| This Time Is Different |
| Why U.S. Foreign Policy Will Never Recover |
By Daniel W. Drezner
Foreign Affairs, May-June 2019
|
This Time Is Different
Why
U.S. Foreign Policy Will Never Recover
It is a
truth universally acknowledged that a foreign policy community in
possession of great power must be in want of peace of mind. Climate change, the
Middle East, terrorism, trade, nonproliferation—there is never a shortage of
issues and areas for those who work in international relations to fret
about. If you were to flip through the back issues of Foreign Affairs,
you would find very few essays proclaiming that policymakers had permanently
sorted out a problem. Even after the Cold War ended peacefully, these
pages were full of heated debate about civilizations clashing.
It is
therefore all too easy to dismiss the current angst over U.S. President Donald Trump as the latest hymn from the
Church of Perpetual Worry. This is hardly the first time observers have
questioned the viability of a U.S.-led global order. The peril to the West was
never greater than when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik—until U.S. President
Richard Nixon ended the Bretton Woods system. The oil shocks of the 1970s posed
a grave threat to the liberal international order—but then came the explosion
of the U.S. budget and trade deficits in the 1980s. The perpetrators of the
9/11 attacks seemed like an existential threat to the system—until the 2008 financial crisis. Now there is Trump. It is worth asking,
then, whether the current fretting is anything new. For decades, the sky has
refused to fall.
But
this time really is different. Just when many of the sources of American power
are ebbing, many of the guardrails that have kept U.S. foreign policy on track
have been worn down. It is tempting to pin this degradation on Trump and his
retrograde foreign policy views, but the erosion predated him by a good long
while. Shifts in the way Americans debate and conduct foreign policy will make
it much more difficult to right the ship in the near future. Foreign policy
discourse was the last preserve of bipartisanship, but political polarization
has irradiated that marketplace of ideas. Although future presidents will try
to restore the classical version of U.S. foreign policy, in all likelihood, it
cannot be revived.
This
time really is different.
The
American foundations undergirding the liberal international order are in grave danger, and it is
no longer possible to take the pillars of that order for granted. Think of the
current moment as a game of Jenga in which multiple pieces have been removed
but the tower still stands. As a result, some observers have concluded that the
structure remains sturdy. But in fact, it is lacking many important parts
and, on closer inspection, is teetering ever so slightly. Like a Jenga
tower, the order will continue to stand upright—right until the moment it
collapses. Every effort should be made to preserve the liberal international
order, but it is also time to start thinking about what might come after its
end.
The
gravity of the problem is dawning on some members of the foreign policy
community. Progressives are debating among themselves whether and how they should
promote liberal values abroad if they should return to power. Conservatives are
agonizing over whether the populist moment represents a permanent shift in the
way they should think about U.S. foreign policy. Neither camp is really
grappling with the end of equilibrium, however. The question is not what U.S.
foreign policy can do after Trump. The question is whether there is any viable
grand strategy that can endure past an election cycle.
THE GOOD OLD DAYS
In
foreign policy, failures garner more attention than successes. During the Cold
War, the “loss of China,” the rise of the Berlin Wall, the Vietnam War, the
energy crisis, and the Iran hostage crisis all overshadowed the persistently
effective grand strategy of containment. Only once the Soviet Union broke up
peacefully was the United States’ Cold War foreign policy viewed as an
overarching success. Since then, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, along with the 2008
financial crisis and the rise of populism, have dominated the discussion. It is
all too easy to conclude that the United States’ recent foreign policy has been
an unmitigated disaster.
At the
same time that all these negative developments were taking place, however,
underlying trends were moving in a more U.S.-friendly direction. The number of
interstate wars and civil wars was falling dramatically, as was every other
metric of international violence. Democracy was spreading, liberating masses of
people from tyranny. Globalization was accelerating, slashing extreme poverty.
The United States could take a great deal of credit for these gains, because
the liberal order it nurtured and expanded had laid the foundations for
decades of relative peace and prosperity.
Washington
made mistakes, of course, such as invading Iraq and forcing countries to remove
restrictions on the flow of capital across their borders. As misguided as these
errors were, and as much as they alienated allies in the moment, they did not
permanently weaken the United States’ position in the world. U.S. soft power
suffered in the short term but recovered quickly under the Obama
administration. The United States still managed to attract allies, and in the
case of the 2011 intervention in Libya, it was NATO allies begging Washington to use force, not vice
versa. Today, the United States has more treaty allies than any other country
in the world—more, in fact, than any country ever.
