With a US flag as a backdrop, US President Donald Trump delivers remarks on supporting the passage of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade deal during a visit to Derco Aerospace Inc., a Lockheed Martin subsidiary, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., July 12, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
The bipartisan backlash against US President Donald J.
Trump’s withdrawal of US troops from Syria is a welcome sign that the old
internationalist consensus is not fully dead and may yet revive. But if will
only revive if the political class takes proactive steps to defend internationalism
well beyond the current crisis. It is easy to bemoan Turkey’s military
operation and the US withdrawal, but it is much more difficult, meaningful, and
necessary to reinvigorate America’s leadership posture on the world stage.
As the United States enters another presidential election
season, its political class should make the case to the American people that internationalism is not an exercise in
utopianism or charity; rather, it is the best and cheapest way to keep the
United States safe and, indeed, put America first.
Internationalism is a prudent appreciation for the
international context in which the United States makes its foreign policy. The
international context matters because it shapes and constrains US action. If
the United States can shape a more favorable international context for itself,
it gains more latitude, more leverage, and more opportunity to pursue its
interests. With a favorable international environment, the United States can
outmaneuver and out-compete rivals and enemies even without direct
confrontation.
Internationalism is thus more comfortable with a broader and
longer-term definition of the national interest. The United States can afford
to define its national interest as, by and large, coterminous with the health
of the international system as a whole. Nationalism tends to take a shorter-term
and narrower view of things. Trump rails against “globalists,” because he sees
the world in zero-sum terms: he believes the interests of the international community
are at odds with US interests, and we must choose to pursue one or the other.
Trump misses the point: internationalists do not prioritize
the international community’s interests above US interests. Rather, they
believe that, over the long run, the two sets of interests are effectively
identical because the liberal order is the outer perimeter of US security. Investing
in the long-term health and stability of the international social system is the
best means to achieve security and prosperity for the United States.
Internationalists understand that the health of the
international system can be measured by how well it reflects our values,
aspirations, and ideals. If the international system is marked by liberal
values, including representative and accountable governance, the rule of law,
and human rights, then it is more hospitable to the United States and other
like-minded nations. The health and viability of liberalism abroad is a proxy
for how favorable the international environment is.
Trump, by contrast, declared
in April 2016 that US foreign policy began to go wrong “with a dangerous idea that we could make western democracies out of
countries that had no experience or interests in becoming a western democracy.”
Nationalists tend to discount concerns about the international environment and
focus instead on traditional, state-centric issues. If nationalism
worries about whether there are bigger fish in the ocean, internationalism
worries about poison in the water.
The instinct for greater restraint was understandable in the
aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan, an instinct President Barack Obama rode to
the White House. Eager to meet the demands of war-weary Americans and bring
troops home from seemingly endless overseas deployments, Obama sold the
withdrawal from Afghanistan as an effort to refocus his administration’s
attention on jobs, infrastructure, and national unity, strikingly similar to
how Trump defends his foreign policy. “After a decade of passionate debate, we
must recapture the common purpose that we shared at the beginning of this time
of war,” he said.
That is why, “it is time to focus on nation building here at home.”
There was an essential continuity between both Obama and
Trump’s foreign policies: under their leadership, the United States has taken
increasingly deliberate and consequential steps away from its historic role as
the guarantor of the liberal international order.
But if Obama’s changes to US foreign policy were
understandable in 2008, it was because the costs of leadership were well known
while the costs of not leading were
unclear. Now, after a decade of withdrawal, the costs are impossible to ignore.
Since 2008, the world has witnessed the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and
al-Sham (ISIS), Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and meddling in western elections,
China’s assertive construction of military facilities in disputed territory,
North Korea’s continued nuclear and missile tests, the fraying of the European
Union, and Iran’s brazen attacks on Saudi Arabia.
The cost of US restraint—in Syrian, Afghan, Iraqi, and
Venezuelan lives; in destabilized regions, weakened institutions, and abrogated
treaties; and in the revival of nationalism and authoritarianism around the
world—is far steeper than any conceivable benefit restraint might bring. US engagement
would not have prevented all of the world’s crises of the past decade. But it
would have left the United States and its allies far more well prepared to meet
them.
Four years ago, the world reacted with shock at the September 2015
photograph of Alan Kurdi, a three-year old Syrian Kurd who drowned fleeing
his war-torn country. Yet, despite the shock and outrage, very little actually
changed in US policy. There was, and continues to be, no appreciable move by US
policy makers to rededicate themselves to the internationalist principles that
would prevent such crises from recurring.
In the absence of action, crises will recur. Americans will
watch more news stories about horrors overseas that will, inexorably, creep
closer and closer to US shores. US policy makers will denounce aggression and
descry humanitarian atrocities. But without firm action, without the political
courage to reinvigorate internationalism, policy makers’ denunciation of the
latest crisis will be so much virtue signaling, or, as the Bard might say,
sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Paul D. Miller is a professor of the practice of international affairs at Georgetown University. He is the author of American Power and Liberal Order: A Conservative Internationalist Grand Strategy.
Further reading
Sun, Oct 20, 2019
President Trump’s maximum pressure and Iran’s escalating responses have increased the risks of conflict. They have also brought a new chance of resolution that may become the most significant test yet of President Trump’s ability to transform his disruptive foreign policy into positive outcomes.
Inflection Points
by
Frederick Kempe
Mon, Aug 26, 2019
By tying the national interest to unilateral territorial demands, the US president puts himself in the same camp as Vladimir Putin. Putin’s strategy is also dismissive of international rules and the sovereignty of smaller nations, and appears to hold that only through force and intimidation can Russia advance its interests.
New Atlanticist
by
Daniel Fried
Sun, Feb 24, 2019
Atlantic Council Declaration of Principles outlines the shared values that underpin the rules-based international order.
New Atlanticist
by
David A. Wemer
As the United States enters another presidential election season, its political class should make the case to the American people that internationalism is not an exercise in utopianism or charity; rather, it is the best and cheapest way to keep the United States safe and, indeed, put America first.
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