–Attributed to Pliny the Elder

Well, it’s finally time to say goodbye to the organization that midwifed me as a writer and a thinker. This December 2017, I’ll (hopefully) graduate from USC and, with so many others who’ve been shaped by it, leave Glimpse From the Globe behind. It’s been a good run, and I’m sad to be leaving.

Sometimes I joke that I’m the “Henry Kissinger” of Glimpse- my time in the spotlight has passed and I offer unsolicited advice to the current leadership in a desperate bid to remain relevant; I also write about the Nixon Administration. (Just kidding, Dr. Kissinger!) But in all honesty, I’ve been around too long. I’ve been in Glimpse for four and a half years, and worked under five editors-in-chief and five presidents of the organization. I was mentored by one of its founders, Samir Kumar. I was the first Senior Correspondent, and have been in the organization longer (and I would assume produced more content) than any other single member of Glimpse. It’s past time to move on.

But I owe it to the organization that shaped me to give something, however meager, back to it, and help future generations of Glimpse writers along a path that I once set off upon, and still follow to this day. So I present some rambling reflections on writing, for future Glimpse correspondents’ perusal at their pleasure. We learn best through personal experience, and second-best through reflection upon the experiences of others. In the effort to help you to learn more quickly what it took me years to discover, I offer my less-than-sage advice.

A BRIEF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

I was one of those high schoolers and college freshmen who just couldn’t shut up on Facebook. Eventually Samir Kumar and Reid Lidow, upperclassmen at the time, told me something to the tune of “stop posting 2,000-word statuses and start writing 2,000-word articles for us!” and invited me to write for a publication they were then working on reviving and expanding. I accepted the opportunity, and set up a personal blog around the same time to publish things I couldn’t publish elsewhere. Thus, with Glimpse From the Globe and ABiasedPerspective, did my amateur writing career begin.

It’s the tendency of every ambitious young writer who thinks they know everything to speak in grand platitudes about the nature of reality, and the singular historical importance of whatever meager event happens to catch their eye. That was me to a “t” from 2013 to 2015, and honestly probably still a bit nowadays. I quickly discovered, through voracious reading, concepts like “Hamiltonianism” and “grand strategy” and regurgitated, in slightly fancier form, whatever conceptual theorizing I could soak up from writers like Michael Lind and Robert D. Kaplan. This led to a bunch of interesting but basically unoriginal pieces under my name.

Over the years, I gradually grew slightly more interesting and original, but only through practice of writing, professional mentorship from experienced writers, and wide reading. One of my Glimpse articles was my ticket to an editorial internship at The American Interest magazine in Washington D.C., and there, under the tutelage and editing of Adam Garfinkle and the TAI staff, I published my first professional, behind-the-paywall piece in a trade publication. Such events tend to boost young writers’ egos, and soon I was submitting essays to various editors every few months, and even founding various policy blogs (all of which eventually failed.) All this time, I continued to write for Glimpse, which provided a great intellectual community and a nice outlet for foreign policy publishing.

My writing was always basically some mix of commentary, analysis, and opinion- the construction and application of worldviews- rather than “objective” news reporting and analysis. This was especially true of my later essays, particularly on the Trump Administration’s foreign policy team, and gradually I went from somewhat-readable to slightly-original. (I still have a long way to go on that front.) Glimpse, furthermore, gave me the opportunity to meet and network with lots of interesting people- I’ve interviewed legendary journalist Robert D. Kaplan, Ambassador Cofer Black, Kissinger aide Winston Lord, and CIA analyst Paul Pillar through opportunities afforded by Glimpse (it really does help with networking.) And through it all, I’ve gleaned an appreciation for what political and analytical writers do, in ways I never would’ve been able to understand when I first got in.

So there’s a little bit about me in my time with Glimpse. Now for some of the lessons I’ve learned.

SOME ADVICE TO YOUNG WRITERS

The biggest, most important thing I’ve realized through writing for Glimpse is that writing is not merely a skill, or even a trade- writing is more like a craft, something that can be learned and cultivated, but which requires quite a bit of self-shaping alongside for true excellence. It’s possibly to be technically good at writing and not be a good writer, and it’s possible to have writing talent without being a good writer. Being a good writer involves constant work, constant practice, constant self-examination, and a true passion and self-identification with the act and the work behind the act. Yes, it is great as a tool; but it is greater as a craft. I’m still learning it.

So rather than being a mere, instrumental means to various ends, truly excellent writing involves some form of ethics, certain kinds of character-shaping, and a lot of neurotic, constant habits. The three most important habits for every writer are as follows:

READ EVERYTHING. By reading lots of things- daily newsletters and blogs, op-eds and essays, reports and books- you get a sense of the ideas of the day, in all their nuance and significance or insignificance. You form your own instinctive opinions on them over time, while learning the conventions that define contemporary good writing. And if you read particularly good writing, you get exposed to techniques you can emulate to further improve your own writing.

WRITE CONSTANTLY. By writing constantly- blogs help, as does being a staff writer on a student or other youth publication- you get used to shaping your voice and expressing ideas; Adam Garfinkle calls it the search for your “internal standard of excellence.” You polish off your rougher edges, build up good strategies and habits, and generally get into what I call a “battle rhythm” that suits your own writing strategies and goals.

TALK TO EVERYBODY. Talking to people- peers and fellow students and coworkers, established writers and intellectual mentors, who both agree with you and disagree with you- exposes you to different ideas, and it also forces you to engage with them, giving you opportunities to become a better communicator on the spot. This helps form the habits of mind that help you when you write, because good writing is always-in moderate degrees, of course- somewhat conversational in rhetoric.

Read Everything, Write Constantly, Talk to Everybody. This trifecta, in my opinion, is the most important set of habits to get into if you want to be a good writer. You should be doing these subconsciously, and you’ll start improving in your writing subconsciously and slowly as well. It helps to turn these habits into routines- write a think-piece daily for your blog, subscribe to daily briefings and newsletters, make a point of having three or four conversation meetings a week. Change your lifestyle to some degree, and become not just better at writing- become a better writer.

There are other strategies to actively rather than passively improve, of course. You should look into those too (and Adam Garfinkle’s excellent little book, Political Writing: A Guide to the Essentials is probably the best book-length guide out there for those.) But I’ve always thought that at a fundamental level, it’s the passive habits that really help you advance.

Figure out which writers you admire, both ideologically and stylistically. Read, religiously, all their books and web archives. Track them down and meet them in person, if you can, and beg them to share their wisdom or give you an opportunity to be their research assistant or something else. Mentors are crucial in the writing game. If you can’t have them as a living, breathing, talking guide, let them speak to you through their writings- sometimes these guides are the most useful.

Ethics is important in writing, because like any tool or art or craft, writing can be weaponized. More often than being weaponized, it can be abused, and done poorly and destructively. You should always take care to hew to certain standards- intellectual humility, honesty regarding your principles, respect for one’s audience and even for those one writes against, respect for facts and truths, general standards of decency- so that you never have to be ashamed of it, and can cultivate a reputation as both a good writer and a “good” writer. It’s hard to explain just why, but as other professions- law, medicine, warfare, business, etc.- have honor codes of their own, so there is an honor code and an ethics to the profession of writing as well.

It’s very important, too, to be epistemologically humble and realize that at any point, you are not the complete thinker- you are on an intellectual journey, and you will change, deepen your understanding, perhaps adjust or alter your principles, come to new ways of seeing things, perhaps understand them in ways that are impossible to put into words. As you grow as a thinker, your writing will change- hopefully for the better! When you look back on the works you write this year, five years from now, being a changed person, you’ll be able to discern where you’ve grown and where you’ve remained the same. This isn’t a deterrent against writing “until you know everything.” Rather, it’s a caution against youthful overconfidence in writing- overconfidence many of us come to regret.

Don’t expect too much from your writing in the “real world,” either. Particularly in politics, some young people run into the conceit that if they write the perfect op-ed or report, they’ll change the conversation and be able to steer governments and publics toward particular policy goals. (I was certainly gung-ho like this.) The fact of the matter is, political and social reality is a lot more complex than that; writings are usually reflections of thinking informed by experiences and other writings, rather than drivers of direction themselves. The written word can sometimes be influential in steering movements, but more often the most a piece can do is explain things and help shape readers’ individual worldviews. So don’t be disappointed when changing the world takes longer than the time between first draft and publication.

Finally- and this is related to the trifecta earlier- you should read at least ten times as much as you’ll ever write, and outline, draft, or otherwise plan at least five times as much as you will ever actually publish. This constant practice helps you weed out the less high-quality things, while still being in constant think-mode. A hard truth to swallow is that not everything you write is worth publishing. So with that in mind, keep on your journey, but only share with the world the best and most important highlights of it.

This, in not-particularly-organized format, is my advice for you, the things I wish I had been told before I ever published a word. Take it as you will; you’ll learn other lessons, too, as you get further through the writing life.

