Wednesday, November 13, 2024

Part I

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Donald Trump and the Reshaping of U.S. Foreign Policy: World Leaders Respond to Donald Trump’s Re-Election

Well, speaking of worldview, world leaders are responding to the 2024 presidential election and the election of Donald Trump to a second term as President of the United States. The return of former President Trump, now President-elect Donald Trump, is setting the stage for an unprecedented amount of conversation on the international scene. That’s true of a climate summit being held right now in Azerbaijan. It is also true in world capitals all over the globe. It’s also catching global media attention producing headlines like this one from Bloomberg News, “Trump Shaping US Foreign Policy Well Before Taking Office.” This one in The New York Times, “Raising the World Order is Trump’s Fondest Wish.” And this one from the front page of Sunday’s edition of The New York Times, “Foreign Chiefs Quicken Stride to Trump’s Ear.” Subhead, “Trying to Build Bridges and to Mend Fences.”

All right, this is truly interesting. Because you’re looking at the global scene, you’re looking at foreign leaders and they are taking stock of the fact that former President Donald Trump is now once again President-elect of the United States. And this changes the global equation. It is also a reminder of something we often don’t think of enough, and that is, let’s just think about the fact that when you’re talking about global politics, you’re talking about the headlines, you’re talking about nation against nation, you’re talking about wars, you’re talking about alliances, you’re talking about people. When we talk about Russia invading Ukraine, we are talking about two men in particular. Vladimir Putin, who is the autocrat of Russia who decided to invade Ukraine, and we’re talking about President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine who has come to personify Ukraine in world global terms. As you are thinking about the United States, the President of the United States is not only chief executive, not only commander-in-chief and head of state, he is also the chief officer of America’s foreign policy.

As a matter of fact, to a considerable degree, a President of the United States decides what is American foreign policy. And just by the way, that is not at all disconnected from the president’s constitutional role as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, but also his executive role over the entirety of the American government including the Department of State. So you are looking here at the fact that leaders around the world are having to change their tune and they’re having to reach out personally to Donald Trump.

That is if they are allies of the United States. And every one of our allies has a particular need from the United States, given the American role in the world. So you have Britain’s Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who’s reaching out to the President of the United States, who is at least ideologically in a very different position. You are also looking at other leaders around the world and you’re looking at some government leaders who had even basically insulted Donald Trump or indicated public opposition to him, and now they’re having to change their tune and reckon with the fact that Donald Trump is going to be for four years President of the United States.

That Bloomberg News article says that the most important and most relevant issue here in terms of the presidential transition might come down to Ukraine. Just about everyone on both sides of the equation expects that there will be a change in American policy when it comes to Ukraine. And this is something that is most graphically seen in the distinction between the policy staked out by the current President of the United States, Joe Biden, who by the way was president when Russia invaded Ukraine. And now the president-elect, who has been very clear in his opposition to the Biden Administration’s policy on Ukraine. Now the interesting thing here is whether or not the differences when it comes to, say, America’s future policy with Ukraine has that much to do with the changing of the presidency or more to do with the changing of time. And so even as you’re looking at this presidential transition to a degree, yes, there’s going to be a marked difference between the approach of President Biden and once again President Trump. But there’s also going to be a change just made necessary by time.

And in this sense, the Biden Administration long ago ran out of plausibility in terms of its current policy. And so that policy was going to change one way or the other. The interesting thing is how under a Trump Administration that policy will actually change. But there’s another distinction here, and that has to do with the fact that when Joe Biden was elected President of the United States, he declared that America was rejoining a global community. He indeed said, “America’s back.” And that was a very clear political statement. Donald Trump’s election means that, well, there’s basically going to be a retraction of that statement made by President Joe Biden. That doesn’t mean that Donald Trump does not see an assertive role for the United States in the world, but it does mean that he sees the world differently than Joe Biden. That’s not a surprise.

