Can the New President Do a Better Job Overseas?

Many presidents enter the White House focused on their domestic agenda, only to end up spending much of their time in office dealing with foreign policy and national security issues. There are a number of reasons for this, from the fact that the U.S. is the primary guarantor of the international order to the reality that, as commander in chief, the president has much more room to act independently on the world stage than he does at home.

But the biggest reason may be that important international crises routinely arise without warning, often forcing the White House to turn all or most of its attention to fixing them. Think of Bush and 9/11, or Biden and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and you get the idea.

When Donald Trump takes the oath of office on January 20 of next year, he may have even less of a domestic policy honeymoon than usual. That’s because, thanks in large part to the misguided policies of President Biden, he will face a much more dangerous world today than he did during his first term. As I recently wrote in this space, the international situation is getting ever more chaotic, more violent and, for the U.S. and its allies, more dangerous, and not just in places like Ukraine and Gaza.

Although Trump made headlines over the summer when he said he would end the conflict in Ukraine in “24 hours,” neither he nor Vice President Kamala Harris spent much time on the campaign trail talking about foreign and defense policy—and that’s a shame. However, given what we know about Trump’s policies in his first term and at least some of his picks to fill out his foreign policy and national security teams, there’s cause for hope that the new administration might set American foreign and defense policy on a better course.  

But before I explain why things have gotten so bad and why they get might better, it’s important to note that not everyone agrees that the situation around the globe is so dire. Recently, eminent political scientist John Mueller took to the pages of Discourse to warn against what he calls “threat inflation”—the constant, unwarranted drumbeat of ever more dire warnings (from people like me) about the prospects of war and global disorder and the need to deal with them. He writes:

Some 12 years ago, for example, officials told us that the world was “more dangerous than it has ever been” and that “crises and threats” abounded “around the globe.” And before that, 9/11 propelled more than a decade of alarm about Islamist terrorism. Earlier presidents said they were certain that failing to enter the wars in Korea and Vietnam would have resulted in World War III.

Later in his excellent essay, Mueller addresses the threat du jour, the possible invasion of Taiwan by China, noting that given the challenges an untested People’s Liberation Army would face in launching an amphibious assault across a 100-mile strait of water and then trying to conquer the well-fortified island, the chances of the Chinese even attempting an invasion are remote.

I agree that there have been times when warnings about international threats have been overblown; think of the hysteria in the 1980s over Japan’s rise, a balloon punctured and deflated in the 1990s and beyond when the country entered a decades-long period of economic stagnation. But there are also plenty of threats that proved to be every bit as real as doomsayers were predicting, if not more so, including the rise of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, the Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union and the threats posed by jihadi terrorist organizations and states.

Dr. Mueller may prove to be right about Taiwan and the overall global picture (I certainly hope he is), but digging even a little into the details of the threats we face overseas shows why they now are so daunting. For instance, nearly three years after the Russians invaded Ukraine, they are slowly gaining ground, threatening not only to snuff out their neighbor’s independence and identity, but putting nearby NATO allies like Poland and the Baltics at much greater risk of being next on Vladimir Putin’s to-do list.

Meanwhile Iran, a violent millenarian theocracy that is on the cusp of building its first nuclear weapon, is not only fighting Israel via its proxies in places like Gaza and Lebanon but is now openly at war with the Jewish state, threatening to spark a much wider regional conflict.

On the other side of the world, China continues to get more and more aggressive in the South China Sea, widening the scope of its intimidation campaign to include not only Taiwan but American allies such as Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam, all in a bid to cement its control of the world’s most vital waterway and bully its neighbors into bending to its will.

And then there is the evidence that Islamic terrorist groups (including some we thought we had largely defeated, like al-Qaida and ISIS) are once again growing in strength over a wide swath of the world, from Afghanistan to Niger, and threatening to unleash horrifying attacks on the U.S. and Western allies.

Add to this list growing narco-instability and left-wing authoritarianism in a number of Latin American states (including neighboring Mexico), continued migrant crises at the borders of Europe and the United States and other geopolitical tinderboxes in places like the Horn of Africa and South Asia, and you get a sense of the challenges Trump could soon be facing after he assumes office in January.

