The Hell of Good Intentions Read online

  By the time the 2016 election ended, in fact, the United States no longer seemed to be a particularly attractive political or economic model for other societies. Instead of being a beacon for liberal ideals and a model of enlightened democratic rule, the country had become an inspiration for such leaders of xenophobic nationalist movements as Marine Le Pen in France or Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, who greeted Trump’s election with enthusiasm and hoped to follow his example in their own countries.

  From a broader perspective, both the overall condition of the world and America’s status within it had declined steadily and significantly between 1993 and 2016. Despite a number of positive trends—including a sharp decline in the number of people living in extreme poverty—the optimistic visions of the early 1990s were not fulfilled. Great power competition had returned with a vengeance, weapons of mass destruction continued to spread, terrorists and other violent extremists were an active force in more places, the Middle East was in turmoil, and the euro crisis, Brexit decision, and illiberal trends in several member states left the European Union facing an uncertain future. U.S. foreign policy was not the primary cause of all of these developments, perhaps, but it played a significant role in many of them. When Trump told audiences that “our foreign policy is a complete and total disaster,” he was telling it like it was.7

  Most damning of all, Trump pointed an accusing finger at a foreign policy establishment that had failed to recognize its repeated errors, refused to hold those responsible for them accountable, and clung to discredited conventional wisdoms. Like the Wall Street bankers who caused the 2008 financial crisis, the architects of repeated foreign policy debacles never seemed to pay a price for their mistakes, or even to learn from them. A bipartisan coterie of senior officials circulated from government service to the private sector, from think tanks to corporate boards, from safe sinecures to new government appointments, even when their past service was undistinguished and the policies they had conceived, sold, and implemented hadn’t worked. Pundits and policy wonks whose predictions and prescriptions had proved to be misguided were shielded from sanction as well, while those who challenged the bipartisan consensus were marginalized, ignored, or vilified even when they were right. And while members of the establishment routinely jockeyed for position and sparred over tactical issues, they remained united in the belief that the United States had the right and the responsibility to lead the world toward a broadly liberal future.

  Foreign policy may have been a secondary issue in the 2016 campaign, therefore, but the combination of persistent failures abroad and an insular, unaccountable elite that refused to acknowledge them dovetailed perfectly with Trump’s populist assault on existing institutions and his pledge to “shake the rust off of America’s foreign policy.”

  What alternative did Trump offer? Although his foreign and national security policy positions lacked detail and clarity, several recurring themes emerged throughout the campaign. First and foremost, he emphasized that the central purpose of U.S. foreign policy should be to advance the American national interest, that the United States should engage with others in ways intended to benefit Americans. Although this might seem obvious, even a truism, Trump was telling his listeners what many of them wanted to hear: U.S. power and influence should be used not to help others or to advance a broader set of political values around the world, but rather to make Americans better off.

  Consistent with this principle, Trump chastised U.S. allies in Europe and Asia for free-riding on American protection, and he made it clear that he expected them to contribute much more to collective defense if they expected to retain U.S. support. He said he would hold summits with U.S. allies in Asia and Europe that would “discuss a rebalancing of financial commitments” and “upgrade NATO’s outdated mission and structure.” In a Trump administration, in short, relations with America’s most important and powerful allies would be fundamentally recast.

  Trump also condemned U.S. efforts at “nation-building” in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Complaining that “we’re rebuilding other countries while weakening our own,” he said that such efforts “began with a dangerous idea that we could make western democracies out of countries that had no experience or interests in becoming a western democracy.” If elected, he promised the United States would be “getting out of the nation-building business.”

  Trump also took dead aim at globalization, especially the various institutions and agreements that had expanded global trade and investment dramatically over the past several decades. He called the North American Free Trade Agreement a “total disaster” and said that U.S. trade policy had led to “the theft of American jobs” and helped China “continue its economic assault on American jobs and wealth.”

  Paradoxically, he also suggested that he would try to improve relations with China and Russia, saying, “We should seek common ground based on shared interests,” and stressing that “an easing of tensions, and improved relations with Russia … is possible, absolutely possible.” Russia’s interests in its “near abroad” would be respected, he implied, and he vowed to work with Moscow to counter the common threat from ISIS, even if this meant supporting the Assad regime in Syria.

  Trump also sounded a defiant note against “radical Islam.” He vowed to “work together with any nation in the [Middle East] that is threatened by the rise of radical Islam” and threatened to bar Muslims from entering the United States. He also said he had a “simple message” for ISIS: “Their days are numbered.”

  Finally, Trump sounded a consistent theme of American strength, resolve, and purpose. Declaring that the United States was now “a weak country,” he promised to rebuild U.S. military power, saying that “our military dominance must be unquestioned … by anybody and everybody” and suggesting that the United States could get its way more often by being “more unpredictable.”8

  Trump’s pronouncements may have lacked coherence, but the central message was clear: U.S. foreign policy was not delivering as promised. What the country needed, therefore, was a tough-minded emphasis on American national interests and a hard-nosed approach to allies and adversaries alike. In other words, America needed a radically different grand strategy.

