Further Reflections on Trump's Foreign Policy
A third voice joins the chat.
Editor’s note: My old graduate school classmate (and fellow student of Harold Rood) weighs in with some thoughts about the disputations playing out on our podcast and in recent threads here. (More to come. John Yoo promises a rejoinder.)
—Steve
By Michael J. Deis, Ph.D
Professors Hayward and Yoo have been analyzing President Trump's foreign policy to gain insight into its origins and possible future trajectory. This contribution aims to provide an additional perspective on the subject.
President Trump's foreign policy diverges from the foundational principles established at the opening of the Cold War. The policies derived from these principles had two main features: 1) economic and 2) national security.
Economically, the United States aimed to dismantle the imperial trade system that had prevailed prior to the conclusion of World War II. Consequently, trade would be secured by the United States' blue water navy, enabling any nation to engage in commerce with any other nation. Additionally, under the Bretton Woods system, the United States opened its markets to its international trading partners to help them recover from World War II.
From a foreign policy perspective, the United States established an alliance framework after World War II in Europe through NATO and in the Asia-Pacific region via bilateral alliances with various countries, including the recently defeated Japan.
These frameworks aimed to mitigate the potential for trade-related conflicts among members of the American protectorate while providing for a common defense against nations opposed to America's allies.
This, in summary and as popularized by Peter Zeihan, represents the foreign policy establishment’s perspective on America’s role globally. It describes a world where international trade prospered, and the US alliance structure contained and overcame its main competitor, the Soviet Union, establishing the United States as the leading global power.
According to George Friedman of Geopolitical Futures, Russia has faced a strategic defeat in Ukraine. It has demonstrated an inability to conduct modern combined arms operations and is presently engaged in tactics reminiscent of World War I trench warfare. Accordingly, the current state of affairs in Ukraine, along with the global balance of power, necessitates a reassessment of this 79-year-old system.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk was, perhaps, more direct.
"This is a paradox, listen to how it sounds: 500 million Europeans are asking 300 million Americans to protect them from 140 million Russians. If you can do math, then count on yourself …”
Donald Trump observed the current system from an outsider's perspective. He identified an arrangement that he believed was undermining America's working class and its manufacturing capacity. Additionally, he noted that Ukraine, despite being a smaller nation, successfully resisted a former superpower with minimal preparation and nominal support from the US and Europe.
Trump and his foreign policy team appear to have concluded that the security dependency of Europe on the US must now be addressed. And, Europe should assume the primary responsibility for its own defense. Additionally, as noted by George Friedman and Edward Luttwak in separate analyses, Russia’s incapacity in Ukraine provides the Trump administration with an opportunity to distance Russia from its current alliances with China and, potentially, Iran.
Regarding Ukraine and the peace process, the Trump administration appears to follow the dictum that aligned interests, particularly commercial, can offer a more powerful security guarantee than diplomatic agreements such as the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. In that memorandum, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia committed to support Ukraine's security following its renunciation of nuclear weapons.
The Trump administration’s foreign policy appears to be less a radical disruption of the status quo and instead a recognition that the post-World War II security structure is no longer fit for purpose. Therefore, the US must help define a new security framework that serves US interests in the current century.
Mr. Deis is a former Olin Public Affairs Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
Thank you, Mr Deis. You wrote that DJT viewed the current system from an outsider's perspective. By that, I think you meant as an outsider to the US State Dept and Western Diplomacy in general which has long been Internationalist.
I offer that DJT was viewing this as an insider's perspective. That is, as an American, not an Internationalist.
Spot on, I believe. In particular, the point about Russia’s now demonstrated military incapacity in combined arms warfare is manifest and needs to be acknowledged. These are not the armed forces of the Soviet Union: Russia has been unable to establish air dominance, not even superiority, in its *border* oblasts: Astounding. That’s been clear from the earliest days of the incompetently managed attempt at a decapitation strike on Kiev. Russia’s blue water navy of “Hunt for Red October” fame is a distant dream. They have nuclear weapons that *may* work, an uncertainty that *both* sides need to consider. In short, it is a fantasy to think that in its present state, Russia is any military threat to NATO nations beyond the use of nuclear weapons whose functionality is uncertain: A nuclear threat countered, and then some, by existing nuclear forces of the UK and France.
Starting from their corresponding degraded states - compare the current force structure to that of 1995 for the France, UK and Germany - is their any doubt that European economies could out produce and out build by orders of magnitude a corresponding build up by Russia? If what’s left of Ukraine is a hedgehog that Russia cannot now swallow, how much more difficult to swallow that hedgehog becomes if allowed a measure of peace backed by a EU-assisted defense build up.
Trump and those politically aligned oppose Ukrainian NATO membership and they oppose extending a boots-on-the-ground security guarantee to Ukraine in any future peace agreement. Name calling isn’t going to change that reality. Waiting them out is a poor strategy because Ukraine will lose an attritive war with Russia eventually. If the common sense of this is insufficient to convince, then read Peter Turchin’s modeling using standard analysis known to militaries on all sides covered in 6 posts on his website in 2023.
At this point, Russia has achieved its principal aim by entrenching in the border oblasts and is prepared to fight on to the last *Ukrainian* knowing that Russians will still be entrenched at that endpoint. Western Europe also appears willing to fight to the last Ukrainian hoping that regime change in Moscow occurs before that end while ignoring the very real possibility that Putin’s replacement would purse a more aggressive strategy in Ukraine. Western Europe is playing its hand poorly.
Trump’s gambit is well-described: A sub rosa security guarantee in the form of a direct material interest that isn’t threatening to Russia: No western arms pointed at Russia from the territory of Ukraine being an expected Russian bottom line here rooted in history and psychology and shared by all political factions in Russia. It buys time and offers a carrot to Russia as well in that proposed development project. Given buy-in, it may even neutralize Russia in the western Pacific when pushing becomes shoving between the US and the PRC as it most likely will at some point in the not distant future. At present, this is the only Plan B on offer to current, and failing Plan A. If there is a secret Plan C for victory on Zelensky’s and his European allies’ terms, now would be a good time to reveal it.