The larger global implications of this change is made clear in that headline for The New York Times that ran on November the 7th, “Raising the World Order is Trump’s Fondest Wish.” David E. Sanger, a veteran international affairs reporter for The New York Times has offered the piece. And the headline is something of hyperbole. It’s an exaggeration to say that this is Trump’s fondest wish. Well, that doesn’t seem very plausible. But to say when it comes to Trump’s foreign policy, I think it’s pretty accurate that changing the world order is near the top of his list.

Sanger writes, “It was only four months ago that President Biden invited America’s NATO allies to Washington to celebrate the 75th anniversary of their alliance. The symbol of an era of American global leadership that once was celebrated as a cornerstone of democracy and the best way to keep the peace among great powers.” He continues, “President-elect Donald J. Trump has made no secret of his desire to oversee the destruction of that world order.” In his first term, he really didn’t know how and his moves were countered by an entrenched establishment. Now he’s made clear he has the knowledge, the motivation, and a plan.”

Well, what’s really going on here? In order to understand this, we need to telescope out a bit and understand something of the history of America’s self-perceived role in the world. That really changed during the 20th century and it changed massively. Just consider the fact that in the beginning of the 20th century, the United States was still fairly characterized by isolationism. The idea that America could maintain its affairs without much reference to the rest of the world and its troubles, thank you very much. Of course, the world’s troubles exploded in a big way in what became known as the Great War, now known as World War I, and America’s role at the end of that war meant that the United States had become something like an indispensable nation.

That very thought was central to the vision of the then President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, who you may remember, broke all precedent by leaving Washington even as the sitting President of the United States and going to Paris for the so-called Peace Talks, and there becoming the driving energy behind the vision of what would be called the League of Nations. And he saw the United States as leading that League of Nations. Yeah, he couldn’t even get the United States Senate to ratify that treaty, and thus the League of Nations came into being without the nation that was believed to be at the center of the project, the United States of America.

The United States went into a new form of isolationism, or at least the temptation to isolationism, after the First World War. But of course that was broken by the global conflagration that became World War II. At the end of World War II, it was clear that the United States could not withdraw from the global scene and of course that so quickly gave way to the emergence of the Cold War when you had the bipolarities of the United States and our allies on one hand representing democratic nations. And on the other hand, the Soviet Union and its allies representing world communism.

As you think about American politics, understand that there was an overwhelming bipartisan consensus after World War II. And once you had the Cold War put in place, there was a massive bipartisan consensus when it came to American foreign policy. You’d have a Secretary of State in a Republican Administration and a Secretary of State in a Democratic Administration. They weren’t exactly the same, but the consensus was the most dominating theme. But with the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union, we were entering what was called even at the time, a New World Order. What would America’s place be in that New World Order? Here’s where a divergence really began to appear. There were those who said that America’s role in this New World Order after the breakup of the Soviet Union is going to be global leadership. We would shift to a new age of global peace presided over by the United States and our allies. 

There would be a world of unrestricted global commerce and there would be world peace. The nations that were not at peace with that world peace would be increasingly isolated. The United States would lead basically a league of freedom and democracy, defined perhaps variably in different parts of the world. But at the same time, there were also those who were saying, “No, that is not America’s role and there is no such global order. It will not be characterized the way the globalist had intended.” So for instance, in the 1990s, you had the emergence in the Republican Party of a challenger such as Patrick Buchanan who ran in Republican primaries, clearly calling for a new form or at least a new definition of America’s role in the world. And that was a less ambitious role by any measure. President George H.W. Bush, elected in 1988, represented a turn to America’s foreign policy establishment.

Now that establishment had been pretty much in place during the two terms of President Ronald Reagan, but when it came to President George H.W. Bush, it was back in a big way. For one thing, President Bush had been the United States envoy to China back earlier during a Republican Administration. He had been the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. He was a man who understood foreign policy himself, and by the way, that proved to be an incredibly important background during his four years in office.

