Trumpism in Foreign Policy Is Here to Stay

I s the future of Republican foreign policy Trumpian? Matthew Kroenig, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, thinks that Trumpism will not define the future of foreign policy. Kroenig is writing primarily to push back against a narrative he sees among foreign-policy professionals and commentators here and abroad that the Republican Party is permanently changed, becoming “a more isolationist GOP — one that is skeptical of free trade and international institutions, indifferent to democracy and traditional allies, and solicitous toward dictators, such as Russian president Vladimir Putin.”

Where Kroenig is indisputably correct in his analysis is in recognizing that the lines between Trump’s policy vision and a more Establishmentarian one often are unclear, or poorly understood. Trump’s administration did not offer as much of a break from America’s post–Cold War stance as his opponents imagined, or as he had flattered himself. And in some cases, Trump’s victory consolidated an ongoing shift in foreign-policy circles. Trump nudged us toward a position of confrontation with China on trade, and we are likely to remain there, even if with trepidation. If President Obama moved from us from Bush’s transformational strategy in the Middle East to an opportunistic one, Trump moved one step further toward more caution still. And the Establishment has tiptoed behind him.

However, I think Kroenig is only just barely uncovering the confusion. Why should Establishmentarians fear “indifference to democracy” or “solicitousness toward dictators” when their pre-Trumpian world order empowered Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party? Or when its leaders go to Saudi Arabia for junkets and blubber about a new Renaissance centered in Riyadh?

Overall, Kroenig looks at the potential 2024 candidates and sees a general return to the norm on the horizon, where “core conservative principles — American exceptionalism, strong national defense, free and fair markets, and individual liberty — still work, both at the ballot box and on the global stage.”

I think this undersells the way events drove “Trumpism” to begin with, and how events are likely to continue to drive changes in American foreign policy.

First, and most obviously, “Trumpist” foreign policy was driven by the failure of a transformational foreign policy executed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The 9/11 event sent Jacksonian passions in favor of war. But the reality of war caused those passions to sour into their more natural form of resentment about being the world’s policeman. American leaders can get away with special missions in the Middle East, if they can keep most of it out of the headlines. But anything requiring truly large force deployment — such as enforcing needless “red lines” in the confusing Syrian civil war — is still decidedly unpopular.

Second, the other event souring Americans on core commitments to international institutions that sustain globalism is the rising sense that China has been the largest beneficiary, and that globalization is practically a synonym for Sinicization. Even now the WHO is unwilling to say what certainty it has that COVID-19 emerged from China, let alone investigate something as sensitive as the lab-leak hypothesis. Chairman Xi can brazenly follow a policy of genocide in Xinjiang, and crush democracy in Hong Kong, yet still be welcomed at Davos where he gives a moralizing speech against “bullies” — by which he meant Trump!

China may drive some Trumpy-nationalism, particularly on trade. But America should also be open to yet more events, including the possibility that China’s bullying behavior internally and in Hong Kong is driven by fundamental weaknesses that will reveal themselves progressively over time. The day when talk of China as a rising great power becomes obsolete may be sooner than we think.

Third, as the Cold War recedes ever more in our memory, so too does the precise rationale for some of the institutions made in that conflict’s pressures. Trumpian venting against NATO is just as often matched by European resentment of America’s overweening supervision, which is leading — more and more — to acting out, such as an EU–China investment agreement. Strengthening the affection between the U.S. and Europe may mean loosening some of the strings between them.

If there was anything in “Trumpian” foreign policy, it was simply questioning the worth of the doctrines, institutions, and conventions that were products of unique Cold War and immediate post–Cold War circumstances. I would expect that even conventional GOP politicians, when they confront the surprises, reversals, and resistance offered by real-world events, will toss away even more of those certainties.