The
United States was able to weather the occasional misstep in large part because
its dominance rested on such sturdy foundations. Its geographic blessings are
ample: bountiful natural resources, two large oceans to the east and the west,
and two valued partners to the north and the south. The country has been so
powerful for so long that many of its capabilities seem to be fundamental
constants of the universe rather than happenstance. The United States has had
the most powerful military in the world since 1945, and its economy, as
measured by purchasing power parity, became the biggest around 1870. Few people
writing today about international affairs can remember a time when the
United States was not the richest and most powerful country.
Long-term
hegemony only further embedded the United States’ advantage. In constructing
the liberal international order, Washington created an array of multilateral
institutions, from the UN Security Council to the World Bank, that privileged it and key allies. Having global
rules of the game benefits everyone, but the content of those rules benefited
the United States in particular. The Internet began as an outgrowth of a U.S.
Department of Defense initiative, providing to the United States an outsize
role in its governance. American higher education attracts the best of the best
from across the world, as do Silicon Valley and Hollywood, adding billions of
dollars to the U.S. economy. An immigrant culture has constantly replenished
the country’s demographic strength, helping the United States avoid the aging
problems that plague parts of Europe and the Pacific Rim.
The
United States has also benefited greatly from its financial dominance. The U.S.
dollar replaced the British pound sterling as the world’s reserve currency 75
years ago, giving the United States the deepest and most liquid capital markets
on the globe and enhancing the reach and efficacy of its economic statecraft.
In recent decades, Washington’s financial might has only grown. Even though the
2008 financial crisis began in the American housing market, the end result was
that the United States became more, rather than less, central to global capital
markets. U.S. capital markets proved to be deeper, more liquid, and better
regulated than anyone else’s. And even though many economists once
lost sleep over the country’s growing budget deficits, that has turned out
to be a non-crisis. Many now argue that the U.S. economy has a higher tolerance
for public debt than previously thought.
Diplomatically,
all these endowments ensured that regardless of the issue at hand, the United
States was always viewed as a reliable leader. Its dense and enduring network
of alliances and partnerships signaled that the commitments Washington made
were seen as credible. American hegemony bred resentment in some parts of the
globe, but even great-power rivals trusted what the United States said in
international negotiations.
At the
same time as the international system cemented the United States’ structural
power, the country’s domestic politics helped preserve a stable foreign policy.
A key dynamic was the push and pull between different schools of thought.
An equilibrium was maintained—between those who wanted the country to adopt a
more interventionist posture and those who wanted to husband national
power, between those who preferred multilateral approaches and those who
preferred unilateral ones. When one camp overreached, others would seize on the
mistake to call for a course correction. Advocates of restraint invoked the
excesses of Iraq to push for retrenchment. Supporters of intervention pointed
to the implosion of Syria to argue for a more robust posture.
Thanks
to the separation of powers within the U.S. government, no one foreign policy
camp could accrue too much influence. When the Nixon White House pursued a
strictly realpolitik approach toward the Soviet Union, Congress forced human
rights concerns onto the agenda. When the Obama administration was leery of sanctioning Iran’s
central bank, congressional hawks forced it to take more aggressive action.
Time and time again, U.S. foreign policy reverted to the mean. Overreaching was
eventually followed by restraint. Buck-passing led to leading. The results
of these crosscutting pressures were far from perfect, but they ensured that
U.S. foreign policy did not deviate too far from the status quo. Past
commitments remained credible into the future.
For
decades, these dynamics, global and domestic, kept crises from becoming
cataclysmic. U.S. foreign policy kept swinging back into equilibrium. So what
has changed? Today, there is no more equilibrium, and the structural pillars of
American power are starting to buckle.
THE NEW NORMAL
Despite
the remarkable consistency of U.S. foreign policy, behind the scenes, some
elements of American power were starting to decline. As measured by
purchasing power parity, the United States stopped being the largest economy in
the world a few years ago. Its command of the global commons has weakened
as China’s and Russia’s asymmetric capabilities have improved. The
accumulation of “forever wars” and low-intensity conflicts has taxed the
United States’ armed forces.
Outward
consistency also masked the dysfunction that was afflicting the domestic checks
on U.S. foreign policy. For starters, public opinion has ceased to act as a
real constraint on decision-makers. Paradoxically, the very things that have
ensured U.S. national security—geographic isolation and overwhelming power—have
also led most Americans to not think about foreign policy, and rationally
so. The trend began with the switch to an all-volunteer military, in 1973,
which allowed most of the public to stop caring about vital questions of war
and peace. The apathy has only grown since the end of the Cold War, and today,
poll after poll reveals that Americans rarely, if ever, base their vote on
foreign policy considerations.
