Evil Empire 91world order is a delusion, perpetuated most recently by post–Cold War
members of the “elite foreign policy establishment.” Walt and others
rightly point to the baseline hypocrisy of a “liberal Leviathan,” noting
that the current fury over Russian election tampering and cyber espionage
rings hollow given the long U.S. reliance on both strategies. This view
accompanies a wistful longing for the putatively gimlet-eyed realism of
the Cold War, a time when U.S. presidents understood that their role
was to deter the Soviet Union, prevent the emergence of dangerous re-
gional hegemons, and preserve “a global balance of power that enhanced
American security.” Seen thus, Trump’s hyperbolic and embarrassing
nationalism is a symptom of the abandonment of great power politics,
while his fawning treatment of Vladimir Putin shatters any remaining
hope that his self-styled “principled realism” might take us back to a
more strategically realistic time. In the words of former Secretary of
Defense Ash Carter, watching the Trump–Putin news conference was
like “watching the destruction of a cathedral.”
But what is Trump actually doing to destroy this cathedral? What
makes Trump’s words and behavior so objectionable? Previous presidents
have pulled out of multilateral agreements, entered into disputes with
allies, and engaged in protectionism and trade wars. The majority of
the Trump administration’s planned and ongoing military deployments
are in regions where the military was already deployed by previous
administrations in the name of the War on Terror. Moreover, Trump’s
national security and national policy statements are littered with the
vocabulary of the very experts who find him so terrifying. What, then,
makes Trump’s foreign policy such a singular threat?
Trump’s foreign policy is disturbing because it is uncanny—both
grotesque and deeply familiar. Like a funhouse mirror, Trump’s vision
of the world reflects back a twisted image of U.S. global politics that is
and is not who we are supposed to be. For instance, deterrence strategy