That being said, I’m not arguing that United States is fated to get into a great power conflict in the next few years or even the next decade. What I am saying is that the deteriorating global situation makes the possibility of a great power conflict much more likely. I’m also arguing that American policymakers, particularly in the Obama and Biden administrations, bear much of the responsibility for the worsening situation in many of these dangerous hot spots because we have allowed the steady degradation of our deterrent capacity.

It was not supposed to be this way. Just 25 years ago, the United States was still enjoying its unipolar moment following the collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s. Of course, the world was not entirely at peace during this time (remember Bosnia and Rwanda?), but when the U.S. decided to invest political and military capital into fixing a problem, we could feel some confidence that it would be fixed or at least triaged to a more sustainable and humane status quo. The postwar American-led order was more robust and stable than ever.

Even four years ago, we were told there was cause for optimism. Newly elected President Biden famously said that “America is back,” while outlining a policy in which the U.S. would work with our allies in Europe, Asia and elsewhere to set the world on a steadier course. Unfortunately, Biden’s rhetoric was rarely matched with appropriate action. From the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan to the almost surreal unwillingness to hold Iran accountable for its reckless actions in the Middle East, the Biden administration has spent four years talking tough but often acting with breathtaking passivity, eroding America’s ability to deter bad actors and thus weakening the very global order it had vowed to strengthen.

Even the administration’s one shining moment overseas—the successful rallying of the West to oppose Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine—is bookended by bad signaling on what was acceptable in the weeks before Russia crossed the border and, more recently, a hamstringing of Kyiv in its legitimate efforts to defend itself. The result, as I recently wrote in Discourse, is that the United States is now perceived as a feckless giant.

America’s greatest international asset—its reputation as a strong and decisive power—has now fallen to the point that when the United States speaks, it rarely commands the respect or even attention of its intended audience. This in turn means that we no longer have the ability to deter even tin-pot dictators like [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro or Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, let alone bigger El Jefes like [Russia’s Vladimir] Putin and China’s Xi Jinping.

Will the next president do any better? While it is always risky to predict what Donald Trump will do next, there is some reason to believe he may have some success in restoring America’s deterrent capability. To begin with, the new administration has already signaled that the United States will restore deterrence by not only speaking like a great power but acting like one.

As Robert O’Brien, Trump’s last national security adviser, recently told the Wall Street Journal, “It’s going to be a return to peace through strength. Deterrence is going to be restored.” O’Brien, who remains close to the president-elect, added that “American adversaries understand that the things they’ve gotten away with over the last four years will not be tolerated any further.”

As the Journal points out in the same article, such a policy will be “easier said than done.” True enough. But at least Trumpworld understands what needs to be done. Moreover, while no one would mistake Trump for Henry Kissinger, during his first term he showed himself to be much cannier about the geopolitical currents shaping the world than either his predecessor or his successor.

For instance, Trump was the first president to fully identify and start treating China as a geostrategic rival. He also recognized that many Sunni Arab states had much more in common with Israel than they did with Iran, leading to his championing of the Abraham Accords, which opened up diplomatic relations between Israel and a number of Gulf Arab states as well as Morocco.

And in spite of being accused of being a “Russian asset” by many of his political rivals, Trump sent weapons to Ukraine (something President Obama refused to do), which inevitably helped save that country from being overrun during the early days of the 2022 Russian invasion. Trump also showed that he was willing to slap down Iran when the Islamic Republic went too far, killing the regime’s military and terror mastermind, Qasem Soleimani, after Iran’s proxies repeatedly targeted American military personnel in the Middle East.

Many have described Trump’s first-term foreign policy as “transactional” rather than visionary and characterized more by capricious bluster than by deep geopolitical strategy. And there is some truth to these assessments. But there also was often a method to his madness.

For instance, when he threatened to pull out of NATO because our European allies were not contributing enough to their own defense, he was pilloried by the American foreign policy establishment for recklessly antagonizing our allies. But he did ultimately get many NATO members to begin ponying up more money for defense, something other American presidents had previously tried and failed to do.

And then there is the so-called proof in the pudding: Some of it may be chalked up to luck, but the world during Trump’s first term was more peaceful and stable than it is now.

