© REUTERS/Randall Hill

For the last three years, Europeans have watched US President Donald Trump take a sledgehammer to the pillars of transatlantic relations that lasted for more than seven decades. Somewhat shell-shocked, European policymakers and experts fear a second Trump term would irreparably damage a relationship that has been at the heart of their world. They worry that a parting of ways might be irreversible after eight years of Trump. And they also assume that even if a Democrat becomes the next US president, things will not—cannot—just go back to the “good old days.” A return to the status quo ante, they argue, is impossible.

This is too pessimistic. In many important ways, a Democratic win come November 2020 would see more of a return to the pre-Trump US foreign policy than Europeans currently dare to hope for.

The European fear of abandonment by the United States is understandable. It remains focused on how a second Trump term would play out, rather than examining the alternative of a new Democratic presidency. Notwithstanding the dawning feeling that a Trump win is becoming more likely, a change in the White House is very possible—and Europeans should be paying more attention to the foreign-policy positions of the Democratic field. If they do, they will see that fears about “no going back no matter who is elected” are overdone.

A Positive Picture

The various foreign policy positions of the main contenders for the Democratic nomination (tracked, for instance, by The New York Times and The Washington Post) add up to a quite positive picture for Europe. There is much talk of a party divided between centrists who have a traditional foreign-policy stance—like former US Vice President Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar—and progressives who would upend the old consensus in their own way—like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

The reality is more nuanced than this image of a black-and-white ideological split, however, as the Brookings Institution’s Thomas Wright has well argued. If they make it to the White House, any of the main Democratic candidates would bring back considerable continuity with the pre-2016 US foreign policy consensus and priorities that are convergent with European ones. (The one case where there is more uncertainty is Michael Bloomberg, who has not put forward positions on as many issues. Yet, to the extent he has, he has often sounded like a traditional centrist, if hawkish Democrat.)

In counterpoint to Trump, all the Democratic contenders place great emphasis on diplomacy, repairing relations with traditional allies, strengthening multilateral institutions, and the need for collaboration in solving international problems such as climate change or the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea. They all acknowledge the existential threat of climate change and have put forward detailed proposals for dealing with it. They would immediately rejoin the Paris Agreement and stress the need for global collaboration, not least with China, for reducing carbon emissions.

Same, Same, But Different

Stressing their commitment to NATO, the leading Democrats would still push European countries to spend and do more on defense, but in a way that is very different to Trump’s. They endorse a traditional US nuclear posture and approach to arms control. They would also re-enter the Iran nuclear agreement.

All of them take a standard hard line toward Russia. They call for strong measures in response to its destabilization of neighboring countries (especially Ukraine, for which more assistance is promised), its corrupt authoritarian domestic model, and its interference abroad. At the same time, they stress the need to continue to engage with Russia over nuclear arms control regime.

In the Middle East, the Democratic contenders have taken critical positions on the war in Yemen and Saudi Arabia’s actions, including calling for an end to military and intelligence assistance in that conflict. With regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they support the two-states solution and a traditional peace process in which the United States plays a leading role. The Democratic Party is also shifting toward more qualified support for Israel, which may make US policy more congenial to Europeans than under Trump.

A new Democrat presidency would definitely mean more attention to democracy and human rights, backed by aid and in cooperation with traditional partners. This would include a stronger focus on fighting kleptocracy and competing with autocratic powers such as China and Russia. The candidates also take traditional positions on humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect, and they say they would be willing to use force in these contexts; for example, in case of genocide or the use of chemical or biological weapons (but not for regime change).

A Critical Dialogue

All of the above is not to say that there would not be differences between Europe and the United States under a Democratic president. There would still be a critical and often difficult dialogue on crucial issues, not least because the two sides do not have identical interests or threat perceptions. This includes trade (where the Democrats have shifted to a more skeptical position), relations with China (where the candidates take varyingly hawkish lines), and reducing the US military footprint in the Middle East.

Europeans should also not confuse a Democratic administration being more aligned with their positions on several issues with it being particularly more interested in Europe. Agreement with Europe would not automatically equate to it reclaiming a greater share of the center stage in US foreign policy. That would still require more heaving lifting by the Europeans on many issues, which is a bipartisan request from Washington. Even a Democratic administration that is fully committed to the transatlantic relationship and multilateralism will make demands of its European allies that they will not always find comfortable.

Regardless of the Trump presidency, the world for which the traditional transatlantic relationship was created—whether the post-Cold War one or even more so the Cold War one—has evolved. So have the United States and Europe, domestically as well as in terms of their geopolitical positions. But what is certain is that those areas of inevitable divergence between them in the coming years will not be handled by any Democratic president in the same, traumatizing way that Europeans have gotten used to under Donald Trump. Calling curtains on the transatlantic relationship no matter who wins in November is certainly premature.

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© REUTERS/Adriano Machado

Senator, how did American foreign politics change under President Donald Trump? One very significant change is this administration’s attitude toward China. There has been a generation-long, bipartisan tradition among American presidents of being tough on China while running for office, but not following through once elected. The president campaigned on China’s abuses with respect to trade and other issues, and he is governing accordingly. What might not be apparent to Europeans is just how much popular support this tough approach to China commands in America. When we aren’t in moments of crisis or fighting wars, foreign policy doesn’t generally dominate the American political discussion. But China is an exception. In my home state of Arkansas, people see the harmful effects that unfair Chinese competition has had on their neighbors and communities, and like all Americans they have a sense of justice and fair play that is offended by the abuses in Hong Kong, or in Xinjiang where the Chinese Communist Party has built concentration camps. So that genie is out of the bottle. It won’t be put back anytime soon, even if there’s a US-China trade deal.

There is an impression that the United States under Donald Trump is taking a step back from world politics while placing a stronger focus on domestic affairs. What is your view? I don’t accept this premise—and remember, Barack Obama campaigned and tried to govern on the notion that it was time to engage in nation building at home. His attempt to pull back from the world, and his largely rhetorical “pivot to Asia,” which wasn’t sufficiently backed up by military assets, contributed to the chaos beginning in 2014 and 2015, whether it was ISIS and the refugee crisis, China bullying its neighbors in the South and East China Seas, or Russia invading Crimea. America remains committed to NATO and committed to its allies in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. The threats to NATO are China and Russia, as well as other NATO members that don’t take China and Russia seriously as adversaries.