SOME REFLECTIONS ON GLIMPSE

Perhaps my most important bit of advice to you, though, is this- if you would like to work to build and cultivate yourself into an excellent writer, and if you hope to develop your mind and become a better intellectual, if you would like to enter the world of the political and foreign policy commentariat- stick with Glimpse! It’s a great opportunity, and there are few other college-level publications like it anywhere.

But it’s more than just a teeth-cutting blog for young, green writers.

On the Tommy Trojan statue in the heart of USC’s campus, there is an inscription in Latin and English: “From these seats of meditative joy, shall rise again the destined reign of Troy.” That, in a nutshell, encapsulates what Glimpse has always meant, in my opinion. It is a training ground for leaders and thinkers to learn to think and write, develop their thoughts and style, and in due course move into the professional world. It’s never been a mere writer’s club; here, our correspondents learn and practice the dark arts of research and writing, so that they can become better and more effective thinkers, leaders, and doers in the complicated world approaching us. It has always been a transitional proving ground from one reality to another.

I am honored to have been among the first recruits, and seen its development thus far. But I am confident that its development will only continue, and that future generations of Glimpse leadership and correspondents will carry on with this fantastic organization.  There’s a long way to go; so let’s keep moving.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

I don’t intend for this to be the last I have work with Glimpse and its members. If there are ever any ways I can be of use to any of you incoming generations of writers as a professional contact, a pair of eyes for a draft, or an advisor for anything, always feel free to reach out. Here is my personal website; do not hesitate to contact me.

Remember, you’re part of a great tradition. So go forth and write great things!

The post Advice to Young Writers and Reflections on Four Years in Glimpse appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

A version of this essay first appeared at The Hamiltonian Republican.

This is Part II of a two-part series.

III- A NEW NIXON DOCTRINE

As mentioned at the beginning of this essay, the world post-2014 has undergone tectonic shifts in power structure and institutional stability. Our world is as different from George H.W. Bush’s and Bill Clinton’s as Nixon’s was different from Truman’s and Eisenhower’s.

Five of those tectonic shifts include:

1. The relative weakness, exhaustion, and confusion of America on the world stage.
2.  The rise of functional ideological challengers.
3. The rise of would-be hegemons in key strategic regions of Eurasia.
4. The halting and reversal of the previously ascendant trends of globalization, democratization, and liberalization.
5. The rise of chaos, statelessness, and anarchy across significant swathes of the Middle East and Africa.

These trends complicate the diplomatic and military equations arrived at from 1991 to 2014, from free trade agreements to regional alliances and institutions to force structuring in different strategic theaters. Being no expert on any of these areas, I do not claim to make specific recommendations on any of them.  But I do think it is important to offer up a new intellectual framework- or rather, an old, surprisingly relevant, and updated one- through which to look at world trends and organize American strategy in all these areas and more. The principles, grand design, and grand strategy of the Nixon Doctrine of the early 1970s are very useful for the United States government’s foreign policy apparatus in the late 2010s.

Any “new Nixon Doctrine” for the foreign policy apparatus of the Trump Administration must accept and update the three general principles of the original Nixon Doctrine- Peace Through Partnership, America’s Strength, and Willingness to Negotiate.

PEACE THROUGH PARTNERSHIP

In the late 2010s, both President Obama and President Trump have encouraged America’s treaty allies to pay greater shares in their own defenses, and President Obama strongly encouraged local allies to provide manpower and other resources as proxies for American warfighting. This policy of retrenched American financial and manpower commitments has been politically popular at home, but is has also helped save American treasure and strength for the rising conventional competitions we enter with the regional great powers in all areas of Eurasia.

This policy can and should be adjusted nonetheless. In particular, the aim of “Peace Through Partnership” should not be mere cost-saving on America’s part. It should instead be the establishment of stronger relations and partnerships with American treaty allies and others based on mutual struggle, mutual contribution, and mutual trust- the solidification of our alliance system for a multipolar world, rather than the abandonment of it. American leadership is necessary and indispensable, but ultimately insufficient for world order- for that, we must cooperate with other nations.

AMERICA’S STRENGTH

As Nixon updated American strength in conventional superiority (investing more resources in precision munition technology and stealth technology, at the expense of unconventional warfare and standard manpower and readiness,) so it would be prudent for the Trump Administration to turn investment focus away from pure manpower and platform readiness, and especially from unconventional war methods like counterinsurgency and special operations, and towards investments in technological superiority in conventional warfare. Unconventional capabilities and manpower readiness have their place, but the most crucial investments that can be made for future American power are in the conventional air/sea/space spheres, areas where our regional rivals for dominance are rapidly catching up to our conventional capabilities.

Regional deterrence and great-power negotiation will be useless if our forces meant to deter go into battle against Russian and Chinese conventional forces of equal strength. The United States needs as many tools as it can get in this complicated era of international relations, and conventional technological superiority over conventional rivals is one of the most important tools there is.

WILLINGNESS TO NEGOTIATE

One of the key trends in American foreign affairs today is the continued frozenness of relations with North Korea and Iran, and the intensification of strategic competition with China and Russia. These are probably inevitable struggles from which we should not back down, and for which we should maintain national preparedness and strategic readiness. Diplomacy not backed up by force is not diplomacy.

At the same time, in the interests of world peace, it is crucial that the United States maintain relations with Russia and China and seek constructive agreements with them on whatever areas possible, while competing in the security sphere. As for the cases Iran and North Korea, the continued goal ought to remain their eventual integration into the international community, with or without regime change.

One of the main tools for managing such fraught and complex relationships remains diplomatic linkage- the attempt to effect changes in regime behavior in particular areas through incentives and pressure in other areas of diplomacy. Using linkage in all four aforementioned cases, as well as in other situations, can only be helpful.

All in all, the purpose of a new Nixon Doctrine, through the use of these three principles, is to produce a reasonably peaceful and open international order incorporating all nations and reducing the chance of war through institutionalized regimes backed up by a sustainable- if impermanent- balance of power. The United States must be the arbiter-of-last-resort for this international order, even if it is not liberal.

But these principles must be applied in practice.

Grand Design and Grand Strategy

Not only must a “new Nixon Doctrine” update the three general principles- it must outline a new set of hard objectives as well. The Grand Design and Grand Strategy of a new Nixon Doctrine might look like the following:

Grand Design:

1. Accept the emergence of a multipolar configuration of power in the security issue area with at least nine poles of significance (United States, Russia, China, Japan, and Western Europe as primary poles; Iran, Turkey, the Gulf States, India and perhaps others as secondary poles.) Further, accept the decentralization of configurations of power in the economic arena.
2. Preserve the liberal Atlantic community and American alliance system; integrate it into a post-liberal international system that also integrates authoritarian states. Diminish the universalism of the liberal Atlantic community’s aspirations and governance.
3. Stop the spread of Chinese, Russian, and Iranian influence into their respective regions and beyond, through expanded partnerships with regional powers and the attainment of conventional military-technological superiority; but avoid direct military confrontation.

Grand Strategy:

1. Contain spread of Chinese, Iranian, and Russian influence through Nixonian means- a) deterrence of military aggression, b) the use of positive incentives like relief and recognition, c) mixed strategies employing positive incentives and negative sanctions, and d) covert operations.
2. Maintain firm collective security arrangements with NATO, Japan, and other treaty allies, while maintaining flexibility in all other alliances and partnerships with state and non-state actors. As a general rule of thumb, all allies- including treaty allies- should be encouraged and expected to contribute more resources to their defense.
3. Communicate and consult openly with Russia, China, and other great powers including India and Turkey; be more open to consultation with Iran. Do this in the interests of avoiding direct military confrontation and maintaining stability, while still containing Chinese, Iranian, and Russian influence.
4. Functionally, though not formally, recognize current Chinese and Russian spheres of influence, as well as those of other great powers including India, Turkey, etc. Promote interchange and communication between these spheres of influence and their peripheral areas, to defuse conflict and preclude confrontations.
5. Encourage and deepen ties between U.S., Russia, and China, and to a lesser extent, other great powers, through various cooperative projects in technological, cultural, and economic areas. Consider nuclear energy and space exploration as primary areas of technological cooperation.
6. Maintain U.S. foreign policy commitments with reduced public and Congressional support. Strive to build new understanding and consensus in foreign policy making, similar to the “Containment Consensus” of the 1940s and 1950s.
7. Reduce U.S. military commitments in ungoverned regions, through advisory partnerships with local actors. (“Obama Way of War.”) Where possible, use cost-saving advanced technology in lieu of more expensive conventional forces. Simultaneously invest in said advanced military technologies.

All in all, the Nixon Doctrine’s utility in an era of increased competition and diminishing resources is this- protect “The American Way of Life”- American society, American prosperity, the American government, and the freedoms of Americans- through a preclusion of catastrophic war and catastrophic revolution, by preserving what is left of the international system and integrating potential adversaries into it. In practice, this would probably involve preserving the Atlantic community’s liberal order while turning the liberal international order into a post-liberal order into which non-liberal powers can be integrated, and through it, constrained. Underlying all this would necessarily be a complex and dangerous system of balances of power within and between the strategic regions of Eurasia and the rest of the globe.

