity toward the ICC from the Bush administration, even offering military assistance in locating suspect Joseph Kony, a Ugandan guerilla leader accused of crimes against humanity by the ICC.16 Obama’s record on the use of force to promote liberal internationalist ideals is more difficult to assess. Much like the Trump campaign, his record provides a screen on which pundits can project their own leanings, with Obama having done too much or too little depending on the particular commentator. His military force drawdowns in Afghanistan and Iraq tended to be too slow for those on the Left, while his increases in troop deployments in response to changing conditions on the ground were too little, too late for those on the Right. Depending on the commentator, his refusal to commit troops to Syria was either prudence or cowardice. Some might call this an illiberal decision since he refrained from an opportunity to promote democracy in Syria and overthrow a dictator. Others might give him liberal credit for at least not helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad destroy the rebels. In Ukraine, some might fault Obama for failing to prevent the decidedly illiberal annexation of Crimea, while others might credit him for a tough sanctions regime that hurt Russia. In Libya, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces helped speed the overthrow of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, yet then also failed to stay and build

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peace. (Again, ironically, following a policy trajectory in which the United States wins a war over regime change and then loses the peace, as occurred during the George W. Bush administration in Iraq and Afghanistan). In sum, the Obama administration was marked by some distinct victories for liberal internationalism, especially on trade and climate change, but also was checkered in areas like democracy promotion. What is clear, however, is that the historical record of the Obama administration cannot be characterized as an abandonment of the liberal internationalist agenda, driven by partisan rancor. Rather, it was generally favorable towards liberal internationalism, with significant strides forward in certain areas. Yet, it was also decidedly transactional in other areas, making cost-benefit calculations about each decision based on the facts on the ground of a particular issue.

T H E US POL ITICAL SYSTEM P R EV EN TS I S O LATION ISM, ENCOURAGE S LI B ERA LI SM

While the pessimists often point to partisan rancor as a constraint on pursuing liberal internationalism, they also overlook how the diversity of interests and opinions in domestic politics, combined with democratic institutions, are powerful constraints on attempts to roll it back. It is extremely difficult to turn the battleship of American foreign policy; there are many captains, each tugging in different directions on the steering wheel, and each representing constituencies with particularist interests. We think that the US domestic political system and economy will help to prevent a turn to isolationism. While the Republican Party has unified control of government, this does not mean that pro-isolationist forces will have unlimited freedom to enact favored policies. The Republican Party has long supported free trade, an open world economy, and democracy abroad, as emblemized by President Ronald Reagan. Nor does it mean that the incentives of individual legislators—of both parties—will be the same as the president’s. As David Greenberg points out in the Wall Street Journal, “controlling the White House and Congress is no guarantee of success. As often as not, presidents who have enjoyed one-party rule have found themselves at war with their fellow partisans on Capitol Hill.”17

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FO REIGN POL ICY TOOL S A N D P OLI T I C A L INSTITUTION S

Following the framework in Helen Milner and Dustin Tingley’s book Sailing the Water’s Edge: The Domestic Politics of American Foreign Policy,18 we now turn to discuss several foreign policy tools and how their use is conditioned by the incentives created by American political institutions.19

T R ADE

International trade, almost without exception, has attracted the ire of presidential candidates on the campaign trail. Often forgotten in prognostications about Trump is that President Obama also called for a renegotiation of North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during his primary battle with Hillary Clinton, who herself expressed displeasure with the agreement.20 While we have no doubt that Trump will attempt to be more antagonistic toward trade than his predecessor, it is unclear how significant and different his policy will be. The main reason is that many other parties beyond the Oval Office have influence over trade policy. Congress has always been extremely assertive on trade issues since the Constitution gives it the legislative power over trade. It was not easy for President Bill Clinton to pass NAFTA because of legislators in his own party. And there is ample reason to suspect that many Republican legislators have substantial interests in remaining in an agreement much like NAFTA. As with Central American–Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement and every other free trade agreement in modern history, it is the Republican Party that drives free trade policy. And while no one would suggest that the Republican Party is the same as it was in 1993 when NAFTA passed, free trade still featured prominently in the 2016 Republican platform.21 While at times aimed at undermining passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), this Party document clearly cements the importance of trade liberalization to the Republican Party. Vast portions of the US economy depend on free trade.22 According to one estimate, imports and exports play important roles in more than 41 million American jobs.23 Trade also has an outsized impact on

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the economics of many traditionally Republican states. According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, “one in three acres of America’s farms is planted for exports.”24 Thus, while the Republican platform states that “Republicans understand that you can succeed in a negotiation only if you are willing to walk away from it,”25 individual legislators whose constituents depend on the economic gains from trade will not readily support high tariffs, rancorous renegotiations, and other policy changes that would have devastating consequences for their states and districts. Thinking about NAFTA specifically, Republican senators have much to lose from a trade war with Mexico. Corn is a major export to Mexico and has been mentioned as a likely target for Mexican retaliation.26 The top five corn-producing states in the United States are represented by five Republican senators.27 During the spat over trucking duties, Mexico retaliated against US apple exports.28 Michigan and Pennsylvania, states of clear importance on the electoral map, are two of the top four states in apple production.29 Over the first eight months of the Trump presidency, a pattern emerged in which the president or one of his spokespeople floated particularly hostile proposals regarding NAFTA, only for supporters of the agreement, often Republicans, to immediately reiterate the importance of the agreement. At his infamous Arizona campaign rally in August 2017, President Trump restated his willingness to terminate NAFTA. Republican senators from states that would be significantly harmed by withdrawal quickly talked down the desirability or feasibility of withdrawal. As Trump floated proposals to remove the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions of NAFTA, powerful business lobbies, like those of the traditionally Republican-aligned gas and energy sector, immediately pushed back on this. The Business Roundtable, National Association of Manufacturers, and Chamber of Commerce made this explicit in a letter to the Trump administration stating that their support of any NAFTA renegotiation hinged on retaining ISDS.30 Beyond Mexico and NAFTA, Trump’s other favorite target, China, is responsible for trade that is tremendously beneficial for many legislative districts. Even crucial members of his Cabinet have benefited from exports to China. For example, Terry Branstad, former governor of Iowa and current ambassador to China, oversaw a deepening of trade relations with China in agricultural products. China is Iowa’s second biggest export

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destination (behind Canada) with $2.3 billion in exports in 2015.31 This is a large number for a state with an estimated gross domestic product (GDP) of approximately $150 billion.32 Iowa and Indiana are also major soybean producers, a product that has been mentioned as a likely target for Chinese retaliation against trade barriers.33 Boeing, another target China has mentioned, employs thousands of workers in red states and swing states like Missouri and Pennsylvania.34 In the first eight months of his presidency, Trump explored a Section 301 investigation into Chinese trade practices. This provision of the 1974 Trade Act would allow the president to implement significant unilateral restrictions on trade with China, if China is found to be in violation of trade regulations. The investigation will likely take a year or more, and its outcome is difficult to predict. The political reality of trade policy already set in on Trump’s plans for tariffs and renegotiations. One Republican senator has introduced legislation to limit the president’s ability to implement tariffs.35 This is particularly noteworthy given the fervor with which Trump vowed to retaliate against politicians who withheld their endorsements during the campaign.36 Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has stated that he opposes efforts to raise tariffs.37 Stock market and business analysts also think Trump’s limitations on trade will ultimately be muted.38 In his first week in office, Trump faced the constraints of Republican legislators whose districts stood to lose from antagonistic trade policy. To follow through on Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall on the US-Mexico border and make Mexico pay for it, his spokesperson described an idea that was widely interpreted as advocating a 20 percent tariff on imports from Mexico.39 Senators John Cornyn (R-TX), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Benjamin Sasse (R-NE), and John McCain (R-AZ), and several Republican representatives quickly and publicly objected to the plan. In less than twenty-four hours, Trump stopped emphasizing this proposal.

FO R E I GN A I D

Foreign aid was not a key issue in the presidential campaign, even though it is well positioned to be cut as part of any budgetary retrenchment. To the extent that Trump weighed in on the topic during the campaign, it was

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in contradictory ways. At times he criticized aid, preferring that funds be spent at home, but at other times, he highlighted its importance for strategic and humanitarian purposes. His transition team’s initial questions regarding Africa seem to fall more in line with the former, with some questions explicitly asking whether expenditures on aid in Africa could be better spent at home or whether initiatives like the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) were simply “entitlement programs.”40 Foreign aid does not have as strong a political backing behind it, although there are non-trivial numbers of supporters, many of whom are Republican. The major foreign aid initiatives of the last Congress were mostly bills sponsored by Republicans.41 Republican support for foreign aid is often founded on the same objectives that characterized the Trump electoral campaign. For example, the last major pieces of foreign aid legislation focused on accountability and mitigation of corruption and misuse. Strong Republican support for foreign aid also stems from its role in helping combat Islamic extremism, which is a goal that is clearly in line with the Trump campaign’s preferences.42 Foreign aid also found direct support in the 2016 Republican convention platform, which lauded aid as a tool for advancing US security and business interests.43 A large amount of foreign assistance is spent on products and services provided by US firms. Some academic research has suggested that major foreign aid donors use aid as a way to slow migration into their countries, an objective that clearly fits with Trump’s goals.44 The powerful backers of foreign assistance in the Republican Party are often connected to public health campaigns supported by evangelicals, the very same segment of the Republican base that spurred Trump’s choice of Indiana Governor Mike Pence as a running mate. What is most likely is a change in priorities. Support for programs that deal with climate change, LGBT issues, family planning will probably be challenged. But much foreign aid continues to be money spent by US companies. On the one hand, there is substantial consensus internationally that such “tied aid” can be inefficient.45 On the other hand, proponents of foreign aid at least gain a domestic interest group. Promises to “drain the swamp” have not exactly been followed with government consultancies and lobbyists shutting down their shops. We think foreign aid will continue roughly in the same size because it supports US national interests, but with different primary aims and targets. In May 2017 Trump

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proposed a 30 percent reduction on US foreign aid; this would have cut many different programs across the board. The proposed cuts and foreign policy budget were soundly rejected by Congress, however.46 In his first eight months, thus Trump made cuts to foreign aid for Egypt for geopolitical reasons, but was not able to significantly cut foreign aid.

I MMI GR AT I O N

Immigration was clearly a major campaign issue. But here too domestic political forces will make it difficult for Trump to deliver major antiimmigration policies. First and foremost are simple demographic realities. Demographic trends point to rising percentages of Latino/a voters and a shrinking white population. Before Trump’s victory, Republican strategists and candidates recognized their need to court votes from minorities, and especially Latinos/as, with whom they often shared similar views on social issues. In the primary, several Republican candidates touted their credentials as Spanish speakers or their ability to empathize with Latino/a voters. But then Trump won the election despite winning less than a third of Latino/a voters.47 While some within the Republican Party see this as proof that they need not work so hard to court minorities, others see Trump’s success as one-off and do not think Republicans can ever go back to a perceived lack of attention to minority voters. Henry Barbour, a Republican National Committee (RNC) member who coauthored a 2013 RNC strategy guide that explicitly emphasized the need to improve the GOP’s standing with Latinos/as, described this as still a “fundamental truth,” even after Trump proved that he could win without strong minority support.48 Demographics mean that the Republican Party simply cannot afford to cede 70 percent of the Latino vote to the Democrats because its policies and rhetoric that continually antagonize immigrants and recent-generation citizens. The successful strategies of the GOP over the last few electoral cycles—gerrymandering and voter restriction laws— are tools whose effectiveness may wane over time in part due to more organized Democratic responses. At some point, Republicans will have to make a positive case to these citizens to attract their votes.49 Social

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issues seem to be sufficient to sway approximately 30 percent of these voters, but alienating the other 70 percent cedes millions of votes to the Democrats.50 Even Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House and Trump advisor, has recognized this reality, urging Trump (unsuccessfully) to include at least one Hispanic person in his Cabinet.51 Second, many of the constituencies Trump has emphasized his support for, such as the high-tech industry, desperately need to fill high-skill jobs with immigrants. Trump’s campaign initially mentioned H1-B visas, which admit workers with specialized skills, with contempt, arguing that they were overused. However, Trump’s inner circle is also comprised of many who advocate for increased H1-B visa use52 and Trump has also signaled a more positive position.53 They recognize that the program brings in highly skilled individuals for jobs that many Americans are not qualified for, and that the overall economic effect is net-positive for American jobs. Trump delivered on his promises to target Muslims, preventing their entry into the United States or even curtailing the civil rights of American Muslims. He signed an executive order in January 2017 barring entry for non-US citizens (and eventually green card holders) originating from several Muslim-majority countries. The order also suspended immigration for refugees from those countries for a certain period of time. While judges, citizens, and lawmakers have challenged this ban, causing the administration to refine it to focus on specific countries, many have argued that the intent to target Muslims through the ban still remained in place. This policy is clearly illiberal. And it is misguided. Terrorism is an issue that has to be dealt with, but not with blanket policies against a community that by and large respects the values and principles of America. It may in the short term be tempting to ban immigrants, but in the long run, this can create damaging results. The political reaction to the Executive Order 13769 was mixed, to put it mildly. On one hand, some polls showed a slight majority disapproving and others a slight majority approving of the policy.54 On the other, the policy triggered massive protests. And while the most common response from Republicans was silence, many spoke out against the ban. The influential politically active billionaire Koch brothers have spoken out against the ban. Trump would do well to claim improved scrutiny of immigrants and their vetting procedures and move on.

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OT HER DO ME ST I C P O L I T I C AL CO NST RAINTS

Finally, it is important to consider two additional constraints that we have not emphasized: the electorate and the judicial branch. With respect to the “voice of the people,” there are signs that overall support among the public for liberal internationalism has not plummeted. While the media has a tendency to cover communities that appear to have been negatively impacted by trade, on the whole the public still supports trade and immigration. A YouGov 2016 nationally representative survey showed a majority of Americans (and individuals from nineteen other countries) supporting trade.55 Similar majorities showing positive attitudes toward other liberal internationalist policies, such as immigration and US engagement, can be found in other surveys.56 Our analysis has largely focused on lawmakers, yet the judicial branch will undoubtedly have a large say in the legality of many of Trump’s policies, just as it was involved in much Obama’s signature policy initiatives, like the Affordable Care Act. Legal challenges to the immigration ban began almost immediately, and immigration is one of the areas that we have covered in which the president is thought to have the most legal discretion. Withdrawal from treaties and agreements is a murkier legal question. The president can clearly withdraw from ongoing negotiations of agreements and treaties that have not yet been signed or ratified, for example the TPP. The president also has broad discretion in withdrawing from mutual defense pacts; for example, Jimmy Carter’s administration withdrew from a defense pact with Taiwan in 1978. Withdrawal from Congressional-Executive Agreements, of which NAFTA is the best known example, or formally ratified treaties like the US accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) is a legal grey area, and the courts have generally preferred that the other branches reach a compromise on these political situations, rather than intervening judicially. Raising tariffs is also possible, but changes are constrained by a dense set of laws that govern the conditions under which the president can raise tariffs and by how much. So far, the Trump administration seems to be willing to take actions even if their legality is not clearly established by previous precedent. Ultimately, the judicial branch may prove to be an ineffective constraint on

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President Trump’s ability to change foreign policy, especially in the short to medium run. He will likely win some cases, and even defeats often take years to play out in the courts. International judicial bodies, like the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU), are unlikely to be particularly constraining in practice. WTO disputes take years to resolve, and the ultimate enforcement mechanism is retaliation by other member states. Those states will likely resort to retaliation before waiting for the full dispute settlement process to play out, meaning that the threat of international legal sanctions does not add additional constraint.

T H E WORL D PREVENTS ISOLAT I ON I SM

In addition to these domestic constraints, American presidents face international pressures that support an ongoing liberal internationalist foreign policy.57 We think that liberal internationalism remains in the United States’ best national interests. This means that policies that go against it will have great costs that outweigh the benefits for American security and the national economy. In part this is because the way other countries react to American policies or threaten to react to them can create costs and benefits for the United States that change its foreign policy calculus. Actions that seem to have net benefits for the US at first, such as decreasing funding for an international organization, may trigger reactions from foreign countries that make the policy very costly for the United States in the end. Most of all, American withdrawal from the international system will open the doors to the influence of other countries that do not share American priorities, such as China and Russia. First, the United States benefits a great deal from the institutions it set up after World War II. These institutions help the US coordinate policies globally and engender willingness to share burdens with other countries. Were it to exit these institutions, other countries might take them over and make them—or replace them with ones—much less beneficial to the US. Second, American behavior that creates serious costs for other countries can be met by all sorts of retaliatory behavior. The United States cannot count on other countries to do nothing if it drastically changes its

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policies toward them, and these reactions can be very costly. Finally, it is not clear that if the US retreats and leaves foreign problems for others to deal with that it will not be hurt by its failure to engage. For instance, ignoring poverty and war in other countries may seem smart until it leads to the massive migration of people into the US or global epidemics that infect the US as well. A closer example is Mexico; the biggest forces driving immigration from there into the United States are the disparities between the two countries’ economies. Putting America first and making its economy boom at the expense of the Mexican economy—if it is even possible to decouple the two in this age of interdependence—is simply going to create massive pressure for migration into the United States. Climate change may be another example of this, as we discuss below.

B E N E F I TS F R O M I NST I TU T IO NS

Doubters of a liberal internationalist future for the United States might suggest that a Trump administration will end or substantially reduce US participation in forums like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the WTO, NATO, the UN, and the World Health Organization. Trump’s constant refrain regarding these institutions is that they no longer promote US interests, are obsolete, and that a better deal awaits. He wants to bargain for a new relationship or to try to bilaterally negotiate a new deal with each partner. It remains to be seen how close this is to the thinking of Prime Minister Theresa May and her Brexit supporters in the United Kingdom.58 We suspect the Trump administration will eventually realize a very different picture: that many of these institutions were designed with American interests very much at heart. Lofty rhetoric of past administrations aside, these institutions were shaped and supported by the United States predominantly because they furthered American interests, not because of an altruistic worldview. The US negotiated hard in each case and got much of what it wanted, as the most powerful country in the world. Other countries joined in these multilateral deals because they too gained. One feature of media coverage and punditry regarding these international institutions is that they are quick to highlight the times in which foreign nations and their actions in these institutions diverge

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from American interests. However, these events are generally the exceptions that demonstrate the rule. For example, it is not headline-grabbing or noteworthy to say, “The International Monetary Fund again makes a decision that is clearly based on US interests.” Nevertheless, a wealth of scholarly evidence demonstrates how American interests shape the recipients, amount, conditionality, and enforcement of IMF loans.59 Moreover, if one believes that the United States is actually weaker today than in the past, then one should not renegotiate these deals since the United States will get a worse outcome. Trump’s Cabinet picks have frequently mentioned the recent United Nations resolution condemning Israeli settlements as an example of the UN run amuck. Yet the resolution’s significance for US foreign policy lies not in the fact that other nations condemned Israel, a regular occurrence, but rather that the Obama administration declined to veto the resolution. Defunding or defanging an institution in which the United States has complete veto power over the most meaningful decisions will not advance US interests. The United States’ Security Council veto ensures that absolutely no policy can get through that body if the US decides that it is not in its interests. There is no way to re-negotiate that deal to make it any sweeter on paper. Abdicating a leadership role in such institutions will simply open up opportunities for other countries to occupy a position of greater power and even rewrite the rules in their favor. Furthermore, other countries need to agree to any arrangement posed for a new bargain to be struck. The terms of a bargain get more favorable as a party’s bargaining power increases, and it is not clear that the United States is in a better negotiating position today compared to the 1950’s when these institutions were created. The Trump administration has focused on its willingness to walk away from institutions as their source of leverage, and few would argue that it has failed to convey this willingness at top volume. But Trump also presides over a country that has seen its soft power, another important component of bargaining leverage, decline because of the Iraq and Afghan wars as well as the United States’ role in the global financial crisis. The Trump administration has focused solely on its stick, ignoring its paucity of carrots. The most effective strategy will use both tactics. As demonstrated by Brexit, brinkmanship with international counterparts is a high-risk, low-reward strategy. The potential gains are often

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minimal. The United States pays approximately $10 billion annually to the UN. Its annual military budget is close to $600 billion, and its annual government spending is almost $4 trillion. Even if Trump cut US contributions in half, with no strings attached, a savings of $5 billion is a drop in a drop of the bucket for the United States. Yet, consider the consequences if other countries called Trump’s bluff and the United States is forced to follow through on withdrawal or defunding. As the UK is learning, bargaining power evaporates and leaders whose bluffs fail are forced to start from square one. The situation with international institutions is even worse for the United States than Brexit is to Britain; other countries, like China, would happily step in to cover those contributions in exchange for greater influence. The international institutions the US created are part of the global balance of power; they shape that balance in ways that are favorable to the United States. A bilateral approach to dealing with the issues covered by these international institutions, with the hopes of gaining better bargaining power, would be ineffective and extremely time consuming. Banding together with other countries that share some common interests with the US enables it to get a lot of what it wants, while sharing some of the burdens of paying for these institutions.60 This sets up a classic tradeoff that we have studied elsewhere.61 Going it alone gives a country more control over policy, but it also costs that country any chance of burden-sharing. The Trump administration may try to navigate mechanisms for contributing less while retaining the same power. This approach may at times be effective, but it will be less effective in organizations like the IMF where power is nominally linked to contributions. The same will go for other institutions like the World Bank, which has long played a role in foreign aid and economic development. Furthermore, foreign aid is increasingly dispersed by a range of multilateral actors, and new bilateral actors like China. Recent work suggests that this increased competition will only make it harder for the US to use foreign aid to influence the policies of other countries.62 Thus, bilateral approaches to aid that try to achieve US foreign policy goals will become harder, not easier, than multilateral engagement. A similar set of considerations applies to the role of the United States in the world militarily. Continuing the discussion about multilateral institutions, the same burden-sharing versus control tradeoff obtains.63 Take

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NATO for example. During the campaign Trump actively used rhetoric about NATO “ripping off ” the US, claiming that other countries did not pay their fair share. In a campaign, these types of statements might persuade individual citizens who do not know the details of United States’ and other country’s contributions to NATO. But as president, Trump will face the facts at the negotiating table. US direct contributions to NATO are calculated based on gross national income.64 As such, contributions across all members are now proportionate to their economies and do change over time.65 Instead of being focused on dramatically renegotiating NATO as an institution, his focus seems to be on others spending more on their own militaries overall.66 But if countries like Germany, Italy, and Canada spend more on their militaries due to this push, the US should expect these countries to demand a greater say in NATO. In the first few months of his presidency, Trump antagonized Chancellor Merkel of Germany, in particular, for Germany’s alleged debts to the United States. These moves were widely panned, and so far, have not moved past posturing to anything concrete. It will also be interesting to see how Trump handles playing hardball on this while maintaining the United States’ role as the world’s top arms exporter. Would a president really pull back from US alliances and see these American jobs evaporate?67 US arms sales abroad are measured in the tens of billions of dollars. Changes in foreign purchasing decisions would offset any gains from renegotiation.

R E TAL I AT I O N

The preceding section presumed that US partners abroad would demand a greater say in return for greater burden-sharing. A more direct way in which the international system can exert pressure on the United States is, however, via retaliatory measures. These measures need not be explicit nor directed to the same area, and often they are not. But they can change the cost–benefit calculus of policies. For instance, during the George W. Bush administration, Europeans retaliated against the US for its attempt to reduce steel imports in 2002 through key products exported from the United States. The Europeans were particularly savvy. They targeted politically important congressional districts with

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their retaliatory measures and they took the case to the WTO. They targeted oranges from Florida, motorcycles from Ohio, and textiles from South Carolina—all states of electoral importance. Once the Bush administration understood the political implications of these measures, it recalculated the benefits of steel tariffs.68 In 2003, just as the European measures were coming into play after the WTO ruled against the United States, the Bush administration gave up on the steel tariffs. Such direct, explicit retaliation is rare in international politics; more often it is tacit and aimed at other areas and thus is harder to pinpoint as the cause of a policy reversal. But retaliation and its threat are potent sources of international constraint on states. One way to think about retaliation is to put it in the context of the many large, multinational, firms that constitute a sizable part of the US economy. These multinational companies have huge globally distributed production chains.69 Analysts expect that the Chinese might target retaliation to include major US manufacturing firms like Boeing and Caterpillar, as well as the agricultural exports mentioned above. Apple also seems to be in the crosshairs, perhaps because of Trump’s praise of the company during the campaign.70 Indeed, in his “summit” with technology leaders Trump pledged he would help these firms.71 It would hardly be in Apple’s interest, for example, to have its global supply chains disrupted, which would happen if retaliatory tactics were used. Finally, even if the United States did not face retaliation for applying tariffs on imports, efforts to punish importers will punish the big US exporters: as economist J. Bradford Jensen argues, “While it might sound like a good idea to punish firms that import and help firms that export, the fact is that most exporters, and certainly the biggest exporters, are importers too. (Likewise, most of the biggest importers are big exporters.) Therefore, there is no way to punish importers without hurting the top US exporters.”72 The most recent economics research on the subject highlights just how interconnected all of these flows are for the largest global firms. Their choices of sourcing for inputs as well as their ability to export are interrelated, meaning that disruptions or changes on one margin—say a US tariff on imports of steel, a key intermediate good—have widespread reverberations in sourcing and exporting decisions that may reduce profits and hurt employment.73

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EXTERNALITIES

A failure by the United States to engage is likely to have consequences back home. Many global problems have externalities that will affect the US directly. Allowing countries to fail and then become havens for drug production, terrorists, and crime is likely to enable those forces to become stronger and more threatening to the United States. This is the sad story of Afghanistan for the past thirty years. But it is also important in other areas such as global health, where the US wants and needs other countries to prevent epidemics and control them if they start; immigration, which can spike if a country descends into violence (witness Syria) or is plagued by poor development;74 and financial regulation, where crises can spread globally and undermine the global economy. For example, if the United States makes Mexico’s economic situation worse, and takes away opportunities for jobs there (including ones by foreign firms), then it makes disparities between the countries larger. The temptation to migrate increases, as discussed above. While a retreat into isolationism may appear costless and appealing, it will actually have many costs and few benefits in the interdependent global system.

AN EMERGIN G A REA FOR LI B ER A L I NT E RNATIONAL ISM: GLOBA L C LI MAT E C HA N GE

When it comes to foreign affairs, key issues for the United States are not just trade, foreign aid, immigration, and the role of the US military. Emerging issues like climate change will arise. While the president and his director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are climate sceptics,75 there are some reasons to suspect that this scepticism will be moderated when it comes to policy outputs. On the domestic political economy side, there are also several forces at play. Most important is the fact that the development of low-carbon technology is a source of growth and jobs. The fact that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton proposed a detailed path forward on this,76 rather than President Trump, does not undermine the economic arguments in

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the industry’s favor.77 Does the Trump administration want China to control the market in green technology?78 Second, local level (state and city) efforts that the federal government will struggle to overturn79 are already highly developed.80 These movements have only become stronger in the face of Trump’s rhetoric against climate change abatement efforts. Third, the US military, a nonpartisan institution, has repeatedly called climate change a major issue that is not just a projection but an existing reality.81 Fourth, deniers that humans are causing climate change are in the minority, a result replicated across numerous public opinion polls.82 It is not just American scientists, or scientists throughout the world, or publics across the world, it is also the American people who want solutions. Nevertheless, Trump’s reluctance about acknowledging the connection between human fossil fuel emissions and climate change is perhaps justified by a desire to protect the livelihoods of individuals working in coal and related industries. Here we find an opportunity. Take, for instance, what political scientist (and chapter coauthor) Dustin Tingley calls “Climate Adjustment Assistance.” Analogous to Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), this program would help workers in these sectors transition away from these industries and retrain. It is not the fault of American citizens working in coal or other carbon-intensive industries to be in an industry that contributes to health and other problems, just like it was not the fault of those working in asbestos when it was outlawed. In a recent nationally representative poll, Tingley finds dramatic bipartisan support for this policy. During the first eight months of his term, Trump announced his desire to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. This step was decidedly contrary to liberal internationalism and is one of the largest data points contradicting our overall assessments. We think, however, that the future for the United States with respect to cooperation over climate change is brighter than it currently appears. While we have no doubt that the next three-plus years will be less favorable towards international cooperation on climate change, that does not portend an indefinite collapse. The United States’ position could drastically change, sooner rather than later: the US withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement does not take effect until 2020, a day after the next US presidential election. If Trump loses the next election, the incoming president could decide to rejoin the agreement.

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Bipartisan agreement on climate change is possible. To take another example, efforts to support a carbon tax as long as it offsets income or payroll taxes have long appealed to conservatives and liberals (including former Vice President Al Gore).83 We suspect there might be a larger gap between Congress and some of Trump’s Cabinet and advisers than between Congress, President Trump, and the American people. This gap also appears to be shrinking with the intense turnover in the Trump Cabinet. The first eight months of 2017 saw the departure of Stephen Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, two advisors who strongly advocated against the “globalist” agenda. Bannon, in particular, was credited with persuading Trump to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, over the protests of other Cabinet members. The structure of the international system also creates an impetus for US leadership on climate change. Whether efforts to reduce climate change operate through government regulations via the EPA, market mechanisms that capture the negative polluting effects of coal, investment in safe nuclear energy,84 geoengineering,85 or other bipartisan ways to deal with this complicated issue, US leadership is a must.86 The quickest way for the United States to get a bad deal on global climate change initiatives is to stay out of them and instead let other countries lead and control the future markets for energy technology, which may be a major source of jobs and profits.

CON CLUSION

The title of our chapter is “Down but Not Out” instead of “Business As Usual” because there are undeniable threats to liberal internationalism. Many Americans feel that liberal internationalism caused their problems, which led directly to Trump’s “America First” mantra. But trade and international engagement are only partially responsible for the troubles Americans feel they face. Recent estimates, for example, suggest that technological change and automation have played a much larger role in determining these outcomes.87 Moreover, inequality has grown worse in the United States than in other rich countries because of domestic policies related to taxes and spending. Solutions to America’s problems will not

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come from abandoning liberal internationalism but from making domestic policy changes. Unfortunately, policies to help those who did not gain and those who lost from globalization and technological change have been largely stymied. Republicans have prevented any such measures for many years by opposing programs like TAA.88 Such programs have been the cornerstone of what scholars called “embedded liberalism.”89 And the numerous loopholes in the tax system that favor the wealthy made the tax system less progressive. So the rich got richer.90 If Trump is serious about helping his fellow citizens who are working blue-collar jobs, he will need to be serious about more than cutting oneoff deals with particular firms, and instead will have to develop policies to help US workers be more competitive against foreign workers and automation, readying them for new jobs that are coming. The trick will be to ensure that these new policies, whether they are renegotiations of trade deals or other strategies, do not lead to others losing their livelihoods or cause spikes in prices for consumers purchasing US manufactured goods, as happened in the “Carrier deal,” where a US manufacturing company was compelled to keep some US jobs from moving overseas.91 Retooling and retraining for the global economy of the next twenty (or even four) years will not be easy (no matter the negotiating prowess of the president), especially for individuals closer to retirement. Fortunately, though, the years of experience these older workers often bring to firms are an asset in their own right.92 But for both them and younger workers, the changing industrial basis of the United States is not to be taken lightly. A key guideline for policy should be to protect workers, not the industry in which they work. The government should improve its assistance programs for workers who lose their medical benefits and pensions when firms fail or depart, it should find ways to make such programs portable so that mobility is less costly, and it should look at novel and more generous ways of helping workers train for and find new jobs. Yes, the United States’ role in the world does change and fluctuate. But our argument is that structural global as well as domestic institutional forces tether the United States to the rest of the world.93 American policy may oscillate, but it seems unlikely that the American government will abandon liberal internationalism writ large. Some scholars like Kupchan and Trubowitz argue that large events like the Vietnam War and the end

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of the Cold War should have undermined the political consensus that supported liberal internationalism. They predicted “wide oscillations in policy as power changes hands between Republicans and Democrats.”94 Those two events were as important as they come. Yet, they did not cause a US withdrawal or rampant vacillation. Liberal internationalism is still in the American national interest, and because of this, both domestic and international pressures will moderate any of Trump’s preferences for drastic measures to change US foreign policy.95 What is interesting from a scholarly perspective is that this administration will also provide us with evidence for the strength of such institutional and external pressures. We could be wrong, of course. Trump and his team’s preferences for isolationism and economic nationalism may be so strong and persistent that their aggressive and undiplomatic rhetoric alone poisons US relations with allies, rivals, and enemies alike. Or it may be that domestic institutions with their checks and balances are undermined by other actions and policies, leaving the United States less liberal and presidential power more unchecked. If Trump takes US foreign policy on a dramatic new course, then we will need to reassess our theories about foreign policy and international relations. It may be that leaders and their preferences are far more important than many of our theories allow. Or it may be that we need a better theory to assess the facets of national interest and how we can discern them. We may also need a more refined model of the political economy of foreign policy, in which the losers from globalization have a far more outsized impact on policymaking. In any case, Trump’s foreign policy will provide an interesting challenge for the study of international relations. What we do expect to see, however, is an administration that makes some incremental changes in the directions it promised, with a very large amount of credit claiming. We have already seen this with the Carrier deal. According to the president’s rhetoric, he demanded and received a better deal from a traitorous US firm seeking to move jobs abroad and convinced the firm to invest in its factories. Others say the job gains were minimal and that the company plans on using its investment to increase automation in its factories, which decreases jobs. What is clear, however, is that small-bore, one-off deals with particular companies will not have an outsized impact on jobs or trade in either direction. These single actions are not a policy.

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There is similar low-hanging fruit in other areas that would allow Trump to claim credit, without radically altering the status quo. For example, a modest increase in funding for border patrol could be sold as an achievement to curb illegal immigration, setting aside the fact that the US-Mexican border is already heavily patrolled and that Trump’s estimates of the quantity of illegal immigrants are orders of magnitude beyond the actual numbers.96 It will take something even more huge than the populist tide that swept Trump to the White House to dismantle the many positive aspects of US liberal international engagement. And for now, we hope that the president realizes that making America first does not mean making everyone else last. Good deals for the United States can be good deals for others as well; if not, they will not sign or enforce them. We hope that leaders throughout the country, from teachers to corporate decision makers to Congress to generals, realize how much they matter: yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

NOTES 1.

2.

3. 4.

5.

Corresponding author: Dustin Tingley, [email protected]. We would like to thank Maria Pachon and Dominic De Sapio for research support and Bob Jervis for the invitation to join a discourse with our colleagues on H-Diplo. We benefitted from excellent comments from the Yale International Relations research workshop, Robert Jervis and Robert Keohane. This chapter is an updated version of a piece originally written in the months after the 2016 election. Randall Schweller, chapter 3 of this volume, and “A Third-Image Explanation for Why Trump Now: A Response to Robert Jervis’s ‘President Trump and IR Theory’ ,” H-Diplo/ISSF Policy Series, 8 February 2017, https://issforum.org/roundtables/policy /1-5m-third-image; John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, “The Case for Offshore Balancing: A Superior US Grand Strategy,” Foreign Affairs 95, no. 4 (July/August 2016); Barry R. Posen, “Pull Back: The Case for a Less Activist Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs 92, no. 1 (January/February 2013): 121, 125. Phillip Stephens, “Trump Presidency: America First or America Alone?” Financial Times, 10 January 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/ae092214-d36f-11e6-b06b-680c49b4b4c0. For a similarly structured argument, see Robert Jervis, chapter 1 of this volume, and “President Trump and IR Theory,” H-Diplo/ISSF Policy Series, 2 January 2017, http:// issforum.org/roundtables/policy/1-5B-Jervis. Stephen Chaudoin, Helen V. Milner, and Dustin Tingley, “The Center Still Holds: The Potential for Liberal Internationalism Survives.” International Security 35, no. 1 (Summer 2010): 75–94, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00003; Stephen Chaudoin, Helen V.

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6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

Milner, and Dustin Tingley, “The Contested State of US Foreign Policy: Liberal Internationalism and American Politics” in H-Diplo/ISSF Roundtable 2, no. 4 (2011): 15–31, https://issforum.org/roundtables/2-4-is-liberal-internationalism-in-decline; Charles A. Kupchan and Peter L. Trubowitz, “Dead Center: The Demise of Liberal Internationalism in the United States,” International Security 32, no. 2 (Fall 2007): 7–44, DOI: https://doi .org/10.1162/isec.2007.32.2.7; Charles A. Kupchan and Peter L. Trubowitz, “The Illusion of Liberal Internationalism’s Revival.” International Security 35, no. 1 (Summer 2010): 95–109, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00004; Joshua Busby and Jonathan Monten, “Off-Center: Misplaced Emphases in Debates About Liberal Internationalism,” ISSF Roundtable 2, no. 4 (2011): 6–14; Brian C. Rathbun, “Was There Ever a Bipartisan Ideological Consensus?” ISSF Roundtable 2, no. 4 (2011): 32–35; https://issforum.org /roundtables/2-4-is-liberal-internationalism-in-decline#Essay_by_Brian_C_Rathbun _University_of_Southern_California. See, for example, Rathbun, “Was There Ever a Bipartisan Ideological Consensus?” Helen V. Milner and Dustin Tingley, Sailing the Water’s Edge: The Domestic Politics of American Foreign Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). David Nakamura and Abby Phillip, “Trump Announces New Strategy for Afghanistan That Calls for a Troop Increase,” Washington Post, 21 August 2017, https://www .washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-expected-to-announce-small-troop-increase-in -afghanistan-in-prime-time-address/2017/08/21/eb3a513e-868a-11e7-a94f-3139abce39f5 _story.html. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012). See also John Ikenberry, “Liberal Internationalism 3.0: America and the Dilemmas of Liberal World Order,” Perspectives on Politics 7, no. 1 (March 2009): 71–87, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017 /S1537592709090112. Roger Cohen, “Pax Americana Is Over,” New York Times, 16 December 2016, https:// www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/opinion/trumps-chinese-foreign-policy.html. Erik Voeten, “Where is US Multilateral Leadership?” paper presented at the Political Economy of Emerging Market Countries, Princeton University Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance, Georgetown University India Initiative, and the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Kolkata, Shantiniketan, and New Delhi, India, 30 December 2016–7 January 2017, http://ncgg-new.princeton.edu/file/291/download?token =zkXhN0n2. “Is Liberal Internationalism in Decline?” H-Diplo/ISSF Roundtable 2, no. 4 (2011), https://issforum.org/roundtables/2-4-is-liberal-internationalism-in-decline. Kupchan and Trubowitz, “The Illusion of Liberal Internationalism’s Revival.” Obama signed the US-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement, US-Korea Free Trade Agreement, and US-Panama Free Trade Agreement on 21 October 2011. In addition, the United States concluded negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with eleven countries in October 2015 and has continued ongoing negotiations with the European Union over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP). During his administration, the United States also ratified the World Trade Organization (WTO)

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15. 16.

17. 18. 19.

20.

21. 22.

23.

24.

25. 26.

27. 28.

Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) in January 2015, finalized a new version of the WTO Information Technology Agreement (ITA) in December 2015, and participates in ongoing discussions around the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). See Office of the United States Trade Representative. “Free Trade Agreements,” https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements /free-trade-agreements; see also Mary A. Irace and Rebecca M. Nelson, “International Trade and Finance: Overview and Issues for the 115th Congress,” Congressional Research Service (No. 7-5700; R44717), 21 December 2016, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44717 .pdf. Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley, “The Center Still Holds,” 30. Helene Cooper, “More US Troops to Aid Uganda Search for Kony,” New York Times, 23 March 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/world/africa/obama-is-sending -more-resources-for-joseph-kony-search.html?mcubz=0. David Greenberg, “The Burden of One-Party Government,” Wall Street Journal, 21 January 2017, http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-burden-of-one-party-government-1484932621. Milner and Tingley, Sailing the Water’s Edge. For an opposite prediction, see Daron Acemoglu, “We are the Last Defense Against Trump,” Foreign Policy, 18 January 2017, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/18/we-are-the -last-defense-against-trump-institutions/. Jacob L. Shapiro, “The American President’s Power Over NAFTA,” Geopolitical Futures, 9 September 2016, https://geopoliticalfutures.com/the-american-presidents-power-over -nafta/. Committee on Arrangements for the 2016 Republican National Convention, Republican Platform 2016, 2–3, https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/static/home/data/platform.pdf. On the importance of trade and trade agreements to the US economy, see Chad P. Bown “The Truth About Trade Agreements—and Why We Need Them,” Peterson Institute for International Affairs, 21 November 2016, https://piie.com/commentary/op-eds/truth -about-trade-agreements-and-why-we-need-them. Trade Partnership Worldwide, LLC, Trade and American Jobs: The Impact of Trade on US and State-Level Employment: 2016 Update, January 2016, http://tradepartnership .com/reports/trade-and-american-jobs-the-impact-of-trade-on-u-s-and-state-level -employment-update-2016/. American Farm Bureau Federation, “Fast Facts About Agriculture,” http://www.fb.org /newsroom/fast-facts. On the consequences of proposed trade policies on US agricultural exports, see “Trade Punishment for Trump Voters,” Wall Street Journal, 9 February 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/trade-punishment-for-trump-voters-1486686758. Republican Platform 2016, 3. “Donald Trump’s Presidency Is About to Hit Mexico,” Economist, 14 January 2017, http:// www.economist.com/news/americas/21714397-protectionist-entering-white-house -mexico-ponders-its-options-donald-trumps. Rob Cook, “States That Produce The Most Corn,” Beef2Live, http://beef2live.com/story -states-produce-corn-0-107129. “Donald Trump’s Mexico-Bashing Hurts American Interests Too,” Financial Times, 18 January 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/434e7c5e-dd73-11e6-9d7c-be108f1c1dce.

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34. 35.

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“US Apple Production and Utilization, by State, 1980–2010,” US Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, May 2012, http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda /viewDocumentInfo.do?documentID=1825. See Air-Conditioning, Heating & Refrigeration Institute et al., Letter to Ambassador Lighthizer; Secretaries Ross, Tillerson, and Mnuchin; and Director Cohn, 8 August 2017, http://businessroundtable.org/sites/default/files/letters/2017-08-08%20Business%20 Letter%20on%20ISDS%20in%20NAFTA_0.PDF. The US-China Business Council, “Iowa,” https://www.uschina.org/reports/us-exports/iowa. Department of Numbers, “Iowa GDP,” http://www.deptofnumbers.com/gdp/iowa/. Edward Alden, “The Roots of Trump’s Trade Rage: The Davos Set Ignored the Warning Signs for Years. Now, the Global Elites Are Rightly Worried About What Comes Next,” Politico, 16 January 2017, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/the-roots-of -trumps-trade-rage-214639?cmpid=sf. Boeing, “Employment Data,” http://www.boeing.com/company/general-info/. Patrick Gillespie, “Republican Senator Aims to Curtail Trump’s Tariff Power,” CNN Money, 13 January 2017, http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/13/news/economy/trump-trade -senator-mike-lee/index.htm. Alexander Burns, Jonathan Martin, and Maggie Haberman, “Donald Trump Vows Retaliation as Republicans Abandon Him,” New York Times, 9 October 2016, https://www .nytimes.com/2016/10/10/us/politics/republicans-trump.html. Lindsey McPherson, “Ryan Bucks Trump, Says Congress Will Not Raise Tariffs: Speakers Comment Breaks from President-Elect’s Promise to Impose ‘Border Tax’ ,” Roll Call, 4 January 2017, http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/ryan-bucks-trump-says-congress -will-not-raising-tariffs. Max Ehrenfreund, “Why Wall Street Still Isn’t Taking Donald Trump Seriously,” Washington Post, 9 December 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp /2016/12/09/why-wall-street-still-isnt-taking-donald-trump-seriously/. Spokesman Spicer’s actual intent is unclear; many think his remarks were about corporate tax reform. They were widely reported, however, as a plan for a 20 percent tariff on Mexican imports. Helene Cooper, “Trump Team’s Queries About Africa Point to Skepticism About Aid,” New York Times, 13 January 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/13/world/africa/africa -donald-trump.html. George Ingram, “Congress Finds Bipartisan Support for Foreign Aid and Aid Reform,” Brookings Institution, 11 July 2016, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development /2016/07/11/congress-finds-bipartisan-support-for-foreign-aid-and-aid-reform/. David Francis, John Hudson, and Dan De Luce, “Will Foreign Aid Get Cut on Trump’s Chopping Block,” Foreign Policy, 23 November 2016, http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/23 /will-foreign-aid-get-cut-on-trumps-chopping-block/. Republican Platform 2016, 52. Sarah Blodgett Bermeo and David Leblang, “Foreign Interests: Immigration and the Political Economy of Foreign Aid,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Political Economy Society, College Station, Texas, 13–14 November

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48.

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2009, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e025/d301ac0dac2a2e7ec09c8950dd88a7fffddf .pdf. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Untying Aid: The Right to Choose,” http://www.oecd.org/development/untyingaidtherighttochoose.htm. Yeganeh Torbat, “Republicans Push Back Against Trump Plan to Cut Foreign Aid,” Reuters, 23 May 2017, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-budget-foreign-aid-idUSKBN18J2DC. Asma Khalid, “Latinos Will Never Vote for a Republican, and Other Myths About Hispanics from 2016,” NPR, 22 December 2016, http://www.npr.org/2016/12/22/506347254 /latinos-will-never-vote-for-a-republican-and-other-myths-about-hispanics-from-20. Associated Press, “GOP Prescription of Minority Outreach Forgotten with Trump,” WTOP, 18 January 2017, http://wtop.com/dc/2017/01/gop-prescription-of-minority -outreach-forgotten-with-trump/. Of note is the fact that immigrants prefer increased immigration. Andrew Dugan, “US Support for Increased Immigration Up to 25 Percent,” Gallup, 10 August 2015, http:// www.gallup.com/poll/184529/support-increased-immigration.aspx. Associated Press, “GOP Prescription of Minority Outreach Forgotten with Trump.” Josh Dawsey and Tara Palmeri, “Trump Under Pressure to Pick a Hispanic for His Cabinet,” Politico, 21 January 2016, http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/donald-trump -hispanics-gingrich-cabinet-232907. Patrick Thibodeau, “Trump Turns to H-1B Advocates for Advice,” InfoWorld, 19 January 2017, http://www.infoworld.com/article/3159075/h1b/trump-turns-to-h-1b-advocates-for -advice.html. Nick Gass, “Trump Softens Opposition to H1B Visas,” Politico, 3 March 2016, http:// www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03 /trump-immigration-h1b-visas-gop-debate-220233. Philip Bump, “Do Americans Support Trump’s Immigration Action? Depends on Who’s Asking, and How,” Washington Post, 2 February 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com /news/politics/wp/2017/02/02/do-americans-support-trumps-immigration-action -depends-on-whos-asking-and-how/. The other countries include Great Britain, France, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, India, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. Matthew Smith, “International Survey: Globalisation Is Still Seen as a Force for Good in the World,” YouGov, 17 November 2016, https://today.yougov.com/news/2016/11/17/international-survey. A 2015 Pew survey showed similar results on the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, with more Americans who expressed support for the agreement than not. Travis Mitchell, “2015 US-Germany Survey Data,” Pew Research Center, 1 March 2015, http://www .pewglobal.org/2015/03/01/2015-u-s-germany-survey-data/. Kavitha Surana, “America Actually Likes Immigrants and a Global Role, Survey Finds,” Foreign Policy 8 December 2016, http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/12/08/america-actually -likes-immigrants-and-a-global-role-survey-finds-trump-populism/; Dina Smeltz, Ivo H. Daalder, Karl Friedhoff, and Craig Kafura, “America in the Age of Uncertainty,” Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 6 October 2016, https://www.thechicagocouncil.org /publication/america-age-uncertainty.

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58. 59.

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62.

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For one analytical approach to the relationship between the pressures of the international system and individual states’ policy choices, see Stephen Chaudoin, Helen V. Milner, and Xun Pang, “International Systems and Domestic Politics: Linking Complex Theories with Empirical Models in International Relations,” International Organization 69, no. 2 (Spring 2015): 275–309, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017 /S0020818314000356. George Parker, “Theresa May to Emphasise Value of EU and NATO to Trump,” Financial Times, 21 January 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/4c0781b8-df37-11e6-9d7c-be108f1c1dce. Randall W. Stone, “The Scope of IMF Conditionality,” International Organization 62, no. 4 (Fall 2008): 589–620, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818308080211; Randall W. Stone, “The Political Economy of IMF Lending in Africa,” American Political Science Review 98, no. 4 (November 2004): 577–91, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S000305540404136X. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). Helen V. Milner and Dustin Tingley, “The Choice for Multilateralism: Foreign Aid and American Foreign Policy,” Review of International Organizations 8, no. 3 (2013): 313–41, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-012-9153-x. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, “Competition and Collaboration in Aidfor-Policy Deals,” International Studies Quarterly 60, no. 3 (2016): 413–26, https://doi .org/10.1093/isq/sqw011. Abraham Newman and Daniel Nexon, “Trump Says American Allies Should Spend More on Defense. Here’s Why He’s Wrong.” Vox, 16 February 2017, http://www.vox.com /the-big-idea/2017/2/16/14635204/burden-sharing-allies-nato-trump. Glenn Kessler, “Trump’s Claim That the US Pays the ‘Lion’s Share’ for NATO,” Washington Post, 30 March 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp /2016/03/30/trumps-claim-that-the-u-s-pays-the-lions-share-for-nato/. We assume Trump does not want the US economy to decline while other foreign country economies improve to get the United States to directly contribute less to NATO, and other countries to contribute more to NATO. Trump has indicated a desire to negotiate other things that relate to NATO, such as European countries spending more on their militaries in general. We suspect to see not a pivot away from NATO but rather a recalibration, although the extent of this calibration will depend on how and whether relations with Russia change and the willingness of European partners to go along with it. See “Donald J. Trump Foreign Policy Speech,” Trump Pence 2016, https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases /donald-j.-trump-foreign-policy-speech. Put differently, how easy it will be to remain the number one arms dealer in the world without an active role in alliances and fulfilling treaty commitments, and international engagement writ large. And it is an open question if the American people are willing to stomach the sales of these arms to often less than liberal regimes if there are not liberal principles at least guiding US foreign policy. And while the arms trade might be an industry that many US citizens oppose, it is a source of many US jobs. Walk away from our overseas alliance commitments and watch those jobs be lost to other suppliers. See Thom Shanker, “US Sold $40 Billion in Weapons in 2015, Topping the Global Market,”

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68.

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New York Times, 26 December 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/26/us/politics /united-states-global-weapons-sales.html. It is unclear what lessons the Trump administration will draw from this experience. Wilbur Ross, Trump’s choice for Secretary of Commerce, advocated strongly for the Bush steel tariffs. See David Iaconangelo, “Why Wilbur Ross Could Have the Toughest Job in Trump’s Cabinet,” Christian Science Monitor, 18 January 2017, http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2017/0118 /Why-Wilbur-Ross-could-have-the-toughest-job-in-Trump-s-cabinet. For example, in the United States, the imported intermediate input content of exports reached more than 12 percent by 2011. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Trade Input-Output Tables,” http://www.oecd.org/trade/input-outputtables .htm. See also Lindsay Oldenski, “Reshoring by US Firms: What Do the Data Say?” Peterson Institute for International Economics Policy Brief, no. PB15–14: 2. https://piie.com /sites/default/files/publications/pb/pb15-14.pdf. Sri Jegarajah, “Boeing and Beans on China’s Blacklist if US Trade Tensions Worsen,” CNBC, 20 January 2017, http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/20/boeing-and-beans-on-chinas -blacklist-if-us-trade-tensions-worsen.html. During the meeting, Trump told executives: “We want you to keep going with the incredible innovation. There’s nobody like you in the world . . . Anything we can do to help this go along, we’re going to be there for you  .  .  . You call my people, you call me. It doesn’t make any difference. We have no formal chain of command around here.” Jack Nicas and Rolfe Winkler, “Donald Trump Strikes Conciliatory Tone in Meeting with Tech Executives,” Wall Street Journal, 14 December 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles /top-tech-execs-to-meet-trump-to-talk-jobs-regulations-1481724004. J. Bradford Jensen, “Importers Are Exporters: Tariffs Would Hurt Our Most Competitive Firms,” Peterson Institute for International Economics Trade & Investment Policy Watch, 7 December 2016, https://piie.com/blogs/trade-investment-policy-watch/importers-are -exporters-tariffs-would-hurt-our-most-competitive. Andrew B. Bernard, J. Bradford Jensen, Stephen J. Redding, and Peter K. Schott, “Global Firms,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 22727 (October 2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w22727. Indeed, some research looks at how countries use one tool of liberal internationalism, foreign aid, to help stem the demand for immigration. Sarah Blodgett Bermeo David and Leblang, “Migration and Foreign Aid.” International Organization 69, no. 3 (Summer 2015): 627–57, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818315000119. The implication for the current context is that pulling away from liberal internationalism will just exacerbate some of the same problems the Trump administration wants to address. Perry, at least, has backed off his climate change denial in his confirmation hearing. See Timothy Gardner and Valerie Volcovici, “Trump’s Energy Pick Perry Softens Stance on Climate Change,” Reuters, 19 January 2017, https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-energy -pick-face-jobs-climate-questions-120142477—finance.html. “Hillary Clinton’s Plan for Combatting Climate Change and Making America the Clean Energy Superpower of the 21st Century,” Hillary for America. The original policy document appears at https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/climate/.

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83.

84.

James Stewart, “Elon Musk Has Trump’s Ear, and Wall Street Takes Note,” New York Times, 26 January 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/business/elon-musk-donald -trump-wall-street.html. “China Leads as Green Energy Investment Plans Hit Record High,” Reuters, 24 March 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-renewables-investment-idUSKCN0WQ1IU. Justin Gillis, “Weak Federal Powers Could Limit Trump’s Climate-Policy Rollback,” New York Times, 2 January 2017, http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/science/donald-trump -global-warming.html. Climate CoLab, “2020 Cities By 2020: America’s Mayors Taking Charge on Climate Change,” Climate CoLab, http://climatecolab.org/plans/-/plans/contests/2015/united-states-climate -action-plan/c/proposal/1323518. See also, Jeff Biggers, “Cities and States Lead on Climate Change,” New York Times, 30 November 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/30 /opinion/cities-and-states-lead-on-climate-change.html; Bernadette Ballantyne, “Cities Are Stepping up Climate Change Efforts C40 Summit Reveals,” Infrastructure Intelligence, 6 February 2014, http://www.infrastructure-intelligence.com/article/feb-2014/cities-are -stepping-climate-change-efforts-c40-summit-reveals. “Theatrical Premiere: The Age of Consequences,” The Center for Climate and Security: Exploring the Security Risks of Climate Change, https://climateandsecurity.org/; US Department of Defense, National Security Implications of Climate-Related Risks and a Changing Climate, 23 July 2015, http://archive.defense.gov/pubs/150724-congressional -report-on-national-implications-of-climate-change.pdf. Allison Kopicki, “Is Global Warming Real? Most Americans Say Yes,” New York Times, 1 June 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/02/upshot/is-global-warming-real-most -in-US-believe-in-climate-change.html; Jon A. Krosnick, “The Climate Majority,” New York Times, 8 June 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/opinion/09krosnick.html; Matto Mildenberger and Dustin Tingley, “Beliefs About Climate Beliefs: Second-Order Opinions in the Climate Domain,” Working Paper, http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/dtingley /files/climatebeliefs_distribution.pdf; Dustin Tingley and Michael Tomz, “Conditional Cooperation and Climate Change,” Comparative Political Studies 47, no. 3 (2014): 344–68; https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414013509571. Bob Inglis and Arthur B. Laffer, “An Emissions Plan Conservatives Could Warm To,” New York Times, 27 December 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/opinion/28inglis .html; “Conservatives,” Carbon Tax Center, https://www.carbontax.org/conservatives/; James A. Baker, III, Henry M. Paulson, Jr., Martin Feldstein, George P. Shultz, Ted Halstead, Thomas Stephenson, N. Gregory Mankiw, and Rob Walton, The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends, Climate Leadership Council, 2017, https://www.clcouncil.org/wp -content/uploads/2017/02/TheConservativeCaseforCarbonDividends.pdf. Nuclear Energy Institute, “Clinton, Trump Both Support Nuclear Energy,” 19 October 2016, https://www.nei.org/News-Media/News/News-Archives/Clinton,-Trump-BothSupport-Nuclear-Energy; “Trump, Clinton, Johnson and Stein’s Views on America’s Top 20 Science, Engineering, Tech, Health & Environmental Issues in 2016,” Science Debate; the answers can also be found here: Gorman, Christine. “What do the Presidential Candidates Know about Science?” Scientific American. 13 September 2016, https://

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85.

86.

87.

88.

89.

90.

91.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-do-the-presidential-candidates-know-aboutscience/. Donald Trump sees his support for nuclear energy through the lens of energy independence. “It should be the goal of the American people and their government to achieve energy independence as soon as possible. Energy independence means exploring and developing every possible energy source including wind, solar, nuclear and bio-fuels.” Committee on Geoengineering Climate: Technical Evaluation and Discussion of Impacts, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Ocean Studies Board Division on Earth and Life Studies, National Research Council. Climate Intervention: Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2015); David Keith, A Case for Climate Engineering (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013). Lindsay Iversen, “Climate Change and US Leadership Under President Trump,” Council on Foreign Relations, http://blogs.cfr.org/sivaram/2016/11/15/climate-change-and-u-s -leadership-under-president-trump/. Claire Cain Miller, “The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China. It’s Automation,” New York Times, 21 December 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/upshot/the-long-term -jobs-killer-is-not-china-its-automation.html. Andrew F. Puzder, Trump’s first pick for labor secretary and chief executive of CKE Restaurants, in an interview with Business Insider about employees: “They’re always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex or race discrimination case.” Kate Taylor. “Fast-Food CEO Says He’s Investing in Machines Because the Government Is Making It Difficult to Afford Employees,” Business Insider, 16 March 2016, http://www.businessinsider.com/carls-jr-wants-open-automated-location-2016-3; Federica Cocco, “Most US Manufacturing Jobs Lost to Technology, Not Trade,” Financial Times, 2 December 2016, https://www.ft.com/content/dec677c0-b7e6-11e6-ba85 -95d1533d9a62; Douglas A. Irwin, “The Truth About Trade: What Critics Get Wrong About the Global Economy,” Foreign Affairs (July/August 2016), https://www.foreignaffairs .com/articles/2016-06-13/truth-about-trade. “Finance Committee Republicans Warn President of Opposition to Including TAA in Korea Trade Agreement,” US Senate Committee on Finance, 30 June 2011, https://www .finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/06-30-2011.pdf; Jonathan Weisman, “House Rejects Trade Measure, Rebuffing Obama’s Dramatic Appeal,” New York Times, 12 June 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/13/us/politics/obamas-trade-bills-face-tough-battle -against-house-democrats.html. John Gerard Ruggie, “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order,” International Organization 36, no. 2 (1982): 379–415, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818300018993. Qucotrung Bui, “40 Years of Income Inequality, In Graphs,” NPR, 2 October 2014, http:// www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/02/349863761/40-years-of-income-inequality -in-america-in-graphs. Kate Taylor, “The Manufacturer that Trump Convinced to Keep 1,000 Jobs in the US is Raising Prices,” Business Insider, 5 December 2016, http://www.businessinsider.com /carrier-raises-prices-after-trump-deal-2016-12.

D OW N BU T NOT O U T97

92.

93.

94. 95.

96.

Carol Hymowitz, “American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer,” Bloomberg Businessweek, 16 December 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-16 /american-firms-want-to-keep-older-workers-a-bit-longer. See also Stephens, “Trump Presidency: America First or America Alone?”; David Brooks. “The Internal Invasion,” New York Times, 20 January 2017, https://www.nytimes .com/2017/01/20/opinion/the-internal-invasion.html. Kupchan and Trubowitz, “The Illusion of Liberal Internationalism’s Revival.” Mark Landler, Peter Baker, and David E. Sanger, “Trump Embraces Pillars of Obama’s Foreign Policy,” New York Times, 2 February 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02 /world/middleeast/iran-missile-test-trump.html. Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, “More Mexicans Leaving Than Coming to the US,” Pew Research Center, 19 November 2015, http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans -leaving-than-coming-to-the-u-s/.

7 DOES STRUCTURE TRUMP ALL? A Test of Agency in World Politics B R I A N R AT H B U N

D

oes the election of President Donald Trump herald the end of the multilateral order created by the United States in the wake of its victory in World War II? How is his new populist foreign policy different from that which would have been pursued by other Republicans had they won the election? The question puts me in a somewhat curious spot. On one hand, I have spent my career noting the importance of political agency, which I have found necessary so as to combat what I see to be the overwhelming and overstated structural character of most international relations scholarship. I have made the case that bipartisanship in US foreign policy since World War II was from the very beginning something of a myth, one held together by the common threat of the Soviet Union, and which quickly dissipated after the Cold War ended. We did not have to wait for Trump to hear disparaging things about the United Nations (UN) and multilateralism. The bipartisan support for the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), for instance, was a bargain between Republicans and Democrats, the latter ensuring for the former that neither institution could really constrain American foreign policy in any meaningful way.1 NATO’s Article 5, now treated as a sacrosanct and fixed commitment to respond to any act of aggression against NATO partners, is at least on paper nothing of the sort. It has a loophole big enough to drive a Soviet tank through, asking only that member states do what they individually

D O ES STRU C TU RE TRU M P ALL?99

deem necessary to restore the security of the North Atlantic area. And the same treaty contains Article 3, requiring self-help and mutual aid, at the request of Republican Arthur Vandenberg, who served as Senate chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee when NATO was first created. This asserted the very same concern about free riding that Trump and his team make now, but was one of the most familiar lines of attack against the treaty in 1948 and 1949. Constructivist scholars have argued that, legal niceties aside, a community of values was developing or has developed, one that is deeply rooted in social structures. We all have a common liberal identity. And now, many months into Trump’s presidency, in my conversations with other scholars, I hear concerns that those very foundations are supposedly crumbling with just a few small pushes from a new president. Surely, if structural constraints are real at all, they should be able to withstand a bit more than a few tweets about NATO’s obsolescence. I think that the structural foundations of bipartisan multilateralism were shallower than most others believe, but it seems these concerns are overstated. I think so not for structural reasons, such as the deep and abiding trust among the democratic powers, but for political and psychological ones. I do not see how Trump can put together a foreign policy coalition that can sustain his populist foreign policy given the intense antagonism of Democrats to his agenda and the fragmentation of the right on foreign policy issues as well. His positions do not offer any possibilities for Baptist-bootlegger coalitions of the kind that the creators of the postwar multilateral order, the Democrat administrations of presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, used to cement their plans. And Trump’s psychological makeup will make it impossible for him to secure any real lasting benefits in the foreign policy arena. We will see, as we did after the President George W. Bush years (remember those?), a regression to the mean. What is Trump’s foreign policy? Putting America first is not a new slogan and not one that many (particularly on the right, most also on the left) would argue against in private. There have been some online kerfuffles over whether Trump is simply a realist laying bare his dog-eat-dog view of the world.2 He is not, in part because, as I will explain, a realist would never say something so transparently counterproductive for one’s own egoistic interests. Trump is first and foremost a walking foreign policy “Id” capable of thinking only about satisfying his and America’s wants

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and desires. He is lacking the cognitive capacity to realize that one can only succeed in such a task if one knows how to use others. He lacks not only empathy, but also instrumental empathy, the ability to pretend that one is concerned about more than oneself or one’s own country’s interests to secure egoistically beneficial outcomes. This awareness of others’ interests is at the heart of realpolitik, and its absence is what drives realists most crazy. It is one thing to pursue a Mexican contribution to and cooperation on border security; it is another to publicly claim that another country is going to pay for something it does not like. Everything about Trump’s foreign policy so far suggests this. He does what feels good in the moment: a strike against Syria for the use of chemical weapons but with no sustained efforts or commitment to resolving the conflict; macho talk at the United Nations about destroying North Korea while belittling its leader as “rocket man.”3 Trump has a terrifically overstated view about how even a military hegemon like the United States can force its own agenda through, which is evident in his frequent tirades against the “horrible,” “disgraceful,” “terrible,” and “disastrous” deals that the United States has concluded on trade, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), among others, or on security, such as the Iran nuclear agreement. He insists that he could have gotten better deals. He could not have. It is impossible to know whether any bargaining gains were left on the table, for instance, in the Iran deal. I am comfortable saying that Trump would not have found them and will not do so in any meaningful way if he attempts to revisit them. In research I have done with Joshua Kertzer at Harvard University, we had undergraduates play an incentivized laboratory game identifying their social value orientation—crudely, whether they were egoists interested only in their own gains or prosocials who had regard for others.4 Among egoists, however, those with lower and higher levels of epistemic motivation (essentially an enjoyment of and commitment to thinking through problems) were further distinguished through self-reported measures. We can call this rational thinking. Egoists who lacked epistemic motivation bargained more or less the same way, regardless of whether they were more or less powerful in the game itself: they demanded more. Egoists with epistemic motivation—I would call them realists—adjusted their behavior to suit the structural circumstances. When they were

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weak, they made better offers. When they were stronger, they turned the screws a bit. And they did better overall in terms of monetary payouts in the end. Egoists with low epistemic motivation did worse than prosocials committed to more egalitarian outcomes because the latter were more capable of finding mutually beneficial outcomes and avoiding major losses brought about by hard bargaining in weak positions. Everything about Trump suggests a lack of epistemic motivation: his incessant self-regard, his impulsiveness, and his never-ending litigiousness in his business dealings. He is, although I think he would find it painful to hear it, simply not a strategic thinker. Trump claims to value those with smarts—remember that he claimed his cabinet had the highest IQ ever—but his approach to politics, foreign policy, and life are fundamentally uncerebral and unreflective. Ultimately, his foreign policy will be largely expressive, an end in itself that will get in the way of accomplishing its own aims. As former speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich said during the election, Trump’s supporters want someone to “kick over the kitchen table.”5 After that, not much has been thought out. This expectation, which emerged at the very beginning of his presidency, remains unchanged.6 In his first months in office, Trump has achieved nothing either in domestic or foreign affairs, largely because he lacks the psychological foundations of a good dealmaker. Indeed, Trump always gets in his own way. Trump is also fundamentally unrealistic in another way. He is (it seems genuinely) convinced that he, and now America, is always the aggrieved party. “Unfair” might be one of his most frequently used words. In his Trade Representative’s brief “Summary of Objectives for the NAFTA Renegotiation,” the word is used thirteen times in fifteen pages.7 Bargainers of the type described above are known to complain about offers made to them and their share of the pie as morally insufficient, phenomena known in the negotiation literature as “ego defensiveness” and “reactive devaluation.” Of course, there is no such thing as fairness for a true realist. There is only the distribution that the situation allows. And there is definitely no such thing as a whiny realist. Trump is not a realist. All of this, I would argue, makes it impossible for Trump to establish any type of alliance with the realist faction of the Republican Party, even though on some issues they are closer than the realists would like to admit. When Trump complains that the United States cannot be the

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policeman of the world and that it wasted trillions of dollars on wars in Iraq that left it worse off, does this not sound like a critique made by realists about the need to engage in strategic retrenchment, focusing on vital interests first?8 Realists, however, make up an ever-shrinking part of the Republican establishment. Can Trump make common cause with other caucuses in the conservative movement? I don’t think so. The new president, unlike most patriots, does not put the United States on a pedestal. Although one might diagnose his defense of Russian President Putin as being in the tank, literally, for the Russians, I think it actually suggests a moral equivalence generally found in the left (“we aren’t perfect ourselves”) but also among isolationists. The neoconservative program in foreign policy, however, is built on the idea of American exceptionalism. It is an idealistic nationalism, one rooted not in nativism but in what the word “American” represents. It is as egoistic, ultimately, as Trump’s positions to say, “we are fighting for democracy, which gives us a mandate for regime change if we like it, UN or not,” but that form of egoism pushes in a completely different direction. Trump has absolutely no interest in what “American” symbolizes or represents. At times, such as in his UN General Assembly address, he invokes the necessity of punishing evildoers, but he makes no sustained effort to promote human rights or American values. Indeed, those who would normally be persona non grata are feted at the White House. Just as with domestic politics, people Trump does not like become “bad” people, not the other way around. Venezuela is the foreign policy equivalent of Rosie O’Donnell, the talk show host with whom Trump has repeatedly sparred. Ultimately, Trump will only be able to redirect the post–World War II direction of American foreign policy if he can create an isolationist political wing predicated on military retrenchment (with an exception for fighting Islamic terrorism) and protectionist trade policy. On this I am fundamentally a structuralist. The United States cannot put globalization back in the bottle. It is an exogenous change in the world economy. It can pursue an ostrich foreign policy, but the opportunity costs will be enormous. If Trump does not, and I do not think he will, respond to those kinds of systemic pressures, eventually someone will replace him who does. At that point, Americans will be back to where they started, which is not as good a position as they thought.

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NOTES 1.

2. 3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Brian C. Rathbun, Trust in International Cooperation: International Security Institutions, Domestic Politics and American Multilateralism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Stephen M. Walt, “No, @realDonaldTrump Is Not a Realist,” Foreign Policy, 1 April 2016, http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/01/no-realdonaldtrump-is-not-a-realist/. See, for instance, “Rocket Man Knows Better,” New York Times, 23 September 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/23/opinion/sunday/trump-kim-jong-un.html. Brian C. Rathbun, Joshua D. Kertzer, and Mark Paradis, “Homo Diplomaticus: MixedMethod Evidence of Variation in Strategic Rationality,” International Organization (2017). Forthcoming paper can be found at http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~jkertzer/. Al Weaver, “Gingrich on Trump: ‘Nobody Should Kid Themselves’ Anymore,” Washington Examiner, 20 February 2016, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/gingrich-ontrump-nobody-should-kid-themselves-anymore/article/2583787. Robert Jervis and Diane N. Labrosse, eds., “Is Liberal Internationalism Still Alive?” H-Diplo/ ISSF Policy Roundtable, 14 March 2017, https://issforum.org/ISSF/PDF/Policy-Roundtable -1-6.pdf. Office of the United States Trade Representative, “Summary of Objectives for the NAFTA Renegotiation,” 17 July 2017, https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/files/Press/Releases /NAFTAObjectives.pdf. Barry R. Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015).

8 LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM, PUBLIC OPINION, AND PARTISAN CONFLICT IN THE UNITED STATES R O B E R T Y. S H A P I R O

P

artisan conflict in the United States goes far beyond what existed in the days of more heterogeneous Democratic and Republican political parties as described in the election and early voting studies of the mid-twentieth century.1 Rather, it has been characterized by striking ideological polarization among party leaders, with the disappearance of moderate centrists, particularly among Republicans in Congress and elsewhere. Most strikingly, Republicans and Democrats have become consistently conservative and liberal, respectively, across an increasingly wide range of issues. Among the mass public there may not be full-blown polarization, but there has clearly been wide-scale “partisan sorting,” with strong Republicans and Democrats, again, taking more consistently conservative and liberal positions on policy issues.2 This transformation has had visible consequences. First and foremost, it is related to the gridlock in government that has been readily apparent, hindering the passage of congressional legislation to deal with salient issues and national problems.3 It also led to today’s stunning and shrill disagreement over facts and reality—including claims of “fake news”—which has raised questions with the election of President Donald Trump about the “democratic competence” of the country’s leaders and American public opinion.4 While partisan conflict and polarization, and the study of it, initially centered largely on domestic issues, this has been extended to national security and foreign policy. This became increasingly apparent during

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President George W. Bush’s administration. The 9/11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the 2003 Iraq invasion spurred this on, but its beginnings were visible earlier.5 When I first began exploring this topic with fellow political scientists Yaeli Bloch-Elkon and Jack Snyder,6 we were initially concerned with the overall extent of partisan conflict in policymaking. Our findings, and those of others, have raised broader questions about the future of liberal internationalism.7

LI B ERA L IN TERN ATION A LI SM A N D PARTISAN CONF L ICT TODAY

What is the state of liberal internationalism and partisan conflict today, at the end of the Obama administration and the beginning of Donald Trump’s term? Increasing evidence points to foreign policy gridlock in Congress. Political scientist Sarah Binder’s findings, for instance, show a further uptick in both congressional attention (though still low) and partisan gridlock in the case of foreign policy issues (though far less than for domestic issues); whether this is a continuing trend remains to be seen.8 Nonetheless, President Obama had a lot to show as a liberal internationalist in the direction of what his Nobel Prize awarders had hoped for: in addition to his efforts on nuclear arms treaties, his administration signed on to a ground-breaking international global climate agreement and the controversial nuclear agreement with Iran. He tried vigorously to push through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. His approach to fighting international terrorism and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria attempted to be multilateral. He employed US troops there and in Afghanistan, although not fully as a fighting force, with the goal of extricating the United States quickly at some point—sooner rather than later. The change in US policy toward Cuba and the recognition of the island nation signified an important breakthrough in US-Cuban relations and also (although this was not widely appreciated) for US relations with Latin America.9 That said, partisan conflict around these issues cannot be ignored, and the unified Republican government headed by President Donald Trump may undo all of these policies. I agree with Joshua Busby and

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Jonathan Monten’s view that “the Trump administration looks to provide a massive stress test for the durability of the international order and may yet remake the landscape of public opinion in ways unforeseen.”10 Trump and the Republicans in Congress may reverse most if not all of Obama’s accomplishments, as Trump promised during the 2016 election campaign. In addition, new issues arose in Obama’s second term that do not augur well for liberal internationalism. One is the refugee situation that came out of the civil war in Syria. Obama tried to work in liberal internationalist fashion with Turkey and European and Mideast countries to resettle the Syrian refugees. The issue of resettling them has caused major problems in all of these countries that are dealing with their own economic and other travails. This has compounded existing immigration issues which in turn have provoked resentment in many of these countries and has contributed to the rise of populist leaders who are challenging democratic nations in Europe. Moreover, the most recent development has been the extent to which these populist leaders may have moved in the direction of closer relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The issues of immigration, refugees, and terrorism related to ISIS and Islamic fundamentalism have been increasingly partisan and conflictridden, which played out to the advantage of Republicans in Trump’s election. The same can be said of the debate over globalization and free trade, which appeared to split both major parties, with Trump’s supporters rejecting the free trade positions of mainstream Republicans. Surprisingly, Democratic presidential primary candidate Senator Bernie Sanders’s supporters did not differ substantially from other Democrats on this in the available polling data, despite Sanders being in sync with Trump in his opposition to trade agreements that are perceived as adversely affecting employment in the United States. Politics became even more complicated in the final years of Obama’s term and has posed a further challenge to liberal internationalism. This has included the vote for Britain’s exit (Brexit) from the European Union and the rise of populist leaders in Europe who reject liberal internationalism and have, stunningly, been poised to see whether they can play ball with Vladimir Putin and Russia. (Or is there still, conceivably, a plausible alternative view that the adverse consequences of this for liberal internationalism could be offset by the potential for easing US and European tensions with Russia?)

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Substantial partisan differences in public opinion have developed on immigration, refugee, international trade, and globalization issues, and with this, and Trump’s election in 2016, liberal internationalism has faced more serious challenges than it did in the early Obama years. What, then, does this further partisan conflict in public opinion look like, and how does it bear on liberal internationalism—and its future?

PART ISAN CON FL ICT IN PUB LI C OP I N I ON

On the one hand, the US public opinion data still show basic support related to the tenets of liberal internationalism that political scientists and fellow contributors to this volume Stephen Chaudoin, Helen Milner, and Dustin Tingley emphasize. On the other hand, some partisan differences across a wide range of relevant issues have become more severe, and the differences that have emerged, which increasingly concern some aspects of international organizations and alliances, refugees, immigration, the threat of terrorism, and foreign trade, have caused new tensions.11

S UPPO RT BUT UNDERLYING TE N SI ON S FOR T HE GENE RAL TENETS OF L IBERA L IN T ERN AT I ON A LI SM

The well-known Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA) trend data into 2016 show persistent public support for the United States playing an “active part in world affairs”—at the 60 percent or better level for the public, with little in the way of significant partisan differences.12 This finding is even more striking for the CCGA sample of leaders’ opinions—a few percentage points shy of 100 percent, virtually unanimous. On the basis of other data, the CCGA has reported that leaders underestimate the level of public support by about fifteen percentage points. One countercurrent here, which can be found in responses to other questions asked by the Pew Research Center, is that there has been a noticeable rise in agreement, though this is still a minority opinion, that the US should go its own way in world affairs and should not worry about other countries agreeing with

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it; public opinion has also become split on whether the “US should mind its own business internationally . . .” And the public’s support for giving priority to “our own national problems,” rather than thinking in international terms, has increased over time. The most recent data since 2013, however, show a modest reversal in these trends.13 Still, there is evidence for an increase in the concern that US foreign policy should focus more than it has on Americans’ interests, which is a “realist” view that Trump apparently capitalized on in winning the 2016 Republican presidential nomination and the general election. How this view plays out going forward poses a challenge to liberal internationalism.14 That said, the public also continues to see the United States as the most influential country in the world: a steady 8.5 on a 10-point scale of influence, topping all other countries by about 1.5 points. In 2016, 60 percent of registered voters responded in a Pew survey that global problems would be worse without US efforts, with little overall partisan difference— (65 percent of Republicans versus 58 percent of Democrats)—and 57 percent of Trump supporters saying so, versus 49 percent, still a plurality, among Bernie Sanders’ supporters. Where we see a noticeable effect of the election of Trump is in the further partisan divergence in perceptions of the performance of the United Nations as reported in Gallup polls: in 2017, as Trump entered office, there was a more than forty percentage point gap between Democrats (57 percent) and Republicans (an all-time low of 16 percent) in responses that the United Nations was doing a good job, compared with a fourteen-point gap in 2001, when 58 percent of Democrats versus 44 percent of Republicans gave this a positive response. While there continues to be strong support for US alliances and agreements as well as American foreign military bases, some of the modest partisan differences increased in 2017. The CCGA surveys have shown clear bipartisan support of the United States’ commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) among leaders and the public. Sixty percent of Trump supporters in 2016 wanted to maintain or increase the US commitment to NATO, compared with 86 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of Republicans overall. The 60 percent figure for Trump supporters is quite substantial, but it is a bit more tempered than Republicans overall and is much less than the overwhelming support among Democrats. Moreover, Gallup and Pew surveys have tracked a striking widening

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partisan gap in 2017, almost exclusively the result of Democrats increasing their support for maintaining the NATO alliance to fully 97 percent, compared with 69 percent for Republicans according to Gallup (versus no partisan differences, at the 65 percent level, in the 1990s), and 78 percent versus 47 percent for Republicans as reported by Pew (compared to 58 to 52 percent a year earlier in 2016). Support for bolstering the military and military commitments is a complicated aspect of liberal internationalism, in that the capacity for strong military action is important for liberal internationalism, but overwhelming support also connotes a readiness to back unilateral military action. According to 2016 CCGA surveys, majorities of both Democrats and Republicans continue to want the United States to have long-term military bases in Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Republicans show a bit more support for this military presence (averaging around ten points more among all Republicans than Democrats), reflecting mainstream Republicans’ and Trump supporters’ somewhat more militant views. Other CCGA trend data suggest that leaders tie this to US security and to defending America’s allies, whereas the public may be less concerned with the security of America’s allies. Specifically, 71 percent of Republican leaders in 2016 and 64 percent of Democratic leaders saw “defending our allies’ security” as a “very important” foreign policy goal, but only 36–37 percent of Democrats and Republicans in the general public held this view. There is some sign that the consensus on support for international agreements has been breaking down in certain cases. While there was still, as of 2016, bipartisan public support for the International Criminal Court (fully 65 percent for Trump supporters and 79 percent among Democrats), there has, not surprisingly, been a major divide over the lifting of sanctions in exchange for Iran limiting its nuclear program— supported by 74 percent of Democrats versus 46 percent of Republicans, including Trump backers, as Trump has, since taking office, been looking for the opportunity to reverse this Iran agreement. Not surprisingly, support was also much greater—by about thirty percentage points—among Democrats than Republicans, including Trump supporters, for the Paris Agreement on climate change, which the Trump administration decided to pull out of. Environmental protection and climate change issues have long divided the parties. A stunning partisan

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divergence has occurred at the leader and mass public level from 1998 to 2014, tracked closely by the CCGA, with the increasing concern that climate change is a global threat driven fully by Democrats. In 2016, Democrats in the general public still differed from Republicans by about forty points regarding this concern (57 to 18 percent) and the corresponding reading of partisan leaders’ differences was fully sixty-one points (73 to 12 percent). The Council’s earlier data had shown how partisan differences in public opinion widened from the days of the Kyoto Agreement to the later debate over a new international agreement. While the CCGA data also show bipartisan consensus in 2016 toward attaining US energy independence as a very important foreign policy goal, many more Democrats than Republicans responded that improving the world’s environment and limiting climate change should be a very important policy goal, by thirty-four percentage points (63 to 29 percent) and fully forty points (59 to 19 percent), respectively. Preventing nuclear proliferation, at least in the abstract, has long been a goal of liberal internationalism that American leaders and the public have supported. This large majority consensus extended through 2016, based on the CCGA data, at the 70 percent level among Democrats and Republicans in the mass public, and at the 80 percent level among Democratic and Republican leaders, without significant partisan differences. This has not extended, however, to the Iran nuclear agreement, which was met with substantial resistance by a number of Republicans but also a few prominent Democrats in the Senate when the agreement was originally debated. Moreover, the Republican candidates were loudly critical of the Obama administration on this issue as the 2016 presidential primary campaign and debates got under way, which helped amplify the agreement as a major partisan issue. And, again, Trump, as of late 2017, has been looking to pull out of it. The available data show that this has been a strikingly partisan issue for the public, with Democrats being far more supportive. The Gallup poll data reveal a forty-two-point partisan difference in approval of the Iran nuclear agreement in 2016 (51 percent of Democrats approving versus 9 percent of Republicans), and earlier Pew data reported an increasing partisan difference from forty-two points to nearly fifty points during 2015, with Republicans overwhelmingly opposed to the agreement (78 percent). Other Pew data show how Republicans have had far less confidence than Democrats that Iran’s leaders will uphold the agreement

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and that the United States and international agencies will be able to monitor the agreement. This divergence regarding Iran is closely associated with Republicans’ greater support for Israel—an increase in “sympathy” for Israel versus the Palestinians over the years that has driven an overall rise in public support for Israel, as found in the Pew and CCGA trend data: the number of Republicans sympathizing with Israel rose from 49 percent in 1978 to fully 75 percent in 2016. In contrast, Democrats’ opinions, although still much more supportive of Israel than the Palestinians, have remained stable: 45 percent in 1978 and 43 percent in 2016. For the historical record, then, no appreciable partisan difference was evident in 1978, but a noticeable gap emerged after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which later widened greatly, to more than thirty percentage points by 2015–2016, as Obama’s relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu soured and Republican leaders were sharply at odds with Obama, to the point of Republican House Speaker John Boehner inviting Netanyahu to address directly the US Congress.

