Foreign Policy Issues for America

The Trump Years

Richard W. Mansbach, James M. McCormick

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780815394020
• eBook ISBN: 9781351186858
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

As America's first president never to have served in government or the military, Donald Trump entered the White House with an unformed foreign policy position. Yet he was confronted by a wide range of developing issues; the rise of China, Russian-United States relations, the resurgence of nationalism in Europe, U.S. Foreign Policy in Latin America, environmental challenges, terrorism, security challenges of failing states, cyber security threats, and challenges in international political economy.

This volume focuses on these sensitive foreign policy issues that determine the prospects for American decline or continued hegemony. Contributions are divided into 'regional' and 'functional' issues, exploring the nature and significance of the challenge, the previous response, and President Trump's policies and their consequences.

Topics have been selected to address political, military, economic, and social factors in global politics and the book will appeal to undergraduates and scholars of U.S. foreign policy at all levels.

Part I
Introduction

1
America’s decline, President Donald Trump, and the global liberal order

Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach

Introduction

Recent years have witnessed disorder in global politics that raise questions about the direction and durability of the global liberal order that emerged after World War II. That order, based on norms of economic, social, and political interdependence, and on multilateral cooperation to meet global challenges, has its roots in the nineteenth century, when the United Kingdom (UK) acted as a global leader, fostering ideas such as free trade, the abolition of the slave trade, and political democracy across its empire and the world as a whole.

That era ended suddenly with World War I and the erosion of British power. Ensuing decades witnessed the growth of U.S. power, but, owing to U.S. isolationism, the impact of that development was not recognized until America’s entry in World War II. The Great Depression fostered economic unilateralism as the great powers sought to improve their economies at one another’s expense by resorting to “beggar-thy-neighbor” policies of protectionism and unilateral currency devaluations.

As World War II ended, America by then a superpower, took the lead in sponsoring international institutions to meet global challenges based on norms of cooperation – the Bretton Woods economic institutions (the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and other regional alliances. Such institutions proved pillars of globalization, facilitating the free movement of people, things, and ideas, and later a declining preoccupation with territory as information and communication technologies overcame geography and social media fostered cosmopolitan links among people worldwide. Globalization also spread liberal norms and rules such as democracy, human rights, and free trade, and America assumed responsibility for enforcing the norms of the liberal order.

Thus, much of the world came to regard the United States as a benevolent hegemon – that is, a global leader whose followers consented to that leadership because it benefitted them. After the onset of the Cold War, Washington adopted policies including the Marshall Plan for reconstructing Europe, support for European economic and political integration, and a willingness to accept a strong dollar, which reduced U.S. exports and increased its imports from allies in return for their willingness to accept Washington’s leadership.

Some theorists believe that a hegemon like the UK during the nineteenth century and the U.S. during the twentieth is necessary to maintain a global liberal order. They point to America’s “decline” as a factor in growing global disorder, and describe cyclical conflicts called hegemonic wars that erupt when a hegemon is threatened by a challenger. Thus, they argue that World War I was caused by Germany’s challenge to British hegemony and that the Cold War reflected a Soviet challenge to U.S. hegemony.

A resurgence of nationalist geopolitical concerns such as Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, development of cyber-weapons, Chinese territorial claims, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and the spread of fragile states in the developing world augur a return to a world of geopolitical national interests, Such a world, hegemonic theorists contend, raise questions about the durability of the global liberal order, which they see as resulting from America’s decline. That decline, however, is relative, not absolute; it is not the result of reduced U.S. capabilities, but instead reflects the growing capabilities of others, especially China. Nevertheless, even a relative decline makes it difficult for Washington to control events, and hegemonic theorists predict that America’s decline will undermine the practices, norms, and institutions of the liberal order in much the same way as the UK’s decline destabilized the earlier liberal order.

The debate about hegemonic stability and decline is significant, not least because the liberal order encompasses the spread of democracy, deepening of political and economic interdependence, and global governance by international organizations – that liberals believe foster a peaceful and cooperative world. By contrast, an illiberal order would foster nationalism, ethnic and sectarian conflict, and preoccupation with geopolitical factors that are associated with interstate war, identity conflicts, and barriers to globalization. Globalization, argue liberals, is rendering national boundaries and national identities less important, while the reassertion of narrow national interests entails preoccupation with borders and territory at the expense of cooperation.