Both President Obama and President Trump have practiced certain elements of the aforementioned Grand Design and Grand Strategy, but neither has fully practiced it, nor has either successfully articulated a coherent grand strategy with a sustainable vision of world order to the public.

To a certain degree, this “new Nixon Doctrine” is already being formed, simply due to institutional and strategic constraints, and to the Trump Administration’s pragmatic reactions to crises in the real world. Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Mattis, and General McMaster are all generally sober-minded strategists–their management is useful in the world we enter. But management alone is not enough.

The brilliance of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger was not merely their ability to see where things were going and why they had come to where they had come; nor was it merely their skill at policy implementation and their successful management of crises as they came up. The real genius of Nixon and Kissinger, seldom replicated in subsequent Presidents and Administrations, was their ability to articulate a practical vision of world order and orient their Administration towards pursuing it; a vision based on their historical understanding and tempered by their skill at crisis management. Had the President and National Security Advisor not codified the basic grand design and grand strategy, it would have been much more difficult to order priorities, dedicate resources to necessary outlets, and generally be as successful in conducting American foreign policy as that great duo was.

As mentioned before, Trump’s team is not incompetent. There are good administrators and good thinkers in the State Department, Defense Department, the CIA, and the National Security Council. They are all managing their roles reasonably effectively, and in all honesty probably better than anyone would have expected under current circumstances. But President Trump has not yet articulated a usable grand strategy for national security and world order to guide the various tools of the administration.

It would be immeasurably helpful, both for the internal coherence of the American government’s efforts and for the ease of mind of all American citizens and watchers of foreign policy, for the Trump Administration to produce a sophisticated document on strategic principles and implementation articulating not only justifications for Administration policy, but the general aims of such policy as well. The time is approaching for the Trump Administration to produce a National Security Strategy, and it would be wise for whoever leads that effort- perhaps General McMaster- to revisit the four Annual Reports on foreign policy of the Nixon Administration for ideas, given the similar situations of the times.

No National Security Strategy or other strategic document can foresee all the crises and decisions a President will have to make, or perfectly document the realities approached by an American Administration in a complicated world. But it can provide a general framework of ideas, interests, processes, and policy goals for an Administration, and if there is anything the Trump Administration needs right now, it is such a general framework.

Richard Nixon is perhaps not the right ghost from which to solicit advice on all questions; but on the question of grand strategy, he is certainly the preeminent one to ask. An update of his general strategic principles for the conditions of the late 2010s would be a blessing for the Trump Administration’s foreign policy team.

Luke Phillips would like to thank Ambassador Winston Lord and Dr. Dan Caldwell for their advice in preparing this essay. But all ideas and assertions made are Phillips’s alone.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

The post Towards a New Nixon Doctrine, Part 2 appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

I- NIXON’S WORLD AND OURS

Most readers will be familiar with the not-often-observed legal responsibility of the President of the United States to provide Congress with an annual report on his administration’s foreign policy initiatives, called the “National Security Strategy.” Though the annual NSS requirement was not put into law until the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1982, the concept was inspired by President Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s publication of four “Annual Reports to the Congress on United States Foreign Policy,” published in 1970, 1971, 1972, and 1973 as the public articulation of the Nixon Administration’s overall strategic approach.

These four NSS prototypes surpass most of their legally-mandated descendants in conceptual solidarity, owing, perhaps, to the genius of Nixon-Kissinger duo and their staff, and to the lack of State Department and Defense Department meddling with the editing and publication processes. Most importantly, the first two reports open up with incredibly detailed analyses of the trends leading up to the 1970s, hinting towards necessary conceptual changes in American strategy. The second two reports, published during and after the administration’s great strategic successes in China, Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and the Middle East, document the administration’s practical application of the conceptual principles articulated in the first two reports.

It’s helpful to revisit the openings of the first two reports, if only to observe the parallels between Nixon’s time and ours. First we will look at the changes Nixon responded to- then we’ll look at the changes to which we in 2017 must respond.

To quote the first report at length, then, on international developments between 1945 and 1970:

“The postwar period in international relations has ended…

[When President Harry S. Truman adapted and implemented the Containment doctrine as U.S. strategy,] we were the only great power whose economy and society had escaped WWII’s massive destruction. Today, the ravages of that war have been overcome. Western Europe and Japan have recovered their economic strength, their political vitality, and their national self-confidence…

Then, new nations were being born, often in turmoil and uncertainty. Today, these nations have a new spirit and a growing strength of independence…

Then, we were confronted by a monolithic Communist world. Today, the nature of that world has changed- the power of individual Communist nations has grown, but international Communist unity has been shattered…

Then, the United States had a monopoly or an overwhelming superiority of nuclear weapons. Today, a revolution in the technology of war has altered the nature of the military balance of power…

Then, the slogans formed in the past century were the ideological accessories of the intellectual debate. Today, the “isms” have lost their vitality…”

Or, more succinctly, in the second report:

“We are at the end of an era. The postwar order in international relations- the configuration of power that emerged from the Second World War- is gone.”

A similarly tectonic series of shifts has happened in the Post-Cold War world, with the breaking point being effectively somewhere between 2014’s Russian annexation of Crimea and the rise of the ISIS Caliphate. The crumbling of the old era is in our instance, though, perhaps more fundamental and shocking even than it was in Nixon’s time. A similar autopsy of the Post-Cold War world today might read something like this:

“The Post-Cold War period in international relations is over.

When President George H.W. Bush declared a “New World Order,” America was victorious in the bloodless end of the Cold War, and proudly stood tall as the unquestioned leader of the nations of the Earth. Today, America is exhausted, divided, and unsure of its basic purpose in world leadership, even unsure of the reason behind its own political existence….

 Then, there were no significant ideological challengers to Western liberal democratic capitalism. Today, various brands of authoritarianism have returned from history and brought their own conceptions of order to the world stage….

Then, no regional great powers threatened the stability of the international system. Today, ascendant great powers in every strategic theater of Eurasia seek to implement new regional orders of their own making….

Then, the processes of globalization, liberalization, and democratization seemed inexorable and inevitable, as nation after nation underwent peaceful revolutionary transitions and joined the liberal international order. Today, all those trends have been reversed- peoples around the world reject globalization, and more of them live under autocratic or semi-autocratic rule than at any other time since the end of the Cold War….

Then, the threat of geographic anarchy and mass-casualty terrorism seemed real, but manageable. Today, whole swathes of the Middle East and Asia have descended into chaos, and fundamentalist terrorists strike out at publics around the world on a regular basis.

We are at the end of an era. The Post-Cold War order in international relations- the order that emerged from the Cold War- is gone.”

Clearly, a new strategic grand design, set forth in this new era, is crucial.

II- PRINCIPLES, CONDUCT, AND LEGACY OF THE NIXON DOCTRINE

President Nixon aspired to be a “peacemaker,” if his first inaugural address is to be taken at its word- “The greatest title history can bestow is “peacemaker.”” Nixon’s vision of peace was far more sophisticated than that of some of his opponents- “Peace must provide a durable structure of international relationships which inhibits or removes the causes of war… Within such a structure, international disputes can be settled and clashes contained… the habits of moderation and compromise will be nurtured…”

It’s reasonable to assume that Nixon was enough of a political realist to know, with that other great realist Alexander Hamilton, that “the seeds of war are sown thickly in the human breast,” and contrary to liberal internationalist dreams, cannot ever be fully removed through institutions, in the interests of perpetual peace. That said, Nixon was certainly enough of an internationalist to know that the causes of war could be inhibited and constrained through institutional arrangements- the balancing of power against power, the formalization of dispute resolution, and all the rest.

Moving the international system towards such a practical, if perhaps temporary, vision and reality of peace, stewarded by American leadership, was what the Nixon Doctrine was all about.

As outlined in the first section of the first Annual Report, and extrapolated in the first sections of the subsequent three Annual Reports, there were three primary intellectual components to the Nixon Administration’s strategic approach: “Peace Through Partnership,” “America’s Strength,” and “Willingness to Negotiate.” Taken together, these constitute the Nixon Doctrine in the broadest possible use of that term.

PEACE THROUGH PARTNERSHIP

In the preceding quarter-century to the Nixon Presidency, the modus operandi of American foreign policy generally featured American involvement and direct American action wherever national interests and world order were threatened. This resulted in exceedingly expensive international commitments, in all senses- diplomatic capital, money, manpower, and oftentimes blood. It was not a particularly efficient way of carrying out policy, and often had the unfortunate side-effect of disillusioning the American public, as the Vietnam War scenario demonstrates.

Nixon’s response, similar to his mentor President Eisenhower’s, was to level the playing field of contributions in America’s alliances in order to reduce American expenditures while deepening American partnerships. This is not dissimilar to President Obama’s and President Trump’s insistence that NATO allies, Japan, and South Korea “pay their fair share” in defense spending, though it is not clear that Trump and Obama have had the deepest of strategic understandings behind their similar policies.