US E O F DIPLOMACY VERSUS MI LI TA RY FOR C E: PARTISAN TENSION S BUT N O WORSE?

Many scholars have acknowledged certain partisan tensions over the use of diplomacy versus military force, but this debate often hinges on whether these tensions have worsened over time. The divergence in perceptions of the effectiveness of the United Nations described earlier did not occur in a vacuum. Partisan difference at the elite level toward strengthening the UN emerged more than thirty years ago, according to the CCGA surveys, and this difference penetrated public opinion during the Bush administration after 9/11. The gap among partisan elites has not changed further based on the available data, with Republicans remaining much less of the mind that strengthening the UN should be a very important goal of US foreign policy. It is telling that the leaders overall did not widely see strengthening the United Nations as a “very important” foreign policy goal—only 31 percent of Democratic leaders in 2014 compared to 50 percent of the Democratic public, with a more than twenty-point lower

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figure for Republicans at both the elite and mass level. Partisan differences have increased among leaders and the public in the CCGA data regarding whether maintaining superior military power worldwide should be a very important policy goal, suggesting Republicans’ greater support than Democrats for the unilateral use of force. The partisan gap has become wide: just over twenty points for the public and more than thirty-five points among leaders. Overall, majorities of all partisan stripes, including core Trump supporters in the 2016 CCGA survey, have seen both military superiority and diplomacy as “very or somewhat effective” toward achieving foreign policy goals (at well over the 50 percent level), but Democrats stand out as more likely than Republicans and Trump’s supporters to see this superiority to be effective for international treaties, trade agreements, strengthening the United Nations, and maintaining existing and building new alliances (at the 80–90 percent or greater level). That Republicans have become increasingly predisposed toward increasing US military power is clear from other Pew Research Center data as well as in responses to similar questions asked by other survey organizations. These Pew data and as well as longer NORC (formerly the National Opinion Research Center) General Social Survey trends (not discussed further here) show long-term partisan differences that very recently widened further into 2016, as Republicans have driven overall public opinion in the direction of greater support for increasing defense spending and US military power. What had been ten- to twenty-point differences in the 1990s through around 2001 have increased to more than forty points based on different polls. Pew data in 2016 show a fortythree-point partisan gap on whether strengthening the military should be a top priority (76 percent of Republicans versus 33 percent of Democrats) and a 41 percent partisan difference between Republicans (61 percent) and Democrats (20 percent) on whether the United States should increase spending on national defense. To be sure, this reflects greater Republican criticism of government national defense and military policies, not criticism of the military itself, in response to perceived weaknesses and the lack of military success in Syria and Iraq, and to the threats posed by Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea. The striking widening of the partisan gaps in military policy occurring in tandem with differences in support for diplomacy poses significant tension for liberal internationalism, with Republicans spurring this on. We can see this

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tension in public opinion in 2017 toward actions to pressure North Korea to stop expanding its nuclear weapons program. According to CCGA survey data, there is large bipartisan support at the 67 to 84 percent level for imposing economic sanctions on North Korea and on Chinese companies doing business with North Korea, with Republicans only eight points more supportive than Democrats. A 54 percent majority of Republicans support conducting airstrikes on North Korean nuclear production sites, compared with only 33 percent of Democrats, a more than twenty-point differences. This support is tempered only by less support for sending US troops to destroy North Korea’s nuclear facilities (37 percent of Republicans and 24 percent of Democrats). At the same time there had been some interesting partisan convergence found in Chicago Council surveys, with Republicans becoming somewhat more favorable toward turning to negotiations with enemies in certain important contexts and cases. From 2008 to 2014, Republicans among the public became more supportive of US leaders being ready to meet and talk with leaders of the Taliban, Iran, and Hamas, with Democrats, who were much more supportive of this at the start, pulling back somewhat but still holding majority support for engaging in talks. The same was found for US leaders being ready to meet and talk with leaders of Cuba. Noticeable partisan differences remained in most of these cases but there was less partisan disagreement than in previous years. There are, however, no recent trend data available. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had evoked partisan conflict that posed complications for liberal internationalism.15 At leadership level, according Chicago Council data, the partisan battle lines remained in 2014, with Republican leaders much more likely to say that the wars were “worth it” (by fully or nearly fifty more percentage points than Democratic leaders). In contrast, the wide partisan differences toward these wars among the general public decreased over time as both Republicans and Democrats, based on ABC News/Washington Post and Chicago Council surveys, were less likely to view both wars as having been worth it. This convergence—to partisan differences of only ten to twenty percentage points—is likely due to the fact that Democrats associated these wars with Republican President Bush and the Republicans came to see these as Democratic President Obama’s wars. This overall negative assessment of the substantial use of force in Afghanistan and Iraq, including

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ground troops, raised questions regarding such substantial use of largely unilateral US power in the future. As the issue of terrorism from the Mideast became even more pressing with the rise of the Islamic State—ISIS in Iraq and Syria—large majorities of both Republicans and Democrats according to Chicago Council surveys (at the 60 percent level among leaders in 2014, and the 75 percent among the public in 2017) have seen international terrorism as a “critical threat” to the United States (with a ten-point partisan difference among the public in 2017, compared to fifteen points among Republican leaders in 2014, with somewhat more Republicans seeing terrorism as a critical threat). The percentages and partisan differences are similar for the public and leaders in 2017 seeing combating international terrorism as a “very important” goal: among the public, 81 percent of Republicans and 70 percent of Democrats; for leaders, 75 percent of Republicans and 64 percent of Democrats. This issue has provided renewed pressure on the United States to continue to use military force abroad, as the Trump administration has done, while it has also faced new issues that pose challenges for other foreign engagements and partnerships.16

NE W MA JOR CHA L L EN GES FOR LI B ERA L I NTERN ATION A L ISM: FOR EI G N A I D, GLOBAL IZATION, TRADE, REFUGEES, A N D IMMIGRATIO N

The evidence presented thus far poses tensions for liberal internationalism as well as indications that it is still alive and well, but new issues have arisen that provide a much less positive picture. These issues include foreign assistance, free trade, globalization more generally, the problems posed by refugees (most recently from civil-war torn Syria and the region), and domestic conflict over illegal immigration to the United States, with immigrants entering through Mexico as the predominant concern. On all of these issues, the presidency of Donald Trump poses a threat for liberal internationalism. American opposition to spending more on foreign aid in the abstract has long been great. In contrast, aid to specific countries at particular

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times for specific purposes has received much more support. In responses to the NORC General Social Survey trend questions about whether “we” are spending too much, too little, or the right amount on “foreign aid,” since 1994 there has been an emerging and widening partisan gap which reached an all-time high of twenty percentage points by 2014, with Republicans (close to 75 percent) much more likely to say “too much,” thereby wanting to decrease spending.17 Pew data reveal fifteen- to twenty-point differences in 2016 between Democratic majority support for, and Republican opposition to, increasing aid to developing countries, as well as increasing imports from them and investments in them. The greatest opposition to these actions occurred among voters who supported Trump early on, by about twenty-five to forty percentage points or more depending on the issue, compared to Democratic voters. In the case of foreign economic interactions more broadly, the 2016 CCGA data show an overall high level of support for “globalization” in the abstract. Democrats at that point in Obama’s second term were more likely (by fifteen points) than Republicans to see this as a force for good: 74 percent of Democrats to 59 percent of Republicans. It was viewed least positively by Trump supporters—fully twenty-five points less than Democrats, as might be expected given Trump’s vocal pessimism as to how the US has fared in global economic and foreign aid activities. Interestingly, the Chicago Council found that leaders in 2016 underestimated the public’s favorable opinion toward globalization, suggesting that they may have felt unnecessarily constrained to the extent they gave any weight to this misperception of public opinion. One striking and politically important development has been the reversal in partisan attitudes toward free trade. With Obama’s election and his support for new foreign trade agreements, Democrats became more positive in their views toward free trade than Republicans. Gallup trend data show that this shift was apparent by 2012 and continued into 2016. Initially, majorities of Republicans thought that foreign trade was mainly an “opportunity” for the United States, at a high of 57 percent in 2002, compared to 47 percent of Democrats (a ten-point Republican edge). Fast forward to 2016, and that edge was reversed: the Republican view fell to 50 percent, whereas Democratic support rose to 66 percent in 2013 and remained at 63 percent in 2016 (a thirteen-point edge for Democrats). The same reversal was apparent by 2016 for Democrats’ greater “warmth”

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(fifty-six) for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), on a zero to one hundred thermometer (cold–warm) scale in a Greenberg Quinlan Rosner (GQR) survey, than Republicans (thirty-one), giving Democrats a twenty-five-point edge in support on this trade issue. By 2017, Pew data found a thirty-seven percentage point difference in Democrats’ (71 percent) versus Republicans’ (34 percent) on whether NAFTA was good for the US economy, and a thirty-two-point difference between Democrats (60 percent) and Republicans (28 percent) who thought Mexico, the most important partner in NAFTA, practiced “fair trade.” Other 2016 GQR survey data found greater support among Democrats than Republicans, also by twenty-five points, for Obama’s TPP, which President Trump later pulled the United States out of. Similar partisan differences in opinion are found in CCGA surveys regarding international trade as being good for consumers, creating jobs in the United States, providing job security for American workers, and preserving one’s own standard of living, with Trump supporters being the least optimistic. Trump emphasized immigration as a major domestic issue in the 2016 election, focusing on illegal immigration from Mexico, emphasizing the need to increase border security and to build a “wall” on the border, and giving priority to finding and deporting all immigrant criminals. As terrorist attacks by individuals of Middle Eastern backgrounds magnified the threat from Islamic fundamentalists, and as the Syrian refugee crisis threatened to add to the flow of immigrants from Muslim countries, the issue of immigration was linked to the threat of terrorism. This also had broader international implications involving European countries, Turkey, and other Mideast countries that were deciding how many refugees to take in. In the US there were clearly increasing perceptions, driven heavily by Republicans, that Islamic fundamentalism was a “critical threat” to the vital interests of the US. On this score, CCGA surveys found that Republicans (75 percent) who viewed this fundamentalism as a critical threat differed from Democrats (49 percent) by twenty-six points in 2016, up from an eighteen-point difference (66 to 48 percent) in 2015. The number of immigrants and refugees coming into the United States was not viewed differently at all by partisans among the public as late as 2002; by 2016, however, Republicans were a stunning forty points more likely than Democrats to see immigrants and refugees entering the country as a critical threat. Specifically, 67 percent of Republicans (versus

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58 percent in 2002) held this view compared with 27 percent of Democrats (versus 62 percent in 2002), and the figure was fully 80 percent among core Trump supporters in 2016. The partisan differences were similar when immigration and refugees were considered separately (i.e., whether controlling and reducing “illegal immigration” should be a very important foreign policy goal), and once again, Trump supporters stood out here. A 2016 Pew survey found that fully 85 percent of voters supporting Trump responded that the large number of refugees was a threat to the United States, compared with 77 percent of all Republicans and 37 percent of all Democrats. Partisan differences in opinions toward immigration, even with the refugee issue kept aside, have become a source of conflict owing to the high level of concern among Republicans in the public, not among Republican leaders in Chicago Council surveys, regarding the control and reduction of illegal immigrants as a very important foreign policy goal. Partisan differences that have existed among leaders in the Chicago Council surveys through 2014 have been muted or lessened by the fact that concern for this goal among these elites has been declining further from the already lower level among both Republicans (well under 40 percent) and Democratic leaders (well under 20 percent) compared with their counterparts among the public (there is a similar trend for the already low level of partisan leaders’ perceptions of the coming of immigrants and refugees as a “critical threat” to the US). This concern remained high among the Republican public, (66 percent) compared with declining concern among Democrats (36 percent). This fully thirty-point partisan difference in 2015 compares with only a five-point difference in 2002. The gap rose to thirty-seven points in 2016 (68 percent among Republicans versus 31 percent of Democrats), and it reached a striking 83 percent among core Trump supporters. That Republican leaders have been out of step with the Republican public does not mean they are unaware of this difference in opinion. In fact, there is evidence that this distorts Republican leaders’ perceptions of public opinion at large concerning immigrants. The 2016 CCGA survey found that 60 percent of Republican leaders perceive that the public supports requiring illegal immigrants to leave their jobs and the United States, whereas only 28 percent of the public overall (including Democrats, independents, and Republicans combined)—responded that it wants this. Democratic leaders’ perceptions have this about right. Republican leaders

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have very likely taken their cues from their perceptions of their fellow partisans among the public, not the citizenry writ large. The 2016 CCGA elite surveys show an increase in Republican leaders’ concern on the immigration front: fully 52 percent of the leaders sampled responded that controlling and reducing illegal immigration was a very important policy goal, compared with 20 percent of Republican leaders in 2014. In this case, these leaders appear to be responding to pressures from below, in contrast to the more typical past pattern of partisan elite conflict penetrating to the level of public opinion and increasing partisan differences there. Republican leaders have apparently been coming around to Trump’s position on immigration.

CON CLUSION

The continued and increasing partisan differences in American and elite opinion toward foreign policy issues, and the positions of President Donald Trump and his supporters, pose major challenges to the United States’ pursuit of liberal internationalist policies. What has changed since the start of Obama’s time in office is that the issues of foreign aid, trade and globalization, refugees, and immigration have to be added to the mix of issues bearing on the pursuit of liberal internationalism. Partisan difference on these issue have gotten larger, and partisan divergences already in progress in opinions toward military spending and foreign aid were not fully considered as posing possible tensions for liberal internationalism. There is also additional evidence indicating that trends among Republicans have been driving these dynamics—both leaders’ opinions and those of Republican self-identifiers among the public. President Donald Trump and his supporters have amplified these differences and increased the level of political conflict. What can we say about the future of liberal internationalism? Has partisan conflict at the level of political leadership and the mass public undermined the pursuit of liberal internationalism in American foreign policy—a pursuit that has emphasized multilateral economic and security relations and the judicious use of military force? Even with the increase in conflict, some of the data still show continued majority support

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for international institutions and the use of diplomacy—somewhat increasingly in some cases. In this debate public opinion has become increasingly important. While the partisan divergences that have occurred in public opinion may have initially been driven largely by elite leadership—in particular by the Republican leadership affecting its partisan supporters—this opinion may now significantly constrain what leaders can do in foreign policymaking. I have summarized a wide range of data that bear on this debate, including new issues that have become highly relevant. What emerges is a mixed picture but with forces at work with the election of President Donald Trump that are pushing against liberal internationalism.18 While there is still noticeable underlying public support regarding liberal internationalism, there are tensions at hand that are tied to partisan conflict and Trump’s form of saber-rattling, which has resonated with Republicans and especially with Trump’s supporters. This could constrain the effects of foreign-policy voices that attempt to pursue liberal internationalism, and this may make possible any efforts by the Trump administration to move in a direction opposite to President Obama’s liberal internationalism. Unless, of course, ignoring these constraints, the administration itself could conceivably shift gears regarding diplomacy and deal-making—supporting existing agreements, international institutions, and alliances—which is still, at this writing, a possibility despite the administration’s early disorganization and unpredictability, as it makes—belatedly—its remaining executive branch appointments and changes. All of this, and the dynamics of public opinion as it might relate to the next elections, leave the status of liberal internationalism in flux. We will know more as we see further what Trump and his administration says (and tweets?) and does,19 and as the pertinent public opinion data and other relevant evidence become available to track new developments bearing on liberal internationalism.

NOTES 1.

Joseph Bafumi and Robert Y. Shapiro, “A New Partisan Voter,” Journal of Politics 71, no. 1 (January 2009): 1–24. Acknowledgments: I want to thank Robert Jervis and Jack Snyder for comments, and Sarah Binder for the latest update to her data on the extent of legislative gridlock in domestic and foreign policy. I am grateful to The Pew Research Center, Gallup, the NORC General Social Survey and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for

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2.

3. 4.

5.

6.

permission to use their opinion trend graphs and tables in my related work. I also thank the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA) for this, as well as access to their latest public and elite opinion trend data, including the CCGA and Texas National Security Network 2016 Leaders Survey. I benefitted from communications at these organizations with Dina Smeltz, Craig Kafura, Claudia Deane, Frank Newport, Tom W. Smith, and Anna Greenberg. Other data and some of the analysis here have come out of my collaborative work with Yaeli Bloch-Elkon, Brigitte Nacos, Anja Kilibarda, Oliver McClellan, and Sofi Sinozich. I am, however, solely responsible for all of the discussion and interpretations offered in this article. For example, see the following and the works that they cite: Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006); Geoffrey C. Layman, Thomas M. Carsey, and Juliana Menasce Horowitz, “Party Polarization in American Politics: Characteristics, Causes, and Consequences,” Annual Review of Political Science 9 (2006): 83–110; Matthew Levendusky, The Partisan Sort: How Liberals Became Democrats and Conservatives Republicans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Matthew Levendusky, How Partisan Media Polarize America. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013); Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks (New York: Basic Books, 2012); Markus Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increases Inequality in Political Involvement and Polarizes Elections (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2007); Morris P. Fiorina with Samuel J. Abrams, Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 2009); and Fiorina with Abrams and Jeremy C. Pope, Culture Wars? The Myth of Polarized America, 3rd ed. (New York: Pearson Longman, 2011). Sarah Binder, “Polarized We Govern” (Washington, DC: Center for Effective Public Management, The Brookings Institution, 2014). While this has been associated with partisanship in the past, it has been heightened by the pervasiveness of ideological conflict and both parties being closely matched for control of the presidency and Congress, which has made unified partisan government more likely than in the past. See Robert Y. Shapiro and Yaeli Bloch-Elkon, “Do the Facts Speak for Themselves? Partisan Disagreement as a Challenge to Democratic Competence,” Critical Review 20, no. 1–2 (2008): 115–39; cf. Benjamin I. Page and. Robert Y. Shapiro, The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans’ Policy Preferences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). See Charles Kupchan and Peter L. Trubowitz, “Dead Center: The Demise of Liberal Internationalism in the United States,” International Security 32, no. 2 (Fall 2007): 7–44; Brian C. Rathbun, “Was There Ever a Bipartisan Ideological Consensus?” H-Diplo/ ISSF Roundtable Reviews 2, no. 4 (2011), http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/ISSF/PDF/ISSF -Roundtable-2-4.pdf; On 11 September 2001 and the 2003 decision to invade Iraq, see Brigitte L. Nacos, Bloch-Elkon, and Robert Y. Shapiro, Selling Fear: Counterterrorism, the Media, and Public Opinion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). Robert Y. Shapiro and Yaeli Bloch-Elkon, “Ideological Partisanship and American Public Opinion toward Foreign Policy,” in Power and Superpower: Global Leadership and

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7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

17. 18. 19.

Exceptionalism in the 21st Century, ed. Morton H. Halperin, Jeffrey Laurenti, Peter Rundlet, and Spencer P. Boyer (New York: Century Foundation Press, 2007), 49–68; Robert Y. Shapiro and Yaeli Bloch-Elkon, “Foreign Policy, Meet the People,” The National Interest 97 (September/October 2008): 37–42; Jack Snyder, Robert Y. Shapiro, and Yaeli BlochElkon, “Free Hand Abroad, Divide and Rule at Home,” World Politics 51 (January 2009): 155–87; Robert Y. Shapiro and Yaeli Bloch-Elkon, “Political Polarization and the Rational Public,” paper presented at the Annual Conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 18–21 May 2006. Cf. Kupchan and Trubowitz, “Dead Center”; Snyder et al., “Free Hand Abroad.” Binder, “Polarized We Govern”; Binder, “Personal Communication,” 12 December 2016. Robert Y. Shapiro, “The Uncertain Legacy of Barack Obama ’83,” Columbia College Today (Winter 2016–17): 24–27. Joshua Busby and Jonathan Monten, “Has Liberal Internationalism Been Trumped?” H-Diplo/ISSF Roundtable, 14 March 2017, https://issforum.org/roundtables/policy/1-6 -liberal-internationalism. Robert Y. Shapiro, “Liberal Internationalism and Partisan Conflict,” H-Diplo/ISSF Policy Roundtable 1–6: Is Liberal Internationalism Still Alive? 14 March 2017, https://issforum .org/roundtables/policy/1-6-liberal-internationalism. The supporting opinion data appear more fully in the many figures and tables in this earlier version of this report, which readers can review as well. We owe a debt to the organizations that have conducted the surveys that have provided these data. See the 2016 report and data at https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/publication/chicago -council-survey-data. See Shapiro, “Liberal Internationalism and Partisan Conflict,” Figure 3. Randall Schweller, chapter 3 of this volume, and “A Third Image Explanation for Why Trump Now: A Response to Robert Jervis’s ‘President Trump and IR Theory’ ,” H-Diplo/ISSF Policy Series, 8 February 2017, https://issforum.org/roundtables/policy/1-5M-third-image. Cf. Kupchan and Trubowitz, “Dead Center.” See Trubowitz, “Domestic Politics, Transatlantic Leadership, and Liberal World Order,” Dahrendorf Berlin Conference, Europe-North American Working Group. December 2015. See Page and Shapiro, The Rational Public, chap. 5–6; and especially Shapiro, “Liberal Internationalism and Partisan Conflict,” Figure 32. Schweller, “A Third Image Explanation for Why Trump Now”; Busby and Monten, “Has Liberal Internationalism Been Trumped?” Cf. Bear Braumoeller and Bruce Russett, “Trump’s Tweets Can Be a Distraction, but Do They Signal a Real Threat to International Institutions?” Monkey Cage/Analysis, Washington Post, 18 January 2017.

III W H I T H E R PAX AMERICANA?

F

9 TRUMP AGAINST EXCEPTIONALISM The Sources of Trumpian Conduct

STEPHEN WERTHEIM

I

s this how the Pax Americana ends?1 Since the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, countless commentators have answered in the affirmative. Four years after dismissing American decline as a myth, Robert Kagan now glimpses what he calls the “end of the 70-year-old US world order.”2 In the New York Times Magazine, Ian Buruma delivered an elegy for the Anglo-American partnership that won World War II and led the world ever since, until Brexit-Trump voters opted to “pull down the pillars” of the whole project and retreat to isolation.3 The liberal commentariat is sounding the alarm, warning that making America great again will actually make America small in the world. Such dirges say less about Trump or his voters than about the limits of conventional wisdom. Candidate Trump never pledged to retract America’s global power. He did denounce nation-building and demand that US allies pay more for protection, but so have many of his predecessors. What was certain, all along, was that Trump would build up the nation’s supposedly depleted military, better funded as it is than its next seven competitors combined.4 And Trump identified no shortage of enemies, starting with the expansive category of “radical Islamic terrorism” and not stopping there. When he launched his campaign, Trump declared China

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to be a “bigger problem” than the Islamic State, and he denounced China’s military escalation alongside its trade practices.5 An isolationist he is not. If predictions of American retrenchment come true, it will more likely be despite Trump’s intentions than because of them. Yet observers are not wrong to detect in Trump a profound break from the precepts of US foreign relations, a difference in worldview that transcends individual policies. In the one area in which Trump possesses an ample record—that of public discourse—the president has discarded America’s traditional identity in the world: Donald Trump does not speak the language of American exceptionalism. Trump, that is, assigns no providential role to the United States and locates it far from the vanguard of world history. His pledge to “make America great again” has obscured this fact, but his full-throated nationalism could be uttered in almost any other nation, just by swapping the flags. It is a normal nationalism, extreme but not exceptional. Trump’s America enters the international arena to square off against comparable competitors, each equally capable of becoming great. What will become of American foreign policy when greatness, no longer bestowed, must be seized?

A CITY IN A VA L L EY

“We shall be as a city upon a hill,” proclaimed John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony. “The eyes of all people are upon us.”6 Winthrop encapsulated what would come to be called exceptionalism, according to which the United States is a model for the world and exists in order to redeem mankind.7 Although so widely shared as to constitute a national ideology, exceptionalism does not prescribe a single course of action. Before World War II, it underpinned a policy of guarding America’s unique experiment in liberty in the Western Hemisphere. Even as the United States fulfilled its Manifest Destiny to conquer territory and exercise hegemony in the virgin New World, it swore off political and military entanglement in the corrupting Old World. Centuries later, although the nation reversed its posture of exemplary separation in favor of one of global intervention, its presidents still quoted Winthrop.8 The

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United States continued to imagine itself as leading the world, whether through the power of its example or the example of its power. But the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 removed the totalitarian enemy against which the United States had defined itself as the leader of the free world. American policymakers suddenly had to explain why the United States remained the chief enforcer of world order and in fact pursued a more robust primacy than before. In hindsight, the crisis of exceptionalism began then. Yet through the 1990s, it proved easy enough to imagine world leadership as America’s new Manifest Destiny, the spoils of its Cold War victory and the fruit of its moral superiority. Especially during the economic boom, few could doubt that America embodied the end of history. Had not history “ended” in the triumph of American-style liberal capitalist democracy?9 After President George W. Bush resurrected exceptionalism at its most messianic, Barack Obama seemed to repudiate it early in his presidency, when he professed to believe in American exceptionalism “just as I suspect the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”10 As the president’s critics hastened to note, genuine exceptionalism forbade such reciprocity; Obama implied that exceptionalism was a relative value, not the one true way. Afterwards, Obama learned to speak more conventionally. But the fact that “exceptionalism” became a ubiquitous term only during his presidency—Obama uttered the word more frequently than any other president, always to affirm it11— suggested that its truth was becoming less self-evident. The more Republicans accused Obama of denying exceptionalism, the more they reduced exceptionalism to a talking point.12 Having been named and politicized, exceptionalism could also be repudiated. Enter Trump. On announcing his candidacy, Trump made the stakes clear: “We need somebody that can take the brand of the United States and make it great again.”13 During the 2016 campaign, Trump indeed began to rebrand America, to recast the image the nation presents to itself and others. While his rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, affirmed that “the United States is an exceptional nation,” Trump depicted America in speech after speech as retrograde.14 “We’re like a Third World country,” he announced.15 Once great, America now had to claw its way back to first-world standards and then, perhaps, to preeminence. In place of the proud exceptionalism of the world’s mightiest country, Trump offered the brawling nationalism of a global victim.

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As evidence of American backwardness, Trump pointed to the nation’s airports, sites not only of national infrastructure but also of international intercourse and international comparison.16 When travelers leave the glittering terminals of Dubai or China, he said, they land at LaGuardia or LAX and see rubble. “Our country is a laughingstock,” Trump repeated. “All over the world, they’re laughing.”17 Trump inverted the exceptionalist dogma that the United States is the “envy of the world,” as both Obama and his 2012 Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, repeated during the campaign.18 To Trump, the whole world still watches America, but only to mock it. Perhaps Trump’s dim view of America’s global standing explains his hard line on immigration. Trump may wonder why immigrants leave their own lands of opportunity to enter Third World America. Must they not be criminals at worst, incompetents at best?

T RUMP ’ S N ORMA L N ATI ON A LI SM

Trump hardly contrived his image of America for the latest campaign. In 1987, flirting with a presidential run, he spent $94,801 to publish a fullpage open letter in three newspapers.19 The gist: “The world is laughing at American politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies who won’t help.” Trump did not once mention the Soviet Union, against which the ships, oil, and allies were ostensibly directed. Instead, he fixed his ire on free-world moochers like Japan, which he judged to have leaped to the “forefront of world economies” on the back of American largesse.20 Three decades later, his cast of antagonists had changed, with China taking over the lead role, but he ascribed to the United States the same lamentable standing in the world. In fact, two months before launching his candidacy, Trump denounced American exceptionalism in no uncertain terms. Asked what exceptionalism meant to him, Trump told Tea Party activists in Houston that he had never liked the word. When Americans crow about their own exceptionalism, they are “insulting the world,” Trump objected. Russians and Germans did not want to hear that Americans were more outstanding than them. Trump had finally come across the one thing too offensive to say out loud: that America was exceptional. More important, the boast also

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struck Trump as false, since America was “dying” while other countries were “eating our lunch.” Winning over the crowd, Trump explained that he might like to make America exceptional, by taking back what America had given the world. (Even then, he said, he might not proclaim America to be exceptional, lest he “rub it in.”21) In this answer, Trump disavowed the traditional meaning of exceptionalism and endorsed the concept only by redefining it. Whereas previous presidents have taken exceptionalism to be a more or less permanent trait, intrinsic to American identity, President Trump views it as a conditional state. A nation becomes “exceptional” by snatching up more wealth and power than others—in short, by winning. It can gain this status one minute and lose it the next. Trump thus assumes that any nation can become great. Rather than reserving greatness for the United States, he recognizes an equality among nations that exceptionalism denies. Small wonder Trump has ruled out promoting democracy and liberty abroad, and categorically so: “I don’t know that we have a right to lecture.”22 When American leaders call their nation the incarnation of mankind, Trump hears how they patronize the rest of the world and flatter themselves. In his view, the United States is just another country. But Trump rejects exceptionalism less because it insults others than because he thinks it paralyzes the United States. It prevents Americans from throwing themselves into the game of international relations, or international deal-making, and playing to win. In thrall to exceptionalism, Americans tolerate, even welcome, mutual gains and shared prosperity, so long as they imagine themselves as blazing the path to freedom. Under the rubric of Cold War exceptionalism, which cast the United States as the leader of the free world, America rebuilt old enemies such as Germany and Japan, lavished dollars and troops on allies, and set up multilateral institutions. All were immediate sacrifices made for necessarily speculative long-term gains. Now Trump asks Americans to put aside their fantasies of salvation over time. Instead, he seeks victories in space, or at least in the here and now. Consider Trump’s retrospective condemnation of the war in Iraq: it might sound dovish until one appreciates his signature objection, namely that the United States did not somehow “take the oil” before getting out.23 Either we take the land and assets or they do, just as the Trump Organization either acquires the Plaza Hotel or someone else does. A zero-sum

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short-termism is therefore the flipside of Trump’s recognition of international equality. For Trump, states are identical because they compete for the same prize—a fixed pot of resources. If Trump manages to escape the hierarchy inherent in American exceptionalism, he puts in its place a nationalism that is intrinsically conflictual.

A LOOMING IDEN TITY C RI SI S

Because Trump spurns exceptionalism in order to take things from the world, he has little reason to retreat to so-called isolation. Although Trump has adopted the slogan “America First,” analysts have erred by likening him to the original America Firsters, who opposed US intervention in World War II.24 After all, they tended to be outspoken exceptionalists, convinced that the righteous New World had every reason to separate itself politically and militarily from the fallen Old. For them, and for most of American history, exceptionalism furnished an argument against global intervention. If the United States was ahead already, or destined to come out on top, then getting entangled in the world’s squabbles could only reverse the march of progress. Trump, by contrast, claims America has fallen behind and is doomed to further degradation unless its leaders get tough. As president, he appears inclined to do just that, which means intervening actively in the world.25 The world should take seriously his threats to upend US trade relations, his longstanding recipe for bringing wealth to America. Against non-Western powers, this danger is acute. Trump addresses them with the Orientalist brew of disdain for their “savagery” and admiration for their cunning. He identifies increasingly with “Western civilization,” a framework that may be more capable than “America First” of reconciling his base of voters with the national security grandees who led the Never Trump movement.26 This civilizational identity overlays his zero-sum nationalism and augments the risk of armed conflict with powers in Asia and the Middle East. Trump could win the backing of traditional exceptionalists for wars against Iran, North Korea, or, in the worst-case scenario, China. Or Trump might come to appreciate the benefits that America reaps for its burdens and the difficulties of effecting major change. By the six-month

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mark of his presidency, he had abandoned any attempt to jettison US alliances in Europe and East Asia. Trump endorsed the mutual defense guarantee of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), taking credit for the allies’ rising military spending even though the increases began in 2014.27 In the end, Trump may wind up stamping his nationalist branding onto a fairly conventional foreign policy, much as he revived his business career by plastering his name on other people’s buildings. Who knows: having become president, Trump might even declare that he has made America exceptional again. But whatever actions Trump takes, his rhetorical rejection of exceptionalism matters. It has already triggered a national identity crisis.28 Americans are not accustomed to thinking that theirs is a country like any other, and if Trump continues to eschew the concept of exceptionalism, he is likely to damage the domestic credibility of his foreign policy, opening up a legitimacy gap that each of the country’s political factions will scramble to fill. The last time such a legitimacy gap appeared was in the early 1970s, under President Richard Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger. Without explicitly renouncing American exceptionalism, Nixon and Kissinger adopted a realist approach that assumed all states behaved in the same manner and pursued comparable interests. This approach had its benefits: it allowed Nixon and Kissinger to pursue détente with the Soviet Union and open relations with communist China, two countries previously seen as implacable foes. Yet even though Nixon and Kissinger doggedly strengthened US power, they inspired bipartisan criticism and produced a political realignment.29 On the right, a new group, called neoconservatives, came together to bring back the Cold War against the Soviet “evil empire.” On the left, a new politics of human rights laid out universal principles for the United States to embody and promote. Both sides agreed that exceptionalism was fundamental to American identity—that the United States did have a right to lecture all the rest. If the past is any guide, Trump will not win many converts to his vision of a third-world America. But he may provoke enduring responses. From the right may come a resurgence of muscular exceptionalism. Trump’s assertiveness and unilateralism will go only so far to co-opt such voices within the Republican Party and the Democratic center. Less predictable,

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but potentially more interesting, will be opposition from the left. After eight years of deference to Obama, the left now has an opportunity to get creative. Left-wing Democrats, and some Republicans, may revive a politics of constraining executive power, as occurred after World War I and the Vietnam War but has yet to materialize following the deeply unpopular war in Iraq. The left may also attempt to redesign and reinvigorate international institutions, the more it perceives the Security Council as a Holy Alliance and the Trump-led United States as an aggressor.

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Politics has returned to American foreign policy. Trump has exposed the fragility of orthodox thinking, and the best response is not simply to try and restore it. For one, exceptionalism is losing ground in American public opinion: recent surveys reveal a declining belief that the United States is the greatest country in the world.30 Moreover, at a time when voters want change, politicians who talk up America as a “city upon a hill” can appear to be content with the status quo. They may fail to admit the costs of foreign policy, or point out the concrete gains that citizens enjoy. Foreign policy comes to seem an elite dogma rather than a collective choice. Trump’s election makes it all the more difficult, but necessary, to widen the boundaries of legitimate debate. Citizens weary of outsourced jobs and unending war are entitled to ask what they are getting in return, without being written off as isolationists. By repudiating exceptionalism, Trump has unintentionally invited the country to reimagine its place in the world—to find a vision, perhaps, that is neither hierarchical nor conflictual.

NOTES 1.

The author and the H-Diplo/ISSF editors thank Foreign Affairs for permission to publish this essay, which expands on Stephen Wertheim, “Trump and American Exceptionalism: Why a Crippled America Is Something New,” Foreign Affairs, 3 January 2017, https://www

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2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

15.

.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2017-01-03/trump-and-american-exceptionalism. Thanks also to Kristen Loveland, Thomas Meaney, Samuel Moyn, Paul Sagar, Anders Stephanson, and Simon Stevens for their comments. Robert Kagan, “Trump Marks the End of America as World’s ‘Indispensable Nation’ ,” Financial Times, 19 November 2016, https://www.ft.com/content/782381b6-ad91-11e6 -ba7d-76378e4fef24. Ian Buruma, “The End of the Anglo-American Order,” New York Times Magazine, 29 November 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/magazine/the-end-of-the-anglo -american-order.html. Sam Perlo-Freeman et al., “Trends in World Military Expenditure,” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Fact Sheet, April 2016, http://books.sipri.org/files /FS/SIPRIFS1604.pdf, 2. Donald Trump, Speech Announcing Presidential Candidacy, Washington Post, 16 June 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/06/16/full-text-donald -trump-announces-a-presidential-bid/. John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity,” 1630, in The Puritans in America: A Narrative Anthology, ed. Alan Heimert and Andrew Delbanco (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 91. See, among others, Nicholas Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States, 1607–1876 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Hilde Restad, American Exceptionalism: An Idea That Made a Nation and Remade the World (London: Routledge, 2015); Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny: American Exceptionalism and the Empire of Right (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996). For example, John F. Kennedy, “City Upon a Hill” Speech, 9 January 1961, http://millercenter .org/president/kennedy/speeches/speech-3364; Ronald Reagan, Farewell Address, 11 January 1989, http://millercenter.org/president/reagan/speeches/speech-3418. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). Barack Obama, News Conference in Strasbourg, France, 4 April 2009. Robert Schlesinger, “Obama Has Mentioned ‘American Exceptionalism’ More Than Bush,” US News and World Report, 31 January 2011, http://www.usnews.com/opinion /blogs/robert-schlesinger/2011/01/31/obama-has-mentioned-american-exceptionalism -more-than-bush; also see Jerome Karabel, “ ‘American Exceptionalism’ and the Battle for the Presidency,” Huffington Post, 22 December 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com /jerome-karabel/american-exceptionalism-obama-gingrich_b_1161800.html. Greg Grandin, “The Strange Career of American Exceptionalism,” The Nation, 6 December 2016, https://www.thenation.com/article/the-strange-career-of-american-exceptionalism. Donald Trump, Speech Announcing Presidential Candidacy. Clare Foran, “The Inverted Politics of American Exceptionalism,” The Atlantic, 31 August 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/hillary-clinton-american -exceptionalism-donald-trump/498212/. Donald Trump, Press Conference After Super Tuesday, Time, 2 March 2016, http://time .com/4245134/super-tuesday-donald-trump-victory-speech-transcript-full-text/.

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16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22. 23.

24.

25.

26.

Transcript of the First Presidential Debate, Washington Post, 26 September 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/26/the-first-trump-clinton -presidential-debate-transcript-annotated. Michael Finnegan, “Trump’s Closing Argument: The US Is ‘the Laughingstock of the World’ ,” Los Angeles Times, 7 November 2016, http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics /trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-trump-s-closing-argument-the-u-s-is-1478540304 -htmlstory.html. Barack Obama, Interview on Fox News Sunday, 10 April 2016, http://www.foxnews.com /transcript/2016/04/10/exclusive-president-barack-obama-on-fox-news-sunday/; Mitt Romney, Speech on Donald Trump, New York Times, 3 March 2016, http://www.nytimes .com/2016/03/04/us/politics/mitt-romney-speech.html. Michael Kruse, “The True Story of Donald Trump’s First Campaign Speech—in 1987,” Politico Magazine, 5 February 2016, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/02 /donald-trump-first-campaign-speech-new-hampshire-1987-213595. Donald Trump, “There’s Nothing Wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy That a Little Backbone Can’t Cure,” advertisement in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe, 2 September 1987. Donald Trump, Interview with Texas Patriots Political Action Committee, April 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72wM6cqPS-c; see David Corn, “Donald Trump Says He Doesn’t Believe in ‘American Exceptionalism’ ,” Mother Jones, 7 June 2016, http:// www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/donald-trump-american-exceptionalism. Donald Trump, Interview on Foreign Policy, New York Times, 21 July 2016, http://www .nytimes.com/2016/07/22/us/politics/donald-trump-foreign-policy-interview.html. Jim Geraghty, “Donald Trump’s Odd Fixation on Seizing Middle Eastern Oil Fields,” National Review, 30 July 2015, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/421825/donald -trump-foreign-policy-middle-east-oil; on Trump’s superficially antiwar appeal, see Samuel Moyn and Stephen Wertheim, “The Long Road to Trump’s War,” New York Times, 10 April 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/opinion/the-long-road-to-trumps -war.html. For example, Richard Haass, “The Isolationist Temptation,” Wall Street Journal, 5 August 2016, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-isolationist-temptation-1470411481; Libby Nelson, “‘America First’: Donald Trump’s Slogan has a Bigoted Backstory,” Vox, 1 September 2016, https://www.vox.com/2016/7/20/12198760/america-first-donald-trump-convention; Frank Rich, “Trump’s Appeasers,” New York Magazine, 1 November 2016, http://nymag .com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/charles-lindbergh-is-a-cautionary-tale-for-republicans .html. For an argument against the “isolationist” interpretation of Trump, see Stephen Wertheim, “Quit Calling Trump an Isolationist. He’s Worse Than That,” Washington Post, 17 February 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/02/17/quit -calling-donald-trump-an-isolationist-its-an-insult-to-isolationism. Stephen Wertheim, “Donald Trump’s Plan to Save Western Civilization,” New York Times, 22 July 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/22/opinion/sunday/donald-trumps-plan -to-save-western-civilization.html.

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27.

28.

29.

30.

Michael Birnbaum and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, “NATO Allies Boost Defense Spending in the Wake of Trump Criticism,” Washington Post, 28 June 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nato-allies-boost-defense-spending-in-the-wake-of-trump-criticism /2017/06/28/153584de-5a8c-11e7-aa69-3964a7d55207_story.html. See, for example, Mike Zapler, “Republicans Denounce Trump’s Defense of ‘Killer’ Putin,” Politico, 5 February 2017, http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/republicans -denounce-trumps-defense-of-killer-putin-234665. Barbara Keys, Reclaiming American Virtue: The Human Rights Revolution of the 1970s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Mario del Pero, The Eccentric Realist: Henry Kissinger and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010); Daniel Sargent, A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). Alec Tyson, “Most Americans Think the US Is Great, but Fewer Say It’s the Greatest,” Pew Research Center, 2 July 2014, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/02/most -americans-think-the-u-s-is-great-but-fewer-say-its-the-greatest/.

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hat can diplomatic history and international relations theory tell us about the future of the United States in the world, and particularly the impact of the Trump administration’s foreign policies? I attempt to answer from the historian’s side, by focusing on one prominently stated aspect of the administration’s purported approach: strident nationalism. Specifically, I will address the issue of economic nationalism in the 1930s as a means of contextualizing Donald Trump’s America First trade nationalism. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 represents the most famous case of trade protectionism in American history, and Franklin Roosevelt’s rejection of the World Economic Conference three years later added to the US economic nationalist response in world affairs. Both issues inform us of the possible consequences of Trump’s approach to the global economy. This history offers some dismal lessons. Political scientist Randall Schweller argues in his chapter for Trump the Realist, in which America will pick its battles carefully rather than engage in disastrous fits of interventionism, idealistic missions, or globalized economic policies that hand over the farm to foreigners at the expense of our workers. Trump will respond to “American citizens,” who will “demand a more narrowly self-interested foreign policy.”1 Wise, realistic citizens— some 63 million of them (although a minority of the voter total)—hope to overcome the oppression of globalization. This argument against global

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engagement is curious, especially because it feigns interest in the electorate, as if the average person should be asked to run American foreign policy. Actually, the pandering to the crowd through the sort of toughguy boasting that appeared in the 2016 election campaign belied the fact that only a small percentage of Trump backers hailed from a struggling, postindustrial, and uneducated population. As Gallup Poll research concluded, most Trump supporters were blue-collar workers but had relatively high household incomes and were not hurt by import competition.2 Why is that group more qualified than educated elites to set the broad parameters of United States’ foreign policy, in any case? To be sure, the “best and the brightest” made their mistakes, and still do. But such nationalist thinking, disguised as realism, threatens to trash our institutions and sources of power—the very last thing realists should desire. Schweller’s argument also neglects the fact that one can criticize globalization without abandoning the entire ship; certainly, major reform, even an overhaul, of the economic system is in order. Perhaps one answer arises from the possibility that there are domestic economic remedies to the plight of workers—tax and fiscal policies, infrastructure programs, meaningful adjustment assistance for those affected by imports, and the like. Why blame trade with the United States’ foreign trade partners for ills the government has brought on itself by Reaganomic, free market policies at home that crushed the working class (and caused labor unions to turn away from their historic embrace of free trade)? As Edward Alden has noted, neoliberalism led to “the broken promise” of generous assistance to workers and has made the transition to a global economy difficult; failure to help American workers “is one of the great tragedies in America’s efforts to build a more competitive economy with widely shared benefits.”3 It may be, as Schweller argues, that “selfishness is not always a shameful thing, as Adam Smith pointed out in The Wealth of Nations (1776),” as if the economist-philosopher were assessing the working class today.4 But selfishness is shameful when remedies to those harmed by the free market are lacking, and, above all, when trumpeted by the leader responsible for historic global stability, order, and peace (all, presumably, cardinal objectives of realism). In an election that featured a remarkable emphasis on foreign policy—including immigration, trade, climate change, terrorism, and Wikileaks, Russia, China, Iran, etc.,—and an inaugural address dominated by international relations (and this when foreign policy is not

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in the public conscious because the country is not at war or under attack), we need to take stock of what is happening by looking at where we have been. Vote totals do not tell the entire story. History has proven that an “America First” strategy can run the United States off the tracks, and dangerously so. Admittedly, history never exactly parallels current affairs. Still, because history intersects with larger geopolitical, economic, and social forces, as well as the personalities that shape or receive them, there are lessons, and at least warnings, to be had. So, let me try to make sense of history. When it comes to Donald Trump’s (supposed) populism and chauvinistic nationalism, the old adage holds: been there, done that—and with bad consequences. The upsurges of chauvinistic or nativist nationalism that burst from populism are an obvious danger to democracy and civil, rational discourse and decision making. The nationalistic turn inward in recent decades, especially after the 9/11 attacks, notes historian Michael Hunt, has prompted a turn from confidence to self-doubt about the nation’s mission, and with it, deepening divides along cultural and political lines that have undermined faith in internationalism (free trade included).5 For electoral purposes, Trump’s nationalism reflected this transformation. His is less an ideology. Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” was a catchy campaign line (that Ronald Reagan also used) and, once he became president, it became a simplistic attempt to order the complexities of the world economy and retain favor. During his first year, he disguised the America First term by not capitalizing the second word, and then referring to “Made in the USA” or “Making America Great Again.” Trump continued to use the term as he fixated on protectionism, jobs for Americans only, the supposed excellence of American-made goods over foreign goods, the robbery of US wealth, ingenuity, and employment by predatory foreigners, and other blustering, foolish, narcissistic (because his utterances are designed to boost himself rather than the nation), and ahistorical commentary typical of this president.6 The slogans “America First” and “Made in America” were critical to his larger agenda of winning the presidency by playing to his targeted base of average Americans easily riled up by supposed inroads in their livelihoods made by imports, immigrants, and other foreign elements.7 The notion that Trump brings out the worst in Americans with his apocalyptic utterances may lead to the kind of isolationist policies

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that are inimical to America’s role in the world, and ultimately, its real interests. Simply, America First protectionism is hostile to international engagement. This type of nationalism, minus the anti-Semitism (for now) of the past, has stymied rational policymaking, as the isolationist era of the 1930s demonstrated. It is simply unrealistic, in an age of interconnected economic relations and one in which it is often the case that a manufactured good (Trump’s target for growth in his Made in the USA rhetoric) is the product of inputs from multiple nations before it is finished and sold. Trade populism and nationalism, wrapped up in such inward-looking, antiforeign, and simplistic thinking, was certainly detrimental to peace and US interests in the global arena in the 1930s. It could be today as well. Take the ill-fated Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP promised to pivot to Asia by promoting order; growth; innovation; and, ultimately, the democracy demanded by a rising middle class. Ending corruption, and child and forced labor; protecting workers’ fundamental rights; and curbing poverty play into the larger American human rights policy objectives of preventing war by antidemocratic actors, as well as avoiding the brutish history of the twentieth century. There is also a distinct realism in the TPP. As Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said in 2016, the TPP is trade’s version of an aircraft carrier—an economic sentinel watching over American values and interests in the Asia-Pacific arena.8 Trump did not agree, obviously. Three days after his inauguration, he cast his withdrawal notice in purely nationalistic terms: “It is the policy of my administration to represent the American people and their financial well-being in all negotiations, particularly the American worker, and to create fair and economically beneficial trade deals that serve their interests.”9 The TPP is all but dead, at least in terms of US participation, thanks to the America First outburst of rejection by Trump as president, which was preceded by his approach in the election campaign (as well as from the left, by a wrong-headed but better-intentioned Bernie Sanders). In late January 2017, some one thousand foreign-service officers and civil servants in the Department of State dissented, in a cable, to President Trump’s temporary travel ban on the US refugee program and immigration from seven Muslim countries. The letter arose from opposition to protectionism of any sort, whether regarding the flow of trade or people. Could so many experts be wrong?

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After all, confronted with populist-nationalist fervor, elites have been correct before. Nearly ninety years ago, 1,028 economists from universities and the private sector sent President Herbert Hoover a letter protesting the pending Smoot-Hawley Tariff. Designed to raise tariffs, Smoot-Hawley has gone down in history as a law that catered supposedly to the average American to make America “First” in trade relations. In their 4 May 1930 letter, the economists countered that the rise in tariff rates would be disastrous to a “majority of our citizens” by raising prices to account for higher production costs in a protected market and thus would punish consumers (while big, established firms, with lower production costs, would still enjoy higher profits). Those employed in mines, food and agriculture, construction, transportation, tourism, public utilities, as well as professionals in finance, media, wholesale, and retail trades, would “clearly lose.” That is, the little guy and gal would continue to suffer, especially because protectionism would not “give work to the idle.” Nations would retaliate by raising duties against US exports, and American industry would adjust by laying off workers to minimize costs.10 This was plain economics, and if it sounded like theory back then, the reality played out over the ensuing decade. Yet Smoot-Hawley proponents, Democrats and Republicans, endorsed protectionism. Some predicted a quick return to “happy times,” while cosponsor Congressman Willis Hawley (R-OR) exulted about full coverage for all Americans because “the protection in this bill is nation-wide.” Senator William Pine (R-OK) simplified the nationalist argument to its bare essential: “The government cannot deny the equal protection of the law to any of its citizens.”11 Trump has said the same thing. Many analysts downplay the impact of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, arguing instead that trade occupied such a minor part of the overall economy that tariff hikes were not critical to the downturn. The Tariff Act of 1930 actually did not raise tariffs to their highest average level in history (nowhere close, actually, as tariffs were pegged at about 16 percent, well under most previous laws and just a few percentages higher than the more recent Underwood and Fordney-McCumber Acts). Smoot-Hawley did not, by itself, cause the Great Depression, nor did it necessarily worsen it—but it certainly did not improve the economy either. As trade historian Alfred Eckes, Jr. has diligently argued, American trade partners did not issue formal protests about the law and did not proclaim that they would

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retaliate (although other sources assert the opposite). Even more, claims that nations retaliated against US exports in 1931 have little basis in fact; there was no massive backlash against American goods, whether they were commodities or auto exports. So, were those 1,028 economists simply engaging in scare tactics and hyperbole? Was their letter to Hoover a stunt to defend their doctrinaire beliefs in free trade? Did Smoot-Hawley serve Franklin Roosevelt’s political purposes in the 1932 election campaign against Hoover, as a form of political theater to denounce Republican protectionism as a cause of the Depression? Did economists plot with internationalists after World War II to prevent a resurgence of isolationism in American foreign policy?12 Perhaps, but timing is everything. The last eight months of the legislative process of Smoot-Hawley in 1929 and 1930 added to market and financial insecurities, which resulted in two stock market crashes. Europe’s World War I debts could not be repaid, as trade revenue abroad dried up. Monetary stability, especially in the farm sector (a key to most states at the time), lay in ruins; the agricultural sector was devastated by Smoot-Hawley. And as Trump nationalists well know, a focus on the aggregate impact misses essential details; the forest does not account for all the trees. Only a fraction of the world’s trade might be affected, but protectionism would deal quite a blow, overall, to trade doctrine, relations, and policies.13 The message was clear to the markets. In the midst of the Great Depression, Smoot-Hawley was a nationalistic outlashing designed to protect the American market from foreigners. We see such sentiment again after the second worst downturn in American history, which began in 2008 and persists to varying degrees today among the working class. Diplomats also understood Smoot-Hawley’s dangers, and nationalists certainly grasped its import. Within months of Smoot-Hawley’s passage, Canada, France, Mexico, Italy, Spain, Cuba, Australia, and New Zealand raised tariffs. Twenty-six countries imposed quantitative restrictions and exchange controls, and the British adopted the protectionist Ottawa Imperial System of Preferences, abandoning nearly a century of free trade policy.14 These measures were a reaction to Smoot-Hawley, even if they did not represent massive retaliation. The economists had also warned that to “inject into our international relations” higher tariffs that would sour relations among friendly nations “does not furnish good soil for the

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growth of world peace.”15 They had their evidence, not in 1931 or 1932, but in a buildup, over time, of fascism and militarism. Of course, it would be simplistic to argue that trade policy begat Nazi conquest, Japanese militarism, and the tragedy of World War II’s 65 million deaths. But it certainly played a role in undermining the capabilities of the democracies. Amidst the economic distress and lack of international cooperation, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Hideki Tojo, and Joseph Stalin took note of the feeble, disunified, and selfish democratic response of creating closed economies, giving them space to prop up their totalitarian governments and military spending. Some principles and guidelines—namely, liberal internationalism (not neoconservatism or one-world universalism, but hard-headed multilateral liberalism)—are worth keeping in mind. Nations should try to act in the interests of all, and not view the world with a win-only, mercantilist attitude. The key lesson from history, however distant, is that the upswell of protectionism signaled the triumph of economic nationalism; tariffs, like trade policy today, were a convenient whipping boy for populist politicians, struggling job-seekers, and demagogues. Hoover acknowledged that tariff policy had been hijacked by domestic politics, which naturally meant a turn inward. He announced after Smoot-Hawley’s passage in both houses that the legislation “was undertaken as the result of pledges given by the Republican Party at Kansas City,” which included promises to protect farmers and workers alike. Hoover swore “the next Republican Congress to an examination and where necessary a revision of these schedules to the end that the American labor in these industries may again command the home market, may maintain its standard of living, and may count upon steady employment in its accustomed field.” The parallels to today are evident; Trump would agree with Hoover that “platform promises must not be empty gestures.”16 Thus, in his inaugural address, Trump pugnaciously asserted the sort of trade nationalist outrage, and an America First solution to US problems, that had not been heard by a political leader since the early twentieth century (excepting GOP candidate Patrick Buchanan in 1992). Trump played to his struggling, and myopic, base just as Hoover did, promising that “every decision on trade on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families.” But Trump also personalized the nationalist campaign in his

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typically man-on-horseback rhetoric. Countries had stolen American products, companies, and jobs, so “protection will lead to great prosperity and strength. I will fight for you with every breath in my body, and I will never, ever let you down. We will follow two simple rules: Buy American and hire American.” Trump went Hoover—who, to be fair, cherished his party, unlike Trump, who seems to cherish only himself and his family— by declaring war on internationalist thinking, including in trade: “We will seek friendship and good will with the nations of the world, but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.”17 So much for three-quarters of a century of American leadership over a liberal world order, a responsibility that Herbert Hoover, despite his turn to protectionism, generally embraced. The Smoot-Hawley debacle reveals that America First demagoguery can lead the country down a dangerous path. It is not just dry, irrelevant history. Such trade nationalism begot nationalism in other arenas, as it might today, with dictators taking heart from Trump’s example and pushing their own local, selfish, and dangerous issues. Experts issued their warnings, as they have on current immigration policy, but self-styled populist-nationalists have taken a different course. History teaches us that they err in such thinking: again, we have been there, and done that, with dire results. Smoot-Hawley is a fundamental historic argument against nationalism, particularly by a country that many in the world hoped would provide a beacon of sanity to a Europe and Asia slipping into fascist terror. It is a familiar story that bears repeating today, as Trump rather cavalierly issues protectionist threats and looks at trade as a zerosum game. President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the dangers of the Smoot-Hawley nationalism that he inherited, even though he, too, turned his administration inward upon coming into office with the New Deal to bring the country out of the Great Depression. Breaking with Hoover’s approach, Roosevelt prioritized the domestic economy over stabilizing prices and finances internationally during the transition period to his first term. This move was part politics (he did not want to be tied to Hoover), part a strategy to delink trade and finance from European debt repayment, part his intention to persuade nations to raise prices at home rather than change currency prices by international bankers, and mostly due to his campaign promise to take care of Americans. It also spoke to his personality and decision-making

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style; Roosevelt famously shunned the sort of dogma and abstraction of his secretary of state, Cordell Hull, who believed in the linkage between trade liberalism and peace (or conversely, protectionism and political strife). The president held only basic convictions that treasured America’s free-enterprise system, American capitalist exceptionalism, and the like.18 In their inch-deep knowledge but keen ability, through nationalistic statements that struck a responsive chord with elements of the electorate, both New Yorkers had much in common, although the jury is still out on Trump’s decision-making style. Yet they do not share many personality traits beyond being unstructured, as well as having had no national elected experience, although at least Roosevelt had served in government. Commentators like Walter Lippmann believed Roosevelt to be a pleasantly optimistic and vague philanthropist upon assuming the presidency.19 Fair enough; Roosevelt was not a great intellectual but had a great feel for politics and people. Trump tends to be a pessimist who sees enemies everywhere.20 Focusing on the domestic economy also smacked of antiglobalization or anti-liberalism. That is, Roosevelt temporarily returned to (or continued) the nineteenth-century American economic nationalist doctrine in trade that, as historian Marc-William Palen has noted, associated protectionism with political nationalism at home and realism in foreign policy. That agenda also split the Republican Party between cosmopolitan free-traders in support of peaceful market integration and protectionist imperialists who opted for a coercive, expansionist foreign policy while shutting out imports from the domestic market.21 Famously, Roosevelt junked the World Economic Conference, meeting in London in 1933, and thus dashed attempts by France and Britain to maintain a high dollar to improve their trade position. He favored instead the national economy over international currency stabilization, although he did not resort to protectionism (offering a reciprocal lowering of tariff barriers as the means to end the trade war) and he insisted, repeatedly, that his decision did not suggest a turn toward ultra-nationalism.22 Yet Roosevelt was wrong. He ridiculed “the fetishes of international bankers” who sought multilateral cooperation, and his view that recovery would come only by each nation adopting a “sound internal economic system” proved incorrect. After all, he never solved the Great Depression. To be sure, while trade partners worried that his stance (coupled with

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Smoot-Hawley) meant a permanent turn to economic unilateralism and nationalism, Roosevelt had nothing of the sort in mind. In fact, he did not really have any course in mind, save one that would play well in Peoria. “In pure theory, you and I think alike,” he told the confirmed free-trader Cordell Hull, “but every once in a while we have to modify a principle to meet a hard and disagreeable fact.” That meant the secretary of state’s principles would be set aside for policies that demonstrated quick and firm action on the part of Roosevelt, that is, as historian Robert Hathaway notes, “a national habit of policy formulation that gave little sustained thought to the impact American programs might have on other nations.”23 That stance looked decisive by appearing to honor campaign promises. At heart, Roosevelt understood that internationalism was the preferred course. He sounded off, however, in a defense of American interests that certainly seemed like a forceful and politically strategic way to get foreign nations to pay back their debts to the United States.24 It was also uninformed and undermined the international community. A commercial war emerged, as American policies prompted the British to discourage outsiders to trade with their empire, and diplomatic relations in the international arena unraveled into a confused jumble of policies that gave aggressors big advantages. Roosevelt understood his mistake, although his considerable talents at spinning his policies in a favorable light did not overcome the immediate injury caused by the aborted World Economic Conference. Three years later, as dictators began their march across continents, he joined trade to democracy and peace, and determined to free trade by reducing tariffs on imports from abroad. Just months after Hitler forcibly reoccupied the Rhineland, Italian fascists seized Ethiopia, and the Spanish Civil War launched the Franco dictatorship, Roosevelt admitted that liberal trade might not stop war. But as he noted in a famous address at Chautauqua, New York, in August 1936, the chances for dire consequences were exacerbated by trade nationalism. “We do not maintain that a more liberal international trade will stop war,” he announced, “but we fear that without a more liberal international trade, war is a natural sequence.”25 In hindsight, this rhetoric acknowledged the pitfalls of nationalism and the crying need for international cooperation. There were, of course, other elements of nationalism besides trade and tariffs that plagued democracies on the road to World War II, and they related to economic nationalism. The infamous America First Committee

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of 1940–1941 questioned whether foreign trade was important to the life of the nation. These isolationists deemed it not crucial when compared to production and selling in the home market; they argued that a withdrawal from the trade system would not be catastrophic. Preceding by seventy years the notion of Vladimir Putin as a friend, America First adherents also noted that America could live side by side with dictators while running no risk to its democracy or security. After all, the United States had been a close trade partner with Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany during the 1930s, but the country had not turned to fascism.26 Such thinking did not consider that America helped the very nations that it would have to fight in World War II. Likewise, the United States abandoned the Jews, shutting down the immigration of refugees fleeing tyranny in Europe. Such policy played well with constituencies in the heartland even as it turned a blind eye to the fact that America could benefit, economically, from an influx of skilled and unskilled labor. It also expressed the extremes of chauvinism and cruelty, of economic nationalism that stemmed from protecting the home market from imports of competitive products and people. One threat of such nationalistic approaches is that the messenger can overwhelm the message; demagoguery oftentimes walks hand-in-hand with chauvinistic nationalism. Using the bully pulpit, Roosevelt attained hero status among millions of “ordinary” Americans, who deemed him their savior. He could reach them directly by radio, and thereby bypass traditional print media and spin his version of events. At least Roosevelt faced real threats (the Great Depression and looming war in Europe and Asia) and there was no indication of a sociopathic personality. Trump is a different type, although he shares Roosevelt’s skill in marketing with new media. He has concocted crises, politically capitalizing on the calamitous 2008–2009 Great Recession, and places himself squarely as the hero rescuer through trade nationalism. While Roosevelt used radio, Trump resorts to Twitter to relate directly to his audience and amplify his message through the “attention economy” of mass media, such as television shows and newspapers.27 In this milieu, a dramatic, America First message thrives, especially in the economic arena. Trump threatens seventy years of liberal internationalism that countered the high tariffs and protectionism of Smoot-Hawley and nonparticipation in world conferences, as well as the prejudicial barriers to immigration of the National Origins Act of 1924 and head-in-the-sand America First

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isolationism. Actually, it was adherence to liberal values that truly made America great. As the guardian of a global economy, the United States, despite its faults and inequalities, muffled nationalism for the mutual benefit of many nations.28 This democratic capitalist peace theory posits that trade and finance are tools of foreign policy that provide security and promote amicable, cooperative relations among nations. It is not a new concept; the theory stretches back centuries.29 On occasion, capitalist peace doctrine promoted unity through global institutions, themselves in need of constant reform and responsiveness. It also achieved American interests; the United States was its primary beneficiary in terms of profits and security. Now, as historian Jeremi Suri argues, Trump threatens to make America a reviled and counterproductive international pariah that risks upsetting global order, stability, and, ultimately, peace.30 The United States has long fought for stability and a liberal, open system after World War II, but it need not return to nationalism and protectionism for the sake of popular politics. Nationalism is a powerful tool, but it can end in disaster. We should learn from that history. Nor is trade simply a case of national winners and losers, like a game show. Everyone can win, and oftentimes, everyone does. Contrary to Trump’s views, the United States is not getting “ripped off all the time,” as he proclaimed while standing alongside a visiting prime minister.31 But the country’s economic problems are not due to trade alone; in fact, trade gets the blame for unemployment (which incidentally, by 2017, was at near-historic lows) when automation, productivity, and long-term trends of blue-collar decline are the real culprits. Computers rather than China are the reasons for the plight of many American workers. Trade barriers will not reverse their fortunes but make them worse. Protectionism might work for some, but overall, many more will be hurt, including consumers. Threats to trade might succeed in winning compliance on agreements by errant nations, but they can, and do, lead to reprisals from abroad.32 What will follow, history tells us, is a more hostile international environment of recrimination, an undermining of world trade rules and norms, and the rise of nationalistic leaders who can prompt a backlash against American interests. This reaction occurred after Smoot-Hawley passed; signs of such retaliation exist now in Mexico, and Canadians are primed to meet US barriers with protectionism of their own. Weakened US influence, and even threats to security and peace, are much more likely.

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Localism has always been present as a compelling shaper of politics and culture, but we should restrict it at the international level. Globalization has its discontents but there can be change within the system rather than a revolutionary trade war. America got a second chance after World War II to abandon nationalistic isolationism. A third chance might not be in the offing. Perhaps Donald Trump is just spouting rhetoric to appeal to his base, as Hoover and Roosevelt did in the 1930s. After all, Roosevelt eventually turned to trade liberalization. Still, his new trade law of 1934 was not the powerful antidote to the Great Depression it might have been had he engaged trade partners on a multilateral basis from the start; the trade regime was too devastated to recover through bilateral commercial agreements. Maybe Trump will tone down his protectionism (possibly making side deals to assist certain beleaguered industries, as all presidents have done), although his continual reference to making the country great again by a single focus on Americans, alone, does not bode well. And confusion reigns as well over his nationalistic rhetoric and sentiments. In a perverse twist of rather unpatriotic logic (and typical uninformed thoughtlessness), Trump has actually complimented America’s trade rival, China, on its nationalistic commercial policies while later denouncing the country for economic aggression. Perhaps he will learn that nationalism, from any quarter when it comes to international affairs, is a dangerous expression that leads to conflict. In any case, if Trump does not shift his gaze away from such hyped-up chauvinistic rhetoric, he risks, once again, retaliation against American exports, higher priced imports, rising costs for consumers who shop at Walmart or Amazon, and intensified (and needless) diplomatic tensions with key allies and powerhouses in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Making American great again would, in sum, ruin the trade system and damage the US economy, workers, farmers, and businesses included. That would be bad for Peoria as well as Paris. And for peace, too.

NOTES 1.

See also Randall L. Schweller, chapter 3 of this volume, and “A Third-Image Explanation for Why Trump Now: A Response to Robert Jervis’s ‘President Trump and IR Theory’ ,” H-Diplo /ISSF Policy Series, 8 February 2017, https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/discussions /165197/issf-policy-series-third-image-explanation-why-trump-now-response.

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2.

3. 4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10. 11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

Jonathan T. Rothwell and Pablo Diego-Rosell, “Explaining Nationalist Political Views: The Case of Donald Trump,” Report for Gallup, 2 November 2016, http://dx.doi.org /10.2139/ssrn.2822059. Edward Alden, Failure to Adjust: How Americans Got Left Behind in the Global Economy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), 126. Schweller, “A Third-Image Explanation.” Michael H. Hunt, “Nationalism as an Umbrella Ideology,” in Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, 3rd ed., ed. Frank Costigliola and Michael J. Hogan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 219. For example, see Donald J. Trump, “Remarks at a ‘Made in America’ Roundtable,” The American Presidency Project, 19 July 2017, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index .php?pid=126687&st=America+First&st1. Michael Freeden, “Is Nationalism a Distinct Ideology?” Political Studies 46, no. 4 (1998): 748–65, makes this case that nationalism is a “thin” ideology that embellishes larger ideologies (and social and political agendas). Ash Carter, “Remarks on the Next Phase of the US Rebalance to the Asia-Pacific,” McCain Institute, Arizona State University, 6 April 2015, https://www.defense.gov/News /Speeches/Speech-View/Article/606660/remarks-on-the-next-phase-of-the-us -rebalance-to-the-asia-pacific-mccain-instit. Donald J. Trump, “Memorandum on Withdrawal of the United States for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations and Agreement,” The American Presidency Project, 23 January 2017, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=122516&st=TPP&st1=. “1,028 Economists Ask Hoover to Veto Pending Tariff Bill,” New York Times, 5 May 1930, 1. Robert A. Pastor, Congress and the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy, 1929–1976 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 78, 83. Alfred E. Eckes, Jr., Opening America’s Market: US Foreign Trade Policy Since 1776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 112–39. In fact, fifty-nine countries protested the legislation before its passage. See Pastor, Congress, 81. Theodore Phalan, Deema Yazegi, and Thomas Rustici, “The Smoot-Hawley Tariff and the Great Depression,” Foundation for Economic Education, https://fee.org/articles/thesmoot-hawley-tariff-and-the-great-depression/. Pastor, Congress, 79. “1,028 Economists,” 1. Statement on the Tariff Bill, The American Presidency Project, 16 June 1930, http://www .presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=22233&st=Tariff&st1=. Inaugural Address, The American Presidency Project, 20 January 2017, http://www .presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=120000&st=trade&st1=. Robert M. Hathaway, “1933–1945: Economic Diplomacy in a Time of Crisis” in Economics and World Power: An Assessment of American Diplomacy since 1789, ed. William H. Becker and Samuel F. Wells, Jr. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 281–82. Lippmann in Robert S. McElvaine, The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941 (New York: Random House, 1984), 133. Lippmann, 133.

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21.

22. 23. 24.

25. 26.

27.

28.

29. 30.

31.

32.

Marc-William Palen, The “Conspiracy” of Free Trade: The Anglo-American Struggle Over Empire and Economic Globalisation, 1846–1896 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 25–26, 54–55. Hathaway, “1933–1945,” 285. Philip Scranton, “How the US Scuttled the 1933 World Economic Conference,” BloombergView, 17 June 2013, https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2013-06-17 /how-the-u-s-scuttled-the-1933-world-economic-conference. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Address at Chautauqua, N.Y,” The American Presidency Project, 14 August 1936, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15097. Justus D. Doenecke, In Danger Undaunted: The Anti-Interventionist Movement of 1940– 1941 as Revealed in the Papers of the America First Committee (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1990), 117, 151. Derek Thompson, “Live from the White House, It’s Trump TV,” New York Times, Sunday Review, 2, 29 January 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/opinion/sunday/live -from-the-white-house-its-trump-tv.html. Robert J. Samuelson, “Trump’s Risky Nationalism,” Washington Post, 4 December 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-risky-nationalism/2016/12/04 /dabc8f66-b8bd-11e6-a677-b608fbb3aaf6_story.html?utm_term=.4773e981c627. See, for example, Eric Gartzke, “The Capitalist Peace.” American Journal of Political Science 51, no. 1 (January 2007): 166–91. Jeremi Suri, “How Trump’s Executive Orders Could Set America Back 70 Years,” The Atlantic, 27 January 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01 /trumps-executive-orders-will-set-america-back-70-years/514730/. “The President’s News Conference with Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom,” The American Presidency Project, 27 January 2017, http://www.presidency.ucsb .edu/ws/index.php?pid=122543&st. Douglas A. Irwin, “The False Promise of Protectionism: Why Trump’s Trade Policy Could Backfire,” Foreign Affairs 96, no. 3 (May/June 2017): 45–56.

11 THE APPEAL OF “AMERICA FIRST” JOHN A. THOMPSON

D

onald Trump’s campaign rhetoric, together with earlier statements of his over the years, led some to anticipate (with varying emotions) that his election would produce a general retraction of America’s overseas commitments.1 But it has become evident that such predictions exaggerated the stability and consistency of Trump’s own views as well as the extent to which US foreign policy is under the direct control of the president. Nevertheless, the unilateralism implicit in Trump’s slogan “America First” has already found expression in his repudiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Paris climate accord, and may well yet do so with respect to other multilateral trade agreements and international commitments. Furthermore, the electoral success of Trump’s campaign was significant in itself. Not only did it demonstrate the appeal of economic protectionism and confirm the public’s disenchantment with overseas military interventions; it also brought into question the depth of domestic political support for the broad conception of the nation’s interests underlying the wide-ranging and strenuous global role that the United States has played in the last seventy years. It is easier to understand the appeal of America First if we recognize that the assumption of a broad responsibility for world order has involved a departure from the norms of interstate relations. Donald Trump himself implicitly drew attention to this uniqueness by repudiating it. In his campaign, he promised he would “Make America Great Again.” But his

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remarks on foreign policy took an opposite tack from the way Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking to “make Russia great again.” Putin wants to extend Russia’s influence over other countries—particularly its neighbors but now also in the Middle East. Trump on the other hand portrayed America’s alliances as burdens rather than assets and threatened to reduce or downgrade America’s security commitments—to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and also in East Asia. On the face of it, such withdrawal or retreat would be a less obvious path to greatness than advance. This paradox reflects the unusual character of the international role that the United States has played since World War II. The breadth of the commitments and responsibilities it has assumed is extraordinary. Through a network of alliances with more than sixty states, the United States guarantees the security of countries across the globe, including such wealthy ones as Japan and Germany as well as threatened ones like Taiwan and Israel. Its armed forces have bases of some kind in no less than sixty-five countries. As Trump has been stressing, all this is costly. The United States is currently spending around $600 billion a year on defense, almost as much as the next fourteen countries combined. There are also nonmonetary costs. Its alliance commitments might pull the United States into foreign conflicts it could otherwise stay out of—for example, in the Middle East, potentially with Russia over Eastern Europe, or with China over its expansionist tendencies. Moreover, as scholarly advocates of “restraint” have emphasized in recent years, the core security of the United States is not dependent on these extensive commitments and responsibilities. Given its geographic position and military power (including its nuclear arsenal), the United States does not need allies to help protect its homeland from attack. In terms of security, it is self-sufficient. Nor are these overseas military commitments dictated by economic interest. With the one exception of its need for imported oil, the nation’s prosperity is not seriously vulnerable to hostile foreign actions. Because of the size and self-sufficiency of its economy, foreign trade is much less important to the United States than it is to most industrialized countries, and in any case, American business is well able to make its way in the world without the support of the military.2 So the world role that the United States has been playing can easily be portrayed as the product of altruism or idealism. Hence it is vulnerable

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to Trump’s commitment “to put America First.” America First was, of course, the name of the chief organization working in 1940–1941 to keep the United States out of World War II. Its adherents have been described by their opponents at the time and since as “isolationists,” but that is not really an accurate or fair description of their position, any more than it is of Trump’s. Supporters of America First did not oppose foreign trade or cultural links with other countries. Nor were most of them pacifists, opposed to all use of military force. Indeed, the organization’s manifesto explicitly called for “a prepared America” with “an impregnable defense.” What they were was unilateralists. The United States, they held, should be concerned only with its own security and prosperity. It should retain its freedom of action, unencumbered by commitments to other countries. This, of course, was the traditional policy of the United States, hallowed by the often-invoked injunctions of presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. It was not until the twentieth century that the continued appropriateness of this stance came under serious challenge from- people who advanced a broader view of the nation’s interest.3 The driver of this change was the growth of America’s power, which derived from the preeminent size and strength of its economy. By 1913, the United States was producing 32 percent of the world’s manufactured goods; its gross domestic product (GDP) exceeded that of Britain, France, and Germany combined.4 This dramatic enhancement of the nation’s relative standing had profound effects on both American attitudes and the country’s position in international affairs. Subjectively, it led many influential Americans, such as Theodore Roosevelt, to believe that the United States now had a responsibility to help maintain a world order from which it benefited. Objectively, the nation’s new economic and financial strength inescapably made it an important player in world politics. This was demonstrated in World War I when it became clear on both sides of the Atlantic that the outcome of the European conflict would be determined to a great extent by whether or not the Allies had access to American resources and credit. Whatever policy the United States adopted would be momentously consequential. It was wrestling with the dilemmas of neutrality in this new context that led President Woodrow Wilson to commit himself to establishing a new world order that would maintain international peace, and so keep the United States free from such complications and threats to its interests in the future. In the brilliant rhetorical

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and ideological move that was perhaps his most lasting contribution to the discourse on US foreign policy, Wilson linked this project with the nation’s unique historic mission to promote liberty and self-government in the world. When Germany’s submarine campaign provoked the United States to become a belligerent, Wilson made the establishment of a new world order the goal of America’s war. As historian Adam Tooze reminds us, World War I further enhanced America’s relative power position.5 But, as everyone knows, the United States failed to make the commitment to world (and particularly European) order that Wilson had called for and that many at the time, at home and abroad, believed to be both a moral responsibility and a prudent necessity. In the debate over the League of Nations, the handling of war debts, and tariff policy, more narrow views of the national interest prevailed. Americans were particularly averse to the possibility of further involvement in foreign wars. The great human and financial costs of participation in World War I, and the enormous disruption to normal life at home it had entailed, increasingly were seen as having brought no benefit. The international scene in the 1920s, and particularly the 1930s, was far from the harmonious world order Wilson had promised; liberty and democracy, far from advancing, were in retreat. Public opinion polls in 1937 revealed that two-thirds of Americans thought entry into World War I had been a mistake, and the Neutrality Acts of 1935–1937 were designed to prevent any repetition of the experience. The support for America First in 1940–1941 owed far less to sympathy with Fascism or anti-Semitism than to the simple desire to keep out of foreign wars. As the 1930s ended, the commitment to neutrality was weakened by revulsion at the aggressive behavior of the Axis powers and Japan. After the fall of France in 1940 created the real prospect of a Nazi-dominated Europe, most Americans came to favor aid to Adolf Hitler’s enemies. Despite the vigorous efforts of America First, the Lend-Lease Act passed Congress with healthy majorities in March 1941. But most Americans remained opposed to full-scale entry into the war until after the direct Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. In the next few years, the unilateralist tradition was decisively repudiated. The fact that for the second time in a generation the United States had been dragged into a major war was widely taken as vindication of Wilson’s argument that preemption was better than cure.

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During World War II, a political consensus emerged that a peaceful, law-governed world order was a sufficiently important national interest to warrant making lasting commitments to other countries and accommodating America’s own actions to the requirements of such an order. An open, multilateral system of international trade and exchange was seen as the necessary bedrock. Consciousness of the unique scale of America’s power engendered an unquestioned confidence that the United States would take the lead in establishing and maintaining such a system. This enabled American policymakers to largely determine the form that international organizations and regimes would take, thereby making the project more compatible with the unilateralist tradition. But this went along with the assumption that the United States had a general responsibility that should on occasion entail the subordination of its narrow national interests. For example, in the postwar years, Washington lent financial support to a system (the European Payments Union) that discriminated against dollar imports.6 It has never been easy to gain the necessary political support for measures to maintain world order that involve the subordination of America’s own interests or that make significant demands on American resources. The main source of such support has always been international conflict and a sense of threat. It is clear from the record that only the Cold War secured congressional approval of the Marshall Plan. Similarly, NATO and subsequent alliances were products of the Cold War. More recently, it was the sense of terrorist threat following the 9/11 attacks that generated the initial support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The form of cost that has encountered the most resistance, not surprisingly, is the casualties resulting from military conflict, especially when such conflict is prolonged and not evidently successful. The Korean War as well as Vietnam illustrated this. Less obvious than the sense of threat in sustaining domestic support for costly measures to uphold world order has been the extent of America’s economic and financial preeminence. It is not a coincidence that it was when this preeminence was at its apogee that the nation assumed its wide-ranging commitments and devoted the most resources to defense and foreign assistance. In 1945, the United States possessed three-fourths of global invested capital and produced half of the world’s manufactured goods. Through the Marshall Plan and other programs,

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the United States provided 26 billion dollars to aid Europe’s postwar recovery—a sum equivalent to 10 percent of one year’s GDP. Despite its aid programs, its reserves increased by nearly 6 billion dollars between 1946 and 1949. In 1950, it possessed half the world’s gold, reserve currencies, and International Monetary Fund reserves. Through the 1950s, more than 10 percent of GDP was devoted annually to defense and foreign assistance.7 In that era, America’s margin of economic primacy engendered a confidence that it could assume the burdens of upholding world order without undue sacrifice. The situation is different today. The United States remains the richest and most powerful country in the world. But its margin of preeminence has undoubtedly lessened. China’s gross national product (GNP) is now larger and America’s share of global industrial production has fallen to less than 20 percent. The country’s trade balance has a persistently large deficit. In this situation, the funds devoted to foreign assistance have declined dramatically—from 3 percent of GNP in 1949 to 0.2 percent in 2017.8 At the same time, the political will to sustain the human and financial costs of military action for objectives not clearly and directly related to America’s own security has been eroded by the lengthy and unsuccessful interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2014, six out of ten Americans said that they wanted the United States to continue to play an active role in the world. But two-thirds of Americans also thought that “US military actions should be limited to direct threats to our national security.”9 These circumstances raised questions about the solidity of America’s extensive security commitments even before Trump’s election. With the end of the Cold War, the guarantees of other countries’ security lost their original rationale, the one that was most understandable to the general public. Hence Trump’s past description of NATO as obsolete. To date, the actions and statements of presidents and other officials have served to give these commitments sufficient credibility to deter major, overt challenges to them. So the promissory notes have not been cashed. But Trump’s “America First” rhetoric carries the risk that adversaries and allies alike may doubt that the United States would in practice honor commitments not obviously related to the nation’s own security. The structure of the Pax Americana is not being dismantled, but it looks more fragile.

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NOTES 1.

2.

3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

On Trump’s earlier foreign policy views, see Thomas Wright, “Trump’s 19th-Century Foreign Policy,” Politico, 22 January 2016, and Charlie Laderman and Brendan Simms, Donald Trump: The Making of a World View (London: Endeavour Press, 2017); for such predictions, see Roger Cohen, “Pax American Is Over,” New York Times, 16 December 2016, and, in a more nuanced way, Francis Fukuyama, “The Failed State,” Prospect, no. 250 (January 2017): 30–35. Barry R. Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for US Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014); Eugene Gholz, Daryl G. Press, and Harvey M. Sapolsky, “Come Home, America: The Strategy of Restraint in the Face of Temptation,” International Security 21, no. 4 (Spring 1997): 5–48. For a fuller analysis of the history so baldly summarized in the following paragraphs, see John A. Thompson, A Sense of Power: The Roots of America’s Global Role (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). Robert E. Gallman, “Economic Growth and Structural Change in the Long Nineteenth Century,” in The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, ed. Stanley L. Engerman and Robert E. Gallman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 2–6; Paul Bairoch, “International Industrialization Levels from 1750 to 1980,” Journal of European Economic History 11, no. 2 (Fall 1982): 269–333. Adam Tooze, The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order (London: Penguin, 2014). Curt Cardwell, NSC 68 and the Political Economy of the Early Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 175. Robert J. Lieber, Power and Willpower in the American Future: Why the United States Is Not Destined to Decline (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 123. Chris Murphy, “Marshall Plans, not Martial Plans,” New York Times, 3 January 2017, 9. Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Foreign Policy in the Age of Retrenchment, 2014.