What do you think of German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer’s suggestion of creating a safe zone in Syria? I’d welcome increased German involvement in northeast Syria. It is imperative that we coordinate to stamp out the last remnants of ISIS. As part of this process, we must ensure that ISIS detainees are returned home and detained. Additionally, we should cooperate to halt further Iranian expansion in the region and protect the Kurds from being overrun, even if they don’t receive an autonomous zone in northeast Syria.

The global order is changing. Right now, there are two main beneficiaries: China on the one hand, Russia on the other. Does the US accept this development and if not, how does it counteract it? Russia and especially China are very serious threats to countries like the United States and Germany. Analysts typically speak of Russia as an economically challenged and, literally, demographically dying nation, and China as the real threat for our future. There’s something to be said for that, but what we should keep in mind is that Xi Jinping and his cronies act as much out of desperation as does Russia’s leadership. As Xenophon taught ages ago, tyrants everywhere and always rest uneasily. Government without the consent of the people is an inherently fragile situation.
One thing we must keep in mind is that dictators like Putin and Xi want to split apart allies like the United States and Germany. The greatest threat to NATO today is the failure or refusal of some members to take seriously the malign intentions of these two men and their policies. Take Huawei, which some NATO members like Germany may allow in their 5G infrastructure, despite its track record of espionage for China. Or take Nord Stream 2, which is, frankly, an appalling and shameful project. While Germany touts the pipeline’s commercial benefits, Putin will use it as a strategic tool to split Eastern Europe from Central and Western Europe. It would effectively double the amount of natural gas Russia could export to Europe along a route that bypasses the alliance’s eastern frontier. This would enhance Russia’s ability to blackmail countries like Poland and the Baltic states by threatening their energy supplies, while deepening NATO members’ reliance on Russia to heat their homes and power their economies. Russia’s use of oil and gas exports to pressure Ukraine is a preview of how it could use Nord Stream 2 against NATO. And remember that when Putin invaded Crimea, he threatened to cut off European countries that assisted Ukraine. If NATO members increase their reliance on Russian gas, it will give the Kremlin more opportunities for blackmail and more leverage over the alliance.

Are you satisfied with the contribution of Germany and the European Union to the international security architecture? What do you expect the Europeans and especially Germany to do in terms of security and foreign policy? I appreciate Germany’s recommitment last month to increasing its defense budget to levels agreed upon by NATO leaders. Given the common threats we face, it’s urgent that all NATO members meet their defense spending commitments. NATO may struggle to remain a credible military force if all but seven NATO members refuse to spend sufficiently on their militaries. Additionally, I support European initiatives to streamline the defense acquisition process for our European allies. However, as these initiatives develop, it’s critical that they be designed in a manner that doesn’t duplicate NATO functions or impact NATO interoperability.

Germany has not ruled out incorporating Huawei in its 5G mobile networks. Would Huawei’s participation limit the intelligence sharing between Germany and the US? I’m deeply concerned about the German government’s proposal to include Huawei in the country’s 5G infrastructure. Huawei is an intelligence-gathering arm of the Chinese Communist Party. China’s neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region—Australia, Japan, and New Zealand—have already banned Huawei from their 5G networks. The United States has gone further by placing the company on our trading blacklist. Some NATO allies have also acted to counter the Huawei threat, including Poland and Estonia.
Huawei technology may be favored by the German business community because it is relatively inexpensive, but at what cost? Huawei networks present a risk to German security that can’t be mitigated. It could enable the CCP to spy on the German government and invade the privacy of German citizens. I’d urge the German government to look at more secure 5G providers such as European firms Nokia and Ericsson.
The adoption of Huawei technology by some allies could split NATO into Huawei and non-Huawei blocs, harming our ability to cooperate and thus helping our adversaries. Unfortunately, the presence of Huawei in allied nations’ networks will force the US government to review our intelligence-sharing procedures.

President Trump stated that the EU and Germany are among America’s “foes.” Do you agree with that, also considering the recent 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall? The United States, Germany, and the EU are never going to agree about everything, including trade, which is the context of the remarks you’re referring to. We’ll have disputes. Our relations will be better under some leaders than others. But important anniversaries like the fall of the Berlin Wall, and threats like China and Russia, remind us that we’re united by common interests much stronger than any supposed divisions.

Could it be already too late for the US to effectively limit China’s expansion in the world? The Chinese Communist Party poses a threat not just to the United States, but to the entire free world. China is run by a totalitarian regime that doesn’t tolerate dissent, at home or abroad. It’s easy to dismiss the Communist Party’s concentration camps in Xinjiang as a “far-off” problem. But the CCP’s malign activities are already at our doorsteps. Beijing is already using predatory economic tactics and censorship to steal from our companies and stifle our citizens’ ability to speak out against it.
Americans and Germans know the evils of totalitarianism, so we must mount a firm, unified response to these threats from Beijing. The US and Germany have many allies and friends, so I’m confident in our ability to confront this challenge.

How would you evaluate the current relationship between the United States and Russia? As I’ve long said about Vladimir Putin: once KGB, always KGB. I expect that the United States and Russia will remain adversaries as long as he remains in power. It would be good if we had a better bilateral relationship, but that may not occur anytime soon—particularly given Russia’s continued aggression against the NATO alliance, as well as its meddling in Ukraine, Syria, Venezuela, and elsewhere.

Do you fear any reoccurring Russian interference in the 2020 US presidential elections, and how do you plan on confronting the issue? I don’t fear anything to do with Vladimir Putin or his efforts to keep Russia relevant. His actions deserve a firm response, not fear. I sit on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Russia’s malign activities on this front are something we track closely, and for which the United States is well prepared. But it’s also important to remember that Russian interference was not a decisive factor in recent US elections. The American people decide their own future, and we’ll do everything in our power to ensure that remains true.

Former national security adviser of president Trump, H.R. McMaster, and economic advisor Gary Cohn stated in a 2017 op-ed that nations should prioritize their own interests over global alliances. Does this statement still resonate with you today? Alliances must be dedicated to some purpose—they are instruments to strategic ends, and so they are critical elements in any nation’s pursuit of its own interests. I look at the world today and I have no doubt about the purposes to which NATO, for example, remains dedicated.

