monday, july 27 , 2020. the washington post eZ re A
that is vulnerable to outside in-
terference.... We h ave the lowest
point in our relationships with
russia and China in decades. I
think democracy is under the
most pressure in the world since
the ’30s.”
Burns, a foreign policy adviser
to the Biden campaign, said he
thinks the former vice president,
as president, would “quickly re-
turn the United States to a posi-
tion of leadership” and that other
governments would respond pos-
itively to that. “But I worry that it
will take longer with the publics
of these countries,” he added.
“The memory of Donald Trump
will not fade easily.”
But for those for whom elect-
ing Biden solves everything,
Daalder offered a cautionary
note. “It’s not enough to just
change tone,” he said. “People will
say it’s great that Joe Biden loves
us, but what are we going to do? It
will take an extraordinary effort
to reengage and rebuild a set of
relationships and a set of tools
that have been ignored for far too
long.”
few believe a new president
can flip a switch and return the
situation to that of a previous era.
“There is no status quo ante,” said
the German marshall fund’s
Kleine-Brockhoff.
Nor will the choices be easy for
allies of the United States, partic-
ularly in Europe, even if Biden
becomes the next president. “Eu-
ropeans can dismiss a lot of what
the Trump administration tells
Europe because it’s Trump telling
us,” Niblett said, “because we
don’t trust him personally, be-
cause as Europeans, we think he’s
making it up as he goes along. But
if Biden were to come, there’d be
no hiding. Europeans would have
to make choices” — starting with
their relationship with China.
Whoever is the next president
will face what some analysts see
as the most daunting national
security inheritance of any presi-
dent in living memory — and the
mere change of administrations
might not be enough to reassure
other nations, which now fear
that a significant portion of the
U.S. population embraces
Trump’s approach to the world
and will continue to do so, even if
he is no longer president.
“Now that they’ve seen Trump,
they fear a whipsawing back and
forth between something they
recognize in the historical tradi-
tion and something that’s a
throwback to neo-isolationism,”
said michèle flournoy, who
served as undersecretary of de-
fense for policy in the obama
administration. “Until they see a
second election that validates an
engaged United States that is
willing to lead in concert with
allies and partners, they won’t be
assured.”
The prestige of the United
States ebbs and flows with events,
but the country remains the one
to which others still look in times
of crisis. Expectations of this
country are always higher than
for other powers that do not have
its long record of leadership. But
the last time this country’s stand-
ing was in decline, it was because
of fears that the United States
would exercise its vast powers
excessively and unilaterally. That
is not the issue today. Instead, it is
a worry that the United States is
no longer prepared or willing to
use the powers it still has for the
good of the world.
[email protected]2019 and now is a professor at
Carnegie mellon University. She
described Trump’s foreign policy
strategy as based on four pillars:
first, that nation states, r ather
than international institutions,
are the principal players and t hat
nation states “should put their
nation state first.” Second, that
there should be greater reciproc-
ity in international agreements.
Third, that there should be in-
creased burden-sharing by
America’s allies. fourth, that
America should extricate itself
from endless wars.
Skinner said the president op-
erates on instincts and hunches
that add up to a theory of the
world. “It’s counterintuitive be-
cause he’s not a foreign policy
expert. But he’s really trying to
do grand strategy,” she said.
She argued that Trump is rec-
ognizing a new reality interna-
tionally faster than some of the
foreign policy elites. “They’re not
theorizing fast enough,” she add-
ed. “They’re reacting to what is
being said by o ne person, namely
Donald Trump, instead of saying,
‘Is there something here?’ I think
there’s a way that they’re dis-
counting that there could be an
argument underneath the rheto-
ric.”
Daalder countered by saying
that even if some of Trump’s
instincts were correct, he has not
shown he has a strategy to get
things done. “Constructive dis-
ruption might well have been
useful,” he said. “It clearly is the
case that the system has been
stultified, that some of the veri-
ties that the foreign policy elite
in Washington have taken as acts
of faith need to be questioned.
But disruption for its own sake
becomes destruction. The ab-
sence of a strategy and a clear
goal of getting from point A to
point B undermines the v alues of
disruption and left us all worse
off.”
Schake said the administra-
tion treats diplomacy as some-
thing performative, arguing that
the administration “appears to
be operating under the belief
that strident reiteration of our
maximal demands counts as di-
plomacy.... They keep saying
over and over what we expect of
North Korea, what we expect of
Iran, what we expect of the
Europeans, a nd it doesn’t a ppear
to move anybody, and so it’s a
failing diplomatic strategy.”A challenging future, no
matter november’s outcome
What the next four years hold
obviously depends considerably
on the outcome of the November
election, but few who study or
practice in the areas of foreign
policy and national security see
an easy path ahead, whatever the
result.
“over the long term, I still have
confidence in our institutions,
our entrepreneurial traditions,
our universities, our values, our
young people and all the rest,”
said Hadley, the former national
security adviser. “But our margin
for error is small. The challenges
are great and we’re not doing
what we need to do to avoid the
doomsday scenario.”