In direct contradiction to President John F. Kennedy’s “Bear any Burden, Pay any Price, for the Survival and Success of Liberty” promise, President Nixon declared a humbler and more partnership-oriented U.S. strategy his administration would pursue:

“…the United States will participate in the defense and development of allies and friends, but… America cannot- and will not- conceive all the plans, design all the programs, execute all the decisions, and undertake all the defense of the free nations of the world. We will help where it makes a real difference and is considered in our interest.

America cannot live in isolation if it expects to live in peace. We have no intention of withdrawing from the world. The only issue before us is how we can be most effective in meeting our responsibilities, protecting our interests, and thereby building peace.

A more responsible participation by our foreign friends in their own defense and progress means a more effective common effort towards the goals we all seek….”

Although on the surface a cost-saving measure, the Partnership aspect of the Nixon Doctrine played a large role in Nixon and Kissinger’s vision of a peaceful international system, as well. By involving more nations in their own defense and development programs, and allowing them to take greater roles in their partnerships with the United States, American policy would increase the stake each partner nation had in the stability and continuity of the international system.

This same principle informed at least two other major components of the Nixon Doctrine- first, the invitations to isolated nations like China to join the international community, in the assumption that making former rogue states into minor stakeholders would pave the way to those states gradually assuming more productive and responsible stakeholder roles in the international system. Second, the concept of diplomatic “linkage” in negotiations- the idea that if states cooperated in multiple sectors and issue areas, misbehaving states could be induced to cooperate further with America by if pressure was applied to them on particular issue areas and if positive incentives were linked to good behavior across the board.

The harmony between the goals of lessening American commitments and increasing allied stakeholder participation in alliances, to be achieved by American retrenchment of funding and allied increase of funding, was in some ways a miracle- one of the great tricks of public policy is aligning gimmicks to build up programs that accomplish multiple beneficial goals, while minimizing the consequences and tradeoffs. The Nixon Doctrine’s emphasis on partnership in the dual interests of decreased U.S. expenditures and greater allied participation in the international system exemplifies that trick beautifully.

AMERICA’S STRENGTH

President Nixon increased and reformed the defense budget, focusing on upgrades to America’s strategic nuclear forces and naval and air platforms in the interests of modernization. The Administration also began investing in various technological advances to change the game of warfighting, specifically in the fields of stealth and precision munitions. These advances were not a luxury- it was a perceived necessity, given the recent attainment of Soviet nuclear parity and the USSR’s general increases in military spending and military activity.

The comprehensive reforms to the defense budget and defense planning system were accompanied by arms negotiations with the Soviets, to reduce global stockpiles of nuclear weapons in a bid to realign defense postures and reduce military tensions.

Nixon never approached the “Peace Through Strength” question quite the way President Ronald Reagan would, whose approach emphasized ultimate military superiority. Nixonian military planning and arms control, rather, assumed general equality of capabilities between nations, and sought to use other diplomatic methods to maximize the American position by reducing overall stockpiles. But it nonetheless was a realization that America needed a certain relative power position to other great powers that needed to be, if perhaps not superior to the capabilities of the USSR and others, at the very least equal and advantaged. It was strength in a relative rather than absolute sense.

WILLINGNESS TO NEGOTIATE

Finally, (and this is what the Nixon Doctrine is perhaps most famous for,) Nixon and Kissinger made a strong point to emphasize improving relationships with hostile adversaries and great powers. This particularly pertained to the opening to China and the negotiations with the Soviet Union, gestures of openness and goodwill accompanied by firmness and resolve.

Nixon and Kissinger believed, and Nixon often wrote, that the permanent exclusion of any society from the life of the international community was likely to make that society more radical; whereas the inclusion of that society could have a tempering effect on its behavior, and even begin the process of transforming that society into a responsible stakeholder. They were under no illusions about the prospect of changing hearts and the human condition or ending warfare permanently, but they did have a certain faith in the prospects of international order conducted through institutionalized avenues of communication between the great powers.

For this reason, the Nixon Doctrine emphasized cooperation with the USSR and PRC on as many noncontroversial and non-conflicting issues as possible, under the belief that fruitful partnerships in some areas would be useful as a general relationship-improving device in international affairs. Used with greater sophistication, this became the policy of linkage- pressure would be applied on lesser areas like economic development and scientific cooperation to influence foreign leaders’ decision-making on higher areas of statecraft like diplomatic openings and arms control.

These three elements of the Nixon Doctrine’s intellectual articulation- Peace Through Partnership, America’s Strength, and Willingness to Negotiate- provided intellectual backdrop for one of the most sophisticated applied grand strategies of the 20^th Century. The big takeaway from this information should be that the Nixon grand strategy was not solely about cold, cynical, Machiavellian balancing of power and calculation of interest- there was an incredibly significant faith in institutions and cooperation, as well.

But there was much more to the story than the three intellectual components of the Nixon Doctrine alone.

THE CONDUCT OF THE NIXON DOCTRINE

These three principles of the Nixon Doctrine were, of course, chiefly the Administration’s public articulation of its actual activities and intentions. The reports outlined the thinking and public image of the Nixon Doctrine, but deeper investigation is necessary to assess its actual conduct and legacy.

Fortunately, the foreign policy scholar Dan Caldwell did exactly that in his essay “The Policies of Henry Kissinger.” Caldwell argues that Nixon and Kissinger generally devised a “Grand Design” of the world they wanted to build, and a “Grand Strategy” to attain it and manage it. The relevant passage, a listing of principles, is copied below:

Grand Design:

1. Accept the emergence of a tripolar configuration of power in the security issue area and a multipolar international economic system.

2. Encourage the development of a moderate international system supported by the U.S., the U.S.S.R., and the P.R.C.

3. Stop the spread of Communism to areas of the world in the traditional Western sphere of influence, but avoid direct military confrontation with the U.S.S.R.

Grand Strategy:

1. Accept Soviet achievement of nuclear parity; strive for the limitation of strategic arms (SALT.)

2. Contain the spread of Communism through: a) deterrence of military aggression [Europe]; b) the use of positive incentives [China]; c) mixed strategies employing positive incentives and negative sanctions [Vietnam]; and d) covert operations (Chile.)

3. Maintain firm collective security arrangements with the NATO Alliance and Japan; other alliance commitments should be more flexible; all allies should pay a greater proportion of the cost of defense as well as provide manpower (Nixon Doctrine.)

4. Deal with tension between Grand Design objectives of containing Communism to traditionally Western areas and avoiding direct military confrontation with the U.S.S.R. through communication and consultation with the U.S.S.R.; threaten or use U.S. force only if absolutely necessary.

5. Employ careful, presidentially-controlled crisis management of confrontations and limited wars to prevent escalation; communicate and consult with other relevant great powers in crisis situations (Basic Principles and Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War.) [Yom Kippur War crisis, “Shuttle Diplomacy.”]

6. Recognize the boundaries of post-World War II European states and the Soviet sphere of influences in Eastern Europe, while attempting to encourage freer interchange between Eastern and Western Europe (Helsinki Agreement.)

7. Encourage ties between the U.S. and Soviet Union through the conclusion of a number of cooperative projects in the economic, cultural, scientific and technological areas. [Ping-Pong Diplomacy, international elements of the Space Shuttle program.]

8. Develop regimes (agreed rules, procedures, and institutions) in important issue areas.

9. Attempt to mesh the various regimes into an overall grand strategy; use asymmetrical advantage in one regime to influence other issue areas [linkage doctrine.]

10. Maintain U.S. foreign policy commitments with reduced public and Congressional support.

As Caldwell very clearly demonstrates, the Nixon Doctrine had very concrete objectives and methods attached to its three general principles. It also was very well aware of the context of America in the 1970s- exhaustion, relative decline amid a “rise of the rest,” reduced resources, and a worsening international environment under the nuclear specter of the Cold War.

Contrary to the common public memory of the Nixon years, the opening to China and the extrication from Vietnam were not done chiefly for their own sake- they were done in the broader context of a global grand strategy that ultimately centered on competing with the Soviets in the Cold War on terms more amenable to American interests and limited American resources.

THE LEGACY OF THE NIXON DOCTRINE

The legacy of the Nixon Doctrine in its own time was mixed- as Caldwell notes, many of the doctrine’s institutions broke down by 1976, and such trends of the late 1970s as the Communist expansions into Angola, South Vietnam, and other areas, as well as generally increased Soviet military activity, seem to imply that Nixon and Kissinger failed to institutionalize the “lasting structure of peace” the President so hoped to build through his diplomacy.

But in a broader sense, Nixon really did set up the contours of the Post-Cold War world in more ways than one. The realignment of diplomacy towards China and East Asia more generally did not, perhaps, create the “tripolar world” of Kissinger’s hopes; but it did produce a necessary adjustment in American diplomatic focus as the East Asian economies grew into global power players. The rules and regimes and programs set up were generally not new, as the internationalists of the preceding four decades or so had already dreamt them up. But Nixon, more than Kennedy and Johnson before him, figured out how to use such instruments, through the linkage doctrine, in broader diplomatic efforts- a feat that has not adequately been imitated by any President since.

