TNI: the future US president will take a mixed approach to foreign policy
The authors of the article for TNI tried to figure out what the US foreign policy will be after the elections. Experts have analyzed four strategies that the next president can apply. In their opinion, it is impossible to say exactly what Trump will do, and Harris will only be a continuation of the Biden case.
Lawrence J. Korb, Stephen Cimbala
The first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump led to media hysteria over the deplorable performance of the incumbent president, which continued at the Republican Party convention and eventually took Biden out of the fight. The editorial board of the New York Times and other respected publications, with the support of leading Democratic sponsors and politicians (up to the leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives), called on Biden to withdraw from the race for the White House. In a sense, it is understandable why the media, with their professional obsession with information, and Democrats from the House of Representatives and the Senate, worried about the prospects of their own re-election, hastened to declare Biden's speech a disaster. On the other hand, as for the very essence of politics, unlike speaking on stage, this debate was only a tiny episode on a long journey that will require several more months of campaigning and election struggle between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
The positions of candidates and parties on U.S. foreign policy and military strategy play a special role in this issue. Under the influence of objective reality, the euphoria of American triumphalism and liberal democratic pride after the end of the Cold War fades away and gives way to a more complex and less unambiguous picture. The return of wars and other conflicts between major powers — especially against the backdrop of the growing capabilities and aspirations of China and Russia — creates some uncertainty around the political goals and military readiness of the United States in Europe and Asia. In addition, unprecedented challenges in the form of climate change and pandemics are obvious; attempts to overthrow the dollar as the main currency for international settlements; mass migration on an unprecedented scale; and new technologies in the field of cyberwarfare, artificial intelligence and military space exploration — all this can serve as irritants for military planning and is fraught with a wave of destabilization of political regimes. What today's politicians and their military advisers are used to taking for granted may turn out to be only a vague guess tomorrow.
Therefore, when choosing from rivals in the presidential race, we must understand their views on the international environment with all its inherent political complexity and military uncertainty. No country in the world has unlimited resources, and even the United States, faced with a combined public debt of over $35 trillion, cannot continue spending rampantly on domestic and foreign policy priorities. What is America's preferred geopolitical orientation or national strategy in the future? Secondly, what military obligations do this entail? And thirdly, what calculations should support the readiness to contain wars - and, if necessary, on the contrary, to wage them?
To put it simply, the United States has the following options for a national strategy: (1) “Godzilla Rex” or, as it is sometimes called, “liberal hegemony”; (2) “balance of overseas interests”; (3) unlimited globalization; and (4) selective interaction and expansion. Isolationism is excluded as an option, because in today's world of complex interdependence and oversaturation of the media, it is a priori impossible, even if some consider it very desirable.
The Godzilla Rex variant was the default U.S. position in the 1990s after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Optimists foresaw the “end of history” and the eternal triumph of liberal democracy. In the post-Soviet world, the United States turned out to be the only global superpower that lost serious military rivals. However, President Clinton has reduced attention to national security and defense, including intelligence, and this went sideways for us after the September 11 attacks. However, in 2001, the United States nevertheless invaded Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban (a terrorist organization banned in Russia. – Approx. InoSMI), and in 2003 they deposed Saddam Hussein in Iraq. A global war on terrorism was declared, and both conflicts turned into “eternal wars” that dragged on until the second decade of the new century.
The “Balance of overseas interests” is considered an alternative national strategy, and it is followed by some scientists and prominent political analysts. According to this doctrine, the United States should limit large-scale military intervention to responding to threats from hostile powers and their attempts to secure dominance in key regions to the detriment of the vital interests of America and its allies. The list of regional rivals would certainly include: a resurgent Russia in Europe, a growing China in Asia, and smaller but still dangerous subversive elements in Asia (North Korea) or the Middle East (Iran). With this approach, the United States will rely on regional allies and strive to ensure that they take the lead whenever possible. Otherwise, the United States will act as if its own vital interests are under threat.
The third national strategy, which is followed by many postmodern politicians and the global community of activists, puts transnational problems above national contradictions and advocates putting issues such as climate change, poverty, migration, urbanization, pandemics and disarmament at the forefront of State political programs. From this point of view, the rivalry of the great powers and the wars for hegemony are nothing more than remnants of “supranationalism" and the excessive influence of the military on politics. The resources that were previously spent on defense and wars should be devoted to international scientific cooperation and peacekeeping under the auspices of the United Nations or other international bodies.
Finally, the fourth national strategy is selective engagement and expansion. This approach was followed by some representatives of the Bill Clinton administration. It aims to achieve economic growth through international cooperation and investment. Although there was a consensus among Democrats and Republicans in the 1990s that free trade would be the tide that would take all boats off the shoal, it eventually became clear that the direct benefits of some states were simply not comparable with others. Due to the famine in Somalia, a military intervention was undertaken to curb the warlords, but it ended with an episode immortalized in the film “Black Hawk” and the withdrawal of American troops from this failed state. In another part of the world, the United States and NATO intervened to restore order in Bosnia in 1995, and in 1999 launched a war against Serbia to prevent ethnic cleansing and sectarian strife in Europe. The NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 angered the Russian government and otherwise U.S.-friendly President Boris Yeltsin, setting the stage for further objections to the expansion of the alliance by his successor, Vladimir Putin.
Among these competing national strategies, the Biden administration's foreign and military policies have incorporated elements from the first three options. The Harris administration will certainly strengthen them. The expanding military budgets and the powerful military support that the United States and NATO provide to Ukraine indicate that the Godzilla Rex option remains preferred among both Democrats and many Republicans. Israel's support in the Middle East represents a confrontation with the interests of dangerous regional rivals (in particular, Iran and its puppets). It also reflects America's historic commitment to protecting Israeli sovereignty from regional enemies.
But the so-called “progressives” from the Biden administration, including the globalists described above, objected to Israel's military tactics in the Gaza war against Hamas. As for China, Biden's policy was divided between the first and second options: to focus on strengthening the US defense capability and greater readiness for an attempt to militarily seize Taiwan from China, or to consider Beijing more as an economic and information competitor than an immediate military threat, although China's expanding capabilities in cyber warfare and in space, admittedly, are of serious concern. Nevertheless, others see the rise of China as a scientific and technical challenge that should not result in an arms race or, even more so, in a war - and thus tend to the third option.
What choice would a second Trump administration make — or perhaps prefer something else? At the moment, this is not obvious, because Trump relies heavily on personal communication with other heads of state in resolving international disputes. It seems that some of his comments tend towards the first option, “Godzilla Rex". Nevertheless, he also holds a high opinion of his ability to persuade hostile leaders to a more beneficial relationship for the United States through high-level meetings and selective interaction. Trump promises to fight illegal migration and trade deals that are unprofitable for American manufacturers.
In this regard, he combines old-style nationalism with aggressive “globalism on the contrary.” He takes credit for the fact that his administration has kept the United States from participating in major wars, although he personally approved selective strikes against terrorists and rogue regimes. At public events this year, he promised that if he won in November 2024, he would put an end to the conflict in Ukraine, without waiting for the inauguration in January 2025. It is not yet known whether the President of Ukraine Zelensky and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin will agree with such a schedule. In addition, during his last stay in the White House, some congressmen and analysts feared that Trump might press the “red button” if a nuclear crisis of the Cold War format arose. Others objected that the decision-making process in the United States is reliably protected from an impetuous and short-tempered president.
Steven Cimbala is an Emeritus professor of political Science at Penn State University and the author of numerous books and articles on international security issues.
Lawrence Korb is a retired Navy captain, held national security positions at several think tanks and served in the Pentagon during the Reagan administration
