Despite all the enthusiasm around the Democrats’ new presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, election forecasts still give the Republican ticket a better-than-even chance of winning in November. Given the stakes involved, it would be irresponsible not to take a closer look at what it would mean for U.S. foreign policy to again be led by former President Donald Trump.
Let’s start with the good news (relax, this won’t take long). At least rhetorically, both Trump and vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance reject the failed strategy of liberal hegemony that neoconservatives and liberal interventionists have promoted over the past 30-plus years. They are equally contemptuous of the foreign-policy “Blob” and its stubborn adherence to outdated orthodoxies. I think they take the latter critique too far—the problem mostly lies with ambitious political appointees and not the thousands of dedicated civil servants who work for them—but their disdain for certain conventional wisdoms has some merit. For this reason, a few realists I know and like seem almost giddy about Vance’s inclusion and the prospect of a Trump victory. Given Vance’s views on Ukraine and a few other issues, you might think I’d be jumping on the bandwagon, too.
Unfortunately, that’s where the good news ends, and I think those realists who have embraced Trump/Vance are being shortsighted. If Trump and Vance win in November, it will do enormous long-term damage to America’s global position.
The central problem is that Trump and Vance are operating with an outdated picture of America’s place in the world and its ability to get its way unilaterally. They may reject neoconservatism, but they believe the United States can do whatever it wants and that other states will simply bend to its will. This wasn’t true during the “unipolar moment,” however, and it is even less true now that China is an economic peer and states from India to Brazil to South Africa to Turkey are charting their own courses and able to play the other major powers off against one another. In today’s world, U.S. leaders must think carefully about how other states are going to react to their actions and not assume they can expect to succeed by acting unilaterally.
Trump’s unilateralist instincts have long been apparent, and there’s no evidence that he’s changed his views. He showed little interest in genuine diplomacy during his first term, and his handling of foreign policy was dismal. Claiming that he “was the only one that mattered,” he left key foreign-policy positions unfilled for months and appointed not one but two incompetent secretaries of state. He thought he could charm North Korean leader Kim Jong Un into giving up his nuclear arsenal and got nowhere, and he thought he could slap tariffs on China without provoking Beijing to respond. The self-styled “master dealmaker” was also prone to offering up concessions while getting little in return (an approach New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman rightly dubbed the “art of the giveaway”) and to walking away from agreements that were very much in America’s interest, such as the nuclear deal with Iran or the Paris climate accord.
These tendencies are likely to be worse during a second term. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which is probably the best guide to Trump’s agenda, has already outlined a host of measures designed to weaken the State Department (such as demanding that all U.S. ambassadors submit their resignations on Jan. 20, 2025). More importantly, it calls for a foreign policy based on issuing ultimatums to allies and adversaries alike, in the expectation that they will quickly fall in line with whatever America demands. This is neither diplomacy nor a strategy of foreign-policy restraint; it’s the same “take it or leave it” approach to the rest of the world that has hampered U.S. foreign policy for decades.
Trump’s handling of foreign economic policy is likely to be especially harmful. Although his first-term trade war with China cost the United States more than it gained and failed to achieve its objectives, Trump wants to double down on this approach should he return to office. Only this time, he wants to impose tariffs on everyone, not just China. Established economic theory and ample historical experience demonstrate that broad-based protectionist policies make countries poorer rather than richer, yet that is exactly what Trump is pledging to do.
Restricting trade makes sense in certain narrow circumstances (e.g., to protect technology with national security implications), but on balance an open world economy benefits the United States, especially when combined with domestic adjustment programs that Republicans typically oppose. Nations that are confident they can out-innovate, out-work, and out-compete others are eager to reduce trade barriers; it is those who fear competition that feel the need to keep others’ goods out. By calling for massive tariffs, Trump, Vance, and the GOP are telling American workers and corporate leaders that they have no confidence in the nation’s ability to compete on the global stage. Other states will inevitably retaliate if Trump goes ahead with this plan, of course, hurting U.S. exporters and lowering global economic growth even more. We will all pay more for what we consume, potentially reigniting the post-COVID inflation that the Biden administration has successfully tamed. If Trump takes the country down this road, it will be weaker in the future and most Americans will live less well.
It’s not just the threat of looming protectionism, of course. Although many people still believe otherwise, since World War II Democrats have been far better stewards of the U.S. economy than Republicans. Economic growth and job creation are higher when Democrats control the White House, and unemployment and inflation tend to be lower. Nine of the last 10 recessions occurred on the GOP’s watch, too. Because economic power is the foundation of global influence, the economic difficulties that are likely to arise under Trump 2.0 will leave the United States with a less robust economic foundation and a reduced ability to exert influence around the world.
It’s also hard to be optimistic about how Trump and Vance would deal with the central strategic challenges that the United States now faces. Like nearly everyone else, Trump sees China as the main long-term challenger to U.S. interests. The problem is that his policies toward that country are rife with contradictions. Abandoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership during his first term undermined a much-needed effort to preserve U.S. economic influence in East Asia and made it harder for Asian countries to give the United States the support it says it wants from them. Trump has questioned whether the United States should support Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack, but making it easier for China to revise the status quo in Asia (and possibly gain control of some of the world’s most advanced chip manufacturers) is hard to square with a desire to keep Beijing in check. GOP hawks are also clamoring to leave the Test Ban Treaty and resume nuclear weapons testing, an unnecessary step that will facilitate China’s efforts to develop new nukes and eventually reach parity with the United States. Does this make strategic sense?
