Four Years Of Isolation
By: Robert Potter
Tags: State Department, Joe Biden, Foreign Policy, Donald Trump

It’s worth looking back at the Trump administration’s view on foreign policy and how it has shaped the world today. After a cursory glance at all the minefields of American foreign policy today, one might be forgiven for thinking that not a lot has changed in four years. The world is still struggling to grapple with climate change in a meaningful way. China’s rise continues to baffle the US, and North Korea has only gotten bolder in flexing its nuclear program. Additionally, the war in Yemen rages on, Iran is still branded as the boogieman of the Middle East, and US troop deployments remain dotted across the Middle East and Northern Africa. The Taliban and the Afghan government are once again attempting to cement some form of a peace agreement that could lead to a full troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

We’ve witnessed the Trump administration’s failure to extract any meaningful concessions from Iran through its campaign of “maximum pressure.” We’ve seen Trump’s inability to find a solution to critical issues involving places like Venezuela or North Korea. There have been two disastrous trade wars with China and the European Union that only succeeded in pissing countries off. Trump has fawned over dictators repeatedly and escalated bombings and airstrikes across the Middle East. He’s opted to leave international agreement after international agreement, convinced that the US is better off alone, and sold arms to theocratic regimes in the hopes of securing some form of tenuous peace with Israel and its neighbors.

In all of this, if there was one overarching theme to the current administration’s view, it is the oft-heard refrain of “America First!” This phrase attempts to highlight the inordinate investment America puts into the international order in solving conflicts abroad and the return on investment that has, in their view, amounted to little and even in some instances, to America’s diminishment. For them, it is past time to reassess America’s investment, pull back in many cases where needed, and utilize economic and military force in other areas to ensure America is getting the “fair deal” it demands.

Now, four years later, it’s hard to see how this policy of militant isolationism has had any success on the world’s stage. The same problems continue to fester, with many getting even worse. Power vacuums created in America’s absence have been filled by despots, and the average American is paying a steeper cost because of all of this. The world is less secure, and it is more important now more than ever that the Biden administration works as fast as possible to undo many of the disastrous actions taken during the Trump era.

The list is long and winding.

Rejoining the Paris Climate Accords, rejoining the Iran Nuclear Deal, canceling our planned defunding of the World Health Organization (WHO), ending our involvement in the disastrous war in Yemen, reevaluating our alliance with Saudi Arabia, reengaging forcefully with North Korea on nuclear disarmament, engaging in a logical strategy with China to push them on human rights and prevent them from exerting undue influence on American companies, a reopening of relations with Cuba, renewing the New START treaty with Russia, working with the UK on a mutually beneficial trade deal post-Brexit, encouraging a robust peace agreement between the Taliban and the Afghan government, reevaluating various arms deals with countries in the Middle East, and pushing the Israeli government on its inhumane treatment of Palestinians are all on the agenda for a Biden administration.

And since he will most assuredly be consumed with handling COVID-19 here at home, President-Elect Joe Biden has nominated Antony Blinken as Secretary of State to start checking some of these items off. Blinken, who can be described broadly as a consummate interventionist, wrote an op-ed last year outlining his views on foreign policy, saying that, “A responsible foreign policy seeks to prevent crises or contain them before they spiral out of control. That requires a combination of active diplomacy and military deterrence.” The term interventionist may be surprising to some, especially in the wake of almost two decades of war in the Middle East, but Blinken’s primary point is fair here. A successful foreign policy should be one of preventative care instead of crisis management. Diplomacy, cooperation, and collaboration should be the driving force, with military deterrence as an end resort.

Whether or not, Blinken is up to the task of reorienting our foreign policy remains to be seen. There will be several important tests within the first one hundred days, that will leave little doubt of that answer. Nevertheless, as has always been the case, the problem comes in putting these beliefs into practice. Stopping crises from spiraling out of control is incredibly difficult for a variety of reasons:

Like in so many other areas of the US government, the foreign policy machine is a mammoth that often takes a herculean effort to get going in a different direction. One only needs to look at America’s history of intervening to see how fraught it can be. Too often diplomacy has been an afterthought, routinely discarded in favor of military alternatives.

Blinken argues that fixing the third reason listed here is of particular importance to his strategy. It’s a trend that began long ago when diplomats and foreign service workers slowly got muscled out of rooms and replaced by generals and admirals. Over the last four years, that pattern has only skyrocketed, with the last two Secretaries of State practically gutting the Department of State from the inside out and in some cases, even treating the job and their employees with utter contempt. Blinken echoes this, saying, “Successive administrations have underfunded and undervalued our diplomacy, none more dangerously than the present one. With a depleted senior diplomatic corps and key posts still unfilled, with cuts to foreign aid, with tariffs targeted at our closest allies, and with confidence in U.S. leadership at a nadir, we are depleting one of our greatest assets: the ability to defuse conflicts and mobilize others in collective action.”

He’s right. Frankly, this is a colossal failure on the part of the US government and a huge reason why diplomatic solutions to issues seem few and far between. If you wonder why the US seems to always jump the gun to troop deployment or bombings, this is it. Our diplomatic structures are crumbling, wasting away in a world that needs diplomacy more than ever. The Iran Nuclear Deal, Paris Climate Accords, Taliban Peace Talks, reopening of relations with Cuba all happened because of diplomacy, and it’s hard to argue that the world would be better off without any of these frameworks in place.

Foreign policy is only ever shades of grey.

Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor, Ben Rhodes, once famously referred to the US’s foreign policy establishment as The Blob. An astute assessment that summed up why the US hasn’t had anything close to a discernible overarching theory of the foreign policy case for a while now. Instead, we seem to lurch from crisis to crisis. Unforeseen consequences abound, institutions are rife with competing agendas, and the infrastructure of it all seems to grow and grow every year with no clear goal. It’s all-consuming and destructive more often than not, leaving those devoted to doing more good in the world jaded and broken.

So, where does that leave us now? Ultimately, I agree with the prevailing assessment to a point. It is not only fair but crucial to skeptically assess America’s role in the world. Much of the results of our actions abroad tend to weigh us down more than uplift. From a purely transactional view, there is some sense in the US pulling back and letting everyone else figure out how to proceed on certain things by themselves. There’s no question that certain countries need tough love and that America has been far too trigger-happy in the past, but employing caution when it comes to our entanglements abroad can’t mean an abdication of our leadership role.

America is uniquely positioned, but whether we act as a force multiplier for good or chaos will depend on if we have the political will to redefine what it means to be an international leader. The old way of thinking was one of competitiveness. We have to be better than others. We have to show strength and continuously throw our weight around. That has failed. Instead, we need to be a leader that focuses exclusively on collaboration and cooperation. Foreign policy is long overdue for innovation, and what we should be turning to instead of isolationism is diplomacy. Equip are diplomats with the tools they need, and you’d be surprised at the preventative care that can be applied around the world. You’d be surprised at the burgeoning fires that can be put out just before they spiral out of control. Making our foreign policy about diplomacy and cooperation again is the only way for Biden, Blinken, and the rest of the incoming administration to course-correct after four years of Trump.