12 THE WANING OF THE POSTWAR ORDER Historical Reflections on 2016 and the Emergence of a Twenty-First-Century World Order T. G . O T T E

Urged by Ambition, who with subtlest skill, Changes her means, the Enthusiast as a dupe Shall soar, and as hypocrite can stoop, And turn the instruments of good to ill, Mending the credulous people to his will. —William Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Sonnets XXVIII

Making sense of the present is a difficult undertaking in the best of times. Doing so seems even more difficult at the current moment. The tumult of 2016 was of a kind not seen since the “spring of the peoples” in 1848. Power no longer seems to be what it was and where it was thought to be. In the West, a wave of anti-establishment populism threatens to bring down the given order, and, in part, has succeeded in upending established verities. Elsewhere, the world seems in turmoil, too. Migratory movements along Europe’s soft Mediterranean underbelly are placing unprecedented strains on European societies and the continent’s political structures; a restless Russia is intent on a policy of imperial reconstitution, however partial; in East Asia, a rising China and a defensive United States are eyeing each other warily; and Islamist terrorism continues to

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widen the internal and geopolitical fault lines of the Middle East and to export violence abroad. The speed and spread of change has left commentators perplexed at how, until very recently, what appeared firm and unshakeable has proved brittle and shallow. Some see Western democracy imperiled and point to parallels with the 1930s. Others draw analogies with the inquietude of Europe on the eve of the First World War. Whether any such parallels exist today, we shall know for certain in a hundred years’ time. Perceived analogies are never exact. Often, indeed, they are misleading and reveal more about contemporary sensibilities than about objective realities. Rather than look back wistfully at the simpler times of the post-1945 world, it is worth remembering that instability and impermanence are the hallmark of international affairs. They are, as German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck once observed, “a fluid element, which will coagulate temporarily under certain circumstances but which, at a change in the atmosphere, will revert to its original aggregate condition.”1 Drawing parallels between the past and the present always contains the risk of short-circuiting more complex connections. Yet a single event may have a flashbulb effect, briefly and sharply illuminating the emerging contours of the new that otherwise would lie in the semidark of the present. Donald Trump’s election may be such a moment. His pronouncements, shot through with inconsistencies and improbabilities as they are, his professed penchant for bilateral deal-making, the manner of his election, the unusual process of transition to his presidency, its no less peculiar commencement, and his first nine months in the Oval Office have led many observers to suggest that the fundamental assumptions about US foreign policy, indeed about the whole architecture of Western security and the wider international system, have been called into question. “The United States is, for now, out of the world order business,” observed one of the president’s notable conservative critics.2 As if to underline this early judgment, Trump’s second national security adviser to date and the director of his National Economic Council put their names to an op-ed piece just after the 2017 G7 meeting at Taormina (Sicily, Italy), in which they assert “that the world is not a ‘global community’ but an arena where nations compete for advantage. [. . .] Rather than denying this elemental nature of international affairs, we embrace it.”3 Even the German chancellor, not normally noted for incautious remarks, signaled that “[t]he times

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in which we [Europe] can count fully on others [the United States] are somewhat over.”4

R Whether such forebodings are justified, only time will tell. But the pervasive sense that 2016–2017 is a turning point invites reflection on the nature of change in general. To obtain a clearer sense of what the glare of the 2016 flashlight reveals, the focus on the short twentieth century, so prevalent in much of current commentary, will not suffice. It may be more productive to seek a longer view on the tide of international affairs. This, indeed, is a good moment to reflect on the waning of postwar eras in a historical perspective. The history of international relations is punctured by wars and subsequent postconflict settlements. One of the chief characteristics of modern history, indeed, is the attempt to establish a lasting peace settlement after the last great war, so that it really would end future wars. But whatever lofty ideals it expresses, the termination of any war—the manner of it and its substantive arrangements—reflects the power relationships of that moment. It crystallizes and preserves them. It reorders hierarchies and regulates, often in considerable detail, future relations between the victorious and the vanquished. The more far-sighted settlements were those that did not exclude the defeated powers but that offered them the prospect of eventual redemption and reintegration. And these tended to be the more durable ones. None of them, however, has proved permanent. At some point, all postwar periods have come to a close. No new order, whether regional or indeed global, has survived for longer than several decades. Power, after all, is the amorphous essence of politics, and conflict is inherent in history. Ultimately, its destructive potential overwhelms all efforts to tame or contain it through rules-based structures. The challenge is to prevent their complete destruction. The generational rhythm of history ensures that international settlements eventually begin to wane. As those present at the creation of a new order, the peacemakers and their advisers, depart from the scene, they are succeeded by those destined to administer the settlement and adapt it to changing circumstances. When they fade away, too, new ideas and ideological forces emerge and new material conditions mature that will eventually undermine the now old order.

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The instrumentum pacis of 1648 (i.e., the peace treaties of Münster and Osnabrück) usually is seen as the beginning of the modern states system.5 It affirmed the equality and sovereignty of states. The complex set of rules, enshrined in the Westphalian peace, and the arbitration mechanisms it established more especially for the Holy Roman Empire, prevented another bout of religious wars in Central Europe. But it did not secure general peace. The French struggle with the declining hegemonic power of Spain continued for another decade, and it eventually reversed the traditional power relations between the two. The rise of France brought war to the Western fringes of the Empire and to the Low Countries more especially, and it enabled the last Ottoman push toward Central Europe in 1683. It also accelerated the decline of Sweden from the dominant force in the Baltic to a regional satellite of the court at Versailles. The Swedish retreat in the North and the repeated checks to Turkish power from the 1680s onward, meanwhile, fueled the ascent of Russia in the East. The War of the Spanish Succession after the death of the last Habsburg at Madrid confirmed the terminal decline of Spain, as it did the rise of Great Britain and Austria. The Peace Treaty of Utrecht sanctioned British maritime dominance, and that of Rastatt transferred Habsburg rule in Brussels to the Viennese branch of the dynasty. The two treaties also established the outlines of some sort of containment of France. Anglo-Austrian disunity and the tenuous position of the Emperor in Germany and Italy, however, meant that the settlement of 1713–1714 was not stable, let alone durable. The search for alternatives eventually produced the Diplomatic Revolution, the seemingly impossible historic compromise between the Bourbons and the Habsburgs. Yet it, too, paved the way for the next great war, the Seven Years’ War, the eighteenth century’s world war, fought simultaneously in the Ohio Valley, on the banks of the St. Lawrence, the North German plain, the rolling hills of Bohemia, and in Bengal. Its conclusion in the treaties of Hubertusburg and Paris of 1763 confirmed the new realities. The new settlement, too, contained within it the seeds of its own demise: the global rivalry between Britain and France, in which the former held the advantage for now; the Austro-Prussian dualism in Central Europe; and the ill-concealed Austro-French suspicions, which even the matrimonial sacrifice of Marie Antoinette could not remove. The Anglo-French antagonism provided the framework for the escalation of Britain’s little local difficulty in North America into a full-blown

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war with France, Spain, and the Netherlands. The two German powers went to war one more time, even though they exhausted themselves in maneuvering to avoid battle. By then, the Bourbon–Habsburg alliance was unraveling, too. If the peace settlements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were less than durable, the quarter of a century of revolutionary turmoil and well-nigh uninterrupted war before 1815 impressed on the architects of the post-Napoleonic peace settlement the vital importance of creating an order that would last. As Viscount Castlereagh observed at the time, it was “not our business to collect trophies [from France], but to try to bring the world back to peaceful habits.”6 Historians will continue to debate the longevity of the Vienna settlement. Some of its essential features, not least the Concert of Europe mechanism, remained in place until 1914, battered and bruised though it was by then. The post-Napoleonic period came to an end with the Crimean War. Until then, the Great Powers had kept the peace. Now, the unwholesome combination of Anglo-Russian blundering and revisionist needling by France might easily have escalated the conflict. That it did not owed much to Austria’s dithering and maladroit diplomacy and Prussia’s cussedness. For once, ineptitude preserved the general peace. The Crimean settlement, however, soon disintegrated. Britain and Russia, the two erstwhile status quo powers withdrew from active involvement in European affairs and left it to Austria to maintain the 1815 order, a task that lay beyond its capabilities. The new order opened the floodgates to French and other revisionism. During the post-Crimean trough in international politics, the Ottoman Empire began to crumble along its edges. The German and Italian nation states were forged in wars; and in the wake of the Franco-German War, Russia was able to abrogate the clauses of the 1856 Crimean peace treaty that provided for the demilitarization of the Black Sea and thus broke down the ring of containment laid around it in 1856. Six years later, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli’s brinkmanship, Russian exhaustion, and Bismarck’s wire-pulling prevented another great power war in the Near East. The Anglo-Russian struggle for mastery in Asia made such a war always a likely prospect. That it did not materialize after all owed much to Russia’s external and internal weakness following the Russo-Turkish and, above all, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. The latter was a regional conflict with global ramifications. It left Russia in a position of abject,

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if temporary, weakness, and so paved the way for an Anglo-Russian grand bargain in Asia. But that same weakness also set Europe on a collision course. If none of the decision makers in the summer of 1914 desired a general war, collectively they had lost that sense of the “tragic,” of the fragility of all human achievement, and of peace and order in particular. And so ninety-nine years of peace came to an end, and the self-destruction of Europe as the powerhouse of world politics began.7 That war was, in George F. Kennan’s oft-quoted comment, the “seminal catastrophe” of Europe.8 The Paris peace settlement, really the outcome of inter-Allied negotiations, was a “lost peace,” not only because of America’s desertion but also because of its arrangements. The fundamental problem of post-1919 European politics was the question of security. As Viscount Grey, who as foreign secretary had taken Britain into war in 1914, observed nine years later, it was of vital importance “to give security to France and to Germany also in the future. Our own security is bound up with French security, and I believe only by some big scheme that makes Germany feel secure as well as France will you bring about that feeling of security.”9 Security remained elusive, and so the incomplete peace of 1919–1925 prepared, in part, the grounds for the next world war: 1919 left behind also a number of running sores, not least in the Middle East, sores that have not healed since and are not likely to do so anytime soon. By contrast, the new world order that emerged, in fits and starts, after 1945 proved to be more stable and durable—in a longer perspective, remarkably so. No doubt, the bipolar confrontation, more or less entrenched since 1953, made maintaining the Cold War system easier. True, as recent historical scholarship has shown,10 crises such as those over Berlin or, more so, over Soviet missiles on Cuba brought the two superpowers closer to war than was realized at the time. Yet the bipolar order, and the rules of the game underpinning it, remained stable enough that even the “Second Cold War” of the 1980s, feeding on discontent with the détente of the previous decade, could not shake the relative stability of the twentieth century’s second postwar order. Thus, the eventual collapse of this stability in 1989–1991 also marked the end of the short twentieth century. What followed was a moment of self-delusion. A “unipolar” order appeared to have arrived, and it seemed safe now to proclaim the “end of history.” One of the two empires that had vied for dominance for nearly five decades had prevailed without the

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bloody wars that accompanied the rise and fall of earlier empires. That in itself was remarkable enough. Western values had triumphed, and the world was at last safe for democracy. This did not last. The unipolar moment disappeared before too long. America is no longer the hyperpuissance it seemed to be in the 1990s, and so the euphoria at having thrown off the shackles of history has evaporated. The past decade-and-a-half has witnessed a transition, gradual at first but steadily accelerating, to a new era, marked by heightened tensions and new forms of war-like conflicts in a more fragmented world. What is unusual, though by no means unique, about the current situation is that, for now, the organizational forms and power constellations of the old order remain in place. Their continued validity, however, is being challenged. The old structures are still alive, while a new order is struggling to break through their crust.

R The outlines of this new order, however, can be discerned. In the first instance, the pace and scope of the rise of China were predicted by few at the end of the Cold War. This is the most profound long-term international development. By any standard, China’s material progress since the early 1990s has been extraordinary (although it merely restores it to the economic position lost around 1800), and it changes the dynamics of international politics. Certainly, Beijing is conscious of its growing global power and is insistent on recognition of that fact. So far, sporadic and ultimately shortlived rhetoric about a strategic partnership notwithstanding, US policy has continued to pursue a strategy of containing the further spread of China’s influence in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond through regional alliances and selective engagement with Beijing.11 Emerging commercial empires tend to guard their trade routes jealously and feel easily threatened. China is no different, as the establishment of its first overseas base at Djibouti, its island-building in the South China Seas, and its now more sophisticated geopolitical courting of the smaller Southeast Asian countries show. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, meanwhile, has geopolitical implications for the entire Eurasian landmass from the Yangtze River Delta to the estuaries of the Rhine and the Thames. In its conception, linking Mackinder’s geopolitical heartland with the Atlantic rim of

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Europe, this new Silk Road has the potential to shift the center of gravity of international politics from the Atlantic to the East. As it does so, however incrementally, Chinese governments will seek to remould the international order in China’s image; and that country’s traditional millennia-old Sinocentric notions of international relations will clash with the still dominant precepts of the Westphalian order.12 It remains to be seen whether Trumpian foreign policy will indeed tear up the rule book of Sino-American relations, abdicate America’s leadership role implicit in the now-defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership, and so abandon the “pivot to Asia.” China’s growing influence will shape the new epoch well beyond the current president’s term of office. The two countries, after all, are the only continental powers that also are maritime powers. There is an ironic twist to the present situation. It has often been suggested that in a collision between a status quo power and an emerging challenger, the latter represents the destabilizing force.13 In electing Donald Trump, the American electorate may unwittingly have sent someone to the Oval Office who, whether out of calculation or ignorance or indeed indifference, seems intent on reversing these traditional roles. His elevation may have pushed open the door to a new-style confrontation in which America’s hand is not very strong and for which US policy thus far lacks a coherent strategic plan. Quite possibly, Trump’s moves in the early stages of his presidency are more a case of chaotic ad hoc improvisation, impelled by personal impulses and short-term domestic calculations, rather than the fruits of careful strategic cerebration. The same cannot be said of Chinese policy. Beijing seems ready to fill any vacuum left by the United States. President Xi Jinping’s speech at Davos, Switzerland, in January 2017, in which he sought to position his country as the core leader of the global world,14 underlined this stance, as did his seductive charm displayed at the 2017 G20 meeting in Hamburg and China’s measured response to the North Korean missile crisis later in the summer of that year. No doubt, Beijing will test Trump at some early point in his presidency, just as it tested President George W. Bush when it forced a US surveillance plane to land on Hainan not long after his inauguration. But China will be the constant point of reference as the new order emerges and settles into its own structures, and Sino-American relations will be the most critical for peace and stability in the world.

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Russia is another source of current and likely future instability. To an extent, this means dealing with the delayed aftershocks of the implosion of the Soviet empire, whose dismantling the Russian president has repeatedly decried as “a major geopolitical disaster of the century.”15 President Vladimir Putin’s sense of grievance is a strong motivation behind his foreign policy. In part, this policy is a reaction to recent history, but even more so it reflects a deeply rooted Russian idea of world order and Russia’s proper place in it, an idea characterized by a deep and permanent sense of insecurity and ambivalence toward Europe.16 The demographic, economic, and technological foundations of Russia’s power may be brittle, but reasserting Moscow’s influence in the “near abroad,” the incursions into Eastern Ukraine, and the annexation of the Crimea are part of a policy of imperial restoration, buttressed by a sustained and by no means unsuccessful disinformation and destabilization campaign targeted at Western Europe and North America. Combined with the ongoing buildup of Russian arms, Moscow is at the point of entrenching “escalation dominance.” Russia’s weaknesses, its crony capitalism and managed clientelism masquerading as democracy, do no lend themselves to long-term economic and geopolitical planning. But Russia’s mercurial leader is an opportunist who will continue to probe the West’s perceived frailties. A more disparate, often diffuse, and hence more difficult challenge is posed by the rise of Islamist ideologies. In its most recent and most violent incarnation in the Islamic States of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/Daesh) it has laid claim to some form of statehood. Yet it is less susceptible to classic strategic or geopolitical analysis. Its spread across North Africa and the Middle East and into Southeast Asia, however, has had a destabilizing effect on the regimes of those regions and the external powers supporting them. It has also sought to obliterate the frontiers drawn toward the end of the First World War in a life and death struggle between the sects and tribes of the region; and this battleground has furnished the base from which Islamist terrorism reaches every corner of the globe. Its violent progress seems to have been checked in late 2017, its pretensions to statehood buried underneath the rubble of Mosul and Raqqa. But it is likely to continue to pose a danger to Western interests and security. It is not an existential threat, but it has revealed the limitations of Washington’s willingness once more overtly to interfere in the Middle East, and has thus helped to entrench a view that America is in retreat. At the

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same time, the stream of refugees fleeing the collapse of old state structures there and Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks outside the region put pressure on European security, social cohesion, and political stability. The Islamist threat is not likely to last in its current manifestation. Eventually, it will consume itself, only to spew out a further mutation. The violence endemic in the Arab world and the interests of various regional players, more especially Iran and Saudi Arabia, but also Russia and Turkey, will keep this region a source of instability, even if, for now, these competing outside interests largely neutralize each other. Turkey’s apparent transformation from a moderating, secular force in the region to an overtly Islamist state with authoritarian and neo-Ottoman inclinations is, perhaps, the most significant source of complications in the region.17 The policies pursued by Russia and Turkey will shape the future of the Middle East, but they also have a bearing on Europe. Here, too, existing structures are under immense strain. At the end of the Cold War, the continent emerged democratic, peaceful, prosperous, and united. Now, a series of interlocking economic, institutional, and geopolitical crises threatens to undermine Europe’s economy and the cohesion of the European Union (EU). Identity politics and rising nationalisms pose a possibly existential challenge to the EU. Populist movements of the Left and the Right, fattened alike on a surfeit of popular disaffection with post-2008 austerity and elite complacency, have emerged. Their further progress seems to have stalled, but the phenomenon is not likely to disappear from the Western political scene. In many European countries domestic politics have fragmented, and make impossible the smooth alternating of governments of the center-right and center-left and the pursuit of broadly consensual policies. Governments have lost control, and citizens have lost confidence in their governments. In Eastern Europe, the “awkward quartet” of the Višegrad Four is openly hostile to EU pluralism and increasingly emboldened to push for its own authoritarian version of European values, not least by Trump’s decision to elaborate his vision of a “community of nations” in Warsaw in July 2017.18 In the face of such challenges, the European integration project, the foundation of trans-Atlantic strategy since the Marshall Plan, is fragmenting. A weaker, more divided Europe will be a source of instability. If and when Britain leaves the EU, the bloc will have lost its second-largest economy and its strongest military power. At the moment, neither London nor

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Brussels has a constructive plan to terminate Britain’s forty-four years of membership in the European club. Even if some transitional arrangement may avoid a “messy Brexit,” in the absence of a geostrategic plan, Britain will drift to the fringes of international politics, and Europe will struggle to adjust to the fluctuations around it. Recurring debt crises in Southern Europe, moreover, will put further strain on the internal cohesion of institutionalized Europe and the Franco-German axis at its core, while the refugee crisis has stretched its ability to assimilate the incomers. Declining popular support for the concept of “ever closer union” leaves the EU vulnerable to populist assaults on its liberal and democratic foundations and exposed to aggressive probing by Russia. How Europe will respond to these challenges remains unclear, but it is doubtful that its current preference for bureaucratic solutions will give the continent a clear strategic identity. The future direction of European politics will to no small degree depend on what happens next in America. There is a profound paradox in the present position. It is characterized by an opportunity inherent in it and the likelihood of being spurned by President Trump. Western politics since 1945–1947 were underpinned by assumptions about the indispensability of the United States. Washington’s apparent retreat over the last eight years has reminded the rest of the world of America’s importance. This might have presented an incoming administration with an opportunity to coax others into renewing cooperation on America’s terms. This opportunity seems to have been missed. The public pronouncements by President Trump and key members of his entourage suggest a narrow reading of America’s national interest, one that repudiates globalism and is infused with a belligerent unilateralism that draws on populist, isolationist instincts that have long been part of America’s political tradition.19 Since assuming office, he has failed to endorse Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, and thereby called into question continued US commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, while his “fire and fury” and other alliterative rhetoric on East Asian matters rather ignored the interests of US allies in the region. Even if the existing alliances will not be renounced, they are likely to be readjusted to new realities. Conceivably, provocative pronouncements may be an opening gambit in Trump’s much-vaunted deal-making approach, which is itself more instinctual than reasoned. If so, he is likely

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to fail in his objectives. History is littered with the political corpses of businessmen who sought to bring their entrepreneurial flair—often real— and insights—mostly imagined—to the art of politics and “the persistent, slow boring of hard boards” that enables it.20 Business deals pursue one object at a time; foreign policy needs to keep several in view at all times. It never stops. It is an unending process; and success is mostly elusive, determined not so much by one single move as by its overall, long-term coherence. America’s acquiescence with Beijing’s so-called “One China” policy is a case in point. Its success so far lies in the fact that the question of Taiwan’s position has not been solved, but that it has gained both sides that most precious political commodity, time, to let the matter evolve, without threatening their relationship. Pursuing short-term gains may well have to be purchased at the price of considerable strategic loss. American isolation in the early twentieth century lasted for two decades. Just as then, the American people will eventually rediscover that their country cannot simply withdraw from international politics—that there is no escape. But, as then, the question is how much damage will be done in the meantime. America will be able to cope with it. Its allies and partners may well not be able to do so.

R The post–Cold War period is coming to an end, and with it the larger postwar era is drawing to a close. The order established in 1945 is fragmenting, and the process of its disintegration is accelerating. The Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump are symptoms of this process of decay; they are not its causes. But both have the potential—the ascension of the new and unlikely president more than the fractious future of a small European island—of letting history spin out of control. The old order has not yet collapsed, but international politics are in the process of reverting to their original fluid condition. Global stability will depend on whether that process can be slowed and whether some of the older structures can be preserved before the atmospheric changes, of which Bismarck spoke, dissolve them completely. And for that the leaders of the West need to redefine policy goals in a rapidly changing world. Above all, they need to rediscover their ability to formulate strategic concepts to shape the emerging new world order.

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NOTES 1.

2. 3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

Otto von Bismarck, Gedanken und Erinnerungen, 2 vols., popular edition (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1913), vol. 2, 287. He made the observation with reference to alliance diplomacy, but it holds true of international politics in general. Robert Kagan, “An End to the Indispensable Nation,” Financial Times, 21 November 2016, https://www.ft.com/content/782381b6-ad91-11e6-ba7d-76378e4fef24. H.R. McMaster and Gary D. Cohn, “America First Doesn’t Mean America Alone,” Wall Street Journal, 30 May 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-first-doesnt -mean-america-alone-1496187426. This somewhat crude and not altogether coherent piece of vulgarized realism drew stinging attacks more especially from some of those associated with neo-conservative ideas, see David Frum, “The Death Knell for America’s Global Leadership,” The Atlantic, 31 May 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/international /archive/2017/05/mcmaster-cohn-trump/528609/. Merkel speech at Munich, 28 May 2017, as reported in Financial Times, 29 May 2017. For Merkel’s relations with Trump see Matthew Qvortrup, Angela Merkel: Europe’s Most Influential Leader (London: Duckworth, repr. 2017), 327–28 and 337. But see the provocative suggestions in Benno Teschke, The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International Relations (London: Verso, 2003). As quoted in C. J. Bartlett, Castlereagh (London: Macmillan, 1966), 156. Georges-Henri Soutou, “La première guerre mondiale: une rupture dans l’évolution de l’ordre européen,” Politique étrangère 65, no. 3 (2000): 841–53. George F. Kennan, The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order: Franco-Russian Relations 1875–1890 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981). House of Lords, Hansard Parliamentary Debates, vol. 53, 20 April 1923, col. 807. See the reflections offered by John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); and, for a case study, see the essays in The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Critical Reappraisal, ed. Len Scott and R. Gerald Hughes (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2015). For some thoughtful reflections on this see Gideon Rachman, Easternization: Asia’s Rise and America’s Decline from Obama to Trump and beyond (New York: Other Press, 2016), although its underlying assumption on China’s inevitable rise strike this writer as problematic. J. K. Fairbank, ed., The Chinese World Order: Traditional China’s Foreign Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968); see also Wang Gungwu, “China’s Historical Place Reclaimed,” Australian Journal of International Affairs 66, no. 4 (2012): 486–92; and Ooi Kee Beng, The Eurasian Core and Its Edges: Dialogues with Wang Gungwu on the History of the World (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2015), esp. 141–212. Most pointedly by Graham T. Allison, Destined for War: America, China and the Thucydides Trap (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). For critiques of this reading see Richard N. Lebow, “The Paranoia of the Powerful: Thucydides on World War III,” Political Studies 17, no. 1 (1984): 10–17; and David K. Richards, “Thucydides Dethroned:

THE WANING OF THE POSTWAR ORDER17 1

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

Historical Differences that Weaken the Peleponnesian Analogy,” in The Next Great War? The Roots of World War I and the Risk of US-China Conflict, ed. Richard N. Rosecrance and Steven E. Miller (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015), 81–89. Xi Jinping speech at World Economic Forum, Davos, 17 January 2017, https://www .weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/full-text-of-xi-jinping-keynote-at-the-world-economic -forum. Putin annual address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, 25 April 2005, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/22931; see also Putin’s speech at the Forty-Third Munich Conference on Security Policy in which he criticized Western nations for having exploited the collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington Post, 12 February 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/12 /AR2007021200555.html. Nikolai Berdyaev’s The Russian Idea (London: G. Bles, 1947) is worth rereading. Tellingly, the book was published in Russia in 1997, Russkaya Ideya: Osnovnye problemy russkoi mysli XIX veka i nachala XX veka (Moscow: Svarog i K, 1997); see also Aleksandr Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki: Geopoliticheskoe budushchee Rossii (Moscow: Arktogeya, 1999), which has enjoyed a degree of influence in Putin’s Russia, although it also draws on mid-twentieth-century Central European geopolitical ideas. The present appropriation of the Ottoman legacy is unlikely to remain the last, see Nick Danforth, “The Ottoman Empire from 1923 to Today: In Search of a Usable Past,” Mediterranean Quarterly 27, no. 2 (2016): 26–27. “Remarks by President Trump to the People of Poland,” Warsaw, 6 July 2017, https://www .whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/07/06/remarks-president-trump-people-poland -july-6-2017. For useful insights see Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman, Donald Trump: The Making of a World View (London: I. B. Tauris, 2017). It is difficult to see, however, how the president’s conflicting impulses and prejudices, compounded by sheer ignorance and disdain for strategic calibration, constitute a “worldview.” For a discussion of the ideas swilling around the president’s inner circle see Joshua Green, Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump and the Storming of the Presidency (London: Penguin, 2017). Max Weber, “Politik als Beruf,” in Max Weber: Wissenschaft als Beruf 1917/1919, Politik als Beruf 1919, ed. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Wolfgang Schluchter (Tübingen: MohrSiebeck, 1994) (= Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe vol. I/17), 88.

13 THE FAILED PROMISES OF 1989 AND THE POLITICS OF 2016 J O N AT H A N S P E R B E R

O

n the night of 9 November 1989, it was apparent to everyone on the scene in Berlin, and to spectators around the world, watching on television, that history had reached a turning point.1 The ramifications of the opening of the Berlin Wall, as was also widely understood at the time, were not to be limited to central Europe but would reverberate around the globe. A little less than a year later, US President George H. W. Bush, addressing Congress, articulated this understanding in calling for a “new world order.”2 Separating this phrase both from its rhetoric of Cold War triumphalism and the various conspiracy theories that have grown up around it, I suggest that the 1990s actually did see the development—tentative, hesitating, contradictory, and incomplete— of a new world order, reflecting the turbulent events of 1989 across the Eurasian landmass as well as the aspirations that propelled these events, the promises of 1989. But by the end of that decade and the beginning of the new millennium, a reaction to that order was beginning to emerge, which would strengthen across the early years of the twenty-first century. The two political upheavals of 2016, the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump as American president, are major signs of the triumph of that reaction, the end of the new world order, and the failure of the promises of 1989. We can delineate four distinct elements of those promises. One was, obviously, the end of the Cold War, the confrontation begun by the two

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chief victorious powers of World War II over the treatment of their defeated enemy that had gone from Germany across the globe and returned to its origin to come to an end. The end of the Cold War seemed to have terminated another global conflict of the post-1945 world: the confrontation between the countries of Western Europe and their offshoots in North America and the Pacific, on one hand, and the nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, on the other, known today, although not very accurately, as the North–South conflict. It was the superpower conflict of the Cold War that allowed governments of the “global South” and insurgent political movements there room to maneuver, by playing off the US and the USSR.3 Iraqi President Saddam Hussein discovered this very painfully following his 1990 invasion of Kuwait, when the post–Cold War USSR, in its last year of existence, was neither able nor willing to oppose the United States. The upshot of the simultaneous end of both of these conflicts was to create a worldwide American hegemony; as French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine put it in 1998, the US was a “hyperpower,” a globally dominant force.4 The ramifications of 1989 were not just felt in power politics and raison d’état; two other promises of that year went in quite different directions. One was the priority of human rights. Emerging as a distinct element in international relations during the 1970s—the “Third Basket” of the 1975 Helsinki Accords, the campaigns of Amnesty International and similar nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), or the not always successful initiatives of US President Jimmy Carter—they were taken up by the scattered and isolated dissidents of 1980s eastern Europe who suddenly emerged at the end of the decade at the head of mass movements, brandishing demands for human rights.5 Very surprisingly, this led to the end of Communist regimes in much of Eurasia; perhaps even more surprising, the idea of action to preserve human rights—“the responsibility to protect”—emerged on the diplomatic agenda, in hesitating and imperfect fashion, as was apparent in both Rwanda and Bosnia. But the consequences of 1989 also came in another direction: the triumph of the idea of the open flow of goods, capital, and people within states and across state borders. Unlike the priority of human rights, the endorsement of an increasingly globalized capitalism was not a feature of the 1980s dissident movements. Quite the opposite; neither the Christian-pacifist-feminist-environmentalist socialists in the German

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Democratic Republic, nor the Czech signers of Charter 77, nor the trade unionists of Solidarność were particularly taken with the idea of a deregulated, privatized, free market economy. The people they led into the street, on the other hand, did very much aspire to the consumer cornucopia of Western capitalism, and in the chaotic conditions following the collapse of the governments of the Eastern bloc (circumstances were different in China, where the transition to a market economy occurred under a stillfunctioning government that had destroyed dissident movements), an unlimited capitalism seemed the way to get there.6 The 1990s were very much the decade of privatization, deregulation, and globalization: sale of state-owned enterprises and cutbacks on social welfare programs just about everywhere; the “Washington consensus” in Africa and Latin America; “shock therapy,” the immediate transition from a planned to a market economy for the former Communist countries of the Eastern bloc; the European Union’s (EU) movement toward an end to all barriers on trade, capital movements, and migration along with the creation of a joint currency (and this not just in the EU core countries of northwestern Europe but in the poorer lands on the Mediterranean and the newly post-Communist countries in the east as well); and the deregulation of financial and capital transactions in the United States. Many of these policies had begun in the 1980s, pioneered by the conservative governments of President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, but they became more widespread in the following decade and were implemented, quite vigorously, by the center-left governments of President Bill Clinton in the United States, Prime Minister Tony Blair in the United Kingdom, and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in Germany, evidence that policy aspirations toward a globalized, privatized, deregulated market had gone from being a partisan position to a broad consensus.7 Bit by bit, the world order embodied in these four promises fell apart during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The terorist attacks of 9/11 on the United States were an initial sign, which made it clear that the North–South conflict had not come to an end, and that Islamist political movements had taken up the mantle of the anti-imperialist cause.8 From the founding of the Moslem Brotherhood, Islamism had always contained a strong anti-imperialist element, but it had been overshadowed by nationalist and Communist ideological currents in Africa and Asia, until the latter had largely collapsed in the 1990s. The asymmetrical

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warfare of terrorism has, since then, been a constant presence, amplified by a worldwide mass media, a reminder of the return of global ideological conflict, which had seemingly been so passé in the 1990s, the age of Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history,” when liberal democracy supposedly had proven to have no alternative.9 Yet for all the dramatic, media-amplified effects of asymmetrical warfare, it would be fair to say that the challenge to the “new world order” has not come primarily from Asia, Africa, or Latin America. In particular, the modest presence of state actors has been noticeably apparent. In 2001, there was the Taliban’s failed state of Afghanistan, and the assumption of the George W. Bush administration that the Iraqi government was supporting terrorism proved incorrect (assuming that policymakers believed it in the first place). In fact, it was the destruction of the state in Iraq that allowed Islamism to flourish there. Other anti-imperialist governments, such as the Cold War leftovers in North Korea and Cuba, or the Chavezista regime in Venezuela, have been generally more pathetic than threatening, even given North Korea’s flaunting of nuclear weapons. China, by far the most powerful non-Western state, has not so much challenged the new world order as sought to exploit the globalization it has wrought for its own economic development. The Arab Spring of 2011, far from being a rejection of the ideas of 1989, was, at least for a brief initial period, their reaffirmation. Rather, the challenges to the post-1989 international regime have come primarily from Europe and North America. They began with the presidency of Vladimir Putin in Russia, pursuing an authoritarian course predicated on the rejection of human rights and democratization, a nationalist policy of seeking to expand Russian influence in the “near abroad,” and a rejection of cooperation with NATO and the EU. Authoritarian, nationalist political parties, hostile to civil liberties and human rights, skeptical of the EU and of open borders and free trade, have expanded across the formerly Communist eastern Europe, with the Law and Justice Party in Poland and Fidesz in Hungary gaining political power and using it to reshape political and social institutions. Similar political parties have been gaining support in western Europe: the Swiss People’s Party, the French Front national, the United Kingdom Independence Party, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany, the Austrian Freedom Party, the “True Finns,” the Swedish Democrats, and the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands.10

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While the post-2008 global economic crisis brought left-wing critics of 1990s economic policies to the fore in Spain and Greece, and sometimes encouraged cooperation between left-wing and right-wing critics of these policies, as can be seen in the opposition to the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it has mostly strengthened right-wing forces. Many of their leaders have proclaimed their admiration for the person and policies of Vladimir Putin, giving an idea of what they would do were they to gain power. To date, these western European right-wing parties have remained in opposition, or, at most, junior government coalition partners. The 2016 and 2017 presidential or parliamentary elections in Austria, the Netherlands, and France were a disappointment for them. Although they gained some ground in the Austrian and German parliamentary elections of September and October 2017—rather more so in Austria than in Germany— they were far from politically dominant. But in 2016, the views of these parties, rejecting the aspirations of 1989, gained political ascendancy in two unexpected venues: the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump. Both campaigns floated on a wave of hostility to the free flow of people across national borders; each emphasized very strongly the primacy of national self-interest against international agreements or assertions of human rights. If the government of the United States, the one-time hegemonic guarantor of a new world order, is no longer willing to support a world order, then what remains of it? One distinct feature of the “Leave” forces in the United Kingdom and of the Trump campaign is their criticism of globalization in the name of the free market economy. The Brexiters denounced the EU as a band of meddling socialist bureaucrats, keeping the United Kingdom from its free market destiny. While condemning international trade agreements, the Trump campaign also railed against high taxes and government regulations holding back American capitalist entrepreneurs. There are continental European parallels, particularly the German AfD, which has sometimes sounded similar notes, but the rejection of free markets in the name of free markets has been primarily a feature of the Anglosphere. In early 2018, it does look like the new world order envisaged in the 1990s lies in ruins, and the promises of 1989 have not been fulfilled. Analyzing global developments across the last three decades would be an essay—or a multivolume study—in itself, but I can, just briefly, point to

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what seem to me to be three main features of these developments. One is that the 1990s position of the United States as a hyperpower was, pace Fukuyama, not the end of history, but the result of particular developments: the ignominious collapse of the Cold War adversary, the USSR; the temporary economic difficulties of the two enemies of the Second World War and main capitalist rivals, Japan and Germany; and the still nascent position of a future rival, China, which required two decades of unparalleled economic growth to reach its potential. The wars of the George W. Bush administration undoubtedly hastened and aggravated the decline of the hegemonic position of the United States in the world, but that hegemonic position was being undermined by developments in other countries, regardless of American government policies. A second reason is the failure of the post-1989 globalized, privatized, economic order to bring about the promised widespread prosperity. There are two particularly apparent examples. One is the collapse of the economy of the former USSR in the 1990s under the aegis of a shock therapy conceived, as Joseph Stiglitz put it, by “market Bolsheviks,” which became the chief reason for Vladimir Putin’s rise to power.11 The second is the global financial crisis of 2008, a direct result of the deregulation of financial markets, and its destabilizing ramifications, persisting to the present. But besides these dramatic individual events, there is the steady growth of income and wealth inequality throughout the world’s economically most developed countries, as recently charted in some detail by the French economist Thomas Piketty.12 Admittedly, this began before 1989 but persisted and accelerated in this era of economic globalization. Anger at this latter development played a large role for both Brexit and Trump voters. It may well be that, contrary to voters’ intentions (or a mark of their naiveté), the policies of the governments brought to office by those voters will accentuate the development of inequality, but that is another story. Finally, one should not underestimate the prevalence and persistence of nationalism—a political sentiment repeatedly pronounced dead across the second half of the twentieth century, but one which has proven able to triumph over most of its rivals. Since the emergence of its modern form during the age of the French Revolution, nationalism has had a tense and ambivalent relationship with human rights, sometimes acting in their favor, but all too often acting against them. Nationalism was a powerful

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driver of the events of 1989 in the Eastern Bloc, going along with calls for independent civil societies and governments that would be regimes of human rights. But this relationship has been increasingly reversed, and the inability of multinational institutions, from the EU to the World Trade Organization to the United Nations, to provide satisfactory resolutions to the post-2000 collapse of the new global order has made nationalism a powerful fallback position, as became quite apparent in the political upheavals of 2016. In this respect, as in so many others, the current global scene seems quite unappealing: the downplaying or downright rejection of human rights, the increasing influence of a xenophobic and chauvinistic nationalism, growing tendencies toward protectionism, a more general hostility toward the flow of goods, capital, ideas, or humans across borders of sovereign states, and rejections of international agreements and assertions of national sovereignty to the point of military action. Responding to such developments might require first a consideration of the way they emerged from a very different scene, and understanding the failure of the promises of 1989.

NOTES 1. 2. 3.

4.

5.

6.

My thanks to my colleague Steven Watts for incisive comments on an earlier version of this chapter. George Bush, “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union,” 29 January 1991, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=19253. In spite of its title, Matthew Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), is a helpful account of insurgent maneuvering during the Cold War. “To Paris, US Looks like a ‘Hyperpower’ ,” New York Times, 5 February 1999, http://www .nytimes.com/1999/02/05/news/to-paris-us-looks-like-a-hyperpower.html; for Védrine’s later reflections on this idea, see his 2008 interview, “What the New Geopolitical World Really Looks Like,” http://www.hubertvedrine.net/article-306.html. For instance, Sarah B. Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Two interesting works dealing with the contrasting attitudes about consumerism of antiregime activists and their supporters are Dirk Philipsen, We Were the People: Voices from East Germany’s Revolutionary Autumn of 1989 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993); and Karsten Timmer, Vom Aufbruch zum Umbruch: die Bürgerbewegung in der DDR 1989 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000).

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7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

Just a few studies of this development would include Rawi Abdelal, Capital Rules: The Construction of Global Finance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); Yousseff Cassis, Crises and Opportunities: The Shaping of Modern Finance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); or John Williamson, “What Washington Means by Policy Reform,” Peterson Institute for International Economics, 1 November 2002, https://piie .com/commentary/speeches-papers/what-washington-means-policy-reform. Gilles Kepel and Jean-Pierre Milelli, eds., Al Qaeda in Its Own Words, trans. Pascale Ghazlen (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); and Dominique Avon and Anaïs-Trissa Khatchadourian, Hezbollah: A History of the Party of God, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012) emphasize the strongly anti -imperialist elements of both Sunni and Shiite Islamism. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: The Free Press, 1992). Fukuyama may have been suffering from an overdose of Hegel when he wrote this book, but he articulated a common idea at the time. Two journalistic summaries are “Guide to Nationalist Parties Challenging Europe,” BBC, 23 May 2016 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36130006, and “Europe’s Far Right: A Guide to the Most Prominent Parties,” New York Times, 4 December 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/world/europe/europe-far-right-political -parties-listy.html?_r=0. “Sound the Alarm: Economist James Stiglitz Rips Washington’s ‘Market Bolsheviks’ ,” Barron’s, 17 April 2000, http://www.barrons.com/articles/SB955757044395088744, and, in more detail, Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: Norton, 2002), especially chap. 5. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014; paper, 2017).

14 TRUMP’S ASCENDANCY AS HISTORY R YA N I R W I N

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost. —G.K. CHESTERTON

H

ow did this happen? Donald Trump—a real estate mogul with a television show and no political experience—is America’s forty-fifth president. “Those that did not foresee” his ascendancy “are going to find it hard to discipline themselves to a balanced projection of his forthcoming first term,” historian Jonathan Haslam declared in a recent essay.1 I’m in that group; maybe you are, too. Polls aside, no major newspaper or magazine endorsed Trump’s candidacy, and a big chunk of the Republican Party establishment actively resisted his nomination. The GOP’s previous standard-bearer, Mitt Romney, said Trump was a charlatan, and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) kept the candidate at arm’s length throughout 2016. Neither President George W. Bush nor President George H. W. Bush supported Trump, and President Barack Obama campaigned against the GOP nominee while enjoying an approval rate that hovered near 60 percent. Trump’s presidency is unexpected because it was improbable.2 This chapter historicizes Trump’s ascendance, lingering on the riddle of how the 2016 election happened. I am not interested in revisiting the tit-for-tat of the presidential campaign; that seems sadomasochistic.

TRU M P ’S AS C ENDANCY AS H ISTORY1 81

Other chapters provide nuanced interpretations of the president’s rhetorical habits and policy decisions. This chapter takes up a particular challenge by considering the conditions that facilitated Trump’s election, and it explores how our methodological choices as scholars inform the stories we tell about the present. Three metaphors frame this chapter: a chessboard, a looking glass, and a wave. The first section explores the politics that preceded the 2016 election and considers Trump’s victory as the unintended consequence of an earlier Republican strategy to subvert Obama’s presidency. By resisting Obama so comprehensively, GOP leaders cultivated the backlash that facilitated Trump’s emergence. The second section considers ideology and contextualizes the president’s worldview as an outgrowth of the socalled culture wars. His attacks on multiculturalism, liberalism, and internationalism draw on a distinct, coherent narrative of US history, which has arguably incubated within the conservative movement for decades. Finally, the chapter’s third section considers the forty-fifth president in the context of American grand strategy. Some analysts have suggested that the 2016 election repudiated the logic of American world power, and Trump’s animosity toward the US foreign policy establishment begs a reassessment of American power—and its future. Viewed together, these three metaphors provide complementary insights into Trump victory and gesture toward the conclusion that Trump popularized sentiments with roots in American political life at a moment of significant change. I should admit that I did not vote for Trump. Moreover, I am critical of the administration’s political style and policy goals. But this chapter is not intended to be polemic against the president; it is an attempt to historicize the present.

BREAKING THE FE V ER

The chessboard is a popular metaphor. Politicians invoke it because it suggests that everything happens for a reason. Powerbrokers play different roles and events reflect coherent plans that can be neatly reconstructed after the game ends. Historians use the chessboard metaphor because it makes the past seem rational, hierarchical, and orderly. Even better,

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while chess requires forethought, it can be very unpredictable. Under the right circumstances, a pawn can slip through a player’s defenses and become a queen. How did Trump happen? For one answer we might study a single chess move from January 2009. According to Obama, he entered the White House believing that the United States’ economic crisis—prompted by the collapse of the subprime mortgage industry—had created the conditions for bipartisan cooperation. And cooperation had been the central premise of his 2008 campaign; “Yes We Can” was not a progressive call to arms but a promise to change America’s political culture. In interviews, Obama’s inner circle has been fairly explicit about what this meant. The president hoped that Republicans would design a stimulus bill with Democrats, which, in theory, would fulfill the promise of his famous 2004 address at the Democratic National Convention and reaffirm the premise that Democrats governed better than Republicans. “Probably the moment in which I realized that the Republican leadership intended to take a different tack was actually as we were shaping the stimulus bill,” Obama recalled in 2016. I vividly remember having prepared a basic proposal that had a variety of components. We had tax cuts; we had funding for the states so that teachers wouldn’t be laid off and firefighters and so forth; we had an infrastructure component. We felt . . . we would begin negotiations with the Republicans and they would show us things that they thought also needed to happen. On the drive up to Capitol Hill to meet with the House Republican Caucus, John Boehner released a press statement saying that they were opposed to the stimulus. At that point we didn’t even actually have a stimulus bill drawn up.3

Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) rebuff hinted at a deeper divide. Obama’s strategic objective in 2009 was to establish common ground within Washington, and, from his perspective, the stimulus bill was a means toward that end. Republican leaders, who were in the minority in the House and Senate in 2009, understood that bipartisan cooperation would undercut their chances of retaking Congress in the 2010 midterm election. By opposing the stimulus, the GOP ensured that Washington would remain gridlocked—despite the president’s rhetoric—and their discipline gave them the high ground because

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the administration’s strategy required some semblance of Republican support. “There were times that I would meet with [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell,” Obama remembered, “and he would say to me very bluntly, ‘Look, I’m doing you a favor if I do any deal with you, so it should be entirely on my terms because it hurts me just being seen photographed with you.’ ”4 In retrospect, Obama’s inability to see the relationship between his own political strategy and the GOP response was as remarkable as McConnell’s intransigence. This moment illuminates Obama’s motives in 2010. Undeterred by Boehner’s slight, Obama, in his own words, tried to “break the fever” that afflicted his Republican counterparts.5 As the midterm election approached, he put Boehner and McConnell in check by advancing a framework for healthcare reform that drew on the plan that Romney had implemented a few years earlier in Massachusetts. As commentators observed at the time, the program had originated from the conservative Heritage Foundation—it was the sort of proposal that Senator John McCain (R-AZ) might have advanced if he had won the 2008 election.6 But Boehner and McConnell cried “socialism,” and the new president relented on the eve of the midterm election. “During the healthcare debate,” Obama recalled, “there was a point in time where, after having had multiple negotiations with [Republican Iowa senator Chuck] Grassley, who was the ranking [Republican] . . . I finally just said, ‘Is there any form of healthcare reform that you can support?’ and he shrugged and looked a little sheepish and said, ‘Probably not.’ ”7 By the following year, blanket opposition had broken any hope for a grand bargain between Democrats and Republicans. Obama’s offensive was over. Trump emerged from the milieu that Boehner and McConnell created. As a political figure, he was an avatar of total resistance, shifting attention away from public policy with racist dog-whistles about Obama’s citizenship. At the 2011 Correspondent’s Dinner, the establishment mocked Trump, and some GOP strategists begged the party to change course after Obama’s 2012 reelection, fearful that Republicans were becoming the “stupid party.”8 But it was too late. The problem, Breitbart News Network’s Steve Bannon claimed, was that Romney was a card-carrying member of the “party of Davos,” who had more in common with the Clintons than “real” America.9 In short order, Boehner was cast aside by the Congress he had helped elect in 2010, and Trump was blustering through the

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Republican primaries, suggesting that the GOP would play total opposition to the end. One could almost hear McConnell’s laconic drawl on November 9: “Checkmate, Mr. President.” Why did this particular strategy resonate among so many Republicans? Although Obama ran against the Clinton machine in 2008, veterans from President Bill Clinton’s administration populated the White House in 2009, and Obama’s words—his eagerness to trade tax cuts for infrastructure investments—recalled Clinton’s so-called Third Way strategy. After 1994, Clinton had rolled back regulations and balanced budgets. This strategy had arguably blunted President Ronald Reagan’s revolution (and inarguably eviscerated the Left), and Obama’s overtures in 2009 were instantly recognizable among Democrats and widely reviled by Republicans.10 Bill Clinton had turned every “hard choice” into a “false choice,” conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg quipped in 2007. “When asked how he’d have voted in 1990 on the Persian Gulf War, [Clinton] said he agreed with the minority but would have voted with the majority. He smoked pot but didn’t inhale. Monica Lewinsky had sex with him, but he could swear under oath he didn’t have sex with her.”11 Goldberg’s acidity elides the deeper truth that total resistance resonated because Clinton had demonstrated triangulation’s potential. McConnell and Boehner cut their teeth in the 1990s; Obama’s approach had bested them once already. This insight gestures toward a pair of preliminary conclusions. First, when we use the chessboard metaphor, Trump emerges from an older story about the rise of New Democrats. The game began in the early 1990s, when Clinton bumbled toward the political center, and it has probably ended with the anti-establishmentarianism of 2016. During that quarter century, Republicans won the popular vote once. It remains to be seen if Trump is a Faustian bargain, but his victory—when considered alongside the rise of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)—suggests the arrival of a new set of assumptions. Since 2017, some Democrats have embraced Sanders’s single-payer health plan, and many have repudiated the centrism associated with the Clintons. Second, we are witnessing the start of a different sort of chess match. “It’s important for us to understand,” Obama commented in 2016, “that whether or not we are able to achieve certain policy objectives is going to be primarily dependent on how many votes we’ve got in each chamber.” The premise of bipartisanship is dead. In Obama’s opinion, governance in

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the United States no longer involves “classic deal-making between Democrats and Republicans,” and politicians cannot “move to the center on fiscal policy” or any other issue of public importance. His words are a postscript to the 2004 speech that launched his career: I have very cordial relations with a lot of the Republican members. We can have really great conversations and arrive at a meeting of the minds on a range of policy issues, but if they think they’re going to lose seats or that they’re going to lose their own seat because the social media has declared that they sold out the Republican Party, then they won’t do it. That dynamic . . . is going to be harder and harder to change because of the balkanization of the media, because of political gerrymandering.12

WE’ RE AT WA R

Obama’s analysis hints at the problem with chessboards. As metaphor, they imply that everyone knows the rules—and that someone is in control. It is plausible that Boehner cultivated a backlash against Obama to enhance the Republican Party’s leverage within Congress and that the speaker planned to use this leverage to resolve America’s debt issues on his terms, which backfired when his caucus—juiced on social media and gerrymandered to the hilt—tossed him into History’s waste bin. But the interpretation is a little narcissistic, and the looking-glass metaphor starts from the premise that people simply see things differently. This approach pushes strategy to the side, since no one is omniscient, to focus on the relationship between perspective and creed. Like any belief system, a looking glass adds clarity by removing context, and looking glasses are manmade, which means they can be taken apart and analyzed critically. How did Trump happen? Trump inspired nearly 63 million people to vote for him—no small feat—and his supporters see the present through a particular lens. “It seems futile to try to generalize about a group as large and disparate as ‘Trump supporters’ ,” writer George Saunders acknowledged in 2016, but “these people have something in common.” In Saunders’s estimation, they emerged from the conservative tradition without being traditionally conservative. They are angry and nostalgic. When

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studied up close, “the Trump supporter might be best understood as a guy who wakes up one day in a lively, crowded house full of people, from a dream in which he was the only one living there, and then mistakes the dream for the past: a better time, manageable and orderly, during which privilege and respect came to him naturally, and he had the whole place to himself.”13 The assessment would feel more condescending if it didn’t ring so true. “Once upon a time there were factories and mills in Oklahoma,” a Trump enthusiast reported to journalist Rick Perlstein in October 2016. People went to church and respected authority, and no one wanted handouts. Then Washington arrived (at some unspecified date) and began raising taxes and distributing welfare, which left Oklahomans “scraping the bottom of the barrel.” According to this particular voter, this new arrangement was fraudulent because it undercut Oklahoma’s ability to take care of itself. “In the name of ‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,’ the government taxes away your means of happiness, takes away your liberty to spend your own money as you please, and the benefits, that were supposed to help you, ruin your life.”14 Trump was no messiah—he was a “wrecking ball” who promised to restore American greatness by destroying the federal government. For this voter, that was the appeal. Every ideological framework has blind spots. As Perlstein observed, the voter who articulated these sentiments grew up in a county where unemployment hovers at 4 percent and the real GDP is growing near 3 percent, which is a far cry from the “bottom of the barrel.” Moreover, Oklahoma’s tax burden is the forty-fifth lowest in the United States, which cuts against the premise that taxes and welfare ruined the state. Oklahoma spends less than 10 percent of its welfare budget on cash assistance, and the “most a single-parent family of three can get is $292 a month—that’s 18 percent of the federal poverty line,” Perlstein discovered. “Only 2,469 of the more than 370,000 Oklahomans aged 18 to 64 who live in poverty get this aid,” and “the state’s Medicaid eligibility is one of the stingiest in the nation, covering only adults with dependent children and incomes below 42 percent of the poverty level.”15 National studies have affirmed that most Trump supporters blame government for problems caused by corporations.16 And sure enough, with no sense of irony, this same voter claimed that Walmart saved his town and then blamed the company’s low-paying, part-time jobs on government regulations and national unions.17

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We are a storytelling species, and this particular narrative is popular because it has been around a while. President Andrew Jackson—whose portrait now hangs in the Oval Office—blamed America’s National Bank for dislocations caused by the market revolutions of the early nineteenth century. After the Civil War, antistatism saturated politics in the American South, and during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency it informed resistance to the New Deal. There has always been a tension between advocates of a managerial state and their opponents, and Americans have navigated this fight with a flare for contradiction. Jackson, for instance, lamented Washington’s unchecked power until the judiciary challenged his Indian Removal Acts—then he had no time for checks and balances—and southern politicians lambasted federal government when it targeted slavery and cheered when it electrified the Tennessee River Valley. Similarly, voters celebrated affirmative action when it was white—and called the G.I. Bill—and then fled the Democratic Party as soon as black Americans began receiving federal support. Reagan’s imaginary “welfare queen,” living comfortably on food stamps and public housing, became synonymous with the phrase “big government” after the 1980s, and the epithet successfully popularized the argument that federal support was destroying minority communities by cheating white Americans.18 Trump and his supporters swim in these rhetorical waters. When asked whether government at least deserved credit for ending slavery, Perlstein’s voter responded emphatically—no, slavery would have ended on its own—and dismissed race as “an attention-grabbing tool that politicians use to their advantage.” Until “urban liberals move to the rural South,” the young man continued, “there’s no way to fully appreciate [my] view.”19 On the campaign trail, Trump weaponized the notion that the problem was not racism; it was the government’s apathy toward white people. Trump’s daily tweets conjured images of a long-gone United States with firm borders and copious jobs, destroyed by the indifference of government bureaucrats. On inauguration day, he declared (to an overwhelmingly white crowd) that he was “transferring power from Washington” and “giving it back to you, the people.”20 Since then his team has plowed ahead with symbolic executive orders and blasted the news media as an “embarrassed and humiliated” opposition party that should “keep its mouth shut and just listen.”21 After the Charlottesville protests, Trump shielded white supremacists—collapsing the line that separates American

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fascists and their critics—and his supporters have swooned. “It used to be that conservatives” would “get unfair coverage” and “go home and grumble,” Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said on the PBS Newshour in 2017. Trump “is confrontational, and I think that’s refreshing.”22 The president obviously relishes these fights, and his surrogates have written extensively about the regenerative power of conflict. According to Bannon, who became Trump’s chief strategist in 2016, and rejoined the commentariat in August 2017, the president is readying the United States for a once-in-a-generation fight. The baby boomers, Bannon writes, weakened America by embracing moral relativism—renouncing their Judeo-Christian heritage—and bankers eroded capitalism by detaching the profit motive from its moral foundations.23 Unmoored and avaricious, the country elected Obama, who bailed out Wall Street and cheered on the Islamic State. Bannon’s claims are insane and it barely matters; many of Trump’s supporters earnestly believe that Obama is a closeted Muslim.24 Even if John Kelly, Trump’s current chief of staff, curtailed bombastic language within the West Wing, it continues to form an ideological prism around the Trump presidency. “This is the fourth great crisis in American history,” Bannon boasts. “We had the revolution, we had the Civil War, we had the Great Depression and World War II.” Through violence, the United States would revive its fortunes again. “The biggest open question in this country,” he continues, “is [whether] our grit [is] still there, that tenacity that we’ve seen on the battlefields.”25 The new administration’s fury has been unfocused so far—directed at immigrants, Muslims, liberals, and reporters—but Trump’s propensity for surrounding himself with generals speaks volumes. “America at war, America’s at war,” Bannon declared on his radio program in 2015. “We’re at war. Note to self, beloved commander in chief: we’re at war.”26 How was this sort of rhetoric mainstreamed? Two decades ago, Patrick Buchanan, a conservative populist who dubbed his followers the “pitchfork people,” was a political curiosity. He lost the 1996 Republican primaries soundly, and won just 0.4 percent of the popular vote in 2000. The news industry has obviously splintered since then, creating a platform for Bannon’s ilk, and gerrymandering has become an art form, clustering likeminded Americans into culturally homogeneous congressional fiefdoms. However, the “big sort,” as journalist Bill Bishop coined these processes, is only part of the story.27 “The remarkable truth is this,” journalist Robert

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P. Jones noted in 2016, “America is no longer a white Christian nation.” In 2000, white Christians constituted 66 percent of the electorate; they are now 45 percent of the electorate. When Buchanan entered politics in the mid-1970s, 63 percent of Americans identified as Protestant and 25 percent belonged to the Catholic Church. The decline of American religiosity has overlapped the diversification of American society. As Jones explains, The same year that Americans reelected George W. Bush as president, the U.S. Census Bureau made waves by predicting that by 2050 the United States would no longer be a majority-white nation. Four years later, when Americans elected Barack Obama as their first African American head of state, the Census Bureau lowered that threshold year to 2042. When Obama was reelected in 2012, population experts forecasted that by 2060 whites will see their numbers decline for the first time in American history, while the number of people who identify as multiracial will nearly triple and the number of Hispanics and Asians will more than double.28

Looking glasses are manmade, but these changes are real and fairly new. “What’s happening now in terms of increasing diversity is unprecedented,” Campbell Gibson, a retired census demographer, said in 2008.29 Gibson is wrong—migration remade the United States in the late-nineteenth century and the Census Bureau’s racial categories change regularly—but few Americans ponder the finer points of immigration history and race formation. At least 63 million people believe these changes are unprecedented; they are deeply troubled by the findings of the Census Bureau. If Trump’s supporters are really prepared to “go to war” over these issues—to fight for their ideology—then this moment probably should be considered as part of a longer story about the United States and the world.

C ITY ON A HIL L  .  .  . WIT H WA LLS

Thinking about change over time is easier with a different metaphor. After all, while Vox’s Dara Lind is surely correct when she writes “there is more to racism than racists,” the process of “thinking harder” about “the terms of the public debate”—the progressive rallying cry of 2017—feels awfully

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academic now that the “pitchfork people” control the Justice Department.30 The image of a wave invites scholars to consider the grand sweep of things. History never repeats itself, just as no two waves are identical, but tides come and go, revealing questions that transcend our daily skirmishes over government policy and public discourse. As metaphor, waves can illuminate why the United States became more diverse and less Christian in recent decades, but they emphasize contextualization over mobilization. Waves are not to be outsmarted or deconstructed; you ride them or watch from a safe distance. If we run with this image, Trump crested late and left a mess. (The existence of this book testifies to the election’s historical importance.) Historian Adam Tooze’s initial assessment—the “American century is over”—may prove to be prescient.31 The US Department of State remains understaffed and poorly used on Rex Tillerson’s watch, and the US government has walked away from the Paris climate accord and other international agreements. If the American Century is truly over, it is not because we did not receive adequate warning. After Great Britain voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, political scientist Stephen Walt speculated that the edifice of world liberalism was collapsing and asked whether its foundations—integrated markets, shared security, and democratic elections—had passed their natural life span. “Unless you think the United States has infinite resources and a limitless willingness to subsidize other wealthy states’ defenses,” it was hard to deny the simple appeal of Trump’s “America First” rhetoric. The real question posed by his candidacy, Walt writes, was whether liberals would sacrifice other global priorities to preserve a political framework that had taken so long to build.32 The answer is revealing itself now, but the question invites a closer look at the waters that Trump displaced. Was Trump (or someone like him) inevitable? The foreign policy establishment in the United States has lambasted the question, proffering a Manichean choice between its record and the president’s. “No country in history has ever played the role that the United States has played over the past 70 years,” the Brookings Institution argued in February 2017. And Washington’s track record—the establishment’s track record—has been quite exceptional: There is no comparable analogy; even the British Empire, which is often mentioned as comparable, was an extractive and exploitative enterprise

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that sought to remain aloof from the balance of power in continental Europe, which is precisely the opposite of what the United States sought to accomplish after 1945. It is therefore impressive that there was overwhelming support for this most unusual of grand strategies for so long. It is perhaps best explained by the sense of “greatness” this higher purpose bestowed on Americans, that we were pursuing something more than our narrow interests that benefited a significant proportion of humankind.33

The Brookings Institution’s defensiveness is easier to defend than its hubris. However, if we dump phrases like “higher purpose,” few scholars would disagree with the report’s periodization—that the United States embraced its hegemony after World War II—and many historians would appreciate the subtler tensions on display here.34 For instance, Brookings sidesteps how the experience of power affected powerbrokers, suggesting that American internationalism has been monolithic, uncontested, and unresponsive to external stimuli since 1945, which is not true. The United States’ global footprint has evolved in the past seventy years. Washington has habitually used a sense of threat to justify its ambitions—so there is a tangential connection between the Marshall Plan in Germany and Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq—but the assumptions that oriented these two projects were different.35 Americans built up the West German government’s capacity and promoted interstate interdependence after World War II; they promoted economic privatization and individual entrepreneurship in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. Indeed, if we put fear to the side, we might argue that American world power came in two waves after 1945. Until the 1970s, the United States projected its influence by making united states. The historical literature on development and governance speaks for itself.36 After World War II, Washington invested enormous sums not only in Germany and Japan, but also in South Korea, Taiwan, and states in the Middle East, Latin America, and Southern Africa. Even countries like India and Indonesia, which refused to ally with Washington in the Cold War, used American aid to build infrastructure and bureaucracy. These were sovereign countries—they had constitutions and elections, and their leaders talked about national identity and participated at the United Nations—but their freedom was circumscribed by conditional loans, trade deals, security pacts, and the conventions of modern diplomacy. By the late 1950s, American

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state-makers were so confident that they rebranded themselves as scientists, promising things like economic liftoff, and US strategists were clamoring to prop up dominoes in places that many Americans could not find on a map. From the rubble of European imperialism, the United States would create an interdependent community of peaceful, prosperous national states—all in the name of national security. Vietnam humbled this mind-set. But state-makers took the fall of Saigon harder than their strategy-minded counterparts, and President Richard Nixon triangulated his way through the early 1970s, ditching the monetary management system that Washington had created after World War II while repudiating the presupposition that the United States had any business building up foreign governments. It cost too much and did not work, which was not entirely untrue. As West Europe and Japan eroded America’s relative economic weight, state-making receded as the organizing principle of US power. Nixon essentially shook the United States from the interstate community it had cultivated after World War II. Watergate reflected the president’s mantra that only bold strategy would preserve American influence while exposing his tendency to equate himself with the national interest.37 When Nixon’s successors reclaimed the mantle of American exceptionalism and inaugurated a second wave of US global power, they did so with a different set of assumptions. This has been one of the revelations of the historical literature on rights—they are very political.38 With Reagan’s election, Washington went to war with walls, championing individual freedom and unregulated markets while importing capital to maintain domestic consumption and keep the US government solvent. This project was bolstered by trade pacts, such as the North Atlantic Free Trade Association, and it was rooted in Reagan’s high-minded belief that immigration affirmed American exceptionalism. If the United States was a city on a hill—as Puritan settler John Winthrop proclaimed in 1630—the president had no intention of building a community of predictable, likeminded neighbors. Instead, he evoked a “city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”39 This vision organized American power after the Cold War and offered a framework for China’s ascendance and Europe’s integration, and it is one of the reasons why the United States became more diverse

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after the 1980s. Washington no longer makes united states—that mission buckled in Vietnam—but America is “still a beacon,” Reagan declared in 1989. “Still a magnet for all . . . the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.”40 Or it was until recently. Reagan’s “freedom men” stumbled with the War on Terror, just as President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “mandarins of the future” faltered after decolonization. The Iraq invasion proved incoherent— George W. Bush wanted to build a state by privatizing its economy, using the tools of the second wave of US power to recreate an outcome from the first. The effort made sense to Brookings, but left most Americans confused and angry. Obama arguably invigorated Reagan’s America—his story embodied the tensions and possibilities of Reagan’s shining city— and deployed US influence in a way that Reagan would have comprehended. But Obama was black, and while Reagan talked about diversity, Obama presided over the aforementioned demographic shift. Regardless of whether Trump successfully weds these new assumptions to the use of American power, Republicans have unquestionably repudiated their forbearers’ worldview. “Even a shining city on a hill needs walls,” Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) explained in early 2017. “Times and circumstances change, and policies change along with them.”41 It is as inevitable as a wave that hits the seashore and recedes back into the ocean.

TRUMP AS HISTORY

Was Trump (or someone like him) inevitable? The answer depends on whether this second wave is truly over. Reagan’s distinct combination of claims—about deregulation, immigration, and individual freedom—has enjoyed bipartisan support within the American establishment, arguably since Bill Clinton found his third way through the 1990s. And as Brookings’ report suggests, the space between Robert Kagan and Michèle Flournoy—policymakers who cowrote that paper and advised rival presidents—is surprisingly narrow. Few Trump supporters have the intellectual dexterity to blame Reagan for the fact that America is more diverse and less religious, but there is an undeniable tension between proselytizing a borderless world and expecting that world to exist on your terms.

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(It is a bit like building an interstate community and assuming everyone will follow your lead.) The irony is rich. The United States is not just vibrant and crowded, as George Saunders suggested after his adventures in Trump land. Viewed with the proper perspective, it becomes clear that Reagan organized the party that Trump wants to break up. How did this happen? Although history’s authority gestates with time, historical thinking can take many forms, and these three metaphors— chessboard, looking glass, and wave—hint at distinct yet complementary interpretations. It is tempting to indulge in counterfactuals. If Boehner and McConnell had taken a different approach toward Obama in 2009— or if McCain had won the 2008 election—perhaps Trump would be hosting the Apprentice right now. But the truth is that Trump popularized sentiments with deep roots in American political life at a moment of significant change. Lambasting his words while ignoring this context is a fool’s errand. And it should not distract from the fact that the president’s boosters believe they are riding a new wave in America’s long story—rebuilding the country’s military might in the name of religious patriotism—readying the rest of us for an epic conflict that will renew our national pride. Mocking their hyperbole is probably unwise. Acquiescence is undoubtedly worse. History cannot stop Trump, of course, but it might contextualize the present for those who oppose his future. If voter turnout will determine American politics going forward, as Obama suggests, Trump’s opponents face a particular challenge. They have to offer their supporters something to vote for—a looking glass that does not sidestep the challenges and anxieties of the present. Time will tell whether Trump is a Nixon redux—using bluster, rather than strategy, to shore up America’s influence—or a harbinger of the next chapter in US and world history.

NOTES 1.

2.

Jonathan Haslam, “The Significance of the Trump Presidency,” H-Diplo/ISSF Policy Series: America and the World–2017 and Beyond, January 2017, https://issforum.org /roundtables/policy/1-5h-trump-significance. For some reflections, see Matt Taibbi, “Extracts from Insane Clown President,” https:// www.penguin.co.uk/articles/find-your-next-read/extracts/2017/jan/insane-clown -president-intro-by-matt-taibbi.

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3.

4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

17. 18.

19. 20.

Quoted in Jonathan Chait, “Five Days That Shaped a Presidency,” New York, 2 October 2016, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/10/barack-obama-on-5-days-that-shaped -his-presidency.html. Chait, “Five Days.” For analysis, Brendan Nyhan, “Will Obama Really ‘Break the Fever’?” Columbia Journalism Review, 24 September 2012, http://archives.cjr.org/united_states_project/will _obama_really_break_the_fever.php. Norm Orstein, “The Real Story of Obamacare’s Birth,” The Atlantic, 6 July 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/the-real-story-of-obamacares -birth/397742; “History of the Individual Health Insurance Mandate, 1989–2010,” ProCon.org, 9 February 2012, http://healthcarereform.procon.org/view.resource.php? resourceID=004182. Chait, “Five Days.” Ta-Neishi Coates, “On Being the ‘Stupid Party’ ,” The Atlantic, 20 November 2012, https:// www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/on-being-the-stupid-party/265461. Quoted in Gwynn Guilford and Nikhail Sonnad, “What Steve Bannon Really Wants,” Quartz, 3 February 2017, https://qz.com/898134/what-steve-bannon-really-wants. For insight, Dick Morris, Behind the Oval Office: Winning the Presidency in the Nineties (New York: Random House, 1997); James Patterson, Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), chapters 8–12. Jonah Goldberg, “Clintonian Triangulation Comes Full Circle,” Los Angeles Times, 18 December 2007, http://www.latimes.com/news/la-oe-goldberg18dec18-column.html. Chait, “Five Days.” George Saunders, “Who Are All These Trump Supporters?” New Yorker, 11 July 2016, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/11/george-saunders-goes-to-trump -rallies. Rick Perlstein, “Peter’s Choice,” Mother Jones, January 2017, http://www.motherjones .com/politics/2017/01/donald-trump-2016-election-oklahoma-working-class. Perlstein, “Peter’s Choice.” Jonathan Rothwell and Pablo Diego-Rosell, “Explaining Nationalist Political Views: The Case of Donald Trump,” SSRN, 2 November 2016, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers .cfm?abstract_id=2822059. Perlstein, “Peter’s Choice.” For insights, Edward Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction, 15th anniversary ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Norton, 2006); David Zucchino, Myth of the Welfare Queen: A Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist’s Portrait of Women on the Line (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999). Perlstein, “Peter’s Choice.” Donald Trump, “The Inaugural Address,” The White House, 20 January 2017, https:// www.whitehouse.gov/inaugural-address.

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21.

22. 23. 24.

25.

26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

Quoted in Michael Grynbaum, “Trump Strategist Stephen Bannon Says Media Should ‘Keep Its Mouth Shut’ ,” New York Times, 26 January 2017, https://www.nytimes .com/2017/01/26/business/media/stephen-bannon-trump-news-media.html?_r=0. “Does Trump’s Confrontation Style Help Him as President?” PBS Newshour, 16 February 2017, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/trumps-confrontational-style-help-president. Guilford and Sonnad, “What Steve Bannon Really Wants.” German Lopez, “Polls Show Many—Even Most—Trump Supporters Really Are Deeply Hostile to Muslims and Nonwhites,” Vox, 12 September 2016, http://www.vox.com /2016/9/12/12882796/trump-supporters-racist-deplorables. Alexander Livingston, “The World According to Bannon,” Jacobin, 7 February 2017, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/bannon-trump-muslim-travel-ban-breitbart -generation-zero. Livingston, “The World According to Bannon.” Bill Bishop, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart (New York: Mariner, 2008). Robert Jones, “The Eclipse of White Christian America,” The Atlantic, 12 July 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/the-eclipse-of-white-christian -america/490724. Quoted in Sam Roberts, “In a Generation, Minorities May Be the US Majority,” New York Times, 13 August 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/washington/14census.html. Dara Lind, “Racism Is Big, Subtle, and Messy,” Vox, 13 September 2016, http://www.vox .com/2016/9/13/12889160/basket-deplorables-clinton-americans-racist. Adam Tooze, “Goodbye to the American Century,” Zeit Online, 13 January 2017, http:// www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2017-01/usa-hegemony-donald-trump-rise-leadership -europe. Stephen Walt, “The Collapse of the Liberal World Order,” Foreign Policy, 26 June 2016, http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/26/the-collapse-of-the-liberal-world-order-european -union-brexit-donald-trump. Derek Chollet, Eric Edelman, Michèle Flournoy, Stephen Hadley, Martin Indyk, Bruce Jones, Robert Kagan, Kristen Silverberg, Jake Sullivan, and Thomas Wright, “Building Situations of Strength: A National Security Strategy for the United States,” Brookings Institution, February 2017, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/fp _201702_ofc_report_web.pdf. For recent elaborations, Adam Tooze, The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916–1931 (New York: Penguin, 2015); John Thompson, A Sense of Power: The Roots of America’s World Role (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015); see the H-Diplo Roundtable on A Sense of Power at https://issforum.org/ISSF /PDF/ISSF-Roundtable-8-15.pdf. For relevant thoughts, John Thompson, “The Appeal of ‘America First’ ,” chapter 11 in this volume. See also H-Diplo/ISSF Policy Series: America and the World—2017 and Beyond, February 2017, http://issforum.org/roundtables/policy/1-5Q-America-First. For introduction, Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Nils Gilman,

TRU M P ’S AS CENDANCY AS H ISTORY1 97

37.

38.

39.

40. 41.

Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2003); Michael Latham, The Right Kind of Revolution: Modernization, Development, and US Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011). For introduction, Daniel Sargent, A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Fredrik Logevall and Andrew Preston, eds., Nixon in the World: American Foreign Relations, 1969–1977 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). For introduction, Barbara Keys, Reclaiming American Virtue: The Human Rights Revolution in the 1970s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Steven Jensen, The Making of International Human Rights: The 1960s, Decolonization, and the Reconstruction of Global Values (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012); Sarah Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). “Transcript of Reagan’s Farewell Address to the Nation,” New York Times, 12 January 1989, http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/12/news/transcript-of-reagan-s-farewell-address -to-american-people. “Transcript of Reagan’s Farewell Address.” Quoted in Jeffrey Goldberg, “Even a Shining City on a Hill Needs Walls,” The Atlantic, 26 January 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/01/tom-cotton -donald-trump-one-china/514226.

15 ASSESSING TRUMP’S EMERGING COUNTERTERRORISM POLICY DA N I E L BY M A N

A

ddressing the threat of terrorism, both real and perceived, would be a top priority for any president, but it is especially important for Donald Trump’s administration.1 Despite the dearth of Islamic State or other foreign-directed mass-casualty attacks on US soil since 9/11, polls from early 2016 showed that 73 percent of Americans saw the Islamic State as a “very serious” threat to the United States, and another 17 percent saw it as “moderately serious”—a rare priority that crosses political lines. Almost 80 percent believed the Islamic State has assets in the United States and can “launch a major terrorist attack against the US at any time.”2 Fears remain high despite the collapse of the Islamic State’s so-called Caliphate by the end of 2017. Exploiting these concerns during the presidential campaign, Trump regularly warned about “a major threat from radical Islamic terrorism” and tweeted (the forum used for all serious policy discussions) that “We better get very smart, and very tough, FAST, before it is too late!”3 President Barack Obama, he claimed, had boxed US generals in with a “strategy that is destined to fail.”4 Fighting terrorism has been at the top of the US national security agenda since 9/11, but the terrorism threat, and thus the appropriate counterterrorism response, is often grossly misunderstood. In addition, the Obama administration failed to resolve several counterterrorism challenges, such as terrorist control of territory, that the Trump administration should consider as it designs its policies. At home, the challenges

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are even more complex: the election exposed failures of societal resilience and led to the public demonization of Muslims, both of which only further empower terrorist groups. Trump’s approach so far appears to be a mix of the old and the misguided. His administration has continued the Obama administration’s efforts to steadily deny the Islamic State a sanctuary through military action against the group in Iraq and Syria. And like Obama, he has refrained from a dramatic escalation there or in places like Afghanistan, where the Taliban continues its campaign against the US-backed government. Similarly, the administration has maintained the intelligence campaign against terrorist groups, which has produced many devastating losses. President Trump has deepened ties to several allies in the Middle East that are important counterterrorism players. At the same time, however, Trump has alienated many other allies around the world. Even worse, his rhetoric and initial policies, like his immigration restrictions, may deepen the problem at home, as will his emphasis on jihadist terrorism to the exclusion of other forms, such as right-wing violence.

THE THREAT TO DAY

It is difficult to assess the danger of terrorism today because it varies so much by region. In the United States, the terrorism threat has been low since 9/11 despite fears to the contrary and the perceptions of many Americans. As of December 2017, jihadists have killed 103 people on US soil – that is 103 too many, but far fewer than experts (including myself) anticipated in the scary weeks after 9/11, whose death toll was 2,977. If you exclude Omar Mateen’s 2016 attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, which killed forty-nine people (almost half the total US homeland deaths from jihadists in the post-9/11 period), right-wing terrorists have killed more Americans in the post–9/11 era than jihadists, and the level of rightwing violence has increased since Trump’s election.5 But we do not hear much about that. One reason we do not is that 9/11 was such a dominant event, and reporting of terrorist plots as well as attacks has since skyrocketed. This is particularly true if the perpetrators have even weak links to jihadist

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groups like al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. A more globalized media has meant that Islamic State attacks in Dhaka or al-Qaeda attacks in Bali receive considerable press attention, to say nothing of attacks on more familiar foreign ground such as Paris or London. Indeed, although the terrorism problem in Europe is more severe than that facing the United States, by some measures it too has not surged dramatically compared with past decades. The seventies and eighties saw far more attacks than have occurred in the post-9/11 era. Recent years have seen bloody and horrific attacks, like the 2015 shootings and bombings in Paris that killed 130 people—but 1988 saw 440 people die, most of whom perished when Libyan agents bombed Pan Am 103.6 The perception of danger is far greater than the reality. Even after fifteen years of intense counterterrorism efforts at home and abroad and the failure of jihadist groups to carry out a mass-casualty attack on the US homeland, 40 percent of Americans believe the ability of terrorists to launch a major attack on the United States is greater than it was at the time of the 9/11 attacks and another 31 percent believe it is the same.7 Although the American public has an exaggerated sense of the terrorism threat, there has been a surge in violence—and it is just not in the West. The threat has skyrocketed in South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Specific numbers are difficult to find, because so many of the region’s terrorist groups are engaged in bloody civil wars in which hundreds of thousands have died, and thus much of the violence is technically not terrorism, but that confusion illustrates the broader danger these groups pose to the region. Terrorists have contributed to and exploited civil wars that have killed more than one hundred thousand in Afghanistan, tens of thousands in Pakistan, tens of thousands in Nigeria, thousands in Yemen, thousands in Libya, and hundreds of thousands in Syria.8 With this picture in mind, the challenges facing the United States can be broken down into three issues. The first, of course, is the real risk to American lives and those of US allies. In absolute terms these are small in the United States and only slightly larger in Europe. Most Americans are more likely to be shot by an armed toddler than killed by a terrorist.9 The next danger is political. Trump scored many points playing up the threat of Muslim immigrants and Syrian refugees, with the terrorism danger (despite being low statistically) looming in the background.10 In Europe, the politics are even nastier, and xenophobic movements have

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gained notable strength almost everywhere. Countries as diverse as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Norway, Austria, Hungary, and Greece have seen a surge of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, right-wing nationalism.11 Defending America means more than defending American lives: it also means defending American values, including being a home to peaceful people of all religions and welcoming refugees. Terrorism’s success, however, often depends on the reaction of the government it is fighting and the foreign audience it seeks to influence—and here too the situation has changed, this time much for the worse. Since 9/11, keeping the US homeland safe from mass-casualty terrorism is an understandable priority by which every president should be judged. But this concern has expanded to stopping all attacks on all Americans everywhere. The killing of three Americans at the Boston Marathon in 2013 shut down the city. After the attack, the House Committee on Homeland Security wisely launched an investigation, but, in a letter to the administration, the Republican committee leadership immediately claimed the failure to prevent the attack raised “serious questions about the efficacy of the federal counter-terrorism efforts.”12 One minor and amateurish attack, apparently, means failure. Even limited strikes in dangerous areas like the 2012 attack in Benghazi that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, are political footballs. Although to today’s Americans this low bar seems obvious, President Ronald Reagan suffered no major political penalty (and people rightly see him as tough on terrorism) despite Hezballah attacks on US Marines and diplomats in Lebanon that killed hundreds as well as the deaths of 270 people from Libya’s downing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. Americans are in no mood to accept that small attacks are difficult to prevent and that low levels of terrorism at home are a sign of success, not failure. The biggest danger, however, is to US interests in Muslim parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Stability and governance have collapsed in many countries and are under threat in others. In addition to the human cost, this threatens the stability of US partners and has led to dangerous confrontations, with countries like Saudi Arabia intervening in Yemen and otherwise ratcheting up regional tension in competition with Iran. The danger also allows US allies like Egypt to resist pressure regarding democratization, claiming that all forms of religious opposition are linked to terrorism.

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UN MET CHAL L ENG ES

The Obama administration did not resolve several problems that have hindered US counterterrorism efforts and foreign policy in general. These include managing technological change, ending terrorist havens, and incorporating counterterrorism into overall US foreign policy. The Islamic State has used the Internet to recruit and fundraise, with social media proving particularly important to its rise and to its ability to work with followers in the West to conduct attacks.13 Although the United States can and should push technology companies to monitor their users to hinder egregious terrorist recruitment and operations, protection of the right of free-speech in communications technologies remains a boon for groups that cannot be completely avoided. Terrorists will use the technology of their times; as it grows more advanced so will they. Conversely, the United States can take advantage of terrorists’ social media output and otherwise use their digital footprints to track them. Indeed, such efforts are vital for identifying and stopping so-called lone wolves, whose only indication of an impending attack might be a tweet or Facebook post that brings them to the attention of security services. In addition, the administration can push technology companies to live up to their terms of service and otherwise try to make the Internet a restrictive and dangerous place for would-be terrorists, as it was in the late 2000s.14 Another challenge is terrorist control of territory. In areas where civil wars rage, the United States will have to step up and improve training programs for allied militaries and partner substate groups. It needs more competent good guys—or at least fewer bad guys—to support in the Middle East and other danger zones. Such forces are necessary to push back the Islamic State and other groups on the ground and, even more difficult, hold the territory as these groups respond with renewed attacks and guerrilla operations. Addressing territorial control in the long-term requires a fundamental shift from the Obama era. The Obama administration aggressively hunted terrorists throughout the greater Middle East and Africa yet remained hesitant to become bogged down in the swamp of Middle East politics. The result was an aggressive campaign to kill and arrest terrorists that was often divorced from the environment that allowed them to breed and

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expand. Civil wars, for example, generate new terrorist groups and allow existing ones to expand operations: halting or preventing civil wars is thus vital for counterterrorism. Such a recommendation is easier to offer than to implement. Military training programs in Syria and Iraq, for example, have failed disastrously. After months or even years of training, US-aided groups have fled in the face of the enemy (or, in Syria, even before). When the Islamic State took Mosul in June 2014, perhaps thirty thousand well-armed Iraqi forces fled the city in the face of perhaps one thousand Islamic State fighters, leaving massive amounts of equipment behind, including Abrams tanks as well as small arms and ammunition.15 The Islamic State’s expansion occurred in part because Iraqi military forces and most political leaders were primarily Shiites, who had little interest in defending local Sunnis, many of whom viewed them with hostility and contempt. Thus, in Sunni areas such as Mosul, residents often regarded the army as an instrument of an Iranian puppet regime. The Iraqi officers did not command the respect of their troops and lacked professionalism, and when they fled the battlefield, their troops quickly followed.16 Training programs without broader reform will fail given such deep problems. Starting small will be essential. The United States will also need to thoroughly vet small unit leaders as well as senior officers. Improving governance is vital. This is not usually a question of financial aid or broader democratization but rather of ensuring that corruption is kept to a minimum and basic services are provided. The United States, however, cannot and should not be everywhere. Part of the current president’s job should be drawing lines between areas of strong interest and those that are peripheral. Some areas might be better left to allies: France, for example, could continue to take the lead in parts of North and West Africa. Just as the American public should not empower amateurish or failed terrorist plots by overreacting, the Trump administration should direct its considerable, but still finite, power at what is a demonstrated threat. Finally, Obama’s administration often focused on counterterrorism to the exclusion of other issues. Its policies in Libya and Yemen, for example, aimed at destroying terrorist groups there but ignored the broader civil wars that enabled them to thrive. Its intervention in Syria focused only on one actor, the Islamic State, thus embroiling the United States in

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a complex conflict without a broader strategy for the struggle as a whole. Allies often deliberately generate sectarianism to undermine rivals and, in so doing, assist recruitment by groups like the Islamic State.

