The White House on Dec. 5 released a 33-page document defining American national strategy. The document can be found here, and both friends and enemies of the Trump administration should read it, as it describes a fundamental shift in U.S. national strategy.
It consists of three main points:
- The United States wants close economic ties with China, as well as an end to military tensions, with both sides assuming defensive postures.
- Europe is responsible for its own defense and is now capable of defending itself.
- The primary strategic interest of the United States is the Western Hemisphere.
The foundation of this strategy is that the United States’ priority must be its own national interests, namely its security and economic well-being. Therefore, the United States must maintain its position as the most powerful military and economic force in the world, while measuring its actions in both dimensions against those that are in its national interest.
Perhaps the most important element in the document is that, whereas after World War II there was a fundamental ideological component to U.S. foreign policy, that ideological perspective is not present here. The Cold War was built around ideology, a confrontation between liberal democracy and communism. From this concept flowed a strategic principle that the fundamental threat to the United States was the spread of communism, and the fundamental interest of the U.S. was to limit the spread of communism. Therefore, the United States needed to strengthen the economies of non-communist nations as well as help defend them with military aid and sometimes even direct intervention. Since communism was a global threat, the United States was compelled to confront it – and its foundational nation, the Soviet Union – anywhere in the world.
In the new U.S. strategy, the issue of communism is no longer present as a defining principle. This shift is most clearly visible in the treatment of China, where the presence of communism is not a basis for continued hostility. It is also present in the matter of Europe. The defense of Europe against the Soviet Union was both a strategic interest for the United States and an ideological, and therefore moral, imperative. But the Soviet Union is gone, and therefore the U.S. interest in Europe becomes not a moral but a geopolitical issue. Russia is now simply another nation, and Europe has long since recovered from the ravages of World War II. In this strategic policy, where fundamental interests are no longer moral, the obligation of the United States is based on its own national interest. Hence, the principle of America First is the guide to U.S. interests and actions.
There is an interestingly unstated principle, which is that the United States is no longer the “policeman of the world,” a phrase antiwar demonstrators used during the Vietnam War – a conflict based on the moral imperative of stopping communism’s expansion. It is ironic in a way that it was the American political right that saw Vietnam as a moral obligation, and the American left that condemned the war and the U.S. role as a global policeman. To some extent, this document embraces what had been a left-wing view, and it will be attacked by some on the left as the abandonment of a moral imperative. History has a sense of humor.
Looked at from a geopolitical point of view, the new document raises two fundamental questions. China will likely welcome an economic understanding with the United States and a diminution of military risk-taking, something that has become more apparent following U.S. President Donald Trump’s talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping. If that is so, the two questions are: What will Russia do? And what will Europe do?
Russia-China relations are far from intimate, with each following its own path. An understanding between the U.S. and China would leave Russia in a difficult strategic position. It is the least economically sound of the three great powers, and it historically has had tense military relations with China, even while both were communist. In a worst-case (and unlikely) scenario, Russia could even find itself facing a joint military threat. Therefore, Russia must, in some way, shift its stance. It is important to remember that in negotiations with Russia over Ukraine, the Trump administration had offered Moscow economic benefits for ending the war. Given the possible evolution in economic relations between China and the United States, Russia could be excluded economically from a dimension dominated by two great economic powers, while facing a worried and therefore unpredictable Europe.
As for Europe, it must now decide what it will be. Its preference is to maintain its relationship with the United States as is, with the U.S. morally committed to being its military guarantor. But this document clearly states that the U.S. has no moral commitment to Europe and regards Europe as capable of self-defense.
Europe, therefore, has two choices. It can remain as it is, a continent of small nations with long histories of animosity, or it can form a federation, under a single government with a single military, with the nations becoming to a great extent self-governing provinces. If they do not hang together, they will surely hang apart. Creation of a federal Europe is unlikely given their bloody histories and memories of each other. Nevertheless, this document clearly says that the U.S. has no moral obligation, after two World Wars and the Cold War, to undertake the role of guarantor against a Russia that poses no military or moral threat to the United States. If it could somehow overcome its divisions, Europe, united and armed, would be an entity on par with China and the United States.
The U.S. has been a major force in the Eastern Hemisphere. This document states essentially that it no longer wants that role, given the price it has paid in the past hundred or so years. This document is simply the summation of the reality the U.S. is now in.
I would like to add that we forecast this evolution in U.S. strategy. A forecast is not a wish or a policy suggestion. Geopolitics outlines the path, and forecasts mark the steps along it. So now that U.S. policy has come to what we forecast, we must next look at how the world will evolve. In due course, other parties and leaders will emerge in the United States, but from our view, this document is stating the obvious, whether we like the obvious or not.