In your view, what are the most important topics for the Munich Security Conference 2020 and what do you expect from it in order to be a successful conference? The most important topics for the 2020 Munich Security Conference are the nefarious intentions of our adversaries, Russia and China. Russia continues to bully, intimidate, and occupy its neighbors. Meanwhile, China seeks to build an international system antithetical to constitutional government, the rule of law, and market-based economics. Despite these threats, some allies continue to strike dangerous deals with China and Russia that risk betraying their safety and the safety of their allies. Conference attendees should discuss how we can prevent our transatlantic alliance from being infiltrated and divided by these hostile powers. How we respond to the threats posed by Nord Stream 2 and Huawei will be critical.

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© REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Since it became a world power around 1900, the United States has had one permanent strategic goal: to prevent a single power from controlling the whole of Eurasia. Interestingly, during the first half of the 20th century, the danger came from Europe. American grand strategy came into its own when the US acted to prevent European powers from annexing China. Brooks Adams, a grandson of US President John Quincy Adams, warned at the time: “Were the Russians and Germans to coalesce to dominate Northern China, and were the country to be administered by Germans with German funds, a strain of a very serious nature might be put upon America.” Later, that same America allied itself with the Soviet Union to prevent Nazi Germany from controlling Ukraine, the Caucasus and, ultimately, India.

For most of the second half of the 20th century, the danger was Russia. Predictably, the US built up Europe and China as bulwarks against the Soviet Union. Now, in the 21st century, the circle is closing. This time, the danger is China. One might have expected the US to use Europe, Russia and India to balance China’s ambitions. But so far the iron logic of the process has been obscured by American triumphalism, itself a predictable consequence of the victory in the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, which bred the hope that the whole world might be unified under US leadership.

With the Belt and Road Initiative, China has placed the Eurasian question front and center of every geopolitical discussion. In its essence, the initiative is a plan to extend Chinese influence and power over the whole of Eurasia, obtaining access to energy sources from Russia and the Middle East, technology from Europe and large markets in Europe, India and Southeast Asia. Were the Belt and Road Initiative to achieve all its goals, the United States would become an island on the shores of Eurasia—still very prosperous and protected from direct interference in its affairs, but peripheral and absent from all global questions. It would become the blockaded party.

Faced with this nightmare scenario, the US has reacted on a number of fronts. The main one is the ongoing trade and technology wars. Washington has dealt a severe blow to China’s most successful global company. Running Huawei out of markets and suppliers may well doom the company’s ambitious plans. The US has also adopted wide-ranging tariffs against Chinese imports.

A Cold War Model

For a while, it seemed that, in its negotiations with China, the US meant to impose a number of onerous conditions on Chinese economic growth and technological development, preserving American primacy in these critical areas. But recent reports paint a different picture. When negotiations failed in May, the main difficulty turned out to have been Washington’s attempt to force Beijing into making fundamental changes to its economic constitution. It was trying to bring it closer to a liberal, Western model and get these changes carved into its domestic laws. There are two ways the US could think about the trade war with China: to limit or constrain Chinese economic power—and keeping the new tariffs in place might achieve this—or to convert China to a Western economic model. It seems that the Trump administration—but arguably not Trump himself, who regards ideological missions with scorn—chose the latter.

Ultimately, decision-makers in the US will have to ask themselves how this can be achieved. Does the Cold War model offer a solution? Can one imagine a scenario where the Chinese economy would not only slow down but effectively deindustrialize and enter a protracted technological winter? And would one then expect the country to fragment politically as the Soviet Union did? These are fanciful projections. If the United States is to adopt a strategy of maximum pressure against Beijing, it needs to have maximum clarity about the endgame.Does it expect China to change, perhaps after the collapse of the Communist Party? Surely, more modest experiments in regime change have failed dramatically, which would suggest some caution on this matter. If, by contrast, the goal is to decouple from China and create two separate economic spheres in the hope that the Chinese economy will quickly fold when left to its own devices, two questions must first be answered.

The first is about the extent of economic damage that such a strategy would inflict on the world economy. Many of the economic gains from globalization in the last few decades resulted from the creation of intricate global value chains. These gains would evaporate if value chains were to be repatriated. The process might well be highly disordered. It might also be conflictual, as both sides would blame the other for the economic pain being inflicted. Which takes us to a second question: can the two economic giants decouple their economies without heading towards conflict?
Most commentators will easily see where the logic of these questions leads us. If the United States ever finds itself in a new Cold War, this time with China as its global foe, it must be aware that it will not be facing the ghost of the Soviet Union but an immeasurably more obdurate and resourceful power.

Push Europe

So let us return to the nightmare scenario and see how it can best be avoided. The unification of the whole of Eurasia under a single power is so far from inevitable that it has in fact never been achieved. Consider the sheer diversity of political models now existing side by side across the supercontinent, the imperial traditions of many of the major powers in Eurasia, and the gradual spread of technology and economic growth to all its corners. These are critical factors suggesting that Eurasian political integration remains unlikely—economic integration is a different matter—and therefore there is no immediate need for Washington to renew its plans of a Eurasia whole and free, united according to a liberal, Western model and under American leadership.

The main counterargument can be answered with a creative reconstruction of the classical concept of balance of power. The US cannot be satisfied with a passive understanding of the concept. Balance of power rarely if ever comes about naturally. If we take the current distribution of power in Eurasia, there is reasonable cause to doubt that the balance will be naturally maintained. Combining economic and military power, China remains unmatched by either the European Union or Russia. The former is an economic superpower but a political and military minion. The latter is no rival to China on the economic plane. India and Japan remain too inward looking to be decisive factors in the Eurasian game.

When it comes to Europe, the strategy seems clear. It is one of the areas where the Trump administration has made progress. The United States was of course instrumental in rebuilding the European economy and prompting European nations to build the common institutions that have placed it on a stable footing. The task now is much more complicated because pushing Europe to become a major global political and military power will involve some brinkmanship. It may well be the case that Europeans will not move farther in this direction unless faced with a major crisis. And the US will have to sacrifice some of its immediate interests: the European Union will not create a common defense and security policy without diminishing the inordinate weight of the American defense industry in Europe in the process.

Find a Place for Russia

Russia poses a much more delicate question. The country has been moving decisively away from the West, and tensions with the US are now at the highest level since the end of the Cold War. Any rapprochement would have to come from the Kremlin, and that will not happen, at least not while Vladimir Putin is in charge. At the same time, the US risks bringing about an informal alliance between China and Russia. If the approach in Washington is to lump them together as the two major threats to the existing global order, they will act accordingly. Even if naturally inclined to develop as independent powers, China and Russia may well feel that the time for disagreements will have to wait while the task at hand is to overturn American hegemony. How does one square the circle? How can the US keep its distance from Russia’s geopolitical ambitions while simultaneously preventing a Eurasian entente between its two great rivals?