T RUMP ’ S MISGUIDED A P P R OAC H

In its opening months, the Trump administration has continued many policies of the Obama administration, often quite successfully. The administration has maintained the slow but successful military campaign against Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria, although it appears to have slightly loosened restrictions on military commanders and deployed additional forces to Syria, nearly doubling the number of previous forces in the fight for Raqqa.17 In addition, it maintained the coalition of states and local actors that the Obama administration cobbled together. Furthermore, the aggressive global intelligence campaign begun under President George W. Bush and continued under Obama remains robust. Together such efforts have hindered Islamic State operations and steadily shrunk its territory. In addition, the group’s various provinces have failed to expand and have suffered significant blows, as in the case of its most successful province in Libya. In his first few months in office, however, the president has taken several steps that may impede the struggle against jihadist terrorism. First, in his campaign rhetoric and through actions like Executive Order 13769 (the socalled Muslim ban), the Trump administration is demonizing American Muslims and damaging relations between religious communities—a traditional source of American strength, pride, and values. Such actions increase the allure of the Islamic State and other groups that claim that the West is at war with Islam. In addition, these actions increase the likelihood that Muslim communities will fear the police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and other government institutions, and thus these communities will be less likely to cooperate with them. Overseas, President Trump embraced the Saudi perspective on the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is an important counterterrorism partner, and the United States shares several vital interests with the Saudi regime. Relations with the Kingdom became strained under Obama, and President Trump’s efforts to strengthen ties should be commended. The Saudi

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government, however, continues to fund an array of preachers and institutions that promulgate an extreme version of Islam, enabling the Islamic State to recruit and otherwise gain support. In addition, Saudi Arabia promotes an anti-Shi’a agenda that harms regional stability and fosters sectarianism, a key recruiting tool of the Islamic State. More broadly, the disdain for human rights as a foreign policy value adopted by the administration advances the argument that the United States cares little about the well-being of ordinary Muslims and is uncritically on the side of the dictatorial regimes in the Arab world.18 At home, administration officials appear highly skeptical of programs to counter violent extremism. Many such programs are based on weak data and untested theories and demand scrutiny and oversight.19 Many of these programs, however, deserve continued support because they offer an often cheap and valuable tool to work with communities and could identify and stop potential terrorists. In addition, the administration proposed dramatic cuts to the already-small foreign aid budget and has not staffed the Department of State, the civilian arm of the Department of Defense, and other key agencies. As a result, the US ability to use a whole-of-government approach to combat terrorism is diminished. Initial signs suggest that the Trump administration would respond poorly to a large terrorist attack on US soil. At a time when a president should provide steady leadership, President Trump’s record suggests he might speak or tweet too quickly, without assembling the necessary facts or listening to the views of his advisors. After the Manhattan car-ramming attack in October 2017, he quickly began tweeting about the need for immigration changes and criticizing his political opponents rather than trying to bring Americans together. Similarly, his response to the London attacks earlier in June 2017 needlessly aggravated US-UK relations at a time when allies should come together. The president has lost credibility among many Americans, which will cause the public to be skeptical of his claims on the nature of any terrorist attack and necessary subsequent actions in the aftermath of an attack.20 He may seek broad detentions or surveillance or act otherwise in ways that might exacerbate the problem in the long-term. After 9/11, the United States detained more than one thousand Muslims, gaining almost no useful intelligence but harming relations with the community. As Daniel Benjamin, a former senior counterterrorism official, recalls, “Repairing the damage from that crackdown took years.”21

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RECTIF YING THE FA ILURE S AT HOME

It may prove harder for the current president to navigate domestic waters than the shoals of the Middle East. Since 9/11, three of the biggest failures in US counterterrorism policy have involved domestic politics. Unfortunately, under Trump, these failures appear likely to worsen. The first is institutionalization. Under both Bush and Obama, new and controversial counterterrorism instruments—targeted killings, increased domestic surveillance, aggressive FBI sting operations, detention without trial, and so on—are at the heart of counterterrorism.22 In addition, the United States has been bombing the Islamic State in Iraq and especially in Syria with only dubious legal justification.23 Since 9/11, counterterrorism policy has been decided by the executive branch and modified by the courts. One branch of government, perhaps the most important in the long-term, has been AWOL under both Democratic and Republican leadership: the US Congress. Regardless of whether you want to expand or shrink the policies discussed above, public debate and legislation are vital. This puts the executive branch and the courts on sound footing and enables the long-term planning necessary for programs to develop properly. It also ensures that government lawyers do not have to tie themselves in knots or unnecessarily limit operations because the legal niceties are missing. President Trump appears enamored of unfettered executive power and, in his tweets and rhetoric at least, has little patience for the role of Congress and the courts. Yet this weak institutional base for counterterrorism reflects a second failure: resilience. Terrorism deaths at home since 9/11 have proven low, but fears of terrorism remain high. In a landmark speech in 2013 and in subsequent remarks, President Obama tried to talk down the threat, describing al-Qaeda as on “the path to defeat” and noting that another 9/11 is unlikely.24 He failed. Alarm over Islamic State atrocities, even though they did not directly involve the US homeland (or even many American citizens), led to a spike in fear of terrorism. The new president seems to prefer to stoke fears that play into the hands of terrorists rather than calm the public mood. The current administration risks jeopardizing one of America’s greatest counterterrorism successes: integration of immigrant communities.

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In many European countries, for instance, Muslims’ trust in the government and security services is low.25 Add such a sense of humiliation to a surging far-right political movement that constantly blasts Muslim immigrants and citizens, and the conditions for radicalization are strong.26 In contrast to Europe, the American Muslim community is far better integrated and regularly cooperates with law enforcement.27 Unfortunately, Trump’s demonization of the American Muslim community will endure beyond the election unless he walks it back. This card is on the table, and other politicians are likely to pick it up. Ideally, the US president should press state and local officials to work with Muslim communities, not just to stop radicalism in their ranks but also to protect them from right-wing extremists. Good relations, and a recognition that Muslims face daily security threats, will help ensure that radicalization remains low and that, when it does occur, the community cooperates with law enforcement. This demonization is part and parcel of Trump’s broader embrace of right-wing nationalist politics. Whether it is his refusal to condemn rightwing abuse of Muslims, ambivalent response to the Nazi and KKK rally in Charlottesville in August 2017, or hiring of officials who prioritize the threat from Muslim groups over others, the president has made clear that he prioritizes one form of terrorism—jihadist—over others. Much of the right-wing low-level harassment and violence that has resulted may not be labeled terrorism, but at least some of it is, and this is likely to receive fewer resources and worsen. The American president has a lot on his plate. He must understand the true threat of terrorism, revise US policy in the Middle East, and address the domestic concerns of resilience and rising Muslim discrimination. Unfortunately, initial signs suggest that the US approach to terrorism is likely to become even less effective during the Trump administration.

NOTES 1.

2. 3.

This chapter draws in part on Daniel Byman, “How to Fight Terrorism in the Donald Trump Era,” The National Interest (January/February 2017), http://nationalinterest.org /feature/how-fight-terrorism-the-donald-trump-era-18839. “ISIS,” PollingReport.com, http://www.pollingreport.com/isis.htm. Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, 8 December 2015, 6:56 p.m., https://twitter.com/realdonald trump/status/674422386620502016.

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4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, 13 October 2014, 11:38 a.m., https://twitter.com/realdonald trump/status/521731699403923456. “Terrorism in America After 9/11: Part IV. What Is the Threat to the United States Today?” New American Foundation, accessed 17 August 2017, https://www.newamerica .org/in-depth/terrorism-in-america/what-threat-united-states-today/;AriePerliger,“Home Grown Terrorism and Why the Threat of Right-Wing Extremism Is Rising,” Newsweek, 4 June 2017, http://www.newsweek.com/homegrown-terrorism-rising-threat-right-wing -extremism-619724. Annalisa Merelli, “Charted: Terror Attacks in Western Europe from the 1970s to Now,” Quartz, 25 November 2015, http://qz.com/558597/charted-terror-attacks-in-western -europe-from-the-1970s-to-now/. “15 Years After 9/11, a Sharp Partisan Divide on Ability of Terrorists to Strike US,” Pew Research Center, 7 September 2016, http://www.people-press.org/2016/09/07/15-years -after-911-a-sharp-partisan-divide-on-ability-of-terrorists-to-strike-u-s/. Neta C. Crawford, “Costs of War: Update to the Human Costs of War for Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001 to mid-2016,” Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University, August 2016, http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce /papers/2016/War%20in%20Afghanistan%20and%20Pakistan%20UPDATE_FINAL _corrected%20date.pdf; “Nigeria Security Tracker: Mapping Violence in Nigeria,” Council on Foreign Relations, accessed 4 November 2016, http://www.cfr.org/nigeria/nigeria -security-tracker/p29483; Yasmeen Serhan, “The 10,000 Civilians Killed in Yemen,” The Atlantic, 30 August 2016, http://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2016/08/the-10000 -civilians-killed-in-yemen/498068/; Libya Body Count, accessed 4 November 2016, http://www.libyabodycount.org/; “About 430 Thousands Were Killed Since the Beginning of the Syrian Revolution,” Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 13 September 2016, http://www.syriahr.com/en/?p=50612. Zak Cheney Rice, “In 2016, Toddlers Have Shot More People in the US Than Muslim Terrorists Have,” Mic, 2 May 2016, https://mic.com/articles/142348/in-2016-toddlers-have -killed-more-people-in-the-us-than-muslim-terrorists-have#.gEMSMmxQV. AJ Willingham, Paul Martucci, and Natalie Leung, “The Chances of a Refugee Killing You—and Other Surprising Statistics,” CNN, 6 March 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017 /01/30/politics/immigration-stats-by-the-numbers-trnd/index.html. Amanda Taub, “Behind 2016’s Turmoil, a Crisis of White Identity,” New York Times, 1 November 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/world/americas/brexit-donald -trump-whites.html?src=me&_r=0. “Obama Administration Under Fire for Boston Bombing Intel Failure,” Fox News, 21 April 2013, http://nation.foxnews.com/boston-marathon-bombing/2013/04/22/obama -administration-under-fire-boston-bombing-intel-failure. Rukmini Callimachi, “Not ‘Lone Wolves’ After All,” New York Times, 4 February 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/04/world/asia/isis-messaging-app-terror-plot .html?mcubz=3. See Thomas Hegghammer, “Interpersonal Trust on Jihadi Forums,” (forthcoming), draft available at http://hegghammer.com/_files/Interpersonal_trust.pdf.

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15.

16. 17. 18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26. 27.

Peter Van Buren, “Dude, Where’s My Humvee? Iraq Losing Equipment to the Islamic State at Staggering Rate,” Reuters, 2 June 2015, http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate /2015/06/02/dude-wheres-my-humvee-iraqi-equipment-losses-to-islamic-state-are -out-of-control/; Andrew Tilghman and Jeff Schogol, “How Did 800 ISIS Fighters Rout 2 Iraqi Divisions?” Military Times, 12 June 2014. See Daniel Byman, “Understanding the Islamic State—A Review Essay,” International Security 40, no. 4 (2016): 127–65. Michael R. Gordon, “US Is Sending 400 More Troops to Syria,” New York Times, 9 March 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/09/world/middleeast/us-troops-syria.html?_r=0. Rex W. Tillerson, “Remarks to US Department of State Employees,” speech, Washington DC, 3 May 2017, Department of State, https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks /2017/05/270620.htm. See J. M. Berger, “Making CVE Work: A Focused Approach Based on Process Disruption,” International Centre for Counter-Terrorism—The Hague, May 2016, http://icct.nl /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/J.-M.-Berger-Making-CVE-Work-A-Focused-Approach -Based-on-Process-Disruption-.pdf. Jim Norman, “Majority in US No Longer Thinks Trump Keeps His Promises,” Gallup, 17 April 2017, http://www.gallup.com/poll/208640/majority-no-longer-thinks-trump -keeps-promises.aspx. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, “What Does the Recent Spate of Lone Wolf Terrorist Attacks Mean?” 27 October 2014, War on the Rocks, https://warontherocks.com/2014/10/what -does-the-recent-spate-of-lone-wolf-terrorist-attacks-mean/. Glenn Greenwald, “Why Does the FBI Have to Manufacture Its Own Plots If Terrorism and ISIS Are Such Grave Threats?” The Intercept, 26 February 2015, https://theintercept .com/2015/02/26/fbi-manufacture-plots-terrorism-isis-grave-threats/. Jack Goldsmith, “The Obama Administration’s Legal Justification for Strikes Against the Islamic State in Syria,” Lawfare, 23 September 2015, https://www.lawfareblog.com/obama -administrations-legal-justification-strikes-against-islamic-state-syria; Jack Goldsmith, “How Administration Lawyers Are Probably Thinking About the Constitutionality of the Syria Intervention (And a Note on the Domestic Political Dangers of Intervention),” Lawfare, 24 August 2013, https://www.lawfareblog.com/how-administration-lawyers -are-probably-thinking-about-constitutionality-syria-intervention-and-note. President Barak Obama, “Remarks by the President at the National Defense University,” The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 23 May 2013, https://www.whitehouse .gov/the-press-office/2013/05/23/remarks-president-national-defense-university. Deborah Acosta, “French Police Make 2,700 Raids in Month, Raising Tension with Muslims,” New York Times, 23 December 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/world /europe/french-police-make-2700-raids-in-month-raising-tension-with-muslims.html. Chris Tomlinson, “Marine Le Pen Surges in French Polls,” Breitbart, 3 June 2016, http:// www.breitbart.com/london/2016/06/03/marine-le-pen-surges-french-polls/. Risa A. Brooks, “Muslim “Homegrown” Terrorism in the United States: How Serious Is the Threat?” International Security 36, no. 2 (Fall 2011): 7–47.

16 THE “GLOBAL ORDER” MYTH A N D R E W J. B AC E V I C H

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uring the Age of Trump, Year One, a single word has emerged to capture the essence of the prevailing cultural mood: resistance.1 Words matter, and the prominence of this particular term illuminates the moment in which we find ourselves. All presidents, regardless of party or program, face criticism and opposition. Citizens disinclined to support that program protest. Marching, chanting, waving placards, and generally raising a ruckus in front of any available camera, they express dissent. In normal times, such activism testifies to the health of democracy. Yet these are not normal times. In the eyes of Trump’s opponents, his elevation to the pinnacle of American politics constitutes a frontal assault on values that until quite recently appeared fixed and unassailable. In such circumstances, mere criticism, opposition, protest, and dissent will not suffice. Simply put, Trump’s most ardent opponents see him as an existential threat. As such, the stakes could hardly be higher. Richard Parker, who lectures at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and several Harvard graduate students, created what they call Resistance School, which in three months signed up some thirty-three thousand antiTrump resistors from forty-nine states and thirty-three countries. “It is our attempt to begin the long slow process of recovering and rebuilding our democracy,” says Parker.2 Another group styling itself the DJT

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Resistance declares that Trump represents “hatred, bigotry, xenophobia, sexism, racism, and greed.”3 This is not language suggesting the possibility of dialogue or compromise. Indeed, in such quarters, references to incipient fascism have become commonplace. Comparisons between Trump and Hitler abound. “It takes willful blindness,” writes Paul Krugman in the New York Times, “not to see the parallels between the rise of fascism and our current political nightmare.”4 And time is running short. As the journalist Chris Hedges puts it, “a last chance for resistance” is already at hand.5 In the meantime, in foreign policy circles at least, a second, less explosive term vies with resistance for Trump-era signature status. This development deserves more attention than it has attracted, especially among those who believe that alongside the question “What values define us?”— that is what concerns the resistance—sits another question of comparable importance: “What principles define America’s role in the world?” That second term, now creeping into the vocabulary of foreign policy specialists is liberal, often used interchangeably with the phrase rulesbased and accompanied by additional modifiers such as open, international, and normative. For many, all of these serve as synonyms for enlightened and good. So Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution, describing what he refers to as the “twilight of the liberal world order,” worries about the passing of “the open international economic system the United States created and helped sustain.” Donald Trump’s misguided emphasis on “America First,” Kagan writes, suggests that he has no interest in “attempting to uphold liberal norms in the international system” or in “preserving an open economic order.”6 Commenting on Trump’s inaugural address, Nicole Gaouette, CNN national security reporter, expressed her dismay that it contained “no reference to America’s traditional role as a global leader and shaper of international norms.”7 Similarly, a report in the Financial Times bemoaned what it sees as “a clear signal about Mr. Trump’s disregard for many of the international norms that have governed America as the pillar of the liberal economic order.”8 The historian Jeremy Suri, barely a week into Trump’s presidency, charged Trump with “launching a direct attack on the liberal international order that really made America great after the depths of the Great Depression.”9 At the Council on Foreign Relations, Stewart Patrick

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concurred: Trump’s very election, he writes, “imperils the liberal international order that America has championed since World War II.”10 Thomas Wright, another Brookings scholar, concurred: Trump “wants to undo the liberal international order the United States built and replace it with a nineteenth-century model of nationalism and mercantilism.”11 In Foreign Policy, Colin Kahl and Hal Brands embellish the point: Trump’s strategic vision “diverges significantly from—and intentionally subverts—the bipartisan consensus underpinning US foreign policy since World War II.” Failing to “subscribe to the long-held belief that ‘American exceptionalism’ and US leadership are intertwined,” Trump is hostile to the “open, rule-based international economy” that his predecessors nurtured and sustained.12 General David Petraeus also weighed in: “To keep the peace,” the soldier-turned-investment banker wrote in essay entitled “America Must Stand Tall,” the United States has established “a system of global alliances and security commitments,” thereby nurturing “an open, free and rules-based international economic order.”13 To discard this legacy, he suggests, would be catastrophic. Liberalism, along with norms, rules, openness, and internationalism: These ostensibly define the postwar and post–Cold War tradition of American statecraft. Allow Trump to scrap that tradition and you can say farewell to what Stewart Patrick refers to as “the global community under the rule of law” that for decades now the United States has upheld.14 What does this perspective exclude? We can answer that question with a single word: history. Or somewhat more expansively, among the items failing to qualify for mention in the liberal internationalist, rules-based version of past US policy are the following: meddling in foreign elections; coups and assassination plots in Iran, Guatemala, the Congo, Cuba, South Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua and elsewhere; indiscriminate aerial bombing campaigns in North Korea and throughout Southeast Asia; a nuclear arms race bringing the world to the brink of Armageddon; support for corrupt, authoritarian regimes in Iran, Turkey, Greece, South Korea, South Vietnam, the Philippines, Brazil, Egypt, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and elsewhere—many of them abandoned when deemed inconvenient; the shielding of illegal activities through the use of the Security Council veto; unlawful wars launched under false pretenses; “extraordinary rendition,” torture, and the indefinite imprisonment of persons without any semblance of due process.

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Granted, for each of these, there was a rationale, rooted in a set of identifiable assumptions, ambitions, and fears. The CIA did not conspire with Britain’s MI6 in 1953 to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected president just for the hell of it.15 It did so because shelving Mohammad Mosaddegh seemingly offered the prospect of eliminating an annoying problem. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson did not commit US combat troops to South Vietnam because he was keen to fight a major ground war in Asia but because the consequences of simply allowing events to take their course looked to be even worse. After 9/11, when President George W.  Bush and his associates authorized the “enhanced interrogation” of those held in secret prisons, panic rather than sadism prompted their actions. Even for the most egregious folly, in other words, there is always some explanation, however inadequate. Yet collectively, the actions and episodes enumerated above do not suggest a nation committed to liberalism, openness, or the rule of law. What they reveal instead is a pattern of behavior common to all great powers in just about any era: following the rules when it serves their interest to do so; disregarding the rules whenever they become an impediment. Some regimes are nastier than others, but all are law-abiding when the law works to their benefit, but not one day longer. Even Hitler’s Third Reich and Stalin’s USSR punctiliously observed the terms of their nonaggression pact as long as it suited both parties to do so. My point is not to charge that every action undertaken by the United States government is inherently nefarious. Rather, I am suggesting that to depict postwar US policy in terms employed by the scholars quoted above is to whitewash the past. To characterize American statecraft as “liberal internationalism” is akin to describing the business of Hollywood as “artistic excellence.” “Invocations of the ‘rules-based international order’ ,” Politico’s Susan Glasser has rightly observed, “had never before caused such teary-eyed nostalgia.”16 What is the cause of this sudden nostalgia for something that never actually existed? The answer is self-evident: it is a response to Donald Trump. Prior to Trump’s arrival on the scene, few members of the foreign policy elite that is now apparently smitten with norms fancied that the United States was engaged in creating any such order. America’s purpose was not to promulgate rules, but to police an informal empire that during

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the Cold War encompassed the “Free World” and became more expansive still once the Cold War ended. The pre-Trump Kagan, writing in 2012, neatly summarizes that view: “The existence of the American hegemon has forced all other powers to exercise unusual restraint, curb normal ambitions, and avoid actions that might lead to the formation of a U.S.led coalition of the kind that defeated Germany twice, Japan once, and the Soviet Union, more peacefully, in the Cold War.”17 The central claim is striking: the United States as a hegemon that forces other nations to bend to its will. Strip away the talk about rules and norms and you come to the essence of what troubles those who worry about the passing of “liberal internationalism.” Their concern is not that Trump will not show adequate respect for rules and norms. It is that he appears disinclined to perpetuate American hegemony. More fundamentally, Trump’s conception of a usable past differs radically from that favored in establishment quarters. Put simply, the forty-fifth president does not subscribe to the imperative of sustaining American hegemony because he does not subscribe to the establishment’s narrative of twentieth-century history. According to that narrative, exertions by the United States in a sequence of conflicts dating from 1914 and ending in 1989 enabled good to triumph over evil. Absent these American efforts, evil would have prevailed. Contained within that parable-like story, members of the establishment believe, are the lessons that should guide US policy in the twenty-first century. Trump does not see it that way, as his appropriation of the historically loaded phrase “America First” attests. In his view, what might have occurred had the United States not waged war against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan and had it not subsequently confronted the Soviet Union matters less than what did occur when the assertion of hegemonic prerogatives found the United States invading Iraq in 2003 with disastrous results. In effect, Trump dismisses the lessons of the twentieth century as irrelevant to the twenty-first. Crucially, he goes a step further by questioning the moral basis for past US actions. Thus, his extraordinary response to a TV host’s charge that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a killer. “There are a lot of killers,” Trump retorted. “We’ve got a lot of killers. What, you think our country is so innocent?”18 In offering this one brief remark,

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Trump thereby committed the ultimate heresy. Of course, no serious person believes that the United States is literally innocent. What members of the foreign policy establishment—to include past commanders in chief— have insisted is that the United States act as if it were innocent, with prior sins expunged and America’s slate wiped clean. This describes the ultimate US perquisite and explains why in the eyes of Trump’s critics Russian actions in Crimea, Ukraine, or Syria count for so much while American actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya count for so little. The exercise in historical revisionism that now credits the United States with having sought all along to create a global community under the rule of law represents that establishment’s response to the heresies Trump has been spouting (and tweeting) since his famous ride down the escalator at Trump Tower. Yet in reclassifying yesterday’s hegemon as today’s promulgator and respecter of norms, members of that establishment perpetrate a fraud. Whether Americans, notably gullible when it comes to history, will fall for this remains to be seen. As for Trump himself, with the exception of the cruise missiles launched against a Syrian airfield in April 2017 in response to images of suffering children, he has this far shown little inclination to take the bait. Say this for the anti-Trump resistance. While the fascism-just-roundthe-corner rhetoric may be overheated and a touch overwrought, it qualifies as forthright and heartfelt. While not sharing the view that Trump will rob Americans of their freedoms, I neither question the sincerity nor doubt the passion of those who believe otherwise. Indeed, I am grateful to them for acting so forcefully on their convictions. They are inspiring. Not so with those who now fear the passing of the fictive liberal international order credited to enlightened American statecraft. They are working assiduously to sustain the pretense that the world of 2018 remains essentially what it was in 1937 or 1947 or 1957 when it is not. Today’s Russia is not a reincarnation of the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China is not Imperial Japan, and the Islamic State in no way compares to Nazi Germany. Most of all, the United States in the era of Donald Trump is not the nation that elected presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, not least of all in the greatly reduced willingness of Americans to serve as instruments of state power, as the failed post-9/11 assertions of hegemony have

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demonstrated. The world has changed in fundamental ways. So, too, has the United States. Those changes require that the principles guiding US policy also change accordingly. However ill suited by intellect, temperament, and character for the office he holds, as is doubtless the case, Trump has seemingly intuited the need for that change. In this regard, if in none other, I’m with The Donald. But note the irony. Trump may come closer to full-fledged historical illiteracy than any president since President Warren G. Harding. Small wonder then that his rejection of the mythic past long employed to preempt serious debate regarding US policy gives fits to the perpetrators of those myths.

NOTES 1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

This chapter originally appeared in slightly different form in the May–June 2017 issue of The American Conservative. E-mail from Richard Parker to several dozen recipients, dated 4 April 2017, Subject: “Resistance School goes live tonight at 7PM.” Formerly located at https://www.thedjtr.com, a website that is now listed as ‘expired.’ See http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/york-trump-opponents-style-themselves-the -resistance/article/2608069. Paul Krugman, “How Republics End” (op-ed), New York Times, 19 December 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/how-republics-end.html. Chris Hedges, “A Last Chance for Resistance,” Truthdig, 19 March 2017, http://www .truthdig.com/report/item/a_last_chance_for_resistance_20170319. Robert Kagan, “The Twilight of the Liberal World Order,” Brookings Institution, 24 January 2017, https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-twilight-of-the-liberal-world-order/. Nicole Gaouette, “Trump Stakes out Inward, Protectionist Vision for America,” CNN, 20 January 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/20/politics/donald-trump-foreign-policy/. “Donald Trump’s Whirlwind Week in the White House,” Financial Times, 27 January 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/1d843662-e4f8-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e5fb. Jeremi Suri, “How Trump’s Executive Orders Could Set America Back 70 Years,” The Atlantic, 27 January 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/trumps -executive-orders-will-set-america-back-70-years/514730/. Stewart M. Patrick, “An Open World Is in the Balance. What Might Replace the Liberal Order?” (blog post), Council on Foreign Relations, 10 January 2017, http://blogs.cfr.org /patrick/2017/01/10/an-open-world-is-in-the-balance-what-might-replace-the-liberal -order/. Thomas Wright, “The Foreign Crises Awaiting Trump,” The Atlantic, 20 January 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/01/trump-russia-putin-north -korea-putin/513749/.

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12. 13. 14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

Colin Kahl and Hal Brands, “Trump’s Grand Strategic Train Wreck,” Foreign Policy, 31 January 2017, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/31/trumps-grand-strategic-train-wreck/. David H. Petraeus, “America Must Stand Tall,” Politico, 7 February 2017, http://www .politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/america-stand-tall-214748. Stewart M. Patrick, “An Open World Is in the Balance. What Might Replace the Liberal Order?” World Politics Review, 10 January 2017, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com /articles/20868/an-open-world-is-in-the-balance-what-might-replace-the-liberal-order. See, for example, “Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Iran, 1951–1954, Office of the Historian, US Department of State, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments /frus1951-54Iran/comp1. Susan B. Glasser, “Trump Takes on The Blob,” Politico, March/April 2017, http://www .politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/trump-foreign-policy-elites-insiders-experts -international-relations-214846. Daniel W. Drezner, Gideon Rachman, and Robert Kagan, “The Rise or Fall of the American Empire,” Foreign Policy, 14 February 2012, https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/02/14/the-rise -or-fall-of-the-american-empire. Brooke Seipel, “Trump Defends Putin: ‘You Think Our Country Is So Innocent?’” The Hill, 4 February 2017, http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/317945-trump-defends-putin -you-think-our-country-is-so-innocent.

IV T R UMP AND T H E WORLD

F

17 DONALD TRUMP AND NATO Historic Alliance Meets A-historic President S TA N L E Y R . S L O A N

T

he North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a unique alliance in world history, outlasting its original purpose of deterring the Soviet Union and, in so doing, demonstrating the persistence of the shared values and interests among its members. Donald Trump is a unique president, rejecting past practice, procedures, and principles. The interaction between NATO and this president in just a few months has upended decades-old assumptions about the transatlantic alliance and the presidency.1 When examining President Trump’s approach to almost any policy issue, including alliance relations, it is useful to consider the psychological profile that seems to lie behind virtually every policy utterance, speech, or, yes, tweet on the subject. This president appears to be motivated by a variety of factors, including the instincts born of a narcissistic personality, his need to be loved, his personal family and financial motivations, and his admiration for “strong” leaders. Aspirants to higher office seldom achieve their goals without elevated levels of self-confidence, and American politicians are elected in part by being loved, or at least respected. President Trump’s behavior, however, has differed sufficiently from that of his predecessors to entice professional, as well as amateur, psychologists to enter into the public dialogue. Critical assessments have ranged from a “diagnosis” of a narcissistic personality disorder to simply not being a nice person.2 It is also clear

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that Trump’s career as a wealth-endowed investor with several children intimately involved in his business world (and now to some extent in his public service role) influences his decision-making framework. His admiration for “strong” leaders, irrespective of their policy or human rights records history, apparently is a product of his experience in the business world—uninformed by standard diplomatic procedure or “presidential” norms. One reason that analysts and commentators are looking for almost any explanation of Trump’s positions and behaviors is that he does not appear to have come to office with any clear or consistent political ideology. Historically, Trump has bounced back and forth between declared affinity for the Democratic and Republican Parties, having donated to candidates of both over time. According to historian Frank Ninkovich: Trump does not have an ideology. This is a serious shortcoming, because an ideology or an articulated worldview is essential to function effectively in the modern world. Although often associated with zealots or narrow doctrinaires, ideology when broadly considered is a much more positive thing than that. It is only through the mediation of a complex, coherently articulated worldview that combines hard information (which includes science), historical background, and personal values that one can formulate a strategy that allows us to navigate the world.3

Another experienced public policy observer, Hal Brands, agrees that one should not look for ideology to explain Trump and his policy positions, despite Trump’s reliance on the cry “America First” to rally his base. According to Brands, “Mainstream observers have long worried about Trump’s radicalism in foreign policy, but it is his incompetence that may ultimately be our undoing.”4 This chapter therefore does not search for an ideological or even policy-based explanation for Donald Trump’s approach to NATO and its members. Rather, it traces the evolution of Trump’s approach from his candidacy for the Republican nomination, to the election campaign, and finally during his first four months as president, concluding with participation in his first NATO summit meeting. Before surveying the contemporary record, a brief comparative historical note may be in order. Throughout the nearly seven decades since

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NATO’s founding,5 US participation in the alliance reflected the fact that the Congress, and particularly the Senate, considered itself a joint manager with the executive branch of the “transatlantic bargain.”6 From the very beginning, the congressional partner regularly raised questions about the persistent burden-sharing issue. This questioning began with the initial debate in the Senate on whether it should give its advice and consent to the Treaty. The administration of President Harry Truman reassured senators that the European allies would contribute to their own defense and that the United States would not end up carrying a disproportionate share of the burden. As the European states recovered from the devastation of World War II, some senators argued that the Europeans had become capable of defending themselves. Montana’s Senator Mike Mansfield (D) famously promoted resolutions from the mid-1960s into the early 1970s that sought to force administrations to begin withdrawing US forces from Europe. While US administrations—Democratic and Republican—sought to contain the financial burdens and to get the Europeans to compensate the United States for some of NATO’s costs, the established pattern persisted into the post–Cold War years. Over all these years, Congress did most of the complaining while successive presidents of both parties urged allies to do more but largely defended the alliance and its costs as necessary for US national interests. In this area, Trump has already reversed institutional roles with his burden-sharing complaints and his threats to abandon key commitments in the 1949 Treaty. Congress, in response, has largely assumed the role of NATO defender, giving strong bipartisan support (the Senate voting 98–2) to a further expansion of the alliance to include the small Balkan state of Montenegro, with some members expressing concern about the new Russian threat to Europe, and wondering why President Trump was not nearly as concerned.7 But that is another part of the story. Candidate Trump’s critique of NATO, and US allies in general, did not come totally out of the blue in the primary campaign. Before that time, there is very little on the public record documenting Trump’s views on NATO, but he did make one major dive into the burden-sharing issue when, in 1987, he was considering a run for the presidency. Trump ran an “open letter” in several major newspapers on “why America should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves.”8

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Then, prior to NATO’s May 2012 summit in Chicago, Trump complained that President Barack Obama had not invited Israel to attend.9 Israel, of course, is not a member of NATO. But many of NATO’s partners had been invited and did attend. NATO member Turkey vetoed the invitation to Israel. During the campaign, Trump’s first major statement on the alliance came in a March 2016 interview with the Washington Post.10 In response to a question, Trump called NATO “a good thing” and said he did not want the United States to “pull out,” but then went on to suggest that the United States was taking virtually all the burden of responding to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine when it was US allies whose security was more affected. The entirety of his NATO comments was set in the framework that also was driving his positions on trade: “the world is taking advantage of the United States, Uncle Sam has been both overly generous and stupid, we are not as wealthy as we once were, and we need to change all of that.” In NATO’s case, he specified, “Why is it that other countries that are in the vicinity of the Ukraine [are] not dealing with—why are we always the one that’s leading, potentially the third world war, okay, with Russia? Why are we always the ones that are doing it? . . . NATO is costing us a fortune and yes, we’re protecting Europe but we’re spending a lot of money. Number 1, I think the distribution of costs has to be changed.”11 Trump echoed those views in a CNN Town Hall television broadcast the evening that the transcript of the Washington Post interview was published.12 In some ways, Trump’s going-in position was not that different from Barack Obama’s complaint that there were too many “free riders” among American allies13 or the lecture by Robert Gates when he was leaving his position as secretary of defense that the maldistribution of burdens in NATO could undermine the US commitment to the alliance.14 It is an approach that has for years been promoted by the libertarian CATO Research institute,15 and in fact reflected the view in Trump’s 1987 open letter. It could be said, therefore, that there is a broad American consensus that US allies should “do more.” However, the Obama, Gates, and CATO perspectives reflected considerable thought, research, and experience, even with their differing motivations and bottom lines, whereas Trump’s view betrayed a superficial knowledge of NATO, its founding treaty, its history, and the realities of international and transatlantic relations. Trump mainly complained that allies are treating the United States unfairly. This

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position comes from his largely profit-oriented, transactional point of view that underlies the America First appeal to his base of support. The next development of the Trump position came just two days later, when Trump described NATO as “obsolete.”16 Trump explained, “NATO was set up a long time ago—many, many years ago when things were different. . . . We were a rich nation then. We had nothing but money. We had nothing but power.” At first blush, this statement seemed to transform Trump’s burden-sharing complaint into a generalization that “NATO is obsolete.” The following day, however, he clarified what he meant through his favorite political forum, tweeting “N.A.T.O is obsolete and must be changed to additionally focus on terrorism as well as some of the things it is currently focused on!”17 This suggests that his problem with NATO was not only that it costs the United States too much and that the allies are not paying their “fair share,” but that NATO is neglecting his top priority: fighting terrorism in general and the Islamic State in particular. A few days later, Trump expanded on his point, arguing that NATO “doesn’t really cover terrorism like it’s supposed to. It doesn’t have the right countries. I mean, many of the countries in there aren’t, you know, that you associate with terrorism.”18 Although he did not clarify, when he referred to NATO not having the “right” countries to make it effective in fighting terrorism, he presumably was thinking of Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and perhaps a few more non-NATO members. In June 2016, when NATO announced it was creating the new post of assistant secretary general for intelligence, intended to improve coordination of intelligence assessment on Russia as well as on the Middle East and terrorism,19 Trump claimed that the change had come in response to his complaints.20 In fact, however, a NATO official confirmed that the alliance had been considering creating this post “for some time” before Trump’s criticism.21 Of course, Trump’s terrorism complaint—the foundation for his “obsolete” generalization—totally ignored the fact that NATO had taken on the most demanding active combat mission in its history following the 9/11 attacks, volunteering to command the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan to which NATO allies and partners contributed thousands of troops to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The list of other NATO activities related to fighting terrorism could go on and, importantly, would include the 2008 establishment of the NATO

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Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn, Estonia. The primary motivation for the center was provided by the Russian cyber threat to NATO ally Estonia, but its mission became even more important as the Islamic State improved its ability to use cyber weapons and social media against the West. In other words, although Trump may have been right that NATO could expand its work against terrorism, the alliance was already headed in that direction. His assertions may have added urgency to the process, but they also revealed his ahistorical and superficial understanding of the alliance. His knowledge of NATO’s involvement in terrorism seemed to be based on a single article22 and confirmation bias. The terrorism-based charge of NATO’s obsolescence also ultimately provided another demonstration of Trump’s narcissistic personality. When NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg visited the White House in April 2017, President Trump bragged that he no longer considered NATO obsolete because the alliance had taken his criticism to heart. In his joint press conference with Stoltenberg, Trump said, “I complained about [what NATO can do to fight terrorism] a long time ago, and they made a change and now they do fight terrorism. I said it was obsolete. It’s no longer obsolete.”23 What a transformation. On 27 April 2016, the third leg of candidate Trump’s NATO stool appeared to be almost a logical progression following his charges of inadequate allied defense spending and lack of counterterrorism efforts. In a major foreign policy speech to the Center for the National Interest,24 in which Trump laid out his “America First” theme, Trump suggested that he would reverse nearly seventy years of US policy toward its NATO Treaty commitment. He declared: “The countries we are defending must pay for the cost of this defense, and if not, the US must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves. We have no choice.” Trump’s statement suggested that for allies not paying their “fair share” of NATO expenses, the United States should reconsider whether it would come to their defense if they were attacked. The 1949 North Atlantic Treaty—NATO’s founding document—does not specify exactly what each ally will contribute to the alliance. The Treaty’s Article 3 suggests simply “the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.” But alliance

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members have all pledged (in Article 5 of the Treaty) that they will regard an attack on any ally as an attack on themselves. This “mutual defense commitment” is the heart of the alliance. It has been invoked only once: when the NATO allies agreed to come to regard the 9/11 attacks on the United States as an attack on all of them and offered assistance to their North American ally. No US administration, Republican or Democratic, has ever called NATO’s mutual defense commitment into question. Should President Trump make this part of his administration’s foreign policy, it would almost certainly force allies to decide what they would need to do to account for a much less reliable American ally. The prospects for an autonomous European defense system had already potentially lost a key player with “Brexit,” the British decision to leave the European Union (EU). But even before Trump’s victory, speculation started building about the possibility for an autonomous European nuclear deterrent, an independent German nuclear weapons program, and European accommodation of Russian interests. After the elections, the European allies were largely left to see what the new administration would bring to the table, in terms of policies and people in key positions. US allies were somewhat relieved when President Trump did not initially repeat the threat to abandon the US collective defense commitment even though he clearly did not abandon demands for more allied defense spending. When Trump nominated General James Mattis as secretary of defense, the allies interpreted the selection as a possible sign of a return to orthodoxy. But Trump’s obvious inclination to “do a deal” with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his nomination of Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state strengthened speculation that Trump might direct Tillerson to negotiate a deal, perhaps removing the sanctions imposed on Russia for its 2014 aggression against Ukraine, including annexation of Crimea.25 On his inaugural visit to NATO headquarters, Secretary Mattis delivered a hybrid model of Trump’s NATO policy. Mattis essentially said that the allies must increase defense spending and that failure to do so could have consequences. At a Brussels press conference on 15 February, Mattis said, “America will meet its responsibilities, but if your nations do not want to see America moderate its commitment to the alliance, each of your capitals needs to show its support for our common defense.”26

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The Mattis message reaffirmed President Trump’s words on allied defense spending and cloaked his threat concerning the US commitment to collective defense in a somewhat more analytical framework—one that sounded a lot like Robert Gates’s 2011 warning. Before Mattis visited Brussels, Trump met with British Prime Minister Theresa May. The two appeared to hit it off, and May reportedly said, “Mr. Trump had given strong backing to NATO, an alliance that the president has previously called obsolete.”27 Candidate Trump had supported the United Kingdom’s departure from the EU, which had been supported narrowly in a popular referendum in the UK in June 2016, and May was now intent on carrying out that mandate. That, combined with the United Kingdom’s position as one of the few NATO countries that was already meeting NATO’s agreed 2014 goal of spending at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense by 2024, had set up the two leaders for a successful meeting. The same could not be said of the circumstances surrounding Trump’s first meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. As the leader of the EU’s political and economic powerhouse, Merkel also represented one of the leading free riders on American defense efforts, at least from Trump’s point of view. The Trump–Merkel discussion on 17 March concluded with a press conference that put the awkward relationship on full view. After avoiding the traditional handshake with Merkel in the Oval Office photo opportunity, Trump declared in the press conference: “I reiterated to Chancellor Merkel my strong support for NATO as well as the need for our NATO allies to pay their fair share for the cost of defense. Many nations owe vast sums of money from past years, and it is very unfair to the United States. These nations must pay what they owe.”28 The suggestion that Germany and other allies owed past dues to the alliance, or even to the United States, reflected once again Trump’s lack of understanding of how NATO works, or even for what the alliance stands. Allies do not contribute to the alliance by paying dues, other than providing their share of funds to support “common” programs like NATO infrastructure, including NATO headquarters in Brussels. The main “contribution” made by each ally is the money spent on their own defense efforts. There is no question that many allies have not spent as much on defense since the end of the Cold War, or even throughout the history of the alliance, as the United States would have liked. But the notion of allies

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owing “past dues” is completely inconsistent with the terms of the North Atlantic Treaty and the allies’ practice over the last seventy years.29 Despite the facts of the situation, President Trump persisted, tweeting on 18 March, after Merkel had headed back to Berlin, “Nevertheless, Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!”30 Finally, Trump’s attitude toward NATO cannot be divorced from his peculiar perspective on Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. Trump throughout 2017 studiously avoided critiquing either Russia or President Putin. That fact, combined with the investigations of links between the Trump campaign and Russia’s clandestine efforts to influence the outcome of the US elections in Trump’s favor, cast a continuing cloud over Trump’s approach to NATO. How can allies put their trust in an American president who seems conflicted about one of the most important threats to many NATO nations and to Western interests and values more generally? Against this backdrop, a NATO summit meeting was scheduled for 24–25 May 2017. as a highlight of Trump’s first international trip as president, in which he was scheduled to visit Saudi Arabia, Israel, Vatican City, Brussels (for the NATO summit), and Taormina, Italy (for the forty-third G7 Summit). The NATO allies were collectively holding their breath in expectation of more Trump bombast. But Trump’s new national security advisor, the well-respected General H. R. McMaster, who had replaced discredited Trump nominee retired General Michael Flynn, offered reassurance. Prior to Trump’s departure from Washington, McMaster said, “President Trump understands that America First does not mean America alone. . . . To the contrary, prioritizing American interests means strengthening alliances and partnerships that help us extend our influence and improve the security of the American people.”31 The most important test of Trump’s approach to NATO came on 25 May when he participated in a summit of alliance leaders in Brussels. The meeting was technically built around formal dedication of NATO’s shiny new headquarters, but the new facility played second fiddle to the Trump display of America first-ism. As the date for President Donald Trump’s arrival in Brussels neared, Trump’s White House remained upside down with controversy while, in Brussels, allies worried about how to deal with the unpredictable yet

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demanding American president. Controversies swirled around issues of interest to NATO—charges of Trump collusion with Russia to affect the presidential election and a Trump dump of classified information into the laps of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russia’s reputed spymaster ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. By the time Trump arrived in Brussels, internal consultations among the allies and with Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg had produced a strategy designed to please the American president while defending against his possible assaults on the alliance and individual allies.32 The strategy included limiting the time available for formal presentations (to avoid boring Trump) and skipping a final “declaration” to avoid potential battles over contentious issues, like burden-sharing and Russia relations. The visit to NATO headquarters began with the dedication of displays at the entrance intended to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 attacks on the United States—again, the latter being the only time that NATO’s Article 5 has been invoked. In Trump’s remarks, after asking for a moment of silence for the victims of the terrorist attack in Manchester, England, earlier in the week, and condemning terrorists, he lit into a critique of defense spending levels of NATO members. His burden-sharing remarks did not come as a surprise, as they reflected his previous positions. The big question was whether President Trump would clarify his position on the American commitment to collective defense. According to press reports, “Mr. Trump offered a vague promise to ‘never forsake the friends that stood by our side’ in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks—a pledge that White House officials later said amounted to an affirmation of mutual defense.”33 This was hardly the ringing endorsement for which the European allies had hoped. The weak affirmation of collective defense was made even more telling by the fact that, once again, Trump chose not to challenge Russia on its aggression against Ukraine and threats to NATO allies. He focused instead almost entirely on the terrorism and refugee issues. As if to add a punctuation mark to his hard line to the underperforming allies, at one point, he pushed his way to the front of the gathering of leaders, physically brushing aside Dusko Markovic, the prime minister of Montenegro, scheduled to become NATO’s newest member on 5 June 2017. The great irony (or the explanation, if one is inclined toward conspiratorial thinking) for the rude behavior, replayed all over social media, was that

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Markovic had led his country through a successful bid to join NATO in the face of strong overt and clandestine Russian opposition. Before Trump left Brussels, the alliance announced that NATO, as an organization, would formally join the anti–Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) coalition (all members were already contributing to the effort in one form or another). To demonstrate that they were listening to Trump’s burden-sharing complaints, the allies agreed to develop annual national plans for how they intend to meet the 2014 defense investment pledge, covering cash, capabilities, and contributions.34 With the summit in the rearview mirror, more turmoil lay ahead, for the alliance as well as for President Trump. The most important consequence of the summit and the G7 meeting that followed was the reaction of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to her interactions with Trump. In a campaign appearance after the meetings, Merkel said, “the days when Europe could rely on others was over to a certain extent. This is what I have experienced in the last few days.”35 Merkel’s comment, made in the context of the British exit from the EU, Trump’s demands on NATO, and his calling German automakers “very bad”36 suggested that Trump handed Vladimir Putin an important victory in his campaign to split the Western alliance. Trump’s participation in NATO’s “mini-summit” may eventually be interpreted as an important way station on his learning tour of NATO issues. But it remains to be seen whether the president wants to learn anything that would conflict with his well-established bias and, if he does, whether he will make a good student. The bad news for Atlanticists is that his management of the alliance could last a full four, or even eight, years. He could, over time, do a lot of damage to the trust and mutual confidence that make that relationship work. While many Americans share Trump’s view that the burden-sharing relationship with all allies—including those in Asia—should be “fairer” to the United States, the good news is that a substantial majority of Americans (and Europeans) believe that the transatlantic alliance remains in their country’s interest.37 If this popular support holds up, it will create pressure on the Trump administration to hew more closely to traditional lines in its alliance policies. It will also provide a foundation on which the transatlantic relationship could be rebuilt in the wake of the Trump disruption.

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NOTES 1. 2.

3.

4. 5.

6. 7.

8.

9.

10.

Travis Sanderson, a student at Middlebury College, provided research assistance for this chapter. See, for example, Richard A. Friedman, “Is It Time to Call Trump Mentally Ill?” New York Times, 17 February 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/opinion/is-it-time -to-call-trump-mentally-ill.html?_r=0; see also Seth Davin Norrholm and David M. Reiss, “Eternal Emperor in His Own Mind: The Distorted Reality of Donald Trump,” Huffington Post, 27 May 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/eternal-emperor -in-his-own-mind-the-distorted-reality_us_5929abfee4b07d848fdc0429. For Trump’s response to the suggestion that he is not a nice person, see George Beahm, Trump Talk: Donald Trump in His Own Words (Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2016), 32. Frank Ninkovich, “Trumpism, History, and the Future of US Foreign Relations,” chapter 32 in this volume. See also The International Security Studies Forum Policy Series, 18 April 2017, https://issforum.org/roundtables/policy/1-5AD-Ninkovich. Hal Brands, “The Incompetence Doctrine,” War on the Rocks, 2 May 2017, https:// warontherocks.com/2017/05/the-incompetence-doctrine/. NATO’s founding document, The North Atlantic Treaty, was signed by the United States, Canada, and 10 West European countries in Washington, DC, on 4 April 1949. With Montenegro on the verge of joining the alliance in 2017, NATO includes a total of 29 countries. Stanley R. Sloan, Defense of the West: NATO, the European Union and the Transatlantic Bargain (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2016), p. 6–7. See, for example, Dan Nowicki, “Sen. John McCain: Michael Flynn’s Resignation Highlights Dysfunction, Questions about Russia,” Arizona Republic, 14 February 2017, http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/azdc/2017/02/14/sen-john-mccain -michael-flynn-resignation-highlights-dysfunction-trump/97888784/. Ilan Ben-Meir, “That Time Trump Spent Nearly $100,000 On an Ad Criticizing US Foreign Policy In 1987,” BuzzFeed News, 10 July 2015, https://www.buzzfeed.com/ilanbenmeir /that-time-trump-spent-nearly-100000-on-an-ad-criticizing-us?utm_term=.lkZDMGNZE8#.enr7j8l9V6. Israel, of course, is not a member of NATO but many of NATO’s “Mediterranean Dialogue” and other partners had been invited and did attend. The invitation to Israel was vetoed by NATO member Turkey, with whom relations had become even more troubled following Israel’s attack on a Turkish ship carrying cargo intended for Palestinians, killing 9 Turkish seamen. Celil Sagir, “Turkey Blocking Israel’s Participation in NATO Summit,” NATOSource, 23 April 2012, http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource /turkey-blocking-israel-s-participation-in-nato-summit. Post Opinions Staff, “A Transcript of Donald Trump’s Meeting with the Washington Post Editorial Board,” Washington Post, 21 March 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com /blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/03/21/a-transcript-of-donald-trumps-meeting-with-the -washington-post-editorial-board/.

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11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

17. 18.

19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

27.

28.

Post Opinions Staff, “A Transcript of Donald Trump’s Meeting.” “The Final Five: Interview with Donald Trump; Interview with Hillary Clinton. Aired 9-10p ET,” CNN, 21 March 2016, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1603/21/se.02.html. Mark Landler, “Obama Criticizes the ‘Free Riders’ Among America’s Allies,” New York Times, 10 March 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/10/world/middleeast/obama -criticizes-the-free-riders-among-americas-allies.html. Thom Shanker, “Defense Secretary Warns NATO of ‘Dim Future’ ,” New York Times, 10 June 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/11/world/europe/11gates.html. See, for example, “NATO/Transatlantic Issues,” CATO Institute, https://www.cato.org /research/natotransatlantic-issues. “Complete Donald Trump Interview: NATO, Nukes, Muslim World, and Clinton,” Bloomberg Politics, 23 March 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/videos/2016 -03-23/complete-trump-interview-nato-nukes-muslims-and-hillary. Donald J. Trump, twitter.com, 24 March 2016. Donald J. Trump, “Transcript: Donald Trump’s remarks in Milwaukee, Wisconsin— Part 7,” WTF, 5 April 2016, http://www.whatthefolly.com/2016/04/05/transcript-donald -trumps-remarks-in-milwaukee-wisconsin-part-7/. Julian E. Barnes, “NATO Moving to Create New Intelligence Chief Post Aim is to help improve US, European information sharing on terrorism and other threats,” Wall Street Journal, 3 June 2016, https://www.wsj.com/articles/nato-considers-new-intelligence -chief-post-1464968453. Donald J. Trump, twitter.com, 6 June 2016. Louis Nelson, “NATO: Trump Had Nothing to Do with Intel Post,” Politico, 8 June 2016, http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/donald-trump-nato-intelligence-post-224081. Barnes, Wall Street Journal. Kevin Liptak and Dan Merica, “Trump Says NATO No Longer ‘Obsolete’ ,” CNN, 12 April 2017, “http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/12/politics/donald-trump-jens-stoltenberg-nato/. Donald J. Trump, “Trump on Foreign Policy,” National Interest, 27 April 2016, http:// nationalinterest.org/feature/trump-foreign-policy-15960. David Halperin, “Trump-Putin Bromance: Election Hacking, Oil Drilling,” Huffington Post, 21 February 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-putin-exxon-what -is-russiagate-really-about_us_58ab1473e4b0fa149f9ac902. Dan Lamothe and Michael Birnbaum, “Defense Secretary Mattis Issues New Ultimatum to NATO Allies on Defense Spending,” Washington Post, 15 February 2017, https://www .washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/02/15/mattis-trumps-defense-secretary -issues-ultimatum-to-nato-allies-on-defense-spending/. Barney Henderson and Nick Allen, “Donald Trump Tells Theresa May: ‘Brexit Is Going to Be a Wonderful Thing for Your Country’ as Two Leaders Hold Hands at White House,” The Telegraph, 28 January 2017, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/27/theresa -may-meets-donald-trump-white-house-live/. Jeff Mason and Andreas Rinke, “In First Trump-Merkel Meeting, Awkward Body Language and a Quip,” Reuters, 16 March 2017, http://www.reuters.com/article/us -usa-trump-germany-idUSKBN16O0FM.

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29.

30. 31.

32.

33.

34. 35.

36.

37.

For a good survey of how NATO “contributions” are made and measured, see Peter Baker, “Trump Says NATO Allies Don’t Pay Their Share. Is That True?” New York Times, 26 May 20, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/world/europe/nato-trump-spending .html. Donald J. Trump, twitter.com, 18 March 2017. Noah Bierman, “Trump Campaigned on ‘America First.’ Now He’s Getting Ready for His First Trip Overseas,” Los Angeles Times, 15 May 2017, http://www.latimes.com/politics /la-na-pol-trump-globalist-20170515-story.html. Robbie Gramer, “NATO Frantically Tries to Trump-Proof President’s First Visit,” Foreign Policy, 15 May 2017, https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/15/nato-frantically-tries -to-trump-proof-presidents-first-visit-alliance-europe-brussels/. Michael D. Shear, Mark Landler, and James Kanter, “In NATO Speech, Trump Is Vague About Mutual Defense Pledge,” New York Times, 25 May 2017, https://www.nytimes .com/2017/05/25/world/europe/donald-trump-eu-nato.html. NATO, “NATO Leaders Agree to Do More to Fight Terrorism and Ensure Fairer Burden Sharing,” 25 May 2017, http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_144154.htm. Henry Farrell, “Thanks to Trump, Germany Says It Can’t Rely on the United States. What Does That Mean?” Washington Post, 28 May 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com /news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/05/28/thanks-to-trump-germany-says-it-cant-rely-on -america-what-does-that-mean/. Dalia Fahmy, “Trump: German Carmakers VW, BMW, Mercedes ‘Very Bad’ ,” Detroit News, 26 May 2017, http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/foreign/2017/05 /26/german-carmakers/102206934/. Bruce Stokes, “NATO’s Image Improves on Both Sides of Atlantic, European Faith in American Military Support Largely Unchanged,” Pew Research Center, 23 May 2017, http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/05/23/natos-image-improves-on-both-sides-of-atlantic/.

18 THE ART OF THE BLUFF The US-Japan Alliance Under the Trump Administration JENNIFER LIND

T

ell us this cannot happen, the Japanese said to their American friends, listening to Republican Party nominee Donald J. Trump during the 2016 campaign. Trump attacked Japan as an economic predator, disdained American allies as free riders, and broadly rejected the US grand strategy that had benefited Japan tremendously. American friends assured the Japanese that Trump was unelectable, and that under a Hillary Clinton presidency, Japan would resume its place as a valued American ally. Trump’s election was thus a profound shock to Japan—the latest shokku from the United States to jolt Tokyo.1 Observers have speculated about the impact of Trump’s election on the US-Japan relationship. Just how far would Trump’s foreign policy revolution go, and how would Tokyo respond if pressured by the new president to contribute more to the US-Japan alliance? Many observers (particularly many Japanese) protested that Japan was already making significant contributions and that Japan’s lackluster economy, demographic problems, and pacifist tradition meant that Tokyo could only disappoint a US president demanding greater burden-sharing.2 Japan could certainly contribute more to the US-Japan alliance—but Trump has not asked it to do so. In the span of just a couple of months, the Trump shokku passed. Much to the relief of not only Tokyo but also the US foreign policy establishment, Trump has significantly backtracked from the revolution he promised at those red-hatted rallies. The president

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has not demanded (and Tokyo has not volunteered) dramatic increases in Japan’s defense contributions. Japan’s national security policy will thus continue the gradual, steady evolution that has characterized it over the past several decades.

T RUMP ’ S FOREIGN POL ICY R EVOLU T I ON

During his campaign, Trump challenged the prevailing American grand strategy, known as “deep engagement” or “global leadership.” According to this strategy, Washington sought to spread political liberalism, market capitalism, and American influence around the world.3 Deep engagement relied on multilateral institutions—such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and so forth—to coordinate diplomacy, provide mechanisms for dispute resolution, and promote liberal economic development.4 The strategy also rested on American alliances in key regions. American security guarantees deterred aggression, dissuaded allies from conventional military buildups,5 slowed the spread of nuclear weapons to allies,6 and thus dampened threat perception and arms racing.7 Proponents of deep engagement also argued that US alliances would create economic benefits for the United States through linkage opportunities.8 Trump campaigned on a platform that rejected this longstanding grand strategy. Walter Russell Mead calls his election a “Jacksonian revolt” in American foreign policy, arguing, “For the first time in 70 years, the American people have elected a president who disparages the policies, ideas, and institutions at the heart of US foreign policy.”9 Trump’s discussions of foreign policy have been cryptic and relatively rare, but certain themes come across loud and clear.10 Broadly, he sees the post–World War II, US-led international order as having been bad for US interests, and vows to put “America First.” Trump is skeptical of the value of multilateral institutions and of the agreements they produced. He tweeted that the United Nations was “just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad!”11 The North American Free Trade Agreement, the WTO, and other trade deals were a “disaster” for America.12 In Trump’s view, misguided liberal

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internationalist leaders had put system maintenance ahead of America maintenance. He lamented in a speech to a Joint Session of Congress, “For too long, we’ve watched our middle class shrink as we’ve exported our jobs and wealth to foreign countries. We’ve financed and built one global project after another, but ignored the fates of our children in the inner cities of Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit.”13 Because of “bad deals,” said Trump, “the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind.”14 Trump savaged the “job-killing” Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) throughout his campaign, and, once in office, withdrew the United States from the agreement.15 In Trump’s view, while US leaders were foolishly playing a liberal cosmopolitan game, predatory trade partners were playing a mercantilist game—and America paid the price. “You look at what Japan has done over the years,” Trump said. “They . . . play the money market, they play the devaluation market and we sit there like a bunch of dummies.”16 Trump decried China’s “massive theft of intellectual property, putting unfair taxes on our companies . . . and the at-will and massive devaluation of their currency and product dumping.”17 Richard Lighthizer, the US trade representative, argued that the WTO was not “set up to deal effectively” with countries pursuing an industrial policy and that, with this in mind, the United States needed to negotiate new deals.18 Both Trump and his advisor Peter Navarro at times mentioned imposing a 20 percent “wall” tariff on Mexican imports, and upwards of 40 percent tariffs on China and others. Navarro, who heads Trump’s recently created National Trade Council, suggested that “Trump will impose countervailing tariffs not just on China, but on any American trade partner that cheats on its trade deals using practices such as currency manipulation and illegal export subsidies.”19 Trump argues that while he believes in free trade, “it also has to be fair trade. It’s been a long time since we had fair trade.”20 Trump also views US alliances differently than the liberal internationalists who previously helmed US national security policy. Rather than valuing alliances as part of a liberal community, Trump sees them as a means to an end: as vehicles for pooling resources against shared adversaries. Under this logic, if there is no shared adversary, if there is no pooling (or, God forbid, both), an alliance makes no sense.21 The United States “subsidized the armies of other countries,” Trump said in his inaugural

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address, “we’ve defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own; and spent trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.” US alliances made “other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon.”22 The allies should be doing more to pull their weight. “They’re very unfair to us,” he said. “We strongly support NATO, we only ask that all NATO members make their full and proper financial contribution to the NATO alliance, which many of them have not been doing.”23 Trump also protested the lopsided nature of the US-Japan alliance. “You know we have a treaty with Japan where if Japan is attacked, we have to use the full force and might of the United States,” Trump said during the campaign. “If we’re attacked, Japan doesn’t have to do anything. They can sit home and watch Sony television, OK?”24 Trump also departs from liberal internationalists’ strong commitment to preventing nuclear spread. In Trump’s view, the spread of nuclear weapons was regrettable (“I hate proliferation”) but probably inevitable.25 He argues that because America is paying too much for its alliances, those alliances are unsustainable. “We’re protecting all these nations all over the world,” said Trump. “We can’t afford to do it anymore  .  .  . at some point, we cannot be the policeman of the world.”26 Because the allies are not contributing enough, the alliances are unsustainable; without the alliances, the allies will ultimately choose to acquire nuclear weapons. (“They have to pay us or we have to let them protect themselves.”)27 Regarding Japan, Trump said: “If the United States keeps on its path, its current path of weakness, they’re going to want to have [nuclear weapons] . . . because I don’t think they feel very secure in what’s going on with our country.”28

JAPAN A N D THE TRUMP SHOK KU

Japan has benefited tremendously from the institutions and alliances that candidate and President Trump vowed to dismantle. Since the 1960s, trade deals gave Japan access to the US and other markets, enabling Japan’s export-led growth strategy and its economic rise.29 Multilateral institutions facilitated the spread of Japan’s bureaucrats, businesspeople,

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products, and culture around the globe, enabling Japan to become a leader in trade and global governance. Alliance with the United States also conferred many benefits on Tokyo.30 After the war, a commitment to building up Japan as a strong ally led Washington to abandon punishing reparations; bestow economic and military aid; and, over the years, temper retaliation to Japan’s often mercantilist trade policies.31 Of course, Tokyo does contribute financially to the expense of stationing US forces in Japan,32 and the Japanese bear other burdens as well. People living near bases endure many problems (crime, noise, environmental damage, military accidents)—particularly in Okinawa, where a tiny island bears a massive base footprint.33 But the alliance enabled Japan to spend less than 1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense. During the Cold War, this was far below the amount spent by NATO countries, and today it is less than half the global average of 2.4 percent of GDP.34 In sum, Japan benefited in many ways from the postwar order that Trump was attacking; his election victory was thus a profound shock. The shock hit particularly hard because of Japan’s worsening threat environment. Steady improvement in nuclear and missile programs has increased the threat of North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction, and Japan continues to worry about political stability in Pyongyang.35 Tokyo has also become increasingly concerned about China’s rising defense budgets and military modernization. In recent years, Beijing’s more assertive policies (e.g., constructing and militarizing islands, surveilling and harassing the ships of rival claimants in island disputes, declaring an Air Defense Identification Zone) suggest that China seeks to become the region’s dominant military power.36 Particularly worrying to Tokyo, Beijing has also grown more assertive in its claim to disputed islands (the Senkaku/Diaoyu), which are currently controlled by Japan. In the economic and financial realms, China has become the region’s most pivotal economy. At a time when Japan sees China assuming a more regionally dominant political, economic, and military role, the Japanese heard Trump demanding increases in military burden-sharing by America’s allies and declaring that he was “prepared to walk” unless he got them. Tokyo, as a major stakeholder in the liberal order, was also dismayed by Trump’s broad rejection of multilateral institutions and processes. In particular, Trump’s withdrawal from the TPP—a deal on which Japanese

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Prime Minister Shinzō Abe had expended a great deal of political capital at home—was a major blow. Abe saw TPP as a vehicle to overcome special interests and implement structural reforms aimed at improving Japanese competitiveness.37 Brookings scholar Mireya Solis argues that the TPP was “the best shot to relaunch [Japan’s] project of economic revitalization.”38 Tokyo also valued TPP as a counterweight to China’s emerging economic and financial dominance in East Asia. Through development lending and trade initiatives, such as the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank and the massive Belt and Road Initiative, China is increasing its regional influence. Japanese foreign policy expert Yoichi Funabashi laments the regional vacuum created by the death of TPP: “That vacuum will be filled immediately and China does not hide its enthusiasm for filling it.”39 And as Trump argued for levying tariffs on economic competitors, Japan feared “a return to the trade wars of the 1980s and early ’90s, where many Americans saw Japan as an untrustworthy economic adversary.”40 In the realms of both trade and the military alliance, Trump’s election seemed to portend a crisis in the US-Japan relationship.

THE ART OF THE BLUFF

Some observers might protest that Japan could not possibly make the kinds of dramatic changes in national security policy that Trump seemed poised to demand. Disapproving polls and numerous protests in 2015, when Abe pushed through new security legislation on “collective self-defense,” showed a lack of popular enthusiasm for greater military assertiveness. “When it comes to changing military policy,” notes Japan scholar Sheila A. Smith, “public opinion polling reveals deep ambivalence.”41 Japanese leaders are preoccupied with economic problems, including a debt burden that is the highest in the world (254 percent of GDP),42 unfavorable demographics, and growing demands for social welfare from Japan’s aging population.43 Thus, like any good negotiator (I hear someone wrote a book on that), Tokyo may sigh that Japan is doing all that it possibly can. It’s not. Increasing its military spending and roles would indeed require Japanese leaders to make tough choices, just like politicians elsewhere who are forced to trade off guns and butter. But at 1 percent of GDP, Japan

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devotes half of the level of effort to defense compared to other high-income countries (whose average spending is 2.4 percent). Although Japan has an unfriendly rising great power in its backyard, it spends far less than other countries facing a security threat (e.g., Israel, South Korea, and Ukraine spend 5.4 percent, 2.3 percent, and 4 percent, respectively).44 Some observers might argue that Tokyo cannot increase its defense spending because leaders are constrained by “antimilitarist” norms and institutions. These include the 1 percent of GDP ceiling in defense spending, Article 9 of the Constitution, the three non-nuclear principles, and so forth. Such institutions are indeed significant in Japan’s defense policymaking process and are valued by the Japanese public.45 Nevertheless, over the past several decades, Japan’s conservative leaders have discarded or massaged numerous constraints, such as reversing previous bans on the overseas dispatch of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (SDF), the military use of space, and arms exports.46 During the Cold War, Tokyo increased its burden-sharing when it confronted both a more dangerous security environment and less effort by the United States.47 In the 1970s, for example, the Soviets were building up their maritime capabilities in East Asia, and President Richard Nixon (via the Guam Doctrine) informed US allies that they would have to do more. At that time, Japan accepted new military roles and made significant improvements that turned Japan’s SDF into a world-class maritime force. Today, given an increasingly threatening China and less American support (via a Trump doctrine), this pattern suggests Tokyo could increase its military spending and roles. And because of important changes in Japanese domestic politics (such as electoral reforms and the collapse of the Left), Japanese conservatives today are less constrained than were their Cold War counterparts.48 Indeed, Tokyo has already moved in this direction with Abe’s reinterpretation of “collective self-defense” and with his recent statement that future Japanese military budgets will need to exceed 1 percent of GDP.49 In sum, lamentations that Japan cannot increase its military spending should be understood to be a bluff; Japan does “less when it can, and more when it must.”50 Fortunately for Tokyo, Trump was bluffing, too. At least in East Asia, the president has not implemented the foreign policy that he campaigned on.51 Early on, Japan was stricken by Trump’s Rising Sun rhetoric, scorched-earth inaugural address, and various phone calls (in which the

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president made a startling overture toward Taiwan and inexplicably yelled at the Australian Prime Minister). During his confirmation hearings, Rex Tillerson, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, also issued baneful warnings about confronting China in the South China Sea.52 But gradually the Japanese began to feel cautious hope. Cabinet ministers visiting Japan—particularly Secretary of Defense James Mattis in early February 2017—reassured Japanese officials with statements like, “The US-Japan alliance is critical to ensuring that this region remains safe and secure—not just now, but for years to come.” The alliance that Trump had lambasted during the campaign as rife with Japanese free riding was, according to Mattis, a “model of cost-sharing.”53 Fear not: the US was “not planning any “dramatic military moves” in the South China Sea.”54 Tokyo was delighted. “Mattis’s visit was a resounding success,” commented journalist Martin Fackler. “He hit the right notes—US commitment to Japan, but also to stability in the region.”55 Soon thereafter, Abe flew to the United States for a summit with Trump, held in Washington, DC, and Florida. Over the weekend, which was decorated by sunshine and photos of the two grinning leaders, Trump sounded like any other recent American president with remarks like, “The US-Japan alliance is the cornerstone of peace and stability in the Pacific region.”56 According to the joint statement that Trump issued with Abe, the American commitment to Japan was “unwavering,” the alliance “unshakeable.”57 Tokyo swooned. “Abe and his closest aides left the US with a sense of relief,” one Japanese newspaper commented.58 Sheila Smith observes of the joint statement, “In many ways, it read like the to-do list for the USJapan alliance: Deterring aggression. Check. Senkaku Islands protection. Check. China. Check. But with Trump’s addition of alliance reciprocity. Check.”59 Regarding the Senkaku islands, Japan “got what it wanted”: a statement, in writing for the first time, saying that the islands in the East China Sea controlled by Japan and claimed by China were protected under Article 5 of the US-Japan security treaty.60 A few months since his election, Trump significantly backpedaled from his foreign policy platform.61 Observers who lambast Trump as capricious might warn that the president may change his mind, that his economic nationalism and criticism of Japan goes way back, and that he may yet set Tokyo—its alliance and trade policies—in his sights. In other words, perhaps the real Trump shokku is yet to hit.

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Such worries are probably unfounded. With the threat from North Korea growing because of its development of its intercontinental nuclear strike capabilities, Japan is only growing more important as an ally to the United States (and Trump and Abe have only grown closer since that sunny Florida weekend).62 Furthermore, Trump campaigned on a platform that demanded a sweeping transformation of American national security policy. In order to implement such an overhaul, four requirements would all need to be met. First, he would need the desire to make this significant change—he would need to believe that change was the right policy for the United States. Second, Trump would need to make the transformation of US foreign policy a top priority of his administration (as opposed to tax reform or some other major endeavor). Third, he would have to use a great deal of political capital toward this effort. He would need to buttonhole, cajole, and make deals. This is particularly the case given the widespread bipartisan opposition to his foreign policy vision. Trump, after all, faces “GOP congressional committee chairmen at the top of defense, intelligence, and diplomatic panels in both the House and Senate, many of whom are wary, at best, of his approach.”63 Finally, such a fundamental overhaul would require maintaining a keen focus—attention to details in far-flung geographic areas and across a multitude of issues. Of these four requirements, Trump ticks only the first. As described earlier, the president clearly believes—and his beliefs are longstanding— that his policy of economic and foreign policy nationalism best serves America. But he falls short on the three other dimensions. Trump appears highly interested in certain issues (e.g., healthcare, taxes, immigration, a border wall) but reforming America’s alliances or remaking the international system do not seem to be among them. He will thus likely use his political capital to press for changes in his areas of particular interest, by default leaving foreign policy in the hands of the bipartisan foreign policy “blob.”64 Distracted by other issues and inquiries and lacking staff in key positions, Trump is also not showing the kind of keen attention to foreign policy reform that such a massive transformation would demand. This is how a revolution dies: less Jacksonian revolt than Trumpian reversal. Thus, after the prospect of a shock in US-Japan relations, Tokyo and Washington appear to be settling back into business as usual. The

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Japanese have managed the transition—and the president—shrewdly. Abe hurried to Trump Tower in November (bearing the gift of a $3,800 gold-plated golf club) to congratulate the president-elect. At the February summit, Abe came with plans that addressed Trump’s economic agenda. The “US-Japan Growth and Employment Initiative” proposed Japanese investment in US infrastructure projects, such as in high-speed rail, which could create seven hundred thousand American jobs.65 Perhaps the golf club was really a hit; perhaps Trump really appreciated Abe’s jobs plan; perhaps the president changed his mind or got distracted. In any event, following his election, the Trump administration’s rhetoric about the US-Japan alliance sounded like it might have come out of a Clinton, Bush, or Obama White House. Under Trump, the two countries have thus settled into their longstanding pattern since World War II, in which Washington seeks, and Tokyo accepts, minimal and gradual increases in Japan’s capabilities and roles.

NOTES 1.

2.

3.

4.

In the 1969 Guam Doctrine, President Richard Nixon declared that America’s Asian allies needed to play a larger role in regional security. He announced his historic visit to Beijing in 1971, and soon thereafter—blaming Japanese financial policy for American trade deficits—the United States abandoned the yen-dollar rate that had prevailed since 1945. On the Nixon and Plaza shocks, see Michael Schaller, Altered States: The United States and Japan since the Occupation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), chap. 12; William W. Grimes, Unmaking the Japanese Miracle: Macroeconomic Politics 1985–2000 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), chap. 4. On the Japanese contribution see Reiji Yoshida, “Trump Remarks Prompt Debate Over Cost of Japan-US Defense Ties,” Japan Times, 16 May 2016, https://www.japantimes .co.jp/news/2016/05/16/reference/trump-remarks-prompt-debate-cost-japan-u-s -defense-ties/. On this strategy see Stephen Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, and William C. Wohlforth, “Don’t Come Home, America: The Case Against Retrenchment,” International Security 37, no. 3 (Winter 2012/13): 7–51; Michele Flournoy and Janine Davidson, “Obama’s New Global Posture: The Logic of US Foreign Deployments,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2012, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2012-06-14/obamas-new-global -posture; Robert J. Art, A Grand Strategy for America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003). On the post–World War II liberal order see G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011). For discussion see the 14 March 2017, ISSF Policy Roundtable

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5.

6.

7.

8. 9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

14.

at https://issforum.org/roundtables/policy/1-6-liberal-internationalism, as well as the 27 February 2011 Policy Roundtable, “Is Liberal Internationalism in Decline?” on the same topic at https://issforum.org/ISSF/PDF/ISSF-Roundtable-2-4.pdf. On deterrence and assurance in US alliances, see Jennifer Lind, “Geography and the Security Dilemma in East Asia,” in The Oxford University Handbook of the International Relations of East Asia, ed. Rosemary Foot, Saadia Pekkanen, and John Ravenhill (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Art, A Grand Strategy for America, 139–45. Alexandre Debs and Nuno Monteiro, Nuclear Politics: The Strategic Logic of Proliferation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); Alexander Lanoszka, “Protection States Trust? Major Power Patronage, Nuclear Behavior, and Alliance Dynamics,” PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 2014. On spirals see Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976). On US alliances promoting regional stability generally see Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan; Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth, “Don’t Come Home, America;” Art, A Grand Strategy for America. Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth, “Don’t Come Home, America,” 42–44. Walter Russell Mead, “The Jacksonian Revolt in US Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2017), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2017-01-20 /jacksonian-revolt. On Trump’s foreign policy see Randall L. Schweller, chapter 3 of this volume, and “A Third-Image Explanation for Why Trump Now: A Response to Robert Jervis’s ‘President Trump and IR Theory’ ,” H-Diplo/ISSF Policy Series, 8 February 2017, https://issforum.org /roundtables/policy/1-5m-third-image; Colin Kahl and Hal Brands, “Trump’s Grand Strategic Train Wreck,” Foreign Policy, 31 January 2017, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/31 /trumps-grand-strategic-train-wreck/; Joshua Itzkowitz Shifrinson, “Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Views Are Actually Pretty Mainstream,” Monkey Cage, Washington Post, 4 February 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/02/04 /the-secret-behind-donald-trumps-antiquated-foreign-policy-views-theyre-pretty -mainstream/; Josh Rogin, “The Trump Doctrine Revealed,” Bloomberg, 31 January 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-01-31/the-trump-doctrine-revealed; Thomas Wright, “Trump’s 19th Century Foreign Policy,” Politico, 20 January 2016, https:// www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-foreign-policy-213546. See Colum Lynch, “White House Seeks to Cut Billions in Funding for United Nations,” Foreign Policy, 13 March 2017, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/13/white-house-seeks -to-cut-billions-in-funding-for-united-nations/. Geoff Dyer, “Donald Trump Threatens to Pull US Out of WTO,” Financial Times, 24 July 2016, https://www.ft.com/content/d97b97ba-51d8-11e6-9664-e0bdc13c3bef. “Remarks by President Trump in Joint Address to Congress,” The White House, 28 February 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/28/remarks-president -trump-joint-address-congress. “Inauguration Address: Trump’s Full Speech,” CNN, 21 January 2017, http://www.cnn .com/2017/01/20/politics/trump-inaugural-address/.

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15.

16.

17.

18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23.

24.

25.

President Trump quoted in Eunice Yoon, “Fears That the Cost of Trump Killing the TPP Could Include US Jobs,” CNBC, 18 November 2016, https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/18 /fears-that-the-cost-of-trump-killing-the-tpp-could-include-us-jobs.html. Takeshi Kawanami and Kentaro Iwamoto, “Trump Fires Next Salvo, Naming China, Japan ‘Currency Manipulators’ ,” Nikkei Asian Review, 1 February 2017, https://asia .nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Trump-effect/Trump-fires-next-salvo-naming-China -Japan-currency-manipulators. Noah Friedman, “Trump Accuses China of ‘Massive Theft of Intellectual Property’ and Unfairly Taxing US Companies,” Business Insider, 9 December 2016, http://www .businessinsider.com/donald-trump-accuses-china-massive-theft-intellectual-property -unfair-taxing-tawian-2016-12. “Lighthizer Vows to Crack Down on Unfair China Practices,” Financial Times, 14 March 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/5300b8f2-08f6-11e7-97d1-5e720a26771b. Peter Navarro, “Trump’s 45 Percent Tariff on Chinese Goods Is Perfectly Calculated,” Los Angeles Times, 21 July 2016, http://beta.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-navarro -trump-trade-china-tariffs-20160721-snap-story.html. “Remarks by President Trump in Joint Address to Congress,” The White House, 28 February 2017. Scholars advocating a strategy of “restraint” or “offshore balancing” make similar arguments. Barry R. Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for US National Security Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014); Barry R. Posen, “Pull Back: the Case for a Less Activist Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2013, https://www.foreignaffairs. com/articles/united-states/2013-01-01/pull-back; Christopher Preble, The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009); Christopher Layne, “The China Challenge to US Hegemony,” Current History 107, no. 705 (January 2008): 13; Eugene Gholz, Daryl G. Press, and Harvey Sapolsky, “Come Home, America: The Case for Restraint in the Face of Temptation,” International Security 21, no. 4 (Spring 1997): 5–48. Inauguration speech of President Trump. Jacob Pramuk, “Trump Aims to Reassure Allies About US Support, But Asks Them to Pay Up More,” CNBC, 6 February 2017, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/06/trump-tries -to-reassure-allies-about-us-support-but-asks-them-to-pay-up-more.html. Jesse Johnson, “Trump Rips US Defense of Japan as One-sided, Too Expensive,” Japan Times, 6 August 2016, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/08/06/national/politics -diplomacy/trump-rips-u-s-defense-japan-one-sided-expensive/. This language oddly recalls the 1971 Nixon shock, when a similarly dismissive John Connally (Nixon’s treasury secretary) said that if Japan did not abide by fair trade, “they could just sit in their Toyotas in Yokohama and watch their color TVs and leave us alone.” Quoted in Bruce Cumings, “Japan’s Position in the World System,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 55. For an argument that the spread of nuclear weapons has stabilizing effects on international politics, see Kenneth N. Waltz, “More May Be Better,” in The Spread of Nuclear Weapons, ed. Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz (New York: Norton, 2003), chap. 1.

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26.

27.

28. 29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

“Transcript: Donald Trump Expounds on His Foreign Policy Views,” New York Times, 26 March 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/us/politics/donald-trump-transcript .html. Quoted in Zack Beauchamp, “Donald Trump: Make America Great Again by Letting More Countries have Nukes,” Vox, 30 March 2016, https://www.vox.com/2016/3/30/11332074 /donald-trump-nuclear-weapons-japan-south-korea-saudi-arabia; also see Jesse Johnson, “Amid North Korea Threat, Tillerson Hints that ‘Circumstances Could Evolve’ for a Japanese Nuclear Arsenal,” Japan Times, 19 March 2017, https://www.japantimes .co.jp/news/2017/03/19/national/amid-north-korea-threat-tillerson-hints-circumstances -evolve-japanese-nuclear-arsenal/. “Transcript: “Donald Trump Expounds on His Foreign Policy Views.” On the economic benefits to Japan from the US-Japan alliance, see Michael Beckley, Yusaku Horiuchi, and Jennifer M. Miller, “America’s Role in the Making of Japan’s Economic Miracle,” Journal of East Asian Studies 18, no. 1 (January 2018): 121. On Japan’s “Yoshida Doctrine” see Christopher W. Hughes, Japan’s Remilitarisation (London: Routledge, 2009); Andrew Oros, Normalizing Japan Politics, Identity, and the Evolution of Security Practice (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008); Richard J. Samuels, Securing Japan: Tokyo’s Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asian Security (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007). On illiberal Japanese trade practices see Michael Mastanduno, “System Maker and Privilege Taker: US Power and the International Political Economy,” World Politics 61, no. 1 (2009): 121–54; Eric Heginbotham and Richard J. Samuels, “Mercantile Realism and Japanese Foreign Policy,” International Security 22, no. 4 (Spring, 1998): 171–203; Yoshimitsu Imuta, “The Roles of Trade and Economic Cooperation in the Evolution into a Major Economic Power,” in Japanese Trade and Industry Policy, ed. Mikio Sumiya (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), chap. 28. Japan contributes about $1.5 billion in host-nation support per year. See Nobuhiro Kubo, Kiyoshi Takenaka, “Japan Agrees to Raise Host-Nation Spending for US Military,” Reuters, 16 December 2015, https://www.reuters.com/article/usjapan-usa-defence/japan-agrees-to-raise-host-nation-spending-for-u-s-military -idUSKBN0TZ13R20151216. Yuko Kawato, Protests Against US Military Base Policy in Asia: Persuasion and Its Limits (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017); Andrew Yeo, Activists, Alliances, and Anti-US Base Protests (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), chap. 4. Data from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2015. Some scholars argue that the one-percent figure does not capture important defense expenditures. See Robert Dekle, “The Relationship Between Defense Spending and Economic Performance in Japan,” in Sharing World Leadership? A New Era for America and Japan, ed. J. Makin and D. Hellmann (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1989); Richard J. Samuels, “ ‘New Fighting Power!’ Japan’s Growing Maritime Capabilities and East Asian Security,” International Security 32, no. 3 (Winter 2007/2008): 84–112.

