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As world leaders convene in New York City this week for the annual United Nations General Assembly, writers at even The American Conservative—the premier America First mag—are mulling the prospects for international cooperation and, dare I say, global harmony.
In that spirit, I’d like to revisit some oft-forgotten guidance from America’s Founders on how the U.S. can navigate global affairs to avoid war, promote international stability, and secure its interests.
As conservative advocates of U.S. foreign policy restraint like to point out, in his farewell address of 1796 the outgoing President George Washington counseled against “permanent alliances” with foreign nations. Five years later, the incoming President Thomas Jefferson similarly warned, in his first inaugural address, of “entangling alliances” that distract from America’s own national interests.
Because presidents in the modern era haven’t followed this advice, Uncle Sam has become “Uncle Sucker” in Europe and the Middle East, paying for the security of wealthy allies and risking U.S. wars on their behalf.
But the failure of American leaders to heed the warnings of America’s early presidents is more comprehensive than even conservative restrainers may realize. For Washington and Jefferson, in their respective addresses, didn’t just counsel against permanent alliances—they opposed permanent enmities as well. Both presidents recommended peaceful ties with all nations, a principle that cannot survive blind hostility to rising powers and old rivals. U.S. officials would be wise, now more than ever, to remember this other half of our Founders’ advice on foreign entanglements.
After all, neoconservatives and liberal interventionists don’t just harbor personal affection for certain foreign states, but also hyperventilate over the anti-Western “axis of upheaval” and the “global struggle between democracies and autocracies.” They should take a deep breath. The truth is that U.S. threats, belligerence, and Manichaean rhetoric have tended to drive together this otherwise loose coalition of bad guys, which comprises China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela. Moreover, each of these U.S. adversaries has shown a willingness to cooperate with the Americans on issues of common concern—so long as Washington is willing to do the same.
President Donald Trump seems to understand these truths in the case of Russia, with which U.S. tensions reached alarming, post-Cold War highs during the Biden administration. At one point, reports surfaced that Biden officials believed the odds of nuclear warfare could rise as high as 50 percent because of conflict over Ukraine.
Early in his second term, Trump got to work repairing U.S.–Russia ties and restoring communication with the Kremlin. Moscow was receptive; the spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in February that talks between the two nations “will focus primarily on restoring the entire complex of Russian–American relations.”
Trump hasn’t managed to resolve the Ukraine war, as he had promised on the campaign trail to do, but he deserves much credit for the revival of functional, sometimes friendly, ties between the U.S. and Russia, the world’s leading nuclear superpowers. The warmer relations don’t just make for cool photo ops with Russia’s leader under B-2 bombers; they make Americans more secure. This Monday, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin offered to extend for one year the New START treaty—the last remaining nuclear arms agreement between Moscow and Washington—which Russia had suspended in 2023.
On Venezuela, the U.S. president gets a much lower grade, and his actions increasingly seem driven less by a calculation of American interests than by a militarized urge to do something. In this month alone, he has authorized airstrikes that have obliterated at least three boats allegedly operated by Venezuelan gangs and carrying drugs to the American homeland.
Since Venezuela plays only a marginal role in the trafficking of drugs that kill Americans, the counternarcotics justification is obviously a pretext for a larger and more ambitious military operation. Last week, analysts and government officials told the New York Times that the boat strikes and broader military buildup in the Caribbean are part of an effort to drive Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro from power.
Regime change in Caracas is unnecessary, unjustified, and inconsistent with Trump’s pledge to avoid unnecessary wars. In a recent letter to Trump, Maduro requested direct talks “with your special envoy (Richard Grenell) to overcome media noise and fake news.” Trump has every reason to believe that talks with Maduro could be productive. Earlier this year, Maduro and Grenell got together and set up twice-weekly flights to deport illegal aliens from the U.S. to Venezuela, flights that Caracas appears to still be facilitating despite the boat strikes.
While Venezuela bears little responsibility for the trafficking of deadly drugs to America—and virtually zero responsibility for the tens of thousands of American lives lost to fentanyl each year—China does play a key role in the fentanyl crisis. “Finished fentanyl” no longer arrives to America from China in large quantities, but the opioid is synthesized by Mexican cartels using chemical precursors manufactured in China and then smuggled over the southern border.
China hawks have claimed that Beijing is engaged in a form of biological warfare against Americans, but, as I reported last year in the NonZero Newsletter, “Beijing’s contributions to the crisis have been passive and indirect,” and Chinese leader Xi Jinping has at times been very cooperative on the issue, strictly regulating the drug at America’s behest and locking up Chinese citizens caught trafficking it. Nevertheless, as I wrote, the trouble is that
such cooperation only takes place when Washington and Beijing are on relatively good terms. The 2019 crackdown [on structurally similar “analogues” of fentanyl], for instance, took place after a cordial December 2018 meeting between then-President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump had agreed to pause his administration’s trade war against China by holding off on new tariffs, and Xi had promised, among other things, to act on fentanyl. “The relationship is very special—the relationship that I have with President Xi,” Trump boasted at the time.
The “special” relationship didn’t last long. In August 2019, with fentanyl still flowing to the US, now via Mexico, Trump castigated Xi for failing to stem the tide. The next year, as the Covid pandemic intensified, Trump unleashed a “whole-of-government” anti-China strategy, and Beijing, which had expected reciprocal benefits after passing its analogue law, reined in its efforts against fentanyl. In 2021, the incoming Biden administration only intensified the strategic rivalry. The final straw came in August 2022, when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi paid a visit to Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province. In response, China cut off dialogue with the US.
Trump has lately struck a surprisingly conciliatory tone toward Beijing, and last week he had a friendly phone call with Xi that has raised hopes for trade deals and better relations. Xi’s government has repeatedly expressed a willingness to cooperate on fentanyl, artificial intelligence, and other international issues that touch American interests. While China is America’s only peer competitor and the nation that most deserves our attention and trepidation, U.S. officials should aim to have as constructive a relationship with it as possible.
The other nations in the axis of upheaval, holdovers from the post-9/11 “axis of evil,” have also demonstrated a willingness to play nice. Earlier this week, North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un said he was open to negotiations with Washington and even that he had “fond memories of U.S. President Trump.” Kim was referring to summits he held with Trump during the latter’s first term, including one surreal meeting in which the two leaders held hands at the Korean Demilitarized Zone that divides North from South.
As for Iran, Trump had seemed on track earlier this year to negotiate an accord with Tehran that would put restrictions on its nuclear energy program and lower the odds of war. Instead, during the middle of U.S.–Iran negotiations in June, Israel launched a surprise attack on the Islamic Republic and successfully dragged the U.S. into the war, though Trump managed to avoid a prolonged conflict. If Trump wants to improve relations with Iran over the long term, he’ll need to first address the “special relationship” with Israel, America’s most entangling and counterproductive alliance.
President Trump, in his second inaugural address, said he wanted to be a “peacemaker and unifier.” That remains a worthy goal, and as the UN gathers this week for the “World Cup of diplomacy,” there’s still plenty of time for him to achieve it, and some signs that he just might do so.
During his address to the General Assembly on Tuesday morning, Trump seemed to grasp a forgotten yet obvious truth: One way to avoid forever wars is to dispense with the idea of forever enemies. “I’ve come here today to offer the hand of American leadership and friendship to any nation in this assembly that is willing to join us in forging a safer, more prosperous world,” Trump said. For the sake of world peace and American security, let’s hope he follows through on the offer.