Within the confines of American power, the puzzle cannot be solved, but some possibilities open up if we enlarge the sphere to the full Eurasian chessboard. Every measure the US might adopt to strengthen Russia as an independent pole in Eurasia could be used by the Kremlin against its unwitting benefactor, but that should not be a reason to keep Russia isolated. The United States may feel that Putin’s Russia is an abomination. It may want to limit its engagement with the Kremlin. But it should not close Russia’s door to the West, to Europe and Turkey, leaving it entirely dependent on China. The goal is to find a place for Russia in the Eurasian balance of power—an independent pole between Europe and Asia—while preserving the ability to keep it in check and, when necessary, force it to respect that balance.

As for India and Japan, the strategic goal should be clear: to allow the two countries to grow more confident and outward looking, capable of marshaling their abundant resources to play an active global role. And why should the US fear or regret such an outcome? To keep them inside its chain of command, useful only when acting under US leadership, is profoundly self-defeating from the point of view of long-term American interests. Only as fully sovereign and autonomous actors can India and Japan contribute to a lasting balance of power in Eurasia.

The World as Literature

Were all these steps to be adopted and a coherent strategy developed, the United States would slowly emerge as a great balancer. Its role would remind one of the role played by Great Britain in 19th-century Europe: with one foot in the continent and the other one outside, perpetually balancing every European power against each other, determined to avoid a future where Europe fell under the domination of a single power. Its strategists knew that Great Britain would remain more powerful than each of the individual European states, but inferior to their combined strength.
The US must become in relation to the Eurasian supercontinent what Great Britain was in relation to Europe, but with a number of important revisions. First, the new version of Britain’s splendid isolation—the ability to influence the Eurasian chessboard while remaining sheltered from its affairs—will not come naturally, or in a fit of absentmindedness. The US will not be able to rely on its insular geography and control of the seas. Borders are more diffuse, and technology has eliminated distance to a great extent, so a form of forward deployment has become necessary, if only to preempt terrorist threats and face cyberattacks and nuclear-armed rogue states.

Second, the US does not have a ready-made world of competing great powers at its disposal. The trend is to return to such a world—the building blocks are available—but some construction work is still necessary. More than a great balancer, America must become a great creator. China has to be cut down to size—a hard-edged negotiation on the terms of trade and the temporary imposition of tariffs may well prove necessary—and other pieces must be built up if an equilibrium is to be the final product. But is this such a great transformation in terms of general psychology? The United States already regards the future of the world order as a great narrative whose main plot lines are written in Washington. What I am advocating is to replace the epic with the novel: world history is not coming to an end, and it does not follow a single line of development. It is open-ended and polyphonic. It contains multitudes. Every character and way of life can find its place in the great narrative.

The chief characteristic of the modern novel is the plurality of consciousnesses, with equal rights and each with its own perspective, the organized coexistence and interaction of spiritual diversity, not stages in the evolution of a unified spirit. The narrator should not pick sides, and that is why the narrator and not the characters are ultimately in control. For America, the age of nation building is over. The age of world building has begun.

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© REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/Pool

Let’s begin by looking at the bigger picture: who is in charge of foreign policy in the United States, and is there a development that worries you the most? Donald Trump very much drives American foreign policy. The US president is outside of both the Republican or Democratic party’s foreign policy communities. Europeans and others have tried to find other interlocutors on specific issues, but the big decisions ultimately reflect Donald Trump and his incredibly disruptive world view. What is interesting to me about him is that there has not been a single mistake as significant as the Iraq War or a single development as damaging as the financial crisis. Yet the very fact of Trump’s election and the nature of his presidency have profoundly shaken the ability of the US to play the role that it had over the last seventy-plus years. Other nations and their citizens simply do not have the same confidence in America as they had before.

And with regard to your concerns? What worries me is the absence of a US commitment to the international order. There is no other nation that can replace this void. I would argue that there was always going to be an evolution of that international order, and Barack Obama in many ways helped drive it. But this was supposed to play out over the next 20 or 30 years, as China emerged, as Europe balanced its relationship with the US against its own diverging interests, and as other nations of the Global South came forward. Instead we see these changes now playing out within two or three years. That is potentially very destabilizing. Ultimately, Trump’s abandonment of the international order puts us back into pre-World War I geopolitics.

Meaning that everything is merely a test of strength? Yes. Foreign policy is no longer informed by values. Trade interests are pursued through tariff wars, and strategic interests are pursued through alliances of political convenience rather than alliances based on shared democratic values and long-term interests. The international order can survive four years of Trump, even if it is never going to be quite the same. But eight years of Trump would completely upend everything from US alliances to international institutions. So, I think whether this a four-year aberration or an eight-year change of direction matters a lot. I also worry that a lot of the negative consequences of what Trump is doing around the world are not immediately apparent. In foreign policy and in global economic policy it takes some time for negative consequences to sink in. I worry that the bill for Trump’s actions is going to come due after he leaves office. Or in his second term, if he gets reelected.

Trump has always been hostile to alliances. Yes, indeed. He never felt that the US should essentially “pay” into an international system of rules, agreements, and institutions. That should not surprise people. For decades, he has been consistent in his hostility to alliances and the US-led international order. His only vision as to what replaces that is the US acting belligerently in its own business interests.

Doesn’t every US president have an element of domestic politics that informs his foreign policy? True, but I’ve never seen a president so clearly having domestic politics front and center in his foreign policy decision-making. The movement of the Embassy to Jerusalem, leaving the Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA), the recklessness with which he pursues these trade wars—I think a lot of this is based on where he sees political interest at home or interest of his political base. That is quite disruptive to US foreign policy because you need to be able to make and keep long-term commitments. If we are shifting like a weather vane based on which constituency is loudest in the current moment, the already difficult task of maintaining consistency in US foreign policy is going to basically become impossible.

Simply being anti-Trump is not a viable option for states or governments. What would you recommend to the European Union: more or less opposition, more cooperation or less—or just patiently waiting for a quick ending of his presidency? Throughout the first two years of the Trump administration, we have basically seen Europeans try all the different approaches available to them. You had Chancellor Angela Merkel essentially writing off Trump from the beginning, you had French President Emmanuel Macron trying the all-out charm offensive, making friends with Trump, you had British Prime Minister Theresa May veer between reaching out to Trump and having to stand up to him when he would insult London and the United Kingdom. All those approaches led to the same result; none of them was any better than the other. And that gets at the point that Trump really does have a world view or orientation, one that I think is hostile to Europe and hostile to alliances.