If anything, Nixon’s strategy for peace was timely, but his structure of peace was built too early- it better fitted a Post-Soviet world. The strategy and structure nonetheless were well-adapted for the American and international situation of the early 1970s, and provide a good model for our similar world of the late 2010s.

There remains the question of the legacy of the Nixon Doctrine throughout the remainder of the Cold War. Generally, President Gerald Ford imperfectly continued the Nixon Doctrine, particularly with Henry Kissinger as his Secretary of State, while President Jimmy Carter wholly rejected the Nixon Doctrine for a human rights-focused approach. But more interesting is the relationship between the Nixon Doctrine and the final phase of the Cold War- the Reagan years.

Some historians, like John Lamberton Harper, have argued that Nixon’s grand strategy was really a “holding action” in the Cold War- a reluctant acknowledgment of temporary American weakness, meant to hold the international order in place while new sources of American strength could be built up, all the while vowing an eventual return to Containment or even Rollback and a “policy of victory” in the Cold War against the Soviet Union.

These historians point to Nixon’s support and advising of Ronald Reagan throughout the eight years of the Reagan Presidency, as evidence of Nixon’s supposed shared belief that the United States had to defeat the U.S.S.R. and eventually would do so through aggressive and active foreign policy.

This seems to me to be misguided.

First off, Nixon, like Kissinger, seems to have believed that American preeminence was over. Perhaps this was a mistaken assumption, given the triumphant roaring-back of the 1990s and 2000s. Nonetheless, a foundational intellectual element of everything Nixon did in foreign policy was the notion that America had to get used to leading the world with prudent statecraft, rather than by sheer mass, money, manpower, and influence. He was no declinist, but sincerely believed in the rise of the rest- including the Soviet Union.

Every policy instrument and strategic doctrine Nixon designed, then, was generally crafted assuming that the risen and forthcoming multipolarity would feature a strong Soviet Union. I don’t think Nixon wanted to destroy or even defeat the U.S.S.R.- in my interpretation, he merely wanted to keep it contained and, perhaps, at most, encourage it to become a more responsible stakeholder, and maybe even reform its domestic institutions a bit.

All this implies that had things gone differently- had Watergate been weathered or had it not happened- the Nixon Doctrine might have been institutionalized and the conservative and neoconservative takeover of the Republican Party might not have subsequently transformed American foreign policy. This in turn would have resulted in a very different endgame for the Cold War, perhaps resulting in a reformed-but-still-formally-Communist Russia not dissimilar to America’s post-1972 relationship with a reformed-but-still-formally-Communist China. But this is all speculative.

Less speculative is the fact that Reagan’s successor, President George H.W. Bush, in many ways refuted not only the rhetoric but the substance of Reagan’s policies. Bush 41 was basically a Nixonian realist in foreign policy, the best example of realist-style statecraft after 1974, better even than Nixon’s own Vice-President, Gerald Ford. President Bush’s National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and his Secretary of State James Baker III were similarly-tempered. This trio- again, not dissimilar to the Nixon-Kissinger duo- presided over great historical shifts, very admirably managed the fall of the U.S.S.R. as bloodlessly as possible, and laid down the basic outlines of the “New World Order” of international relations for the 1990s and 2000s. Indeed, it could almost be argued that what Nixon and Kissinger failed to institutionalize by 1974, Bush and Scowcroft and Baker basically brought into practice in 1991.

There’s no way to tell whether or not a second Bush term might have resulted in the further institutionalization of realistic foreign policy-making and a revival of the popularity of the Nixon Doctrine’s spirit; alas, the “New World Order” of President Bush was to be inherited by three far less experienced statesmen over the subsequent two decades, and thus fell a bit more quickly than Truman’s world order of Containment fell.

A version of this essay first appeared at The Hamiltonian Republican.

This is Part I of a two-part series.

Luke Phillips would like to thank Ambassador Winston Lord and Dr. Dan Caldwell for their advice in preparing this essay. But all ideas and assertions made are Phillips’s alone.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

The post Towards a New Nixon Doctrine, Part 1 appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

A time-honored tradition in the foreign policy commentariat is the habit of anyone who studies foreign policy for a living–from undergraduates at USC to PhD’s in International Relations and former Undersecretaries of State for Communications Policy– to put on their courtly robes, pretend to be the President’s National Security Advisor, and write him a wide-ranging and theoretically-informed manifesto on how he ought to govern the world.

Sometimes, their distance from actual policymaking leads these temporary NSA’s to construct grand new castles in the clouds, beautiful in form but wholly unrealizable in practice (and when their implications are considered, truly terrifying in scope and implication.) Other times, temporary NSA’s are so fully enmeshed in the policy world that they are incapable of speaking anything offensive, interesting, or true- their works tend to be resounding glorifications of things the way they are, offering no distinct direction away from official orthodoxy.

The goal of any young intellectual and writer ought to be to be enough of a pragmatist that their visions and ideas never approach utopia; yet to be enough of an original and a critic that their tracts never veer towards insipidity. As a little exercise, let’s look at two examples of works that break either rule in either direction, bearing in mind that the authors seriously thought these would be useful to policymakers when they published them.

NIALL FERGUSON: ESTABLISH AN AUTHORITARIAN ENTENTE

The British intellectual and Kissinger biographer Niall Ferguson wrote up a fascinating treatment of realism at The American Interest sometime after the election of Donald Trump and before his inauguration. Ferguson’s general argument in “Donald Trump’s World Order” is that President Trump, with his unsentimental strongman tendencies and opposition to both the nation-building of George W. Bush and the multilateralism of Barack Obama, ought to translate his instincts into a realpolitiking foreign policy:

“Trump conceives of an international order no longer predicated on Wilsonian notions of collective security, and no longer expensively underwritten by the United States. Instead, like Roosevelt, Trump wants a world run by regional great powers with strong men in command, all of whom understand that any lasting international order must be based on the balance of power. “

What does this mean in practice?

Among other things, an abandonment of multilateralism in all its forms, from NATO to the United Nations to regional partnerships and trade agreements; an alignment of American diplomacy away from Europe and Japan, and towards China and Russia; an allowance of regional balances of power to determine justice in the strategic theaters of the world, without direct U.S. commitments in anything deemed strategically uncritical; and most blatantly, a worship of strength and order as the legitimating principle, unchecked by any principles of freedom of justice otherwise conceived.

In short, Niall Ferguson recommends an abandonment of the liberal international system in entirety and a replacement with what former Secretary of State John Kerry might, this time accurately, call “behaving in a 19^th Century fashion.”

If Trump took Ferguson’s advice, it would be absolutely silly.

There’s a liberal conceit that political realists, especially foreign policy realists, are cynical, Machiavellian billiard-ball-movers intent on reducing power to a science and sacrificing every dignity and right to a broader design. That’s a reduction of political realism to the level of parody, and it certainly doesn’t describe the great realists Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, or their modern descendants like Robert Gates.

But that parodic caricature may well describe Niall Ferguson, at least in this essay.

The true conservative preserves, rather than “restores.” Something that all the great American realists of the 20^th Century had in common was their insistence on the preservation of the liberal international order, and its reformation and adaptation. They neither were deluded by liberal dreams about the basic naturalness of liberal internationalism and the goodness of man, nor did they seek to expand the liberal international order so dramatically as the internationalists preferred. The liberal order was not their god- it was a means to preserving and partially institutionalizing the international peace and relative harmony that would keep their states, societies, and peoples safe and free to live their ways of life. Not being constrained to legalism or the letter of the law, they were able to adapt that order and America’s relationship to it to adjust to the winds of international change- Nixon and Bush Sr. most recently and dramatically.

What Ferguson proposes for President Trump is a full-on rejection of the liberal international order and its replacement with a barbaric system of strongman rule, based on the first principle of force. It is paradoxically both revolutionary and reactionary. It is revolutionary in that it would overturn an order that American blood and treasure has spent at least seven decades protecting, and that American and British blood and treasure have built slowly for centuries. It is reactionary in that it harkens to a golden past of power-concerts and great statesman-diplomacy, a world that even Bismarck, Palmerston, Castlereagh, and Metternich never knew. In Ferguson’s preference for radical change and radical restoration, he stands with de Maistre and Robespierre, not Burke and Adams.

It may be true that the liberal international order as it stands now is so fundamentally rotten and broken that it cannot be saved in its current form, as some have argued. Nonetheless, what can be saved should be saved- and mere vulgar Machivallianism and realist-nationalism as a replacement for an international order the British and Americans have spent centuries building, would be reactionary, rather than conservative.

For all his essay gets wrong (and I get the impression Ferguson was writing it as a thought-exercise more than as a serious proposal) Ferguson does bring up some very crucial points. American diplomacy these days has a quiet whisper of regime change under its breath vis-à-vis authoritarian regimes, and this is both detrimental and unconducive to domestic reforms. The notion that we ought to build an Authoritarian Entente is perhaps too far; the notion that we ought to respect authoritarian regimes as legally moral equals is not.