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35.

36.

37.

38. 39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

44. 45.

Jeffrey Lewis, “North Korea’s Nuke Program Is Way More Sophisticated Than You Think,” Foreign Policy, 9 September 2016, http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/09/09/north -koreas-nuclear-program-is-way-more-sophisticated-and-dangerous-than-you-think/. On the instability unleashed by a North Korean collapse, see Bruce Bennett and Jennifer Lind, “The Collapse of North Korea,” International Security 36, no. 2 (Fall 2011): 84–119. On such policies see Jennifer Lind, “Asia’s Other Revisionist Power,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2017, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2017-02-13/asias-other -revisionist-power. “The Battle for Japan,” Economist, 27 June 2014, https://www.economist.com/news/asia /21605929-shinzo-abes-fight-reshape-japans-economy-and-society-entering-new -phase-battle-japan; Konrad Yakabuski, “Why Japan Is Hell-Bent on Saving the TransPacific Partnership,” The Globe and Mail, 23 December 2016, https://www.theglobeandmail .com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/why-japan-is-hell-bent-on-saving-the-tpp /article33413016/. Mireya Solis, “Approval of the TPP Is Vital for Continued US Power in Asia,” Room for Debate, New York Times, 6 October 2015. On the Belt and Road initiative, see Richard Ghiasy and Jiayi Zhou, “The Silk Road Economic Belt,” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2017; William T. Wilson, “China’s Huge ‘One Belt, One Road’ Initiative Is Sweeping Central Asia,” The National Interest, 27 July 2016, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/chinas-huge-one-belt-one-road -initiative-sweeping-central-17150. Funabashi quoted in Yakabuski, “Why Japan is HellBent on Saving the Trans-Pacific Partnership.” Quote from Jonathan Soble, “After Trump Rejects Pacific Trade Deal, Japan Fears Repeat of 1980s,” New York Times, 25 January 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/business /trump-tpp-japan-trade.html. Sheila A. Smith, “Defining Defense: Japan’s Military Identity Crisis,” World Politics Review, 12 May 2015, https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/15747/defining -defense-japan-s-military-identity-crisis. On Japan’s security legislation see Jennifer Lind, “Japan’s Security Evolution,” Policy Analysis no. 788, CATO Institute, 25 February 2016; Adam P. Liff, “Abe the Evolutionary,” Washington Quarterly 38, no. 2 (2015): 79–99. Reuters “China, US, Japan Top Borrowers,” South China Morning Post, 25 February 2017, http://www.scmp.com/business/global-economy/article/2073883/china-us-and-japan -top-borrowers-global-official-debt-hits. On the aging Japanese population see Isabel Reynolds, “Japan’s Shrinking Population,” Bloomberg, 16 May 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/japan-s-shrinking -population. Data from World Bank, 2015, accessed at data.worldbank.org. Thomas U. Berger, Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); Yasuhiro Izumikawa, “Explaining Japanese Antimilitarism: Normative and Realist Constraints on Japan’s Security Policy,” International Security 35, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 123–60.

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46.

47. 48.

49.

50. 51.

52.

53.

54. 55.

56.

On the evolution of Japanese security policy over time see Andrew L. Oros, Japan’s Security Renaissance: New Policies and Politics for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017); Hughes, Japan’s Remilitarisation; Jennifer M. Lind, “Pacifism or Passing the Buck? Testing Theories of Japanese Security Policy,” International Security 29, no. 1 (2004): 92–121. Lind, “Pacifism or Passing the Buck?” On the left see Gerald Curtis, “Weak Opposition Is a Cancer in Japan’s Political System,” East Asia Forum, 18 September 2016, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2016/09/18/weak -opposition-is-a-cancer-in-japans-political-system/; on the increased prominence of national security policy in Japan see Amy Catalinac, Electoral Reform and National Security in Japan: From Pork to Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). “Japan PM Abe Says No Defense Budget Ceiling as 1 Percent to GDP,” Reuters, 1 March 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-defence-budget/japan-pm-abe-says-no -defense-budget-ceiling-as-1-percent-to-gdp-idUSKBN1690EZ. On the Japanese security legislation see Liff, “Abe the Evolutionary.” Jennifer Lind, “Japan’s Security Evolution,” Wall Street Journal, 16 September 2015. For signs of greater conciliation toward China, see Jane Perlez, “Rex Tillerson and Xi Jinping Meet in China and Emphasize Cooperation,” New York Times, 19 March 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/world/asia/rex-tillerson-xi-jinping-north-korea .html; Nikhil Sonnad, “Rex Tillerson’s Tone on China Got a Lot Friendlier Once He Actually Got to China,” Quartz, 19 March 2017, https://qz.com/936406/trump-and -china-secretary-of-state-rex-tillersons-first-visit-to-beijing-was-a-lot-friendlier-than -youd-expect/. On trade, see Binyamin Appelbaum, “President’s Growing Trade Gap: A Gulf Between Talk and Action,” New York Times, 31 March 2017, https://www.nytimes .com/2017/03/31/us/politics/trump-trade-agreements-actions.html; Paul Krugman, “Trump Is Wimping Out on Trade,” New York Times, 3 April 2017, https://www.nytimes .com/2017/04/03/opinion/trump-is-wimping-out-on-trade.html. Michael Forsythe, “Rex Tillerson’s South China Sea Remarks Foreshadow Possible Foreign Policy Crisis,” New York Times, 12 January 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017 /01/12/world/asia/rex-tillerson-south-china-sea-us.html. Phil Stewart and Nobuhiro Kubo, “Mattis Reaffirms US Alliance with Japan ‘For Years to Come’,” Reuters, 3 February 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-usa-southkorea /mattis-reaffirms-u-s-alliance-with-japan-for-years-to-come-idUSKBN15J02G. Gideon Rachman, “Trump in the China Shop,” New York Review of Books, 7 March 2017, http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/03/07/trump-in-the-china-shop/. Personal communication, March 2017. On Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit to Tokyo, see Tsubasa Tsuruga, “Abe, Tillerson Call for Stronger Alliance Amid North Korea Threat,” Nikkei Asian Review, 16 March 2017, https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy /International-Relations/Abe-Tillerson-call-for-stronger-alliance-amid-North-Korea -threat. “Remarks by President Trump and Prime Minister Abe of Japan in Joint Press Conference,” White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 10 February 2017.

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57. 58.

59.

60. 61.

62.

63.

64.

65.

“Joint Statement from President Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe: The White House, 10 February 2017. Koya Jibiki and Ken Moriyasu, “Abe Scores Big in ‘Fairway Diplomacy’ with Trump,” Nikkei Asian Review, 16 February 2017, https://asia.nikkei.com/magazine/20170216 /Politics-Economy/Abe-scores-big-in-fairway-diplomacy-with-Trump. Sheila Smith, “A Successful Meeting Between Trump and Abe as America Is ‘Behind Japan, 100 Percent’ ,” Forbes, 13 February 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/sheilaasmith /2017/02/13/behind-japan-100/#4a0ef98f3f66. Jibiki and Moriyasu, “Abe Scores Big in ‘Fairway Diplomacy’. ” On Trump’s several policy reversals, see Stephen Collinson, “Trump’s Stunning U-turns on NATO, China, Russia and Syria,” CNN, 13 April 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/12 /politics/trump-russia-china-nato-syria/index.html; Kevin D. Williamson, “Ya Got Took,” National Review, 18 April 2017, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446825 /donald-trumps-china-currency-manipulator-reversal-and-other-flip-flops; Peter Baker, “As Trump Drifts Away from Populism, His Supporters Grow Watchful,” New York Times, 18 April 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/us/politics/populism-donald-trump -administration.html. Motoko Rich, “Trump’s Phone Buddy in the North Korea Crisis: Shinzo Abe,” New York Times, 5 September 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/world/asia/japan -trump-north-korea-abe.html. Molly O’Toole, “GOP Foreign-Policy Power Brokers in Congress Could Foil Trump,” Foreign Policy, 16 November 2016, http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/16/gop-foreign -policy-power-brokers-in-congress-could-foil-trump/. For more on the unpopularity of Trump’s foreign policies among mainstream Republicans, see Kori Schake, “Republican Foreign Policy After Trump,” Survival 58, no. 5 (2016): 33–52; Eric Maurice, “McCain: World ‘Cries Out’ for US and EU Leadership,” EU Observer, 24 March 2017, https://euobserver .com/foreign/137376; Annie Linskey, “These GOP Foreign Policy Pros Are Wary of Working for Trump,” Boston Globe, 18 November 2016, https://www.bostonglobe.com /news/nation/2016/11/17/republican-foreign-policy-veterans-full-angst-about-serving -trump-administration/Hknyoim4DxY75qJnIEbJjL/story.html. Gordon Adams and Richard Sokolsky, “Don’t Let the DC ‘Blob’ Guide the Trump Presidency,” National Interest, 17 November 2016, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/dont-let -the-dc-blob-guide-trumps-foreign-policy-18440. Takashi Umekawa and Linda Sieg, “Exclusive: Japan Eyes US Job, Investment Initiative Ahead of Abe-Trump Summit,” Reuters, 31 January 2017, https://www.reuters.com /article/us-usa-trump-japan-trade-exclusive/exclusive-japan-eyes-u-s-job-investment -initiative-ahead-of-abe-trump-summit-idUSKBN15F0LD. Beijing may take a similar approach; see Edward Luce, “Xi Jinping’s Summit Plan to Tame Donald Trump,” Financial Times, 1 April 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/e0750496-1629-11e7-80f4-13e067d5072c.

19 LATIN AMERICA Asymmetry and the Problem of Influence T O M L O N G A N D M A X PA U L F R I E D M A N

“M

ilitary option.” With two words, uttered in impromptu remarks to reporters, President Donald Trump encapsulated his taste for the dramatic in his administration’s otherwise-muddled policy toward Latin America. The words came in August 2017 in response to a question about the growing crisis in Venezuela: “We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option, if necessary.”1 Trump’s approach to Latin America, like much of his foreign policy, has been characterized by hot rhetoric that outstrips action but is uttered without consideration for the consequence. It favors unilateralism, mercantile nationalism, a vitiation of diplomacy, and faith in military solutions to complex problems. The immediate reaction to Trump’s suggestion of a “military option” from across the Americas illustrated why that approach, which is apparently intended to convey an image of more muscular US power, is likely to result in a further degradation of US influence in Latin America. Despite its proximity and importance, Latin America usually does not receive a lot of attention in US elections. After Trump’s shocking and ultimately successful campaign for the presidency, the region may miss being out of the limelight. Somewhat atypically, many of Trump’s campaign promises related to Latin America. Mexico was, and remains, Trump’s villain of choice from the first day of his unlikely campaign. Mexico supposedly sent criminals as immigrants and bested the United States in the

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countries’ deep trade relationship; Trump granted the Mexican government a level of astuteness and competence that must have surprised many Mexican citizens. Central American migrants, whose remittances are more important to their home states in relative terms, also came under fire. Trump has aimed his Twitter feed at transnational street gangs like the Salvadoran MS-13, casting all the blame on neighbors to the south, despite the group’s origins in US cities and the flawed deportation policies of years past. Trump’s initially pacific tone toward Cuba soured as his presidential campaign progressed, culminating in a partial rollback of the 2014 rapprochement. Administration officials have increased sanctions in response to the Venezuela crisis, with Vice President Mike Pence seemingly sensing a new Florida constituency. Trump’s anti-trade proposals go beyond the planned renegotiation, backed by the threat of withdrawal, of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Greater US protectionism would cut to the core many Latin American countries’ economic strategies, in which access to the US market is the lynchpin. Although divining Trump’s “real” intentions is a fool’s errand, all of this adds up to a seeming shift in US policy. Under the Obama administration, the policy discourse had been dominated by the rhetoric of partnership and the declaration that the Monroe Doctrine was dead (again).2 The United States never entirely left behind its “hegemonic presumption,”3 but openly condescending phrases like “America’s backyard” faded. So, too, did the sort of unilateral military interventions that marked much of the history of inter-American relations. Since the end of the Cold War, trade deals, seen by some critics as US impositions, have often been enthusiastically sought by Latin American leaders (in some cases over domestic opposition, but in others with considerable support).4 Protecting them is a priority for most of the political spectrum in the Latin American countries that have them. Even discounting some of the Trump administration’s most extreme rhetoric, the pattern seems to indicate greater unilateralism, less consultation and institutionalization, more militarization, harder borders, and an overall decline in hemispheric cooperation on shared challenges like trade, the environment, and migration. While some countries in the Western Hemisphere, notably Canada and Uruguay, explore alternative approaches to the still-central issue of drug trafficking, Trump has enlisted the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security

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to pursue the renewed emphasis on militarized interdiction implied in his “law and order” fear-mongering. On one issue after another, Latin America may face a stark choice between accommodating the diktats of the northern colossus or facing a Trumpian wrath. Despite a decade of global power shifts, the United States still holds the dominant position in the Western Hemisphere. Its power advantage is overwhelming. The military gap is huge, and, far beyond the less likely threat of military incursions, is relevant to training, provision, and staff relationships. Trade asymmetries vary widely across the region, but US capital markets and the dollar remain central in almost all countries. All of these seem like effective sticks that Trump could use to get his way. If we were to take Trump’s approach at face value, what would be the effects of such a US policy in Latin America? Less effective sticks and less enticing carrots, despite US structural advantages. The history of US-Latin American relations and the dynamics of asymmetrical relationships in international relations suggest a much more complex picture. First, Latin America is unlikely to offer outright compliance—in fact, its leaders’ independence from the whims of Washington was greater than many observers supposed.5 That may even be the case when Latin American leaders go to great lengths to avoid outright confrontation. Second, US unilateralism holds the seeds of its own undoing, as seen in the unified response against Trump’s Venezuela threat. Latin American states are likely to respond with subtle soft balancing, a nonmilitary approach by lesser powers to restrain a global or regional unipole that may include closer partnerships, recourse to international institutions, foot-dragging, and other strategies.6 There is an important caveat: a Latin American united front against Trump is no given, despite the US president’s intense unpopularity across the region. Latin America is riven by international divisions, ideological and material in nature, which have slowed the projects of regional integration and coordination that only recently were increasing Latin American autonomy in the framework of new hemispheric institutions that excluded the United States, such as the Union of South American Nations and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.7 Finally, outside of Mexico and Central America, Latin American states depend considerably less on the United States than in the past, at least in some respects. In the commercial sphere, China and Europe offer alternatives. This is not a stark geopolitical game

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or a new cold war in which Latin America functions as a prize in a superpower battle. Instead, the rise of new centers of power is important above all because it amplifies Latin American leaders’ choices. In the diplomatic realm, Washington is not making an attractive—or even coherent—offer. In the economic realm, the Trump administration’s unpredictability and antitrade rhetoric has increased the interest in diversification, even among close allies like Colombia. On the other hand, Mexico, with an economy and society interwoven with the United States, is seemingly susceptible to great damage. Mexico, however, holds more cards than a focus on pure power disparities would lead one to believe. Much of the United States’ noncoercive influence comes from the gravitational pull of its huge and relatively open market. If Washington dumps NAFTA, undermines other free trade agreements, or unilaterally curtails market access through a border tax or protective tariffs, it will weaken the domestic political positions of its strongest supporters in the region.8 Many countries in Latin America trade with the United States under preferential agreements that cover at least some sectors. These have the effect of aligning certain economic sectors’ interests with the United States. Sometimes, Washington has tied this access to specific goals, most notably under the 1991 Andean Trade Preferences Act, which incentivizes antidrug cooperation. The principal alternative to Latin American dependence on the United States is Trump’s other international obsession, China.9 Chinese public finance capital now surpasses what the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank combined invest in Latin America, and Chinese commercial banks are increasing their investments as well, notably in energy and transportation.10 Chinese lending is concentrated in Brazil, Venezuela, and Ecuador, but other countries are also deepening their economic ties with China. After Trump’s election sealed the fate of the TPP in November 2016, President Xi Jinping immediately signed dozens of new trade deals at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit held in Lima. Mexico, Chile, and Peru signaled interest in accession to China’s free trade initiative, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which could unite all the largest economies in Asia, including India and Japan, behind the Chinese project. Latin American critics who have long pointed out that Chinese investment is extractive and has not contributed much to development are being heard in Beijing. In December 2016, a Chinese Ministry

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of Foreign Affairs paper called for aligning investment with local needs to promote independent development capacity, showing that China at least recognizes the political problem of overreliance on exploiting primary commodities.11 On 2 February 2017, shortly after Trump claimed credit for killing a planned Ford assembly plant in Mexico, Mexico announced that Chinese automaker JAC motors would build a $212 million dollar factory in Hidalgo.12 Meanwhile, several Latin American states rejoined talks for a TPP without the United States, a demonstration of interest in spurning Trump to build liberal trade ties with Asian economies. Faced with the growing Chinese challenge as well as orchestrated and effective Latin American criticism, President Barack Obama tried using free trade deals and diplomatic concessions to stanch the bleeding in inter-American relations. But Trump, who disdains both diplomacy and free trade, has given up the principal instruments for evoking cooperation. That makes confrontation more likely—especially since key members of his security team worry that growing Chinese economic influence will lead to growing Chinese political influence and ultimately pose a challenge to US security. Having built a Cabinet without a single Latino member for the first time in three decades, Trump then turned to a number of advisors who see Chinese activity in Latin America as a threat to the Monroe Doctrine, in which they still have faith.13 Trump’s first secretary of homeland security and second chief of staff, retired general John F. Kelly, has perhaps the most Latin American experience of any of Trump’s cabinet members, having spent four years as head of US Southern Command, which is responsible for military operations in the Western Hemisphere south of Mexico. But in addition to ramping up deportation and border enforcement with zeal, Kelly warned that growing Chinese economic ties can swiftly become Chinese military ties. This hardly signals a proclivity for cooperative solutions in a region where Chinese economic presence is already a deeply rooted fact. Trump’s short-lived senior director for the Western Hemisphere at the National Security Council (NSC), former military intelligence officer Craig Deare, denounced the Obama administration’s burial of the Monroe Doctrine “as a clear invitation to those extra-regional actors looking for opportunities to increase their influence.”14 With a State Department plagued by long-term vacancies and uncertain restructuring, Deare might have been expected to play a key role in formulating regional policy—if

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he had not been fired after Trump learned that he had criticized him at a closed-door meeting.15 Instead, the NSC has taken a low profile in Latin America policy, with Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) seeming to exercise much greater influence in shaping administration responses to Cuba and Venezuela. Other administration officials have pointed to the danger of a nexus of Latin American nationalism and Middle Eastern terrorism. If that notion takes hold and comes to the fore, perhaps because of an unforeseen incident, we are likely to see a Trump administration committed to vigorous unilateralism in Latin America in the name of national security. Across the past century, United States officials have justified unilateral interventions as necessary to defend US interests in the region from bandits, then from Germans, then from Communists, then from drug kingpins. If interventionism resumes, Iranians or the Islamic State may appear next on that list, perhaps before China does. What should Latin American leaders do in response? Trump’s impact will vary from country to country. For Brazil, internal economic and political challenges outweigh the possible influence of a Trump presidency. For South American traders like Chile and Uruguay, a broader world awaits. The weight of US policy is much heavier in the Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico. Efforts to bolster multilateral pressure on the Venezuelan government through the Organization of American States slowly gained adherents as violence in Venezuela escalated. These efforts were complicated, however, by Trump’s bellicose rhetoric and reliance on punitive approaches. Latin American condemnation of Trump’s offhanded threat was swift and unanimous, including a face-to-face meeting between Vice President Pence and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. Trump’s words seemed to reinforce what Venezuelan leaders had claimed for years—the United States was prepared to intervene, with domestic opposition serving as the handmaiden of imperialism. Any US action in Venezuela may be counterproductive; the US capacity to lead even a humanitarian response is depressingly low. First, relations will progress in a climate of distrust; from the Latin American perspective, this makes sense. When an international relationship is marked by power disparities, the smaller country is at greater risk and has more to lose. It is rational for Latin American states to be skeptical toward the United States even under normal circumstances. Trump exacerbates that. To overcome this distrust, as Brantly Womack argues,

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the stronger power needs to commit to restraint and employ diplomatic assurance to assuage the concerns of the small.16 Trump’s campaign, and many of his words since then, have done the opposite. If the Trump administration wishes to avoid worsening relations, it will fall upon the United States to swiftly and repeatedly commit to restraint. Demonstrations of unilateralism (say, building a wall without Mexico’s assent) will be perceived as threatening; the response to that threat is likely to be a form of soft balancing. Second, US domestic policies are also foreign policies from the perspective of its neighbors.17 This has two sides. It means that actions against immigrants or to advance “Buy American” provisions will be watched closely in Latin America and interpreted as unilateral affronts. The effects are too large to ignore for Mexico and others. That said, governments in the region should try to separate ‘foreign’ and ‘domestic.’ Mexico and Central America will need a foreign policy and a consular policy.18 These may sometimes be at odds as the consular policy fights US immigration actions while the foreign policy tries to salvage diplomatic and trade ties. Third, on trade, Latin America needs to work with powerful US allies. Mexico has the greatest experience in the region of using transnational business ties to lobby the United States.19 Now, even Cuba will need to follow that model. Hotel companies, airlines, and construction players like Caterpillar opposed and attenuated Rubio’s desired Cuba rollback and may slow further hostile actions. Trump understands tourism and construction, of course, and his administration has demonstrated great openness to lobbyists, despite his outsider rhetoric. At the same time, Latin Americans should actively develop alternative trade and investment partners—and should not be shy in letting Washington know they are doing so. Like many US politicians before, the president has come to see Cuba as a lowcost, high-impact way to shore up his conservative credentials and curry influence with Florida’s congressional delegation. If Cuba wants to stop being used as a punching bag and avoid further sanctions, it may need to build up political capital in Washington by, for example, going around the administration to accelerate the signing of contracts with US companies that visibly produce jobs in the districts of key members of Congress. Fourth, Latin America has friends in the US bureaucracy and military who can delay and lessen the blow of prejudicial policies. Latin American governments cannot let distrust at the top keep them from cultivating

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contacts at lower levels, where much policy design and implementation will occur. Trump might appoint hardliners to top positions, but his bench does not run deep—particularly on Latin America policy. Nonstop turmoil has lessened interest among qualified individuals to join the administration. Appointing visible, far-right figureheads may satisfy the base, but few have the requisite management experience. Conversely, many career civil servants understand that long-term US agency, and career interests are better served by workable cooperation with neighboring countries. Fifth, the national government is not the only place for cooperation. Connections with state and local governments will be more important than ever to addressing issues that affect migrant communities, the environment, and even manufacturing chains.20 Integration is deep, and second-best solutions will have to be found if the national government is not cooperative. Canada and Mexico have taken this approach to preserving NAFTA. Surviving the Trump presidency may be for Latin America a matter of waiting and minimizing the damage. Cuba’s President Raúl Castro was notably silent in response to Trump’s gleeful tweeting over the death of his brother Fidel shortly after Trump’s election, whereas Fidel might well have responded with at least a rhetorical escalation. At times, it may be tempting to minimize confrontation and even make symbolic sacrifices. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto tried this humble approach, only to be badly burned (although his poor management of Trump’s campaign visit also played a role). Likewise, Argentine President Mauricio Macri’s visit to Washington seemed aimed to ensure that Buenos Aires does not suffer from Trump’s ire—bandwagoning efforts that confront a long Argentine diplomatic tradition and draw considerable domestic skepticism, especially as Macri’s plan for achieving economic growth and the resulting political legitimacy hinged on gaining greater access to the US market, which is now unlikely to materialize.21 Latin American governments need to draw and maintain their lines where it matters most. Trump lacks concrete proposals in most areas, so he will not be bound by them. Nonetheless, his publicity-obsessed id seems driven by a need to deliver visible “achievements,” particularly on immigration and trade. What can be offered that looks important but hurts the least? That is the painful question that Latin American leaders have to answer if they try to accommodate Trump. The more blatant US unilateralism is,

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however, the more the US leadership role will be undermined. The exercise of blunt power is likely to weaken the prospects for accommodation and to increase the chances of confrontation.

NOTES 1.

2.

3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

“Trump Alarms Venezuela with Talk of a ‘Military Option’ ,” New York Times, 12 August 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/world/americas/trump-venezuela-military .html?mcubz=1. Keith Johnson, “Kerry Makes It Official: ‘Era of Monroe Doctrine Is Over’ ,” Wall Street Journal, 18 November 2013, https://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/11/18/kerry-makes-it -official-era-of-monroe-doctrine-is-over/. Abraham F Lowenthal, “The United States and Latin America: Ending the Hegemonic Presumption,” Foreign Affairs 55, no. 1 (1976): 199–213. Richard E. Feinberg, “Regionalism and Domestic Politics: US‐Latin American Trade Policy in the Bush Era,” Latin American Politics and Society 44, no. 4 (2002): 127–51; Tom Long, “Echoes of 1992: The NAFTA Negotiation and North America Now,” (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, 2014). Tom Long, Latin America Confronts the United States: Asymmetry and Influence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Max Paul Friedman, “Retiring the Puppets, Bringing Latin America Back In: Recent Scholarship on United States-Latin American Relations,” Diplomatic History 27, no. 5 (2003): 621–36. Max Paul Friedman and Tom Long, “Soft Balancing in the Americas: Latin American Opposition to US Intervention, 1898–1936,” International Security 40, no. 1 (Summer 2015): 120–56. Andrés Malamud, “Interdependence, Leadership and Institutionalization: The Triple Deficit and Fading Prospects of Mercosur,” in Limits to Regional Integration, ed. Sören Dosenrode (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2015), 163–78. Rawi Abdelal and Jonathan Kirshner, “Strategy, Economic Relations, and the Definition of National Interests,” Security Studies 9, no. 1–2 (1999): 119–56. Kevin P. Gallagher, The China Triangle: Latin America’s China Boom and the Fate of the Washington Consensus (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). Margaret Myers and Kevin Gallagher, “Chinese Finance to LAC in 2016,” China-Latin America Report, Global Economic Governance Initiative, Boston University, February 2017, http://www.bu.edu/pardeeschool/files/2014/12/Chinese-Finance-to-LAC-in-2016 -Web-and-email-res.pdf. Ting Shi and John Quigley, “China Seizes Opening in US Backyard as Trump Upends Policy,” Bloomberg, 2 December 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-02 /china-seizes-opening-in-u-s-backyard-after-trump-upends-policy. “Chinese Automaker JAC to Produce Cars in Mexico,” Xinhua News Service, 2 February 2017, https://www.shine.cn/archive/business/auto/Chinese-automaker-JAC-to-produce -cars-in-Mexico/shdaily.shtml.

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13.

14.

15.

16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21.

Max Paul Friedman, “Return of the Monroe Doctrine: Making Latin America Irate Again.” AULA Blog, Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, 2 February 2017. Reprinted as “Is Trump Resurrecting the Monroe Doctrine?” Christian Science Monitor, 5 February 2017, https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/Latin-America-Monitor /2017/0205/Is-Trump-resurrecting-the-Monroe-Doctrine. Craig A. Deare, “Latin America,” in Charting a Course: Strategic Choices for a New Administration, ed. R.D. Hooker, Jr. (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2016), quoted in Matthew Taylor, “Open Questions About Latin American Relations During the Trump Administration,” Council on Foreign Relations, 25 January 2017, http://blogs.cfr.org/oneil/2017/01/25/the-big-questions-and-challenges-the-trump -administration-will-face-in-latin-america/. Eliana Johnson, “White House Dismisses NSC Aide After Harsh Criticism of Trump,” Politico, 18 February 2017, http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/white-house-nsc-aide -craig-deare-dismissed-235175. Brantly Womack, Asymmetry and International Relationships (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Abraham F. Lowenthal, United States-Latin American Relations at the Century’s Turn Managing the “Intermestic” Agenda (Los Angeles: Pacific Council on International Policy, 1998). Jorge A. Schiavon and Nuty Cárdenas Alaminos, “La protección consular de la diáspora mexicana,” Revista Mexicana de Política Exterior 101 (May–August 2014): 50. Tom Long, “Coloso fragmentado: la agenda ‘interméstica’ y la política exterior latinoamericana.” Foro Internacional 57, no. 227 (January 2017): 5–54. Marcela López-Vallejo Olvera, Reconfiguring Global Climate Governance in North America: A Transregional Approach (London; New York: Routledge, 2016); Christopher E. Wilson, Working Together: Economic Ties Between the United States and Mexico (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2011). Mario Rapoport and Leandro Morgenfeld, “Proteccionista forever. Argentina y Estados Unidos en la era Trump,” Página 12, 5 February 2017, https://www.pagina12.com.ar /18188-proteccionismo.

20 HISTORICAL LEGACIES OF US POLICY IN THE MIDDLE EAST JA M E S R . S TO C K E R

T

he election of Donald Trump as president of the United States has prompted deep reflection, even soul-searching, by scholars of international affairs. For the historians among them, the natural tendency is to connect the past to the present, and even the future. What major historical continuities in US Middle East policy is Trump inheriting from his predecessor? Will his administration represent a continuation or a break from these policies? Thinking ahead four or even eight years, what legacies will the Trump administration leave? A look at historical legacies is particularly important, considering that Trump the candidate spent so much time discussing them. Before taking office, Trump criticized many aspects of American foreign policy, including the US role as global security provider and promoter of human rights, democracy, and open societies. But he had a particularly copious amount to say about US Middle East policy. President George W. Bush had done a “terrible thing” to invade Iraq, but President Barack Obama had been equally foolish to leave without finishing the job, especially without seizing the country’s oil resources.1 The Iran nuclear deal was “one of the worst deals in the history of our country.”2 Israel had been treated “very, very badly.”3 And so on. Of course, it was easy for someone who had never served in government and had little experience in the Middle East to criticize those who came before him. Just five weeks after taking office, Trump told a meeting

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of the nation’s governors in inimitable fashion that “Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated.”4 Will he come to a similar conclusion regarding the Middle East? In this chapter, I discuss five historical legacies in the Middle East that the Trump administration has inherited and look at what the president’s campaign rhetoric and early moves in office suggest it will do about them: the degree of American engagement in the region, the situation in Syria and Iraq, US relations with Iran, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and democracy promotion. On the whole, with a few (albeit important) exceptions, it seems that there is a remarkable degree of continuity with previous administrations. The first legacy is the fact that the United States is involved in the Middle East at all. In fact, the region has been key to American interests only since the 1950s, when the disintegration of the British and French empires and the expansion of the Cold War to the so-called Third World led the United States to step in. The main rationales for American involvement were security and economics. Measures like the 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine promised US assistance to regimes threatened by Communism, while US policymakers intervened in a variety of ways to keep the oil flowing, from a 1953 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)–assisted coup in Iran and the 1991 war in Iraq, to the provision of economic and military assistance to all but a handful of governments in the region. There were other reasons for American engagement in the region, such as protecting Israel, but these were of a secondary order of magnitude: stopping the spread of Communism and ensuring the continued flow of oil were the priorities. Although the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a dramatic decrease in American military bases and troop deployments around the world, the United States soon reengaged in the Middle East, particularly after the attacks of 9/11, when the War on Terror assumed first priority among US foreign policy interests. Thus, the region witnessed America’s largest military actions in the post–Cold War era, namely, the wars in Afghanistan since 2001 and in Iraq since 2003. By 2010, approximately half of US troops deployed abroad were located in the region.5 Yet even as the security rationale for US engagement in the region seems to have increased, other American interests, including economic ones, have declined in relative terms. The Middle East is still home to

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the largest reserves of oil and gas in the world, but as a percentage of global hydrocarbon resources, they have declined in the last few decades.6 This, along with the failure of American military force to resolve conflicts, declining domestic support for American engagement around the world,7 and concerns about a rising China and a reemerging Russia, created what could be seen as the groundwork for a major change in the prioritization of the region vis-à-vis others. The Obama administration certainly read the tea leaves in this manner and tried its best to adjust accordingly, making the so-called pivot toward Asia away from the Middle East a centerpiece of its foreign policy. But although the United States made at least some strides in its policy of taking a more assertive approach toward the former region, it was never truly able to extricate itself from the latter.8 Despite a withdrawal of so-called combat troops from Iraq and drawdowns in Afghanistan, the emergence of the Arab Uprisings in 2011 and wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen kept US attention firmly fixed on the region. There is little doubt that Obama would have preferred a lower level of US involvement.9 But as an anonymous senior Department of Defense official said in January 2016 regarding Iraq and Afghanistan, “What we’ve learned is that you can’t really leave.”10 With escalating US involvement in Syria and Yemen, the same may hold true for these conflicts, too. President Trump came into office without a clear message on the future of American involvement in the Middle East. To some, he appeared to criticize the depth of US engagement around the world, heralding a potential withdrawal of troops posted abroad and a reversion to a “Fortress America” ideal.11 Others, paying more attention to statements that he would “bomb the hell out of ISIS [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria],” anticipated a more aggressive presidency that could lead the United States to step up its military involvement in conflicts there. Finally, some thought Trump would adopt a Nixonian “madman” strategy, threatening extreme measures, but at least in part as a bluff to get others to do what he wanted.12 In his initial months in office, none of these things came to pass. The administration did not put forward a distinctive vision for the role of the Middle East in US foreign policy. There was no substantial withdrawal of US forces. The president’s first major speech on Afghanistan in fact announced a willingness to allow American troops to remain in that

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country for the time being.13 The president has suggested increasing the defense budget, and many members of Congress seem to want to do this even faster than the administration, but it is not clear how this would affect specific regions.14 Trump has also spoken of his desire to cooperate with autocrats, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, fueling fears that he was about to cede American influence in the region to America’s former enemy. But there is no sign of American withdrawal, or any concrete deals or understandings with Russia regarding Syria or other hot spots in the region. The pressure of multiple investigations regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election and tit-for-tat restrictions on diplomatic personnel will prevent a rapprochement between the United States and Russia in the short term, even if both sides seem to want one. On Iraq and Syria, Trump inherited the legacy of the Bush and Obama administrations. President Obama succeeded in fulfilling a campaign promise to remove American combat troops from Iraq. Although he hoped to leave up to ten thousand troops to train and support the Iraqi military, he was unable to reach a “status of forces” agreement with the Iraqi government that would grant American troops immunity from prosecution.15 While Iraq at that point did not seem to be in grave danger, its state remained fragile and fragmented, with an autonomous Kurdish region, strong Shi’i militias, and a disaffected Sunni population that did not feel that Baghdad represented its interests. Thus, after the outbreak of civil war in Syria, the groundwork was laid for ISIS quickly to emerge in 2013–2014 and capture a large portion of the country’s territory, including its second largest city, Mosul. From the beginning of the Syrian uprising in 2011, US support for protesters and then rebels was primarily in word rather than deed. Obama ruled out a military intervention against the regime of Bashar al-Assad after members of Congress indicated that they would not pass a resolution approving it.16 Two training missions were created for the rebels, and some military aid was supplied, but these were half-heartedly implemented and, by most accounts, largely ineffective.17 By the end of 2016, no doubt in part motivated by a desire to change the status quo on the ground before the next US presidential administration took power, the Syrian military and its allies took Aleppo, the country’s largest city and the symbol of the resistance’s power. Thus, even before Trump took office, the rebels were on their heels.

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In its first year, the Trump administration continued the same policy directions that a Hillary Clinton or even a continued Obama presidency might have contemplated. Trump essentially continued to implement a plan put into place by his predecessor to take back territory from ISIS, including Mosul. The US special envoy on defeating ISIS claimed that the campaign was accelerated by orders that Trump gave, such as allowing battlefield commanders more liberty to attack targets without permission, but these claims are difficult to assess.18 Civilian casualties due to coalition airstrikes have risen significantly.19 In June 2017, Trump finally decided to “phase out” a CIA-led program to arm and supply various rebel groups. Although this constituted a blow to the same rebels that Obama administration supported, such a step may well have been inevitable in the aftermath of the fall of Aleppo.20 By December 2017, ISIS appeared to be defeated militarily in Iraq and Syria. This was far from an American victory alone, as Russian, Syrian, Kurdish, and other forces did the bulk of the fighting, just as they had in previous years. Still, some 2,000 American troops remain in the country, but their mission is unclear, leading some commentators warning of “mission creep,” a familiar condition in American military interventions in the region.21 The Iran nuclear deal, too, illustrates the difficulty of changing course on the Middle East. As part of Obama’s mission to reduce the American footprint in the region, the president aimed to achieve a sort of détente with Iran and to broker a similar thawing of tensions between Iran and other powers in the region. At the same time, Israel perceives Iran to be a serious threat, and if unchecked, it could use military force in an attempt to stop its enemy from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Working closely with European powers, Russia, and China, the United States brokered a diplomatic arrangement that would allow Iran to keep a civilian nuclear program while ensuring that only a minimum level of uranium enrichment took place within the country, thereby minimizing the risk of Tehran acquiring a nuclear weapon. Candidate Trump predictably took a hard line on Iran. At various times, he promised to “rip up” the Iran deal, but soon after the election, he reversed course, promising strict enforcement of the agreement instead. This meant in practice a continuation of the Obama policy. Trump initially appointed a strongly anti-Iran figure, Michael Flynn, as national security advisor, but since Flynn’s resignation a less publically

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confrontational individual, H. R. McMaster, has taken his place. This appointment alarmed some leaders of Sunni Arab Gulf states, who appreciated Trump’s position on Iran. This, however, may change: Iran and the United States have exchanged accusations of treaty violations after Iran conducted a ballistic missile test, which the United States followed with sanctions.22 But the agreement remains in place, even if Trump seeks to renegotiate the United States’ involvement in it. On the Arab-Israeli conflict, Trump inherited a legacy of intense American engagement. The first agreements between Israel and the Arab states were brokered by National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy in the aftermath of the 1973 October War and were then solidified by the Camp David Accords and the EgyptianIsraeli Peace Treaty, negotiated by the Carter administration. Looking back over the previous fifty years, it seems that negotiations have moved (steadily if irregularly) toward a set of peace treaties between Israel and its neighbors, even if agreements with Syria, Lebanon, and other Arab states remain elusive. Unofficially since the Oslo Accords, and officially since the George W. Bush administration, US policy has encouraged negotiations toward the establishment of a Palestinian state, a trend supported by Arab peace initiatives that offer Israel recognition and peaceful coexistence, provided that its territory be based on the country’s pre-1967 borders. Important trends have prevented this from happening. Israeli settlement activity, encouraged by government policy, has undermined a possible two-state solution by leaving the West Bank and Gaza divided into a virtual archipelago.23 In 2004, as part of an exchange of letters with the United States, Israeli leaders agreed to stop the “outward” growth of settlements, but claimed an exception for so-called inward “natural growth.” Apologists maintain that natural growth is necessary to accommodate families; critics point out that it covers up the expansion of existing settlements as well as the creation of new “illegal outposts” or unrecognized but protected settlements.24 Palestinian campaigns of violence against settlers and soldiers in turn bring about military crackdowns and prevent a return to the negotiation table. Since 2011, turmoil in Arab regimes, particularly in Syria and Egypt, continues to provide an additional convenient excuse to avoid difficult compromises. For much of President Obama’s time in office, the administration pressured Israel to fully reign in settlement activity as a prerequisite to talks, a

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policy that did not play well with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s base of conservative groups and settlers. This, along with a failure to take a tougher position on the Iran deal, was enough to prompt a massive Israeli backlash against the Obama administration. Relations between the president and the Israeli prime minister were notoriously bad. The final blow came when the Obama administration abstained on a December 2016 UN Security Council vote that condemned Israeli settlements. This action was geared in the language of preserving a two-state solution, as the US feared that settlement building could “close the door to any hope of negotiating side-by-side Israeli and Palestinian states.”25 Candidate Trump promised to reverse key aspects of US policy. Under his presidency, he claimed, Israel would now have a friend in the White House. His real estate lawyer, Jason Greenblatt, would be a special representative for international negotiations. His bankruptcy lawyer, David Friedman, a man who referred to Jewish critics of Israel as “kapos,” the name for concentration camp prisoners who worked for the Nazis, would be US ambassador to that country.26 His son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose family had long provided financial support to settlers, would be a key adviser with a diplomatic role in the Arab-Israeli conflict.27 As a first step, on his first day in office, the US embassy in Tel Aviv would be moved to Jerusalem, fulfilling a long-time wish for pro-Israel groups.28 All of this indicated that he would indeed make a radical departure from existing US policy, perhaps even embracing the possibility of a one-state solution. Yet, in the first eight months of Trump’s time in office, US moves on this issue came only haltingly. The US Embassy transfer was immediately put on hold. After Israel approved the construction of six thousand new homes, the Trump administration responded by mildly criticizing settlements as unhelpful.29 During a visit by Netanyahu, Trump briefly caused a stir by stating that he was open to whatever solution the two parties wanted, whether two states or one state, but this was then quickly walked back by members of his administration. President Trump and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas exchanged visits in May, with few apparent results.30 Jared Kushner made several subsequent trips to the region to explore proposals for bridging the gap between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but it is unclear how much progress was made.31 In December 2017, the president made what appeared on the surface to be a bold move: recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. This step

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outraged the Palestinian and Arab public, drew condemnations from countries around the world, and sparked criticism from former US Middle East officials.32 Yet, although Trump’s statement on the issue was heavy tilted towards the Israeli perspective, it also made clear that it was not meant to prejudice the final borders of Jerusalem or a Palestinian state. No date was set for the move of the American embassy to the city.33 Thus, it is still safe to say that the administration remains on the well-worn path of American diplomacy, regardless of whether it leads anywhere new. Trump inherited one final legacy that has a much shorter pedigree than the others: US democracy promotion in the Middle East. Democracy promotion had become a factor in American foreign policy even before the end of the Cold War, but it really only took off in the Middle East under President George W. Bush.34 As with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, these efforts were on their way to failing, and upon taking office, President Obama sought to change the tone of American policy. As Middle East scholar Fawaz Gerges writes, Obama focused more on “stability” rather than an “ideology of proselytization of democracy” that had characterized the Bush approach.35 In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the Obama administration did take steps, albeit hesitantly, in the direction of pushing for democracy in places like Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, even if these were limited. Still, under both Bush and Obama, democracy promotion was never a consistent driver of policy, and when it clashed with other American interests, such as the War on Terror or the security of Israel, US policymakers tended to side against democratic trends. As president, Trump abandoned most, though not all, interest in spreading democracy, human rights, and a number of other liberal ideas around the world. It should be clear by now that the administration’s aversion to this sort of rhetoric is not absolute. The launching of missiles against a Syrian airfield in April 2017, following the use of poison gas by the Bashar al-Assad regime in an attack on rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, does seem to represent a conviction that at least some human rights violations go too far.36 And the White House has criticized the human rights situation in countries such as Cuba and Venezuela. Still, the issue is generally downplayed across the administration. In just one example, the Department of State issued its annual report on

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human rights in countries around the world, as is required by law, but Secretary of State Rex Tillerson did not attend the 3 March 2017 ceremony for the report.37 For these reasons, contrary to what many might have expected for a president who has called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States, regimes in the Middle East have been relatively open to Trump. His first stop on his maiden trip abroad was in Saudi Arabia, where he enjoyed a warm reception. Indeed, a lack of emphasis on democracy and human rights is most probably welcomed in the capitals of many countries around the region, from the Gulf to Egypt and on through Algeria and Morocco. That said, this does not guarantee that the people of the region will view the administration more favorably than they did its predecessor. The 2017 Pew Poll on this topic contained data from five Middle Eastern countries; only Israel showed a higher percentage of respondents having confidence in President Trump than in Obama in 2014–2015.38 It is relatively early in the Trump administration. Yet, at least in regards to these legacies, most signs indicate that American policy on the Middle East will stay largely within the historical patterns described in this chapter. In four years, the United States will almost certainly still be heavily engaged in the Middle East militarily and diplomatically. The defeat of ISIS may indeed help stabilize Iraq, but it will not mark an end to that country’s conflict or to the war in Syria. The Trump administration will be privately bickering with Israeli leaders over settlements, even as it continues to proclaim the importance of the American-Israeli friendship. The US deal with Iran may or may not still be in place, but there is little reason to think that US-Iran relations on the whole will have improved or deteriorated markedly. Whether or not the same individuals are in power in Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the settlements will continue growing, and a Palestinian state is unlikely. In short, the Trump administration’s policies are likely to continue along the same track, meaning that fears or hopes of radical change are misplaced. After all, individuals and administrations are to a great extent limited by larger forces at work. The one exception is the decline in rhetoric about the domestic politics of the countries of the region. But does anyone think that democracy and human rights, especially as regards the Middle East, will fade permanently from the American foreign policy lexicon? Look for these words in the 2020 presidential campaigns.

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NOTES 1.

2.

3. 4. 5.

6. 7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

Glenn Kessler, “A Distinctive Pattern for Trump’s Biggest Fibs: Defend, Don’t Bend, Grasp at Straws,” Washington Post, 29 September 2016, https://www.washingtonpost .com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/09/29/trumps-method-of-fibbing-deny-deny-then -grasp-at-straws. Team Fix, “The CNN-Telemundo Republican Debate Transcript, Annotated,” Washington Post, 25 February 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/25 /the-cnntelemundo-republican-debate-transcript-annotated. Sarah Begley, “Read Donald Trump’s Speech to AIPAC,” Time, 21 March 2016, http:// time.com/4267058/donald-trump-aipac-speech-transcript/. Kevin Liptak, “Trump: ‘Nobody Knew Health Care Could Be So Complicated’ ,” CNN, 28 February 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/27/politics/trump-health-care-complicated/. Michael J. Lostumbo et al., “Overseas Basing of US Military Forces: An Assessment of Relative Costs,” RAND Research Report No. RR-201-OSD, 2013, https://www.rand.org /pubs/research_reports/RR201.html. The Middle East Contained 58.9 Percent of Total Global Oil Reserves in 1995, 55.0 Percent in 2005, and Just 47.3 Percent in 2015, BP Statistical Review of World Energy, June 2016, 7. See Andrew R. Hoehn et al., “Exploring America’s Role in a Turbulent World: Strategic Rethink,” RAND Research Brief No. RB-9944-RC, 2017, http://www.rand.org/pubs /research_briefs/RB9944.html. For a critical appraisal of Obama’s moves in Asia, see Victor Cha, “The Unfinished Legacy of Obama’s Pivot to Asia,” Foreign Policy, 6 September 2016, http://foreignpolicy .com/2016/09/06/the-unfinished-legacy-of-obamas-pivot-to-asia/. See, for instance, Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine,” The Atlantic, April 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/. Greg Jaffe and Missy Ryan, “Checkpoint,” Washington Post, 26 January 2016, https:// www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/01/26/the-u-s-was-supposed-to -leave-afghanistan-by-2017-now-it-might-take-decades. Thomas Walkom, “Donald Trump’s Realistic Retreat to Fortress America, Toronto Star, 25 January 2017, https://www.thestar.com/opinion/2017/01/25/donald-trumps-realistic -retreat-to-fortress-america-walkom.html. Charles Krauthammer, “President Trump and the ‘Madman Theory’ ,” Pittsburgh Gazette, 24 February 2017, http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/Op-Ed/2017/02/25/Charles -Krauthammer-President-Trump-and-the-Mad-man-The-ory/stories/201702250041. White House Office of the Press Secretary, “Remarks by President Trump on the Strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia,” Fort Myer, Arlington, Virginia, 21 August 2017, https:// www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/08/21/remarks-president-trump-strategy -afghanistan-and-south-asia. See Katherine Blakeley, “A Defense Buildup in the Near Term?” Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 3 August 2017, http://csbaonline.org/reports/a-defense-buildup -in-the-near-term.

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15.

16.

17.

18.

19. 20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

Tim Arango and Michael S. Schmidtoct, “Despite Difficult Talks, US and Iraq Had Expected Some American Troops to Stay,” New York Times, 21 October 2011, http://www .nytimes.com/2011/10/22/world/middleeast/united-states-and-iraq-had-not-expected -troops-would-have-to-leave.html. Peter Baker and Jonathan Weisman, “Obama Seeks Approval by Congress for Strike in Syria,” New York Times, 31 August 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/world /middleeast/syria.html. One program, launched by the Department of Defense, spent some $500 million training rebels, to little effect. Paul McLeary, “The Pentagon Wasted $500 Million Training Syrian Rebels. It’s About to Try Again,” Foreign Policy, 18 March 2016, http://foreignpolicy .com/2016/03/18/pentagon-wasted-500-million-syrian-rebels. Another program, led by the CIA, may have had more impact but was largely funded by Saudi Arabia. See Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo, “US Relies Heavily on Saudi Money to Support Syrian Rebels,” New York Times, 23 January 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/world /middleeast/us-relies-heavily-on-saudi-money-to-support-syrian-rebels.html. Jack Moore, “Trump’s War on Isis ‘Dramatically Accelerated’ Coalition Gains in Iraq and Syria,” Newsweek, 5 August 2017, http://www.newsweek.com/trump-war-isis-dramatically -accelerated-coalition-gains-iraq-and-syria-646962. Charlie May, “More Than Six Months in, What Has Trump Actually Done in the War on Terror?” 6 August 2017, http://www.salon.com/2017/08/06/trump-war-on-terror. Paul D. Shinkman, “Trump’s CIA Decision Dooms Syrian Rebels,” US News, 20 July 2017, https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-07-20/trumps-decision -on-cia-weapons-shipments-dooms-syrian-rebels. Noah Rothman, “Mission Creep in Syria”, Commentary magazine, 12 December 2017, https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/syria/mission -creep-syria/. “Iran Says It Could Quit Nuclear Deal If US Keeps Adding Sanctions,” Agence France-Presse, 15 August 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/16/iran-says-it-could-quit -nuclear-deal-if-us-keeps-adding-sanctions. For an artist’s conception of this, see Robert Mackey, “The West Bank Archipelago,” New York Times, 7 May 2009, https://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/the-west -bank-archipelago/. Jodi Rudoren and Jeremy Ashkenas, “Netanyahu and the Settlements,” New York Times, 12 March 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/03/12/world/middleeast /netanyahu-west-bank-settlements-israel-election.html; Elliot Abrams, “The Obama ‘Settlements’ Crisis,” National Review, 30 December 2016, http://www.nationalreview.com /article/443422/israeli-settlements-obama-freeze-went-too-far. Karen DeYoung, “How the US Came to Abstain on a UN Resolution Condemning Israeli Settlements,” Washington Post, 28 December 2016, https://www.washingtonpost .com/world/national-security/how-the-us-came-to-abstain-on-a-un-resolution -condemning-israeli-settlements/2016/12/28/fed102ee-cd38-11e6-b8a2-8c2a61b0436f _story.html.

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26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35. 36. 37.

38.

Jon Sharman, “Donald Trump’s Israel Ambassador Said Jews Who Back Two-State Solution Are Worse Than Nazi Collaborators,” 16 December 2016, http://www.independent .co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-david-friedman-israel-ambassador -j-street-worse-kapo-nazi-concentration-camps-a7478651.html. Aaron David Miller, “Could Jared Kushner Resolve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?” CNN, 18 January 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/18/opinions/could-jared-kushner -resolve-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict-miller/. Tom Batchelor, “Donald Trump ‘to Announce US Embassy Move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem’ ,” The Independent, 22 January 2017, http://www.independent.co.uk/news /world/middle-east/donald-trump-us-embassy-israel-tel-aviv-jerusalem-reports -israeli-media-a7540476.html. Daniel Shapiro, “Trump Sounds Like Obama on Israeli Settlements,” Foreign Policy, 3 February 2017, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/03/trump-sounds-like-obama-on -israeli-settlements. “Mahmoud Abbas Set to Meet Donald Trump in US Visit,” Al-Jazeera, 3 May 2017, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/05/mahmoud-abbas-meets-donald-trump-key -visit-170503140443451.html; Yasmeen Serhman, Trump’s Visit to Bethlehem,” The Atlantic, 23 May 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/05/trumps-visit-to -bethlehem/527742. Gardiner Harris, “Kushner to Meet with Mideast Leaders in Latest Attempt at Peace Deal,” 11 August, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/world/middleeast/jared-kushner -israeli-palestinian-peace-deal.html. Jennifer Rubin, “On Jerusalem, Context is Everything,” Washington Post, 6 December 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/12/06/on-jerusalem -context-is-everything. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “Statement by President Trump on Jerusalem”, 6 December 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/12/06 /statement-president-trump-jerusalem. Michele Durocher Dunne, “Integrating Democracy into US Middle East Policy,” Democracy and Rule of Law Project, Carnegie Papers, No. 50, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 2004. Fawaz Gerges, Obama and the Middle East (New York: St. Martin’s, 2012), 8. Steve Coll, “Trump’s Confusing Strike on Syria,” New Yorker, 17 April 2017, http://www .newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/17/trumps-confusing-strike-on-syria. Carol Morello, “Rex Tillerson Skips State Department’s Annual Announcement on Human Rights,” Washington Post, 3 March 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world /national-security/rex-tillerson-skips-state-departments-annual-announcement-on -human-rights-alarming-advocates/2017/03/03/7fbf8584-002d-11e7-8f41-ea6ed597e4ca _story.html. Richard Wike, Bruce Stokes, Jacob Poushter, and Janell Fetterolf, “US Image Suffers as Publics Around World Question Trump’s Leadership,” Pew Research Center, 26 June 2017, 59, http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/06/26/u-s-image-suffers-as-publics-around -world-question-trumps-leadership/.

21 DONALD TRUMP AND THE MIDDLE EAST F. G R E G O R Y G A U S E , I I I

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ith one very important exception, and despite a number of rhetorical and stylistic differences, the Trump administration’s approach to the Middle East is not substantially different from that of the Obama administration. President Barack Obama prioritized the fight against Salafi jihadist groups, including al-Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and their offshoots, above other regional goals, as has President Donald Trump. Both came to office evidencing a general reluctance to get involved in large-scale military actions, reflective of their common perception that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a mistake, although both proved willing to use military force in the region. Both publicly committed their administrations to finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, although Obama’s efforts there failed and the first ventures by Trump do not look promising.1 While Trump criticized Obama during the 2016 campaign for ignoring the interests of traditional American allies in the region, it is hard to sustain the proposition that the Obama administration substantially altered American policy toward Israel and Saudi Arabia and that the Trump administration is thus “restoring” past ties. The one significant difference in the Middle East policies of the two administrations regards Iran. President Trump identifies Iran as a major threat to American interests and took a tentative step in October 2017 toward scuttling the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the

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agreement between Iran, the five permanent members of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, Germany, and the European Union setting limits to Iran’s nuclear program. The Obama administration sought to engage Iran, mainly through the negotiations for the JCPOA, primarily to restrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions as an end in itself but also in the hopes that the nuclear deal might eventually lead to a moderation of Iran’s broader regional policies.2 The Trump administration rejects that logic, prioritizing containment, if not rollback, of Iranian influence in the Middle East and indicating that it might pursue regime change toward the Islamic Republic. In this harder line toward Iran, the Trump administration harks back to previous American policy, suggesting that Obama was more of the outlier than Trump on this issue. Both the Trump and Obama approaches toward the Middle East suffer from internal tensions that make policy consistency hard to achieve. Their evident reluctance to pursue a President George W. Bush–style policy of using large-scale military force to achieve American aims runs up against their commitment to battle ISIS and al-Qaeda and achieve other goals. Obama, whose opposition to the Iraq War was a major factor in his capture of the Democratic nomination and his general election victory in 2008, ended up committing forces to a regime change effort in Libya, vastly expanding American drone attacks in Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries, sending American troops (although in much smaller numbers) back to Iraq to fight ISIS, and sustaining a substantial American military commitment to Afghanistan. Trump, in just his first few months in office, has used American military power against the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad and increased American military involvement in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere in the region against ISIS and al-Qaeda. His commitment to roll back Iranian influence also risks escalating to a military confrontation. Trump’s particular style of governance also creates challenges for the achievement of his goals in the Middle East. The shoot-from-the-hip quality of Trump’s public pronouncements can mislead both friend and foe alike and complicate the implementation of policy. The breach between the American Gulf allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on one side and Qatar on the other that emerged in the summer of 2017 is but one example. The overwhelming presence of former and current officers on Trump’s foreign policy team means that a military

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establishment with significant sunk costs in the region will set the parameters of American involvement there, regardless of his previously stated opposition to long-term military commitments in the Middle East.

SURPRISIN G CON TIN UI T I ES

If President Trump made Middle East policy based solely on his rhetoric in the 2016 campaign, we would be seeing a substantially different American approach to the region. His constant focus on the terrorist threat and his promises of a new plan to confront ISIS would have led one to believe that a major departure on the counterterrorism front was in the offing. His anti-Muslim statements and the role in the campaign played by retired General Michael Flynn, whose extreme views on the nature of the threat from the region were well advertised, seemed to indicate a much more confrontational policy.3 His promise to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the dropping of support for a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians from the Republican Party platform, and his tweet in December 2016, after America failed to veto a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity, that Israel should “stay strong” and await his coming to office, signaled a move away from past presidents’ efforts to negotiate Arab-Israeli peace.4 Trump’s categorization of the JCPOA as a “disaster” and “the worst deal ever negotiated” signaled an immediate change in Iran policy.5 In fact, very little changed in Trump’s first year. The administration’s conduct of the war against ISIS basically followed the template established by the Obama administration: reliance on local allies, significant American air support, a relatively small number of American combat forces on the ground to assist, and a reluctance to expand the scope of American goals to include confronting the Assad regime.6 Given that the existing policy was basically working and that the rollback of ISIS’s territorial hold in both Iraq and Syria continued under the Trump administration, it is little wonder that major changes did not occur. President Trump did not change Obama’s penchant for using drones and special operations forces to attack terrorists in countries like Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia; he simply increased the frequency of such attacks.7 Far from reassessing

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policy in Afghanistan, Trump in August 2017 ordered an increase in the number of American troops there.8 Even when he decertified the JCPOA in October 2017, asserting that it did not serve American interests, he kicked the issue to Congress, which as of December 2017 has hesitated to impose sanctions on Iran that would place the US outside of the agreement.9 Flynn was removed as national security advisor within weeks of his appointment, replaced by General H. R. McMaster, who let it be known that the phrase “radical Islamic terror” was not a useful description of the threat facing the United States.10 The gap between campaign rhetoric and Trump administration policy is also apparent in the Arab-Israeli area. He spoke of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement as “the ultimate deal.” He visited Israel and met with Palestinian leaders on his first foreign trip in May 2017, encouraging Israel to be responsive to Arab states that were holding out the prospect of better relations in exchange for movement toward a Palestinian state. Most telling, Trump delegated the peace process portfolio to his son-in-law and arguably most trusted adviser, Jared Kushner.11 The prospects for success for Trump’s peace initiative are no greater than they were for Obama’s efforts in this regard, but that fact simply reaffirms the continuities in American Middle East policy. In November 2017 President Trump ordered the American embassy in Israel to be moved to Jerusalem, a highly symbolic and disruptive act, characteristic of his diplomatic style, but one that changed none of the realities on the ground. He paired that announcement with a recommitment to American involvement in the peace process.12 It was not unreasonable to assume that Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric on the campaign trail might complicate American relations with Muslim allies in the Middle East. The fact that his first major action upon taking office was an effort to ban travel to the United States from a number of Muslim-majority countries might have been expected to have led to backlashes in the region at both the elite and popular levels. But that has not happened. Saudi Arabia and Egypt, among other Muslim countries, overlooked Trump’s immigration policies and rhetoric and, because of their own problems with Obama, celebrated Trump’s arrival in office.13 The new president’s first foreign trip in May 2017 began in Saudi Arabia, where King Salman convened a meeting of dozens of leaders of Muslim countries for the occasion.14 On that visit, the Saudis agreed to a set of arms deals totaling more than $100 billion, although many of those deals

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had been in the works for some time and others were simply preliminary commitments, not actual contracts.15 The Saudis pulled out all the stops to ingratiate themselves with the new president. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi visited the White House in April 2017, with the two leaders sharing positive statements about each other and the state of Egyptian-American relations.16 Public opinion in the Muslim Middle East about the United States and President Trump was not particularly positive during the early months of his administration, but that is nothing new. The United States is normally unpopular in the Muslim world.17 If there is a public opinion revulsion against Trump, it has not affected regional states’ policies toward the United States. If America’s position in the Middle East was not negatively affected by Trump’s rhetoric and policies, neither was its position substantially improved, either. The atmospherics of the bilateral relationships with Israel and Saudi Arabia are certainly better under Trump. Both American allies had little sympathy for Obama, whom they saw as naïve in his outreach toward Iran and, in the case of the Netanyahu government in Israel, too willing to pressure Jerusalem for concessions to achieve a negotiated solution with the Palestinians. During the campaign, Trump promised to restore what he saw as Obama’s retreat from supporting Middle East allies. But it is hard to argue that the Obama administration actually did “abandon” the American role in the region. When Obama left office, more than fifty-eight thousand American military personnel were stationed in the region, on land and sea, including more than five thousand personnel assigned to the campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq and eight thousand four hundred personnel in Afghanistan.18 The campaign against ISIS was so well established that the Trump administration basically continued Obama’s policy there. Despite its misgivings, the Obama administration supported the Saudi campaign in Yemen with logistical and political support. It negotiated a series of arms deals with Riyadh and continued a deep engagement with the Saudis on intelligence issues. It also concluded a ten-year $38 billion memorandum of understanding on US military aid to Israel and offered what two authors term “unstinting military and security cooperation.”19 Trump has neither been as harmful nor as helpful regarding the American position in the region as either his worst critics or most enthusiastic boosters contend. In a word, not that much has changed.

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All this continuity raises the question: Why has someone so fond of disruption, so dismissive of his predecessors’ policies and achievements, so critical of recent American military campaigns in the region, so committed to an “America First” policy of radically reassessing overseas commitments brought about so little change in American Middle East policy? It is not from lack of interest. Trump has traveled to the region, received numerous Middle Eastern leaders in Washington, presided over sustained military engagement there, and even tweeted about it. It has to do with what political scientist Marc Lynch describes as the “structural realities” of the American position in the region.20 Those realities include an active post–9/11 counterterrorism agenda, domestic lobbies that support American involvement in the region, regional allies who are important to the counterterrorism agenda and other American interests demanding attention and commitment, and a US foreign policy and military establishment grooved into supporting the regional status quo through considerable American involvement. Pursuing goals that Trump has identified as central to his foreign policy agenda, like counterterrorism, makes it difficult to change other elements of Middle East policy, because those elements are necessary to sustain domestic and regional support for his overall agenda. For example, Trump authorized a missile attack on Syrian regime assets in May 2017 to punish al-Assad for the use of chemical weapons, despite his stated desire to stay out of the Syrian civil war.21 That attack, while in tension with Trump’s desire to avoid the Syrian imbroglio, was justified by his desire to restore what he saw as damaged American credibility in front of regional allies and to deter the use of weapons of mass destruction more generally.22 Trump frequently criticized Saudi Arabia on the campaign trail, and occasionally in office, portraying the Saudis as free riders who should be paying more for American military protection, but he quickly found that a strong relationship with Saudi Arabia was necessary for his counterterrorism and Iran policies.23 Barack Obama came to office in 2009 looking to pivot away from intense American military involvement in the Middle East, actively seeking an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, and, with the Arab Spring, seemingly committed to encouraging democratic change in the region. He left office with tens of thousands of American troops in the region; American involvement in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; a redoubled commitment to

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the War on Terror through drone strikes and special forces; no progress on peace in the Holy Land; and America still tightly connected to Arab authoritarians from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. It should not be surprising that Donald Trump could not radically change American Middle East policy in his early months in office.

A M AJO R CHA N GE? TRUMP POL ICY TOWA RD I RA N

The one area in which the Trump administration exhibited the greatest desire to change American policy in the Middle East is Iran. While Trump certified Iranian compliance with the JCPOA on the first two occasions the issue crossed his desk, he made it clear in July 2017 that he was looking for a rationale for the United States to declare Iran to be out of compliance and to increase American pressure on the country.24 He told the Wall Street Journal in an interview that month that he “would have had them [Iran] noncompliant 180 days ago” and that he expected Iran would be declared noncompliant at the next review.25 As mentioned, he finally took the step of decertifying the JCPOA in November 2017, but left it up to Congress to determine what new sanctions, if any, would be placed on Iran. As of December 2017, then, technically the United States was still complying with the requirements of the JCPOA. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, at a congressional hearing in June 2017, said that US policy is “to work towards support of those elements inside of Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of that government,” reviving the issue of regime change that the Obama administration repeatedly foreswore.26 The Trump administration approved a series of new sanctions against Iran in the summer of 2017, ostensibly unrelated to its nuclear program and thus not a violation of the JCPOA, although Iran has formally charged that these steps violate the agreement.27 These signals of a new, harder line against Iran were accompanied by an increased willingness to confront Iran and its allies across the region. After threats by then candidate Trump to shoot Iranian ships “out of the water” if they harass American naval vessels in the Persian Gulf, there were several incidents of American ships warning Iranians against provocative behavior in 2017, including two times when warning shots were fired.28

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Twice in June 2017 American fighter jets shot down Iranian-made drones that were flying toward American-backed Syrian fighters and their American advisers; a US plane also shot down a Russian-made Syrian warplane that was attacking America’s Syrian partners during the same month.29 In May 2017, American jets bombed an Iranian-backed militia convoy in Syria that was heading toward an area where US Special Forces had been deployed.30 Warnings of the possibility of a direct American-Iranian military confrontation have been heard from responsible voices in the Washington foreign policy community.31 Trump’s hard line against Iran does not make him an outlier in the recent history of American Middle East policy. If anything, his jaundiced view of Tehran is more consistent with the approach taken by American presidents since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 than Obama’s effort at outreach. The Reagan administration sent the US Navy into the Persian Gulf in 1987 to confront Iran, leading to a number of armed encounters, culminating in the shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner in July 1988. The Clinton administration’s policy in the Gulf of “dual containment” equated the threats from the Islamic Republic and from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. George W. Bush included Iran in the “axis of evil” after the 9/11 attacks, despite the fact that Iran had no involvement in that event. American hostility toward Iran is reciprocated by most Iranians leaders, including the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who evince a profound mistrust of and ideological opposition to the United States. Iran has gone to great lengths to oppose American policy throughout the Middle East, including directly supporting groups that killed American soldiers during the Iraq War.32 One can argue with the wisdom of the Trump administration’s policy toward Iran, but it is part of what is now a long American tradition.

ST Y LE I M P EDIN G SUBSTANCE: THE T RU MP MODU S O P ERANDI A N D THE MID DLE EAST

President Trump’s Middle East agenda is characterized more by continuity than change, even allowing for his departure from the Obama approach to Iran. But his unique and disruptive style damaged his ability to achieve

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his goals in the region. His recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in November 2017 is one example. While there was no doubt that his predecessors considered the holy city to be the Israeli capital, they were not willing to alienate Arab and Muslim opinion by acting unilaterally to officially recognize that fact. That move would have come in the context of an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement. Trump’s decision certainly set him apart from his predecessors, which seems to be an important element in his policy-making process, was praised by many of his supporters at home and welcomed by the Israeli government. But, by provoking public opinion in the Arab and Muslim worlds, the decision makes it more difficult for the Palestinian Authority and Arab states to support whatever peace initiative the Trump administration advances in 2018.33 It also gave the Israeli government something it has always wanted, seemingly without requiring a quid pro quo that would have made progress toward an Israeli-Palestinian agreement more likely. Another example of President Trump’s improvisational style is the spat among American allies that emerged in May 2017 between Qatar on one side and Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the other.34 The Saudis and the Emiratis wanted Qatar to end its backing for Islamist groups, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, which Riyadh and Abu Dhabi dislike; its support for the satellite news channels of Al Jazeera; and its close relations with Iran. The Saudi and Emirati moves to isolate Qatar came just weeks after Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia. Secretary of State Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis immediately pursued conventional diplomacy, seeking to end the dispute among American allies through quiet contacts. President Trump undercut their efforts, with a tweet supporting the Saudi-Emirati position, implying that his visit had led to the Saudis and the UAE taking these steps.35 As of December 2017, the tensions among the Gulf States have persisted. It is not unreasonable to assume that Saudi and Emirati leaders thought they had at least a tacit green light from the new president to escalate the issue with Qatar. The idea that proposals put forward by cabinet secretaries might not be the final word on American policy and that direct appeals to the White House might lead to different answers on sensitive topics has prolonged the Gulf dispute. Trump’s penchant for off-the-cuff remarks and tweets has certainly complicated the resolution of this issue.

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Notably, just one month after Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia, King Salman shook up the line of succession, replacing Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, a long-time favorite of Washington and primary contact on counterterrorism issues, with his young son, Prince Muhammad bin Salman. Some in the Trump White House wanted to take credit for the change, which might or might not end up being in America’s interest.36 Given the opacity of Saudi royal family politics, it is impossible to determine whether Trump had any role in the change. But the effects of American presidents’ comments, lack of comments, and body language cannot be underestimated in the calculations of Middle East actors, both friends and adversaries. The fact that President Trump is so cavalier in his comments on diplomatic issues has had a negative effect on American diplomacy in the Gulf and could cause more problems in the future. Reports have emerged that President Trump has delegated to Secretary Mattis the authority to determine troop levels in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria,37 although it is not completely clear whether he will be as hands-off on military decisions as has been depicted.38 If the president does in fact allow these key decisions to be made by the secretary and his military advisers, he will have given an institution with more than a decade of sunk costs in these conflicts and a propensity to see the possibility of solving any problem with increased troop levels the decisive say in American military involvement in the region.39 His secretary of defense, national security advisor, and, as of August 2017, his chief of staff are all generals who served in either Afghanistan, Iraq, or both. Deference to military advice at the strategic level could run directly against Trump’s desire to avoid greater American commitment in Middle Eastern conflicts.

CONCLUSION

President Trump’s Middle East policy does not represent a significant departure from that of his predecessors. Although his approach to Iran is quite different from that of President Obama, it represents a return to the norm of hostile bilateral relations that Obama tried to change. It is clear that Trump wanted a new approach toward the Middle East—that is,

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less military involvement and greater cooperation with Russia. But he has been stymied in making significant changes by the difficulty of untangling the web of American interests in the area; the power of sunk costs for the American military and foreign policy establishment; and, in the case of Russia, his forfeiting of trust across a bipartisan range of opinion that he can manage the relationship with President Vladimir Putin. The big question about the Trump administration in the Middle East is not strategic direction, but whether it will be competent enough to avoid major problems and achieve short-term goals.

NOTES 1. 2.

3.

4. 5.

6.

For a larger argument about the continuities in Trump foreign policy, see Elliott Abrams, “Trump the Traditionalist,” Foreign Affairs 96, no. 4 (July/August 2017): 10–16. President Obama was always careful to downplay the likelihood of any significant shortterm change in Iranian regional policy stemming from the nuclear agreement and to emphasize that the agreement was good in and of itself, even if Iranian behavior in other areas did not change. However, he did evince a hope that more moderate voices in Iran, with whom the United States negotiated the JCPOA, might lead to different Iranian policies more generally. He told Thomas Friedman in 2015, “The so-called moderate in Iran is not going to be suddenly somebody who we feel reflects universal issues like human rights, but there are better or worse approaches that Iran can take relative to our interests and the interests of our allies, and we should see where we can encourage that better approach.” Thomas L. Friedman, “Obama Makes His Case on Iran Nuclear Deal,” New York Times, 14 July 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/opinion/thomas -friedman-obama-makes-his-case-on-iran-nuclear-deal.html. Flynn’s 2016 book, coauthored with noted Islamophobe Michael Ledeen, argued that the US government had underestimated the threat from Islamist groups across the board— Sunni and Shia, overtly violent and more “political,” and not taken aggressive enough actions against them and their state supporters, like Iran. The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies (New York: St. Martin’s, 2016). Dana H. Allin and Steven N. Simon, “Trump and the Holy Land,” Foreign Affairs 96, no. 2 (March/April 2017): 40, 42–43. Yeganeh Torbati, “Trump Election Puts Iran Nuclear Deal on Shaky Ground,” Reuters, 9 November 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-iran -idUSKBN13427E. Karen DeYoung, “Pentagon Plan to Defeat ISIS Looks Very Much Like Obama’s Approach,” Washington Post, 28 June 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national -security/pentagon-plan-to-defeat-isis-looks-very-much-like-obamas-approach /2017/06/28/d43aa1b6-5c30-11e7-a9f6-7c3296387341_story.html.

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7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

Micah Zenko, “Donald Trump Is Pushing America’s Special Forces Past the Breaking Point,” Foreign Policy, 1 August 2017, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/01/donald-trump -is-pushing-americas-special-forces-past-the-breaking-point-jsoc-navy-seal/. “Full Transcript and Video: Trump’s Speech on Afghanistan,” New York Times, 21 August 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/21/world/asia/trump-speech-afghanistan.html?_r=0 (last accessed 18 December 2017). Anne Gearan and Abby Phillip, “Trump sets new conditions for U.S. to stay in Iran nuclear deal, tossing the issue to Congress,” Washington Post, 13 October 2017, https:// www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-to-set-new-conditions-for-us-to-stay-in -iran-nuclear-deal-tossing-issue-to-congress/2017/10/13/39ac3894-af82-11e7-9e58 -e6288544af98_story.html?utm_term=.feb859ae1e58 (last accessed 18 December 2017). Evan Perez, “National Security Adviser: Term ‘Radical Islamic Terrorism’ Isn’t Helpful,” CNN Politics, 25 February 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/25/politics/nsa-radical -islamic-terror-term-unhelpful/index.html. “Statement by President Trump on Jerusalem,” 6 December 2017, https://www.whitehouse .gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-trump-jerusalem/ (last accessed 18 December 2017). Nathan Thrall, “Trump Chases His ‘Ultimate Deal’,” New Yorker, 22 May 2017, http:// www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trump-chases-his-ultimate-deal. Susan B. Glasser, “Why the Middle East Hated Obama but Loves Trump,” Politico, 31 July 2017, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/31/donald-trump-middle-east -barack-obama-215441. Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear, “Trump Softens Tone on Islam but Calls for Purge of ‘Foot Soldiers of Evil’ ,” New York Times, 21 May 2017, https://www.nytimes .com/2017/05/21/world/middleeast/trump-saudi-arabia-islam-speech.html. Mark Lander, Eric Schmitt, and Matt Apuzzo, “$110 Billion Weapons Sale to Saudis Has Jared Kushner’s Personal Touch,” New York Times, 18 May 2017, https://www.nytimes .com/2017/05/18/world/middleeast/jared-kushner-saudi-arabia-arms-deal-lockheed .html; Bruce Riedel, “The $110 Billion Arms Sale to Saudi Arabia Is Fake News,” Markaz blog, Brookings Institution, 5 June 2017, https://www.brookings.edu/blog /markaz/2017/06/05/the-110-billion-arms-deal-to-saudi-arabia-is-fake-news/. “Donald Trump Says US Is ‘Very Much Behind’ Egypt’s Sisi,” Al Jazeera, 3 April 2017, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/04/donald-trump-welcomes-egypt-sisi-white -house-170403164810319.html. Richard Wike, Bruce Stokes, Jacob Poushter, and Janell Fetterolf, “Worldwide, Few Confident in Trump or His Policies,” Global Attitudes and Trends, Pew Research Center, 26 June 2017, http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/06/26/worldwide-few-confident-in-trump-or -his-policies/. For a broader discussion of public opinion toward the United States in the Arab world, see Amaney A. Jamal, Robert O. Keohane, David Romney, and Dustin Tingley, “Anti-Americanism and Anti-Interventionism in Arabic Twitter Discourses,” Perspectives on Politics 13, no. 1 (March 2015): 55–73. Ash Carter, “The Logic of American Strategy in the Middle East,” Survival 59, no. 2 (April/May 2017): 13–24.

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19. 20. 21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

Allin and Simon, “Trump and the Holy Land,” 38–39. Marc Lynch, “Belligerent Minimalism: The Trump Administration and the Middle East,” Washington Quarterly 39, no. 4 (Winter 2017): 128. In the summer of 2017, Trump ended the Central Intelligence Agency’s covert program to arm and train “moderate” Syrian rebels, a program begun by the Obama administration that had little impact on the battlefield in Syria. Greg Jaffe and Adam Entous, “Trump Ends Covert CIA Program to Arm Anti-Assad Rebels in Syria, a Move Sought by Moscow,” Washington Post, 19 July 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world /national-security/trump-ends-covert-cia-program-to-arm-anti-assad-rebels-in-syria -a-move-sought-by-moscow/2017/07/19/b6821a62-6beb-11e7-96ab-5f38140b38cc_story .html. Michael R. Gordon, Helene Cooper, and Michael D. Shear, “Dozens of US Missiles Hit Air Base in Syria,” New York Times, 6 April 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06 /world/middleeast/us-said-to-weigh-military-responses-to-syrian-chemical-attack .html. Stephen J. Adler, Jeff Mason, and Steve Holland, “Exclusive: Trump Complains Saudis Not Paying Fair Share for US Defense,” Reuters, 27 April 2017, http://www.reuters.com /article/us-usa-trump-mideast-exclusive-idUSKBN17U08A. David E. Sanger, “Trump Seeks Way to Declare Iran in Violation of Nuclear Deal,” New York Times, 27 July 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/world/middleeast /trump-iran-nuclear-agreement.html. “Excerpts: Donald Trump’s Interview with the Wall Street Journal,” Wall Street Journal, 25 July 2017, https://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2017/07/25/donald-trumps-interview-with -the-wall-street-journal-edited-transcript/. Eric Pelofsky, “Tillerson Lets Slip He Wants Regime Change in Iran,” Newsweek, 27 June 2017, http://www.newsweek.com/tillerson-lets-slip-he-wants-regime-change-iran -629096. Rick Gladstone, “Iran Says New US Sanctions Violate Nuclear Deal,” New York Times, 1 August 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear -trump-sanctions-complaint.html. On Trump’s threat against the Iranians, see Mary Louise Kelly, “Foreign Policy Experts Push Back on Trump’s Iranian Ships Comment,” NPR, 13 September 2016, http://www .npr.org/2016/09/13/493721843/foreign-policy-experts-push-back-on-trumps-remark-to -shoot-iranian-ships-out-of; on the incidents in the Persian Gulf in 2017, see Ed Adamczyk, “US Navy Ship Fires Warning Shot at Iranian Ship in Persian Gulf,” UPI, 25 July 2017, http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2017/07/25/US-Navy-ship-fires-warning -shots-at-Iranian-ship-in-Persian-Gulf/3211500997047/?nll=1. Michael R. Gordon, “American Warplane Shoots Down Iranian-Made Drone Over Syria,” New York Times, 20 June 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/world /middleeast/american-warplane-shoots-down-iranian-made-drone-over-syria.html. Dennis Ross, “Trump Is on a Collision Course with Iran,” Politico, 20 June 2017, http:// www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/20/trump-foreign-policy-syria-middle -east-iran-215285.

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31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

Philip Gordon, “A Vision of Trump at War,” Foreign Affairs 96, no. 3 (May/June 2017): 10–19; Paul R. Pillar, “The Growing Danger of War With Iran,” Lobelog, 28 June 2017, http://lobelog.com/the-growing-danger-of-war-with-iran/. “OIC Draft Declaration Says Trump’s Jerusalem Move Marks U.S. Withdrawal From Peace Process,” New York Times, 13 December 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/reuters /2017/12/13/world/middleeast/13reuters-usa-trump-israel-draft.html (last accessed 18 December 2017). On the recent history of American-Iranian relations and American policy toward the Persian Gulf more generally, see Ray Takeyh, Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); David Crist, The Twilight War: The Secret History of America’s Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran, (New York: Penguin Books, 2012); and F. Gregory Gause, III, The International Relations of the Persian Gulf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). For background on this incident, see Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, “The Gulf ’s Demands on Qatar Look Designed to Be Rejected,” The Atlantic, 24 June 2017, https://www.theatlantic .com/international/archive/2017/06/qatar-saudi-arabia-trump-mattis-gcc-uae/531474/; Hussein Ibish, “Unfulfilled 2014 Riyadh Agreement Defines Current GCC Rift,” The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, 6 June 2017, http://www.agsiw.org/unfulfilled -2014-riyadh-agreement-defines-current-gcc-rift/. Mark Lander, “Trump Takes Credit for Saudi Move Against Qatar, a US Military Partner,” New York Times, 6 June 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/world/middleeast /trump-qatar-saudi-arabia.html. Mark Lander and Mark Mazzetti, “Trump’s Preferred Candidate Wins Again, This Time in Saudi Arabia,” New York Times, 21 June 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21 /world/middleeast/trump-saudi-arabia-mohammed-bin-salman.html. Michael R. Gordon, “Trump Gives Mattis Authority to Send More Troops to Afghanistan,” New York Times, 13 June 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/world/asia /mattis-afghanistan-military.html. Steve Holland and John Walcott, “Trump, Frustrated by Afghan war, Suggests Firing US Commander: Officials,” Reuters, 2 August 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article /us-usa-trump-afghanistan-idUSKBN1AI2Z3. Paul Pillar, “Trump and the Middle East,” National Interest 147 (January/February 2017): 49.