The
marketplace of ideas has broken down, too. The barriers to entry for
harebrained foreign policy schemes have fallen away as Americans’ trust in
experts has eroded. Today, the United States is in the midst of a debate about
whether a wall along its southern border should be made of concrete, have
see-through slats, or be solar-powered.The ability of experts to kill bad ideas
isn’t what it used to be. The cognoscenti might believe that their informed
opinions can steady the hands of successive administrations, but they are
operating in hostile territory.
To be
fair, the hostility to foreign policy experts is not without cause. The
interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya were massive screwups. Despite
what the experts predicted, globalization has not transformed China into a
Jeffersonian democracy. The supposedly infallible advice enshrined in the
Washington consensus ended up triggering multiple financial crises. Economists
and foreign affairs advisers advocated austerity, despite the pain it caused
the poor and the middle class, and consistently cried wolf about an
increase in interest rates that has yet to come. No wonder both Barack
Obama and Trump have taken such pleasure in bashing the Washington establishment.
Institutional
checks on the president’s foreign policy prerogatives have also
deteriorated—primarily because the other branches of government have
voluntarily surrendered them. The passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of
1930, which exacerbated the Great Depression, showed that Congress could
not responsibly execute its constitutional responsibilities on trade. With the
1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, it delegated many of those powers to the
president, marking the beginning of a sustained decline in congressional
oversight. More recently, political polarization has rendered Congress a
dysfunctional, petulant mess, encouraging successive administrations to enhance
the powers of the executive branch. Nor has the judicial branch acted as much
of an impediment. The Supreme Court has persistently deferred to the president
on matters of national security, as it did in 2018 when it ruled in favorof the Trump administration’s travel ban.
Foreign
policy analysts largely celebrated this concentration of power in the executive
branch, and prior to Trump, their logic seemed solid. They pointed to the
public’s ignorance of and Congress’ lack of interest in international relations. As
political gridlock and polarization took hold, elected Democrats and
Republicans viewed foreign policy as merely a plaything for the next election.
And so most foreign policy elites viewed the president as the last adult in the
room.
What
they failed to plan for was the election of a president who displays the
emotional and intellectual maturity of a toddler. As a candidate, Trump
gloried in beating up on foreign policy experts, asserting that he could get
better results by relying on his gut. As president, he has governed mostly by
tantrum. He has insulted and bullied U.S. allies. He has launched trade
wars that have accomplished little beyond hurting the U.S. economy. He has said
that he trusts Russian President Vladimir Putin more than his own
intelligence briefers. His administration has withdrawn from an array of
multilateral agreements and badmouthed the institutions that remain. The
repeated attacks on the EU and NATO represent a bigger strategic mistake than
the invasion of Iraq. In multiple instances, his handpicked foreign policy
advisers have attempted to lock in decisions before the president can sabotage
them with an impulsive tweet. Even when his administration has had the germ of
a valid idea, Trump has executed the resulting policy shifts in the most
ham-handed manner imaginable.
Most of
these foreign policy moves have been controversial, counterproductive, and
perfectly legal. The same steps that empowered the president to create
foreign policy have permitted Trump to destroy what his predecessors spent
decades preserving. The other branches of government endowed the White House
with the foreign policy equivalent of a Ferrari; the current occupant has acted
like a child playing with a toy car, convinced that he is operating in a land
of make-believe.
After
Trump, a new president will no doubt try to restore sanity to U.S. foreign
policy. Surely, he or she will reverse the travel ban, halt the hostile
rhetoric toward long-standing allies, and end the attacks on the world
trading system. These patches will miss the deeper problem, however. Political
polarization has eroded the notion that presidents need to govern from the
center. Trump has eviscerated that idea. The odds are decent that a left-wing
populist will replace the current president, and then an archconservative will
replace that president. The weak constraints on the executive branch will only
make things worse. Congress has evinced little interest in playing a
constructive role when it comes to foreign policy. The public is still
checked out on world politics. The combination of worn-down guardrails and
presidents emerging from the ends of the political spectrum may well whipsaw
U.S. foreign policy between “America first” and a new Second International. The
very concept of a consistent, durable grand strategy will not be sustainable.
The
combination of worn-down guardrails and presidents emerging from the ends of
the political spectrum may well whipsaw U.S. foreign policy between “America
first” and a new Second International.
