Trump’s Foreign Policy Abandons Ideology for the Balance of Power
Twentieth century world politics saw the United States combine ideological abstractions with balance of power realities. President Woodrow Wilson sought to transform the geopolitical clash of the Great War into a crusade on behalf of self-determination and democracy. Twenty years after that global conflict, FDR borrowed Wilson’s ideology of democratism in support of America’s war against Nazi Germany and its allies, and Japan. During the Cold War, most American presidents likewise framed the conflict between the West and the Soviet empire in ideological terms. America’s penchant for ideological abstractions carried over into the 21st century, as President George W. Bush waged war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere (the so-called Global War on Terror) to promote global democracy. The Biden administration (staffed by Obama holdovers) characterized U.S. foreign policy as an ideological struggle of democracy versus autocracy. President Trump, however, has abandoned the ideology of democratism in favor of the balance of power approach to world affairs.
Trump appears to recognize that 21st century geopolitics has much more in common with the 19th century than with the 20th. The 20th century’s “age of ideology” is over—at least in Europe. There, world politics has reverted back to the 19th century’s multipolar structure of power. Russia is waging war in Ukraine to claim its sphere of influence—a very 19th century concept. Even President Obama recognized this after Russia’s seizure of the Crimea in 2014, when he said that Ukraine is more important to Russia than it is to the United States. Yet the leaders of the nations of Western and Central Europe, and many in the United States, refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of spheres of influence. In 2014, Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry expressed shock that Russia was “behaving in a 19th century fashion.” “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pre-text,” Kerry said, demonstrating that the ideology of democratism, as well as U.S. naivete, remains strong.
Trump appears to be channeling Richard Nixon, who during his presidency deemphasized ideology and prioritized the balance of power in conducting foreign policy. Nixon’s masterstroke was triangular diplomacy, which exploited the Sino-Soviet split to America’s geopolitical advantage. Henry Kissinger was right in the third volume of his magnificent memoirs, Years of Renewal, when he claimed that Nixon set the stage for Reagan’s victory in the Cold War. And Nixon did that by abandoning ideology in favor of the balance of power. Trump’s policy of negotiating an imperfect end to the Ukraine war and refusing to condemn Russia at the United Nations resembles Nixon’s negotiation of the imperfect end to the Vietnam War and his embrace of a de facto alliance with Communist China. Trump, like Nixon, is playing the long, crucial game of balance of power geopolitics instead of leaning on ideological abstractions like “democracy versus autocracy.”
Nixon’s long game was designed to shift the balance of power against the Soviet empire. Trump’s long game is to shift the balance of power against Communist China. Trump, like Nixon, is following the geopolitical playbook of Walter Lippmann, the influential American journalist who understood, even in the age of ideology, the overriding importance of the balance of power to global peace and stability.
Lippmann’s balance of power geopolitics was evident in three main books: U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic (1943), U.S. War Aims (1944), and The Cold War (1947). In U.S. Foreign Policy, Lippmann defined an effective foreign policy as one that aligned a nation’s commitments with its power and resources. He acknowledged that the war demonstrated again that America’s first line of defense was on the shores of Europe, Asia, and Africa, but not every region was equally important. As Lippmann’s best biographer Ronald Steel pointed out, Lippmann believed that U.S. security was “based on power, not on abstract principles.” And American power, he wrote, was not unlimited.
In U.S. War Aims, Lippmann recognized the importance of an “Atlantic community,” but he also recognized that Russia, having fought two wars against Germany, is “bound to consider the region eastward from Germany as a separate strategic system of security.” Lippmann called this region the “Russian Orbit.” He also predicted that a Chinese Orbit would form in east Asia and Indochina, and that India and the Islamic world achieve “an importance and a power they have not hitherto had in the modern world.” And Lippmann believed that only a neutral Germany would enhance the prospect s of peace between the Atlantic Community and the Russian Orbit.
Where U.S. War Aims speaks to us today is when Lippmann wrote that Russia would always view the lands east of Germany as part of its geopolitical orbit to be fortified “against any sort of anti-Russian combination of Western states.” Here we see the error of NATO enlargement after the end of the Cold War. NATO enlargement pierced the Russian Orbit and was bound to cause a Russian reaction—which is precisely what happened in 2008 (Georgia), 2014 (Crimea), and 2022 (Ukraine). Lippmann understood that U.S. and Western political leaders had to respect Russia’s vital interests, and “[s]hould recognize as valid and proper the strategic system of the Russian Orbit.” Lippmann concluded the book with a devastating critique of Wilsonianism and an admiring, unsentimental view of the utility of spheres of influence and the balance of power.
But it was in The Cold War that Lippmann set forth his most persuasive case for balance of power geopolitics. The book’s origins were a series of columns Lippmann wrote in response to George F. Kennan’s essay in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” which explained the Truman administration’s policy of containment. (Kennan at the time was the Director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff). Kennan, after discussing the ideological and historical sources of Soviet foreign policy, recommended that the United States respond to Soviet aggressive moves anywhere with a policy of “long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment.” Kennan further described containment as the “adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy.”
Lippmann in The Cold War described Kennan’s containment policy and the Truman Doctrine that it encompassed as a “strategic monstrosity.” “The Eurasian continent is a big place,” Lippmann explained, “and the military power of the United States, though it is very great, has certain limitations which must be borne in mind if it is to be used effectively.” American power, he wrote, should be used to “redress the balance of power . . . but it is not designed for, or adapted to, a strategy
of containing, waiting, countering, blocking, with no more specific objective than the eventual ‘frustration’ of the opponent.” The U.S., he continued, does “not have unlimited power, resources, influence.” The Soviet Union, Lippmann emphasized, was the “successor to the Russian Empire.” Its foreign policy is motivated more by geopolitics and history than ideology.
Lippmann recommended a negotiated resolution to the Cold War whereby Soviet and American troops would be withdrawn from Western and Central Europe. The European nations would cease being “pawns of the Russian-American conflict,” and will become a third power able to defend itself from Russian aggression. U.S. policy, Lippmann memorably wrote, “will not be to organize an ideological crusade.” We should not attempt to make “Jeffersonian democrats” of the peoples of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The goal of American policy should be to “restore the independence of the nations of Europe by removing the alien armies—all of them, our own included.”
Lippmann may have been too sanguine about Europe’s ability and willingness to provide for its own defense so soon after the end of the war. But Lippmann’s vision is more attuned to today’s Europe where Russia is far less of a threat then the Soviet Union was in 1947 and thereafter, and where the nations of Western and Central Europe have the economic, industrial, scientific, and technological wherewithal to provide for their own defense. Ukraine is located in what Lippmann described as Russia’s Orbit, whether we like it or not. There are now 30 European countries in NATO; there were 10 in 1949. Lippmann, one presumes, would applaud President Trump’s plan to force the Europeans to make the necessary sacrifices that they have too long avoided to provide for their common defense.
Francis P. Sempa writes on foreign policy and geopolitics. His Best Defense columns appear at the beginning of each month.
This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.