Additionally, Ferguson rightly highlights the need for a reappraisal of the balance of power. Europe is weak and decadent; Russia and China are strong and legitimate. International institutions as they are designed today, for whatever reason, still echo the balance of power of 1945, with only marginal updates having been made every few decades. It would perhaps be prudent to redesign these institutions in such a way as to recognize the real underlying power structures and contain and balance them a little bit better.

Despite these two points, though, I think the spirit of Ferguson’s essay interprets realism very wrongly.

HAL BRANDS & CO.: LITERALLY DON’T CHANGE ANYTHING

If Niall Ferguson’s essay goes too far in the direction of radical change, and shouldn’t be treated as a serious policy option for the Trump White House, it’s equally possible for a foreign policy analyst to advise the exact opposite approach- to do nothing to fundamentally reform American foreign policy in this changed and changing world. It’s possible to be a strategic stand-patter in 2017, however unadvisable that might be. Regardless of all the evidence laid out, someone might still decide that the hegemonic and liberal internationalist policies of the Post-Cold War were basically right, and deserve updating and use today.

That’s more or less the position Hal Brands, Paul D. Miller, Peter Feaver, and William Inboden stake out in a new report for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, entitled “Critical Assumptions and American Grand Strategy.” Despite the title’s implied focus on checking “critical assumptions” amid new evidence, they ultimately conclude that tweaks around the edges to the Clinton-Bush-Obama strategic and rhetorical traditions are sufficient, and are not in need of true reform. They counsel the Trump Administration against a course of retrenchment and recommend resurgent internationalism, with six cautiously-worded sentences written in insipid “Bureaucratese,” as it’s called, as their final recommendations on how to maintain liberal internationalism today:

• Embrace the need for constructive and fairly significant adaptation.
• Pursue offsets and hedges.
• Double down on positive trends.
• Understand that more resources will be necessary.
• Consider “what-ifs” and make contingency plans.
• Engage in more explicit, frequent, and sophisticated assumption-testing exercises.

Never has a less disagreeable sextet of proposals and guidelines been published. I’m sure the Pepsi advertising team has produced a report with similar wording, in the wake of their recent commercial controversy; and United Airlines probably issued the same memo to their security employees after the scuffle with a passenger on an overbooked plane went viral.

In other words, nothing of policy substance is actually said in these six sentences. The background assumption behind that, then, is that the basics of American grand strategy since Bush 41 are in no need of fundamental change, only better management and implementation. (I’m told that this means people in government will actually read the report.)

This is unfortunate, because the rest of the meat of the report is actually quite good, composed of Aquinas-like pairings of assumptions and rebuttals to those assumptions. The authors do very accurately paint the problems with prior U.S. foreign policy alongside its benefits. As a document of geopolitical analysis, the report does well; as a document advising future policymaking and adjustments to the aforesaid geopolitical trends, the report falls on its face.

There are at least five major changes in international affairs that make the late 2010s different from, and needing a different grand strategy than, the 1990s and 2000s; these trends became evident throughout the administration of President Barack Obama and have only been consummated since 2014. These trends all fly in the face of the CSBA report’s fundamental argument that the old grand strategy can and should be maintained in slightly-tweaked, updated form.

These trends are American exhaustion and internal division, the rise of illiberal ideological challengers (if only functionally rather than formally,) the return of great regional powers to significant regions of Eurasia, the cessation and reversal of globalization, democratization, and liberalization, and the proliferation of mass-casualty terrorism to ungoverned regions of the world. All of these trends require different tools and strategies of statecraft than Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush brought to the table.

And embracing the need for adaptation, pursuing offsets and hedges, doubling down on positive trends, employing more resources, making contingency plans, and engaging in assumption-testing exercises won’t change those trends. At best, they will help policymakers manage the liberal international consensus a little bit longer; but they’re generally not helpful, and some form of retrenchment to order and adapt to a decentralizing world of great powers will be necessary.

The one big thing that the authors of this report get right is that fundamental revolution in foreign policy a la what Niall Ferguson recommends is not only inadvisable, but unnecessary.

However, the authors seem to be blind to even the need for reform, despite reform shouting out to them through all their studies of alterations to fundamental assumptions. If the ideas to reorient American foreign policy do emerge from somewhere, it won’t be from this report.

THE DEFENSE OF THE WEST

What is needed is something more along the lines of a “Defense of the West” strategy, a preservation of the liberal international system in America’s alliances, made possible and stable through the broader integration of non-Western powers into a new, pluralistic and post-liberal global order.  This, in fact, looks something like Henry Kissinger’s outline in World Order–regional blocs of power fused into an amoral world order, none imposing its will upon the others, all sacrificing their hegemonic and universalistic ambitions at the altar of world order and world peace. This would neither forsake what has been built of liberal order, as would Ferguson’s Authoritarian Entente, nor continue futilely expanding the liberal order to the far reaches of the globe, as would Brands and company’s Liberal Internationalist Hegemonism.

It’s not fully clear that President Trump’s team is pushing towards this, but it certainly isn’t pushing against it at the moment.

Which brings us to another question- what the heck is going on the National Security Council right now?

HOW TRUMP’S DOING IN FOREIGN POLICY

Despite all the supposed Trumpian isolationism and Trumpian realism the folks at The American Conservative and The National Interest, respectively, think they’re seeing, (and which the liberal press seems to be seeing, too,) it should be clear to most observers that, functionally, President Trump is basically maintaining standard Post-Cold War hegemonic and internationalist policies, albeit with his characteristically brash populist flare. He looks a little more like a President Bush than a President Obama in his willingness to back up words with weapons- witness the strikes on the Syrian airfield, the first battlefield deployment of the “Mother of all Bombs” in Afghanistan, the ongoing showdown on the Korean Peninsula. He looks a little more like a President Obama than a President Bush in his simultaneous drawdowns of international activity and apparent post-hegemonism in rhetoric- note his coziness with the Russians and Chinese, and the conspicuous lack of fuzzy rhetoric about democracy and human rights. Regardless, there’s nothing new here. Trump is acting like a normal President in foreign policy, even a realist one. (And I can’t believe I just wrote that.)

Many of us- myself included- worried about a radical shift in U.S. foreign policy towards unpredictability under Trump. The various letters signed by prominent neoconservative foreign policy thinkers testified to this concern.

But experience has not born out these fears, most likely, I think, due to Trump’s selection of a prudent “Team of Realists” to execute his decisions. Sure, decision-making power is now formally centralized in the White House, and Secretaries Tillerson and Mattis haven’t been particularly vocal or open about foreign policy leadership. But Steve Bannon has been marginalized and General Mike Flynn was ousted, having been functionally and formally replaced by the boring playboy Jared Kushner and the all-around-sober General H.R. McMaster. The President is being advised by sane human beings- and as Ambassador Cofer Black once told me of Presidential decision-making in foreign policy, “everything will be ok, as long as their advisors are top-notch.”

Tillerson and Mattis are running things fairly smoothly, predictably, and, I might include, prudently. With McMaster at the President’s ear rather than Flynn, a voice of prudence counsels the most powerful man in the world. The world indeed seems on the verge of crisis with every tweet and statement; but the nukes aren’t flying just yet.

Maybe this is a radical claim, but I’ll make it anyway– the Trump Administration, though probably not President Trump himself, is adapting American grand strategy fairly well for a world beyond the Post-Cold War. The Administration is preserving what is best of “Same World” while softening the landing and preparing us for competition as global trends unfortunately and inexorably drag us into a “Cold World.”  Things are not as bad as they seem in Washington.

Now if only the administration can internally produce a document that is both conceptually interesting and pragmatically relevant encapsulating this temperament. We shall see if anything happens on that front.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

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For most of the American foreign policy commentariat, myself included, the greatest and most horrendous legacy of a Trump Presidency was always going to be President Trump’s clownish mismanagement of foreign affairs, which many believed would lead to a breakdown in international order and the final end of the liberal international system. Trump’s election, and subsequent appointments of General Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon to the high positions within the White House, seemed to validate those concerns.

Those concerns still might be valid, just as concerns about the President’s seemingly-schizophrenic temperament, neurotic Twitter habits, and lack of formal experience in politics and foreign affairs certainly remain valid. But there is an increasing body of evidence that the Trump Presidency might be far less interesting, or indeed far more beneficial, for American grand strategy than anyone could have assumed going into it. High-level appointments like Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, and the serious consideration of figures like General David Petraeus and Ambassador Jon Huntsman for roles within the administration, indicate a strategic sobriety and realism within the Trump Administration’s vetting team, perhaps within the mind of President Trump himself.

With Mattis, Tillerson, and McMaster steadying and guiding President Trump’s strategic hand, we very well may see the resurgence of American realism going into the third decade of the 21^st Century, not unlike previous resurgences across American history.