Looking ahead, Trump has made a number of statements that, at least to me, indicate that his thinking reflects basic foreign policy common sense. For instance, after Israel recently bombed and destroyed much of Iran’s air defense capability, Trump opined that the Israelis should have hit the Islamic State’s nuclear facilities first, something Biden explicitly told the Jewish state not to do. Whether or not such a move made sense tactically for Israel at the time, destroying Iran’s nuclear weapons program is a strategic imperative. That’s because a nuclear Iran would, at the very least, feel much more emboldened to act against America and its regional allies, given that retaliation against a nuclear power is a much tougher call, even for the United States.

Likewise on Ukraine, where Trump has drawn a lot of flak for his statements about quickly ending the war, including by our own Rob Tracinski, in an excellent recent piece in Discourse. But his thinking makes at least some sense to me. Pressing both sides to negotiate, while at the same time pressuring Putin with promises of much more lethal aid for Ukraine if he refuses to bargain in good faith, seems at least worth a try, given the current trajectory of the war.

Meanwhile, many of Trump’s picks for the top foreign policy and national security jobs in the administration also bode well. Sen. Marco Rubio (who has been tapped for secretary of state), Rep. Michael Waltz (who will become national security adviser) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (who has been chosen as our next United Nations ambassador) are all hawks, particularly on China. Given the real possibility of a major war in the Indo-Pacific, getting our China policy right has to be the new administration’s first international priority.

To his credit, President Biden has made some progress on strengthening our alliances in Asia, particularly through the AUKUS defense deal with Great Britain and Australia, as well as the encouragement of Japan, South Korea and other allies to bolster their military capabilities.

But Biden has done little to grow our own military capability, something that will be necessary going forward if we’re going to credibly deter a rising China. Rubio, Waltz and Stefanik, all of whom have years of foreign policy experience in Congress, understand that credible hard power will be crucial in effectively managing the U.S.-China relationship—as well as our relationships with other rival nations—which is why they seem like good choices.

All which makes Trump’s pick of Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense a bit baffling. Hegseth, who is a combat veteran, veteran’s advocate and broadcaster, has no experience running anything, let alone a huge, hidebound bureaucracy like the Pentagon. As former Rep. Mike Gallagher points out in a recent op-ed, the to-do list for the next secretary of defense will be long and challenging and will include everything from rebuilding our inadequate defense industrial base to reversing chronic recruitment shortfalls. Maybe Hegseth is up to the task, but there’s nothing in his resume to inspire much confidence.

Still, the overall outlook for the new administration is good, largely because the president-elect and most of his new national security team recognize that restoring American deterrence is absolutely necessary if we’re to avoid future wars, both minor and major, and to sustain the international order that has brought so much prosperity to America and the world.

Meanwhile ...  

What I’m listening to: Like many people, I’ve become a big fan of podcasts. There are so many good ones out there, from Walter Russell Mead’s “What Really Matters” to our own Ben Klutsey’s “Pluralist Points.” But I’d like to give a special shout-out to the “Honestly” podcast from The Free Press.

“Honestly” doesn’t follow one format. Some episodes are debates, while some are panel discussions. Others are one-on-one interviews, usually hosted by Free Press head honcho Bari Weiss. (Her latest, with Peter Thiel on Donald Trump and elites, is fabulous.) Some are even open letters to readers.

But recently, “Honestly” has also started producing audio documentaries. The two that I’ve listened to, on “Trump and the Art of the B*********r” and “Resistance or Opposition: Which Route Should the Democrats Take?,” are superb. Both episodes, hosted by journalist Eli Lake, feature lots of interviews and do a wonderful job of rounding out the topic at hand with plenty of history and other contextual material. I walked away from both episodes much better informed about the political currents running through our nation. I hope “Honestly” and Lake continue to produce these wonderfully interesting and insightful episodes.

And while I’m at it: When I speak to Discourse readers, they often tell me that one of the things they like best about the magazine is its eclectic content palette. “I never know what I’m going to get when I open my email each morning,” a subscriber recently told me. If you also like the fact that we offer you and other readers something different each day, consider donating to Discourse. Your contribution will allow us to continue to provide diverse and thoughtful content to all our readers, free of charge. Thanks, and have a great week.

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