...and you should too.
By Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University
and a Schwartz senior fellow at the New America Foundation. She served as a
counselor to the U.S. defense undersecretary for policy from 2009 to 2011 and
previously served as a senior advisor at the U.S. State Department.
* * *
My editors here at Foreign Policy have asked me to get
serious and write about what U.S. foreign policy would look like if the White
House should ever sprout an enormous gold sign reading, “TRUMP.”
Where to start?
Donald Trump is crazy... like a fox.
Despite the braggadocio, the bullying, and the bluster —
despite the contradictions, misstatements, and near-total absence of actual
facts — Trump is, to a great extent, nonetheless articulating a coherent vision
of international relations and America’s role in the world.
David Sanger and Maggie Haberman capture it well in a
summary of their lengthy New York Times interview with Trump:
“In Mr. Trump’s worldview, the United States has become a diluted power, and the main mechanism by which he would re-establish its central role in the world is economic bargaining. He approached almost every current international conflict through the prism of a negotiation, even when he was imprecise about the strategic goals he sought.” The United States, Trump believes, has been “disrespected, mocked, and ripped off for many, many years by people that were smarter, shrewder, tougher. We were the big bully, but we were not smartly led. And we were … the big stupid bully, and we were systematically ripped off by everybody.”
Trump hasn’t the slightest objection to being perceived
as a bully, but he doesn’t want to be ripped off. Thus, he says, he’d be
willing to stop buying oil from the Saudis if they don’t get serious about
fighting the Islamic State; limit China’s access to U.S. markets if Beijing
continues its expansionist policies in the South China Sea; and discard
America’s traditional alliance — from NATO to the Pacific — partners if they
won’t pull their own weight.
To Trump, an effective negotiator plays his cards close
to his chest: He doesn’t let anyone know his true bottom line, and he always
preserves his ability to make a credible bluff. To those who criticize his
apparent contradictions, his vagueness about his ultimate strategic objectives,
or his willingness to make public threats, he offers a simple and Machiavellian
response: “We need unpredictability.”
Trump has little time for either neoconservatives or
liberal interventionists; he thinks they allow their belief in American virtue
to blind them to both America’s core interests and the limits of American
power. He has even less time for multilateralist diplomats: They’re too willing
to compromise, trading away American interests in exchange for platitudes about
friendship and cooperation. And he has no time at all for those who consider
long-standing U.S. alliances sacrosanct. To Trump, U.S. alliances, like
potential business partners in a real-estate transaction, should always be
asked: “What have you done for me lately?”
In his inimitable way, Trump is offering a powerful
challenge to many of the core assumptions of Washington’s bipartisan
foreign-policy elite. And if mainstream Democrats and Republicans want to
counter Trump’s appeal, they need to get serious about explaining why his
vision of the world "isn’t appropriate" — and they need to do so without merely
falling back on tired clichés.
The clichés roll easily off the tongue: U.S. alliances
and partnerships are vital. NATO is a critical component of U.S. security.
Forward-deployed troops in Japan and South Korea are vital to assurance and
deterrence. We need to maintain good relations with Saudi Arabia. And so on.
But this is pure intellectual and ideological laziness.
Without more specificity, these "truisms" of
the Washington foreign-policy elite are just pablum.
Why, exactly, does the United States need to keep troops
in Japan, or Germany, or Kuwait?
Would the sky really fall if the United States had fewer
forward-deployed troops?
What contingencies are we preparing for? Who and what are
we deterring, and how do we know if it’s working? Who are we trying to
reassure? What are the financial and opportunity costs? Do the defense treaties
and overseas bases that emerged after World War II still serve U.S. interests?
Which interests? How?
Does a U.S. alliance with the Saudis truly offer more
benefits than costs? What bad things would happen if we shifted course, taking
a less compromising stance toward “allies” who don’t offer much in return?
Questions like these are legitimate and important, and
it’s reasonable for ordinary Americans to be dissatisfied by politicians and
pundits who make no real effort to offer answers.
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