“I think this is the most dan-
gerous moment the United States
has faced in decades,” said the
former obama adviser Donilon.
“We obviously are in the midst of
multiple crises. Economic.
Health. A serious societal upheav-
al. We have an election systemor 20 years, since the end of the
Cold War.”
If Trump’s style draws near-
universal criticism, not every
policy of his does, whether it is
helping to arm Ukraine and
moving an armored brigade into
Poland as a counter to russian
aggression, or pushing back on
China’s moves in the South Chi-
na Sea. In this interpretation,
Trump’s policies recall an old
line about the composer richard
Wagner, of whom it was said that
his music was better than it
sounded.
Bannon said that Trump has
been far ahead of the American
foreign policy elites on China
and has “boxed in the globalists”
and the campaign of former vice
president Joe Biden with his
hawkish approach. H e pointed to
statements b y senior administra-
tion officials this summer that
have laid out the case against the
Chinese in aggressive terms.
Bannon called it “ nonsense” t o
suggest that Trump is not lead-
ing the world on what he de-
scribed as the major issue of the
day. H e argued that the president
has spoken with t he same kind of
force and clarity on China that
marked President ronald rea-
gan’s posture and rhetoric
toward the Soviet Union in the
1980 s. “The world is coming
together [on China],” he said.
“Those are the facts.”
others see Trump as a prob-
lem identifier w ithout policies t o
solve the problems he identifies.
They see his China policy as
one-dimensional, focused prin-
cipally on trade, and ask what is
the relationship with China that
he is seeking and how would he
try to make it happen. “The
Trump administration can’t say
what’s the point we’re aiming
for,” said Schake, the AEI policy
director. “What’s the China we
want? That makes it harder to
get everybody organized.”
romney argued that Trump
would have been “far better
served to have collaborated with
our allies around the world and
have confronted China not just
as the United States but as an
entire world community.”
Kiron Skinner served as the
State Department’s director of
policy planning from 2018 totoo. other nations rose to power.
China’s economic prowess gave
it standing it had lacked, and
then Xi turned his country in a
sharply anti-democratic direc-
tion. russia under Putin became
a global nemesis. India’s power
expanded. The United States be-
came bogged down in two wars
in the middle East that cost
thousands of lives, stretched its
military thin and sapped the
appetite among the public for
foreign adventures.
Anecdotally, a shift in percep-
tions about America’s desire for
global leadership began before
Trump was elected. o ne moment
that many abroad cite is when
obama failed to follow through
on his threat to retaliate militari-
ly after Syria crossed his “red
line” by using chemical weapons
against its own people. obama’s
decision sent a damaging signal
to allies.
Before Trump, opposition to
globalism was growing. The
most conspicuous example of
how the politics were changing
came when Hillary Clinton, who
as secretary of state had advocat-
ed for the negotiation of a Tr-
ans-Pacific Partnership trade
pact, refused to endorse the
agreement as a candidate for the
Democratic nomination in 20 16.
others cited the financial cri-
sis in 2008 and 200 9 as another
moment when others, particu-
larly China, fed perceptions of
U.S. decline. Efforts to extract
the country’s military from Iraq
and Afghanistan added to the
idea of the United States pulling
back.
Both obama and Trump cam-
paigned against endless wars in
the middle East, and analysts
argue that both presidents
thought the United States need-
ed to right-size itself globally —
though the two leaders ap-
proached that m ission in radical-
ly different ways. obama still
sought engagement in the world
through allied institutions.
Trump has preferred that Ameri-
ca go it alone.
“I think t his has b een coming,”
Chatham House’s Niblett said.
“Trump is a rude awakening,
maybe a necessarily rude awak-
ening, to a shift that’s been
happening for at least the last 15ganizations is some kind of big
favor we are doing everyone else.”
Sen. mitt romney (r-Utah)
said Trump’s benign treatment of
authoritarian leaders such as Pu-
tin, Xi and North Korea’s Kim
Jong Un h as produced no obvious
positive results or benefits for the
United States. “He would argue
this is part of his grand strategy to
get them to be better neighbors,”
romney said. “The disproof of
that is the lack of pudding.”
romney pointed to Trump’s
decision to withdraw from the
WHo to argue that going it alone
is the wrong strategy. “It’s a very
symbolic decision to say the WHo
is too influenced by China and
we’re going to get out of it so it can
be completely dominated by Chi-
na, instead of saying we’re going
to flex our muscle and make sure
the WHo gets in line,” he said.
Across the political spectrum
of national security analysts, in-
cluding some who give the presi-
dent credit in specific areas of
foreign policy, there is agreement
that the pandemic underscores
the damage caused by the presi-
dent.
To m Donilon, who was a na-
tional security adviser to obama,
said: “By almost every measure,
America’s standing and influence
in the world has been damaged
over the last three-and-a-half
years.... You see it during a crisis.