22 US-RUSSIA RELATIONS UNHINGED R O B E R T L E GVO L D

I

n the first half-year of the Trump administration, United States-Russian relations sped through a series of phases only to end suspended basically where they were on Election Day, 8 November 2016—badly damaged, friction-laden, and immobile.1 Whatever muddled hopes Russian President Vladimir Putin and his entourage may have had for better times with Trump in the White House and whatever obscure intentions President Trump may have had of improving relations, the two sides remain mired in the new Cold War into which they had plunged in the last years of the Obama administration.2 Their leaders were like figures in straitjackets: the more they struggled, the more their straitjackets tightened. Straitjackets, it might be noted, of their own manufacture, although each was of a different design. Trump was hamstrung by a Congress that was angry over the Russians’ interference in the presidential election and the possibility that Trump’s people had helped them, and in any event, persuaded that he meant to “go soft” on Putin. Putin’s constraints were self-imposed. Much as he may have wished to “normalize” the US-Russian relationship, his jaded view of what drives US foreign policy left him unwilling or, worse, unable to do his part to make progress possible. Yes, both appeared to share the view that the two countries were in a deep hole and needed to stop digging. Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, told the Senate appropriations subcommittee in June 2017, “Our relationship is at the lowest level it’s been at since the Cold War and it’s

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spiraling down. The two greatest nuclear powers in the world cannot have this kind of a relationship. We have to stabilize it and we have to start finding a way back.”3 The day after Trump’s election, Putin, noting the “degraded state of relations” between the two countries, spoke of the need to “restore fully fledged bilateral relations” between them, because of their “special responsibility  .  .  . to sustain global security and stability.”4 But neither side seemed to know how, and between November 2016 and June 2017, their moods seesawed. Putin and his people—indeed, the Russian public in general—clearly wanted Trump to win the election, but they did not think he would. They saw Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton as a continuation of the Obama administration, only worse, and many commentators, even among Putin’s critics, predicted an inevitable military confrontation between the United States and Russia soon after she entered office. Trump’s victory came as a pleasant surprise, and, while still wary, they let themselves hope that the new administration would shift course, perhaps even rethink the sanctions regime that was battering the Russian economy. One assumes that they also welcomed the retreat from a traditional US global role implied by the “America First” theme of Trump’s inaugural address. After only a few weeks in office, however, senior administration officials began leveling familiar criticism of Russian actions in Ukraine, Syria, and elsewhere. By the end of February, Trump reversed himself on key issues. He assured Chinese leader Xi Jinping that the United States’ “One China” policy had not changed; told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe that the United States remained committed to its mutual defense pact with Japan; and informed the European Union’s high representative, Federica Mogherini, that the United States would honor the Iran nuclear deal, thus creating the impression that he would not radically alter US policy, including its surly approach to Russia.5 By early April, following the US missile strike on Syria in retaliation for its apparent use of chemical weapons, any early optimism had disappeared into an angry fog of recrimination. Russia’s Prime Minister, Dmitri Medvedev, announced that US actions had “completely ruined” the relationship.6 A week later, the seesaw tipped in the other direction. Tillerson’s first visit to Moscow, while treated by most observers as more evidence that the relationship was floundering, in fact was quite productive. In meetings with Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov,

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Tillerson repeated the US indictment of recent Russian actions—minus any reference to interference in the US election—but stressed the importance of halting the “degradation” in relations and somehow finding a way back to a more constructive path. The two sides agreed to have deputy foreign ministers consult on ways to remove so-called irritants in the relationship—such as the squabbling over the treatment of each side’s diplomats and diplomatic facilities—and then explore the possibility of more extensive “strategic stability talks.”7 Over the next month or two, despite the growing tempest back in the United States over Russian interference in the US presidential election, the modestly rekindled hopes that the two countries could do business carried through Lavrov’s White House meeting with Trump in May and the much-anticipated Putin-Trump encounter at the July 2017 G-20 Hamburg summit. During Lavrov’s May visit, the two sides had discussed the possibility of working together to establish “de-escalation” zones in Syria, and at the Hamburg summit, they agreed to create one in southwest Syria. Putin said of his meeting with Trump, “If we can build a relationship along the lines of our conversation yesterday, then there is every reason to believe we can restore, at least to a certain degree, the level of co-operation we need.”8 Less than a month later, however, Putin ordered the United States to cut its diplomatic presence in Russia by 755 staff. This was in retaliation for US Senate legislation adding new Russian sanctions in response to Russian meddling in the election and blocking the president’s authority to remove them without Senate approval. The vote was 98–2, and a reluctant but resigned Trump indicated that he would sign the bill. Said Putin, “We were waiting for quite a long time that maybe something would change for the better, were holding out hope that the situation would change somehow. But it appears that even if it changes someday it will not change soon.”9 Thus, as fall approached, the seesaw seesawed, quivering around something of an equilibrium point, but blocked from any significant upward movement by a giant new impediment. The quivering was evident, on one hand, when, after meeting with Kurt Volker, the administration’s special envoy for Ukraine, on 21 August, his Russian counterpart Vladislav Surkov characterized their exchange as “constructive and useful,” saying that it had produced fresh ideas for resolving the Ukrainian crisis.10 On the other hand, the next day, the US Department of Treasury announced

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new sanctions imposed on a Russian company and four individuals for aiding North Korea’s nuclear and missile-development programs. As summer drew to a close, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, while visiting Ukraine, charged that Russia sought “to redraw international borders by force, undermining the sovereign and free nations of Europe,” and indicated that the administration was near a decision to provide lethal arms to Ukraine.11 There the relationship stood, wavering unsteadily between moments of minor progress and new instances of heightened tension. The future remained muddy, save for one large looming specter. By the time the US Senate voted 98–2 for new Russian sanctions and signaled that it meant to keep the administration on a short tether when dealing with Russia, the issue of Russia’s role in US elections—past and future—could no longer be passed off as a side issue or a political distraction. It had emerged as central to the relationship, as important an issue as Ukraine, Syria, or an endangered Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty—indeed, for the US Congress, one that now took precedence over any other. Unless it could somehow be resolved, there seemed small chance that the US-Russian relationship would escape its current paralysis. Escaping seemed all the more difficult because of the Russian leadership’s perspective on the issue. Even if Putin knew, while never confessing, what his government, its agents, or their surrogates did during the US election, almost certainly, he and those around him saw the uproar as strangely out of proportion, a curious artifact of American politics and a cudgel used to bash the Trump administration. Yet, unless Russian officials came to understand that the issue was not simply an idiosyncrasy of US politics, but for Senate Democrats and their hardline Republican counterparts as well as most of the US intelligence community a matter of national security because they believed Russia sought to undermine the integrity of the US electoral system, there would be no path forward.

OBSTACL ES AND IMPE R AT I V ES

US-Russian relations are where they are because of actions, some misguided, some inadvertent, by both sides over the two decades after the

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collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991—none more destructive than the Russian seizure of Crimea and intervention in the separatist war in eastern Ukraine. This was the turning point that sent the relationship careening over the cliff. But the headwind that stymies any effort to dig out of the hole where the two are lodged has been generated by the stories each side tells itself about the other. The dominant catchphrase on the US side says Russia is bent on undermining a US-led global order. For many in Washington, the US media, and much of the expert community, this is not because of Russia’s interaction with the outside world, including the United States, but because of the regime’s needs: it needs an external enemy, hence, the anti-Americanism; it cannot afford democracy creeping toward its borders, hence, its actions in Ukraine; and when economics as a source of legitimacy flags, it resorts to crude nationalism, hence, the theft of Crimea. On the other side, the equally warped and debilitating narrative has it that the United States, in its frustration as its preponderance in world politics crumbles, still insists on imposing its fiat by force without regard to international law or the interests of others. Its core strategy has become regime change wherever and by whatever means it chooses, ultimately targeting Russia itself. Needless to say, one narrative set against the other leaves little room for repairing this badly damaged relationship. Against this headwind, even modest progress requires the two leaderships to set aside for the moment their prevailing narratives and entertain a relatively risk-free alternative. In the US case, this might be one that takes Russia now and into the future as an embodiment of its past. The United States would have to view Russia as insistent on its great-power status as essential to the country’s survival, less set on damaging US policy than on compelling US respect, driven by historical notions of what makes the state strong, not least because the strong state is seen as the essence of Russia’s being, and willing to push against external barriers until met with superior force.12 On the Russian side, it might be one that views the United States as struggling to redefine its global role, unnerved by the turmoil in the greater Middle East and potential instability in Europe and East Asia, prone to react in ways Moscow disapproves of, but not an existential threat to the regime or determined to destroy its legitimate security interests. They then might test the plausibility of this alternative narrative by first gingerly trying to engage in a strategic dialogue with the other side.

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Led by senior officials who hold the confidence of the two presidents, the point would be to get at the underlying sources of the trouble—that is, to find some way to face directly the wellsprings of mistrust, the mismatch in narratives, the basis for their grievances, and the limited hopes they have.13 In May, the two sides agreed to hold “strategic stability talks” at the deputy foreign ministers level.14 This was a start, but their focus remains unclear, as does whether they will probe deeply enough to get to the root of the problem. They should also, however, test this scenario in another way, either by interrupting the tit-for-tat cycle of retaliatory measures or by cautiously offering a constructive first step. When the United States imposed its latest round of sanctions on Russia in August 2017 and Russian officials indicated that their side would not respond, this may have been a modest attempt to break the cycle.15 Similarly, the fact that in September 2017 Russia executed the large quadrennial military exercise on North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) borders (Zapad 2017) at levels lower than anticipated by nervous NATO allies and without a clear-cut nuclear phase, might have been seen as a constructive first step. If the United States and NATO had then focused on trimming back the nature of its own exercises, it might have been taken as a small step encouraging one or both sides to reconsider ways of damping down the military buildup on a divided Europe’s new central front.16 It would not take extraordinary imagination to devise other steps that satisfy one or the other criterion, only the will to try. But unless the two leaderships find some way to remove the large obstacles that block a path forward, these moves will lead nowhere. First among these barriers is the question of Russian meddling in US elections. It stands athwart almost any imaginable cooperative outcome in the Ukrainian crisis, any durable partnership in dealing with the Syrian civil war, and any likely resolution saving the INF Treaty. In this case as in the others, no progress is likely, unless both sides—and the stress must be on both sides—rethink the way they have formulated the problem, adjust the outcome they seek, and alter the method for achieving it. A solution to the election interference issue can only be found through quiet diplomacy that is forward-looking and without the pillory, and focused on the heart of the matter (a disruption or tainting of the actual voting process), with the aim of agreeing on verifiable red lines.

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Progress here may then facilitate progress elsewhere—but, again, only if positions are rethought. In Ukraine, the mutual objective should be a stable peace in eastern Ukraine, an end to Russia’s direct patronage of the separatist regimes in Donbas, and steps leading to the normalization of bilateral Russian-Ukrainian relations, particularly in the economic sphere. Holding a resolution of the Ukrainian crisis hostage to the full implementation of the 2015 Minsk II agreement—that is, to the political settlement required by the agreement—guarantees a permanent stalemate.17 In the Syrian case, progress should be easier, because, in the abstract, Russia and the United States share objectives: viz., an end to the violence, a stable government in Damascus with legitimacy in the eyes of the Sunni majority population and secure against jihadist control, and a common fighting front against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In reality, however, moving in this direction requires each side to risk trusting the other in the initial phases of cooperation—say, the expansion of de-escalation zones—and without progress on the election interference and other issues, the readiness to risk trust will not be there. In the case of the imperiled INF Treaty, the two sides need to stand back and weigh seriously how much they value the agreement and whether they are willing to bear the costs of losing it. Does the United States want to answer the alleged Russian violation, as many in Congress urge, by funding a new weapons system that clearly violates the treaty and encourages Russia to move toward full-scale development of a system directly threatening the United States’ European allies or by threatening to block the renewal of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) when that time comes in 2021? The Russian military and others in the national security establishment have never cared for the INF Treaty, persuaded as they are that in a neighborhood of states with intermediate-range nuclear weapons, they need their own. But is the Russian leadership ready to sink this treaty, if the consequence will be to ensure no chance that the US Senate will approve any new arms control agreement, including further constraints on strategic nuclear arms? So, considering the strength of the headwind and the modest odds that the two governments will recast their approach to the large roadblocks standing in their way, including the paroxysmal issue of Russian election interference, a betting person is likely to wager that if the two sides

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manage to ease tensions and do some business together, their détente will be a limited and fragile affair. In short, the watchword will at best be “averting confrontation” or “skillfully managing” rather than hoping to “permanently resolve” the basic tensions dividing the two countries.18 This is as ambitious as most commentators in both countries, including the most constructive, dare be. It falls short—far short of what should be the calculations driving US and Russian policy.

THE STA K ES

If, as it feels to many, the world is stumbling into an unknown but potentially dangerous future, and, if the country with the greatest capacity for good or ill also faces an uncertain road ahead, foreign policy, whether Russian or US, should not be trifling. It should not be fixed on narrow near-term preoccupations. And it should not be without strategic vision. That it is so in both countries ought to be a major source of concern and a focus for fresh and bolder thinking among serious analysts. Two profound challenges loom before the United States—neither of which in the present political circumstances it is capable of addressing, and both of which have immense implications for the US-Russian relationship. One cuts to the core of the US role in the world. The other involves a vital strategic choice. In the first instance, if US leadership wishes, as it should, to see the post–World War II liberal international order sustained, it must reconceive the way that the United States plays its role. No longer can the United States be the system’s ultimate arbiter and guarantor. No longer can it impose its standards, worthy as they may be, on whomever it thinks necessary and by whatever means it chooses. And no longer can it operate with an open-ended understanding of what constitutes the liberal international order, including the intrusive promotion of human rights, a normative basis for determining the legitimacy of sovereign states, and a selective norm for justifying the use of force. Instead, if the United States is to contribute effectively to saving an order that has served it well, it will have to learn to lead in partnership with others, to co-manage, not preside over the system, to modify rules and give voice to rising powers that feel disenfranchised by the system as currently

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structured, and to accept curbs on when and how it uses its power as well as who and what gives it license to act. Embedded at the heart of what it will take to recast the US role to save a liberal international order is a new strategic imperative. Although not framed in these terms, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Paul Wasserman, in Brzezinski’s final contribution before his death, wisely urged President Trump “to recognize that the ideal long-term solution is one in which the three militarily dominant powers—the United States, China, and Russia—work together to support global stability.”19 A modified and more equitable liberal international order cannot be achieved unless the United States, China, and Russia work together. On the three great issues that threaten to undermine any international order (liberal or otherwise)—the rising threat of nuclear catastrophe in an increasingly dangerous multipolar nuclear world, the chaos from conflicts generated by climate change, and the prospect of turbulent change in and around the Eurasian core— cooperation (or not) will be decisive. If order rather than disorder is to prevail in coming years, global governance will likely depend on a honeycomb of disparate collaborations: a G-10 or G-12 of the world’s largest economies to ensure global economic growth and stability, cooperation between the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and NATO to deal with instability in the Northern Tier, the six-party talks to address North Korean nuclear weapons (like the five-party effort in the Iranian case), bilateral and multilateral formats to constrain the most destabilizing developments among nuclear-weapons possessing states, and a restructured United Nation’s Security Council to manage explosive regional conflicts. If this honeycomb of mechanisms is to have coherence and a cumulative effect, it will only be because the United States, China, and Russia are collaborating, not competing. The same will be true of a second dimension required for a stable liberal international order: dueling integration projects, such as the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Union as well as competing trade regimes like the follow-on to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and China’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership will have to be reconciled. This will not happen if China and the United States or Russia and the West led by the United States remain at odds. If in the penumbra of a vague but potentially fraught international future and a convulsive domestic passage, the United States faces historic

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choices (whether its leaders realize it or not), the same is true of Russia. Russian analyst Sergey Karaganov has argued that “the world’s three largest powers—the ‘big troika’—must come together to create the conditions for a peaceful transition to a new, more stable world order.”20 His urging rests on the assumption that a “more stable world order” should be based on enlarging the field of cooperation among a widening circle of major powers, eventually leading to a “concert of powers,” the starting point for which should be a collaboration among the United States, China, and Russia. This is not terribly different from the international order that scholar Dmitri Trenin envisages in his book, Should We Fear Russia? “a transcontinental/transoceanic system,” based on a “rough equilibrium among the great powers,” in which the United States, China, and Russia “are essentially satisfied that their security is not threatened by one or both of the other two great powers,” a system tolerant of “political-ideological pluralism” that is dependent on “mutual respect.”21 Only if Russia does its part—and China, too—does any of this have a chance. This is where the larger issues at stake intrude, where the price paid for the new US-Russian Cold War surfaces, and where the low expectations and lethargy that dominate the mood in Moscow and Washington exert their destructive pull. Adequately addressing the grave challenges that Russia and the United States will face over the next two decades requires two prerequisites. The first is that each side discipline the casual assumptions that have misdirected its policy toward the other. The second longer term and more substantial requirement is that each develop a strategic vision for how the US-Russian relationship is to fit into the international order that it wishes to see emerge. In my book Return to Cold War, I tried to do that for the US-Russian component.22 Its five parts reflect the vast stakes the two countries have in the relationship but are failing to act on, a failure that bears directly on how dystopian the emerging international order will be. They begin with the need for US and Russian leadership to bring greater stability to a new and increasingly dangerous multipolar nuclear world. The perils present during the original Cold War remain—namely, the risk of a nuclear accident (and there were many), the accidental use of a nuclear weapon, the inadvertent escalation to nuclear war, and a war consciously fought with nuclear weapons. One of them, the chance of an inadvertent nuclear conflict, poses a growing risk, and, if unchecked, raises uncomfortably high the

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likelihood that nuclear weapons will be used at some imaginable point in the not too distant future. Unrecognized—or, at least, unacknowledged— by either side, the destabilizing effects of technological advances as the United States, Russia, China, India, and Pakistan modernize their nuclear forces, the line increasingly blurred between conventional and nuclear warfighting, the loss of control as bilateral nuclear competitions become triangular, the stunningly disruptive potential of cyber weapons incorporated into nuclear deterrence, the geometric complexity from the asymmetries among nine nuclear powers, and the disparity in the way the nine conceive of the role of these weapons make this threat all too real. They also underscore how urgent it is for the United States and Russia to refocus their attention on the way nuclear trends are slipping from their control and to combine their efforts—and those of China—to prevent this new nuclear era from ending in tragedy. The stakes are roughly as high in four other realms. How seriously have Russian and US leaders paused and reflected on the perverse irony that having contributed to the dismantling of the Cold War’s massive military face-off in the center of Europe, they are again restoring it farther east? It may not be on the same scale as the earlier confrontation, but its implications are the same, or conceivably worse, given the shaky peace in the territories abutting the line where the two militaries meet. Washington and Moscow have a choice to make. They can, given the inertia of their narrowly defined priorities, carry on, eying the military steps taken by the other side, beefing up their and their allies’ responses, focusing on the likely range of contingencies for which their forces would be used, and girding themselves for that moment. Or, provided that impediments, such as the Ukrainian imbroglio, are reduced (even if not eliminated), they can concentrate their attention on reversing course, pulling back militarily, and focusing on steps enhancing mutual security. The stake over the next twenty years is a Europe that adds to the global map one more arena of instability and military competition or one that introduces an enclave of stability whose resources and leadership can take the lead in addressing the twenty-first century’s global security challenges. By extension, the Arctic, the world’s next new great oil and gas frontier and until now the beneficiary of basic cooperation among the five littoral states, is wobbling in the direction of increased military activity on all sides, including military exercises that go beyond protecting legal

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claims and sea passages. If this region, rather than remaining a sanctuary apart from the military confrontation in Europe, becomes its extension, and cooperation among the five erodes, then the damage to both European security and to the struggle to contain the environmental damage from climate change will be immense. Here, too, the stakes are large: do the United States and Russia wish to lead in making the politically virgin territory of the Arctic a building block and prototype for a more stable Euro-Atlantic security system or are they content to let events take whatever course they may, including a descent deeper into cold war? Add to these three concerns a fourth: trouble in and around the Eurasian core (essentially the former Soviet Union) and the concentric circle surrounding it led to the current US-Russian Cold War. In the years ahead, it will be decisive in determining the level of disruption in the broader international setting. No three countries have a larger stake in how that turns out than the United States, Russia, and China. Again, they can continue to let matters drift as in the past, responding in tardy and ad hoc fashion to each new rupture of the peace, or they can make a conscious effort to achieve a modus vivendi built around compatible and, where possible, coordinated policies anchored on promoting stable change and mutual security in and around this Eurasian core. What they choose from this point on will produce two very different international futures twenty-five years from now. Finally, if, as thoughtful US and Russian voices have argued, the critical strategic underpinning for a stable future international order is collaborative US-Chinese-Russian leadership, leaders in all three capitals will have to reorient policy in fundamental ways. The bilateral framework that is so thoroughly dominant in how each approaches the other two powers will have to give way to a trilateral framework. Progress in dealing with any major problem requires a three-way interaction. Second, a constructive three-way interaction will come about only if all three governments make it a priority. Third, making it a priority will require what they have not managed to this point—that is, a willingness to resist the temptation to approach issues, tensions, and conflicts of interests dividing the other two countries in ways designed to disadvantage the country they most want to disadvantage. If approached as a strategic contest, as it is now, “the troika” will become a dangerous centrifuge of great-power rivalry and a fundamental threat to global peace and stability.

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Thus, at a moment when the future of the international order and its most important member grows cloudy, Russian and US leaders have choices to make. They are choices of far greater portent than either appears to realize. They may be choices that political realities in both countries preclude. Narrow preoccupations, occluded politics, and the ascendance of small-minded thinking on both sides at all levels may be inescapable. If so, it will not be the first time in history that the great powers sleepwalk through defining moments—and pay the price.

NOTES 1.

2. 3.

4. 5.

6. 7.

8. 9.

10. 11.

This chapter is based on a previously published essay, “Into the Unknown: US-Russian Relations Unhinged,” Valdai Papers 64 (April 2017) and republished as “Шаг в неиэведанное,” Россия в глобальной политике, no. 2 (March/April 2017). I have traced the deterioration and justified characterizing it as a new Cold War in Return to Cold War (Malden, MA: Cambridge Polity, 2016). “Hearing to Review the FY2018 Budget for the US Department of State,” US Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, 13 June 2017, https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/hearings/hearing-to-review-the-fy2018-budget -for-the-us-department-of-state. Vladimir Putin’s Remarks, Presentation of Foreign Ambassadors’ Letters of Credence, 9 November 2016, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/53223. True, his later vacillation on whether he would keep the Iran agreement by recertifying Iranian compliance, together with other shifting positions, did raise questions about just where US policy stood. Peter Baker, Neil MacFarquhar, and Michael R. Gordon, “Syria Strike Puts US Relations with Russia at Risk,” New York Times, 7 April 2017. The effort to deal with “irritants” hit an early snag, when the Russians cancelled an initial 23 April meeting ostensibly as a protest over the Trump administration’s decision to reaffirm Obama’s December sanctions occasioned by Russian election meddling. Guy Chazan and Demetri Sevastopulo, “Putin Praises Trump and Hails New Era of Cooperation,” Financial Times, 8 July 2017. Max Seddon and David J. Lynch, “Putin Orders Drastic Reduction in US Diplomatic Presence in Russia,” Financial Times, 30 July 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/48d34a1e -7559-11e7-a3e8-60495fe6ca71. Kremlin Aide Upbeat After First Meeting with US Envoy for Ukraine,” Reuters, 21 August 2017, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-russia-usa-idUSKCN1B11V5?il=0. Idrees Ali and Pavel Palityuk, “Defense Secretary Mattis Promises Support to Ukraine, Says Reviewing Lethal Aid,” Reuters, 24 August 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article /us-usa-ukraine-mattis-idUSKCN1B415F.

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12.

13. 14. 15.

16.

17.

18. 19.

20.

21. 22.

It is articulated in Thomas E. Graham, “The Sources of Russian Conduct,” National Interest, 25 August 2016, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-sources-russian-conduct -17462. I explore earlier efforts at US-Russian strategic dialogue, their character, and the results in Return to Cold War, 140–42. Steven Pifer, “Taking the Edge Off US-Russia Strategic Relations,” Russia Matters, 16 June 2017, https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/taking-edge-us-russia-strategic-relations. More specifically, Sergey Ryabkov, Russia’s first deputy foreign minister, said that Russia did not want to be “guided by the erroneous logic of sanctions and counter-sanctions, where regardless of the consequences . . . we must repay the action in kind,” particularly if those consequences “would be detrimental to Russia itself.” “Comment by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov on New US Anti-Russian Sanctions,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 22 August 2017, http://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher /cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/2841501. True, while Zapad 2017 came off at levels and in forms far different from the exaggerated concerns of neighboring states and some NATO officials, any signaling intended was not that Russia wanted to begin de-militarizing the competition. At most it was that Russia’s military preparations were not what NATO feared. That, however, with a little imagination on Washington’s part, could have justified a low-risk initiative to test whether Moscow might be willing to introduce greater transparency, predictability, and reassurance into the dance the two sides were doing. The two parts of the February 2015 Minsk II agreement signed by the leaders of Britain, France, Russia, and Ukraine provided for an end to the violence in eastern Ukraine and measures designed to resolve the political conflict between the central Ukrainian government and the Donbas separatists. Eugene B. Rumer, Richard Sokolsky, and Andrew S. Weiss, “Trump and Russia: The Right Way to Manage Relations,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2017, 12–19. Zbigniew Brzezinski and Paul Wasserman, “Why the World Needs a Trump Doctrine,” New York Times, 20 February 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/opinion/why -the-world-needs-a-trump-doctrine.html. Sergey Karaganov, “Mutual Assured Deterrence,” Project Syndicate, 17 February 2017, https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/russia-role-in-new-world-order-by -sergei-karaganov-2017-02. Dmitri Trenin, Should We Fear Russia? (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2017), 106, 109. Trenin, 138–64.

23 THE VIEW FROM THE ASIA-PACIFIC Loose Nukes and Loose Cannons PRISCILLA ROBERTS

F

or all the Asia-Pacific nations—and virtually every other state— the days, weeks, and months since Donald Trump won the 2017 presidential election and took office have brought continuing revelations as to just how surreal United States politics might become. “Mr. Trump Goes to Washington” has become a never-ending reality saga, far surpassing any scenario the most enterprising Hollywood or television scriptwriter would dare to dream up. For sheer entertainment value, as a spectacle, the Trump White House is hard to beat. Across the Asia-Pacific, as elsewhere, the overwhelming expectation was that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a respected and experienced political figure with an established track record, would become the next president. While other states might not have welcomed every position she took, she was a known and relatively predictable quantity. With Trump’s victory, not only were all bets off, but apprehension ran high. For a while, stunned disbelief characterized the reaction of not just many Americans, but also much of the world beyond. The frozen horror the prospect of President Trump generated around the Asia-Pacific was readily comprehensible. Running for office, Trump comprehensively assailed the liberal free trade principles that had since the 1950s fueled economic growth in East and Southeast Asia by opening US markets to Asian goods, and, especially since the 1990s, encouraging Western manufacturers to relocate industrial production to low-cost Asian

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plants. His rhetoric made passionate appeals to those Americans who felt themselves the victims rather than the beneficiaries of the ever-growing “globalization,” free market norms, and deregulation that had become increasingly prevalent around the world since the late 1970s or early 1980s. China was cast as the arch-villain in this story, a nation that not only was running the highest trade surpluses with the United States, but had also deftly manipulated its currency to ensure that its exports entered American markets at artificially low prices. Other Asian commercial partners—notably Japan, South Korea, and assorted Southeast Asian states—also featured somewhere on his radar screen as “unfair” trade competitors. Trump’s election dealt the final blow to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the American-led regional trade agreement with Asia, as the new president announced that the United States would instead “negotiate fair and bilaterally beneficial trade deals that will bring jobs back to American shores.” The Chinese-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership pact was now the only alternative, one likely to increase Chinese influence around the Asia-Pacific.1 Equally or perhaps even more disturbing to Asian states were Trump’s attacks on US allies for freeloading on American defense arrangements. Assuming his campaign rhetoric was genuine, the United States seemed likely to abandon Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, and Australia to their own devices, expecting them in the name of burden-sharing to meet their own defense costs. Trump went so far as to suggest that the United States would welcome the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Japan and South Korea. The Seventh Fleet conceivably might redeploy back to Hawaii. Other Asia-Pacific nations might find themselves facing a dramatic upsurge in Chinese military power that most considered undesirable. South Korea would be left exposed to escalating nuclear threats from North Korea. Such expectations might well embolden those Japanese nationalists—possibly including Prime Minister Shinzō Abe—who long to rebuild Japanese military forces and perhaps acquire nuclear weapons. More than seventy years after World War II ended, the prospect of any Japanese military revival still terrifies many in the region. Yet for much of Southeast Asia and probably Australia, the possibility of Chinese hegemony was hardly more appetizing. Initial Asian responses to the election of Donald Trump bore some resemblance to the mixture of panic and wary respect that the discovery

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of an unexploded bomb in the immediate neighborhood might elicit. Most responded with pronounced caution, even conciliation, to the roller coaster of Trump statements and actions. Southeast Asian countries felt particularly vulnerable. On commercial and security matters, several major ASEAN states, including Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore, were apprehensive. Most regretted the US decision to jettison the TPP, which was likely to inflict significant harm on their economies. Several also feared that China’s growing strength and assertiveness in both the military and economic spheres, especially its insistence that most of the entire South China Sea should be considered Chinese territorial waters, threatened not just their own maritime claims to portions of these waters and the islands in them, but more broadly speaking, their independence as states. As China expanded its footprint and activities in the South China Sea, reclaiming reefs and building military installations on them, most had tried to use the United States as a strategic counterweight to China. Trump’s election seemed to threaten this delicate balance. Although Rex Tillerson, Trump’s secretary of state, visited Asia in early May 2017 and met with all ten ASEAN foreign ministers, urging them to impose stronger sanctions on North Korea and promising that Trump would attend the next ASEAN summit in November 2017, many of his interlocutors remained dissatisfied with US economic and strategic policies and the security dilemmas with which the Trump administration presented them.2 The remarkable and largely unanticipated improvement in relations between China and the United States that followed the first meeting between Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in early April 2017 had provided significant justification for such apprehensions. During his presidential campaign, Trump effectively demonized China, fears the president-elect compounded in the weeks before his inauguration not simply by continuing hostile comments on China’s trade policies and assertiveness in the South China Sea posted on his ever-active Twitter account, but also by accepting a phone call in early December 2016 from President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan. The close ties to Taiwan that some of Trump’s senior foreign policy advisers enjoyed, and unusually strong reaffirmations of US support for Taiwan in the Republican platform, gave rise to further apprehensions that this move portended a major change in the de facto understanding and status quo on

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Taiwan that had governed US and Chinese policy for almost forty years.3 Mainland Chinese media, until then relatively circumspect in commenting on Trump, responded with vehement condemnation. The nationalist Global Times, a state-run tabloid, concluded: “He bears no sense of how to lead a superpower.” If Trump’s attacks continued after his inauguration, the newspaper warned, China would not “exercise restraint.”4 Although Trump ultimately reversed course and announced his adherence to the established “One China” policy, the episode had stoked lingering Chinese resentment and suspicions. China, preoccupied in recent years with enhancing its global position and influence within the existing international system and possibly modifying that system to its own advantage, suddenly faced the unpalatable prospect that the ground rules it was following might themselves change dramatically, with unpredictable consequences for China’s assorted ambitions. Within months, however, China, it seemed, had pulled off what was almost certainly the greatest diplomatic coup of the early Trump administration: an apparent rapprochement with the new president. How and why did this happen? To a considerable degree, it reflected the extent to which, in less than four decades since the normalization of relations with the United States, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had become what one leading scholar of Sino-American relations recently termed an “insider” of the existing international system.5 Trump’s victory came a mere six months after the people of Great Britain voted, by a narrow majority, to leave the European Union (EU). Both political events were widely interpreted as a rejection by ordinary people of the espousal by international elites of globalization, deregulation, and free market economics, an outlook that has become increasingly entrenched since the late 1970s, facilitated both by China’s enthusiastic embrace under Deng Xiaoping and his successors of the market revolution and by the ending of the Cold War. China’s ever-expanding prosperity and economic might owed much to the sustained dismantling of barriers to the free movement of goods and capital. After weathering the initial shock, China soon put a dual strategy into play. Less than a week before Trump’s inauguration, President Xi Jinping of China made a major address at the annual Davos forum, a gathering of the world’s power brokers and international great and good, in which he affirmed China’s continued adherence to the norms of globalization,

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especially to open markets and unfettered world trade.6 In a fairly astonishing reversal of roles, with the defection of the United States, China’s leader was stepping up, assuming the mantle of foremost champion of these values, and presenting himself as the voice of moderation and reason. Quite simply, China had invested too much in the existing international system to stand by and allow its demolition. More pragmatically, Chinese diplomats and specialists on the United States scrutinized the Trump administration in depth, with the objective of understanding how it worked in practice. Following the early weeks of incredulity, China treated the incoming regime with kid gloves. In February 2017, media outlets were officially instructed only to publish stories on Trump that originated from Xinhua, the government news agency. Independent Chinese social media criticism of Trump was embargoed.7 Back in favor, too, were the assorted organizations, dialogues, and personal networks that had invested heavily—in many cases since the early 1970s—in maintaining stable US relations with Asia. For China, this marked something of a change. In the previous three to five years, Chinese voices counselling moderation and continued rapprochement with the United States had been conspicuously excluded from Beijing political circles, while informal elite contacts among influential Chinese and Americans languished and fell into abeyance.8 In 2017, China’s established group of middle-of-the-road American specialists became more visible than it had been for several years. The Chinese government’s ultimate policy objective was to enable a meeting of not just persons but ideally minds between Trump and Xi Jinping. Prominent Chinese diplomats soon concluded that Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, were the advisers who carried the most weight with him, and they promptly set out to convince the couple of the value of good relations with China.9 Even so, when a forthcoming Trump–Xi Jinping summit meeting was announced in March 2017, expectations were extremely low. A Trump tweet even forecast that this first encounter would be “very difficult.”10 As so often with Trump, events confounded all prior predictions. Charm is not a quality normally associated with China’s formidable and somewhat forbidding president, who generally leaves that department to his talented and charismatic wife, Peng Liyuan, in whose company— now almost a given on his foreign trips—he nonetheless visibly relaxes.

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On this occasion, however, China’s first couple were on a mission, one they performed with an aplomb reminiscent of the skill displayed by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his late wife Raisa in the early years of overtures to the West. After their meeting, Trump tweeted his admiration for both Xi Jinping and his stylish consort, announcing that he and Xi had a “very, very good relationship” and had made “tremendous progress” in their talks, while proclaiming how helpful he had found the Chinese leader’s elucidation of the difficulties China faced in seeking to influence President Kim Jong-un of North Korea.11 Xi Jinping was, it seemed, Trump’s new best friend. In the interests of avoiding future crises, the two presidents established a special communications hotline. China subsequently signed various trade deals on beef, poultry, and natural gas with American businesses, while promising to open its markets further to assorted US products and to allow American credit card firms to offer their services to Chinese consumers.12 In an effort to persuade its recalcitrant neighbor to enter into talks with the United States and other powers that might rein in its nuclear weapons program, China also applied various forms of economic pressure to North Korea and acquiesced in the expansion of United Nations (UN) sanctions on Kim Jongun’s regime.13 The Trump administration, for its part, announced that it intended to eliminate funding for State Department aid programs for Tibetans in exile.14

BEYOND MAR-A-L AG O

What would happen next was less clear. Unpredictability had become the new normal. By April and May 2017, commentators were suggesting— albeit highly provisionally—that at least in the short run, Trump’s international positions were generally becoming less extreme.15 At least in public, well-connected Chinese political pundits were often exceptionally circumspect when discussing Sino-American relations, with most cautioning that it was far too early to reach any definite conclusions as to their future course and that on both sides much would depend on the internal domestic political factors involved. In private closed-door discussions, experts differed remarkably in their analyses of which side came out best from

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this encounter. Pointing to the trade concessions Trump won from China, one suggested that he had been far more successful than any previous American president in obtaining genuine changes in Chinese international commercial policy. Another, by contrast, thought that the advantage lay with China and lauded the skill of Chinese diplomats working to facilitate a personal meeting. Few, however, expected the new warmth between the two leaders to herald any resurgence of the Group of Two (G2) worldview put forward some years earlier by the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, an outlook that contended that the only international relationship that really mattered was that between the United States and China, who could effectively come close to running the world between them.16 Publicly and privately, more cautious voices warned that Trump was exceptionally volatile, entirely capable of reversing any past position almost instantaneously, either for self-interested reasons or due to real or fancied affronts to his outsize ego. Americans familiar with Trump’s previous business career also counseled that he took a transactional view of both business and international dealings and had little if any belief in win-win solutions, but rather was driven by an ingrained zero-sum outlook that could lead him to cancel any existing bargain if he thought he could thereby gain some advantage. The message was clear: Trump could not necessarily be trusted. Such warnings soon proved prescient. One trigger for the early 2017 Mar-a-Lago meeting was North Korea’s intransigent insistence on not merely continuing its program of developing nuclear missiles but on conducting tests that seemed deliberately calculated to rattle its neighbors. The hope of persuading China to pressure North Korea into abandoning its nuclear program—perhaps in return for US commercial concessions— was one factor driving Trump to meet with Xi Jinping. China imposed some restrictions and endorsed tighter UN sanctions but, given Kim Jong-un’s past and present stubborn determination to go his own way, just how effective such measures might be was questionable. North Korea responded to Mar-a-Lago with several additional missile tests, every month from April to September, alarming not just the United States but also Japan and even Beijing, both within uncomfortably close range of these weapons. China, perhaps North Korea’s only ally and patron, the source of much of its food and coal, apparently enjoyed little leverage over its obstreperous client.

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The role and powers of commander in chief seem to appeal to Trump. Despite his campaign rhetoric condemning US military interventionism almost everywhere and questioning the value of his country’s alliances, after taking office, he ordered missile strikes on government forces in Syria, an episode that coincided with President Xi Jinping’s arrival at Mara-Lago, and proposed a 10 percent increase in US military spending. If American allies likewise heeded his calls to boost their own defense budgets, the US strategic position might even be enhanced. Some evidence suggests that Trump administration officials contemplated the possibility of a unilateral strike that would eliminate North Korea’s nuclear program. In late April, at a closed-door meeting on Sino-American relations, a retired Chinese general even asked a retired US admiral whether the United States could be certain of identifying and destroying every single missile installation. (His interlocutor gave no definite reply.) Later, it became clear that there was no guarantee this could be done. Initially, multilateral talks aimed at a peaceful resolution of the situation in Korea, negotiations that would involve China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, and the United States, dominated the agenda. In May, tweeting condemnation of the latest missile test, Trump praised China for “trying hard” on North Korea.17 Such plaudits were transitory. As Kim continued tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which are apparently far more effective than North Korea’s earlier such weapons, he and Trump each escalated their rhetoric. In August 2017, following reports that North Korea had developed a miniaturized nuclear warhead, Trump told reporters that should North Korea not abandon its nuclear program, it would be met with “fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”18 Kim responded in kind by threatening multiple nuclear strikes on the American Pacific territory and military base of Guam.19 Following North Korea’s second ICBM test, Trump had tweeted his disappointment that, after profiting so handsomely from trade with the United States, China had done “NOTHING” to rein in Kim’s nuclear aspirations.20 China’s state media promptly assailed Trump’s Twitter habit as inappropriate and ineffective “emotional venting.”21 As Kim and Trump traded insults, official Chinese media outlets advised both sides not to “play with fire” in an extremely dangerous situation in which “any accidental spark could trigger a conflict and prove to be a disaster.”22 In a telephone call

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to Trump, Xi Jinping urged moderation and restraint on all concerned, advising them to find a peaceful solution to their dispute.23 Trump, meanwhile, announced plans to launch new investigations into Chinese trade practices, especially breaches of intellectual property rights.24 The official China Daily promptly warned that rash moves to politicize trade risked “poison[ing] the overall US-China relationship.”25 As Trump endured fierce political attacks, domestic and international, for what was widely perceived as an inadequate response to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the state-owned Global Times commented: “As US struggles with chaos, China responds with stability.”26 Considerably earlier, top Chinese policy advisers had anticipated choppy waters for Sino-American relations, following whatever brief honeymoon Mar-a-Lago might afford. In late May 2017, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a leading Beijing think tank, released a report on US foreign policy under Trump, contending that Trump would be less likely than his predecessor, Barack Obama, to make concessions to China; he would increase the pressure on Beijing to get tough with North Korea, especially if direct talks between the United States and North Korea proved fruitless; and his “America First” pledges notwithstanding, the United States would retain its strategic stake in the Asia-Pacific region. The Academy’s report characterized Trump as “more determined than Obama to take diplomatic and military risks in key international issues” and believed the North Korean nuclear situation “will bring huge challenges for Sino-US relations.” The report’s authors thought it likely that the United States would also turn to Japan and South Korea to deal with North Korea. In addition, they anticipated further confrontations with US military forces over the South China Sea, where US surveillance aircraft and destroyers were already operating in waters claimed by China. They did suggest, however, that China and the United States could seek greater bilateral cooperation in the economic sphere.27 The report was broadly correct in its analysis. A few days later, US Secretary of Defense James Mattis arrived at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, an Asian defense summit and regional security forum organized every year in Singapore by the International Institute of Strategic Studies. He promptly proclaimed the determination of the United States to stand by its Asian partners, including Taiwan, even as it welcomed Chinese assistance with North Korea. Even though Mattis responded to subsequent

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questions by reaffirming US adherence to the existing “One China” policy, People’s Liberation Army representatives present responded with vehement objections.28 The forum became a venue for US, Australian, French, and Japanese criticism of China’s actions in the South China Sea, as a breach of the “rules-based order” to which China proclaims allegiance, part of an effort to establish a regional Chinese “Monroe Doctrine.”29 In late May, US naval forces resumed freedom of navigation patrols in disputed areas of the South China Sea. As China protested fiercely against these characterizations of its policies, Chinese and US military aircraft came dangerously close to each other a mere 150 miles away from Hong Kong, while Chinese naval forces ostentatiously sailed out of Hong Kong on patrol.30 Mattis subsequently joined Secretary of State Tillerson on a visit to Australia that emphasized US-Australian defense cooperation and coincided with a wave of Australian media stories on Chinese interference in Australian politics and intelligence activities.31 Early expectations notwithstanding, the Yanks were not, it seemed, about to go home from Asia any time soon. As the end of 2017 approached, mixed messages continued. In early November 2017, Trump paid his first presidential visit to Asia, with stops in Japan and South Korea serving as preludes to what China billed as a “state visit-plus” to Beijing. Feted with every courtesy President Xi Jinping and his wife could bestow, with the Forbidden City an exotic scenic backdrop, Trump basked in the star treatment and flourished assorted trade deals and concessions from China purportedly worth $250 million to US businesses. Shortly afterward, having lectured his fellow attendees on trade imbalances, he cut short his visit to the subsequent ASEAN summit, raising fears that the president had lost interest in working with partners in Southeast Asia. Yet within weeks, as North Korea tested another long-range intercontinental ballistic missile that was allegedly capable of reaching the United States, the era of Sino-American good feelings became precarious. Chinese diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions on North Korea remained conspicuously ineffective in terms of restraining Kim Jong-un’s obdurate drive toward nuclear striking power, prompting mounting dissatisfaction on Trump’s part. Administration officials seemed to be preparing for outright trade war with China. On the security front, storm clouds were also brewing. Trump’s defense team began publicizing the value of a potential quadripartite

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security alignment of India, Japan, Australia, and the United States as a means of checking growing Chinese military strength in what they—and Trump—began to term the Indo-Pacific region. To crown Trump’s first year in office, in mid-December the president unveiled his new National Security Strategy, a hard-line document that, as administration officials quickly confirmed, depicted both China and Russia as “revisionist” powers bent on challenging the United States and other Western states. In its words, they “are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.”32 It focused in particular on China, driven by a “repressive vision,”33 as America’s foremost “strategic competitor” across a broad spectrum of “political, economic, military, and informational domains.”34 Trump promptly delivered a speech characterizing China and Russia as “rival powers” and strategic competitors” and pledging a major US military build-up in response.35 China’s initial response was muted and cautious.

LOOKING TO THE FU T UR E

Although China may now be considered an “insider” of the existing international system, at least some of its policy intellectuals wish it to become a “contributor” to that system, helping to set the international climate of opinion and agenda by putting forward novel and seminal ideas that become part of the global discourse. To date, few representatives of China have been able to attain that status. Much Chinese thinking on international affairs appears somewhat outdated, a recycling of concepts already well established in traditional international relations theory, and rather imitative and derivative in nature. Ever since the Harvard scholar Joseph S. Nye, Jr., writing in the early 1990s, popularized the concept of “soft power” as an intangible but valuable asset that could supplement and magnify a country’s military and economic strength when dealing with other nations,36 Chinese leaders and scholars alike have been intrigued by the concept. For budgetary reasons, China was also drawn to the concept of “soft power” as a means of maximizing its influence at minimal cost. In a keynote address to the

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Seventeenth Chinese Communist Party Congress in October 2007, President Hu Jintao highlighted the need to boost China’s soft power, using the media and Chinese culture to enhance the country’s standing and its international cultural and intellectual prestige and influence overseas. President Xi Jinping continued this policy, even as he placed far greater emphasis than his predecessors on boosting his country’s military effectiveness, presence, and reach, and not just its economic influence.37 In May 2013, he also aggressively proclaimed his belief in the “China Dream,” purportedly a rival to the “American Dream,” a vision of China as a prosperous and modernized society.38 President Xi Jinping’s vision of China’s future combines economic prosperity, national assertiveness overseas, and a hardline approach to any potential threat to state and party authority. Historians and political commentators have embarked on intense debate as to whether China is a rising power that will eclipse and replace the United States, possibly through war, or whether the two are more likely to work together and perhaps even become co-hegemons.39 Martin Jacques and Stephen Halper suggest that the “Beijing consensus” Chinese model of economic growth and political authoritarianism is likely to prevail over Western norms of liberal capitalist democracy enshrined in the “Washington consensus.”40 Some Chinese are eager for China to throw its weight around more assertively in international affairs. In his book The China Dream, Colonel Liu Mingfu, a retired Chinese army officer whose views are apparently influential with President Xi Jinping, argues that China will inevitably replace the United States as the global hegemon and the world’s foremost military power.41 Until recently, many Chinese seemed to assume that relations between China and the United States would inevitably deteriorate, quite possibly ultimately provoking full-scale war or at least armed conflict between the two. A significant number of Chinese academics and policy intellectuals subscribe to realist international affairs theories that view geopolitics and global strategy from a win–lose balance of power perspective, and the United States as a major rival to China. Many cite what has become known as the “Thucydides trap,” drawing on arguments by the Greek historian in his classic history of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, that a rising power will inexorably end up fighting an established rival.42 Whether the intellectual framework employed to describe competition between two small Greek city-states almost two and a half

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millennia ago offers an adequate explanatory model for relations today between two major global powers located on different landmasses is a question rarely if ever considered. It is also worth noting that much international relations theory was developed during the twentieth century, and realism and liberalism each constitute interpretive outlooks that emerged at least in part as efforts to justify aspects of growing US involvement in global affairs. A more ominously apposite parallel might be the outbreak of World War I. In many respects, China appears to be a power operating by latenineteenth- or early twentieth-century norms, in a twenty-first-century world in which ostensibly weaker neighbors and internal and external critics and dissenters have recourse to a huge array of international institutions, allies, and stratagems, both governmental and nongovernmental. Recent scholarship suggests that in 1914 war was precipitated by the decisions of official military and civilian elites in Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia who felt that the survival in those nations of their existing autocratic systems of government was increasingly threatened by the spread of liberal values and outlooks within and beyond their borders. Rather than acquiescing in political and social change, they preferred to risk total destruction by choosing war, an option they selected despite the rational arguments of influential and well-publicized books that contended that the early twentieth-century world’s economic interdependence had made major conflicts between major powers obsolete.43 By the time World War I was over, of course, the authoritarian and monarchical regimes of all three empires had been overthrown. There is at least one relatively recent example of a hegemonic world power having surrendered the mantle to a successor without a war for supremacy: the replacement of the British Empire by the United States that occurred during the mid-twentieth century. Strains and tensions undoubtedly disturbed the Anglo-American relationship, but what historian David Reynolds has termed “competitive co-operation” was its fundamental modus operandi.44 The transfer of power from Britain to the United States was mediated and facilitated by the existence at numerous levels of a wide range of personal and nongovernmental contacts and transnational networks, informal links that were often utilized to promote understanding on both sides—especially during crises—and to develop shared policies.

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China has become a recognized and respected presence on the international scene, even as its leadership somewhat schizophrenically hymns the advantages of globalization, while pursuing nationalistic objectives that result in repressive domestic policies and strained relationships with both its immediate neighbors and more distant states. As the American president announced his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang stated that China would work with the EU to implement continued international cooperation to attempt to mitigate the impact of global warming.45 In a somewhat bizarre sequel, a wide range of top US business figures, J.P. Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and the heads of Apple and Google among them, together with governors and mayors representing US states and cities that dissented from Trump’s climate change reversal, promptly announced their readiness to support and work with China, the EU, and other signatories of the Paris accord in continuing efforts to implement the policies Trump had just repudiated.46 Trump’s October 2017 decision to withdraw the United States from the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) offered China yet another opportunity to enhance its influence within a major international organization. Just possibly, the rise to power of Donald Trump might lead China to reassess its policies and produce a genuinely new model of international leadership, one that will offer an attractive alternative to current practices and address issues of real importance to the world as a whole. Unfettered market capitalism plus authoritarian domestic repression is unlikely to fill the bill. In the late 1970s, Deng Xiaoping broke iconoclastically with the PRC’s past adherence to central planning and Marxist-Leninist tenets, to align China not just with Western capitalism, but specifically with the neoliberal free market model that was then becoming increasingly intellectually dominant. Arguably, by focusing on economic development at almost any price, from the seventies onward, China deliberately aligned itself with the world’s have rather than have-not powers, seeking to become a player at the international top table, and abandoning its earlier self-identification with developing nations and anticolonial forces. China’s dramatic tilt undoubtedly helped to legitimate the ascendancy of hard-edged neoliberal economic principles, which international institutions urged enthusiastically upon former Communist states and developing nations from the 1990s onward.

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Short cuts to global standing and prestige are few and far between. But China now has an opportunity to define itself as the representative and spokesperson of forward-looking forces—which might well include many major corporate leaders around the world—that embrace globalization but seek to mitigate its impact on vulnerable individuals, groups, and states. Its size and wealth, not to mention its espousal of the Belt and Road Initiative, its ambitious program to promote economic development across Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and perhaps even Europe and North America, give China a potentially unique opportunity to articulate an alternative developmental vision that draws on its own traditions, dating back more than sixty years and encapsulating the 1955 Bandung spirit, while rejecting simplistic versions of free market economics and untrammeled neoliberal capitalism that ignore human considerations and fail to cater to those who lose as well as those who gain from the latest economic model. Doing so would require verve, imagination, and confidence rarely evident in international affairs, especially in the often dour and formulaic pronunciamentos of uncompromising Chinese officialdom. But perceptive commentators have also noted that a new generation of Chinese diplomats, familiar with the outside world, has begun to display unprecedented levels of excellence, skill, and charm.47 Faced with the twin crises of Trump and North Korea and the need to deal with not one but two volatile, unpredictable, and uncompromising leaders, one an ocean away and the other uncomfortably close to home, it is not inconceivable that Asia-Pacific nations might pragmatically decide to shelve past disputes and antagonisms and work together to meet these new challenges. In early May 2017, the finance ministers of China, Japan, and South Korea came together at the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank and issued a joint statement in which they pledged to “resist all forms of protectionism.”48 Instead of talking past each other and repetitively rehashing old wrongs and grievances, Japan and China have made admittedly tentative efforts to resolve their own fraught relationship, which has deteriorated dramatically in recent years. In the final months of 2017, China moderated past rhetoric and moved to mend fences with neighbors such as South Korea and Singapore, with which it had previously been at odds over supposedly intractable security issues. Paradoxically, in Asia, it might even be something of a blessing, admittedly well-disguised, that the United States can no longer simply

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be taken for granted. The reliable predictability of past US policies may of itself have helped to stifle any sense of urgency that greater maturity and restraint on all sides were desirable, even essential. With uncertainty now the hallmark of American dealings with the rest of the world, the appearance on the scene of Donald Trump conceivably might serve as a wakeup call for nations around the Asia-Pacific, impelling them to focus less on their differences and competing claims, and more on their common interests. At present, China faces challenges in Hong Kong that arise at least in part from deep-rooted unhappiness by those who feel powerless against rampant free market economics and the political dominance of unrestricted big business interests. Mutatis mutandis, similar resentments drove both the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump. Before long, comparable dissenting voices—despite all efforts to silence them—are likely to be heard with increasing force in mainland China. Will China’s current leaders continue to suppress them and fall back on models of national glory that would have done credit to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany or Nicholas II of Russia? (Following revolutions, one spent the last two decades of his life in exile, while the second was murdered, together with his family.) Or will they come up with something better, offering an approach that addresses and redresses the shortcomings of the model purveyed by Western neoliberal forces from the 1970s onward? Can China—in company with other international partners—put forward a different and superior model of international relations, based on the imperatives of 2017, rather than those of Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War? Realistically, the odds are that the answer is “no.” But how exhilarating it would be, from so many perspectives, if the answer were “yes.” The “last best hope” of mankind would suddenly be not the United States but China. NOTES 1.

2.

Fanny Potkin, “What Trump’s Presidency Will Mean for Southeast Asia in 2017,” Forbes, 8 December 2016, https://www.forbes.com/sites/fannypotkin/2016/12/08/what-trumps -presidency-will-mean-for-southeast-asia-in-2017/#1c715cf75d12. David Brunnstrom, “Tillerson Urges ASEAN to Cut North Korea Funding, Minimize Ties,” Reuters, 4 May 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-asean-northkorea /tillerson-urges-asean-to-cut-north-korea-funding-minimize-ties-idUSKBN1802EI.

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5. 6.

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9.

10.

Mark Landler and Jane Perlez, “Trump’s Call with Taiwan: A Diplomatic Gaffe or a New Start?” New York Times, 5 December 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05 /world/asia/china-donald-trump-taiwan-twitter.html; also Mark Landler and David E. Sanger, “Trump Speaks with Taiwan’s Leader, An Affront to China,” New York Times, 2 December 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/us/politics/trump-speaks-with -taiwans-leader-a-possible-affront-to-china.html; Jane Perlez, “China Sees New Ambiguity with Donald Trump’s Taiwan Call,” New York Times, 3 December 2016, https://www .nytimes.com/2016/12/03/world/asia/taiwan-call-gives-china-a-clue-on-what-to -expect-from-donald-trump.html; Mark Landler, “Donald Trump Thrusts Taiwan Back on the Table, Rattling a Region,” New York Times, 3 December 2016, https://www.nytimes .com/2016/12/03/us/politics/donald-trump-taiwan-china.html; and Ann Gearan, Philip Rucker, and Simon Denyer, “Trump’s Taiwan Phone Call Was Long Planned, Say People Who Were Involved,” Washington Post, 4 December 2016, https://www.washingtonpost .com/politics/trumps-taiwan-phone-call-was-weeks-in-the-planning-say-people-who -were-involved/2016/12/04/f8be4b0c-ba4e-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?utm _term=.72fe052937d8. Tom Phillips, “Trump Has No Idea How to Run a Superpower, Say Chinese Media,” Guardian, 19 December 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/19/donald -trump-no-idea-how-to-run-superpower-chinese-state-media. Chen Jian, Keynote Speech, Conference on “Cultural Integration and Cultural Conflict: Great Power Relations and Hong Kong,” 20 May 2017, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou. “Full Text of Xi Jinping Keynote at the World Economic Forum,” CGTN America, 17 January 2017, https://america.cgtn.com/2017/01/17/full-text-of-xi-jinping-keynote-at-the -world-economic-forum “Donald Trump’s Feminist Critics in China Accuse Weibo of Gagging Their Views,” South China Morning Post, 22 February 2017, http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society /article/2073022/chinese-critics-donald-trump-accuse-social-media-giant-gagging. Orville Schell, “China Strikes Back!” New York Review of Books, 23 October 2014, http:// www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/10/23/china-strikes-back/; Edward Wong, “Xi Jinping’s Inner Circle Offers Cold Shoulders to Western Officials,” New York Times, 25 September 2015; and Keira Huang, Nectar Gan, and Kristine Kwok, “Now for the Hard Part,” South China Morning Post, 30 September 2015, http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy -defence/article/1862562/now-hard-part-following-xi-jinpings-trip-action. David Shambaugh, “Can Steely Xi Jinping and Volatile Donald Trump Find the Right Chemistry in Florida?” South China Morning Post, 31 March 2017, http://www.scmp .com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2083512/can-steely-xi-jinping-and-volatile -donald-trump-find-right; and Shi Jiangtao, “The Man Behind the Xi-Trump Summit,” South China Morning Post, 1 April 2017, http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy -defence/article/2083810/man-behind-xi-trump-summit. Cristiano Lima, “Trump Tweets: Meeting with Chinese Leader Will Be ‘Very Difficult’ ,” Politico, 30 March 2017, https://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-china-xi-jinping -difficult-236733.

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11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

Tom Phillips, “Donald Trump Hails Friendship with China’s Xi as Missiles Head to Syria,” Guardian, 7 April 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/07/donald -trump-hails-friendship-with-chinas-xi-as-missiles-head-to-syria; and “Trump Hails ‘Tremendous’ Progress in Talks with China’s Xi,” BBC News, 7 April 2017, http://www .bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39517569. See, for example, Keith Bradsher, “US Strikes China Trade Deals but Leaves Major Issues Untouched,” New York Times, 11 May 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/business /us-china-trade-deals.html. Robert Delaney, “UN Punishes North Korea in First China-US Sanctions Deal Under Trump,” South China Morning Post, 3 June 2017, http://www.scmp.com/news/china /diplomacy-defence/article/2096736/un-expands-north-korea-sanctions-adding-14 -officials. “Donald Trump Administration Proposes Zero Aid to Tibetan Community,” Indian Express, 26 May 2017, http://indianexpress.com/article/world/donald-trump-administration -proposes-zero-aid-to-tibetan-community-4674173/. Richard Sokolsky and Aaron Miller, “Trump’s Foreign Policy: 100 Days of Global Bafflement,” Politico, 24 April 2017, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/24 /trumps-foreign-policy-100-days-of-global-bafflement-215066; Klaus Larres, “Donald Trump and America’s Grand Strategy: US Foreign Policy Toward Europe, Russia and China,” Global Policy (May 2017); Klaus Larres, “Reality Check: Donald Trump Shies Away from Isolationism During His First Meeting with the Chinese President,” International Politics and Society, 11 April 2017, http://www.academia.edu/32396133/_REALITY_CHECK_Donald _Trump_shies_away_from_isolationism_during_his_first_meeting_with_the_Chinese _president_April_2017_; and Ross Douthat, “Donald Trump, Establishment Sellout,” New York Times, 20 May 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/opinion/donald -trump-establishment-sellout.html. Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Group of Two that Could Change the World,” Financial Times, 13 January 2009, https://www.ft.com/content/d99369b8-e178-11dd-afa0-0000779fd2ac. Catherine Wong, “North Korean Nuclear Threat Tops Agenda as China’s Senior Diplomat Visits Tokyo,” South China Morning Post, 29 May 2017, http://www.scmp.com/news /china/diplomacy-defence/article/2096137/north-korean-nuclear-threat-tops-agenda -chinas-senior; Kristin Huang, “Japan Seeks China’s Support in Confronting North Korea Over Missile Launches,” South China Morning Post, 30 May 2017, http://www.scmp.com /news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2096172/japan-seeks-chinas-support-confronting -north-korea-over; and “Japan Vows to Work with China to Solve North Korea Crisis,” South China Morning Post, 31 May 2017, http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy -defence/article/2096332/japan-vows-work-china-solve-north-korea-crisis. Peter Baker and Choe Sang-hun, “Trump Threatens ‘Fire and Fury’ Against North Korea If It Endangers US,” New York Times, 8 August 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/08 /world/asia/north-korea-un-sanctions-nuclear-missile-united-nations.html. Justin McCurry, “US Airbase in Guam Threatened by North Korea as Trump Promises ‘Fire and Fury’ ,” Guardian, 9 August 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017 /aug/09/north-korea-us-airbase-guam-trump-fire-fury; and Julian Borger, “North Korea

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20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

Details Guam Strike Plan and Calls Trump ‘Bereft of Reason’ ,” Guardian, 10 August 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/10/north-korea-details-guam-strike -trump-load-of-nonsense. Tom Phillips, “Donald Trump Says China Does ‘Nothing’ to Thwart North Korea’s Nuclear Quest,” Guardian, 30 July 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017 /jul/30/donald-trump-says-china-does-nothing-to-thwart-north-koreas-nuclear-quest. Alexandra Wilts, “China’s State Media Blasts Donald Trump for ‘Emotional Venting’ on Twitter About North Korea,” Independent, 1 August 2017, http://www.independent.co.uk /news/world/americas/us-politics/china-donald-trump-north-korea-twitter-emotional -venting-us-president-xinhua-news-websites-a7871336.html. Chris Baynes, “China Warns Donald Trump Not to ‘Play with Fire’ as US-North Korea Tensions Escalate,” Independent, 10 August 2017, http://www.independent.co.uk/news /world/asia/china-donald-trump-us-north-korea-tensions-play-fire-war-guam-missile -tests-us-president-a7885856.html. Julian Borger, “Chinese President Speaks with Trump and Urges Calm Over North Korea,” Guardian, 12 August 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/11 /donald-trump-north-korea-tweet-military-locked-loaded. Lesley Wroughton, “Trump to Ramp up Trade Pressure on China with Call for Probe on Monday,” Reuters, 12 August 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-trade -china/trump-to-ramp-up-trade-pressure-on-china-with-call-for-probe-on-monday -idUSKBN1AS04O. Negassi Tesfamichael, “Chinese State Media Blasts Trump’s Trade Action,” Politico, 14 August  2017, https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/14/trump-china-trade-investigation -response-241609. Tom Phillips, “Chinese State Media Revel in Donald Trump’s Charlottesville Woes,” Guardian, 18 August 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/18/chinese -state-media-trump-charlottesville-fallout. Teddy Ng, “Why the Trump Era Could Mean Riskier Business for Beijing,” South China Morning Post, 29 May 2017, http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article /2096033/why-trump-era-could-mean-riskier-business-beijing. Minnie Chan, “James Mattis Outrages China’s Military Delegation with Taiwan Remark at Asia Security Forum,” South China Morning Post, 3 June 2017, http://www.scmp.com /news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2096762/james-mattis-outrages-chinas-military -delegation-taiwan; and Jeevan Vasagar, “US Appeals for Chinese Engagement Over Threat from North Korea,” Financial Times, 2 June 2017, https://www.ft.com/content /e2555dd8-4801-11e7-8d27-59b4dd6296b8. Wang Xiangwei, “China Chafes at Lectures on ‘Rules-Based Order,’ as US Breaks All the Rules,” South China Morning Post, 10 June 2017, http://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion /article/2097252/china-chafes-lectures-rules-based-order-us-breaks-all-rules. Shi Jiangtao, “China Shows US Its Military Muscle with Patrol off Hong Kong Waters amid Rising Maritime Tensions,” South China Morning Post, 8 June 2017, http://www .scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2097379/china-shows-us-its-military -muscle-amid-rising-maritime.

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31.

32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

Asher Wolf, “Frenzied Australian Media Fears Foreign Influence—‘China’ Foreign, Not ‘US’ Foreign,” South China Morning Post, 10 June 2017, http://www.scmp.com/week-asia /opinion/article/2097435/frenzied-australian-media-fears-foreign-influence-china-foreign. Mark Landler and David E. Sanger, “Trump Delivers a Mixed Message on his National Security Approach,” New York Times, 18 December 2017. Demetri Sevastopulo, “Trump labels China a strategic ‘competitor’ ,” Financial Times, 18 December 2017. Josh Rogin, “Trump’s National Security Strategy marks a hawkish turn on China,” Washington Post, 18 December 2017. “Remarks by President Trump on the Administration’s National Security Strategy,” 18 December 2017, White House Website, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements /remarks-president-trump-administrations-national-security-strategy/. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990). Xinhua, “Xi: China to Promote Cultural Soft Power,” XinhuaNet Website, 1 January 2014; Zhang Lihua, “Beijing Focuses on Soft Power,” Carnegie-Tsinghua Website, 28 April 2014; and Rory Medcalf, “Xi Jinping’s Speech: More Diplomacy, Less Raw Power,” The Interpreter Website, 1 December 2014. “The Chinese Dream Infuses Socialism with Chinese Characteristics with New Energy,” editorial, Qiushi, 1 May 2013, text available on China Copyright and Media Website; also “Potential of the Chinese Dream,” China Daily USA, 26 March 2014; and numerous other articles on this topic available through the China Daily website, http://www.chinadaily .com.cn/china/Chinese-dream.html. See, for example, Aaron L. Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia (New York: Norton, 2011); Andrew J. Nathan and Andrew Scobell, China’s Search for Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012); and David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). Stefan A. Halper, The Beijing Consensus: How China’s Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-first Century (New York: Basic Books, 2010); and Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin, 2012). Liu Mingfu, The China Dream: Great Power Thinking and Strategic Power in the Post-America Era (New York: CN Times Books, 2015; Chinese version, 2010). See also Edward Wong, “In China, A Colonel’s Views Bolster Nationalism,” International New York Times, 3–4 October 2015. For a recent exposition of this outlook, see Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig, eds., The Origins of World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), especially the chapters on Austria-Hungary by Graydon A. Tunstall, Jr., on Germany by Holger H. Herwig, and on Russia by David Alan Rich; Holger H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary,

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44. 45.

46.

47. 48.

1914–1918 (London: Arnold, 1997); and David Fromkin, Europe’s Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914? (New York: Knopf, 2004). David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 1937–41: A Study in Competitive Co-operation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982). Associated Press, “World Leaders Renew Vow to Fight Climate Change After Trump Pulls US out of Paris Agreement,” South China Morning Post, 2 June 2017, http://www .scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/2096585/world-leaders-renew-vow-fight-climate -change-after-trump-pulls-us. Agence France-Presse, “ ‘A Matter of Principle’: US Business Leaders Slam Trump’s Withdrawal from Paris Climate Deal,” South China Morning Post, 3 June 2017, http://www .scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2096716/matter-principle-us -business-leaders-slam-trumps. David M. Lampton, The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). Reuters, “China, Japan, South Korea Pledge to Resist Economic Protectionism,” South China Morning Post, 5 May 2017, http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence /article/2093057/china-japan-south-korea-pledge-resist-economic.

24 THE FUTURE OF THE ATLANTIC ALLIANCE UNDER PRESIDENT TRUMP W I L L I A M R . K E Y LO R

I

accepted with some trepidation the kind invitation of this volume’s editors to contribute a brief chapter on the possible foreign policy initiatives of the Trump administration. The candidate made only sporadic references to that topic during the 2016 presidential campaign—tirelessly repeating the slogan “America First” (in apparent ignorance of the historic context of that term). But President-elect Donald Trump issued a few notable remarks and assembled a team of foreign policy advisers that give us some clues about where this country may be headed in its relations with the outside world in the next four years. Since the topic I know best is transatlantic relations, I will confine my analysis to that narrow slice of the overall global picture, putting aside the “Two China” policy, the wall along the southern border, stringent restrictions on Muslim immigration, trade protectionism, the Paris climate accord, and the Iran nuclear deal. It is no exaggeration to say that Trump’s occasional statements during and after the presidential campaign, together with his nominations for key foreign policy posts since the election, suggested that he may have intended to orchestrate the most radical transformation of the relationship between the United States and its transatlantic allies since the advent of the Cold War. In March 2016, he described the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as “obsolete,” noting that the Atlantic alliance “was set up a long time ago. . . . We were a rich nation then.”1 In July 2016, he issued this warning: “If we cannot be properly reimbursed for the tremendous

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cost of our military protecting other countries, and in many cases the countries I’m talking about are extremely rich, . . . I would absolutely be prepared to tell those countries ‘Congratulations, you will be defending yourself.’ ”2 His seemingly neo-isolationist approach to European security was apparently related to his belief that the top security priority of the United States must be a global campaign against radical Islamic terrorism. Once in the Oval Office, he did not hesitate to exert pressure on America’s transatlantic allies to bear a greater share of the burden for their own defense, so that the United States could reallocate the freed-up resources to what seems to be his overriding goal of destroying Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), al-Qaeda, and other jihadist groups in the Greater Middle East. He demanded that the European members of the alliance meet the specified minimum spending on defense of 2 percent of GDP, which only six (out of twenty-eight total alliance members) now do. Trump was not the first American public official to complain about the European allies’ preference for butter over guns at the expense of the American taxpayer. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy both privately groused at this ongoing security dependency after Western Europe had fully recovered from the devastation of World War II. During the Vietnam War, the Mansfield Amendment of 1969, which called for a 50 percent reduction of US troop strength in Europe in light of the Old Continent’s economic prosperity, came close to obtaining a majority vote in the Senate. In support of his amendment, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT) mordantly observed: “The 250 million people of Western Europe, with tremendous industrial resources and long military experience, are unable to organize an effective military coalition to defend themselves against 200 million Russians who are contending at the same time with 800 million Chinese, but must continue after 20 years to depend upon 200 million Americans for their defense.”3 This longstanding transatlantic dispute about “burden-sharing” survived the end of the Cold War and continued right up to the Obama administration. In 2010, Defense Secretary Robert Gates grumbled about what he called “the demilitarization of Europe.”4 In June 2011, before leaving his post, he warned in a speech in Brussels of NATO’s “dim if not dismal future” unless its European members increased their contributions to the alliance. “The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the US Congress—and in the American body politic writ

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large—to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense.” And he added, ominously: “Indeed, if current trends in the decline of European defense capabilities are not halted and reversed, future US political leaders . . . may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.”5 An exasperated President Barack Obama echoed the criticism from his former defense secretary in his wide-ranging interview in The Atlantic magazine with Jeffrey Goldberg in April 2016. “Free riders aggravate me!” he declared, in reference to the European allies’ hyper reliance on the US for their own security at minimal costs to themselves.6 It has been widely assumed that the United States would spend the money and provide the military equipment and manpower required to deter the Kremlin from, say, intervening in the three NATO member states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia (as it had in the non-NATO states of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014). There are two reasons to question whether the Trump administration will honor this automatic US security commitment based on Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. The first is the president-elect’s intimation that this commitment is not absolute but rather is conditional on Europe’s willingness to look after its own security while Washington concentrates on security priorities elsewhere. The second is the mounting evidence that the president intends to orchestrate a complete and total “reset” of US relations with Russia: his refusal to believe reports from the intelligence community in Washington that Moscow intervened in the recent presidential campaign through a cyberattack, his favorable references to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a national leader, his frequent insistence on the necessity of improving relations with America’s old Cold War adversary, and his nomination of Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state. A longtime personal friend of the Russian strongman, Tillerson opposed the economic sanctions imposed by the Obama administration on Russia after its annexation of Crimea and intervention in Eastern Ukraine because they interfered with Exxon’s plans for a joint oil-drilling venture with a state-run Russian company. The choice of Tillerson confirmed the impression left by Trump’s earlier selection of retired Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn as national security advisor, an influential position previously occupied by the likes of McGeorge Bundy, Henry Kissinger, and Brent Scowcroft.

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Flynn had earlier designated radical Islam as the number-one global threat to the United States and even referred to the religion of Islam as “a cancer.” As for relations with Russia, he appeared on the Russian state-controlled television channel RT and has stressed the need to work with Russia and the Bashar al-Assad regime to counter the threat of radical Islamic terrorism in Syria. As for NATO, Flynn heartily endorsed Trump’s criticism of the European members of the alliance, declaring that “this is no longer the Cold War—we need to organize ourselves differently. And, frankly, if you are part of the club, you’ve got to pay your bill, and for countries that don’t pay their bills, there has got to be some other penalty.”7 Although the president was obliged to dismiss Flynn within a month of his inauguration, he continually praised the ousted national security adviser after his departure and, in February 2017, urged then-director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, to back off his efforts to investigate Flynn for collusion with the Russian government.8 It is conceivable that the Trump administration may seek to disengage from the Atlantic Alliance while seeking détente with Russia. On the off chance that such a seismic strategic realignment comes to pass, what can the European members of NATO do to ensure their security? The answer may lie in proposals recently offered by several longtime students of the transatlantic relationship. After noting that the Europeans “will not do more unless the United States credibly commits to doing less,” political scientist Barry Posen concludes that “the European Union [EU] provides as good a foundation for US disengagement [from Europe] as the United States will find anywhere in the world today.”9 Writing before the presidential election of November 2016, historian Andrew Bacevich observed that “should it choose to do so, Europe—even after the British vote to leave the EU—is fully capable of defending its eastern flank. The next administration should nudge the Europeans toward making that choice—not by precipitously withdrawing US security guarantees but through a phased and deliberate devolution of responsibility” over the next decade or so. “But to get things rolling,” he concluded, “the next administration’s message to Europe should be clear from day one: ready your defenses; we’re going home.”10 The neo-realists John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt chimed in with the blunt assessment that “the United States should end its military presence in Europe and turn NATO over to the Europeans.”11 Jolyon Howorth, the leading expert on the abortive

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efforts of the Europeans to devise an institutional structure for their own defense, from the failure of the European Defense Community in 1954 to the current moribund Common Security and Defense Policy,12 has called for the “EU-isation” of NATO, that is, the gradual transfer of authority within the alliance to its European members. “There is no God-given law whereby Europe should be utterly reliant in perpetuity on any ally (however powerful) for its regional security,” he observes. “The United States cannot ‘solve’ Europe’s ‘Russia problem.’ Only the EU can do that. But it can do that only from a position of strategic autonomy [from NATO].”13 Since entering the Oval Office, Donald Trump “walked back” many of his most extreme campaign pronouncements—on waterboarding, on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, on the total ban on Muslim immigration, and on the criminal prosecution of his opponent, among others. It is entirely possible that his inchoate plans to compel America’s transatlantic allies to contribute more to their defense or risk losing the American pledge of extended deterrence will also fall by the wayside. His favorable reference to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty in June 2017 (the only time he has mentioned America’s pledge to intervene in defense of its transatlantic allies) seemed to allay concerns about his commitment to the US pledge of extended deterrence.14 But he may return to his earlier criticism of the European members of NATO for the financial burden they have imposed on the United States. In that case, the writing will be on the wall for the EU as it confronts the challenge of devising a common European security and defense policy that has eluded it for so many decades, in the expectation of disengagement of the United States from the continent.

NOTES 1.

2.

Maggie Haberman and David E. Sanger, “Transcript: Donald Trump Expounds on His Foreign Policy Views,” New York Times, 26 March 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016 /03/27/us/politics/donald-trump-transcript.html. David Sanger and Maggie Haberman, “Donald Trump Sets Conditions for Defending NATO Allies Against Attack,” New York Times, 20 July 2016, https://www.nytimes .com/2016/07/21/us/politics/donald-trump-issues.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh =C3CBEC1F11730AA8CE75AEB4DE2C18FD&gwt=pay.

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3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

Joseph Joffe, “Trump to NATO: Pay Up or We Won’t Protect You,” Hoover Institution, 8 August 2016, http://www.hoover.org/research/trump-nato-pay-or-we-wont-protect -you. Brian Knowlton, “Gates Calls European Mood a Danger to Peace,” New York Times, 23 February 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/world/europe/24nato.html. See also James J. Sheehan, Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe (New York: Mariner Books, 2009). Remarks by Secretary Gates at the Security and Defense Agenda, Brussels, Belgium, US Department of Defense, 10 June 2011, http://archive.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript .aspx?TranscriptID=483. Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine,” The Atlantic, April 2016, http://www.theatlantic .com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/. James Goldgeier, “Trump’s National Security Adviser Wants to Water Down US NATO Commitments. Here’s What That Means,” Washington Post, 20 November 2016, https:// www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/20/trumps-handpicked -national-security-adviser-wants-to-water-down-americas-nato-commitments-heres -what-that-means/?utm_term=.1f5d11630b90. Michael S. Schmidt, “Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation,” New York Times, 16 May 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/us/politics/james -comey-trump-flynn-russia-investigation.html. Barry R. Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for US Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 66, 90. Andrew J. Bacevich, “Ending Endless War: A Pragmatic Military Strategy,” Foreign Affairs 95, no. 5, September/October 2016, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united -states/2016-08-03/ending-endless-war. John J. Mearsheimer and Steven M. Walt, “The Case for Offshore Balancing: A Superior US Grand Strategy,” Foreign Affairs 95, no. 4, July/August 2016, https://www.foreignaffairs .com/articles/united-states/2016-06-13/case-offshore-balancing. See his most recent book on the subject: Jolyon Howorth, Security and Defence Policy in the European Union (London: Palgrave, 2014). I am grateful to him calling to my attention some of the sources cited in this essay. Jolyon Howorth, “European Security Autonomy and NATO: Grasping the Nettle of Alliance EU-isation,” preliminary draft of an article to appear in a special issue of West European Politics in 2017. Peter Baker, “Trump Commits United States to Defending NATO Nations,” New York Times, 9 June 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/world/europe/trump-nato -defense-article-5.html.

V TH E L ANGUAGE AND LEG ACY OF H UMAN R IG HTS

F

25 THE UNITED STATES AND THE GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS ORDER MARK PHILIP BRADLEY

“D

on’t tell me it doesn’t work—torture works,” then–presidential candidate Donald Trump said at a February 2016 campaign event in Bluffton, South Carolina. “Okay, folks, Torture—you know, half these guys [say]: ‘Torture doesn’t work.’ Believe me, it works, Okay?”1 Whether or not the president’s promise of a return to Bush-era waterboarding (or forced deportations or building his “beautiful wall”) will be realized is anybody’s guess, but the Trump presidency is unlikely to be remembered for its vigorous championing of human rights. Perhaps more surprising is the ever-diminishing place of the United States in the making of a global human rights order long before Donald Trump appeared on the political scene. One arresting indication of the United States’ marginality in the contemporary global human rights imagination is the sharp decline in the use of the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights as the model for drafters of written charters in new states. As late as 1987, Time magazine reported that of the 170 countries then in existence, as many as 160 had used the American model for their constitutions. By the beginning of the twentyfirst century, however, the use of the US Constitution had gone into what one legal scholar terms a “free fall.”2 No single document has replaced it; instead, contemporary constitution making is shaped by a pluralist sensibility drawn from newer national constitutions like the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the 1996 South African Constitution,

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along with international and regional human rights instruments, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsberg has said, “I would not look to the American Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.”3 Similarly, judges around the world, who had habitually gone first to the decisions of the US Supreme Court to craft their own judgments during much of the second half of the twentieth century, no longer do so. Instead they more frequently cite decisions by the European Court of Human Rights.4 As much of the world is turning away from the United States for its human rights inspiration, the continuing reticence of the American state to engage in the global human rights order is also striking. The United States has always been slow to embrace international human rights treaties and norms. The US Senate ratified the Genocide Convention only in 1988, some forty years after it was adopted by the United Nations (UN). As of 2017, the United States remains the only country in the world that had not signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is among only seven countries that have failed to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The United States is not a participant in the International Criminal Court. It signed the Rome Statute that established the court, but opposition to bringing the statute forward in the Senate for ratification has been vigorous. The United States was the twenty-second country to legalize gay marriage. American courts also use international and regional human rights law in their jurisprudence far less often than other national courts. In the rare instances that they do, such as the US Supreme Court’s 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision striking down that state’s sodomy laws that drew on similar decisions by the European Court for Human Rights, their invocation stirred a political tempest. In his dissent to Lawrence, Justice Antonin Scalia called the majority’s use of foreign law a “[d]angerous dicta.” This court, he wrote, “should not impose foreign moods, modes, or fashions on Americans.” Other members of the Court have viewed foreign law more generously, but their actual use of it remains parsimonious.5 The broader American political climate has not been encouraging. Since the Lawrence decision, a resolution has circulated annually in the US House of Representatives calling for a constitutional amendment that would prohibit US courts from basing opinion on international law.6 This American

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allergy to international human rights law suggests that the ghost of the challenge by conservative Republican senators in the 1950s through what became known as the Bricker Amendment and brought a retreat from US support for UN human rights norm making—a challenge that stopped US ratification of the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights and the Genocide Convention in its tracks for decades—continues to cast a long shadow. The reluctance by the American state to fully embrace global human rights is mirrored in contemporary civil society. A National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) delegation traveled to Geneva in 2012 to bring the question of voting rights in the United States to the attention of the United Nations Human Rights Commission. In a conscious reprise of the organization’s 1947 An Appeal to the World led by W.E.B. Du Bois that sought to make visible racial discrimination in the United States at the UN, the NAACP presented its report Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in the United States to draw global attention to state legislation that threatened the voting rights of millions of persons of color.7 American gay rights and Native American rights activists also continued to employ global human rights vocabularies as they had beginning in the 1970s. These were, however, largely the exceptions that proved the rule, and even in these cases, the presence of human rights was muted. Most of today’s major American social movements—among them the Occupy Protests, the Fair Immigration Movement, the Fight for $15, the Marriage Equality Movement, and Black Lives Matter—take primary inspiration from alternative political and moral lexicons. In their challenges to the mounting chasm in wealth and income between the top 1 percent of Americans and the rest; the mass incarceration of African Americans; the escalating detentions and deportations of immigrants; and growing racial disparities in policing, education, and income, these movements might have turned to the language of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its promises of universal guarantees to economic and social rights, to free movement, and to live without racial and gender discrimination. At times, these movements have made rhetorical gestures to the lexicon of human rights, but their energies and tactics on the ground operated largely around a domestic space in which global human rights remained in a minor key. With the number of families in the United States

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living in $2-a-day poverty having more than doubled since 1996, human rights is losing some of its moral power to instruct in an era when structural arguments about economics and race are displacing other kinds of oppositional political discourses. The declining significance of human rights as a powerful political or moral vocabulary in the United States cannot be seen apart from the deployment of torture as a key instrument of American state power after 9/11. American public opinion was initially skeptical about the turn to torture. In a 2004 Pew Research Center poll, the majority of respondents said that torture could never be justified. But over the next seven years, public opinion began a slow reversal, with a majority in 2011 saying torture can often or sometimes be justified.8 Trump is not alone. It was not always so. In the 1940s the United States was fully present at the creation of a global rights order and Japanese Americans joined African Americans and Native Americans in their embrace of UN-sanctioned human rights norms to fight cases of domestic discrimination. The rise of President Jimmy Carter’s human rights diplomacy in the late 1970s was almost a sideshow compared with the four hundred US-based human rights organizations established over the decade. Many of them were self-styled grassroots and decidedly local operations, while others, like Human Rights Watch, came to be national if not global in scope. At the same time, a host of American professional organizations that previously had been unconcerned with global rights questions took up the cause of human rights. For the first time in American history, doing something about human rights became a part of everyday practice. Doctors, lawyers, journalists, physicists, bankers, accountants, chemists, university and high school teachers, students, senior citizens, social workers, ministers, librarians, grants officers at the nation’s leading foundations, psychologists and psychiatrists, dentists, statisticians, and even civil engineers all found human rights in the 1970s.9 To some extent they never let go. If the 1970s marked the beginning of human rights as vocation, then the professional turn has only intensified in the twenty-first century. Human rights are now deeply embedded in the curriculums of most professional schools, from schools of medicine and law to business. Undergraduate and graduate programs in human rights at American colleges and universities have proliferated, with

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many of these graduates going to work in what is now considered “the human rights field” at nonprofits or in government and business. Indeed, the quotidian spread of human rights into the fabric of contemporary American society can be quite remarkable. New York state fifth graders spend as much time reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as they do Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer. A middle-school shop teacher in Des Plaines, Illinois, switched out his usual cuckoo-clock project and instead had his students build birdhouses to illustrate the Universal Declaration’s Article 25 guarantee of the right to shelter. The simple acts of buying a coffee or a piece of fish are now mediated through human rights concerns with fair trade and slavers.10 The language of human rights is still there for the taking. It offers a set of vocabularies and practices that could mobilize Americans, if not the American state, to make human rights and the kind of political work they might do at home and abroad their own again. Recovering the moral power of human rights may in fact become an unintended consequence of Donald Trump’s presidency.

