Debunking "America First"

 A friend asked me to comment on an article in "Foreign Policy".

261019 - What Trump Gets Right—and Wrong—About Foreign Policy.

• Critics from across the political spectrum have disparaged U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America first” brand of statecraft—and for good reason. He has alienated allies, appeased great-power rivals, launched yet another failed war of choice in the Middle East, and blundered into trade wars that have worsened the United States’ affordability crisis.

• But as debate heats up about what the next administration’s foreign policy should look like, Democrats and Republicans alike must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Trump is right to recognize that U.S. strategy is in need of an overhaul. Most of his instincts are sound and and align with fundamental changes in the international system and in American public opinion. 

* His “America first” foreign policy is a symptom, not a cause, of global disarray and the public’s turn against the establishment; many U.S. voters have been disillusioned by the country’s chronic overreach abroad and the affordability crisis at home. Trump successfully tapped into these grievances by promising to scale back international entanglements and bring back factories and manufacturing jobs.

• These are worthy goals, but Trump’s policies have badly missed their mark. He has started new wars and mostly failed to end old ones, and his tariffs have fueled inflation while doing little to resuscitate the manufacturing sector. Trump has implemented his course corrections with marked incompetence, making policy by impulse, gutting the diplomatic corps, relying on an inexperienced inner circle, and prizing loyalty over fact.

The challenge ahead is not to reflexively restore what came before; liberal internationalism long served the United States well, but during an era that no longer exists.

*  Instead of burying “America first,” Trump’s successor should salvage its best elements and implement them more capably. The next version of U.S. foreign policy should marry the realist impulses that shape “America first” with the liberal cause that remains at the heart of the American experience. 

* That composite strategy would see Washington pare back its commitments abroad, reach across ideological dividing lines to work with great-power rivals, operate through nimble coalitions, and repair the United States’ broken social contract and ailing democracy. 

* Foreign policy starts at home: only by redressing the socioeconomic discontent that has cleaved the body politic into hostile camps can the country recoup the bipartisan centrism and democratic vitality needed to anchor a purposeful and steady statecraft.

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Well, this will be a bit of fun! There's nothing so predictable as "Foreign Policy" bloviating about how the elites should run our lives with "realism", "centrism", and a credulous faith in the good intentions of tyrants. 

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So here's my reply to my friend:

Thank you for sharing this article. I appreciate the opportunity to think about the question seriously rather than simply react to the latest headline.

I would start with a more fundamental question than whether Trump gets some elements of foreign policy right or wrong.

After World War II, the Greatest Generation reached a hard-earned conclusion: the world should not be governed primarily by brute force. Having seen what happened when powerful nations pursued their interests without meaningful legal or institutional constraints, they worked to build a system that would resolve disputes through law, diplomacy, alliances, and international institutions.

That system was imperfect. Every human institution is imperfect.

Yet it coincided with an era of unprecedented prosperity and relative stability among the major powers. We naturally focus on the wars we know about, but we often forget how extraordinarily violent the century before 1945 was. The postwar order did not eliminate conflict, but it substantially reduced the likelihood that great-power competition would repeatedly erupt into catastrophes like the two world wars.

Today, however, a growing movement represented in different ways by Trump, Putin, and Xi proposes a return to a world in which power is the primary currency and might increasingly makes right. I believe that is a mistake. Such a system benefits a small number of people at the top while making everyone else less secure.

That brings me to "America First."

As a slogan, it has obvious appeal. Every nation should consider its own interests. The problem is not the slogan but the policy that has followed from it. In practice, "America First" has too often become "Never Trust America."

Allies are uncertain whether commitments made today will be honored tomorrow. Trade arrangements, treaties, diplomatic understandings, and security guarantees become difficult to sustain when partners assume they may disappear with the next political whim.

Anyone who has worked on a team, whether in sports, business, government, or volunteer organizations, understands the problem. Successful teams depend upon trust and reliability. If no one believes your commitments are durable, cooperation collapses. Nations are no different.

As a result, America becomes weaker rather than stronger. Influence is not merely a product of military or economic power. It is also a product of credibility.

For that reason, I find it largely unproductive to search for "what Trump gets right" in foreign policy without first addressing the larger framework. The article itself does not even try to identify concrete foreign-policy successes and fails to acknowledge damaged alliances, failed military ventures, trade conflicts, and impulsive decision-making.

I am especially unconvinced by its embrace of "realism." History suggests that American strength derives not simply from power but from the values that make others want to cooperate with us. The Greatest Generation learned this lesson the hard way. America's most enduring advantage has never been that we are the strongest. At various times others have matched or exceeded American power in particular domains. Our strength has been our ability to attract partners through principles, institutions, and predictable rules.

Nor do I accept the claim that today's great powers are primarily divided by ideology. In the most important respects, Trump's worldview has more in common with Putin's and Xi's preference for centralized authority, personal loyalty, and transactional politics than it does with the postwar liberal order that previous American presidents of both parties largely supported. The labels differ, but the impulse toward concentrating power in a single leader is remarkably similar.

So if we are looking for a positive alternative, my answer is straightforward:

We should recommit ourselves to the rule of law, at home and abroad.

We should rebuild trust with allies.

We should strengthen international institutions rather than casually discard them.

We should pursue diplomacy before force.

And we should remember that America's greatest strategic asset is not fear of our power but confidence in our values.

That may sound old-fashioned. But the record of the last eighty years suggests it has been far more successful than the alternative.