Having a personal relationship with him or not did not really change that. No. The end-result remained the same: Trump ended up being in direct conflict with each and every one of those leaders and continued his adversarial posture toward Europe. So how do you deal with that? I do think Europe has to figure out the means to an independent foreign policy while also standing up to Trump on certain issues. Not every issue, but those issues that are particularly important. The JCPOA is an interesting example. Can Europe keep the Iranians from taking a provocative step in the nuclear program while also taking a stand against the enforcement of US sanctions, thereby demonstrating that there are issues on which Europe can have a position that differs from a significant geo-strategic US decision?

What are your thoughts about a common European defense force? Contrary to what Trump says, these debates are constructive. Even with a normal US administration, there are going to be certain issues that are of greater interest to Europe than to other NATO member states, and Europe having its own military capacity I think is wise. There is no reason for Europe not to have that capacity if the US military carries out all kinds of missions beyond NATO. I also like the fact that Europe is, in some respects, taking a firmer stance on human rights issues. The Saudi case being the most recent example, but given the absence of an American voice on democracy and human rights in the world, it is actually very important that Europe steps up to that role of being the global spokesperson.

That’s not an easy task for Europe. Of course not, but worthwhile in a world in which China is seeking to press an alternative, authoritarian model. I do not think that Europe should try to break with the United States wholesale. Europe should hold out the possibility that this is a profound aberration in American politics and that there could be a different kind of president in two years. But over time, it is somewhat inevitable that Europe will need at least a slightly more independent set of policies. So now Europe needs to ask itself: what are those issues where we really do differ from Trump. What would it look like if we not so much opposed the US, but formulated European approaches? I recognize that this is difficult, as Europe itself is under a lot of strain, but I still think it is worth doing.

Many commentators say that Trump has only continued what Obama had started. Meaning a new conception of US foreign politics, which no longer sees its role as the world’s policeman, withdraws from the Middle East etc. How do you respond to that? I have heard that a fair amount, particularly in Europe—and I think it is kind of crazy. I do understand the premise though. Obama and Trump made similar criticisms of aspects of US foreign policy: they both criticized open-ended, extensive wars in the Middle East and they both talked about the need for greater burden-sharing, for example the two-percent defense spending goal in NATO. They diagnosed some similar challenges, but their treatments are diametrically opposed. Obama’s answer is yes, the US cannot do all these things alone, and we got over-extended after 9/11 with the Iraq War. So, now we have to channel US influence into new agreements, new global accords, new trade agreements. The world order that Obama sought was manifest most clearly in the Paris climate agreement, the TPP trade agreement, and the Iran Nuclear Deal. He used US influence to build new coalitions to solve new problems.
And Trump? His is the absolute opposite approach. If Obama’s approach was to channel American influence into new modes of international cooperation, Trump’s approach is to withdraw entirely from international agreements, abandon everything—not only Obama’s agreements, but long-standing treaties as well—and turn each foreign policy issue into a bilateral test of strength. I think it is true that they both spoke to a certain frustration with post-9/11 US foreign policy, but the answers they came up with are radically different. I think we underappreciated the extent to which it appeared like we were pivoting away from Europe and toward Asia. In our minds, we only talked about pivoting out of the wars in the Middle East, but I think we sent an unintended message.

What are your thoughts on the role of Chancellor Merkel and her role for the West? Do you think she will be replaced easily, or will things fall apart after she leaves office? Only recently, I was talking to Obama about Merkel. One reason why they got along so well was personal chemistry and history. Yet the important point about her is that she was one of the rare leaders in our time who was willing to do things that were either politically difficult or politically dissident and not advantageous to her, if she felt like a core Western principle was at stake. This was not only the case with the refugee crisis, but also with the eurozone crisis. Even if she did not do as much on Greece as Obama would have wanted at certain times, she did enough, despite encountering resistance domestically and on the European level. We have seen her do this in a number of different circumstances. The Russia sanctions following the Crimean crisis were not an easy step for her to take either, but she wanted to send a clear signal that there need to be consequences for the invasion of the Ukraine. If you look at these decisions on refugees, Russia, the eurozone, and other EU issues, you see her being a leader who understands her role first and foremost as Chancellor of Germany, but also as someone who needs to take difficult stances in defense of issues and principles important to the future of the West.

So, losing that will be difficult? Yes, it will. Equally, the reason many Germans are ready to move on, her very long time in office, is of incredible importance to the West, as it means she has enormous institutional memory. She has seen it all, and a lot of these issues that are in the world today, from migration to European integration to terrorism, have developed during the more than a decade that she has been around. Losing the Western leader with the deepest institutional memory is a significant blow. You will not be able to replace that quickly and you do need a German chancellor, whoever it is, who is at least inclined to see part of their job as defending Europe and European values. That does not mean we need a second Angela Merkel, but I do hope that the next German chancellor is someone committed to being a European leader and shepherding the EU through this difficult moment. I recognize that as Americans who did not manage to do that, we do not get to choose here.

What about other leaders? It’s heartening to have somebody in Macron who, more so than his predecessor François Hollande, sees part of his role in energizing the EU and pushing back on right-wing nationalism. You also have a charismatic leader in Justin Trudeau who can speak on democratic values with more experience on the world stage than he had a few years ago. And you have some other people invested in making the case for liberalism on the world stage. Still, Merkel will leave a big vacuum, which puts even more focus on the outcome of the next US presidential election and Brexit. If she indeed sees out her fourth term and we get what I would hope to be a better result in the next presidential election, she may have helped create a bridge over the Trump years in a way that is interesting. I say that recognizing that America will not get back its credibility overnight, but the timing may prove to be interesting nevertheless.

Do you know whether President Obama and Chancellor Merkel are still in contact and do you have an anecdote from the two of them? Occasionally, they are in contact. He calls her. He reached out to her on her birthday and called her after her election. His constant refrain is to be supportive of her and what she is doing, to offer any help he can, in any way, and just stay in touch. While also respecting that she is currently dealing with Trump and does not really have to have a very high-profile relationship with Barack Obama right now. It has been a quiet, but ongoing relationship.

The interview was conducted by Martin Bialecki.