What is American Realism?

As many students of American foreign policy and international relations argue, Theodore Roosevelt was the American realist-internationalist of the 20^th Century. (Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and perhaps George H.W. Bush are on the second tier.) TR’s political philosophy of individual excellence and patriotic citizenship was intrinsically and inescapably linked to his philosophy of national greatness on the world stage. But his philosophy of national greatness was not Wilsonian- he neither sought to “make the world safe for democracy” nor to “teach [other countries]to elect good men.” His sole concerns were the interests of the American nation and the American people, and the construction of such a balance of power and liberal world order as could best preserve those interests in a way compatible with American values.

Theodore Roosevelt saw a world of rising great powers and increasingly complicated social and economic trends, and saw that the preservation of American liberty and union required a stronger American commitment to international affairs and world order than American politicians had theretofore allowed. This competitive and complicated new international system, and America’s yet-undefined role in it, required cold prudence in statecraft and basic unity of American national purpose, which TR provided during his tenure as President of the United States.

This sensibility has guided American statecraft countless times over the last century. Whenever America has forged a durable and sustainable international role or world order, there has been a generation of capable realist-internationalist statesmen at the helm; this has been especially crucial at times of global power transitions like that of the late 1940s. We got lucky with generations of such leaders twice, and were less lucky as the Cold War progressed and ended. Now, as we exit the Post-Cold War and enter a new Age of Nationalisms, we could use quality leaders of realist-internationalist leanings again.

But first, a look at the older generations and their power transitions.

Teams of Realists at the Power Transitions

The first major reshaping of America’s role in the world came around the late 1890s and early 20^th Century, when America formally shifted from its “Promised Land” role to its newfound “Crusader State” position (to cite Walter McDougall’s parlances.) Warren Zimmermann documents the contributions to this new American imperialism and internationalism through a study of the lives and friendships of Theodore Roosevelt, John Hay, Henry Cabot Lodge, Alfred Thayer Mahan, and Elihu Root, in his book “First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made their Country a World Power.” This post-Civil War generation of American elites were temperamentally conservative but politically nationalist and internationalist- “Neo-Hamiltonians,” as Samuel P. Huntington described them. Their contributions came at a critical time, and helped position American internationalism at a moment when it was most needed. Post-World War One elites like Woodrow Wilson were not nearly so successful, and even Franklin Roosevelt’s Cabinet during the Second World War did not have so lasting an influence, brilliant though they were in prosecuting the war and defeating the Axis Powers.

After the close of the Second World War, a major debate cropped up concerning America’s future role in the postwar/early Cold War world. As usual, isolationists and America Firsters made themselves heard, but the debate was ultimately dominated and won by a group of six friends who managed to convince President Harry S. Truman to assume an internationalist, “Cold Warrior” stance of containment of the Soviet Union and the formalization of a liberal international order featuring permanent alliances. Walter Isaacson depicts the lives and contributions of Dean Acheson, George Kennan, Averill Harriman, Robert Lovett, John McCloy, and Charles Bohlen, six friends and the first Cold Warriors, in his book “The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made.” Their contributions committed America to its postwar internationalist global stance, and effectively set the tone of world politics throughout the six-decade span that would become known as “The American Century.”

Both friend groups were composed of what were once known as “WASPs,” or White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, typically upper-class Northeastern Puritan-descended American elites who were bred into a cult of duty to the nation. They had their flaws, and after the 1970s ceased to exist meaningfully in American culture, having been replaced by new generations of self-made, cosmopolitan men and women. But their Neo-Hamiltonian, realist-internationalist temperament and sense of public duty has since proved less common amongst our elites than it once was, and I would argue we have suffered because of it.

The next great realignment of America’s role in the world occurred in the 1970s, amid the splitting of the Communist Bloc, the return to prominence of Europe and Japan, and the “rise of the rest” of nations in the developing world. But no elite of WASP-y thinkers rose to manage the transition of American foreign policy to a new world; instead, the most unlikely of duos, the anti-establishment grocer’s son, President Richard Nixon, and his partner, the Jewish immigrant-intellectual Henry Kissinger, shaped American foreign policy for a multipolar age. They achieved some basic strategic successes, but ultimately failed to shape the future development of U.S. grand strategy much- perhaps because they never institutionalized a new foreign policy social elite.

The next great realignment was incomplete. When the Soviet Union collapsed, President George H.W. Bush and his main advisors, Secretary of State James Baker and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, steered the ship of state through potentially tumultuous waters with Kissingerian cunning and prudence. But Bush and company never managed to institutionalize a Post-Cold War grand strategy, again perhaps due to their failure to set up a new social elite capable of steering foreign policy.

So despite the grand strategic successes of the Nixon-Kissinger and Bush-Scowcroft-Baker teams, the basic timbre of Post-Cold War American grand strategy was set by a distinctly different social elite- the cosmopolitan, liberal internationalist Democrats who had been shaped by the Antiwar movement of the 1970s, and their neoconservative counterparts in the Republican Party. The subsequent incoherence of American grand strategy from the Clinton liberal internationalist years through the “Vulcan” Bush 43 years through the Obama retrenchment-lite years is testimony to President Bush 41’s failure to institutionalize American strategic discipline a quarter-century ago, regardless of the brilliance of his other victories.

The Need for Enlightened Elites

As James Burnham argued in “The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom,” political science is in many ways merely a study of the values of, behavior of, and constraints upon socio-political elites. And the Post-Cold War American elite clearly failed to conduct American foreign policy responsibly enough to perpetuate itself beyond 2016, losing the Presidency then to the incoherent populist Donald Trump. President Trump, despite Niall Ferguson’s high hopes for his Presidency, does not seem to be a reformist strategic thinker. There is reason to expect that his Presidency will result not in a major realignment in American strategic thinking, but in a need for such a realignment, to cope with the international disasters this administration may well accidentally bring forth.

But then again, Tillerson is Secretary of State. General Mattis and General McMaster are sane and competent strategists. General Flynn is out, and Steve Bannon might not survive the duration of the administration. There are responsible adults in the managerial apparatus of American foreign policy, at the very least. Perhaps these realist-internationalists will temper the impulses of the President and provide strategic thinking where there would seem to be none.

Perhaps Trump has brought to power a new foreign policy elite of responsible realist-internationalists, with a WASP-y culture of service and duty ingrained in their souls, to manage world order. It is too much to expect of our present situation that this “Team of Realists” will be capable of perpetuating itself into the further future the way Mahan and Lodge or Kennan and Acheson did; but even if we have merely a strategic management team like the Nixon-Kissinger Duo or the Bush-Scowcroft-Baker Trio at the helm for a mere four years, there is untold good that can be done.

It’s too soon to rest easy. We still don’t know what influence the cunning Steve Bannon will have over the Administration’s foreign policy, if he stays onboard. Plenty of commentators have suggested that Tillerson isn’t quite up for the job of Secretary of State. And there’s no guarantee that Trump, who routinely attacked “the generals” on the campaign trail, will listen to Mattis and McMaster on important questions of war and peace.

But the very fact that these voices have now been formally placed in positions of high office means that they’ll have, at the very least, a chance to influence the process. A new age of American Realism may well be upon us.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

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Robert D. Kaplan is the bestselling author of many books on foreign affairs including In Europe’s Shadow, Asia’s Cauldron, The Revenge of Geography, Monsoon, The Coming Anarchy, and Balkan Ghosts. His writing is eclectic and lucid; an essential voice in modern political scholarship. Kaplan is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a contributing editor at The Atlantic, where his work has appeared for three decades. His most recent book is entitled Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World, and is set to be published early next year.

TRANSCRIPT

LNP: Hi, my name is Luke Phillips and I am a senior correspondent at Glimpse From the Globe, USC’s student-run international affairs publication. We are joined today for this first installment of the podcast interview series by the legendary journalist, Mr. Robert D. Kaplan.

Robert Kaplan has written many, many great books on geopolitics and history and travel, and his newest book “Earning the Rockies” is coming out in 2017. Mr. Kaplan, welcome!

RDK: Thanks, it’s a pleasure to be here.

LNP: So Mr. Kaplan, in preparation for this interview, I was rereading a few chapters in “The Revenge of Geography” and “An Empire Wilderness” and I get the impression that your main argument about American geopolitics is that as we move forward into the 21^st Century, America is still defined by her geography, but that the social conditions which play out on that geography are increasingly conducted in an international and multicultural context.

RDK: Yes that is true. And this is elaborated on in my new book, which is coming out in 2017, “Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World,” my new belief is that America is being swept up into a globalized world, like it or not. And a large section of the American population can compete with that world, and will prosper.

But a large section is still stuck in space. It cannot compete, it’s stuck in the nation-state, and the geography of the United States is, remember- we’re the largest of the great satellites around the Eurasian super-continent. So we are removed from the turmoil and chaos of Eurasia.

But at the same time, our river systems, which empty into the Mississippi and meet the great sea-lines of communication bring all of our great cities into communication with the rest of the world even without jet airplanes, simply by shipping. So that we’re connected to the world, even though we’re somewhat protected [from]it. But our middle class is less protected than ever before.