This is the first global crisis prob-
ably since World War II where the
United States has not been in the
lead. It’s kind of a stunning thing
to see a transnational challenge
like this without U.S. leadership.”Trump disrupts, but is there
an effective strategy?
In the years after the end of
the Cold War, the United States
was the world’s lone superpower.
But it never was quite the indis-
pensable nation as those words
began to be used in the late
1990 s.
Defenders say the description
was employed by officials in
President Bill Clinton’s adminis-
tration in part to encourage
Americans to resist isolationist
impulses and to remain involved
in the world after the breakup of
the Soviet Union.
As the world changed, the role
of the United States changed,which Trump has criticized
sharply for its handling of the
pandemic, did not come off well,
either, but in comparison, far less
badly than the United States.
When Pew asked Americans in
may to rate the performance of
various countries with respect to
the coronavirus, the United
States was rated lower than three
other countries — South Korea,
Germany and Britain.
The discontinuity of Trump’s
foreign policy
on Sept. 2, 1987, Trump, at the
time a New York real estate devel-
oper toying with a run for presi-
dent, bought a full-page ad in
three major newspapers to pub-
lish an open letter to the Ameri-
can people outlining his views on
foreign and defense policy. It was
a view of the world and America’s
place in it that he would carry
largely unchanged into the White
House almost 30 years later.
He did not use the words
“A merica first” but that was the
essence of his message. for dec-
ades, he argued, “other nations
have been taking advantage of the
United States.” He said the world
“is laughing at America’s politi-
cians” for doing work beneficial
to others at the expense of those
at home. He said the United
States was absorbing the costs of
protecting other nations that
could and should pay more.
At the time, Japan and Saudi
Arabia were among his principal
targets. In office, it has become
China and the nations of NATo,
which together make up the Unit-
ed States’ most important mili-
tary alliance. But if the targets are
different, the philosophy has
changed little. America has been
played for a sucker, and it’s time
to call a halt.
The elements of his America
first worldview include a focus
on trade, with tariffs as a weapon;
a more restrictive immigration
policy; pressing others to pay
more of the cost of mutual de-
fense; and a reliance on bilateral
rather than multilateral negotia-
tions. His style is transactional
and highly personal, and while he
has been critical of the leaders of
democratic countries such as
Germany and france, and Britain
earlier, he has been reluctant to
criticize authoritarian leaders in-
cluding russia’s Vladimir Putin
and China’s Xi Jinping (the latter
at least until recently).
In a speech to the United Na-
tions General Assembly in Sep-
tember 2019, Trump said: “If you
want freedom, take pride in your
country. If you want democracy,
hold on to your sovereignty. And
if you want peace, love your na-
tion. Wise leaders always put the
good of their own people and
their own country first. The fu-
ture does not belong to globalists.
The future belongs to patriots.
The future belongs to sovereign
and independent nations.”
Secretary of State mike
Pompeo, in a speech to the Heri-
tage foundation’s President’s
Club last october, said the admin-
istration was approaching the
world realistically. “We’ve recog-
nized that we can’t b e all things to
everywhere, all the time,” he said.
“No nation has the capacity to
deliver that. And that means not
that you abandon the field but
that you calibrate your resources
to effectively address the relative
risks.... I am confident that the
next administrations will come
into office and they’ll see these
issues the same way because
they’re right.”
on their face, those words are
not particularly discordant. But
analysts who have served presi-
dents of both parties come to a
different conclusion. They say
Trump’s presidency has marked
the greatest discontinuity in
American foreign policy since
World War II.
“President Trump is acting as
no administration acted since the
1920 s,” said Nicholas Burns, a
career foreign Service officer and
former U.S. ambassador to NATo
now teaching at Harvard’s Ken-
nedy School. “Those presidents
were engaged in the world. Presi-
dent Trump isn’t. He’s almost at
war with the world.”
Ivo Daalder, president of the
Chicago Council on Global Affairs
and U.S. ambassador to NATo
during the administration of
President Barack obama, said of
Trump, “He doesn’t believe in
alliances, open markets, promo-
tion of freedom and human rights
— the three pillars of [American]
foreign policy. on the essential
concept of the United States as
the global leader of the interna-
tional order, Donald Trump has
thrown that all out the window.”
“What Donald Trump is doing
is badly damaging the belief by
people outside the United States
that we still understand that that
system [of alliances] is in our best
interests, as well as the interest of
other countries,” said Kori
Schake, director of foreign and
defense policy at the American
Enterprise Institute, who served
in the administration of George
W. Bush. “We act like treaties and
participation in international or-
rEckOning from A
brenDan smialowsKi/aGence France-Presse/Getty imaGesVictor J. blue/bloomberG news
TOP: Trump, center, with world leaders on Sept. 18, 20 17 , at a meeting at U.n. headquarters in new
York. ABOVE: A voter visits a Brooklyn polling station on June 23. The next president will face what
some analysts see as the most daunting national security inheritance of any president in living memory.