The post “Trump Is Hostile to Europe” appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Jason Reed

Former President Bill Clinton once said, “Follow the trend lines, not the headlines.” But as Donald Trump and a raft of more than ten Democratic presidential candidates think about US foreign policy with 2020 in mind, even trend lines don’t command the power they once held. The United States has fallen into the “arc of history” trap—following the trend line—at least four times in the past thirty years, each time exposing strategic weaknesses in US foreign policy.

The first miscalculation was that the fall of the Berlin Wall and Soviet communism would easily lead to the victory of liberal, free-market democracy over all competing ideologies.  A second was that “Europe”—and particularly the broadened core of Europe within an enlarging EU and NATO—would effectively cease to be a geo-strategic theater of international politics. The third—articulated in 2008 by Barack Obama in Berlin and his subsequent administration—was that the ugliness of the Bush administration with its unilateralism, norms-breaking, vengefulness, corruption, feckless management, jingoism, and penchant for violence, was a deviation from the true character of American moral leadership. The final—heralded particularly at the onset of the 2011 Arab Spring—was to see the spread of technology as an unqualified global good paving the way for democracy, freedom and dynamic civil society.

Addressing—and in some ways correcting for—these four interrelated traps will define the US foreign policy debate in 2020 and beyond. No candidate can ignore these four hubristic blind spots. The outcome of this reimagination could be a foreign policy that is more sober, reflective, and circumspect in its ambition. It could also be more imaginative.

No Status Quo Ante

The folly of 1990s triumphalism has been widely derided, but foreign policy in the United States is only now beginning to change. It has become difficult to lean on the platitudes of post-Cold War foreign policy. The Iraq War and 2008 financial crisis dealt twin blows to the unreflective global acceptance of US leadership and the power of American ideals. China’s rise, Russia’s aggression, and Trump’s election have hastened it. As Trump has shown through his withdrawal from the TPP, Paris Climate Accord, the JPCOA with Iran, and UNESCO, agreements with the US will from now on always have a built-in sunset clause lasting the term of an administration. That is a staggering limitation on the credibility of the country that had been the international system’s underwriter since Harry Truman.

In 2020 and beyond, US foreign policy will have to engage and prepare for a world without unquestioned US hegemony. The potential for conflict is rising as great powers and aspirants jockey to fill vacuums. The December 2017 National Security Strategy recognized as much: “After being dismissed as a phenomenon of an earlier century, great power competition returned.” The strategy frames US foreign policy in terms of great power rivalry with China and Russia wielding above-board and below-the-belt instruments to expand their spheres of influence.

US foreign policy has been at once jolted from its complacency and made aware of its limitations. At least in some areas, this could lead to the US becoming a more mature great power. Progressives and mainstream Republicans recognize the need to shore up alliances, institutions, and vehicles of US influence in the international system—albeit clipped by an awareness of the dent in credibility caused by the Trump administration.

This has also created space for creative thinking about policy areas that were once sacred tenants of the liberal order, like free trade and the unencumbered flow of capital. Having cast off slavish adherence to the divinity of open markets, Trump—and any progressives that follow—will feel freer to deploy geo-economic instruments to shape foreign policy. The Trump administration is making maximal usage of the $20 trillion US economy as a cudgel against US rivals—attempting to quarantine Iran through sanctions against the wishes of the other P5+1 JCPOA signatories; levying more than a quarter trillion dollars of tariffs on China; and hanging sanctions and visa bans on hundreds of Kremlin-linked Russians.

Both progressives and Trump adherents will continue to reach for these tools and emphasize their effectiveness against the backdrop of a continuing distaste for military intervention abroad. In fact, 2020 could well see consensus across the political spectrum about the reluctance to use force. Trump has attacked the Iraqi, Libyan, and Afghan wars, as have many leading potential Democratic challengers (with Joe Biden the major exception). Whatever the case, the US could end up in a position where the challenges are more acutely felt and the instruments at its disposal more limited.

No Happily Ever Afters

The grand illusion that Europe would cease to play a role in US foreign policy and domestic politics has also been blown apart. Russia’s Ukraine invasion and the flows of migrants from Syria have brought Europe back to the fore as an active theater for US foreign, security, and to some extent, domestic policy.

On the Republican side, positions on Russia are sticky. The Republican party has long been driven by Russia hawks, led principally by John McCain, who seethed as the early Obama-era reset brought pragmatic nodes of cooperation like New START, supply transport to Afghanistan, and Russian WTO accession. Trump’s own officials, aided by Republicans in Congress, have worked to fortify US power in Europe and elsewhere, strengthening the interior NATO frontline, considering permanent basing in Poland, providing lethal assistance to Ukraine, and naming a Special Envoy to Ukraine negotiations.

But that is slowly changing. More and more, the Trump-allied GOP is broaching the idea of a new openness to the model of Putin’s Russia. Kissinger-style realists are congregating around Trump along with Rand Paul-style isolationists and anti-gay evangelicals like Franklin Graham to form a powerful coalition of Putin admirers within the GOP.

On the other side, Democrats have become decidedly more hawkish. It began with Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and Syria, which hardened progressive foreign policy establishment somewhat, even though Obama still winced at the idea of supplying Georgia-war levels of assistance and lethal weapons to Kyiv. Russia’s 2016 assault on the US election then galvanized Democrats and made Russia a domestic issue to a level that makes rapprochement with Putin impossible.

Behind the rhetoric, there remains a great deal of consensus in US transatlantic policy. The building blocks will remain the same. Concerns about defense spending, trade imbalances, and energy dependence remain high in both parties in Congress and even with the Trump administration. These positions are unlikely to change. But the school of thought underpinning US grand strategy is in line for a massive electoral overhaul.

Who Is Doing the Rigging?

Even as American defenders of the liberal order woke up to the threats from the East and South, Trump has also unmasked threats from within. Obama’s promise that he could transcend the divisiveness both at home and abroad was built on the assumption that the Bush administration was a departure from a wide American liberal consensus of normative leadership, faith in alliances, institutions, and global trust. Of course, the presidency of George W. Bush was not an apparition. Neither is President Trump, who has reinforced several of the core elements of the first Bush administration while adding elements of unpredictability and ethno-nationalism.

