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Welcome to the FIRST issue of Blue Blaze. It’s a free, biweekly newsletter about international politics and US foreign policy by me, Jennifer Lind, and co-conspirators Dan Byman, Jonathan Kirshner, and Jeremy Shapiro. Thanks for connecting with us.
We have become numb to the pundit’s cliche that US foreign policy has reached (pause for gravity and purse lips sorrowfully) a crossroads. But occasionally we’re actually at one. Competing in the 2024 election are two very different foreign policy visions for the United States.
Critics dismiss Donald Trump’s foreign policy as incoherent: arguing that it would be “likely to involve spontaneous and not thoughtful reactions.” It’s true that that Trump’s comments on foreign policy are not, er, lucid treatises grounded in intellectual traditions. He speaks brusquely and cryptically. Nevertheless, Trump’s views are part of a broader nationalist tradition in US foreign policy thinking. In its current incarnation, this nationalist foreign policy clashes with and seeks to upend, the globalist consensus in US foreign policy after World War II.
Seeking to maintain the longtime globalist foreign policy are Joe Biden and Nikki Haley. The globalist vision advocates strong American leadership, a robust U.S. military, and efforts to uphold and support democracy around the world. Globalism rests on Liberal ideas about creating order under anarchy. The strategy’s key instruments are multilateral institutions such as the World Trade Organization and World Bank, and U.S. security alliances. These alliances are seen as sacrosanct: for example, globalists in Washington describe the alliance with South Korea as “ironclad”; they celebrate NATO as “the most successful military alliance in history.”
The globalist vision advocates strong American leadership, a robust U.S. military, and efforts to uphold and support democracy around the world.
As evident in Nikki Haley’s criticisms of Biden, the globalist consensus has always been an unruly one. The Democrats’ vision embraces international institutions, which Republicans distrust as infringing on U.S. sovereignty (as in the case of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, not ratified by the United States due to Republican opposition). Democrats, for their part, wince at neoconservatives’ desire to promote democracy and nuclear non-proliferation at the point of a gun. Democrats sought to use international institutions (e.g., the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) to deal with Iranian nuclear ambitions. Republicans, by contrast, rejected the JCPOA and advocate using force to smash Iran’s nuclear program.
Still, for decades the bipartisan globalist consensus came together in important ways. It responded to the collapse of the Soviet Union not by retrenching but by doubling down on American primacy: sustaining a massive military, and maintaining and expanding NATO. In 2003 Democrats and Republicans agreed that toppling Saddam Hussein was a vital national security interest: one that warranted ignoring the protestations of U.S. allies and the absence of UN authorization. Toward China, globalists once pursued a policy of encouraging China into becoming a “responsible stakeholder,” by taking their foot off the democracy and human rights pedal and granting Beijing membership in global institutions and access to markets. After the perceived failure of this policy, a consensus reformed around the view of China as a deeply hostile and revisionist superpower competitor. Today, one also sees the foreign policy consensus supporting Ukraine and Israel in their ongoing wars and advocating a formal U.S. security alliance with Saudi Arabia.
Among conservatives, Nikki Haley carried the neo-Reaganite globalist standard that others in the party had dropped to embrace Trump. This view still has significant support among conservatives — see for example this essay by Kori Schake and work by Zack Cooper. Indeed, in debates over US aid to Ukraine, many conservative voices express consternation over what they call isolationist trends in the GOP.
With Haley’s defeat in the primaries, the GOP is now led by Trump’s nationalist approach. Nikki Haley’s departure reflects the end of the conservative globalism— at least for the foreseeable future. In the election in November, barring an October surprise, Biden the globalist will face Trump the nationalist.
The nationalist foreign policy vision also supports a large and powerful military, but it is seen as advancing a more narrowly defined set of U.S. interests relative to the globalist vision. Nationalists decry serious problems at home, notably aging infrastructure and the crises of the fentanyl epidemic and the southern border. These problems are seen as eroding national strength and requiring energy, resources, and attention. Global adventurism detracts from these pressing concerns.
the nationalist vision eschews the role of global policeman and dismisses the idea of a global “order” that requires U.S. primacy to sustain
The vision is incorrectly characterized as isolationist (the favorite pejorative of globalists). Under the nationalist vision, America would continue to engage the rest of the world in diplomacy, trade, finance, science & technology, and so on. But the nationalist vision eschews the role of global policeman and dismisses the idea of a global “order” that requires U.S. primacy to sustain. Nationalists may be deeply sympathetic toward Ukraine but, facing tough tradeoffs, are unwilling to pay its defense budget into what now seems like perpetuity.
In November, Biden the globalist faces Trump the nationalist. Regardless of who wins, expect continued robust U.S. military spending and a dangerous US-China competition. Expect the continuation of the Biden-Trump consensus on “de-risking” to reduce the vulnerability of supply chains to geopolitical disruption. Otherwise, the two candidates have very different views of the struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, the value of American global leadership, and the value of long-standing alliances.
These alliances already survived a Trump presidency; the question is whether they can again: whether the allies will continue to trust a security partner with an unraveling consensus.
Want to read more?
📚 Many IR colleagues’ books have contributed significantly to grand strategy debates: check out Barry Posen’s Restraint; Chris Fettweiss’s The Pursuit of Dominance, Elbridge Colby’s The Strategy of Denial, and multiple books by Colin Dueck.
On the emergence of globalism after World War II, don’t miss Stephen Wertheim’s important book, Tomorrow, the World. For the globalist vision see Rebecca Lissner and Mira Rapp-Hooper’s An Open World, and the book, America Abroad by my Dartmouth brethren Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth. Articles and commentary by Walter Russell Mead analyze the nationalist tradition in the United States.
And if you’re trying to figure out the GOP on foreign policy, don’t miss smart contributions of fellow Blue Blazer Jeremy Shapiro, writing along with ECFR colleague Majda Ruge.
💭 As for the books I want to read but haven’t gotten to yet…I’m thinking about A. Wes Mitchell’s The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire. If you’re a fan, please tell me about it —or share your favorite foreign policy & grand strategy books.
Great, really helpful essay. In a future iteration, could you address the distinctions between an internationalist nationalist GS vs an isolationist one? It might be thought of as different means to the same end.
"These alliances already survived a Trump presidency; the question is whether they can again: whether the allies will continue to trust a security partner with an unraveling consensus."
The European powers as members of NATO, and American Pacific Rim allies/partners like South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, may well have maintained stronger capabilities, and a stronger range of capabilities, with more autonomous deterrent capability, and ability to even exercise influence over the Ukraine situation autonomously if they had *less* trust in the United States rather than more.
The American globalist love affair with "being trusted" by allies, and being followed by them has created a moral hazard of possibly misplaced trust, excessive dependency, and a decaying sense of hardpower realpolitik intellectual and physical infrastructure among US allies, save Israel and Turkey, leaving them potentially vulnerable to sudden abandonment by a Trump-like nationalist figure.
A question I've put out there on multiple international discussion boards since 2022 has been, "what has your country done, what should your country do, to hedge against the prospect of 'The Trump-Putin Pact of 2025'?" Clock's-a-tickin'.