Trumpism and the Global Order
In the alternative history novel The Plot Against America, Philip Roth imagines a world in which the aviator Charles Lindbergh wins the U.S. presidency in 1940, defeating Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Lindbergh was one of America’s first celebrities, famous as the first man to fly across the Atlantic and for his child having been kidnapped in the “crime of the century.” In the late 1930s, he led the America First movement—a pro-German, isolationist organization that sought to keep the United States out of World War II. In Roth’s novel, President Lindbergh, elected thanks to his celebrity and the public’s desire for peace, accepts Hitler’s conquests in Europe and turns the United States into an anti-Semitic state.
In the real world, of course, Lindbergh did not stand for the nomination, and Roosevelt beat a Republican internationalist, Wendell Willkie. After Pearl Harbor, America First was discredited and was never spoken of again in polite company—until 2016, that is, when Donald Trump appropriated the term as his campaign slogan. Trump’s knowledge of Lindbergh appears limited, but the America First label does convey something very important about his foreign policy. Trump is the first president who campaigned against the liberal international order that the United States created after World War II and has led ever since. Every other president accepted the parameters of postwar U.S. strategy, but Trump argued that American leadership of the order was hurting the United States.
This argument was not just something he plucked from thin air. Trump has a set of core beliefs about the world that date back thirty years to when he spent $95,000 to buy a full-page advertisement in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post and used it to publish an open letter to the American people about his views on U.S. foreign policy.1 Three beliefs stand out. Trump has been a staunch critic of America’s security alliances since the 1987 letter and has demanded that U.S. allies transfer vast sums of money to the United States in exchange for protection. He has opposed every trade deal the United States has signed since World War II and advocated for the widespread use of tariffs. And he has a soft spot for authoritarian strongmen, particularly of the Russian variety. This appears to date back to 1990, when he visited Russia and came back deeply disillusioned with Mikhail Gorbachev and convinced that Moscow should have emulated China in repressing dissent, as China did in Tiananmen Square. Trump repeatedly raised these views in the campaign, even when it was politically costly to do so (as in his praise of Vladimir Putin).
At the time of writing (December 2016), we do not know if and how Trump’s personal beliefs will affect U.S. foreign policy. It is likely that his administration will contain people with a variety of views—some probably with Trump’s own America First perspective, some who want to fight a global and religiously infused war against radical Islam, and some who support traditional U.S. strategy—and Trump’s core beliefs may be somewhat diluted. However, there is no doubt that the election of 2016 is a highly significant event for U.S. grand strategy. It demonstrates that American commitment to the order is not guaranteed. A significant constituency in the United States wants to do much less in the world and to define its interests narrowly rather than in terms of a healthy international order.
The liberal international order has been around for so long that we take it for granted—not just by assuming that it will survive but also by assuming that even if it goes away, we can still be assured of peace and prosperity. We may now be about to test that proposition. Four years of American nationalism will weaken the liberal order. The crisis of American leadership is merely the most dramatic example of rising populism and nationalism in the West. The year 2016 was truly an annus horribilis for internationalists. It has left the liberal order battered and bruised. Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, Rodrigo Duterte’s victory in the Philippines, and the defeat of the Italian referendum on constitutional reform were all manifestations of a revolt against the political order. We do not know whether the rise of populism and nationalism is a delayed but fleeting reaction to the financial crisis or something more lasting. But what we do know is that the new nationalists have a common purpose: blaming other nations for their country’s problems and acting unilaterally to protect one’s own interests, whether that involves immigration and refugee flows, banking debt, military commitments, or trade. And they have an impact greater than their electoral success. Few, if any, Western leaders are running on a platform of more globalization, more European integration, or more trade, as they did in the 1990s.
Not surprisingly, Russia and China are challenging the West to see where the true limits lie. Moscow and Beijing believe that the United States will remain a superpower for some time and do not buy the narrative of decline. But they also understand that the approach of broadly defining American interests to include a liberal international order has a soft underbelly—public opinion may not support costly action to defend places that American voters regard as peripheral. And they see great opportunities in Trump’s rejection of the liberal international order. They will surely test the United States in the years to come, probing the regional orders in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East. Even if the United States seeks a rapprochement with Russia, it will be temporary and will only serve to worsen geopolitical competition in Europe.
If the United States disengages from its traditional leadership of the international order, it will dramatically accelerate the shift away from convergence and toward a more nationalist and geopolitically competitive world, as described in this book. U.S. support for alliances, an open global economy, multilateral cooperation, and democracy are the foundation of international stability. Without it, everything will be in flux. Revisionists will be empowered because they will not worry so much about a U.S. response. Fragile democracies, particularly in Eastern Europe and parts of Southeast Asia, may flirt with authoritarianism. The global economy will be especially vulnerable to a new financial crisis and a trade war. The process of deglobalization described in Chapter 5 may rapidly accelerate. And the levels of international cooperation on common challenges will plummet. We have no idea where this will lead, but it is a good rule of thumb that the greater the U.S. disengagement, the greater the global problems.
Some will say that this turn of events is inevitable—that the West was already declining and would eventually give way to the will of emerging powers. But Russia is not a rising power and China no longer seems to be on a permanent upward trajectory. Other non-Western powers, like Brazil, India, and Indonesia, are not revisionist. And, most important of all, the United States is not in decline. In fact, when President Obama left office, the United States was more powerful than it was eight years earlier, just after the financial crisis. Its economy appears to be more resilient than Russia’s or even China’s. America’s allies may have problems but they are still wealthy and capable countries that can determine their own destiny. And, crucially, what the United States has traditionally wanted—an open liberal order—is still what most of the rest of the world wants, thus giving Washington a crucial strategic advantage. Yes, America has vulnerabilities, just as its rivals do. But the future is not preordained. Raw metrics of GDP growth and military spending still matter, but they may be eclipsed by the strategic decisions that leaders make.
Clearly, the United States is highly unlikely to pursue responsible competition under a Trump presidency. But it is the strategy his successor should pursue. He or she will probably encounter a world in which the liberal international order has weakened further than it has already. The United States benefits hugely from a functioning and healthy international system. The liberal international order continues to function well both on its own terms and relative to the alternatives. It is capable of checking revisionist powers in Europe and Asia. An open global economy offers a much better prospect of shared prosperity than does a mercantilist system. And it alone is capable of generating increased levels of international cooperation to tackle common problems like nuclear proliferation and climate change. The specific actions described here—on Ukraine, Iran, the South China Sea, among others—may be overtaken by events, but the principles of responsible competition will endure. Ultimately, this strategy offers the best prospect of an order that is peaceful, prosperous, and just.