If America is indeed declining and hegemonic stability theory is correct, in time, there will be an absence of a single powerful but presumably benign actor able to shape global institutions and enforce the rules and norms necessary for cooperation. Even worse, President Trump’s policies have accelerated the decline of the liberal order even while it grows relatively weaker and it surrenders global leadership to its illiberal hegemonic rival China. China would not protect the liberal order, or at a minimum would alter it to its advantage.

Today, as the second-largest world economy and soon the world’s largest foreign investor, China is an economic superpower, a fact reflected by its ambitious plan to invest in projects across Europe, Central Asia, and Africa, and encourage trade and finance. In 2017, the U.S. economy accounted for 24 percent of the global economy, while China accounted for almost 15 percent. Between 1989 and 2016, China’s economy grew by an annual average of nearly 10 percent. China’s economy has been an engine for export-based growth, and Beijing seeks to transform the renminbi into a global reserve currency like the U.S. dollar. The formal opening of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank that Beijing founded as a rival to the World Bank also increased China’s economic visibility.

China has also passed the U.S. in annual patent applications; its scientists rank second in peer-reviewed research articles, and it plans to become globally competitive by 2025 in ten advanced manufacturing sectors dominated by America including commercial aircraft, robotics, 5G mobile phone communications and computer microchips. Thus, China is becoming a science and technological superpower.

China’s economic growth, however, faces challenges. After years of easy credit, China has a heavy debt burden incurred by businesses and local governments. Its state-owned corporations are experiencing strains in making a transition to market discipline, and economic inequality has grown. Thus, America will continue to have a larger economy in term of total gross domestic product (GDP) than China for several decades, and even then, Americans will be far richer as measured by per capita GDP.

Growing wealth enables China’s military modernization, and its defense spending has risen rapidly. It boasts top-of-the-line military aircraft, a ballistic missile and nuclear force, anti-satellite capabilities, and sophisticated cyberwar capabilities. Such capabilities allow Beijing to pursue claims to sovereignty over virtually all the Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea and their adjacent waters, and the Senkaku Islands in the Sea of Japan. Beijing’s policies have increased its presence around the world and have made it an Asian superpower. Its territorial claims are of great concern to its neighbors, and it is acquiring naval facilities around the world (see Chapter 4). Thus, Beijing opened its first overseas naval base in Djibouti, next to a U.S. naval base in the Horn of Africa, affording it access to the Middle East, and a Chinese company won a bid to operate the Port of Darwin in Australia under a 99-year lease, also near a U.S. naval facility. China ranks second behind America in defense spending and is rapidly modernizing its armed forces, but America’s military budget of $716 billion remains far larger than China’s and exceeds the combined total of the eight next largest military budgets (including China’s) and will grow dramatically under Trump. Thus, America remains by far the world’s leading military power.

Indeed, China scholar David Shambaugh (2013: 6–10)¹ describes China as a “partial power.” He argues that Beijing’s global influence is largely economic and that militarily, China is not (yet) able to “project power” beyond Asia. China also lacks “soft power” – the ability to attract others – because its statist development model and its positions on human rights and territorial issues make China more likely to be feared than admired. “China is a lonely power, lacking close friends and possessing no allies.” However, Shambaugh acknowledges that poll data suggest that there is a widespread perception among “global publics” that China either already has or will eventually replace the U.S. “as the world’s leading power.”

Although the belief that China is supplanting the U.S. is widespread, in absolute terms America remains the world’s only superpower. However, as Joseph Nye (2015: 14) points out, if leaders perceive a decline they may act in ways that produce it.² This was the case during the Obama years, but the Trump administration recognizes that America is confronting challengers to its hegemonic status. America’s National Security Strategy released in late 2017 by the administration declares that “after being dismissed as a phenomenon of an earlier century, great power competition returned,” and “China and Russia began to reassert their influence regionally and globally” (White House, 2017: 27).³ As we shall see, however, Trump has actually surrendered U.S. leadership in several respects.

