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ABSTRACT
No question encountered in the social sciences can be answered without appeal to some notion of the relative importance of structure versus agency. International relations (IR) appears to be entering an era of shifting global power as the world waits to see how Donald Trump’s ‘America first’ agenda plays out. Will the structure of the international system constrain Trump as a change agent? Or will the Trump administration’s agency lead to wrenching changes that threaten both the liberal international order and transatlantic alliance? This paper resorts to debates about structure v. agency in IR to argue that crossroads have been reached at 3 levels: the international system, transatlantic relations, and democratic politics. All are linked to one another in terms of outcomes, but it is perhaps the domestic level – where the negative externalities of globalization must be confronted – where changes are needed most urgently.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the editors and 3 anonymous reviewers for useful feedback, as well as to attendees at seminars where earlier drafts were presented at the University of Warwick, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of California (Berkeley).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Emphasis in original.
2. See https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21721413-far-saving-jobs-it-will-destroy-them-protecting-american-steel-imports (accessed 4 March 2018).
3. Expatica (France), 8 November 2017; https://www.expatica.com/fr/news/country-news/France-budget-defence_1530717.html (this link and all others cited were accessed 1–3 December 2017 except where noted).
4. See Politico (Europe edition), 28 June 2017; https://www.politico.eu/article/nato-jens-stoltenberg-spending-increase-non-us-by-4-3-percent-in-2017/.
5. Quoted in Politico (Europe edition), 9 November 2017; https://www.politico.eu/article/jens-stoltenberg-nato-allies-battle-for-spoils-of-big-spending/.
7. Quoted in Financial Times, 10 November 2017; https://www.ft.com/content/5afbd914-a2b2-11e7-8d56-98a09be71849.
8. Quoted in https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanielparishflannery/2017/11/30/have-nafta-talks-reached-a-breaking-point/#77383900276b.
9. See https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/02/us/politics/trump-tariffs-steel-aluminum.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news (accessed 3 March 2018).
10. Quoted in https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/03/us/politics/trump-european-cars-tariff-trade.html (accessed 4 March 2018).
11. Here I borrow from Mearsheimer’s contribution to a roundtable on ‘America First vs. the Legitimacy of the American International System?’ held 2 September 2017 at the annual conference of the American Political Science Association in San Francisco.
12. J. Webber and J.P. Rathbone, ‘US braced for migrant surge as region convulses’, Financial Times, 2 December 2017. It also mattered that Trump proposed to cut the State Department’s budget by 31 per cent, Tillerson announced cuts of 8 per cent to State’s officer corps and the number of (mostly young) people taking the US Foreign Service officer entry test fell by one-third in 2017. See New York Times, 27 November 2017.
16. T. Buck, ‘Schulz issues tough terms for Merkel alliance’, Financial Times, 2 December 2017.
17. Interview, Brussels, 27 April 2017.
18. Interview, European External Action Service, 27 April 2017.
19. Both issues featured prominently in Mogherini’s statement at a joint press conference with Tillerson on 5 December 2017. See https://www.politico.eu/article/rex-tillerson-federica-mogherini-visits-brussels-amid-doubts-about-his-future-and-his-boss/.