By 2020, the wheel will have turned. There is no intellectual consensus on the ideals underpinning the US role in the world. Trump came into office promising to unshackle the country from a rigged system based on pluralism, nondiscrimination, immigration, open trade, an institution- and rules-based international community, and norms built on trust. At the heart of this is a searing critique of Enlightenment Europe with the EU and NATO at its core. As Trump stated in Warsaw in July 2017: “The danger is invisible to some but familiar to the Poles: the steady creep of government bureaucracy that drains the vitality and wealth of the people.” The Bannonist wing of Trump’s coalition will seek to validate this vision at the 2020 polls. If successful, a second Trump administration could revisit a broad range of multilateral arrangements the president considers constraining, including NATO, America’s partnership with the EU, and even membership in the WTO and UN.

Just as Trump is articulating his vision of technocratic globalism and its dangers, 2020 progressives have found a new organizing principle in the fight against kleptocratic authoritarianism. For progressives, US foreign policy will have to draw on new lines of political philosophy that are rooted domestically. These include the fight against corruption and concentration of power and wealth, particularly in big finance, big oil, and big tech. With Trump and Putin both squarely in the crosshairs, Bernie Sanders outlined his unified theory of the global plutocratic sucking sound in a Guardian article in September 2018. He believes there is an “international authoritarian axis” with connections between “unaccountable government power” and “unaccountable corporate power” that reaches across borders and sectors. Progressives increasingly see this clutch of corrupt oligarchs—aided by political clients—as the force that demolishes the rule of law in the pursuit of shameless extraction of wealth, destructive climate policies, monopolistic control of information flow, unfair trade, election manipulation, and a narrower space for democratic action.

In some ways, the narratives behind both paradigms—the fight against globalism and the fight against kleptocracy—have a similar ring. Both feature an unaccountable elite riding roughshod over the will of citizens. Both contain transnational overtones pointing to a world-wide phenomenon that must be confronted both at home and abroad. But only the latter is compatible with the liberal world order.

The Deep Digital Age

Finally, there is technology. The squabbling travails of today’s foreign policy might look quaint when compared to the challenges from artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing, and block chain ledgers. If algorithms are ideologies, as Lawrence Lessig and others have argued, then creating the structures in which they develop could be the most important challenge both for relations within states and between states. The understanding that the rise of technology is the driving political, ethical, economic and security factor of our day has been particularly slow to work its way into the American strategic discourse.

The lesson of the hacks against the Democratic National Committee  by FancyBear is that tech can be a wormhole for instability and subterfuge. Political progressives, mainstream conservatives, and US social media platforms are aware of this threat vector and have worked to patch vulnerabilities in the information space. The American left has painfully experienced how open elections are vulnerable to manipulation through hacking, fake news, deep fakes, and other hybrid tools. Both Democrats and non-Trumpist Republicans have attempted to build in consequences for future attempts to undermine the legitimacy of elections in the form of sanctions, asset freezes, and visa bans.

But the myopic focus on social media, fake news, and election meddling ignores other potential effects of technology on American foreign policy. Automation is a source of populist anger globally and potentially as destabilizing as immigration and trade. Cyber threats are increasingly defined not only by data theft and manipulation but by physical harm, as autonomous vehicles and connected homes, appliances, even clothing join critical infrastructure as a vector of attack.

And then there’s artificial intelligence. The AI race between the US and China is accelerating—and not solely for its commercial applications. In fact, AI technology has the potential to have the same effect on relations within states that nuclear weapons had on relations between states. Machine learning voice and visual recognition and omnipresent information analysis could perpetualize authoritarian governing systems like that in China. Neither Republicans or Democrats have begun to rethink a world order where AI-infused predictive policing, communication analysis and wall-to-wall surveillance would make a Tiananmen Square-style uprising almost unthinkable.

Nothing Is Inevitable

The intellectual energy of foreign policy thinkers on both right and left has delivered stinging rebukes to the pristine niceties of the post-Cold War era. Yale historian Timothy Snyder calls those who propagate those platitudes a class of “inevitability politicians” who allow a vague sense of righteousness to anesthetize their followers into inaction. Those day are over. But if the rise of populism, revisionist powers—including the United States—and technology are rendering the old order unfit, we must ask ourselves: are we present at the new creation? All indications point to yes, even if American progressives, stewards of the establishment, and Trump-style reactionaries have yet to fully grapple with the singularity of this moment.

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© REUTERS/Neil Hall

Readers of the German magazine Der Spiegel were greeted last week by a startling image on the front cover – a cartoon showing Donald Trump holding the severed head of the Statue of Liberty. The allusion was clear, likening the chaos caused by Trump to the chaos caused by the so-called Islamic State (IS), whose beheading videos have spread across the internet like a virus.

The cover caused a great deal of consternation, both within Germany and in the United States, even among those opposed to Trump. The new US president is not a terrorist, and to compare his deeds to that of a member of IS would be grotesque. But to interpret the cartoon so literally misses the point: in a very real way, President Trump is bringing to fruition the goal that Islamic terrorists have been working for, whether he realizes it or not.

A Clash of Civilizations

It took a long time to get here. It was on September 11, 2001 that many in the West first learned of the aims of Islamic terrorism, at that time personified by Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.

President George W. Bush offered Americans the vague explanation that they had been attacked because the terrorists “hate our freedoms.” Experts, however, offered a more detailed explanation: On a practical level, the attacks were meant to drive the US and its allied secular Middle East regimes out of the Islamic world. But on a wider level, the aim was to provoke a “clash of civilizations” between Islam and the West, resulting in a great confrontation.

But the Bush administration did not give in to the provocation, at least not in that language. Islam was not the enemy, President Bush repeatedly stressed. Although the Bush administration used the 9/11 attack as justification for the invasion of Iraq, which ended up furthering the aims of Islamist radicals in the Middle East, the conflict never looked like a clash of civilizations.

The Language of War

Flash forward 15 years, and it appears bin Laden has at long last gotten his wish. After a brutal decade of low-scale terrorist attacks and the rise of IS, the new US administration has embraced not only the language, but also the policies that bin Laden hoped to provoke the Bush administration into pursuing so many years ago.

The most prominent such policy is the so-called “Muslim ban,” Trump’s hastily executed order to ban people from seven countries in the Middle East and North Africa. The specifics of the ban, and the reasoning behind the selection of these seven countries, are still nebulous. But the message behind it is crystal clear: Muslims are inherently dangerous.

Many have called the ban a “gift to IS.” The group, as with Al-Qaeda before it, has long sought to convince Muslims around the world that Western governments hate them. The words of the Bush and Obama administrations seemed to run contrary to that message. Now, Trump is verifying the IS claim.

Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei couldn’t resist tweeting this week, “We appreciate Trump! Because he largely did the job for us in revealing the true face of America.”

A Cabal of Provocation

It isn’t only the Muslim ban. The views expressed by Trump’s cabinet have been heard clearly throughout the Muslim world.

Last year Mike Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser, tweeted: “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.” He told his followers to forward a video arguing that Islam is not a religion but a cult which is intent on the destruction of the West.

Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, has run articles on his Breitbart website for years demonizing Islam and warning of an impending clash of civilizations. In 2014 he told an interviewer that “the Judeo-Christian West” is “in the very beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict…an outright war against jihadist Islamic fascism.”

The list of this type of language from the new US administration goes on and on, as exhaustively compiled by Politico late last year.

And the comments continue to be echoed by Europe’s rising far right, possibly poised for victories in upcoming elections in France and the Netherlands.

Europe to Follow?

Marine Le Pen, who could become the French president in May’s election, has said she wants to enact a Trump-style Muslim ban in France that goes even further. Geert Wilders, whose Freedom Party could win the highest number of votes in the Dutch election next month, has declared the Koran a “fascist book”. “Islam wants to destroy us, and I want to prevent it,” he has told Dutch voters.

Europe is now at a crossroads. It can follow Trump’s path of provocation, which seems to be leading to the “clash of civilizations” so desired by Islamic terrorists. Or, Europeans can choose to rebuke those who see no future for peace between the world’s major religions.

Despite the message that Islamic extremists have been trying to send, the majority of the world’s 1.7 billion Muslims do not see the West as an irreconcilable enemy. Trump’s actions may change how those unconvinced people see the US. But if voters in Germany, France, and the Netherlands reject the ideology of conflict in the coming months, they may not see Europeans in the same light.

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© REUTERS/Jim Young

Foreign policy issues usually play a subordinate role in the US primaries, and in 2016, topics like immigration, criminal justice, terrorism, income distribution, education, climate change, and health care have so far dominated the debates between the candidates. But the nearer the Democratic and Republican National Conventions draw, the more the would-be presidential candidates are scrutinized for their foreign policy expertise – or lack thereof.

Hillary Clinton is often regarded as the presidential candidate with the most foreign policy experience. She can easily comment on policy issues in the Middle East, East Asia, or Europe like no other candidate, and as former Secretary of State she maintains extensive networks in Washington institutions and think tanks. She recently used this home-field advantage to expose the lack of support among foreign policy experts for her Democratic rival, self-declared “democratic socialist” Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. But to what extent would such an approach help Clinton in a direct contest with Donald Trump? Recently, Trump was sharply criticized by Republican foreign policy experts – but it has yet to have a harmful effect on his campaign.

Opposition to the Iraq War

For some time now, it has seemed that Clinton’s foreign policy expertise would not be an advantage to her candidacy. In fact, Sanders regularly criticizes her for supporting the Iraq invasion during her time as senator. Having voted against the war himself, Sanders argues that, in contrast to Clinton, he “got it right” when it came to the most important foreign policy issue of our time. In addition, Sanders regularly calls attention to Clinton’s role in the Libya intervention, which is widely held as one of the great missteps of the Obama Administration.

Sanders thus presents himself as the candidate who has always shown proper judgment on crucial foreign policy issues – the candidate who will eschew foreign policy entanglements with uncertain outcomes if elected president. Indeed, there are significant foreign policy differences between the Democratic candidates. While Clinton argues for a more pro-active US role in Syria – by establishing no-fly zones, for example – Sanders advocates more restraint in the use of American force. And while it is unlikely that Clinton will shrink the US military, Sanders advocates further cuts in defense spending in favor of “nation-building at home.”

However, when Sanders demanded that “we move as aggressively as we can to normalize relations with Iran” and advocated cooperation with Tehran, Riyadh, and Moscow in the fight against the so-called Islamic State, foreign policy experts close to Clinton questioned Sanders’ qualifications for the position of commander-in-chief. In an open letter, they warned that Sanders would jeopardize national security, while Clinton herself added that “there really isn’t any kind of foreign policy network that is supporting and advising Senator Sanders.” Indeed, as Politico pointed out, until recently Sanders has been unable to win over influential foreign policy experts for his team. And the closer Clinton comes to the nomination, the less inclined experts are to openly side with Sanders.

“Wildly Inconsistent”

On the Republican side, frontrunner Donald Trump often refers to his good judgment and confidently claims that he has a better understanding of foreign policy than his competitors. As part of this approach, he recently claimed to have vehemently criticized the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – though the accuracy of this claim is questionable. Trump advocates a more isolationist foreign policy, opposes free trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP), and demands compensation from allies like Japan and South Korea for US security guarantees. Aside from a former intelligence chief, Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who argues in favor of close cooperation with Russia, Trump noticeably lacks prominent foreign policy advisors. Among his supporters, Trump’s “unorthodox” ideas – including his trademark policy of building a wall along the US-Mexican border and making “the Mexicans pay for it” – reinforce the impression that the real estate tycoon openly challenges the mindset of the Republican establishment.

In early March, more than a hundred conservative foreign policy experts signed their names to an open letter warning against a Trump nomination. Trump’s foreign policy vision, they claim, is “wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle,” and his advocacy for trade wars is “a recipe for economic disaster.” International conflicts can not be resolved “as a real estate deal might,” the letter taunted. In addition, former CIA Director Michael Hayden warned that it is unlikely that US commanders would follow Trump’s orders should he try to implement his ideas on torturing terror suspects or killing their next-of-kin – practices that are clearly in violation of international law. So intense is the dislike of the Republican frontrunner in some branches of his own party that a number of conservatives have already stated that they would rather vote for Clinton. It remains to be seen if this harsh criticism could help stop Trump’s triumph.

An Unpleasant Rival

In a contest between Trump and Clinton, foreign policy is likely to become a fascinating subject, fed by the candidates’ mutually exclusive visions. Clinton asserts that Trump would pose a real threat to national security. “Our commander-in-chief has to be able to defend our country, not embarrass it,” Clinton told followers on March 15. “When he embraces torture, that doesn’t make him strong, it makes him wrong.” The risk is that Trump will continue to frame himself as the anti-establishment candidate who, unlike Clinton, deliberately ignores Washington elites and their alleged “expertise.” If he succeeds in doing so, Trump will pose more of a threat to the Clinton campaign than Bernie Sanders ever did.

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