NOTES 1.

2.

3.

4.

Jenna Johnson, “Donald Trump on Waterboarding: ‘Torture Works’ ,” Washington Post, 17 February 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/02/17 /donald-trump-on-waterboarding-torture-works/. Adam Liptak, “ ‘We the People’ Loses Appeal with People Around the World,” New York Times, 6 February 2012, A1; John Greenwald, “The World: A Gift to All Nations,” Time, Monday, 6 July 1987, 92. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,964901,00 .html “US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg to Egyptians: Look to the Constitutions of South Africa or Canada, Not to the US Constitution,” Middle East Media Research Institute TV Monitor Project, 30 January 2012, http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/3295 .htm. Adam Liptak, “US Court, a Long Time Beacon, Is Now Guiding Fewer Nations,” New York Times, 17 September 2008, A1. On these processes more generally, see David S. Law and Mila Versteeg, “The Declining Influence of the US Constitution,” New York University Law Review 87, no. 3 (June 2012): 762–858; and Hanne Hagtvedt Vik, “How Constitutionalism Concerns Framed the US Contribution to the International Human rights Regime from Its Inception, 1947–53,” International History Review 34, no. 4 (December 2012): 887–909.

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5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

Lawrence v. Texas, 539 US 558, 598 (2003) (Scalia, J., dissenting). By contrast, Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer offers a robust defense of the use of international law by American courts in his The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2015). See, for instance, H.J. Res.54, “Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to the use of foreign law as authority in Federal courts,” 113th Congress (2013–2014), https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-joint-resolution/54. “NAACP Brings US Voting Rights Problems Before UN Human Rights Commission,” 14 March 2012, http://www.naacp.org/latest/naacp-brings-u-s-voting-rights-problems -before-un-human-rights-commission/. Pew Research Center, “About Half See CIA Interrogation Methods as Justified,” 15 December 2014, http://www.people-press.org/files/2014/12/12-15-14-CIA-Interrogation-Release .pdf. On these histories, see my book The World Reimagined: Americans and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Kate Taylor, “English Class in the Common Core Era,” New York Times, 19 June 2015, 1; Laura T. Raynolds, Douglas Murray, and John Wilkinson, eds., Fair Trade: The Challenge of Transforming Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2007); The Editorial Board, “Slavery and the Shrimp on Your Plate,” New York Times, 21 June 2014, http://www.aladdin.st /holiday14/new_york_times.html.

26 DONALD TRUMP AND THE IRRELEVANCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS S A M U E L M OY N

T

he election of Donald Trump furnishes an opportunity to look beyond the naïve celebration and apocalyptic criticism of international human rights in search of balance about their true importance.1 Human rights could well complement a political response to populism, but will not compensate for the failure to construct that response in the first place. The international human rights system, with its diverse global movements, is epoch-making, allowing stigma to be applied to errant states on matters of crucial global concern.2 But promoting its exclusive relevance in the face of injustice, as if the alternative were apathy or despair, is simply not going to cut it. Trump helps show why. The crucial achievement of international human rights thus far is the possibility of passing global judgment on states, especially those that depart radically from a now-worldwide consensus around civil and political liberties, including racially discriminatory treatment. But we cannot turn to human rights history simply to celebrate our progress. Engaging seriously with history means not only marking undoubted achievements but also staring strict limits in the face. And no matter how good our ancestors were in making some political options possible, it cannot change the fact that we might need more now. The Trump presidency reveals three limitations with remarkable clarity. One concerns enforcement: for all the stigma the human rights system

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imposes, remedies have always been another matter—a point of special relevance to the United States, where such remedies are historically nonexistent. Another is the comparative frailty of human rights norms and movements so far in protecting noncitizen victims of errant states, precisely the people who have most feared violations of their rights thanks to Trump’s presidency. The last, and easily the most important, is that the human rights regime simply bypasses the challenges of middle-class dislocation and stagnation that have driven populist revolts the world over. In their short historical era of prominence, human rights have rarely gone beyond the ability to stigmatize, especially when it comes to international enforcement. Regional protection schemes have done a bit better than international ones, but not for Americans. It may be true in some contexts, as Beth Simmons influentially argues, that enforcement occurs when domestic movements rely on the extra tools provided by international norms.3 But sometimes it simply seems counterproductive, inopportune, or unnecessary to turn to them. We can emphasize, for example, how American blacks, along with diverse global actors, contributed to the origins of the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. But we must also add that the convention’s actual contribution to the civil rights struggle in America has been largely nugatory. Next to no advocates in the Black Lives Matter movement have seen the value of internationalizing it in the name of human rights. It strikes me as obtuse to think that American citizens who are ethnic minorities, and therefore understandably fearful of Trump’s depredations, must or will depend on international human rights to save or even help them from the likeliest scenarios. This is especially the case as American human rights activists have never struggled hard to make international legal rights, including those in the few treaties the United States has ratified, domestically actionable. This is not going to change under Trump’s presidency. One wonders whether the situation might have been different had the leading advocates tried to make human rights law relevant to American citizens with the same zeal with which they promoted humanitarian interventions and criminal accountability for the strongmen of other nations—but now it is too late. I have my doubts about how great a risk Trump poses to American citizens and thus how serious the classic problems that international human rights were designed to solve really is. Constitutional traditions

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and institutional protections that no demagogue with razor-thin support can easily shirk have proven dependable, as the travel ban litigation has shown. The same is not true, alas, for two groups of noncitizens: those facing deportation under Trump’s heartless maximalism (even beyond the heartlessness of his predecessor, who deported so many already) and those in America’s now-global security zone who are apt to suffer under Trump’s escalated militarism. Yet if these two groups are the likeliest victims of Trump’s excesses, we must add in the same breath that international human rights offer weaker norms for their protection and therefore will place less heavy a stigma on their persecutor. And enforcement mechanisms are next to nonexistent—especially to the extent that Trump abjures his crazy talk about torture to stick to Obama’s pattern of relatively humane war without chronological or geographical bounds.4 In the end, however, the chief limit of human rights politics in the age of Trump is that they offer the wrong norms and wrong remedies for the economic fundamentals. The poorest of Americans were not Trump’s essential supporters; instead, it was the middle class—especially whites willing to play a classic “blame game” after the grinding experience of dislocation and stagnation—that put him over the top. A politics to counteract populism will not take the form of mobilization for the socioeconomic rights for the poor, important as such work remains, but instead a broader engagement with distributive inequality. The international human rights regime does not have the norms to address this problem, however, let alone the strength to achieve broader distributional fairness of the welfare states of yesteryear. Human rights advocates can dissociate themselves from the market fundamentalism with whose success their movement shares the same life span, but they cannot bring down a companion they have so far left undisturbed.5 This hardly means that we must simply return to national politics as if the fate of democracy locally were unaffected by the politics and economics of the international order. We need a new cascade of internationalist justice—beyond retribution for arch-criminals—as much as a series of national new deals. This does mean, however, that human rights do not address (let alone solve) all problems. They serve their limited purposes without displacing the need for a new politics to subvert populism, which will have to be global as much as it is local. To the man with a hammer, it is said, everything looks like a nail. Now that Trump is in power, in the

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train of a series of other populists, hammering away with human rights alone is to neglect the desperate need for other tools.

NOTES 1.

2. 3. 4.

5.

A slightly different version of this chapter appeared under a different title at Open Democracy, 14 November 2016, https://www.opendemocracy.net/openglobalrights/samuel -moyn/trump-and-limits-of-human-rights. Charles R. Beitz, The Idea of Human Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Beth A. Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Samuel Moyn, “Why the War on Terror May Never End,” New York Times Books Review, 24 June 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/books/review/spiral-by-mark-danner .html. Samuel Moyn, “Human Rights and the Age of Inequality,” 27 October 2015, https:// www.opendemocracy.net/openglobalrights/samuel-moyn/human-rights-and-age-of -inequality.

VI THE FOURTH ESTATE, LEAKS, AND FAK E NEWS HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

F

27 DONALD TRUMP AND THE “PARANOID STYLE” IN AMERICAN (INTELLECTUAL) POLITICS L E O P. R I B U F F O

R

ichard Hofstadter’s famous catchphrase, the “paranoid style in American politics,” should be buried with a stake in its heart.1 As someone who has tried to hammer in the stake for several decades, I cannot help noticing that the term has again risen from the grave as in a horror movie populated, not by vampires, zombies, and terrified teenagers, but by Donald Trump, superficial pundits, and terrified liberals and radicals. The application of the “paranoid style” to Trump and his followers began in 2015 and has continued unabated. Some of Trump’s conservative defenders have retaliated by calling his critics the true paranoid stylists.2 This chapter represents not only another effort to bury the paranoid style but also (especially for those opposing the interment) an attempt at least to review the term’s problematic origins and consequences. Certainly, President Trump promotes groundless conspiracy theories and claims to be unfairly persecuted, dispositions shared by many of his supporters. The question at hand is whether the term “paranoid style” enhances or inhibits our understanding of Trump, his coalition, and his presidency.

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THE IN TEL L ECTUAL OR I GI N S OF THE PARANOID STY LE

Hofstadter’s catchphrase and the initially serious ideas behind it fitted into three intersecting trends in the post–World War II era. First, with Cold War liberals leading the way, the right-center-left model became the prevailing framework for conceptualizing American politics by the early 1950s. This simple formula, which originated in the French Revolution, had been more or less standard in Western Europe for over a century. In this respect, as in many others, the United States was different. The conflict over slavery culminating in the Civil War produced a powerful North–South regional interpretation of American history. Then the Populist Party revolt of the late-nineteenth century strengthened an East–West regional interpretation that was codified in Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis. Charles Beard stressed instead the conflict between classes or economic groups. Especially outside the academy, these modes of analysis overlapped. Nonetheless, from the so-called Progressive Era to the Great Depression, liberals (or progressives as they often preferred to call themselves) typically conceptualized an enduring conflict between “the people” and “the interests.” So did most radicals. Liberals and radicals differed primarily about the composition of “the people” and the amount of conflict needed to thwart or overthrow “the interests.” The Great Depression, World War II, and the early Cold War not only transformed domestic and international politics but also changed the ways in which Americans conceptualized these developments. President Franklin Roosevelt eschewed “radical” and “progressive” to claim the label “liberal” for the New Deal welfare state. In practice, the famous Roosevelt coalition changed several times before FDR’s death in 1945. Many “old progressives,” judging the New Deal too coercive and disruptive of social order, reluctantly began to call themselves conservatives. In 1940–1941, some conservatives who favored aid to the Allies replaced antiwar liberals who defected from the Roosevelt coalition. During the on-again, off-again Popular Front phases from the mid-1930s to the late-1940s, Communists and their allies continued to portray “the people” arrayed against “the interests” (now often characterized as fascist).

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Neither classic Marxism nor liberal notions of rational self-interest adequately explained Italian Fascism or German Nazism, let alone fascism as a generic category. During the 1930s, anti-Communist liberals began to emphasize similarities between Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism. This trend accelerated as the Cold War escalated in the late-1940s. As Cold War liberal Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. wrote, domestic and international developments required a revised “terminology of politics.” The “linear conception of right and left”—the interests versus the people—no longer fitted reality.3 Schlesinger’s The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom, published in 1949, was especially influential in popularizing this revised terminology. In the right-center-left model, wisdom and virtue resided in a practical center dominated by Cold War liberals occasionally aided by some sensible conservatives. The far left and far right met “at last on the murky grounds of tyranny and terror.”4 This soon-to-be-standard framework was applied not only to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union but also to the American far right and far left. In a second related post–World War II trend, self-consciously pluralist intellectuals like Hofstadter, Daniel Bell, Seymour Martin Lipset, Nathan Glazer, and David Riesman tried to make sense of what they called “radical right” movements associated with Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) in the 1950s and with Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) and the John Birch Society in the 1960s. Their efforts reached beyond the academy with a collection of essays called The New American Right, edited by Bell in 1955, which the contributors modified into The Radical Right: The New American Right, Expanded and Updated in 1963.5 Third, in the three decades after World War II, social science perspectives in general and psychological interpretations in particular were increasingly applied to a wide range of issues. Indeed, from the 1940s through the 1960s, psychology was an almost inescapable part of the zeitgeist. Influential pre–World War II antecedents of this development included scholars at elite universities who probed “culture and personality,” Frankfurt School émigrés who tried to combine Marxism and psychoanalysis, and pop Freudians who published guides to getting ahead and selling real estate. The foremost postwar intellectual products were variously admirable, brilliant, obtuse, and infuriating—sometimes all at the same time. The psychologizing trend crossed international boundaries.

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In Cold War America, psychology of a sort served primarily as an alternative to prewar Marxist or Beardian economic interpretations that were considered clunky or subversive. The dominant voice was “neo-Freudian” ego psychology, which usually stressed the possibility and desirably of social adjustment. Most neo-Freudians also drew a sharp distinction between normality and abnormality. In the same vein, Arthur Schlesinger maintained that the far left and far right appealed to men and women who, disoriented by modernity, fled freedom for totalitarian discipline.6 Yet the psychologizing trend extended beyond self-conscious advocates of political and temperamental moderation. The Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education rested partly on the argument that segregation psychologically damaged black children. According to radical theorists Herbert Marcuse, Norman O. Brown, and Frantz Fanon, whole cultures, peoples, or even all of humanity could be in some sense mentally ill. This kind of grand theorizing crested in 1979 with The Culture of Narcissism by Hofstadter’s student Christopher Lasch.7 Practitioners and students of American foreign policy used a psychological perspective to legitimate the Cold War. George F. Kennan’s famous essay “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” was initially titled “Psychological Background of Soviet Foreign Policy.” By the 1960s, vital center liberals, with Schlesinger in the lead, routinely pronounced the Cold War inevitable because Stalin was “paranoid.” A skeptical William Appleman Williams suggested a retrospective psychoanalysis of Stalin by three psychologists he respected: Robert Coles, Rollo May, and Abraham Maslow. No historian took up Williams’s challenge and few even got the joke.8 From the outset, the dominant psychological ideas of the post–World War II era had their greatest impact on the study of political dissidents. In retrospect, Hofstadter recalled the “exploratory” mood of the pluralist scholars represented in The Radical Right, writing that “the application of depth psychology to politics, chancy though it is . . . made us acutely aware that politics can be a projective arena for feelings and impulses that are only marginally related to manifest issues.” Implicit was an effort to move beyond the clunky economic interpretations of the Depression Era without leaving the “material interests” to be “psychologized away.”9 The explorations begun by Hofstadter, Bell, Lipset, Glazer, Riesman, and their fellow pluralists had considerable merit. Many of the inherited “material” interpretations of politics were clunky or had become

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formulaic.10 The revisionist essays published in The Radical Right and elsewhere contain valuable insights about individual social movements. The authors usually distinguished between most of the American conservative and far-right movements on the one hand and European versions of fascism on the other. They also recognized the appeal of these movements to the American working class, an insight that has been found and lost and found and lost and found by liberals and radicals at least once per generation since the mid-1950s. Trump’s election has ushered in the latest stunned rediscovery.

UND ERSTAN DING POL ITICAL PLUR A LI SM A N D I TS COL D WA R ROOTS

A right-center-left spectrum did not and does not necessarily require reflexive celebration of the center. Nor does it necessarily assume that these three positions are hermetically sealed off from one another. Unfortunately, Hofstadter, Bell, Lipset, Glazer, Riesman, and their academic coterie tenaciously translated these prescriptions from Cold War liberalism into a social science idiom. With occasional exceptions, practical bargaining among interest groups was postulated as the norm within an American consensus. “Extremists” on the far left and far right were said to depart from this centrist civility in three intertwined ways: their social position, psychological condition, and mode of political operation. To begin, extremists on both ends of the spectrum were typically social outsiders—those whom Bell called the “dispossessed.” On the far right, these outsiders included old families losing influence, Protestant fundamentalists also in decline, and ethnic groups still denied full acceptance— notably, the Irish Catholics who celebrated McCarthy. Despite obvious differences, elite WASPs, theologically conservative Protestants, and unmelted ethnics were all motivated by “status anxiety.” There was no discussion of religious beliefs or practices. On the contrary, “fundamentalism” not only encompassed traditionalist Catholics as well as Protestants but also widened to include a generic “fundamentalist” frame of mind.11 Moreover, far-right extremists differed psychologically from centrists, a category expanded to embrace prudently dull conservatives like President

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Dwight D. Eisenhower. They were really pseudo-conservatives. In the worst cases, as Lipset wrote, their “apocalyptic and aggressive” outlook revealed “paranoid tendencies.”12 The term “pseudo-conservative” was borrowed from The Authoritarian Personality, a massive study of prejudice whose lead author was Frankfurt School émigré Theodor Adorno. But the Frankfurt School was insufficiently Americanized to have had much impact on The Radical Right. Insofar as the authors adhered to a coherent psychological perspective, it was a pop version of neo-Freudian adjustment.13 Finally, the radical right shunned practical politics, which Bell characterized as “ad-hoc compromise and day to day patching.”14 The practical deals made by mayors, state legislators, and members of Congress involved material interests. Pseudo-conservatives engaged instead in various kinds of impractical “status politics.” For example, their resentment prompted attacks on elites. As Hofstadter put it, pseudo-conservatives, unsure of their social standing, focused their anti-Communist zeal on Ivy Leaguers Franklin Roosevelt and Dean Acheson instead of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, their fellow “bedraggled” extremists at the other end of the spectrum.15 Furthermore, pseudo-conservatives brought into the public square issues of belief and behavior—notably, those relating to religion—that should be kept in the personal sphere. Above all, radical rightists adhered to bizarre conspiracy theories. Some Birchers considered President Eisenhower to be a conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy. Others further right accused an international Jewish cabal, perhaps revealed in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, of using both capitalism and Communism to undermine Christian civilization. The pluralists applied their model retrospectively to most of American history. Antecedents of the post–World War II radical right included radio priest Charles Coughlin, the premier anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist of the late-1930s, and the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. Earlier precursors included the agrarian rebels of the late-nineteenth century who were mobilized into the People’s Party during the 1890s, the anti-Catholic American (or Know-Nothing) Party of the 1850s, the Anti-Masonic Party of the 1820s and 1830s, and segments of the Federalist Party in the 1790s. The People’s Party played a crucial role in this genetic history. Particularly susceptible to farfetched conspiracy theories in general and the

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anti-Semitic variants in particular, the Populists were precursors of the twentieth-century Coughlinites, McCarthyites, Birchers, and Goldwaterites. Senator Robert La Follette (R-WI) appeared to be the link between the Populists and McCarthy in Wisconsin politics.16 Conceptual and empirical criticism of this set of ideas began almost immediately. As C. Vann Woodward observed in 1960, the pluralist arguments illustrated the disillusion of American intellectuals with the masses. Certainly snobbery was not absent from The Radical Right. Boomtowns like Houston, Wichita, and San Diego lacked the sophistication of “large civilizing cities,” Glazer and Riesman wrote.17 At the same time, many of the students who “swamped” American colleges, especially second- or third-level colleges, acquired only a “half-educated resentment for the traditional intellectual values.”18 More important than their lapses into snobbish cosmopolitanism, Hofstadter, Bell, Lipset, Glazer, Riesman, and their coterie disliked not only (upper case) Populism as a nineteenth-century political party, but also (lowercase) populism—that is, any angry movements assailing ostensibly responsible elites. Their claim that practical bargaining within a consensus was the American norm looks at first glance like the product of innovative scholarship. It was at least as much a secular prayer that this was the case. Well-researched critiques kept on coming. The Populists in the 1890s were no more anti-Semitic than most of their contemporaries and perhaps less so than the New England Brahmin elite; they were considerably more hospitable than their Republican rivals to the large Roman Catholic population on the prairie. The post–World War II Red Scare, which is usually mislabeled McCarthyism, had sturdy roots in President Harry S. Truman’s apocalyptic Cold War rhetoric and government loyalty-security program. Insofar as group electoral support could be measured across many decades, McCarthy voters in Wisconsin were not the heirs of the Populists or La Follette. Theologically conservative Protestantism was not dying out in the 1950s and 1960s. Rather, with some adaptations in style and doctrine, evangelicals flocked to hear Billy Graham in stadiums a few miles from Columbia University, where Hofstadter and Bell taught. The Anti-Masonic and Know-Nothing Parties had considerably more support from established politicians than the pluralists occasionally conceded. The presentation of the Ku Klux Klan as an “extremist” movement

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is particularly instructive for scholars who expect sophisticated theory always to enhance understanding. As the best workaday journalists of the 1920s had reported, the Klan was an integral part of American life from the stage to the sports pages to the early radio airwaves.19 Although the conceptual and empirical challenges never ceased, the impact beyond academic specialists was slight. The pluralists not only held onto their model but also added new troublemakers like Alabama Governor and presidential candidate George Wallace. Outside the academy, Populism and populism never recovered from the pluralist hatchet job. Commentators—including some historians who should know better— still routinely present essentially admirable and relatively tolerant figures like William Jennings Bryan and Huey Long as Trump’s precursors. On the recent international scene, the label populist was quickly applied to right-wing leaders Nigel Farage in the United Kingdom, Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland. The ease with which European commentators borrowed the negative conception of populism from their American counterparts is striking. After all, a different connotation was on display nearby in the moderate Austrian People’s party and Spanish Popular party. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever seriously run for office under the banner of the Unpopular party.20

PSYC H O LO GY, PARANOIA, AND B A R RY GOLDWAT ER

Barry Goldwater’s march toward the 1964 Republican presidential nomination worried liberals even more than McCarthy did during his heyday. The mood in 1963–1964 needs to be recaptured here because many contemporary liberals (often self-described as progressives in the latest public relations rebranding) have become almost nostalgic for the occasionally libertarian senator who endorsed abortion and gay rights before his death in 1998. In the 1960s, Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and ruminated recklessly about abolishing the federal income tax, blockading Cuba, withdrawing recognition from the Soviet Union, and using tactical nuclear weapons to win the Vietnam War. Shortly before the 1964 election, Hofstadter wrote that if Goldwater consolidated

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his Republican “party coup” he would “put the democratic process in this country in jeopardy.”21 Many liberal and radical attacks on Goldwater and his followers reorchestrated the exaggerated Depression Era fear of American fascism happening here (as Sinclair Lewis had famously warned in his 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here). California Governor Edmund G. Brown, American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations President George Meany, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and Protestant social gospelers at Christian Century heard echoes of fascism or Nazism in Goldwater’s grassroots mobilization. Hundreds of psychologists and psychiatrists who had never met Goldwater diagnosed him as mentally unfit for the office.22 In this emotional context, the essays added to The Radical Right in 1963 were less exploratory than those published in The New American Right eight years earlier. Perhaps the fresh assertiveness, sometimes to the point of dogmatism, also reflected the rise of the authors to eminence in American intellectual life. Whatever the reasons, they ignored recent and readily available psychological studies that questioned reductionist explanations of human behavior; rejected the sharp dichotomy between public and private issues; and viewed fear, anger, and dissidence as normal and, in the last case, sometimes admirable aspects of life.23 Among the leading pluralist theorists of “extremism,” Hofstadter was always the most interested in psychological explanations. He began working on what became “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” in 1963. The final version appeared as the lead article in a collection published in 1965. The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays also reprinted slightly modified versions of his contributions to The Radical Right along with a piece on the Goldwater campaign. Pleased by the Republican nominee’s overwhelming defeat, Hofstadter more or less returned to his customary cool tone. These four articles in The Paranoid Style must be analyzed together. Furthermore, we need to recognize the quirks and tricks—which Hofstadter would not have acknowledged as tricks—that characterized most of his writing. His chief quirk was an infatuation with ambiguity and paradox even beyond the de facto requirements of cosmopolitan intellectual life in his generation. Readers may search in vain for a straight linear sentence—at least a straight linear sentence whose conclusion is

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not hedged by caveats a paragraph or two down the way. Hofstadter’s chief trick was to obscure methodological or empirical weaknesses with fluent exposition; coercive adjectives, adverbs, and nouns; and catchy turns of phrase. Much of the behavior he liked to call “curious”—his premier coercive adjective, also favored in adverbial form—was curious only in the eye of the beholder: Hofstadter himself.24 Hofstadter’s main goal in his essay “The Paranoid Style” was to evoke a “style of mind,” mostly displayed on the far left and radical right, which was marked by “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.” He was not “speaking in a clinical sense, but borrowing a clinical term for other purposes.” His subjects were “more or less normal people.” Nonetheless, their “central preconception” was the “existence of a vast, insidious, preternaturally effective international conspiracy.”25 In a nutshell, conspiracies not only could be found within history, which was certainly true, but also “history is a conspiracy.” Events constantly verged on an apocalyptic “turning point.” Under the circumstances, paranoid stylists did not see “social conflict as something to be mediated in the manner of the working politician.” At first glance, paranoid stylists left and right seemed to use evidence like everybody else, though often with a pedantry bred of insecurity. At a certain point, however, they made a “curious leap of imagination” into fantasy.26 The paranoid style was an international phenomenon. Hofstadter cited fascism in general, Nazism in particular, and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s purge trials. For the most part, however, his list of examples was familiar: some Federalists, Anti-Masons, Know-Nothings, Populists, Birchers, and followers of Coughlin, McCarthy, and Goldwater. He made a few updates to include aficionados of President John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories and avid opponents of gun control or fluoridation as steps toward socialism. Hofstadter and his fellow pluralists paid almost no attention to the civil rights movement in their conceptualization of the right-center-left spectrum. Even in 1965, he merely noted a symmetrical paranoid style “on both sides of the race controversy . . . among White Citizens Councils and Black Muslims.”27 “Paranoid style” was primarily a catchphrase from the start. The major arguments and examples in Hofstadter’s title essay had been disseminated by his pluralist coterie for a decade; there had been casual references to “paranoia” in The New American Right. But Hofstadter’s title and the long

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essay that followed made a difference. Now relegated to a clinical-sounding category, far-right extremists seemed more peculiar than ever. As usual, in those parts of the essays where Hofstadter distanced himself from his central thesis, he offered some good ideas. For example, he contrasted Barry Goldwater’s quest for “ultimate total victory” in the Cold War, even at the risk of thermonuclear war, with Senator Robert A. Taft’s (R-OH) qualms about intervention abroad during the early fifties. In some respects, he wrote, Goldwater’s “militant” position echoed John F. Kennedy’s in 1960. And Hofstadter reminded fellow cosmopolitan intellectuals “how frightening right-wing pressures can be in smaller communities.”28 As usual, too, Hofstadter’s catchy phrases, paradoxes, and caveats revealed weaknesses in his arguments. Most obviously, if “paranoid” was not being used “in a clinical sense,” why use the word at all? Hofstadter called “imitation of the enemy” a “fundamental paradox” of the style.29 Like their moderate opponents, extremists in every era recruited turncoats and prodigiously documented their own beliefs. Yet what is surprising about adversaries living in the same country at the same time drawing on a common store of themes and tactics? Most important, Hofstadter’s caveats included numerous established figures that led or belonged to extremist coalitions. The list ranged from Jedidiah Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse, and Lyman Beecher in the nineteenth century to McCarthy and Goldwater in the twentieth. Others cited by Hofstadter, including the White Citizens Councils, aficionados of Kennedy assassination plots, and Joseph Stalin, did not fit his core criterion of considering history itself as a conspiracy. Despite his own evidence, Hofstadter could not bring himself to acknowledge the fluidity of the psychological or political spectrum. The essays in Paranoid Style showed three changes of emphasis from what Hofstadter had written between 1955 and 1964. He moved away from the concept of status anxiety narrowly conceived. That is, anxiety about social position did not adequately explain an embrace of the radical right. Now he preferred the broader terms “cultural politics” or “symbolic politics.” “Status politics” still served as a synonym for the radical right’s mode of operation. Indeed, Hofstadter stressed the “fundamental difference” between the practical wheeling and dealing of interest politics and the mere symbolism of “status politics.” Cultural politics was a “luxury.” Psychological interests were psychologized away in Paranoid Style.30

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This sharp dichotomy was an unacknowledged and perhaps unrecognized inheritance from the pre–World War II “materialist” interpretations that Hofstadter judged to be inadequate. Beardians emphasized economic interests at the expense of ideas and most Marxists distinguished the powerful economic base from the ephemeral superstructure. The problem in all three cases was that, with the exception of clunky social theorists, most people do not rigidly compartmentalize their thoughts and feelings in this way. Most Americans always wanted more stuff, but they do not regard their cultural and psychological needs as luxuries. Their sense of self was often—although not always—connected to how much stuff they owned. Psychological and cultural needs varied from group to group and from era to era. Frequently, however, these feelings were embedded in the general American language: pursuit of happiness, republican virtue, honor, character, manliness, true womanhood, producer, worker, middle class, and identity (the last popularized by neo-Freudian ego psychologists). Or, as we used to say in the northern New Jersey discourse of my youth, nobody wants to be treated like crap. Although Hofstadter and his pluralist coterie wanted to exclude socalled psychological appeals from politics, the real question is what mix of economic and cultural appeals is effective and (ideally) ethical? Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and cultural critic Kenneth Burke pondered this question over and over during the Great Depression. Also during the 1930s, leaders in the struggle for labor unionization, the last mass movement Hofstadter and his fellow pluralists admired, skillfully combined economic and cultural appeals. The New Deal under Roosevelt was an obvious psychological success among most Americans. So was Eisenhower’s use of his grandfatherly persona to calm the country. In different ways, both presidents showed that cultural conflicts were also susceptible to trade-offs and compromises (though at a social cost, especially for African Americans, and not without continuing controversy). As a historian, Hofstadter had always been more interested in American Christianity than the sociologists Bell, Lipset, Glazer, and Riesman. By 1965, he had discovered that theologically conservative Protestantism was not declining after all. Rather, what he mischaracterized as the “re-emergence of fundamentalism in politics” looked like a powerful source of “Manichean

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and apocalyptic” thinking. “Of necessity,” Hofstadter wrote with one of his coercive nouns, he used fundamentalism in a “rather extended way to describe a religious style.”31 Nothing was less necessary. The evangelical and fundamentalist parts of the religious revival begun during World War II needed instead to be sorted out. Hofstadter paid even less attention to actual religious beliefs and practices than he had when writing about the first and second Great Awakenings in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Finally, and perhaps inadvertently, Hofstadter in The Paranoid Style showed an increasing wariness of (lowercase) populism. A “populistic culture like ours” lacked a “responsible elite with political and moral autonomy,” he lamented. And like Daniel Bell in The End of Ideology, he chastised those who approached “economic issues as matters of faith and morals rather than matters of fact.”32 The fifteen years after the publication of Paranoid Style produced changes in American political and intellectual life that Hofstadter (who died in 1970) might have pronounced curious but which were unsurprising. Growing doubts about the Vietnam War reopened other questions that had been dormant or suppressed since the 1920s. The right-center-left spectrum temporarily widened (by American standards) on both ends. The personal became the publicly political for the foreseeable future. One of the reopened questions involved the nature of normality. Diverse psychologists and psychiatrists rejected the sharp distinction between normal and abnormal behavior as well as the alleged virtues of adjustment. Once again the trend crossed international borders.33 For example, Robert Coles wryly recanted his earlier belief that through “some combination of ten years of psychoanalysis and a little liberal juggling of the economy . . . by golly heaven would be right around the corner.”34 R. D. Laing, a leader of the British antipsychiatry movement, came close to saying that in a murderous world the crazy people were really the sane people.35 In book after book libertarian Thomas Szasz derided the “myth of mental illness.”36 States of mind labeled schizophrenia or paranoia were not diseases like cancer or congestive heart failure. Rather, Szasz contended, most of his fellow psychiatrists used medical-sounding jargon to obscure moral values. They legitimated their own social or political judgments while stigmatizing and controlling those who disagreed in odd ways.37

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The dissident psychiatrists and psychologists differed among themselves and their works contained dubious claims as well as valuable ideas. Yet, collectively, they reaffirmed the continuum between normality and abnormality that marked the worldviews of both Sigmund Freud and William James, the first great humanist psychologist. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association put the “Goldwater rule” into its code of ethics; the rule warned members against publicly diagnosing anyone they had not examined. As is customary with trends in the zeitgeist, the resurrected doubts about normality and abnormality were hardly confined to professionals who earned a living addressing the issue. In novels by Joseph Heller, Ken Kesey, and Kurt Vonnegut, the crazy people were the sane people and vice versa. Graffiti on subway walls proclaimed that “even paranoids have enemies.” David Brion Davis, the foremost historian interested in the paranoid style after Hofstadter’s death in 1970, agreed. With greater erudition than the subway scrawlers, Davis has documented the grand conspiracy theories adopted by the country’s founders, traced analogous fears among “diverse” mainstream Americans, and stressed the “infinite gradations between “normal” and “abnormal” behavior.” Even “wild distortions of reality” are “not necessarily unreasonable interpretations of available information.”38 As the polarized sixties temporarily widened the right-center-left spectrum, Bell, Lipset, Glazer, and many other vital center intellectuals, distressed by domestic and international disorder and criticism of Cold War orthodoxy, moved rightward. Some of them reluctantly accepted the label neoconservative. Their reductionist psychological interpretations now focused on paranoid left-wing extremists, too many of whom seemed to occupy their own classrooms. In 1980, Bell and Lipset became part of Ronald Reagan’s coalition along with Barry Goldwater and the millions of Protestant evangelicals they never understood. Cheap irony aside, the “paranoid style in American politics” deteriorated from a term of art with some theoretical and empirical basis into an unexamined catchphrase.39

WH Y T RUMP ’ S STYL E IS N OT “PA RA N OI D ST Y LE”

Among liberals and radicals, Donald Trump’s election catalyzed fears of the far right even greater than those of 1964. Unlike Goldwater, Trump won.

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Historians Robert Kagan and Timothy Snyder lead the list of “public intellectuals” who conflate Trumpism with fascism; Snyder even credits the possibility of a Trump administration version of the Reichstag fire. Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here has made a comeback in bookstores and op-eds. So many psychiatrists and psychologists publicly declared Trump mentally unfit for the presidency that the American Psychiatric Association felt obliged to reaffirm the Goldwater rule. In comparison, allusions to a mere paranoid style to describe Trump and his followers seem almost mild.40 For an understanding of Trump and Trumpism, not much can be expected from the self-congratulatory mainstream news media in which the level of reporting and commentary has declined since President Bill Clinton’s impeachment—not a high bar to begin with. Journalists and pundits generally prefer a familiar catchphrase to a semi-complicated idea or even an unorthodox simple idea. For example, foreign tyrants do not see themselves as evil and American support for one side in a regional or civil war may provoke violent attacks from the other side(s). Similarly, no one should be surprised when politicians and activists pick up any available rhetorical stick to clobber an opponent. Scholars and public intellectuals should try to do better. Historians, who for a generation have taken pride in their “linguistic turn,” might wonder why their sensitivity to semantic precision has all but evaporated. Invocations of “paranoid style” obscure what once again should be obvious. President Trump and the latest “extremists” on the right are not hermetically sealed off from the temperamentally less volatile conservatives—including most congressional Republicans. Hofstadter’s catchphrase also reinforces the current inclination among liberals reflexively to endorse anything contrary to Trump’s latest tweet. Hence, their enthusiasm for institutions, policies, concepts, and people that merit skeptical examination: the Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, so-called Republican mavericks, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, free trade, national security, humanitarian invention, and a post–Cold War cold war with China or Russia. Ironically, too, invocations of the “paranoid style” inhibit efforts to figure out Trump’s way of thinking (no easy task) and to understand the grievances of his supporters. The president believes in plenty of conspiracies but does not fit Hofstadter’s core criterion, a conviction that history itself is a conspiracy. Whatever Trump’s fate as president, Trumpism is

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not going away—especially if he looks like a martyr driven from office by cosmopolitan elites.41 My critique of the “paranoid style” catchphrase is not intended to discredit efforts to use psychology—including broadly psychoanalytic theories—to interpret human behavior past and present. The academic denigration of this way of thinking since the late 1970s has brought more losses than gains. Even reductionist and bizarre psychoanalytic interpretations underscore a great truth: human beings are more complicated than they think they are. This perspective is especially valuable in an era hospitable to clunky conservative economic theories based on “rational expectations.”42 Nor does my rejection of “paranoid style” preclude occasional acts of blowing off steam. To again invoke the northern New Jersey discourse of my youth, President Trump is a stuck-up bigot, bully, blowhard, and con man.

NOTES 1.

2.

I would like to thank Professor Leila Zenderland, a specialist in the history of psychology at California State University at Fullerton, for comments on an earlier version of this chapter. Chuck McCutcheon, “In Assessing Donald Trump’s Appeal, Some Go to the Phrase ‘Paranoid Style’ ,” Christian Science Monitor, 14 December 2015, https://www.csmonitor .com/USA/Politics/Politics-Voices/2015/1214/In-assessing-Donald-Trump-s-appeal -some-go-to-phrase-paranoid-style; Conor Lynch, “Paranoid Politics: Donald Trump’s Style Embodies the Theories of a Renowned Historian,” Salon, 7 July 2016, https:// www.salon.com/2016/07/07/paranoid_politics_donald_trumps_style_perfectly _embodies_the_theories_of_renowned_historian/; Thomas G. Edsall, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics Is Back,” New York Times, 8 September 2016, https://www .nytimes.com/2016/09/08/opinion/campaign-stops/the-paranoid-style-in-american -politics-is-back.html; Paul Musgrave, “Donald Trump Is Normalizing Paranoia and Conspiracy Thinking in US Politics,” Washington Post, 12 January 2017, https://www .washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/12/donald-trump-has-brought-us -the-american-style-in-paranoid-politics/?utm_term=.41fc312c384f; and Jonathan S. Tobin, “The Paranoid Style in Anti-Trump Politics,” National Review, 12 February 2017, http:// www.nationalreview.com/article/444831/trump-derangement-syndrome-liberal -anti-trump-hysteria-growing-worse. References to Hofstadter and the paranoid style also marked the Organization of American Historians session on Trump in April 2017.

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3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), 143–44. Schlesinger, Vital Center, xxiii–xxiv. Historians have paid little attention to the controversy over conceptualizing the political spectrum but see Alonzo L. Hamby, Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), 277–84; Edward A. Purcell, Jr., The Crisis of Democratic Theory: Scientific Naturalism and the Problem of Value (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1973), 235–72; and David Green, The Language of Politics in America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), especially 119–206. Daniel Bell, ed., The Radical Right: The New American Right, Expanded and Updated (New York: Doubleday, 1963). The other contributors to this volume, less original or less central to the main themes discussed here, were law professor Alan Westin, idiosyncratic conservative historian Peter Viereck, and sociologists Talcott Parsons and Herbert Hyman. Schlesinger, Vital Center, 52, 54, 58. Russell Jacoby, Social Amnesia: A Critique of Contemporary Psychology from Adler to Laing (Boston: Beacon, 1975) offers a spirited critique of neo-Freudianism and related “humanist” psychology from the perspective of a strict Freudian on the political left. There was more intellectual cross-fertilization among the contending psychological and psychoanalytic schools of thought than contemporary and subsequent polemics suggest. Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (New York: Vintage, 1959); Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon, 1969); Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove, 2004); Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979). John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (New York: Penguin, 2011), 259; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Cycles of American History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 189–90; William Appleman Williams, History as a Way of Learning (New York: New Viewpoints, 1973), 371. Williams’s invocation of Coles, May, and Maslow shows that neo-Freudian and humanist psychological theories need not support the status quo. So does Betty Friedan’s enlistment of Maslow in the cause of women’s liberation in The Feminine Mystique (New York: Dell, 1974). Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York: Vintage, 1967), ix–x. Let me emphasize that I do not consider the writings of Turner and Beard to be clunky. In particular, Beard’s discussion of “relativism” and his controversial books on Franklin Roosevelt’s foreign policy deserve renewed attention. For the first post–World War II discovery of the angry white working class, see, in addition to The New American Right, Seymour Martin Lipset, “Working-Class Authoritarianism,” in Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (New York: Anchor, 1963), 87–126. Bell, Radical Right, 1. Bell, 314.

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13.

14. 15. 16.

17. 18.

19.

20.

21. 22.

On the degree to which the Frankfurt School was Americanized with particular reference to The Authoritarian Personality and other books in the Studies in Prejudice Series, see Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute for Social Research, 1923–1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 219–52; Thomas Wheatland, The Frankfurt School in Exile (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 219–57; and Stuart Jeffries, Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School (London: Verso, 2016), 274–79. Bell, Radical Right, 15. Hofstadter, Paranoid Style, 61. Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790–1970 (New York: Harper and Row, 1970). Hofstadter explored many of these themes in two books preceding Paranoid Style, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to FDR (New York: Vintage, 1960) and Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Vintage, 1963). Bell, Radical Right, 92, 96. C. Vann Woodward, “The Populist Heritage and the Intellectual,” in Woodward, The Burden of Southern History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008), 141–66; David S. Brown, Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 116–19. The critical scholarly literature is too large even to begin to summarize here. Since the case of the 1920s Klan is especially instructive, however, see Felix Harcourt, Ku Klux Kulture: America and the Klan in the 1920s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017). On the lazy application of “populism,” especially by journalists, see Charles Postel, “If Trump and Sanders Are Both Populists, What Does Populism Mean?” The American Historian (January 2016), tah.oah.org/february-2016. Postel’s The Populist Vision (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) is the most important recent study the People’s Party of the 1890s. Robert Alan Goldberg, Barry Goldwater (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 149–237, 331–32. Brown, Richard Hofstadter, 157. The most prominent attack on Goldwater by psychologists and psychiatrists was organized by Fact magazine; while some of the respondents used clinical terms like “paranoid schizophrenic,” others stuck to vernacular expressions like “warped.” Goldwater sued Fact for libel and won a judgment of $150,000 in 1968. For the Fact controversy, see Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, 390; Evan Osnos, “Endgames,” New Yorker, 8 May 2017, 39; and Lionel Lokos, Hysteria 1964: The Fear Campaign Against Barry Goldwater (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1967), 140–44. Hysteria 1964 is a convenient compendium of attacks on Goldwater compiled by an outraged supporter and blurbed by the Senator himself. Despite the allusions to fascism and Nazism cited here, much of the anthologized criticism still looks sensible. Anyone interested in my long-standing skepticism of recurrent American fascism scares should consult Leo P. Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1983) and “It Can’t Happen Here: Novel, Federal Theatre Production, and (Almost) Movie,” in Leo P. Ribuffo, Right Center Left: Essays in American History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 161–88.

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23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35.

36.

37. 38. 39.

40.

For example, see Erik H. Erikson, Insight and Responsibility: Lectures on the Ethical Implications of Psychoanalytic Insight (New York: Norton, 1964), 81–157; and Helen Merrell Lynd, On Shame and the Search for Identity (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958). This psychological turn received early, sympathetic notice in Donald Meyer, The Positive Thinkers: A Study of the American Quest for Health, Wealth and Personal Power from Mary Baker Eddy to Norman Vincent Peale (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1966), 284–90. Younger scholars may say that I am “interrogating” Hofstadter’s arguments, but since that term reminds me of a Depression era film noir with Jimmy Cagney, I’ll stick with analyzing. Hofstadter, Paranoid Style, 3–4, 14. Hofstadter, 14, 29, 35–36, 39. Hofstadter, 9. Hofstadter, 126–31, 139. Hofstadter, 32. Hofstadter, 52, 67, 86–87. Hofstadter, 72–73, italics added. Hofstadter, 65, 89–90. For an excellent overview of the shifting zeitgeist from the 1950s to roughly 1980, see Edward A. Purcell, Jr., “Social Thought,” American Quarterly 35, no. 1–2 (Spring-Summer 1983): 80–100. Coles is quoted in Robert Boyers, ed., R. D. Laing and Anti-Psychiatry (New York: Perennial, 1971), 221. To further explore this trend, see R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience (New York: Pantheon, 1967); Boyers, R. D. Laing and Anti-Psychiatry; and the Szasz works cited in note 36. Thomas Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (New York: HarperCollins, 1974), and Ideology and Insanity: Essays on the Psychiatric Dehumanization of Man (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1991). Szasz’s work has many virtues but he slights the metabolic sources and pharmacological treatments of mental disorders. David Brion Davis, ed., The Fear of Conspiracy: Images of Un-American Subversion from the Revolution to the Present (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971), xiii-xiv. John Ehrman, The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Policy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995) remains the best account of the vital centrist transition to neoconservatism. Ehrman rightly sees the term as problematic even in its heyday, as does reluctant neoconservative Seymour Martin Lipset in Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Word (New York: Norton, 1996), 176–208. Speculation persists as to whether or not Hofstadter would have become a neocon and supported Reagan in 1980 if he had lived. See Brown, Richard Hofstadter, 87–89, 147–52. Beverly Gage, “Reading the Classic Novel That Predicted Trump,” New York Times, 17 January 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/books/review/classic-novel-that -predicted-trump-sinclar-lewis-it-cant-happen-here.html; Douglas Perry, “Donald Trump a Fascist? The Debate Rages: Expert Claims ‘Clock Is Ticking’ on US Democracy,”

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41.

42.

Oregonian, 3 May 2017, http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2017/05/donald _trump_a_fascist_the_deb.html; Jane Mayer, “Should Psychiatrists Speak Out Against Trump?” New Yorker, 22 May 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/22 /should-psychiatrists-speak-out-against-trump; Catherine Caruso, “Goldwater Rule in Trumpland: Psychiatrists Debate Weighing in on the President’s Mental Health,” 18 February 2017, https://www.salon.com/2017/02/18/goldwater-rule-in-trumpland-psychiatrists -debate-weighing-in-on-the-president-mental-health_partner/; Maria A. Oquendo, “APA Remains Committed to Supporting Goldwater Rule,” American Psychiatric Association, 16 March 2017, https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/apa-blogs/apa-blog/2017/03/apa -remains-committed-to-supporting-goldwater-rule. Leo P. Ribuffo, “The Forebears of Trumpism,” History News Network, 17 September 2015, historynewsnetwork.org/article/160552; Ribuffo, “Donald Trump, Richard Nixon, and the ‘F….ing Jews’ ,” History News Network, 24 September, 2017, http://historynewsnetwork .org/article/166995 . In these articles I place Trump in the contexts of American nativism, Republican conservatism since the 1930s, politics as entertainment, and know-it-all billionaires Although historians have moved away from psychological interpretations of behavior, Robert J. Shiller, George A. Akerlof, and other economists have rediscovered them. For example, see Robert J. Shiller, Irrational Exuberance, 3rd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015); Robert J. Shiller and George A. Akerlof, Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why It Matters (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009); and Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). Among non-academics eager to get ahead or sell real estate, pop psychology has never died.

28 LEAKING ABOUT DONALD TRUMP IN THE AGE OF FAKE NEWS SA M L E B OV I C

T

he first six months of the Trump administration were defined by ongoing rumors of a Russian connection. Fueled by anonymous sources and ongoing leaks from the intelligence agencies, the news media sketched portraits of suspicious behavior by figures close to Trump. The Trump administration responded with accusations of its own—that the “failing” news media was conducting an unprecedented witch hunt and that Trump was illegally wire-tapped on the orders of President Barack Obama. We are far from the bottom of the story, so it is difficult to write about allegations of improper relations between the Trump team and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Russia with any certainty, let alone with the historian’s preferred tool of hindsight. Still, whatever details end up emerging from the swirl of suspicion, the form of the controversy is not as unprecedented as we might imagine. The key evidence is classified, cloistered within the secretive national security branches of the government. What the media and the public know has been released in partial form. In January 2017, allegations of Russian interference in the US presidential election were issued in a declassified intelligence report.1 In February, National Security Advisor Michal Flynn was forced to resign after the Washington Post and New York Times reported that Flynn had lied about his exchanges with the Russian ambassador in late December. The stories were based on leaks of counterintelligence

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information about the nature of the conversations—the Post story was based on nine anonymous official sources.2 In March, Justice Department officials told the Washington Post that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had spoken twice with Russia’s ambassador to the United States during 2016, contradicting Sessions’s earlier testimony during his confirmation hearings.3 In May, US officials told the Post about intelligence intercepts stating that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had discussed the possibility of setting up a secret communications channel between the transition team and the Kremlin.4 In all of these cases, and many more, we learned about the existence of classified information through leaks or partial declassification, but the actual evidence remained classified. This has been a familiar feature of politics since World War II. Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s hostility to leakers is similarly familiar, for in this regard, Trump really is acting presidentially, with a fixation on “fake news” as an idiosyncratic flourish. (Although one that is not, it is worth pointing out, very far removed from the critique of the “liberal media” so central to the Republican playbook since the time of President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew.) So while history may be no guide to the specifics of the scandal, it can help us think through its structure. Leaks are essential to the coverage of the national security branches of the state; they provide a key means for the public to learn about otherwise-secret activity being conducted by its government. But they are also a limited and insufficient mechanism to inform the public—for the press and the public to rely on them uncritically is to risk making serious mistakes and seriously distorting public discourse. Leaked information plays a role in unearthing scandals, but it is important to be clear about the limitations of leaks. History can provide some lessons. History’s first lesson is that leaks are a ubiquitous, structural feature of American political culture. Because we fixate on the most shocking leaks, we tend to think of them as exceptional breaches of secrecy, and we tend to interpret them in highly partisan terms. Leakers who support our side we treat as noble whistle-blowers; leakers who undermine our side we treat as pathological and treacherous. There is little principle to be found. Think here of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s remarkable transformation in the eyes of Republican pundits—in 2011, he was a traitor worthy

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of assassination; five short years later he was seen as a hero for exposing Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.5 In reality, leaks are omnipresent in American political culture and have been since the rise of state secrecy in the 1940s. New York Times Washington correspondent Max Frankel captured the process in his deposition in the Pentagon Papers case in the early 1970s: “practically everything that our government does, plans, thinks, hears and contemplates in the realms of foreign policy is stamped and treated as secret—and then unraveled by that same government, by the congress and the press in one continuing round of professional and social contacts, and cooperative and competitive exchanges of information.”6 Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee agreed, noting that the “executive branch . . . normally, regularly, routinely and purposefully makes classified information available to reporters and editors in Washington.”7 Leaks, in other words, are not unusual. Frankel called the trade in secrets the “coin” of modern journalism; by the 1980s, according to a Harvard study, 42 percent of federal policymakers had leaked information to journalists; by 2013, Columbia Law Professor David Pozen observed that the “United States government leaks like a sieve.”8 In the context of what everyone acknowledges is a runaway classification system, in which far too much information is declared secret and shielded from the public, leaks play an important role in informing public debate about the operations of the government. As legal scholar Seth Kreimer has argued, leaks play an important role in the “ecology of transparency”—they often provide the first glimpse of a problem, the details of which can then be ferreted out by government investigation, congressional inquiry, or the filing of Freedom of Information Act requests. Kreimer provides many examples of issues that first came to light through leaks, including abuses at Guantanamo Bay, warrantless surveillance and wiretapping, and the existence of a network of Central Intelligence Agency “black sites.”9 Such leaks can play an important role in both revealing and preempting potential government misconduct. On January 25, the New York Times published the leaked draft of an Executive Order that would have reestablished the black sites; in light of public criticism, the Trump administration distanced itself from the draft.10 Of course, we have no way of knowing how seriously this draft memo was being debated, or how credibly to take the Trump administration’s subsequent denials of its authenticity. This reminds us of a second feature

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of leaks: while they might be necessary to provide insight into the secretive operations of the state, they are also a flawed mechanism for informing the public. Basically because they are difficult to verify or assess. (Leaked documents of clear provenance are a partial exception, although even they often lack the necessary context.) To deal with this problem, there has always been a tendency to try to assess leaks based on the identity and motivations of the leaker. Whether we applaud or condemn them, we imagine most leakers to be solitary dissidents, speaking out against the political structure. We want, therefore, to assess their personal motivations. For this reason, there is a long history of interest in the psychological health of leakers; it was no accident that Richard Nixon organized “the plumbers” to break into Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office or that Edward Snowden was accused of narcissism.11 In reality, it is difficult to assess the intentions of leakers, even when we know a great deal about them. The little-known case of Colonel John Nickerson illustrates this point. In 1957, Nickerson was the first American charged under the Espionage Act for leaking state secrets. In an effort to scuttle a rival weapons development program and win funding for his own missile program, he had disclosed the classified results of Army missile tests. Nickerson saw himself as both a brave whistle-blower, informing the public about incompetence and corruption in the awarding of defense contracts, and as a self-interested player, risking national secrets for personal advancement. In his words, he was “one of a new-breed of missile-men politicians engaged in a lone-wolf operation to sell new weapons projects to the government.”12 In other words, no clear line distinguished his personal political agenda from his desire to inform the public. And this is typical; leaks are always a way of conducting politics by other means. We should adjudicate leaks according to what we learn from them, not according to the motivations of the leakers, even when we can identify them. Normally, of course, we do not know the identity of the leakers—this is the case in today’s leaks. The act of leaking classified information is, under the draconian provisions of the Espionage Act, illegal (think here of Obama’s “war on whistle-blowers”). Those who wish to leak information contrary to the wishes of the administration risk real reprisals: beyond the threat of prison, even the leak of nonclassified information can result in firing, demotion, and other sanctions.13 As a result, most leaks are issued

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anonymously, a necessity to avoid prosecution. But the anonymity of most leaks simultaneously creates the potential for government leakers to manipulate the press to pursue their own agenda. Such agendas can take two forms. First, leaks can be part of a coordinated effort by an administration to pursue a policy or political goal. Leaks can be a way of floating trial balloons, or shifting public debate.14 When combined with the ability of the administration to partially declassify secret information, they can be powerful tools. The textbook case here, of course, is the leaked and selectively declassified “evidence” of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War, which the press reproduced uncritically and which made the case for war seem far stronger than it was.15 Even leaks that are closer to what we might think of as pure whistleblowing often have a particular political agenda that may run parallel to the public’s right to know, but is rarely identical to it. The textbook example here is Mark Felt, or Deep Throat, who helped blow the whistle on Watergate to try to wrest control of his Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) away from Nixon’s White House and to gain retribution for having been passed over as FBI director. On the basis of his access to ongoing government investigations, Felt fed important information to the reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, which helped them keep the Watergate story alive in the press. But based on Felt’s leaks, as well as other partial leaks from the government investigation, Woodward and Bernstein were unable to crack the story before the November election. (It is also worth remembering that they made occasional, and entirely understandable, errors in their early coverage, which served to misinform the public.)16 Seen in a broader context, it is significant that Felt had little interest in informing journalists about illegal activities conducted by the FBI—his interests were exposing the White House, nothing more. The public benefitted from this intragovernmental conflict insofar as it learned about Watergate, but other illegal conduct went unexposed. For instance, the massive illegalities of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, in which the FBI monitored, intimidated, and harassed a generation of activists, never leaked out in these years. These activities came to light only when activists broke into FBI offices in Media, Pennsylvania, and stole documents, which revealed the name of the program for the first time.17 The lesson is

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clear: leaks can work to inform the public, but they are dependent on the agenda of the leaker. Not everything leaks. The example of Watergate provides a final historical lesson—leaks are an insufficient mechanism for resolving scandals. In a mythological version of the Watergate story, promoted by the book and film All the President’s Men, Woodward and Bernstein single-handedly brought down Nixon by cultivating leakers.18 Like all myths, there is some truth here, but much is missing—in this case, the fact that Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting had stalled by October 1972. The next month, Nixon, unharmed, swept to easy reelection at the polls. It then took more than a year of congressional investigations to produce the evidence that would lead to Nixon’s resignation. (The film version of All the President’s Men tries to get around the anticlimactic end of its story, with the young reporters increasingly marginal to the action, by appending a montage of Nixon’s fall to the movie’s conclusion.) It was congressional investigations and criminal trials that unearthed evidence that the White House had tried to cover up the Watergate burglary and that discovered and then dislodged the White House tapes that provided the “smoking gun.”19 Anonymous leaks, in other words, are necessary to begin a process of uncovering a scandal, but they are not capable of informing the public about the true meaning of the scandal. Leaks are a device for beginning a debate, a way to open a process of information gathering and investigation and adjudication. Whether or not Republicans in Congress will agree to vigorously support independent investigations remains unclear—their political calculus seems to shift by the hour. But it is surely what is needed to clarify the true story. In the meantime, while it is necessary to rely on leaks to keep the story alive, we should be wary of placing too much faith in anonymously sourced stories. Leaks are necessary, but they are also deeply problematic. A press that is reliant on leaked sources opens itself up to manipulation by government sources: either directly, à la WMDs, or indirectly, by creating a culture of insider access that undermines press independence. And the rise of hyperpartisan media has created another problem, for it seems likely that the cycle of assertions without evidence is only heightening partisan rancor. Within the polarized echo chambers of the current news cycle, allegations only fan preexisting assumptions. Trump supporters dismiss such stories as “fake news” and as evidence of a conspiracy

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of liberal media elites and Washington insiders designed to undermine a democratically elected president. Trump’s opponents, trusting the processes of the media and the expertise of the national security state, see in the allegations proof of his deep illegitimacy. News stories alone, no matter how many anonymous sources are cited, seem unlikely to transform these beliefs. Indeed, the entire affair reflects deep problems in the structure of American political debate. Competing sections of government issue statements with little evidence; as a public, we are asked to trust them. This is much closer to eighteenth-century court intrigue than it is to the ideal of a democratically informed public, rationally parsing competing claims according to the evidence. Meanwhile, the allegations and counterallegations distract from much-needed debate about the development and implementation of policy matters of real importance: the environment, the economy, immigration, foreign policy, health care, minority rights. Chaotic public debate is not politically neutral. It can provide a cover for the delay of much-needed policy (something the Republicans learned from pollster and political consultant Frank Luntz when they began disputing the science on climate change in the 1990s). And it can provide a veil for apparently technocratic administrative governance that has real consequences. Regardless of the outcome of Trump’s particular scandals, we need to do more to encourage the flow of information to the public and to restore faith in democratic dialogue. Government needs to become more accountable. In the short term, if it has nothing to hide, the Trump administration needs to become more transparent about matters ranging from tax returns to conflicts of interest. More important, the veil of state secrecy needs to be rolled back to allow for on-the-record disclosures of information pertaining to national security. In the long run, the classification system needs to be reformed to consider the public’s right to know. Similarly, as legal scholar Yochai Benkler has proposed, the whistle-blower laws need to be amended to allow for the leaking of national security information, if leakers do so with a reasonable belief that they are exposing government wrongdoing.20 In the medium term, as we continue to rely on illegal leaks to learn about government activity, protections for anonymous sources need to be improved. News outlets are already developing technological fixes to protect their sources. A federal law protecting

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journalists from being forced to name their sources would also help information flow to the public.21 None of this is to comment either way as to how history will ultimately judge the Russian connection, or the media’s reporting on it. Perhaps, in the long run, this chapter will seem to be an abstract and naïve reaction to the unfolding of a serious scandal (in which case, excuse these notes as missives from the world’s tiniest and most marginal echo-chamber— historians interested in the structure of American political discourse). It all depends, of course, on what actually happened between the Trump team and the Russians, and what we learn from much-needed government investigations. Perhaps all of the smoke indicates a raging fire; perhaps the bellows of a scandal-hungry news media have artificially inflamed things. It should go without saying that when public officials lie to the public, they should resign; if they break the law, if they commit perjury, they should be charged. But trial-by-media has always been a difficult way to get to the bottom of such matters. And in today’s hyperpartisan, hyperclassified information environment, it is harder than ever.

NOTES 1.

2.

3.

Masha Gessen, “Russia, Trump and Flawed Intelligence,” New York Review of Books, 9 January 2017, http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/01/09/russia-trump-election-flawed -intelligence/; Zack Beauchamp, “The Key Findings from the US Intelligence Report on the Russia Hack, Decoded,” Vox, 6 January 2017, https://www.vox.com/world/2017 /1/6/14194986/russia-hack-intelligence-report-election-trump. Philip Rucker, Adam Entous, and Ed O’Keefe, “As Flynn Falls Under Growing Pressure over Russia Contacts, Trump Remains Silent,” Washington Post, 12 February 2017, https:// www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-flynn-falls-under-growing-pressure-over-russia -contacts-trump-remains-silent/2017/02/12/2b58f31e-f15e-11e6-b9c9-e83fce42fb61_story .html; Greg Miller, Adam Entous, and Ellen Nakashima, “Flynn’s Swift Downfall,” Washington Post, 14 February 2017; Matthew Rosenberg and Matt Apuzzo, “Flynn Is Said to Have Talked to Russians About Sanctions Before Trump Took Office,” New York Times, 9 February 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/us/flynn-is-said-to-have-talked -to-russians-about-sanctions-before-trump-took-office.html. Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima, and Greg Miller, “Sessions Met with Russian Envoy Twice Last Year, Encounters He Later Did Not Disclose,” Washington Post, 1 March 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sessions-spoke-twice-with -russian-ambassador-during-trumps-presidential-campaign-justice-officials-say/2017/03 /01/77205eda-feac-11e6-99b4-9e613afeb09f_story.html.

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4.

5.

6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

16.

17.

Ellen Nakashima, Adan Entous, and Greg Miller, “Russian Ambassador Told Moscow That Kushner Wanted Secret Communications Channel with Kremlin,” Washington Post, 26 May 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian -ambassador-told-moscow-that-kushner-wanted-secret-communications-channel -with-kremlin/2017/05/26/520a14b4-422d-11e7-9869-bac8b446820a_story.html. David Weigel and Joby Warrick, “How Julian Assange Evolved from Pariah to Paragon,” Washington Post, 4 January 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-julian -assange-evolved-from-pariah-to-paragon/2017/01/04/2a3ea6e6-d2b8-11e6-9cb0 -54ab630851e8_story.html. Elie Abel, Leaking: Who Does It? Who Benefits? At What Cost? (New York: Priority Press, 1987), 34. “Security Classification as a Problem in the Congressional Role in Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs Division, Legislative Reference Service, December 1971, 22–23. Abel, Leaking: Who Does It?, 62; David E. Pozen, “The Leaky Leviathan: Why the Government Condemns and Condones Unlawful Disclosures of Information,” Harvard Law Review 127 (2013): 512–635. Seth Kreimer, “The Freedom of Information Act and the Ecology of Transparency,” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law (2008), 1040. Charlie Savage, “Trump Poised to Lift Ban on C.I.A. ‘Black Site’ Prisons,” New York Times, 25 January 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/us/politics/cia-detainee-prisons. html; Trevor Timm, “Flynn Resignation Shows Leaks Under Trump Are Working. Keep ‘em Coming,” Columbia Journalism Review, 14 February 2017, https://www.cjr.org/first _person/michael-flynn-trump-leaks.php. Jeffrey Toobin, “Edward Snowden Is No Hero,” New Yorker, 10 June 2013, https://www .newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/edward-snowden-is-no-hero. Sam Lebovic, “The Forgotten 1957 Trial That Explains Our Country’s Bizarre Whistleblower Laws,” Politico, 27 March 2016, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016 /03/the-forgotten-1957-trial-that-explains-our-countrys-bizarre-whistleblower-laws -213771. Daniel Ellsberg, “Secrecy and National Security Whistleblowing,” Social Research 77 (2010). Pozen, “Leaky Leviathan”; Douglass Cater, The Fourth Branch of Government (Cambridge, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1959). Sam Lebovic, “Limited War in the Age of Total Media,” in Understanding the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ed. Beth Bailey and Richard Immerman (New York: New York University Press, 2015). Max Holland, Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2012); Beverley Gage, “Deep Throat, Watergate and the Bureaucratic Politics of the FBI,” Journal of Policy History 24, no. 2 (2013): 157–83; Sam Lebovic, Free Speech and Unfree News: The Paradox of Press Freedom in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 203–8. Betty Medsger, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI (New York: Knopf, 2014).

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18. 19.

20.

21.

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, All the President’s Men: The Greatest Reporting Story of All Time (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974). Edward Jay Epstein, “Did the Press Uncover Watergate?” Commentary, July 1974; Stanley I. Kutler, The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon (New York: Norton, 1990); Lebovic, Free Speech and Unfree News, 203–8; Michael Schudson, Watergate in American Memory: How We Remember, Forget, and Reconstruct the Past (New York: Basic Books, 1992). Yochai Benkler, “A Public Accountability Defense for National Security Leakers and Whistleblowers,” Harvard Law and Policy Review 8 (2014), https://dash.harvard.edu /bitstream/handle/1/12786017/Benkler.pdf?sequence=3. Heidi Kitrosser, “Free Speech Aboard the Leaky Ship of State: Calibrating First Amendment Protections for Leakers of Classified Information,” Journal of National Security Law and Policy 6, no. 2 (2013): 409–46; Geoffrey R. Stone, “Why We Need a Federal Reporter’s Privilege,” Hofstra Law Review 34, no. 1 (2005); Jason M. Shepard, Privileging the Press: Confidential Sources, Journalism Ethics and the First Amendment (El Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2011).

29 WHY DOES DONALD TRUMP HAVE SO MUCH TROUBLE WITH THE TRUTH? JOHN SCHUESSLER

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number of the essays in this volume have grappled with the question of how big a departure Donald Trump’s presidency is from the theory and practice of American foreign policy and international relations more broadly. Having published a book on presidential deception not too long ago, I have been reflecting on this theme with particular reference to Trump’s strained (perhaps broken) relationship with the truth.1 Trump’s carelessness with the truth is by now well known. According to David Leonhardt and Stuart A. Thompson of the New York Times, Trump said something untrue, in public, every day for the first forty days of his presidency. “There is simply no precedent,” they argue, “for an American president to spend so much time telling untruths.”2 Why, then, does Donald Trump have so much trouble with the truth? It would be tempting to argue that the analytical framework developed in my book, Deceit on the Road to War, provides some purchase on the subject; ultimately, however, I conclude that its relevance is limited. With Trump, it is difficult to distinguish deception from self-deception. Equally important, deception in the Trump case appears to be as much a bottom-up phenomenon as a top-down one, insofar as his supporters credit Trump with a populist authenticity exactly because he runs so afoul of the marketplace of ideas and its elite gatekeepers. In the remainder of this chapter, I elaborate on these points.

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D EC EPTION AND THE DEMOCR AT I C P ROC ESS

In Deceit on the Road to War, I make the case that deception is a natural outgrowth of the democratic process.3 Elected leaders have powerful incentives to maximize domestic support for war and retain considerable ability to manipulate domestic audiences without being fully exposed. Most important, they can exploit information and propaganda advantages to frame issues in misleading ways, cherry-pick supporting evidence, suppress damaging revelations, and otherwise skew the public debate in advantageous directions. These tactics are particularly effective in prewar periods when the information gap between leaders and the public is greatest and the latter’s perception of reality is most elastic. In practice, leaders resort to varying degrees and types of deception to sell wars. As a general rule, however, the more contentious the domestic politics surrounding a war, the more leaders engage in blame shifting. In cases in which expected costs are high or success is uncertain, leaders can encounter serious resistance to going to war. They will not be inclined to welcome domestic debate under these conditions. Rather, they will do their best to conceal the fact that they are actively considering war while seeking out provocations that shift blame for hostilities onto the adversary. If the public becomes convinced that the other side has forced the issue, they will be more tolerant of the high costs and initial setbacks that can attend war against a capable opponent. The more permissive the domestic political environment, in turn, the more deception takes the form of overselling. In the event that expected costs are low or an easy victory seems assured, public discontent will be latent and will center on the fact that war seems unnecessary. In this case, leaders will oversell the threat to convince the public that the stakes are high enough to justify war. Any threat inflation will go uncontested, as expectations of a one-sided victory will dilute whatever incentives the political opposition might have to force a contentious debate. When resorting to deception, leaders take a calculated risk that the outcome of war will be favorable, with the public adopting a forgiving attitude after victory is secured. In the event that the outcome is unfavorable, leaders will suffer a political cost, less for misleading the public than for launching a failed war.

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Three cases—President Franklin Roosevelt and World War II, President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Vietnam War, and President George W. Bush and the Iraq War—test these claims in an intensive fashion. Each is marked by a different level of domestic opposition to war, with more opposition associated with blame shifting (World War II, Vietnam) and less opposition with overselling (Iraq). In looking at these cases, I find that democracies are not as constrained in their ability to go to war as we might like, that the marketplace of ideas rarely lives up to its full potential as a deterrent to deception, and that deception cannot be ruled out in all cases as contrary to the national interest.

T RUMP ’ S BRA N D OF DE C EP T I ON

I conclude Deceit on the Road to War with three questions that the book raises but does not answer.4 First, when does deception blur into selfdeception? Second, what strategies do leaders use to co-opt other elites and keep them from blowing the whistle?5 Third, to what extent is deception a bottom-up phenomenon, as opposed to a top-down one? The first and third questions, I would argue, are particularly relevant to Trump and complicate any attempt to compare him to leaders like Roosevelt, Johnson, and Bush who strategically deployed deception to overcome pockets of domestic resistance to wars they considered to be in the national interest. In the absence of “smoking gun” evidence, it is difficult to pin down the exact balance between deception and self-deception in any individual instance. To successfully deceive others, leaders first need to deceive themselves, at least to some degree. In the case of Trump, however, it is not clear that he has a firm enough grasp of the facts to even know that he is doing violence to them. In other words, this may be a case of self-deception all the way down. Suggestive on this score are the triggers that elicited the most blatant falsehoods on the part of Trump and his surrogates in the first weeks of his presidency: the crowd at Trump’s inauguration must have been the biggest in history and widespread fraud must have handed the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, because otherwise Trump is not the dominant “winner” that he conceives himself to be.6 A narcissist can still be a rational

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actor up to a point, but Trump’s self-regard seems consuming enough that inconvenient facts get screened out when they clash with his ego. With Trump, the relevant question might not be “Why does he lie so much?” but rather “Can he handle the truth?”7 That said, it would be going too far to suggest that there is no method to Trump’s madness. It is just a different method than the one I would associate with Roosevelt, Johnson, and Bush. All three used deception to forestall debate, to minimize controversy. The goal was to achieve broad support for their policies. Trump and his surrogates, in contrast, welcome conflict with the marketplace of ideas and its elite gatekeepers. Former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, for example, has described the media as “the opposition party,” so out of touch with the American people that it “should be embarrassed and humiliated.”8 The media, according to this populist narrative, is just another element of the elite establishment that is biased against Trump, with fact-checking as its weapon of choice. For Trump’s supporters, most of whom are conservative Republicans, his rough treatment in the marketplace of ideas can thus be taken as further evidence that he is on their side and not on the side of an elite establishment that is too liberal and too Democratic for their taste.9 Indeed, one could argue that partisan polarization has led directly to the “post-truth” era we find ourselves in. It is “partisan tribalism,” as Amanda Taub argues, that “makes people more inclined to seek out and believe stories that justify their pre-existing partisan biases, whether or not they are true.”10 This notion is related to how Trump can be credited with authenticity even as he takes such liberties with the truth: it is not the accuracy of his claims that matters, but the way they speak to the partisan identity of his supporters. Partisan polarization, in other words, has paved the way for the “alternative facts” and other forms of misinformation that Trump thrives on.11 What are the implications for those of us who study the impact of democracy on American foreign policy and international relations more broadly? The primary one, I would argue, is that we need to be attuned to the possibility that threats to sound foreign policy can come from the bottom-up as well as the top-down. In Miroslav Nincic’s language, “disruption from below” can be as problematic as “derailment from above.”12 Ironically, given the uneasy relationship historically between realism and democracy, realists of late have trained most of their fire against elite, and not mass, threats to sound foreign policy. Consider Jack Snyder’s

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pioneering work on great power overexpansion, in which the primary culprits are logrolled cartels spewing myths of empire.13 More recently, in the debate surrounding how the Iraq War could have happened, the point of departure has been executive-branch threat inflation and neoconservative influence on the Bush administration.14 John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, widening the aperture, have made the case that the Iraq War is but one manifestation of the distortions that the Israel Lobby introduced into American policy toward the Middle East.15 On one level, this focus on elite politics is understandable, given what many realists consider to be the central strategic problem of the post–Cold War period: the tendency of a unipolar United States to succumb to the hegemon’s temptation and overextend itself.16 Underpinning an overactive American foreign policy has been an elite consensus that spans right and left, with a reluctant public being dragged along for the ride.17 When the issue is too much ambition, rather than too little, it is natural to start the analysis with elites, as they usually outpace the masses in their interventionism (as classical liberals have long emphasized).18 At the same time, we may have allowed hegemonic continuity at the grand strategic level and ideological overlap at the elite level to distract us from developments at the mass level—like political polarization—that have opened the door to a heterodox figure like Trump, who pairs the retrenchment instincts of many realists with none of the discipline or savvy that is required to implement that policy successfully.19 If Trump himself has become the central problem in American foreign policy, then it would behoove us to think hard about the political forces that enabled his rise.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

John M. Schuessler, Deceit on the Road to War: Presidents, Politics, and American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). David Leonhardt and Stuart A. Thompson, “Trump’s Lies,” New York Times, 23 June 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html. In the book, I define deception as deliberate attempts on the part of leaders to mislead the public about the thrust of official thinking; Schuessler, Deceit on the Road to War, 8. Schuessler, Deceit on the Road to War, 124–25. On the elite politics surrounding the use of force, see Elizabeth N. Saunders, “War and the Inner Circle: Democratic Elites and the Politics of Using Force,” Security Studies 24, no. 3 (2015): 466–501.

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6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

14.

15.

Trump has long relied on “truthful hyperbole” to associate his name with the “biggest” and the “best,” belying a messier reality See David Barstow, “‘Up Is Down’: Trump’s Unreality Show Echoes his Business Past,” New York Times, 28 January 2017, https://www .nytimes.com/2017/01/28/us/politics/donald-trump-truth.html. The Editorial Board, “Can Donald Trump Handle the Truth?” New York Times, 28 January 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/opinion/sunday/can-donald-trump-handle -the-truth.html. Michael M. Grynbaum, “Trump Strategist Stephen Bannon Says Media Should ‘Keep Its Mouth Shut’,” New York Times, 26 January 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26 /business/media/stephen-bannon-trump-news-media.html. As Lynn Vavreck, a professor of political science at UCLA, writes in the New York Times, “People often ask me ‘who these people are’—those who elected Donald J. Trump . . . They’ll ask, ‘What’s the single best description of Trump supporters?’ My answer often disappoints them. It’s quite simple: They’re Republicans.” See Lynn Vavreck, “A Measure of Identity: Are You Wedded to Your Party?” New York Times, 31 January 2017, https:// www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/upshot/are-you-married-to-your-party.html. Amanda Taub, “The Real Story About Fake News Is Partisanship,” New York Times, 11  January 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/upshot/the-real-story-about-fake -news-is-partisanship.html. Nicholas Fandos, “White House Pushes ‘Alternative Facts.’ Here Are the Real Ones,” New York Times, 22 January 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/22/us/politics/president -trump-inauguration-crowd-white-house.html. Importantly, partisan polarization should not be conflated with strong parties. Arguably, it is the combination of weak parties and strong partisanship that has been the key enabler of Trump’s rise. See Ezra Klein, “Donald Trump’s Success Reveals A Frightening Weakness In American Democracy,” Vox, 7 November 2016, http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/7/13532178 /donald-trump-american-democracy-weakness; and Ezra Klein, “Obamaism Sought Strength In Unity. Trumpism Finds Power Through Division,” Vox, 20 January 2017, http:// www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/20/14339024/trump-inaugural-divisions-obama. Miroslav Nincic, Democracy and Foreign Policy: The Fallacy of Political Realism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 5. Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). Snyder’s work on democratization and nationalist conflict has a similar flavor, with elites in transitioning societies cynically deploying belligerent rhetoric to retain their hold on power. See Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: Norton, 2000) and Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005). See A. Trevor Thrall and Jane K. Cramer, American Foreign Policy and the Politics of Fear: Threat Inflation Since 9/11 (London: Routledge, 2009) and Jane K. Cramer and A. Trevor Thrall, Why Did the United States Invade Iraq? (London: Routledge, 2012). John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007).

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16.

17.

18.

19.

On the hegemon’s temptation, see Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 152–53. For Mearsheimer, “global dominators” come in two flavors: “neoconservatives” on the right and “liberal imperialists” on the left. See John J. Mearsheimer, “Imperial by Design,” The National Interest 111 (January/February 2011), 19. For a smart dissent that does not let the masses off the hook, see Jonathan D. Caverley, Democratic Militarism: Voting, Wealth, and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Stephen M. Walt, “Trump Doesn’t Know What He Doesn’t Know About Foreign Policy,” Foreign Policy, 8 January 2017, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/08/trump-doesnt -know-what-he-doesnt-know-about-foreign-policy/. To be fair, Charles Kupchan and Peter Trubowitz were warning as far back as 2007 that the domestic political foundation under liberal internationalism was eroding, as evidenced by rising polarization. It was only with Trump’s ascendancy to the White House that the full import of their analysis became clear, at least to this reader. See Charles A. Kupchan and Peter L. Trubowitz, “Dead Center: The Demise of Liberal Internationalism in the United States,” International Security 32, no. 2 (Fall 2007): 7–44.

30 IS DONALD TRUMP JIMMY CARTER, OR IS HE KAISER WILHELM II? N A N C Y M I TC H E L L

newscaster: When have we ever seen this before? pundit: Never. President Trump’s action is unprecedented. Extraordinary. There’s never been anything like it.

These are tough times for historians. I am referring not just to the proposed elimination of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Wilson Center but also to the more profound psychological sense that I have experienced, as President Donald Trump has overtaken the news cycle, of free fall. I am grappling for a toehold. I realized, as Trump rose to power, that one reason I am a historian is that I take comfort in making sense of the world through the use of historical parallels. But Trump defies analogues. During the campaign, I grasped onto the idea that there were parallels between Trump and President Jimmy Carter. I hasten to stipulate at the outset that I am not referring to the cartoon image of Carter as an inept loser. That assessment of the thirty-ninth president has provided an essential foil to the idea that President Ronald Reagan saved the nation, but it is contradicted by the facts. Jimmy Carter had more legislative and foreign policy successes than most modern presidents: the Camp David accords, the normalization with China, the Panama Canal treaties, and the resolution of the war in Rhodesia. The United States was in a stronger global position in 1981 than it had been in 1977.

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And I am not correlating, in any way, Carter’s character with that of Donald Trump. I am referring to Carter as a real outsider, like Trump. This means that they faced some comparable challenges. Both were eschewed by their parties. Late in the primary campaign of 1976, as it dawned on the Democrats that Carter might actually wrest the nomination from the establishment Democrats vying for the honor, they launched the ABC—Anyone But Carter—movement, much as the Republicans belatedly and unsuccessfully tried to derail Trump’s march. Moreover, both Trump and Carter are hard to pigeonhole ideologically. Carter was not a typical Southern Democrat of the 1970s. Yet he was not an establishment Democrat either. He was a born-again Southern Baptist from the deep South—from what Andrew Young, an aide to Martin Luther King, Jr., and then Carter’s United Nations ambassador, deemed the most racist county of Georgia. Yet Carter seemed relatively liberal on racial issues, while also being fiscally conservative. The press was baffled by him. Likewise, Trump defies political categories: during the campaign, he sometimes seemed more liberal than most Republicans (for example, in his initial response to North Carolina’s “bathroom bill” and in his promises not to cut Social Security), whereas at his rallies he often seemed to be the mouthpiece of the xenophobic and nationalist right-wing fringe. It seemed likely that Trump, like Carter, would launch an overly ambitious agenda, overestimating, in the euphoria of his unexpected victory, his ability to push complex legislation through Congress—even a Congress that, in Carter’s case, was controlled by the Democrats, just as Trump’s is controlled by the Republicans. Carter later rued his lack of a singular focus. Almost wistfully, he contrasted his cluttered agenda in 1977 with what “Reagan did, I think wisely, in 1981 with a major premise and deliberately excluding other conflicting or confusing issues. It . . . gave the image . . . of strong leadership and an ultimate achievement. We didn’t do that.”1 I also expected that Trump would neglect his role as leader of the Republican Party, just as Carter had given short shrift to his leadership of the Democratic Party. Neither man owed his victory to the party; in fact, both resented that the party had not embraced them. But Carter later understood that his neglect of this role had cost him—in political

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terms during his presidency as well as in terms of his reputation afterward. Jimmy Carter, narrowly elected by a fragile and unlikely coalition, left office without a constituency. And the Democratic Party, which had never warmed to him, left him to twist in the wind as the Reagan team said again and again that their man had saved the country from disaster. Both of those predictions might turn out to be true: Trump might try to do too much too fast, and he might suffer because of his strained relations with the Republican Party. But another of my predictions has turned out to be greatly mistaken. I didn’t take Twitter into account. During the 1976 campaign, the press had been intrigued by Carter, happily taking stabs at answering the question, “What makes Jimmy tick?” But a year or so into his presidency, journalists had grown frustrated by the difficulty of explaining Carter’s hard-to-pigeonhole ideology. And, as the war in the Horn of Africa exploded, they hit on a much simpler way of describing the Carter presidency: it was a struggle between the hawkish national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and the dovish secretary of state, Cyrus Vance. Jimmy Carter was lost in the shuffle. I thought Trump would suffer a similar fate, and his presidency would be depicted as a struggle between his (former) establishmentarian Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and his (former) anti-establishment Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. I thought it likely that Trump would be lost in the shuffle. Was I wrong! Trump’s use of Twitter has kept him, not his aides, front and center. This behavior is new. Presidents have been known to the public—and to historians—through a scrim of formality. We hear their speeches and their carefully controlled press conferences. When writing about Carter, my biggest challenge was to figure out, through the deluge of documents written by other people, what Carter was thinking, what motivated his decisions. Trump’s Twitter account fills this void. It will profoundly affect historians’ analyses of his administration. While Trump as candidate shared structural similarities with Carter as candidate, Trump as president is so different from Carter as president—in his indifference to morality, his lack of self-discipline, his militarism, and

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his lies—that one month into his presidency, I felt once again in free fall, without an analogue. As soon as a label seemed to fit—Trump was an isolationist or perhaps a man bent on overturning the post–World War II order or perhaps a populist—the president would do something to make nonsense of all labels. He seems to have no guiding principles that could define his foreign policy. His foreign policy, to date, has been defined by two of his character traits: he is impulsive and he is defensive. I sought another analogue. I listened to the sometimes whispered, sometimes overt comparisons to Adolf Hitler. Trump’s rallies can indeed be alarming. But as Trump began to govern, I decided that another German leader could shed more light on him: Kaiser Wilhelm II. Wilhelm II, the last German emperor, ruled Germany from 1888 to 1918, and his unpredictability and his bombastic rhetoric profoundly destabilized the balance of power. Like Trump, he was enamored of the military, and he determined that his grand accomplishment would be to build a great German navy. The problem was that this endeavor made no sense: German ports were effectively landlocked by the English Channel. What was Wilhelm’s plan? Was he crazy like a fox, or just plain crazy? This uncertainty rocked the great powers. Britain pulled its fleet from its far-flung empire to protect the homeland, because the only logical explanation for Wilhelm’s great naval buildup was that he was planning to attack Britain. The United States took advantage of the opportunity to establish firm control over the Caribbean and Central America, all the while arguing that if Washington did not do so, Berlin would. The Kaiser’s bellows—his Fox News, Breitbart News, and Rush Limbaugh—were the pan-Germans, who lathered up the German people to seek their destiny in a Greater Germany, a vast empire that would unite, embolden, and multiply all German people. The Kaiser’s relationship with the pan-Germans was never exactly clear, and some dismissed their rhetoric as ravings. But the rhetoric mattered. It was dangerous. It fueled real fears, and it justified power-grabs by other nations. In 1915, for example, the United States claimed its occupation of Haiti was necessary to keep the country from the Germans.