  Viewed as a whole, Trump’s foreign policy program promised a radical departure from the internationalist agenda that had informed U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Second World War, and especially since the end of the Cold War. Instead of striving to expand and deepen a rules-based international order—one that actively sought to spread democracy, promote free trade, strengthen alliances and international institutions, and defend human rights—Trump was offering a self-centered, highly nationalist foreign policy that eschewed long-term efforts to spread American ideals and focused instead on securing short-term advantages.

  Whether he understood it or not, Trump was also presenting a different take on the familiar notion of “American exceptionalism.” The United States would still be different from other countries, but it would no longer be the “indispensable nation,” the linchpin of a liberal world order, the first responder to major global challenges, or even a “reluctant sheriff.” Instead, relations with other states would be conducted on a purely transactional basis, with an eye toward getting “the best deals” and forcing others to bear the greatest burdens. Given that this approach was a direct repudiation of the worldview that had guided U.S. foreign policy for more than sixty years, it is no wonder that foreign policy elites greeted his candidacy with a combination of horror and dismay.

  And yet he won. Given the positions he had outlined in the campaign, Trump’s victory raised two fundamental questions about the past, present, and future of U.S. foreign policy.

  First, how could the U.S. have gone so badly off the rails that American voters would elect a completely inexperienced leader who had openly challenged well-established foreign policy wisdoms and who was opposed by senior foreign policy experts from both parties?

  Second, could Trump pull off the rev
olution in foreign policy that he promised? Given the opposition he was bound to face from elites in both parties and a well-entrenched national security establishment, would he be able to steer the ship of state in a new direction? Would the foreign policy establishment manage to co-opt and corral him, or had he been bluffing all along? Whichever course he ultimately chose, what effects would his presidency have on U.S. security and prosperity, and on international politics more broadly?

  THE ARGUMENT

  This book addresses each of these questions, focusing primarily on the political power of the foreign policy community here at home. I argue that Trump won in part because his claim that U.S. foreign policy was “a complete and total disaster” contained many elements of truth.9 The American people understood that something had gone awry, which is why public opinion polls showed diminishing support for overseas adventures and why voters kept gravitating toward candidates who promised to do less abroad and more at home.

  It is worth remembering, for example, that in 1992, voters ignored George H. W. Bush’s impressive foreign policy achievements and opted instead for Bill Clinton, whose campaign mantra was “it’s the economy, stupid.” In 2000, George W. Bush won support by criticizing Clinton’s overemphasis on “nation-building” and by promising voters a foreign policy that would be “strong but humble.” After Bush failed to deliver as promised, however, in 2008 Americans picked Barack Obama because he had opposed the war in Iraq and promised to repair relations with the rest of the world. Though personally popular, Obama did not end the cycle of foreign policy failure either, and by 2016 many voters clearly preferred Trump’s “America First” to Hillary Clinton’s commitment to continue the same policies that had repeatedly backfired.

  What had gone wrong? U.S. foreign policy did not fail because the United States faced a legion of powerful, crafty, and ruthless adversaries whose brilliant stratagems repeatedly thwarted Washington’s noble intentions and well-crafted designs. Nor did it fail because the United States experienced an improbable run of bad luck.

  On the contrary, U.S. foreign policy failed because its leaders pursued a series of unwise and unrealistic objectives and refused to learn from their mistakes. In particular, the deeper cause of America’s recurring foreign policy failures was the combination of overwhelming U.S. primacy, a misguided grand strategy, and an increasingly dysfunctional foreign policy community.

  With respect to the former, victory in the Cold War had left the United States, as President George H. W. Bush and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft later recalled, “with the rarest opportunity to shape the world.”10 This position of primacy was the permissive condition that allowed Washington to pursue a highly ambitious foreign policy—to “shape the world”—without having to worry very much about the consequences. Yet because the United States was already wealthy, powerful, and secure, there was little need to “go abroad in search of monsters to destroy” and little to gain even if these efforts succeeded. The result was a paradox: U.S. primacy made an ambitious grand strategy possible, but it also made it less necessary.

  Ignoring these realities, which implied that the United States could have reduced its overseas commitments somewhat and focused more attention on domestic priorities, each post–Cold War administration embraced an ambitious grand strategy of “liberal hegemony” instead. This strategy is liberal, not in the sense of being left-leaning (as in the familiar dichotomy between “liberal” and “conservative”), but because it seeks to use American power to defend and spread the traditional liberal principles of individual freedom, democratic governance, and a market-based economy.11 The strategy is one of hegemony because it identifies America as the “indispensable nation” that is uniquely qualified to spread these political principles to other countries and to bring other states into a web of alliances and institutions designed and led by the United States. Not only do its proponents see the preservation of U.S. primacy and the expansion of a predominantly liberal world order as essential for U.S. security and prosperity; in their eyes, this objective is good for the rest of the world as well.