As for Europe, Trump and Vance are openly skeptical about continuing to support Ukraine, and Trump’s claim that he could end the war in 24 hours shows how little he understands the situation there. There’s a world of difference between backing Ukraine and pushing hard for a sustainable diplomatic settlement (as a Democratic administration is likely to do after November) and simply abandoning Kyiv to its fate. Similarly, there is a big difference between carefully negotiating and implementing a new division of labor with America’s European allies in order to free up resources to deal with China and engaging in a precipitous withdrawal or a spiteful campaign to browbeat them into spending more. I’m all for getting Europe to take greater responsibility for its own defense, but Trump 2.0 is likely to pursue that goal in the worst possible way.
And then there’s the Middle East. Biden’s Middle East policy has been a disaster, but Trump’s policies during his first term were essentially the same as Biden’s and equally ineffective. Like Biden, Trump gave Israel whatever it wanted, thought the Palestinian issue could be safely ignored, and focused on pursuing “special relationships” with demanding client states while refusing to talk to important regional rivals. There are many labels one could apply to this approach, but “realism” ain’t one of them. Trump abandoned the 2015 agreement that had successfully rolled back Iran’s nuclear program and imposed “maximum pressure” on Tehran instead, fueling regional tensions and allowing Iran to move much closer to having the bomb. As for Vance, he bizarrely claimed that Biden has “done nothing to help our ally Israel” (seemingly unaware of the billions of dollars of military aid provided since Oct. 7, 2023) and thinks the Biden administration should have backed Israel’s brutal war in Gaza even more strongly. In short, Vance is perfectly happy to support a genocide no matter how much damage it does to America’s or Israel’s image in the eyes of others. Of course, this is partly just pandering to the Israel lobby (a problem for both political parties), but it also reveals a unilateralist’s disinterest in what the rest of the world thinks. U.S. Middle East policy has been a bipartisan failure for decades, but it won’t be any better with Trump back in the White House.
Trump and the GOP are likely to adopt policies on several other issues that will weaken America over time. They want to raise barriers to immigration and expel millions of people from the United States, ignoring the fact that many of these people are now gainfully employed and contributing to our long-term growth prospects. Unlike China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and most other powerful countries, the U.S. population will continue to rise over the next century, and its median age will be lower than most of its main rivals’. A younger workforce and fewer retirees helps the U.S. economy, and retaining that advantage depends on immigration. America’s ability to attract talented immigrants and earn the loyalty of their descendants—including the founders of Oracle, Apple, Tesla, Amazon, and countless other successful businesses—has been a source of strength since America’s founding. Trump and Vance want to cast it aside.
The United States will also take a big step backward on the environment under Trump and Vance. Empowered by a packed Supreme Court, they are certain to reverse efforts to deal with climate change and other sources of environmental harm, even as Americans swelter through increasingly hot summers; have to pay for wildfires, floods, and other weather-related events; and as global temperatures set new records each year. As for pandemic preparedness, do you really want the guy who thought bleach could cure COVID-19 back in charge?
These positions remind us that today’s GOP—and Trump himself—is fundamentally hostile to science and reason when they don’t conform to its selfish interests or religious beliefs. Republicans continue to dismiss the scientific consensus on climate change, the need to prepare for future pandemics, or the impact that restrictions on reproductive choice are already having on public health. Remarkably, the MAGA movement also wants to impose its political views on America’s world-class colleges and universities, whose independence, prestige, and contributions to knowledge have made them the envy of the world and an engine of innovation. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s campaign to drive the Central European University out of Hungary didn’t make that country smarter or stronger or more prosperous, and taking a machete to educational institutions in the United States would be as clear an example of national self-harm as one could imagine.
A Trump/Vance presidency will shred whatever remains of America’s soft power. Hypocrisy, corruption, and political dysfunction have diminished the global appeal of American institutions significantly, but their appeal hasn’t disappeared entirely. If the United States reelects a convicted felon and confirmed sex offender, a man who still denies that he lost fair and square in 2020 and tried to thwart the peaceful transfer of power, and whose candidacy is opposed by dozens of senior officials who worked for him during his first term, then countries who used to admire the United States will see our political system as a model for what to avoid rather than emulate. And there’s still the very real danger that Trump and his minions will rewire U.S. institutions and make future elections meaningless, as his pal Orban has successfully done in Hungary.
There’s one final reason why the Trump/Vance/Project 2025 vision for America worries me. With some notable exceptions (such as a desire to impose fundamentalist views on gender, reproductive rights, etc.), they want to make the president more powerful, yet weaken the rest of the government as much as possible. What they fail to realize is that modern societies are immensely complex entities that require strong and effective political and social institutions to hold them together, particularly in the face of the complex challenges of an interdependent world. Mega-wealthy plutocrats like Elon Musk don’t need an effective government, because they can buy private bodyguards, fly in private jets, live in gated communities, use expensive tutors and private schools to educate their kids, and pay for whatever health care they might need no matter what it might cost. For these fortunate few, governments just get in the way. The rest of us, however, depend on effective public institutions to educate our children, build and maintain infrastructure, manage the economy, provide for a decent retirement, and engage with the rest of the world. The only thing worse than an inefficient or predatory state is no state at all, and I fear that we are about to discover what happens when the federal government is controlled by people who either want to take it apart or to use it to line their own pockets. Trump may now be paying lip service to the need for national unity (having based his entire political career on exacerbating divisions), but the agenda he and the GOP are laying out is a recipe for domestic disruption that could endanger all of us.
The United States still has enormous advantages over all other countries, even though Republican and Democratic administrations have each done a lot to squander them in recent decades. Given Trump’s evident desire to eviscerate many of the institutions that helped the United States achieve its favorable global position, allowing him a second chance in office would be an exceedingly reckless roll of the dice. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.