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Abstract
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 sent shock waves across political classes globally and prompted debates about whether his ‘America first’ agenda threatened the liberal international order. During his first year in office, Trump seemed determined to undermine the hallmarks of the liberal international order: democracy, liberal economics and international cooperation. So, are we witnessing the emergence of a “post-liberal” and “post-American” era? Four sources of evidence help frame – if not answer – the question: history, the crisis of liberal democracy, Trump’s world view, and the power of civil society (globally and nationally) to constrain any US President. They yield three main judgements. First, continuity often trumps change in US foreign policy. Second, the liberal international order may have been more fragile pre-Trump than was widely realised. Third, American power must be put at the service of its own democracy if the US is to become the example to the world it used to be.
Notes
1 As of 30 October 2017, nearly a year after the 2016 US election, the highly influential New York Times website “The Upshot: Who Will be President?” was still listing its 8 November 2016 estimation that Clinton’s chances of winning were 85%. See https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-polls-forecast.html.
2 Quoted in CNN, “Trump Warns North Korea: US Military ‘Locked and Loaded’, 11 August 2017, http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/10/politics/trump-north-korea/index.html.
3 Remnick, “The Divider”, 28.
4 Acheson, Present at the Creation.
5 Alcaro, “Liberal Order and its Contestations”, 7.
6 Ikenberry, “Plot Against American Foreign Policy”, 3 (same reference for the next sentence).
7 Haas, A World in Disarray, xii. It should be noted that Haas advised Trump on foreign policy during the 2016 campaign and was even considered for an appointment in his administration, although Haas subsequently soundly criticised the administration for its unprofessional ‘ad-hoc-ery’ in making foreign policy. See Haberman, “Donald Trump Held Briefing with Haas”, Appelbaum, “Trump’s Foreign Policy ‘Adhocracy’”.
8 Waltz, Theory of International Politics.
9 Buzan, “The Level of Analysis Problem”, 214.
10 Wendt, “Anarchy is what states make of it”.
11 Moravcsik, “Liberal international relations theory”, 7.
12 Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations, 123-5.
13 Waltz, “Globalization and governance”.
14 Dannreuther and Peterson, Security Strategy and Transatlantic Relations.
15 Mead, Special Providence.
16 Ibid., 175.
17 Ibid., 54.
18 George W. Bush quoted in Khalaf, “Iraq’s difficult decade of democracy”.
19 UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw quoted in BBC News, “Iraq helped ‘Mid-East democracy’”.
20 Ikenberry et al., Crisis of American Foreign Policy.
21 Woodward, Bush at War, 42.
22 See Farber, What They Think of Us; Katzenstein and Keohane, Anti-Americanism in World Politics.
23 Sky, The Unravelling, 338.
24 Goldberg, “The Obama doctrine”.
25 Wight, “Why is there no International Theory?”, 123-5.
26 Ikenberry, “Plot against American foreign policy”, 3.
27 Garton Ash, Free World, 192.
28 Glasser, “Trump team blindsided by NATO speech”.
29 Quoted in Smale and Erlanger. “Merkel is looking past Trump”.
30 The Economist, “The world’s most powerful man”, 14 October 2017, 11.
31 Quoted in Phillips, “Xi Jinping hails ‘new era’”.
32 Nye, Soft Power.
33 One example amongst many is Osnos et al., “Trump, Putin and New Cold War”. See also Lucas, The New Cold War.
34 Far less so, of course, during the Cold War international order when the US interfered in multiple democratic elections.
35 Wright, All Measures Short of War, 765-72.
36 Quoted in Freedom House, Breaking Down Democracy, 35.
37 Huntington, The Third Wave.
38 Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017.
39 Quoted in Phillips, “Xi Jinping hails ‘new era’”.
40 Freedom House, Breaking Down Democracy, 4.
41 Sharma, Broken BRICs.
42 Peterson et al., “Multipolarity, multilateralism and leadership”, 52-4.
43 Alcaro, “The paradoxes of liberal order”, 210-1.
44 Clementi et al., “Making America grate again”.
45 The Trump administration continually blocked new appointments to the WTO dispute settlement body, its top arbiter of trade cases, in 2017 leading to concerns that the US was seeking a breakdown of the entire WTO system. The EU’s Trade Commissioner, Cecilia Malmström, accused the Trump administration of “killing the WTO from the inside”. See Brunsden and Beattie, “Trump risks killing WTO”.
46 Thrush and Harris, “Trump mulls exit from South Korea”.
47 Navarro and Autry, Death by China.
48 Paletta, “Internal White House documents allege”.
49 Porter, “Trump’s endgame could end global rules”.
50 “US policy and politics. America’s global role, superpower status”, Pew Research Center, 4 May 2016, http://www.people-press.org/2016/05/05/1-americas-global-role-u-s-superpower-status/1_4/.
51 Clementi et al., “Making America grate again”, 515.
52 Sanger and Haberman, “50 GOP officials warn Donald Trump”.
53 Mann, “The adults in the room”. As a caveat, by the end of 2017, it was widely reported that Trump was on the verge of firing Tillerson and replacing him with CIA chief Michael Pompeo.
54 McMaster and Cohn, “America first doesn’t mean America alone”.
55 Quoted in de Vogue. “Judge blocks Trump’s transgender military ban”.
56 Quoted in Gladstone, “Nuclear scientists urge Congress”.
57 Tomasky, “The resistance so far”, 42.
58 Alcaro, “Liberal order and its contestations”, 7.
59 Ikenberry, “Plot against American foreign policy”, 3.
60 Fukuyama, The End of History.
61 Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism, 974.