  But as the past twenty-five years have shown, the strategy of liberal hegemony is fundamentally flawed. Instead of building an ever-expanding zone of peace united by a shared commitment to liberal ideals, America’s pursuit of liberal hegemony poisoned relations with Russia, led to costly quagmires in Afghanistan, Iraq, and several other countries, squandered trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, and encouraged both states and non-state actors to resist U.S. efforts or to exploit them for their own benefit. Instead of welcoming U.S. leadership, allies took advantage by free-riding, adversaries repeatedly blocked U.S. initiatives, and hostile extremists found different ways to attack, divert, and distract. America’s superior economic and military assets could not rescue an approach to the world that was misguided at its core.

  So why did the United States adopt a grand strategy that performed so poorly, and why did three very different presidents continue this approach even after its limitations became apparent? I argue that liberal hegemony remained the default setting for U.S. foreign policy because the foreign policy establishment was deeply committed to it and in an ideal position to promote and defend it. As the nearly unified opposition to Trump has shown, the consensus behind this approach transcended party lines and survived repeated disappointments.

  Leading members of the foreign policy establishment undoubtedly believed that liberal hegemony was the right strategy for America, but they also understood that it was very good for them. Open-ended efforts to remake the world in America’s image gave the foreign policy establishment plenty to do, appealed to its members’ self-regard, and maximized their status and political power. It bolstered the case for maintaining military capabilities that dwarfed those of the other major powers, and it allowed special interest groups with narrow foreign policy objectives to lobby for their preferred policies and logroll with others, thereby making it more likely that the government would give each some of what it wanted. Liberal hegemony, in short, was a full-employment policy for the foreign policy elite and the path of least resistance for groups seeking to convince the U.S. government to do something somewhere far away on behalf of somebody else.

  By 2016, however, the track record of the past twenty-five years and the costs it had imposed on the nation could not be fully concealed. Awareness of repeated failures opened the door to Trump’s populist assault on what many of his supporters saw as an aloof, insular, and unaccountable elite. Dissatisfaction with the status quo helped propel Trump to the White House, but would he be able to overcome opposition from the establishment and pull off the revolution in foreign policy that he promised?12

  PLAN OF THE BOOK

  The remainder of this book is organized as follows.

  In chapter 1, I evaluate the foreign policy performance of the three post–Cold War presidents: William Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. I describe America’s position in the world at the end of the Cold War, its expectations for the future, and the policies it pursued. The tale is not a happy one. In 1993 the United States was the unipolar power, on good terms with the other major powers, and an inspiring model for millions around the world. Democracy was expected to spread far and wide, and great power rivalry was supposedly a thing of the past. Today, by contrast, we live in a multipolar world, relations with Russia and China have deteriorated sharply, and liberal values are under siege. U.S. efforts to halt proliferation, pacify the Middle East, and reduce the danger from terrorism have repeatedly failed. It is, in short, a dismal record.

  But why did U.S. foreign policy perform so badly? In chapter 2, I argue that it failed because the strategy of liberal hegemony rested on an inaccurate and unrealistic understanding of world politics, paid insufficient attention to political conditions in other countries, overstated America’s ability to shape complex societies, and encouraged other states and non-state actors to resist or exploit U.S. efforts. America was very powerful, and its intention
s may even have been (mostly) benevolent, but the strategy it adopted after 1993 was doomed to fail.

  But if liberal hegemony contained obvious flaws and led to repeated disappointments, why did the United States adopt it and why didn’t U.S. leaders learn from their mistakes? Chapter 3 addresses this question through a detailed portrait of the American foreign policy establishment, one that highlights the bipartisan consensus uniting most of the individuals and organizations that make up this community. Instead of being a disciplined meritocracy that rewards innovative thinking and performance, the foreign policy community is in fact a highly conformist, inbred professional caste whose beliefs and policy preferences have evolved little over the past twenty-five years, even as the follies and fiascoes kept piling up. The establishment’s deep commitment to liberal hegemony is also sharply at odds with the preferences of most Americans.

  If that is the case, then how did Washington sell the public a foreign policy that most of them did not want, and how did the foreign policy elite sustain public support for policies that kept failing? One reason, already mentioned, is the favorable geopolitical position the United States still enjoys. Because the country is so strong and so secure compared with other nations, it can pursue misguided and unsuccessful policies for a long time without putting its survival at risk.

  The second reason is the ability of the foreign policy establishment to dominate public discourse on these issues, making it less likely that Americans will question the wisdom of liberal hegemony. Chapter 4 shows how politicians, officials, pundits, and other influential members of the establishment sold the strategy of liberal hegemony by manipulating the “marketplace of ideas”: (1) inflating threats, (2) exaggerating the benefits of global leadership, and (3) concealing the costs of an expansive global role in order to convince the population that garrisoning the world and trying to spread liberal ideals was both essential to their security and destined to succeed (eventually).