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Trump’s bellicosity, unpredictability, and words matter. They stimulate real fears and they can—and I fear will—be used to justify aggression. Like Wilhelm II before him, Trump may be blustering and blundering toward war.

NOTE 1.

“Interview with Jimmy Carter,” 29 November 1982, Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia, 23.

31 ARISTOCRACY, OLIGARCHY, AND DONALD TRUMP ARTHUR ECKSTEIN

When a commonwealth, after warding off many great dangers, has arrived at a high pitch of prosperity and power, it is evident that, from long continuance of great wealth, the manner of life of its citizens will become more extravagant; further, rivalry for office and in other spheres of activity will become more and more fierce. And as these conditions continue, the desire for office and the shame of loss, as well as the ostentation and extravagance of living, will prove the beginning of the deterioration of the state. For this change the people will be credited, when they become convinced that they are being cheated by the elite because of avarice, and are puffed up with flattery by others of the elite, who act out of love of office. —POLYBIUS OF MEGALOPOLIS, WRITING ABOUT THE THREAT FACING THE ROMAN REPUBLIC, CA. 150 B.C.

I

n influential essays, both Andrew Sullivan in New York Magazine and Paul Krugman in the New York Times reacted to the rise of Donald Trump by alerting us to warnings coming from thinkers long ago concerning the fragility of democratic politics.1 This chapter evaluates those ancient warnings and their relevance for the American republic in the age of President Trump. It seems to me that Sullivan and Krugman are on to something.

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Ancient writers had plenty to say about how democracies and free republics fell apart into chaos or (conversely) into despotism. Intellectuals in the ancient Mediterranean world engaged in serious political analysis concerning the various categories of states in existence and the transitions that sometimes occurred from one form of state to another. “Monarchy,” “ tyranny,” and “despotism” are all Greek terms of political analysis; “aristocracy” and “oligarchy” are as well; so is “democracy” itself; for that matter, so are the terms “political” and “analysis.” “Republic” is not a Greek word: it is Latin and comes from the Romans: res publica. These ancient thinkers had a sense of the enormous accomplishment involved in the creation of polities under the rule of law, where the rights of citizens were clearly set forth and protected, and where government came into being—and was legitimized—through frequent popular elections. They had an equally vivid sense of how fragile such democratic political structures were, and how threatened they were from multiple directions. The success of Donald Trump’s demagogic political campaigning led to Andrew Sullivan’s shocked perception that the American democratic system, too, while very long-lasting, is not necessarily immortal. This would not have been a perception foreign to the ancients. As aristocrats, or at least very well-off men (and they were all men), they worried about the irrationality of the poverty-stricken and uneducated masses. Thus, when Sullivan cited Plato on this, he was accused (both in Salon and The New Republic) of engaging in undemocratic elitism.2 But ancient thinkers worried even more about corruption and factionalism within the social elite and the ambitions of oligarchs to seize total power with the help of the mob. Polybius distinguished carefully between aristocracy and oligarchy. For him, aristocracy was rule by an elite, but it was a public-spirited elite. Oligarchy was its evil twin, the corrupt form of this government, with an elite interested only in its own wealth and power. It was men of noble bearing who abolished monarchy and established aristocracies based on the will of the people. The commons were grateful to the aristocrats for destroying tyranny, while the leaders assumed responsibility for the state and regarded nothing as more important than the common interest, administering the public affairs of the people with

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paternal solicitude. But when new generations inherited their ancestors’ position of authority, having no experience of misfortune and none of civic equality and liberty of speech, and having been brought up from the cradle amid the power and high position of their fathers, they abandoned themselves some to greed and unscrupulous money-making, others to indulgence in wine and convivial excess, others again to the violation of women and the rape of boys. They thus converted the aristocracy into an oligarchy, and aroused the anger of the people against them, as it had been aroused against the tyrants. For whenever anyone who has noticed the jealousy and hatred in which the elite are regarded by the mass of the citizens has the courage to speak or act against the chiefs of the state, he has the whole mass of the people ready to back him.3

Donald Trump appears to fit this mold of the oligarchical agitator described by Polybius. On the one hand, Trump is famous for the extravagance with which he himself lives: the private plane with the egotistic “Trump” emblazoned on it, the gold elevator in Trump Tower, the gold-plated bathroom fixtures. Both Plato, writing ca. 390 b.c., and Polybius, writing one hundred and fifty years later, stressed a linkage between such extravagant lifestyle among the elite and political danger: for the extravagant lifestyle of the elite was an expression of uncontrolled appetite. To Plato, the transformation of social leaders from a community-oriented aristocracy to a self-seeking oligarchy expressed itself through the growth of ugly appetites among the elite. Originally this self-expression applied to feasting, sex, and the display of wealth, but for certain members of the elite, the loss of control over appetites eventually took the form of ambition for power without limits. Plato warned that for some members of this oligarchical culture of egoism, the way to such power was to turn to the people for support against their fellow oligarchs. Among Roman writers, the historian Sallust (ca. 40 b.c.) also linked the influx of wealth to moral degeneration, uncontrolled appetites, and intensifying conflict among the elite. In the early Roman republic, “once liberty had been won, good morals were cultivated; there was the greatest harmony and little or no avarice; justice and probity prevailed . . . citizen vied with citizen only for the prize of merit. Each man strove to be the

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first to strike down the foe, to scale the wall—this they considered riches, fame, and high nobility.” But now, in Sallust’s own time, when our country had grown great through toil . . . the lust for money, and then for power, grew; avarice destroyed all noble values, and taught in their place insolence, cruelty, neglect of the gods. . . . As soon as riches came to be held in honor, and dominion and power followed in their train, virtue began to lose its luster, poverty to be considered a disgrace, and they disregarded modesty, chastity, everything human and divine . . . You look upon houses and villas reared to be the size of cities.4

In such a city, it was easy for a renegade member of the elite, such as Catiline, to gather around him men (and a few women) to stage a coup d’état based on appealing to the discontented populace to rise up against the corrupt oligarchy. In the face of these warnings from the far past, consider that on the one hand, Donald Trump is himself fabulously rich and one of the elite, while on the other, his victory in 2016 was a victory first over the Republican Party oligarchy and establishment—most obviously in the person of Jeb Bush, the son and the brother of previous presidents—and then a victory over the Democratic Party oligarchy and establishment as well, in the person of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Trump accomplished this in good part through an appeal to a working class that has felt abandoned by the elites of both parties since at least the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the mid-1990s. Once more, Trump appears to fit a pattern of upper-class demagogues familiar to ancient political thinkers. These writers adduced another danger to free polities and their free citizenry: the growth of government power, most often necessitated by the administration of empires by republics. Aristotle warned ca. 350 b.c. that men who became accustomed to the wielding of power as governors over subordinate regions made dangerous citizens when they returned home to free polities. They were used to imposing their will on the weak and found it hard to accept republican limits on their political behavior. In the case of Rome, this warning of Aristotle also proved correct. In Rome, there was at first a city council (the Senate) and annually elected officials with limited powers and limited time in office (one-year term-limits, especially the two consuls). Yet these city institutions ended

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up administering an empire that stretched from Spain to Syria. Largescale problems on the imperial periphery then came to require greater concentrations of government power: the imposition of governors over large regions for multiple years. And so the Romans experimented with special “great commands”: Marius, consul for five straight years against the German threat, 104–100 b.c.; Sulla in the East, 88–83 b.c.; Pompey in the East, 67–62 b.c.; and Julius Caesar against the Celts in Gaul, 58–50 b.c. While great commands led to increased efficiency in the handling of large imperial problems, the danger lay in whether the holder of a great command would surrender what was already the power of an emperor and return to a life of limited republican behavior in Rome. As the senior senator Q. Lutatius Catulus protested concerning Pompey’s command: “If it is necessary to put such power in the hands of a single man, Pompey is that man; but no man should have such power.”5 Julius Caesar, in the end, refused to give up the power he thought of as his, preferring civil war instead. And so the experiment that worked to solve large imperial problems helped wreck the Republic. It can be argued that the American Republic has followed a similar pattern: since the 1930s and 1940s, presidential power has continually expanded, especially in foreign affairs, no matter which person or party was in the White House. Faced in World War II with terrible threats on a global scale, and afterward with an enemy in the Soviet Union, which was perceived as at least equal in global power to the United States, Americans have ceded more and more control to the president in the name of self-defense from external enemies. The US Constitution grants the right to declare war only to the Congress, but the last time that happened was in 1941; presidents have gained the power to fight wars on their own. Meanwhile, since the Islamist terrorist attacks of 9/11, the government’s ability to engage in warrantless surveillance of its own citizenry has hugely increased. This was true under President George W. Bush, and President Barack Obama did little to limit it. Indeed, with a Congress opposed to many of his policies (e.g., on immigration), President Obama got into the habit of ignoring Congress altogether and issuing “presidential directives” whenever he could. And after him, with all this increased presidential power, came President Trump, the ruthless renegade oligarch. Two additional aspects of the presidential campaign would have disturbed ancient thinkers. Thucydides, writing ca. 410 b.c., described how the city-state of Corcyra fell apart. The downward spiral began when one

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faction, defeated by an assembly vote on a crucial policy (toward Athens), decided to bring their victorious enemies to court by fabricating criminal accusations against them. This criminalizing of political differences, Thucydides said, violated the limits on internal rivalry necessary in a free state (Corcyra was a democracy)—norms that meant that political defeat did not carry personal penalties beyond the defeat itself. In the case of Corcyra, the criminalizing of political differences eventually led to show trials, deepened internal divisions, assassinations, and then outright civil war. Thucydides commented that what happened at Corcyra could happen in any polity when one side or the other was absolutely desperate to win victory. Lack of limits on political conduct, Thucydides warned, led to chaos.6 Thus, a main reason that Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 b.c. was his fear of being put on trial for his actions as consul a decade earlier.7 During the 2016 political campaign, Donald Trump, in a face-to-face confrontation with Hillary Clinton on national television, overtly threatened to put her in prison if he won the election. It was an unprecedented act, a personal threat by the candidate of one of the United States’ major political parties against the candidate of the other. Unprecedented in the American Republic, that is—but not at all unknown to ancient political thinkers, who warned of the consequences of such behavior for the internal stability of a free state. In turn Trump, as president, has himself faced all sorts of investigations. Finally, factional conflict within ancient Greek states was sometimes so deep and bitter that one side preferred to call in the help of foreigners rather than accept the other faction’s political victory. This phenomenon was remarked on by political thinkers as early as Herodotus and Thucydides in the fifth century b.c. (it happened in the Corcyra case, as well as in Athens). In the Greek world of the third and second centuries b.c., this behavior was so common that the historian Polybius devoted an entire essay to it. It was not treason if a Greek government decided that community advantage lay in backing the powerful Romans against rival Greek states—because the safety of the state was on everyone’s mind. Nor was it treason if a Greek government did the opposite and sided with the Macedonian kingdom in war with Rome (although that was dangerous). Rather, treason was something quite specific: “the name of traitor attaches to those men who, at a time of public danger, for reasons either of personal safety or profit, or because of the sharpness of differences with the

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opposing party, put their city into the hands of the enemy, seeking foreign assistance to further their personal aims. All who commit actions of this kind may fairly be regarded as traitors.”8 In Donald Trump, we see a president who not only benefited from Russian-inspired leaking of discreditable information about his opponent but also actively encouraged this foreign interference in the presidential campaign. When it became clear that the Russians were hacking into Democratic Party operations, Trump encouraged this unprecedented foreign interference, declaring that he hoped the Russians would find and release all of his opponent’s allegedly hidden emails. That is an established and public fact, no matter what conduct was (or was not) involved in Trump’s alleged collusion with the Russians.9 It is clear that Thucydides and Plato, and Polybius and Sallust would have been appalled at candidate and later President Donald Trump. But they would not have been surprised. The Trump phenomenon was familiar to them. They had a vivid awareness of the fragility of free states when the traditional limits on political behavior were broken by a ruthless demagogue emerging from within the existing elite. What is to be done? A Roman historian of a later period, Cornelius Tacitus, provides an answer: while maintaining faith in the great national project, do not be eager to obey the man with power. Tacitus castigated those in the Roman elite who went along with emperors to win political success: “they were elevated to the heights of political office in precise proportion to their readiness to be slaves.”10 Tacitus himself had a successful political career (consul in 97 a.d.) and carried a sense of political guilt because of it, but we know that in certain circumstances, he did not hesitate to disagree with emperors. With Trump as president, we must all have the courage to do the same.

NOTES 1.

Andrew Sullivan, “America Has Never Been So Ripe for Tyranny,” New York Magazine, 1 May 2016; also called “Democracies End When They Are Too Democratic,” New York Magazine, 1 May 2016, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny -donald-trump.html; Andrew Sullivan, “The Republic Repeals Itself,” New York Magazine, 9 November 2016; Paul Krugman, “How Republics End,” New York Times, 19 December 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/how-republics-end.html?_r=0.

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2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8. 9.

10.

Alex Trimble Young, “Andrew Sullivan Is Wrong Again: His Mainstream Liberalism Has Become Scarily Anti-democratic,” Salon, 8 May 2016, http://www.salon.com/2016/05/08 /andrew_sullivan_is_wrong_again_his_mainstream_liberalism_has_become_scarily _anti_democratic/; Astra Taylor, “The Anti-Democratic Urge,” The New Republic, 18 August 2016, https://newrepublic.com/article/135757/anti-democratic-urge. Polybius, Histories, Book 3, chaps. 8–9 (condensed). Sallust, The Conspiracy of Catiline, chaps. 9–12, and 14. Cicero, Speech to the Roman People in Favor of the Manilian Law (66 b.c.). Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 3, chap. 69–84. Caesar, looking out at the thousands of Roman dead on each side after the civil war battle of Pharsalus a year later, said “This is what they [my enemies] wanted. I, Gaius Caesar, would have been condemned in the law courts if I had not looked to my army for protection,” (Suetonius, Life of Julius Caesar 30.4, based on the eye-witness account of the Caesarian General C. Asinius Pollio, who heard Caesar say it). Polybius, Histories, Book 18, chap. 15. Ashley Parker and David E. Sanger, “Donald Trump Calls on Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s Missing Emails,” New York Times, 27 July 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28 /us/politics/donald-trump-russia-clinton-emails.html. Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome, Book 1, chap. 2.

VII I S T H ERE A T RU M P DO C T RINE?

F

32 TRUMPISM, HISTORY, AND THE FUTURE OF US FOREIGN RELATIONS F R A N K N I N KO V I C H

T

rying to make critical sense of the current state of foreign affairs is treacherous business for anyone, but even more so for historians, who command no specialized skills for analyzing the present. Although access to the past, where historians are in their natural element, is always limited to some degree, decoding contemporary events is like trying to see through a blinding sandstorm. Factional feuds between nationalists and globalists, revolving door staff changes, and sudden policy reversals, not to mention unanticipated crises and impulsive presidential outbursts—all hallmarks of the Trump administration—make attempts at evaluation even more uncertain. Although much remains unclear, at least the basic frame of mind of Donald Trump’s presidency is known. Soon after the inauguration, Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s former erstwhile chief strategist, looked forward to the “deconstruction of the administrative state” in America.1 Given Trump’s disparagement of long-established US foreign policy positions—on foreign trade, climate change, and nuclear weapons; on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); on China, Russia, the Middle East, and, more recently, North Korea—the dismantling of the American-led world order that was created after World War II is also a real possibility. Are there any historical precedents for Trump’s preferred policies? At first sight, the answer would appear to be yes. While most historical references thus far have mentioned parallels between Trump and

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the isolationist 1940–1941 America First Committee, less well known is that the signature features of Trump’s position had an earlier trial in the twenties in the administrations of presidents Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. The 1920s are not the only possible period to which one might harken back—President Theodore Roosevelt’s New Nationalism comes immediately to mind, but the parallels with the twenties are more numerous and striking. Before American-led internationalism became the “new normal” for the second half of the twentieth century, Republican administrations during the so-called New Era had tried out early versions of many of Trump’s favored foreign policy ideas. Once one moves beyond the stark contrast in personalities between the stormy bluster of Trump and the colorless personalities of the 1920s leaders, the list of resemblances is striking. The Republican Party then was more staunchly opposed to free trade than it had been since its founding. With its emphasis on jobs and high wages for workingmen, President William McKinley’s campaign slogan in 1896, “Patriotism, protection, and prosperity,” which could serve as a pithy nationalist slogan even today, resonated powerfully in the 1920s as Republican majorities in Congress passed two of the most protectionist tariff bills in American history, the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922 and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930.2 Throughout the decade, the United States ran the kinds of trade surpluses that Trump would like to see, refused to cancel large war debts incurred by its World War I allies, and viewed the politically fraught reparations question as “not a political but a business problem.”3 Trump’s anodyne references to “fair trade” sound a lot like the reciprocity schemes that sought with little success to soften the high protectionism of the post–Civil War era. The 1920s were a time of rising nativism and a resurgent Ku Klux Klan when anti-immigration sentiment won significant legislative victories, capping a long-swelling tide of restrictionist agitation. Following a decade of legislative tinkering, the National Origins Plan of 1929 imposed an annual quota of one hundred and fifty thousand incoming aliens, a reduction of nearly 90 percent from the prewar high. Of that total, allocations were set as a percentage of each country’s total proportion of white inhabitants in the 1920 census. As part of the drastic decline in overall numbers, the legislation virtually turned off the spigot of newcomers flowing from eastern Europe while entirely halting immigration from Asia.4

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The decade was also notable for the country’s failure to join the League of Nations, opposition to participation in international organizations in general, and traditional avoidance of entangling alliances. The United States wanted nothing to do with the League despite having played an outsize role in its creation. Notwithstanding a strong tradition of American leadership in the movement for international law and arbitration, a number of attempts to have the US join the Permanent Court of International Justice, or World Court, at Geneva failed to gain Senate approval. This antagonism to international organization resembles Trump’s view, widely echoed in conservative circles, that the United Nations is a “talking shop” or “just a club for people to get together, talk, and have a good time . . . a waste of time and money.”5 Trump’s skepticism about collective security also extended, for a time, to NATO (“obsolete”), whose “free-loading” propensities caused him to call into question the alliance’s one-for-all and all-for-one security guarantee.6 Trump did eventually walk back his anti-alliance remarks, but not before planting a poisonous seed of doubt about the reliability of America’s commitment in the minds of European leaders. One of the more striking features of the 2016 presidential campaign was Trump’s repeated expression of admiration for Russia’s autocratic president, Vladimir Putin, ostensibly with a view to advancing a rapprochement. In some ways, this echoed business sentiment in the 1920s, when prominent business leaders like W. Averell Harriman, Armand Hammer, and Henry Ford believed that they could do business with Soviet Russia, especially during the New Economic Policy period when the USSR seemed to be retreating from direct control of the economy. This desire to befriend the Russians became even stronger during the Depression decade of the 1930s, as the allure of the Russian market beckoned to a nation starved for export markets. One also finds echoes in the 1930s of Trump’s expressions of admiration for authoritarian leaders like Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, and even North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. Earlier, the appreciation of strong men was most pronounced in the Caribbean, where caudillos took the place of US forces of occupation in countries like the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Nicaragua. As the historian John Diggins has pointed out, Italy’s Benito Mussolini and Fascism had a decidedly favorable public image in the US during the 1920s. The prevailing view, still commonplace today, was that

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dictators, however offensive their methods, at least brought stability to otherwise-chaotic lands.7 As any competent historian would expect, there are also significant differences between then and now. The immigration policies of the 1920s were more sweeping than Trump’s more narrowly targeted proposals.8 Although the United States was the world’s dominant economic power, it was by choice politically far less influential in the twenties. Its navy was huge, but the army was in the bantamweight class, and nuclear weapons were not yet on the horizon. Issues that would later come to the fore—global warming and the environment, world poverty, women’s rights and human rights, and decolonization, for example—were in their infancy. International organization in various forms would take on a new life only after 1945 largely because of newfound American support. Despite a history of occasional “red scares,” terrorism was not a major political problem. The status of China and Japan and the US position in Asia were light years removed from today’s altogether different geopolitical landscape. Finally, American policymakers viewed the future of international relations with optimism, much as they had throughout the nineteenth century. All in all, the 1920s were a period of “independent internationalism,” to use historian Joan Hoff ’s term, in which the United States was far from being an isolationist nation.9 On especially important issues, the US worked side by side on an ad hoc basis with other major powers— most notably in the German reparations crisis, the 1921–1922 Washington Conference for reduction of naval armaments and promotion of the Open Door principle in China, and the symbolically important 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war. Behind this cooperative impulse lay a belief that a healthy and growing international economy, globalization in short, would continue to heal the wounds of the Great War. Importantly, policymakers understood that American prosperity was closely linked to prosperity elsewhere. They also believed in a maturing world opinion that was slowly but surely bringing the great powers together, in contrast to the kind of zero-sum world of winners and losers that Trump takes for granted. When the US role in the world during the 1920s is viewed synoptically, it turns out that the decade’s policies were more complex and, fatally, more contradictory than terms like isolationism and nationalism would suggest. In short, because the deep differences far outweigh any

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surface similarities, the takeaway from this comparison is that, no, we have not been here before. In all likelihood, this kind of historical dissection is of no interest to someone like Trump, for whom foreign policymaking has nothing to do with an informed reading of history.10 A man who, according to his ghostwriter, “has [n]ever read a book straight through in his adult life” shows little evidence of being endowed with an informed historical sensibility.11 That observation also applies more generally to his understanding of the world, which is rooted in immediate experience and in the consumption of superficial forms of cultural media. Because the world we perceive directly is not the world as it actually is, this makes for quirky anecdotal knowledge that allows Trump to deny basic truths of science and to contradict readily provable facts. He prefers easily digestible information delivered succinctly and likes to make decisions off the top of his head based on his gut instinct. Rather than engage in complex argumentation, his addiction to emitting Twitter messages betrays a weakness for what have been called “thought farts.”12 Relatedly, his views on issues resemble Facebook “likes” and “dislikes” in which complexity and contradiction are absent (Obamacare is a “disaster,” the “world is a mess,” and so on). “I’m a very instinctual person,” Trump says, “but my instincts turn out to be right.”13 This intuitive style is seen by some as a virtue. For instance, the author of a wildly worshipful article claims that Trump’s success in leading with his gut has “recalibrated the nature of insight itself.”14 Given this visceral and ahistorical sensibility, his views emanate largely from an impulsive dislike and negation of the way things are, and not from a desire to recreate the past. Thus, a search for precursors most likely explains nothing about the sources of Trump’s positions. Trump’s shaky grasp of history nevertheless raises a number of interesting and perhaps important issues. First and foremost, it brings to mind the question of what it means for a policy to have historical grounding. Does an academic understanding of history have anything at all to contribute to an explanation of his policies, or is it possible that they may instead be driven by a different kind of historical understanding? Another problem, given Trump’s “America First” nationalist focus, is the potentially disastrous impact that a lack of a broader sense of historical responsibility might have on the future of international relations. Republican leaders in the 1920s at least had a sense, albeit one that was horribly wrong in the

40 0 IS TH ERE A TRU M P D OCTR I N E?

short term, of where the world was going. The same cannot be said of the current administration. Finally, despite the many historical parallels, one might ask whether the overall situation today is so vastly unlike that of the twenties that an attempt to return to the mind-set of that decade, if not necessarily its policies, makes any sense at all. In sum, if there is no historical sensibility upon which to build policy, where does that leave us? Many observers have noted that Trump does not have an ideology, at least not one that he is able to articulate. This is a serious shortcoming, because an ideology or worldview is essential to function effectively in the modern world. Though often associated with zealots or narrow doctrinaires, ideology, when broadly considered, is a much more positive thing than that. For it is only through the mediation of a complex, rationally composed worldview that combines hard information (which includes science), an understanding of historical context, and personal values that one can formulate a strategy whereby to navigate the world. Think of liberalism, for example, and how it accommodates beliefs, science, history, and practical prescriptions that deal with everything from love, childrearing, the economy, speech, the status of women, race, international relations, and a whole lot more. An immediate objection to the claim that Trumpism is not a deeply held or coherent belief system is that nationalism surely qualifies as such and that Trump is its present-day incarnation. Yet Trump’s views are far removed from nineteenth-century nationalisms, which were based on lucid syntheses of geography, ethnicity, language, religion, culture high and low, and history. Nationalism then took various forms that not only competed with internationalism and each other, but also, in its liberal wing, was actually a subset of internationalism. Moreover, the divergent versions of nationalism could all claim with some plausibility to have history on their side. As I argue in this chapter, nationalism offers an unrealistic point of departure for conceptualizing the problems of today’s world. Trump’s reliance on protean gut instincts and his process-oriented preoccupation with making “deals” pretty much forecloses any possibility of articulating a reasoned ideology of “Trumpism.” But could this not, perhaps, plausibly be called pragmatism? This is a questionable suggestion, for two reasons. First, pragmatism in its more philosophical form is quite congruent with science, whose principles Trump seems not to understand.

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Second, the dumbed-down version of pragmatism (“if it works, it’s true”), relies on results, some of which are readily available in a historical record for which Trump has little regard. Indeed, at times one wonders whether getting results is even part of the president’s political playbook. Parenthetically, this lack of an overriding belief system is not limited to Trump. It is also characteristic of many present-day politicos whose operational code has been warped by a cynical form of party politics that operates with little regard for principle. As a case in point, Trump’s election has been mightily aided by the triumph of sophism in the classical sense, whereby any argument, even any reality, can be confuted by a rhetorically adept spokesperson. Sharing this troubled relationship with facts are Trump’s spinmeisters, who, with their jaw-dropping ability to adroitly defend and criticize just about anything, have unwittingly embraced a de facto postmodernism whose core argument is that there is no objective truth, an outlook that until recently was associated with the extreme left. In this view, truth is something that is made, or better yet made up, rather than something that exists in its own right and is to be sought after and occasionally found. For classical Greek sophists like Thucydides, the conclusion drawn from this radically relativist position was that the underlying basis for society lay in power and the desire for power rather than, say, justice or virtue. Perhaps congressional types do have sincere ideological motives for throwing overboard their previous allegiances to free trade and for their reluctance to probe too deeply into Russian interference in the presidential election in the hope that Trump might repay them by supporting doctrinally pure items on their agenda. Regrettably, the “unnerving silence” in the face of Trump’s iconoclastic ideas suggests that these principles, as well as others, were wobbly articles of faith for the Republican establishment to begin with.15 And yet, despite the patchy discursive connection to past policies, is it possible that history continues to exert a powerful gravitational pull in the form of deeply embedded cultural patterns? Cultures are among humankind’s most enduring creations and thus are saturated with history. Cultures do change, of course, but typically at a slower pace than changes in society. The various components of a culture do not mutate holistically in lockstep or at a uniform pace, but in segments, slower or faster depending on the particular issues. When we try to connect culture with foreign affairs, one obvious question is, how quickly do deep-seated attitudes

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change? That is impossible to say in general, but in the United States there is one area, public opinion, whose complexion has not changed very much. Whereas the post–World War II transformation in US foreign policy took place principally at the elite level, the public’s understanding of Cold War strategy and its internationalist precepts remained sketchy, at best. The same was true for trade, which was perceived in simple terms— good when it created jobs, bad when it took them away. But the public was never sold on the counterintuitive virtues of free trade, an axiom of the otherwise fractious science of economics and a key principle of postwar economic policy. Trump’s allure is partially explained by his uncanny appreciation of the personal hurts of the masses—Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables”—and by his advocacy of nationalist economic solutions that strike a responsive chord with mass culture. A strong case can be made for nationalism as the intuitive, default cultural response of populism to accumulated problems of globalization, as the concurrent rise of far-right movements in Europe confirms. The populist demands for monetary inflation and anti-immigrant agitation that have periodically roiled American politics in the past have been reincarnated in today’s outburst of protectionist sentiment, fueled by an intuitive sense that the shrinkage of low-skill, high-wage manufacturing jobs is the fault of free traders who care little about American workers. If this is correct, the pertinent past is less the product of study and learning than something that already abides deep within our psyches. Thus Trump’s views, though historically illiterate by one interpretation, may from another angle be profoundly historical in their deep-rootedness. Ergo Trump’s first beatitude as a populist savant: “I love the poorly educated!”16 To be clear, gut instincts matter and should not be cavalierly waved off as being diametrically at odds with intelligence. The philosopher HansGeorg Gadamer maintained that “prejudices” (i.e., prejudgments) were a condition of our humanity and thus were indispensable starting points for understanding the world.17 He was right, for that is how we usually know straightaway where we stand on most important issues. And it is from this unavoidable starting position that we are able to develop more complex and nuanced understandings and arguments as we become more deeply engaged with problems. Some of Trump’s gut instincts are not necessarily wrong-headed. I have no room to go into the particulars here, but US

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foreign policy was indeed ripe for an overhaul after the Cold War and the seemingly endless War on Terror, and it still is. It is a long way, however, from prejudgments to effective policy. The problem with Trump’s gut-level nationalism is that its spooky rapport with a minority strain of mass opinion simultaneously disconnects it from a thoroughly entangled world. Its domestic strength is its international weakness, precociously brilliant on one level and hopelessly obtuse on another. It is a long-standing precept of internationalist thought that internationalism depends on education, that is, an extended engagement with expert knowledge about the world, the more the better. At a minimum, a grounding in the history of relations with other countries, combined with an understanding of how and why one’s own foreign policy has evolved, is indispensable for the effective conduct of foreign affairs. In this case, having a grasp of the big picture has enormous practical implications because it enables one to appreciate what is at stake in a policy, whose various aspects quickly tend to become knotty once one starts to calculate costs and benefits. At the extreme, a policy that seems obviously beneficial to begin with may, upon extended consideration, prove to be quite harmful to the national interest. Regrettably, in Trump’s cognitive universe, knowledge of foreign affairs stops at simple prejudgments, and the same holds true for his loyal base of followers. If numerous surveys are to be believed, Americans’ historical, scientific, and geographic literacy is in a sad state, oftentimes hilariously so, and their familiarity with the issues and details of foreign relations is no less pathetic. If it were to be generalized, a foreign policy reduced to a gut level would be akin to relations between rival inner-city gangs. A foreign policy made from the gut would be no more a policy than a bull lunging toward the toreador’s cape. In a nutshell: in international relations, attitude and intuition can too easily become enemies of achievement. Take terrorism, for example—obviously, a bad thing, but how bad? Defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is the nation’s number-one foreign policy goal, says Trump. As a warning against overreaction, President Barack Obama liked to remind his White House staffers that “terrorism takes far fewer lives in America than handguns, car accidents, and falls in bathtubs” which, however impolitic, happens to be statistically true.18 It is also true that terrorism is not a new problem. Since its modern emergence in the nineteenth century, terrorism has been

40 4IS TH ERE A TRU M P D OCTR I N E?

managed to a greater or lesser degree by numerous governments without resorting to the kind of overblown mobilization and ill-conceived foreign embroilments that have dominated US policy since the attacks of 9/11. Still, even though it is by no means an existential threat, and an endowment of historical experience shows that it can be handled without necessarily going on a perpetual wartime footing, terrorism continues to be treated as an apocalyptic menace. In the absence of a sound grasp of historical context that helps distinguish the desirable from the possible, military means tend to be divorced from political ends. Unsurprisingly, with few roadblocks in public opinion to stand in its way, a belligerent knee-jerk disposition to rely on military force has yet to produce much relief from the spectral threat of terrorism. Means-ends problems also plague Trump’s parochial approach to trade and business. It is doubtful that Trump’s idée fixe of making deals, which originates in a family-centered business reminiscent of a precorporate milieu of interpersonal haggling, is capable of dealing effectively with a far more complicated world. As the economic journalist Adam Davidson notes, far from being a “loutish ignoramus,” Trump is “a canny spokesman for a different sort of economy, one that often goes by the technical name ‘rent seeking’ ,”19 an approach that is more pertinent to the insular world of Manhattan real estate than to a global economy. While economists agree overwhelmingly that trade as a continuation of warfare by other means is a bad idea, it is true that zero-sum nationalism has worked well for some “free riders” (of which the United States was long the most prominent example). But that does not mean that nationalism can work well for all. And for those nations who do manage for a time to take advantage of the open international system, a host of reasons make it unlikely that this two-faced approach can be sustained indefinitely. From a global view, moreover, there are serious questions about how many such neomercantilist players an open international system can tolerate at any given time or whether it makes any sense for the hegemon to mimic the free riders. In his eagerness to use the political clout of the United States to back out of multilateral agreements that provide the framework for the global economy in favor of bilateral trucking and bartering, Trump risks making the world the chaotic place he imagines it already is. Moreover, pure and simple antipathy to the established global order ignores the enormous privileges, most notably but not restricted to the dollar’s status as a global

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currency and the related ability to run ongoing trade and budget deficits with impunity, all of which the United States enjoys as a perquisite of its hegemonic status. If the United States has indeed been taken advantage of, it has been with open eyes and with an appreciation of the benefits, financial and otherwise, that accrue to global leadership. Tellingly, there is in Trump’s foreign policy agenda no mention of democratization or human rights. Nationalist patriotism may be the last refuge of scoundrels, but in today’s world, it is also the first refuge of autocrats and dictators, many of whom Trump has lauded for their leadership qualities. Admittedly, the promotion of democracy and human rights abroad is inherently problematic and often quixotic, but to mothball these ideals risks losing something vital to America’s conception of itself. There is a depressing irony here that deserves mention. By rooting foreign policy in culture (and an embattled nativist culture, at that), Trump’s version of American greatness turns its back on the traditional understanding of American exceptionalism that anticipated the eventual adoption of American ideals throughout the world. Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement of Great Britain’s exit from the European Union, and the simultaneous rise of far-right nationalist politicians in Europe who echo his viewpoint, underscore the broader implications of this nativist turn: the encouragement of a kind of mimicry that is not likely to end in a harmony of interests. Wittingly or not, his program would mean having the United States adopt the kind of narcissistic behavior that has characterized other failed countries over time. In promising to make America great again, he has disowned what has made America truly exceptional: its exemplary role in creating and supporting a global system that has in turn encouraged, however fitfully, the growth of a global community. Practical impediments aside, the general reason why Trump’s nationalism will not work well is that it is out of step with history’s deep globalizing trends. According to a Brookings paper, “a resistance to globalization was arguably the foremost policy theme in Trump’s election campaign.”20 In a campaign speech on foreign trade, Trump condemned “a leadership class that worships globalism over Americanism.”21 Following the 2016 elections, Stephen Bannon put it more bluntly: “the globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia.”22 Equally revealing of Trump’s perspective on globalization are remarks from his foreign policy team that portray the president as operating from

40 6 IS TH E RE A TRU M P D OCTR I N E?

“a clear-eyed outlook that the world is not a ‘global community’ but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage.”23 True, in a speech delivered in Warsaw, Trump sought to situate his policies in a broader context by claiming that his mission was the preservation of civilization, thereby suggesting the existence of some kind of international society that transcends narrow nationalism. It was not globalization that he had in mind, however, but a clash of civilizations in which the Western type (“we write symphonies”) was under siege. And inasmuch as competitive nationalism originated in Western civilization, this says nothing about broader imperatives for international cooperation. The clear implication of this outlook is that when globalization, especially its economic effects, works to the disadvantage of the United States, the system’s offending features must be undone, no matter the harm to the larger structure. Lurking behind the antiglobalist rhetoric, then, is the traditional realistic sensibility writ large, expanded in an attempt to make sense of a modern era in which nations pursue their national self-interest on a global stage in lieu of old-fashioned contests for local and regional primacy. Unfortunately, history has not been kind to this point of view. In the nineteenth century, nationalism was on the rise as an ideology with a promising future. It would not become clear until the middle of the twentieth century whether narrow nationalism or liberal internationalism was the long-run winner. Today, the verdict is in: structurally speaking, the contest is over, as internationalism has swept the field. The world today actually exists as a society in a sociological sense and not simply as that legal fiction known as a “family” of nations, which means that serious costs come with choosing to be an outsider. But apart from his visceral condemnations of its shortcomings, Trump has said nothing about the why and the how of globalization, which is, after all, the most consequential historical development of the past two centuries—indeed, of the millennia since the Neolithic Age. If realism claims to see the world as it really is, ignoring the importance of globalization is evidence of the existence of a huge blind spot in its understanding of the world. With nationalism, conversely, we have seen a future that does not work. It might be useful to ask, as an exercise in counterfactual history, whether the planet would have been better off had spheres-of-influence deals been reached with the Third Reich, the USSR, and the People’s Republic of

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China. Would a realist post-1945 system based solely on power politics have been preferable? Had there been no American-led globalization, would the world have been a better place without modernizers such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and, yes, China, not to mention a host of others who have taken advantage of the opportunities opened up by globalization; without multilateral institutions; without the European Union; without human rights; and without the growing international trend to democracy? If the answer to such questions is “yes,” then one might logically conclude that US foreign policy over the past seventy-five years has been exceedingly foolish. Trump is a disrupter, everyone says, but is he a creative disrupter? This is an important question given the possibility that his preferred policies might trigger a catastrophic collapse of globalization, which has happened before and might well happen again in the absence of some TLC. Without a willingness to engage in the difficult task of creating a feasible substitute, mere antipathy to a state of affairs is a half-baked standpoint. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.” Thus far, Trump has shown no interest in continuing to assume responsibility for the world system or in making a plausible case for a superior alternative, nor does the possibility of system collapse and its consequences appear to concern him. One suspects that, like his predecessors in the 1920s, Trump believes that he can eat his cake and have it, that globalization will somehow continue to function well in the background even when confronted with an outbreak of competitive nationalisms. But a frontal assault on the existing order is not the immediate cause for concern. Even benign neglect has its dangers because all systems, technological and human, even if not abused, inevitably break down without regular maintenance and the occasional overhaul. There is no sign that Mr. Trump aims to be a Mr. Fixit. The historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. once proposed that American political history moves in alternating cycles of reformism and conservatism. Along the same lines, historians of foreign relations have written a good deal about America’s alternation between nationalism and internationalism, or isolation and intervention. Along these lines, Bannon, one of the few Trump soul mates who tried to provide some intellectual ballast to the administration’s outlook, is reportedly attracted to a cyclical theory of history in which internationalist overreach has produced a boomerang

40 8IS TH ERE A TRU M P D OCTR I N E?

return to a natural unilateralism. But Bannon is not alone. Some historically literate Trump enthusiasts see his administration as a restoration, as “a return to the pre–New Deal Republican Party.” Former presidential aspirant Pat Buchanan believes that Trump is taking the party “back to the Old-Time Religion.”24 According to this way of thinking, Trump could well “reconnect conservatism and the GOP to their American roots, and to renew them for the next generation.”25 But revivalism is better suited to religion than to politics. Though it is clear that America’s behavior in the past reveals some significant precursors for Trump’s key policy inclinations, the world is a fundamentally different place than it was in the 1920s. To be sure, that decade can be used as historical backing for Trumpist ambitions in US foreign relations—unfortunately, historians can find justifications for anything— but this kind of exercise would be little more than an attempt to apply scholarly gilding to a chimerical structure of ideas. Dismayingly absent from Trump’s view of the world is an understanding that we are living in a radically new era of history. In recent centuries, the change to modernity has been so pronounced that there is no going back to the good old days. Indeed, in the last seventy-five years, America and the world have experienced more and faster change than ever before as the river of time, flowing with overwhelming force and swiftness, has carved a new channel entirely. If so, cyclical theories of history may be irrelevant to an understanding of what is going on today. Unlike legal precedents, which are cited and whose footsteps are followed, historical precedents have little authority unless they have been institutionalized as policy and applied successfully over time. Unfortunately for those Republicans who look back nearly one hundred years for inspiration, the policies of the 1920s are superannuated and make little sense for a very different contemporary world. In any event, Trump has no desire to return to a past of which he knows little. And even if such a desire did exist, it would be impossible to fulfill. Trump’s vow to “Make America Great Again” finds its historical expression par excellence in the 1950s and 1960s, internationalist decades whose unique constellation of circumstances cannot be brought back. But pick a decade, any decade, and the same conclusion will hold true: America’s greatness, however one defines it, can never be restored to what it was in the past.

T R U M P ISM , H ISTO RY, AND TH E FU TU RE O F U S FOR EI GN R ELATI ON S409

My dark premonitions about how events will play out may prove to be well founded or, as I hope, they may turn out to be overblown speculation. More than a little humility is in order if only because an understanding of history brings with it an understanding of its many practical limitations. History cannot fully explain the past, it cannot foresee the future, and its so-called lessons are often unclear or misleading. But it can reliably tell us where we are and how we have arrived at this provisional destination. Without such historical understanding or an interest in acquiring it, we are adrift in time with no idea of where we are going or how to get there even if we did know. As it now stands, unfortunately, policy is neither understood backwards nor is it being lived forwards in a well thought-out manner. To approach United States foreign relations with the kind of historical vacuity that now holds sway in Washington would mean that the country has truly lost its way.

NOTES 1.

2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

See, for example, Philip Rucker, “Bannon: Trump Administration Is in Unending Battle for ‘Deconstruction of the Administrative State’ ,” Washington Post, 23 February 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/02/23/bannon-trump -administration-is-in-unending-battle-for-deconstruction-of-the-administrative-state/. Among the many intangibles is that Bannon’s exit as Trump’s “resident provocateur” may mean that his policy agenda will depart with him—or perhaps not, if the falling out was due to personality conflicts between individuals who remain political kindred spirits. President Hoover disliked the Smoot-Hawley bill, but signed it anyway. Calvin Coolidge, State of the Union address, 6 December 1923. Through the 1930s, the annual average of immigrants dropped to about seventy thousand. Juliet Elperin, “Trump Calls U.N. ‘Just a Club for People’ to ‘Have a Good Time’ ,” Washington Post, 27 December 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics /wp/2016/12/26/trump-calls-u-n-just-a-club-for-people-to-have-a-good-time/. The complaint is not unique to Trump. President Barack Obama also complained about “free riders” in NATO, though without bringing into question the continuing utility of the alliance. John Patrick Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972). As this was being written, Trump announced his support for a merit-based system that would cut legal immigration in half after ten years. Joan Hoff Wilson, American Business and Foreign Policy, 1920–1933 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1971)

410 IS TH ERE A TRU M P D OCTR I N E?

10.

11. 12.

13. 14.

15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21. 22.

23.

24.

25.

Trump’s remarks about Frederick Douglass on his visit to the National Museum of African-American History and Culture bring to mind a slacker student trying to fake his way through an answer to an essay question. Jane Mayer, “Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter Tells All,” New Yorker, 25 July 2016, http:// www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all. J. D. Biersdorfer, review of Ellen Ullman, Life in Code, New York Times Book Review, 17 August 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/books/review/life-in-code-ellen -ullman-memoir.html. TIME magazine interview with President Trump, 23 March 2017. Victor Davis Hanson, “The Animal Cunning and Instinct of Donald Trump,” National Review, 20 December 2016, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443188/donald-trumps -cunning-animal-instinct. The phrase is from Jeff Flake, “My Party Is in Denial About Donald Trump,” Politico, 31 July 2017, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/31/my-party-is-in-denial -about-donald-trump-215442. At the time of writing, Congress had with near unanimity passed anti-Russian sanctions, yet there is little evidence of a desire to dwell on Trump’s Russian connections. Associated Press, “Trump in Nevada: “I Love the Poorly Educated’ ,” YouTube (video), 23 February 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpdt7omPoa0. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (London: Continuum, 2004), especially chap. 3. Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine,” The Atlantic, April 2016, https://www.theatlantic .com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/. Adam Davidson, “What Trump Doesn’t Understand About ‘the Deal’,” New York Times, 17 March 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/magazine/what-donald-trump -doesnt-understand-about-the-deal.html. Brina Seidel and Laurence Chandy, “Up Front: Donald Trump and the Future of Globalization,” Brookings Institution, 18 November 2016, https://www.brookings.edu/blog /up-front/2016/11/18/donald-trump-and-the-future-of-globalization/. Trump campaign speech on trade, Monessen, Pennsylvania, 28 June 2016. Michael Wolff, “Ringside with Steve Bannon,” Hollywood Reporter, 18 November 2016, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/steve-bannon-trump-tower-interview -trumps-strategist-plots-new-political-movement-948747. H. R. McMaster & Gary Cohn, “America First Doesn’t Mean America Alone,” Wall Street Journal, 30 May 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-first-doesnt-mean-america -alone-1496187426. Pat Buchanan, “It’s Trump’s Party, Now,” Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, 3 March 2017; Charles R. Kesler, “The Republican Trump,” Claremont Review of Books 17, no. 1 (Winter 2016/2017). See also Kesler’s op-ed piece, “Donald Trump Is a Real Republican, and That’s a Good Thing,” New York Times, 26 April 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26 /opinion/donald-trump-is-a-real-republican-and-thats-a-good-thing.html. Jennifer Schuessler, “ ‘Charge the Cockpit or You Die’: Behind an Incendiary Case for Trump,” New York Times, 20 February 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/arts /charge-the-cockpit-or-you-die-behind-an-incendiary-case-for-trump.html.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Andrew J. Bacevich is professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University. Michael N. Barnett is university professor of international affairs and political science at George Washington University. His most recent book is the collection Paternalism Beyond Borders. Mark Philip Bradley is Bernadotte E. Schmitt Distinguished Service Professor of International History at the University of Chicago. He is the author most recently of The World Reimagined: Americans and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century. Joshua Busby is associate professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Daniel Byman is professor and the senior associate dean at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings. His latest book is Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Global Jihadist Movement: What Everyone Needs to Know. Stephen Chaudoin is assistant professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His articles have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Politics, International Organization, and the British Journal of Political Science.

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Arthur Eckstein is professor of history and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland at College Park. His most recent book is Bad Moon Rising: How the Weather Underground Beat the FBI and Lost the Revolution. Max Paul Friedman is professor of history at American University in Washington, DC. He is author of Rethinking Anti-Americanism: The History of an Exceptional Concept in American Foreign Relations. George Fujii is the web and production editor of H-Diplo and the International Security Studies Forum. F. Gregory Gause, III, is professor of international affairs, John H. Lindsey ’44 Chair, and head of the Department of International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University. His most recent book is The International Relations of the Persian Gulf. Francis J. Gavin is the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and the inaugural director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. His most recent book is Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age. Ryan Irwin is associate professor of history at the University at Albany, SUNY. His first book, Gordian Knot: Apartheid and the Unmaking of the Liberal World Order, explored how African independence altered the international system at the height of the Cold War. Robert Jervis is Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics at Columbia University. His most recent book is How Statesmen Think: The Psychology of International Politics. He is the executive editor of the International Security Studies Forum. William R. Keylor is professor of international relations and history in the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. His most recent book is The Twentieth-Century World and Beyond: An International History Since 1900 (6th ed.). Diane N. Labrosse is the executive and managing editor of H-Diplo and senior managing editor of the International Security Studies Forum. Sam Lebovic is assistant professor of history at George Mason University and author of Free Speech and Unfree News: The Paradox of Press Freedom in America.

ABO U T TH E CO NTRIBU TO RS41 3

Robert Legvold is Marshall D. Shulman Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. His most recent book is Return to Cold War. Jennifer Lind is associate professor of government at Dartmouth College and a faculty associate at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University. Tom Long is assistant professor in Rising World Powers at the University of Warwick and affiliated professor at Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Mexico. He is the author of Latin America Confronts the United States: Asymmetry and Influence. Helen V. Milner is the B.C. Forbes Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and the director of the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School. Her newest book is Sailing the Water’s Edge: Domestic Politics and American Foreign Policy, coauthored with Dustin Tingley, which won the 2016 Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book published in the field of US national policy. Nancy Mitchell is professor of history at North Carolina State University. She is the author of Race and the Cold War: Jimmy Carter in Africa, which was awarded the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Douglas Dillon Award and the Society of American Foreign Relations’ Robert Ferrell Prize. Jonathan Monten is lecturer in political science and director of the International Public Policy Program at University College London. Samuel Moyn is professor of law and professor of history at Yale University. His most recent book is Christian Human Rights. Frank Ninkovich is emeritus professor of history at St. John’s University. T.G. Otte is professor of diplomatic history at the University of East Anglia. His publications include July Crisis: How the World Descended into War, Summer 1914. Brian Rathbun is a professor in the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California. His most recent book is Diplomacy’s Value. Leo P. Ribuffo is Society of the Cincinnati George Washington Distinguished Professor of History at George Washington University. His most recent book is Right Center Left: Essays in American History.

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Priscilla Roberts is professor at the City University of Macau. Among her recent publications is China, Hong Kong, and the Long 1970s: Global Perspectives, coedited with Odd Arne Westad. Joshua Rovner is associate professor in the School of International Service at American University. Rovner is the author of Fixing the Facts: National Security and the Politics of Intelligence. John Schuessler is associate professor in the Department of International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University. He is the author of Deceit on the Road to War: Presidents, Politics, and American Democracy. Randall L. Schweller is professor of political science at Ohio State University. His most recent book is Maxwell’s Demon and the Golden Apple: Global Discord in the New Millennium. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Security Studies. Robert Y. Shapiro is the Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government in the Department of Political Science and Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. His most recent book is Selling Fear: Counterterrorism, the Media, and Public Opinion, with Brigitte L. Nacos and Yaeli Bloch-Elkon. Stanley R. Sloan is visiting scholar in political science at Middlebury College. He is author of Transatlantic Traumas; Has Illiberalism Brought the West to the Brink of Collapse? Jonathan Sperber is the Curators’ Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Missouri. His most recent book, Karl Marx: A Nineteenth Century Life, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in the biography category and has been translated into nine foreign languages. James R. Stocker is assistant professor of international affairs at Trinity Washington University. He is the author of Spheres of Intervention: US Foreign Policy and the Collapse of Lebanon, 1967–1976. John A. Thompson is emeritus reader in American history at Cambridge University and an emeritus fellow of St. Catharine’s College. His most recent book is A Sense of Power: The Roots of America’s Global Role. Dustin Tingley is professor of government in the Government Department at Harvard University. His book on American foreign policy, with Helen Milner, Sailing the Water’s Edge, was awarded the Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book published in the field of US national policy.

ABO U T TH E CO NTRIBU TO RS41 5

Stephen M. Walt is Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. His is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy magazine and is the author of numerous books and articles on international relations and US foreign policy, including The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, with John J. Mearsheimer. Stephen Wertheim is lecturer in history at Birkbeck, University of London. His first book, forthcoming, examines the birth of US global supremacy in World War II. Thomas W. Zeiler is professor of history and director of the Program in International Affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His most recent publication is Guide to US Foreign Policy: A Diplomatic History, coedited with Robert J. McMahon.

INDEX

Adorno, Theodor, 15, 348 Affordable Care Act, 76, 326 Afghanistan; democratization of, x, 41; economic development of, 83; Obama administration policy towards, 105, 262–68, 274–82; terrorism in, 175, 199–200; war in, 4, 28, 41–44, 66–69, 113, 155–56, 215, 225 Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), 175, 176. See also populism America First, xii, 24, 28, 41, 43, 65, 78, 85, 88, 99, 130, 136, 138–39, 142–43, 146, 151–70, 190, 211, 214, 222, 225–26, 229, 236, 278, 288, 309, 322, 399; America First Committee, 145–46, 396, American exceptionalism, xiii, 102, 126, 130–31, 144, 192, 212; and Obama, 127; and Trump, 127–32, 405 American Farm Bureau Federation, 71 American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, 351 American Psychiatric Association, 18, 356, 357 Amnesty International; and the Helsinki Accords, 173 Andean Trade Preferences Act of 1991, 254

Arab Spring, x, 14, 175, 268, 278 al-Assad, Bashar, 10, 41, 44, 68, 264, 268, 274, 325 Assange, Julian, 364 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 303, 310 Asia, 31–32, 143, 146, 165, 173–75, 201; and economy/trade, 41, 148, 240, 254, 301, 302–3, 315; and security, 41, 130, 139, 162–63, 213, 309; and the United States, 231, 255, 263, 305, 310, 396, 398, 405; Asians in the United States, 189 Asia-Pacific, 29, 139, 164, 254, 301–2, 309, 315, 316 Australia, 141, 242, 302, 310–11 Austria, xii, 161–62, 313; Austrian Freedom Party, 175, 350; Austrian People’s Party 350; and right-wing nationalism, 175–76, 201, 313 Bannon, Stephen: anti-internationalism, 85, 183, 405, 407–8; and the media, 376; nationalism, 12, 31, 188–89; and Trump, 382, 395, Beard, Charles, 344; Beardian, 346, 354 Bell, Daniel, 345–49, 354–56

418 IND E X

Bernstein, Carl, 367–68 von Bismarck, Otto, 162; realism, 159, 169 Boehner, John, 111, 182–85, 194 borders and boundaries, 290, 345, 355 Black Lives Matter, 333, 338 Brazil; and China, 254; and past US foreign policy, 212; and Trump, 256 Brexit, x, xii–xiii, 78–80, 106, 227, 231; after, 190, 304, 405; and the EU, 176; and the liberal world order, 168–69, 172–77; and populism, 64, 176–77, 316; Trump and, 31, 125. See also Great Britain Brussels, 161, 168, 227; NATO and Trump administration in, 228–31 Bryan, William Jennings, 350 Buchanan, Patrick, 142, 188–89, 408, Bush, George H. W., xiii, 172, 180 Bush, George W., x, 4, 42, 67, 99, 180, 189, 204, 206, 213, 375–376, 389; administration, 68–69, 81–82, 105, 111, 175, 177, 266, 377; and China, 165, and exceptionalism, 127; and Iraq, 193, 261, 264; the Middle East, 268, 274, 280; and Japan, 244; and brother Jeb, 388; and public opinion, 113 Cameron, David, xii–xiii Canada, 44, 72, 141, 252; and NAFTA, 258; and NATO, 81 Carter, Jimmy, 76, 173, 381; administration, 266, 334, 380–82 Central Europe, 161, 172 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 5, 213, 262, 265, 365 Charlottesville, 17, 187, 207, 309 Chile, 212, 254, 256 China, 29, 31, 128, 137, 147, 174, 255, 310; climate change, 84; currency manipulation, 44, 302; economy and trade, 10, 41, 66, 71–72, 148, 237; and Japan, 215, 239, 242; and Latin America, 253–54; and North Korea, 307–9; Monroe Doctrine of, 310; rise of, xiii, 14, 27, 62, 77,

80, 156–69, 263, 175, 177, 192, 239–40, 311; and Russia x, 25, 34; threat of 112, 125–30, 152, 241, 256; and the United States, 131, 164, 165, 265, 295–98, 303–10 Clean Air Act, 31 Clinton, William (Bill) J., 19, 33, 70, 183–84, 193, 357; administration of, 42, 174, 184, 280 Clinton, Hillary D. R., 23, 29, 42, 44; economic nationalism, 31; and elections, 55, 57, 83, 127, 183, 184, 375; foreign affairs, 23, 70, 236, 265, 301; politics and policy of, 288; and Trump, 365, 388, 390, 402 Cold War, xiv, 25, 26, 63, 163–64, 214, 239, 241, 287, 322, 345, 347; and the far right, 131, 348–49, 353; and liberalism, 50, 87; and NATO, 32–35; new/second, 34, 163, 254, 287, 357; postwar period, xii, 23, 25, 32–33, 41, 116, 164, 167, 169, 172–73, 175, 177, 212, 214, 252, 262, 377; and the United States, 4, 6, 23, 34, 98, 127, 129, 268, 322, 323, 344, 345–47, 403; 344, 347, 356; and US-Asia, 239, 241, 262, 304; and US-European relations, 33, 155–56, 223, 228, 322–25; and US-Russian relations, 296–99; and USSoviet relations in, 25–26, 131, 262, 324 Comey, James: investigation of Russian collusion, 325 Concert of Europe, 162 constructivism, 13; constructivists, 13–14, 99 Coolidge, Calvin, 396 Crimea: Russian annexation of, 10, 41, 68, 166, 215, 227, 291, 324 Crimean War, 162; Crimean War Peace Treaty, 18, 56, 162 Cuba, 257–58, 268; and the United States, 105, 113, 141, 175, 212, 252, 256–58 Cuban Missile Crisis, 16, 163, 268, 350. See also Cuba Deare, Craig: and the Monroe Doctrine, 255–56 Democratic Party, 206, 223, 227; Carter versus Trump administration, 281–82;

IND EX 419

electoral-base, 74–75, 104, 140–42, 187; and Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, 31, 83, 288, 365, 388, 402; and the liberal world order, xv, 40–42, 59–57, 61, 67, 87, 98, 106–19; and NATO, 33, 108–109; Obama administration, 182–85, 274, 278; and Trump, 19, 98–99, 131–32, 222, 290, 376 Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), 10, 19, 100, 112–13, 165, 175, 212, 239, 241, 243, 290, 295, 302–3, 306–10, 315, 395, 397, 407. See also nuclear weapons Deng Xiaoping: market liberalization in China, 304, 314 Department of Defense, 205, 263 Department of State, 16, 33, 43, 139, 190, 205, 255, 268, 306 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Disraeli, Benjamin: brinkmanship, 162 Du Bois, W. E. B., 333 East Asia, 158, 240–41, 301; Assistant Secretary of State for, 29; Northeast Asia, 35, 159; Southeast Asia, 164, 166, 212, 301–3, 310; and the United States, 131, 152, 168, 241, 291. See also Asia Eastern Europe, x, 9, 173; and the EU, 167, 175; US immigration from, 139, 396; and Russia, 152 Egypt, 29, 74, 201, 232, 266–69, 276, 277, 417 Eisenhower, Dwight, 215, 354; conservatism, 347–48; foreign policy of, xiii, 4, 323; Eisenhower Doctrine, 262 Ellsberg, Daniel, 366 Eurasia, 164, 172–73, 295, 298 Europe, x, xii, 41, 106, 165, 253; and China, 315; imperialism, 191–92; Interwar Period, 141–43, 154; and the migrant crisis, 116, 158, 167; and NATO, 31–35, 93n66, 223–31, 322–26; peace settlements before 1914, 161–63; post-Cold War, xiii, 32–35 172–78; post-war, xi–xiii, 10, 155–56, 158–60, 173; and right-wing populism, x–xii, 106,

175–76, 207, 347–50, 402, 405; and Russia, 33, 166, 175; and security, 325, 397; and terrorism, 200–207; United States foreign policy and, 81–82, 130–31, 148 152, 288–98, 397; World War I, 153; World War II, 146. See also European Union European Union (EU), x, 167–68, 295, 407; and Brexit, x, xii–iii, 31, 50, 106, 167–68, 176, 190–91, 227–28, 204, 304, 325, 405; and Iran Nuclear Deal, 265, 274, 288; weakening of, 167–68, 174–77, 231. See also Europe Espionage Act, 366 Executive Order 13769, 75, 204 Facebook, 202, 399 Farage, Nigel, 350; See also UKIP Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 30, 204, 206, 325, 357, 367 Fidesz (Hungary), 175; See also Viktor Orban; populism Flynn, Michael, 229; national security advisor, 44, 265; and the Middle East, 265, 275–76, 324–25; and NATO, 325; resignation, 363 Fordney-McCumber Tariff, 140, 396 France, xii, 64, 141, 153, 154, 161–63, 176, 201, 203, 350 Franco-Prussian War, 162 Frankfurt School, 15–16, 345, 348 Freud, Sigmund, 356; Freudians, 345; neoFreudian(s), 346,348, 354 Front national, 175; See also Marine Le Pen; populism Gaddafi, Muammar, 42, 68, 397 Gates, Robert, 29, 224, 228, 323 Germany, 15, 146, 152, 153, 154, 161–63, 173 216, 316, 345, 383, 389; and domestic politics, xii, 174–76, 201, 313; and economy/trade, 153, 168, 177, 231; and the Marshall Plan, 191; and security xii, 81, 109, 152, 159, 227, 229, 274; and the United States, xii, 44, 81, 109, 128, 129, 214, 228–29, 231, 256

420 IND E X

Georgia, 10, 33, 324, 381 Gilpin, Robert, 26; Gilpinian variants, 25 Glazer, Nathan, 345–47, 349, 354 globalization, xiv, 14, 23, 30, 42, 86–87, 102, 136–37, 144, 148, 174–77, 302, 398, 402, 405–7; anti-globalization, 11, 405; and China, 304, 314–15; public opinion of, 51, 53–57; 106–7, 114–16, 118 Goldwater, Barry, 345, 349; politics and policy, 350–56; Goldwater rule, 18; and Trump, 18, 357 GOP, 33, 40–41, 74, 142, 180–184, 243, 408. See also Republican Party Gorka, Sebastian: anti-internationalism, 85 Gourevitch, Peter. xiv Great Britain: alliances, xii, 228; Brexit, pre-, 405; Brexit, post-, xii, 190, 304, 325; economy and trade, 141, 144–45; empire, 191, 262, 262 313; maritime dominance, 161; nature and mores, 127, 355; rise of, 161; security in Europe, 161, 325; security responsibilities, xii, 227, 325. See also United Kingdom Great Depression, 188, 211; FDR and, 143–48, 344; materialist interpretation, 346, 351–54; and the New Deal, 354; Ruso-American business interests, 397; Smoot-Hawley and, 140–43. See also New Deal; FDR Great Recession, 52, 146; and American hegemony, 27 Greece: financial crisis, 176; and past US foreign policy, 212; populism, 201 Grey, Edward: British foreign secretary, 163 Habsburgs, 161–62 Harding, Warren, 396; Trump and, 216 Helsinki Accords: human rights as “third basket” of, 173 Hitler, Adolf, 145, 146, 154, 213; populism, 142; and Trump, 211, 383 Hofstadter, Richard: “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”: 343–58

Hollande, François, xiii Holy Roman Empire, 161 Hong Kong: and China, 316; and the South China Sea, 310 Hoover, Herbert, 396; and Smoot-Hawley, 140–142; Trump and, 143, 148. See also Smoot-Hawley Tariff Huntington, Samuel, xiv Hussein, Saddam, 173, 280, 397 instrumentum pacis of 1648, modern statehood and, 161 India, 27, 29, 41, 191, 254, 297, 311 Indian Removal Acts, 187 international affairs, 41, 148, 153, 159–60 261, 311–312, 315 international agreements, 67, 109–10, 176, 178, 190 international arena, 126, 145 international bankers, 143–44 international climate and culture, 311–12 international constraints 64, 82; international conventions, 332–33; and cooperation, x, 84, 142, 145, 314, 406 International Criminal Court (ICC), 66–68, 109, 332; Permanent Court of International Justice (World Court), 397 international development, 164, 345 international disorder, 356; and division, 253 international economy, 211–12, 398 international engagement, 5, 53, 56, 58, 85, 88, 139 international institution(s), x, xi, xv, 14, 24, 41, 62, 65, 68, 78, 80, 119, 132, 253, 313–14 international law, xi, 291, 332–33, 397 international liberal order, 28, 58 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 52, 62, 78–80, 156, 236 international norms, xi, 211, 332, 338 international order, ix, xv, 9, 14, 25, 106, 165, 211–13, 215, 236, 294–96, 298–99, 339 international organizations, 52, 107, 155, 214, 397–98

IND E X 421

international partners, 53, 316 international politics, xi, xiv, xv, 7, 26, 82, 162, 164–65, 168–69, 344; and pressure, 63, 77, 87 International Relations (IR), xiv, 3, 7–8, 11, 12, 24, 27, 61–62, 311, 313, 316, 273, 276; 87, 98, 129, 136–37, 141, 160, 165, 173, 224, 253, 256; 398–400, 403 international rights: civil and political, 332–33; human, 332–33, 337–39; legal, 332, 338 international regime, 175; role, 152; scene, 154, 314, 350 international security, 35, 225; international society, 14, 406 international system, ix, 3, 5, 26, 63, 66, 77, 81, 85, 159, 211, 243, 304–5, 311, 404 international terrorism, 105, 114 international trade, 52, 70, 107, 116, 145, 155, 176 internationalism, 25, 49, 58, 61, 65, 138, 141, 143, 145, 181, 212, 398, 400, 403, 406–7; American, 191, 396. See also liberal internationalism internationalist(s), 25, 49, 51, 54–55, 64–65, 141, 143, 212, 237–38, 339, 402–3, 407–8; pro- vs anti-internationalist, 58; justice, 339. See also internationalism Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), 290, 293 Iran, 111–12, 130, 137, 167, 201, 203, 212, 256, 262, 265, 274, 280; Nuclear deal and program, 41, 100, 105, 109–10, 261, 265–67, 274, 279, 288, 295, 322; and the United States, 49, 110, 113, 212–13, 262, 265, 269, 273–82; See also nuclear weapons Iraq, 173, 203, 262, 280, 397; democratization of, x, 41; ISIS in, 166, 199, 203, 204, 206, 231, 269, 273–75, 277–78, 293, 323, 403; terrorism in, 114, 175; and the United States, 105, 106, 112, 155–56, 191, 215, 263–65, 282; war and Trump, 42, 57–58, 79, 102, 129, 214; war in, 13, 28–29, 62,

68–69, 113, 132, 193, 262, 263, 268, 375, 377; and weapons of mass destruction, 367. Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/Daesh), 166, 215; and coalition forces, 225–26, 231; operations and logistics of, 202–5; and the United States, 10, 44, 105–6, 114, 126, 188, 198–200, 204–6, 225, 256, 263–64, 269, 273–75, 277, 293, 323, 403 Islamic State. See Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/Daesh) isolationism, 61, 65, 69, 77, 83, 87, 141, 147–48, 398 Israel, 162, 224–25, 262, 265–69, 377; and the United States, 10, 44, 79, 111, 152, 224, 229, 241, 261–62, 266–69, 273, 275–79, 281 Japan, 142, 154, 162, 177, 214–15, 239–41, 254, 288, 307–8, 310–11, 315, 334, 398, 407; and the United States, 35, 41, 50, 53, 109, 128–29, 152, 154, 191, 192, 214, 235–39, 241–44, 302, 309; and Senkaku Islands, 239, 242 Jerusalem, 268, 277; as capital of Israel, 44, 267, 275, 276, 281 jihad, 199–200, 204, 207, 273, 293, 323 Johnson, Lyndon B., 193, 213, 375–76 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and Trump, 273–279, 283n2 Kaczynski, Jaroslaw, 350. See also Law and Justice Party; populism Kelly, John, 44; and Latin America, 255; as a moderating force, 188 Kennan, George F., 34, 163, 346 Kim Jong-un, 19, 306–10, 397 Kissinger, Henry, 30, 131, 266, 324 Korean War, 155. See also DPRK; ROK Ku Klux Klan (KKK): and 1920s nativism, 348–49, 396; Trump and, 207 Kushner, Jared: Arab-Israeli Conflict, 267, 276; and the Kremlin, 364; Kushner Properties, 12; and Trump, 305

422IND EX

La Follette, Robert, populism and, 349 Lavrov, Sergei, 230, 288–289 Le Pen, Marine, 350. See also Front national; populism Law and Justice Party (Poland), 175. See also Jaroslaw Kaczynski; populism liberal(s), xiii, 61, 65, 147, 168, 190, 211; and American politics, 61, 84, 87, 104, 187–88, 343–347, 355–57, 364, 369, 376–77, 381, 400; and capitalist, 127, 312; and commentariat, 125; component, 61, 65; cosmopolitan game, 237; and credit, 68; and democracy, x, 41, 50, 57, 65, 175; economic, 236; hegemony, 24–25, 41–43; ideas, 268; illiberal, 12, 68, 75, 295; neoliberal, xiv, 22, 33, 314–316; norms, 211; order, x, xi, xiv–xv, 25, 32, 41, 49–50, 52, 57, 143, 211,239, 294–95; prescription, 25; policies, 66; position, 104; states, 12; trade, 145, 255, 301; terminology, 61; values, 147, 313; liberalization, 25, 70, 148 liberalism, 12, 65, 142, 144, 181, 190, 212–13, 236, 313, 347, 350–51, 400; antiliberalism,liberalism 144; neoliberalism, 137. See also liberal(s) liberal internationalism, 12–13, 23–25, 29, 49–51, 54–55, 57–58, 61–69, 76–78, 83–86, 105–10, 112–14, 118–19, 138, 141–43, 145146, 212–14, 237–38, 339, 396, 398, 400, 402–3, 406–8. See also liberalism liberal internationalist(s), 13, 29, 57, 61–63, 65, 67–69, 76–78, 105–6, 118. See also liberal internationalism Lipset, Seymour Martin, 345–49, 356 Macron, Emmanuel, xii, Marshall Plan, 155, 167, 191 Marxism, 345; Marxist(s), 346; 354, Marxist theory, 15; Marxist-Leninist tenets, 314 Mattis, James: Secretary of Defense, 227–29, 282, 290; as a moderating influence, 228, 242, 281, 309–10

May, Theresa: and Brexit, 78; premiership of, 228 McCarthy, Joseph, 345, 347, 349–50, 352–53 McConnell, Mitch, 183–84, 194 McKinley, William, 396 McMaster, Raymond H., 44,, 229, 266, 276 Mearsheimer, John, 34, 325, 377 Merkel, Angela, xii; and Trump foreign policy, 44, 81, 228–31 Mexico, 141, 147; and trade 41, 71, 253–58; Trump antagonization of, 31, 251; USMexico Border issues, 72, 78, 83, 114, 116 Middle East, 14, 116, 130, 152, 159, 163, 166–67, 191, 203, 206, 225, 262, 265, 269, 326; countries, 269; terrorism in, 256; and the United States, 41, 44, 152, 199–204, 207, 261–63, 265, 268–69, 273–80, 282–83, 291, 377, 395. See also individual country names Monroe Doctrine, 252, 255, 310 Mussolini, Benito, 146; populism, 142, 397–98 nationalism, 174, 177; economic, 242; and the Interwar Period, 140–48, 396–98; Latin American, 256; the rise of American, 51–58, 62; rise of Asia-Pacific, 302–4, 314; rise of Western, xi–xv, 167, 175, 178, 404–7; Russian, 291; Trump’s, 1222–31, 87, 102, 126–31, 136–38, 142–44, 146–48, 181, 200–201, 207, 211–12, 242–43, 251, 395–406 National Origins Act (1924), 146 Navarro, Peter, trade policy, 237 Netanyahu, Benjamin: Obama and, 111, 266–67, 277; Trump and, 10–11, 267 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 333 Neutrality Acts of 1935–1937, 154 New Deal, 143, 354, 408; anti-statism and, 187, 344, 354, 408 Nixon, Richard, 6, 131, 192, 194, 364, 367; and Guam Doctrine, 241; and “madman”

IND E X 423

strategy’s appeal to Trump, 263; and “plumbers,” 366; and Watergate, 192, 367, 368 North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 76, 116, 192, 258; Trump position toward, 70–71, 100, 101, 252, 254; investor-state dispute settlement provisions (ISDS), 71 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 10, 32, 51, 98–99, 175, 221–34, 292, 295; Article 5, xii, 31, 44, 98, 168, 227, 230, 242, 325, 326; Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, 226; and security, 33–35, 324–25; United States commitment to, xii, 44, 50, 52, 53, 81, 109, 156, 221–31, 326, 397 North Korea. See Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North-South Conflict, 173, 174 Nuclear energy, 85 nuclear weapons, 212, 295–97, 350, 353, 398; Donald Trump’s statements on, 10, 41–42, 288, 395; Trump on Iran’s nuclear program, 41, 44, 101, 105, 109, 110, 261, 265, 274, 279, 288, 295, 322; on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, 113, 175, 239, 243, 290, 295, 297, 306–8, 310; nuclear arms treaties, 105; nuclear proliferation, prevention of, 110, 227, 236, 238, 241, 290, 292. See also DPRK, INF, and Iran Obama, Barack, x; and campaign, 42, 57, 127– 28, 132, 180–85, 188–89, 193–94;domestic policy of, 110, 363, 366, 389–99, 403; foreign policy of, 4, 29, 30, 64, 67–69, 70, 76, 79, 105–7, 111, 113, 115–16, 118–19, 198–99, 202–4, 206, 287–88, 309, 323–24, 339; and the Middle East, 224, 244, 252, 255, 261, 264–69 One China Policy, 169, 288, 304, 310 Orban, Victor, 350. See also Fidesz; populism

Paris climate agreement, 151, 190, 322; and international signatories, 314; partisanship and, 109; Trump and, 12, 43, 84–85 Party for Freedom (the Netherlands), 175. See also Geert Wilders Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), 326 Pence, Michael: and Latin America, 252, 256; and the Republican base, 73 Pew Research Center, 23, 28, 56, 107–12, 115–17, 167, 269, 334, 337 Philippines: and ASEAN, 303; authoritarianism, 50, 67; and past US foreign policy, 212 Polanyi, Karl, xiv polarity: bipolarity: polarity, 18, 24–25, 163; multipolarity, 22–24, 28–29, 295–96; unipolarity, 22, 24–25, 27–28, 34, 163–64, 377 polarization, 49, 56–57, 67, 104, 356, 368, 376–77 populism, 88, 158, 188; in American history, 349–55; nationalism in response to, 402; resistance to, 337–40; Trump’s, 57, 98–99, 138–43, 373–76, 383, 402; Western resurgence of, x, 106–7, 167–68 Power, Samantha, 29 Priebus, Reince, 44, 382 Putin, Vladimir, 56, 106, 175–77; and Donald Trump, 41, 50, 58, 102, 214, 227–31, 264, 283–89, 324, 363, 397; foreign policy, 65, 152, 166; relations with the United States, 10, 33, 146, 290 al-Qaeda, 200, 206, 225, 273, 274, 323 Qatar, 274, 281 Reagan, Ronald, 69, 138, 174, 184, 187, 192–94, 201, 280, 356, 380–82; Reaganomics, 137 realism, 16, 29, 137–44, 376, 406; theory of, xiv, 5, 9, 13, 24–28, 31, 33, 108, 131, 312–13;

424IND EX

realism (continued ) and Trump foreign policy, 5, 10, 22–30, 136 realist, 11–13, 22–23, 29–30, 34–35, 99–102, 137, 325, 376–77, 407. See also realism Red Scare, 398; and McCarthyism, 349 Renzi, Matteo, 64 Republic of Korea (ROK), 41, 44, 50, 53, 109, 191, 212, 302, 309–10, 315 Republican Party, 4, 51,141–42, 201, 235, 350–51; and Democrats, xv, 33, 41, 49, 87, 104, 140, 182–85, 206, 223, 227; and Donald Trump, 15, 19, 40, 72–75, 101, 106, 108, 131–32, 180–81, 222, 381–82; Republican(s), 18, 22, 41, 98, 99, 128, 290, 333, 357, 364, 368, 369, 376, 396, 399; values, 31, 40, 52–58, 61, 69–71, 86, 102, 109–19, 193, 275, 401, 408 revisionismm: insight on individual social movements, 347; in practice, 162, 311; in policy, 41; Waltzian and Gilpinian variants, 25–26, Rice, Susan, 29 Riesman, David, 345–49, 354 Romney, Mitt, 128, 180, 183 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 37, 99, 215, 348; economic policy, 136, 141–45, 187, 344; and New Deal, 344, 354; politician, 146, 148, 375–76 Roosevelt, Theodore, 153; new nationalism, 396 Rumsfeld, Donald, 10 Russia, x, 25, 27, 57, 62, 128, 137, 152, 158, 263, 280, 311, 313, 316, 395; as cyber threat, 41, 226, 297, 324, and Europe, 106, 223; history, 161–63; interests, 10, 32–35; influence in the “near abroad,” 41, 166–68, 175, 215, 224; meddling in US election, 17, 176, 212, 289, 292, and Trump, 10, 14, 17, 32, 102, 229–30, 264, 363–70, 391, 397; and the United States, 5, 6, 44, 56, 62, 68, 77, 229–30, 283, (chapter 22) 287–99, 311, 324–26, 357–401; and security, 225–27, 265, 323, 345;

Russo-Japanese War, 162 Russo-Turkish War, 162 Ryan, Paul, 72, 180, Sanders, Bernie, 6, 106, 108, 139, 184 Saudi Arabia: and Donald Trump, 229, 269, 276, 278, 282, and geopolitics, 167, 201, 274, 277, 281; terrorism, 204–5; and the United States, 44, 273 Scaramucci, Anthony, 44 Schroeder, Gerhard, 174 Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., 345–46, 407 September 11, 2001 attacks (9/11), 105, 111, 138, 155, 174, 198–201, 205–6, 213, 215, 225, 227, 230, 262, 280, 334, 389 Seven Years’ War, 161 Sessions, Jeff, and allegations of Russian interference, 363–64 Singapore, 309; and ASEAN, 303; and China, 315; and US foreign policy, 302 el-Sisi, Abdel Fattah, 277, 397 Snowden, Edward, 366 Soviet Union. See Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) South China Sea, 164, 242, 303, 309–10 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, 136, 140–47, 396 Spanish Popular party, 350 Stalin, Joseph, 142, 213, 346, 352, 353 State Department. See Department of Sate Stoltenberg, Jens, 226, 230 South Asia, 200 South Korea. See Republic of Korea (ROK) Spain, 141, 350, 389; decline of imperial, 161, 162; financial crisis, 176 Syria, 41, 246, 389; violence civil war, x, 83, 269, 325; refugee crisis, 106, 114, 116, 200; United States involvement in, 10, 35, 68, 100, 112, 199, 203, 206, 215, 262–65, 268, 277–82, 288–93, 308. See also ISIS Swedish Democrats (Sweden Democrats), 175. See also populism Swiss People’s Party, 175. See also populism

IND E X 425

Taliban, 44, 113, 175, 199, 225 terrorism, x, 83, 106, 114, 116, 137; counterterrorism, 198–99, 200–206; and international security, 62, 114, 158, 166–67, 174–75, 193; and the United States, 13, 75, 102, 105, 107, 111, 126, 155, 198–207; See also September 11, 2001 Thatcher, Margaret, 179 Thucydides, 316, 389, 401; Thucydides trap, 312 Tillerson, Rex: and China, 242; and Iran, 279; as a moderator, 281, 310; and Russia, 227, 287–89; Secretary of State, 190, 268–69, 303 Trade Act of 1974; and trade with China, 72 Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), 84, 86 Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), 176 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), 165, 295; abandonment of, xiii, 12, 41, 43, 139, 151, 237, 252, 302; support for, 53, 70, 100, 105, 176 Treaty of Utrecht, 161 True Finns (Finns Party), 175. See also populism Truman, Harry, 99, 215, 223, 349 Trump, Ivanka, 305. See also Kushner, Jared Turkey, 50, 106, 116, 167, 212, 224 tweets: of Donald Trump, ix, 31, 43, 99, 119, 187, 198, 202, 205, 206, 215, 221, 225, 229, 236, 258, 275, 278, 281, 305, 306, 308, 357 Underwood Tariff, 140 unilateralism, 23, 168, 408; and Donald Trump; 131, 151, 168, 252–57; economy, 145; unilateralist tradition, 153–55 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), 25–26, 32, 56, 98, 131, 163, 214, 215, 298, 306, 350, 352, 406; collapse of, 127, 291; foreign policy of, 346, mention of, 128; and NATO, 221; post collapse of, 33,

65, 166; and the United States, 241, 262, 389, 397 unipolarity. See polarity United Arab Emirates (UAE); and Trump’s foreign policy, 274, 281 See also Great Britain United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), 175. See also populism United Nations (UN), 5, 12, 29, 112, 306, 332–33, 381; institutions, 62, 178, 236; Security Council, 295; support for, 53, 98, 108, 111; talks given in, 5, 100, 191 United Kingdom (UK), 174, 176, 201; and Brexit 50, 78, 176, 228; politics of, 175 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 333, 335 Ukraine, 241, 290, 324; geopolitics, 10, 33–34, 215, 288–89; and Russia, 68, 166, 224, 229–30, 291, 293 Vandenberg, Arthur, 99 Vietnam, 212, 303; the Vietnam War,, 50, 57, 86, 132, 155, 192–93, 213, 323, 350, 355, 375 Venezuela, 102, 175, 251–56, 268 Wallace, George, 350 Walt, Stephen: liberalism, 190; the United States, 27, 34–35, 325 Waltz, Kenneth: on levels of analysis, 3–4, 9, 14–15; on unipolarity, 25–34; Waltzian variants, 25 Watergate. See Richard Nixon Western Europe, 344; and the North-South Conflict, 173; post-war, 192, 323 Westphalian, order, 165; peace, 161 Wikileaks, 137, 364 Wilders, Geert, 350. See also Party for Freedom; populism Wilson, Woodrow, 65; Wilsonian tradition in American foreign policy, 12, 153–54 Winthrop, John, 126, 192

426 IND E X

Wilhelm II of Germany, 316; and Trump, 383–84 World Bank, 41, 80, 254; institutions, 52, 62; and the United States, 78 World Trade Organization (WTO), 12; institutions, 52, 78, 178, 236; dispute settlement, 66, 77, 82; and the United States, 62, 76, 236–37 World War I, 132, 153–159, 166, 313, 396 World War II, 4, 16, 125, 126, 130, 142,145, 173, 188, 355, 375; European recovery, xiii, 223, 323; post-, 4, 23, 40, 62, 65, 77, 98, 102, 141,

152, 191–92, 236, 244, 302, 344–49, 364, 383; precursor to liberal order, X, 32, 167, 212, 294, 395, 402; and the United States, 125–30, 146, 153, 389 Woodward, Bob, 367–68 Yemen: and the United States, 41, 22, 274–77; and unrest, 200–201, 263 Xi Jinping, 288; and Donald Trump, 303, 305–10; and rise of China, xiii, 166, 254, 304, 312