LNP: So you would argue that the trends that many people, from Ross Douthat to Joel Kotkin to Michael Lind have been seeing, with the increasing rise of a cosmopolitan upper class that shares more in common with its international counterparts than with its countrymen, is on the one side; while on the other side you have the more traditional middle-class/working-class, nationhood-oriented people in the rest of the suburban rings and in the interior of the United States.

RDK: Yes in fact I’ve been writing about that since the mid-1990s. If you look at my book “An Empire Wilderness: A Journey Across America” in the mid-1990s, if you look at several The Atlantic essays I did in the 1990s, I was writing very directly about what I call this globalized, whiskey-sipping upper middle class that’s merging into the global elite, and a lower middle and lower class that is slipping behind, staying anchored in the nation-state, so that the middle class itself is weakening, and it’s dividing up into an upper-middle and a lower-middle.

LNP: Now there are some who would argue that it is important for the maintenance of American nationhood that we strengthen that middle class and lower class as well as strengthening the institutions of the American state and the American cultural nation, in direct opposition to the kind of globally-minded coastal elites who would instead prefer a free-trade/open-borders kind of world.

Now I know that your writing is mostly descriptive rather than prescriptive, but it nonetheless lends to the notion that there may be some sort of great cultural conflict on the horizon if those divides continue to widen; what are your opinions on the future of that kind of conflict within the American system between those two broad cultures that can both lay equal claim to being “the real Americans” quote on quote?

RDK: Yes, well, it’s playing out in politics! A large part of the Trump voters are in that lower-middle, stuck-in-space, unable to compete in the globalized world, fewer manufacturing jobs in the US since the Chinese joined the world free trading system, and a lot of Hillary Clinton’s supporters are of course in that upper-middle globalized elite that have done very very well by globalization; and you see the same thing in Great Britain. A lot of people who supported Brexit were from the Midlands, from the middle part of the country, who felt that their jobs, the weight of their wages was being threatened by immigration from other EU countries- Poles, Romanians, and others. And an upper-middle elite at Oxford, Cambridge, the City of London, who have benefited enormously from Britain being in the EU, and therefore supported it.

You cannot have social peace unless you help out the people who’ve been left behind. So, a pure Darwinian system of pure free trade, pure free markets, without a social safety net, will lead to social unrest.

LNP: It seems to me that a prospective solution could be something along the lines of what the 19^th Century American School economist Henry Carey, I believe, called, the “Harmony of Interests” or what the great 19^th Century Prime Minister of England Benjamin Disraeli called “one-nation conservatism,” whereby the interests of different socio-economic classes, who were being affected by economic developments in different ways, even back then, whereby the interests of different social classes could be united into a broader, nationhood-oriented political program that could bring up the bottom while protecting the top at the same time.

RDK: Yeah, look, I’m not an economist. What I am is a journalist, and I travel, and I describe things. And if you travel across the United States slowly, as I’ve done for the past year for this new book that’s coming out, what you see is a lot of towns of about 20,000 or so that used to be thriving that are now dead. The stores are empty, the streets are empty, you have places in Kansas and Indiana that have a lot of low-paying jobs for Mexican immigrants, and life has been shattered for people who’ve been living there for many generations. And this is the side of the country that the elites do not see.

Now, it’s true that a number of the solutions proposed by Mr. Trump would probably make things worse. I’m not arguing in support of him. I’m just saying that the social conditions away from the great cosmopolitan cities and coastlines, are significantly to blame for the upheaval we’ve seen in this election cycle.

LNP: I think you can even see it in other places than just the interior, I mean I live in South-Central Los Angeles and the conditions around here are similar to those as I’ve read. But I want to shift the conversation towards another aspect of your thought.

So in the last chapter of The Revenge of Geography, you argued that the United States would become something like a North-South oriented, Mexico-to-Canada kind of regional uniter of Latino and Anglo cultures in the Western Hemisphere. What implications would that kind of multinational, if not union, then integration certainly, what kind of implications would that have on the American working class and middle class which is predominantly white?

RDK: The issue is not Canada. Canada is like Chile laid on its side, almost all Canadians live within a hundred miles of the U.S. border. Canada is a middle class country. Canadian entry into the U.S. does not in any way effect the social peace inside the United States. Canada is in demographic terms a small extension of the United States going northward.

Mexico is another matter. Mexico is a country with a third, a half the population of the United States, growing faster than the United States demographically, and although it’s been dynamic economically it’s still significantly poorer than the United States with a younger average population. And because it’s contiguous to the United States, Mexican immigration has a much greater effect on the United States than immigration from other parts of the world. Mexican immigrants do not have to cross a large sea to get to the United States, they just cross a land border.

So our future is increasingly intertwined with Mexico, whether we like it or not. But while the elites experience the good side of Mexican immigration, the people in the lower middle classes in other parts of the country experience the difficult parts of it.

LNP: Do you think that the program for alleviating that difficulty will include greater international integration, and do you think we’ll see a rise in anti-immigrant populism in response to that integration?

RDK: Remember, the United States has been friendly to immigrants not all of its history but during parts of its history. There’ve been decades when very few immigrants were allowed entry, there’ve been decades when many immigrants were allowed entry. It’s always been regulated over time.

I do not see unlimited immigration into the United States. But what I see is, despite the populist upheaval, the world is increasingly converging and integrated and crises are converging with each other, so that we’re facing effectively one large conflict system in ways we haven’t in the past.

LNP: It’ll be interesting to see. I know the late Robert Pastor wrote some things on the “North American Idea,” so I’m sure there’s reason to look more into that.

My final question basket, Mr. Kaplan, revolves around the question of American identity and American geography in line with what Frederick Jackson Turner, the great historian of the Progressives and the West, discussed when he was talking about the relevance of the frontier to American democracy.

In An Empire Wilderness, you discussed how as the social changes take place and as the frontier closes in ways Frederick Jackson Turner never could have known, America becomes a more cosmopolitan entity that integrates itself with the rest of the globe, which may be a positive development, yet at the expense of what you call the Homeric Age of American identity and the Homeric Age of great exploits defining what America was. You suggested there would be a disconnect between traditional military patriotism with the new global cosmopolitanism.

My question is- do you think it is possible to maintain a semblance of what we would recognize as American nationhood, and American identity, amidst this increasingly globalized world and amidst this increasingly multicultural North American continent?

RDK: Well, we’re going to have to. Because without a sense of American identity, without a sense of pride in American history, without a sense of pride in settling the temperate zone of the American continent, with all of its cruelties, nevertheless if we have no pride in that, it will be very hard for us to be active and to do good in the world.

LNP: And so it’s important to maintain some of those institutions regardless of the challenges there will be to maintain them.

RDK: Absolutely.

LNP: I suppose the follow-up question would be, how do you see the actual geography of the United States reflecting that? I know the title of your book is “Earning the Rockies,” and I wanted to ask what the logic behind that was.

RDK: The logic will be explained in the first few pages of the book. It’s primarily about how settling the thinly-soiled lands of the Great Plains and the Rockies changed the character of the American people.  Up through settling the Midwest, Anglo-Saxons encountered a landscape very similar to Great Britain. It was only when they entered water-starved areas with very little rainwater, that the Anglo-Saxon race encountered a true desert. And it was that encounter that changed the American character and created it as we know it now, and that encounter involved not just individualism but communalism. It required restraint, caution, common sense, because Utah, for instance, is only 3% arable, whereas Iowa is almost 100% arable. So settling Utah required constraint and communalism and a break on individualism. I think as I’ll explain in the book, the settling of the American West provides a good guide to our foreign policy and how we should proceed with it going forward.

LNP:  That’s a fascinating idea and I look forward to reading your book and reading the fleshed out arguments on how it works. And you know, in the increasingly complex world of foreign policy in the 21^st Century, I think it’s going to be even more important than ever before.

Do you have any prescriptions, forecasts, or general ideas and advice for people who are going to be looking into the confluence of American geography, foreign policy, politics, and culture moving forward?

RDK: Yes. They need to do a lot of reading of authors who have now been forgotten, but who are very important. Walter Prescott Webb, Bernard Devoto, Wallace Stegner, and others. And of course I discuss all them in my new book.

LNP: Well excellent. I look forward to reviewing your book for Glimpse From the Globe! Mr. Kaplan thank you for joining me today, we appreciate it a lot!

RDK: You’re very welcome.

A complete list of Robert D. Kaplan’s books and essays can be found here. 

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

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Correspondents Luke Phillips and Spencer Slagowitz sit down for a conversation about trends in foreign affairs, from trade to climate change to the populist right.

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Correspondents Luke Phillips, Katya Lopatko and Jack Crash Anderson talk geography and the balance of power in Europe and Eurasia. From Westphalia to Vienna to the EU, how do we conceive of the European landmass? It’s more than churches, tourist traps and sold-out David Hasselhoff nostalgia concerts.

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