In that
event, only the credulous will consider U.S. commitments credible. Alliances
will fray, and other countries will find it easier to flout global norms. All
the while, the scars of the Trump administration will linger. The vagaries of
the current administration have already forced a mass exodus of senior
diplomats from the State Department. That human capital will be difficult
to replace. For the past two years, the number of international students who
have enrolled in U.S. university degree programs has fallen as
nativism has grown louder. It will take a while to convince foreigners
that this was a temporary spasm. After the Trump administration withdrew from
the Iran nuclear deal, it forced SWIFT, the private-sector network
that facilitates international financial transactions, to comply with
unilateral U.S. sanctions against Iran, spurring China, France, Germany,
Russia, and the United Kingdom to create an alternative payment system. That
means little right now, but in the long run, both U.S. allies and U.S. rivals
will learn to avoid relying on the dollar.
Perhaps
most important, the Trump administration has unilaterally surrendered the set
of ideals that guided U.S. policymakers for decades. It is entirely proper to
debate how much the United States should prioritize the promotion of human
rights, democracy, and the rule of law across the world. What should be
beyond debate, however, is that it is worthwhile to promote those values
overseas and enshrine them at home. Trump’s ugly rhetoric makes a mockery of
those values. Although a future president might sound better on these issues,
both allies and rivals will remember the current moment. The seeds of doubt
have been planted, and they will one day sprout.
The
factors that give the United States an advantage in the international
system—deep capital markets, liberal ideas, world-class higher education—have
winner-take-all dynamics. Other actors will be reluctant to switch away from
the dollar, Wall Street, democracy, and the Ivy League. These sectors can
withstand a few hits. Excessive use of financial statecraft, alliances with
overseas populists, or prolonged bouts of anti-immigrant hysteria, however,
will force even close allies to start thinking about alternatives. The American
advantage in these areas will go bankrupt much like Mike Campbell in The
Sun Also Rises did: “gradually and then suddenly.” Right now, the
United States’ Jenga tower is still standing. Remove a few more blocks,
however, and the wobbling will become noticeable to the unaided eye.
What
would collapse look like? The United States would remain a great power, of
course, but it would be an ordinary and less rich one. On an increasing number
of issues, U.S. preferences would carry minimal weight, as China and Europe
coordinated on a different set of rules. Persistent domestic political
polarization would encourage Middle Eastern allies, such as Israel and Saudi
Arabia, to line up with Republicans and European allies, such as Germany
and the United Kingdom, to back Democrats. The continued absence of any
coherent grand strategy would leave Latin America vulnerable to a new Great
Game as other great powers vied for influence there. Demographic pressures
would tax the United States, and the productivity slowdown would make those
pressures even worse. Trade blocs would sap global economic growth; reduced
interdependence would increase the likelihood of a great-power war.
Climate change would be mitigated nationally rather than internationally,
leaving almost everyone worse off.
WHAT, ME WORRY?
It would be delightful if, ten
years from now, critics mocked this essay’s misplaced doom and gloom. The
state of U.S. foreign policy seemed dire a decade ago, during the depths
of the financial crisis and the war in Iraq. That turned out to be more of a blip
than a trend. It remains quite possible now that Trump’s successor can
repair the damage he has wreaked. And it is worth remembering that for all the
flaws in the U.S. foreign policy machine, other great powers are hardly
omnipotent. China’s and Russia’s foreign policy successes have been accompanied
by blowback, from pushback against infrastructure projects in Asia to a hostile
Ukraine, that will make it harder for those great powers to achieve their
revisionist aims.
The
trouble with “after Trump” narratives, however, is that the 45th president is
as much a symptom of the ills plaguing U.S. foreign policy as he is a cause.
Yes, Trump has made things much, much worse. But he also inherited a system
stripped of the formal and informal checks on presidential power. That’s why
the next president will need to do much more than superficial repairs. He
or she will need to take the politically inconvenient step of encouraging
greater congressional participation in foreign policy, even if the opposing party
is in charge. Not every foreign policy initiative needs to be run through the
Defense Department. The next president could use the bully pulpit to encourage
and embrace more public debate about the United States’ role in the world.
Restoring the norm of valuing expertise, while still paying tribute to the
wisdom of crowds, would not hurt either. Nor would respecting democracy at home
while promoting the rule of law abroad.
All
these steps will make the political life of the next president more difficult.
In most Foreign Affairs articles, this is the moment when the
writer calls for a leader to exercise the necessary political will to do the
right thing. That exhortation always sounded implausible, but now it sounds
laughable. One hopes that the Church of Perpetual Worry does not turn into an
apocalyptic cult. This time, however, the sky may really be falling.
U.S. and Afghan soliders in Paktika Province, Afghanistan, November 2012
Trump and Putin at the Helsinki Summit in Finland, July 2018
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