America’s Perceived Decline: The Obama Years

Following the Cold War, America was an unchallenged hegemon in the global system. The proliferation of nongovernmental and interstate groups advocating solutions to collective problems like global warming had fostered global civil society and enhanced prospects of global governance.

With U.S. encouragement, democracy made advances in the countries of the former Soviet bloc and the developing world. Global concern for democracy and human rights spread, and even authoritarian regimes pay lip service to these rights. This led optimists to conclude that Washington’s chief foes were not “just up against the United States; they would also have to contend with the most globally organized and deeply entrenched order the world has ever seen, one that is dominated by states that are liberal, capitalist, and democratic” (Ikenberry, 2014: 89)⁴ It appeared that the liberal global order had triumphed.

The Clinton administration’s policies had reflected a confident hegemon – the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the billions spent to save the democratic experiment in Russia, and the efforts to contain countries that threatened the global order including North Korea, Serbia, Iran, and Iraq. George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, however, although an effort to spread democratic values, ended in disaster and contributed to President Obama’s later reluctance to lead “from in front.” Obama’s perception of America’s decline reflected an overreaction to Bush’s neo-conservative triumphalism and militant unilateralism.

The Obama administration adopted a cautious foreign policy, preferring negotiations and multilateralism, and deferring to allies as though the world were already multipolar. When President Obama accepted a Nobel Peace Prize early in his first term, he admitted that war is sometimes necessary but should be a “just war,” and was an example of “human folly.” This would be the dilemma Obama would face repeatedly in subsequent years that became manifest in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East, where countries questioned U.S. commitments and so posed threats to the post-Cold War order.

The Obama presidency coincided with the global financial crisis, and escalating partisanship in domestic politics that produced legislative deadlock. It was Obama’s misfortune that he was simultaneously confronted by multiple geopolitical challenges that made a coherent strategy virtually impossible to design. Obama had to face a world that seemed to be “falling apart.” His foreign challenges were among the most complex since the end of the Cold War – the European Union (EU) in disarray, turmoil in the Middle East, Iranian and North Korean efforts to become nuclear powers, China’s saber-rattling in the South and East China Seas, Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea, and so on.

In a speech at West Point in 2014, President Obama declared, “Since world war two, some of our most costly mistakes came not from our restraint, but from our willingness to rush into military adventures without thinking through the consequences” (cited in The Economist, 2014: 23).⁵ “I would betray my duty to you, and to the country we love, if I sent you into harm’s way… because I was worried about critics who think military intervention is the only way for America to avoid looking weak” (cited in Baker, 2014).⁶

President Obama had assumed office committed to ending the “bad” war in Iraq and pacifying Afghanistan in a “good” war. He withdrew U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011 and planned to do the same in Afghanistan. In neither case did Washington achieve its objectives. U.S. forces returned to Iraq after the Islamic State (IS) occupied territory there and in Syria, yet Iraq remains the victim of sectarian violence with little to show for over a decade of U.S. intervention. Afghanistan remains threatened by a Taliban-led insurrection financed by heroin production against a government installed by Washington. Neither the War on Terror nor the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were part of a coherent global strategy.

Having removed most U.S. forces from Europe and cut back plans for European missile defense, the Obama administration was unprepared to respond to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and heavy-handed “hybrid war” in Eastern Ukraine. The sanctions imposed by Washington and the EU and U.S. reluctance to provide Ukraine with arms were insufficient to prevent Russian “volunteers” from aiding pro-Russian Ukrainians seeking to “federalize” the country or secede from it. Nor did the administration react vigorously in Russia’s covert intervention in America’s 2016 election.

The death of Osama bin Laden was President Obama’s most memorable foreign-policy triumph. Otherwise, in the Middle East, the administration’s policies were largely irreso-lute. President Obama’s thoughtful speech in Cairo in 2009, in which he promised “a new beginning” in U.S. relations with Islam and the Arab world and support for democracy in the Middle East more generally, encouraged those in the region who sought democracy. In 2011, the “Arab Spring” erupted across the Middle East but ended in civil wars in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen.

In...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• List of contributors
• PART I Introduction
• PART II Regional issues
• PART III Functional issues
• PART IV Conclusions
• Index