And then you had George H.W. Bush followed by former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. Clinton’s two terms were also represented by a very assertive role of America’s role in the world, especially in the sense of leading a democratic coalition of nations or a coalition of free nations. But then you’ll have the election of George W. Bush. That’s not Bush 41, but Bush 43. And George W. Bush, even though he really didn’t run in something like a foreign policy campaign for president, once 9/11 happened, he was surrounded by those identified as neoconservatives, going all the way to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and even all the way up to Dick Cheney who served as President George W. Bush’s vice president. He was himself a former Head of the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, and a former White House Chief of Staff.

And so the coalescence began of an American approach that of course became very clear all the way through the American invasion of Iraq and the attempt by the United States and our allies, but with American leadership, to try to involve ourselves in nation building in Iraq. That was a very unsatisfying American experience. Since then, there has been more discontinuity than in the past as American administrations have responded to foreign challenges and foreign policy. But of course, after you had the Bush years, you had the years of President Barack Obama, clearly committed to this kind of globalist division. As a matter of fact, he used more of that kind of globalist language than any previous President of the United States. Frankly, even more than any successor in that office.

But then you had the election of Donald Trump in the 2016 election, and that was a great disruption. But as this New York Times article indicates, President Trump elected then in 2016 did not seem to have a clear understanding of how he wanted to translate his vision into American foreign policy. The election of Joe Biden in 2020 was something of a reversion to the mean. But now the election of Donald Trump to a second term as President of the United States does mean that we can anticipate a very different American foreign policy, a very different understanding of America’s role in the world. Now, is that good or bad? Now, I’m simply going to argue that in worldview terms, the first thing to say is that it’s going to be real. And the second thing is to say that I think Donald Trump does have a clear view of some of the challenges faced by the United States. And he does have a very clear policy commitment to prioritize what he sees as good for the United States, even if that presents problems with our allies.

Part II

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NATO and Christian Realism: Even the Most Powerful Countries on the Planet Need Allies

When it comes to NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, that was so central to the defense of the West during the Cold War, again with American leadership. When Donald Trump looks to NATO, he sees a giant bill paid by the United States of America and he seriously questions whether American taxpayers should be paying so many billions of dollars for the defense of other nations when they seem to be unwilling to significantly increase the amount of their own economic commitment to their own national self-defense.

Now, I’ll just state that in general terms instability when it comes to American foreign policy and our defense posture, that could be a very dangerous thing. At the same time, I would state that it is clearly time for a reevaluation of America’s role in the world. And I can only hope that the president-elect will move towards that kind of definition in a way that will not only strengthen America in terms of our position in the world, but also would make clear the fact that the United States has a limited role, the key there is limited role, when it comes to understanding America’s posture in the world.

One of the criticisms of the president-elect is that he has sometimes been too warm to autocrats. But the former president has said that his intention is to deal with national challenges as they actually exist, rather than to apply what he sees as an overly ideological understanding of how America should relate to leaders around the world. President Trump also has great confidence in his own personal relatability and his own personal instincts. That will become interesting also in the play out of American foreign policy.

An interesting section of the article by David Sanger comes down to this, “The essential difference that Mr. Trump embodies is this, presidents from Harry Truman to Mr. Biden have largely viewed America’s allies as a force multiplier. Mr. Trump views those alliances as a burden, often declaring that he doesn’t understand why the United States would defend nations with whom Washington has a trade deficit. He professed in his first term to reject the concept that Europe was a bulwark against the Soviet Union and later Russia. Or that Japan was America’s aircraft carrier in the Pacific. Or that South Korea is key to containing North Korea.”

Now, I’ll simply state the fact that I believe the United States desperately needs allies around the world. We may be a very powerful nation, we may be even the most powerful nation on earth, but we cannot exist as if we are in absolute isolation from the rest of the world. That was an illusion as America began the 20th century. It would be an even far more dangerous illusion now in the 21st century. Withdrawal from the world is not an option. At the same time, I think that a new look at America’s foreign policy and frankly a new look at challenges around the world, given so many urgencies, is very much in order.

For one thing, as you look at Russia’s war against Ukraine, we are reaching the point at which honesty is going to have to be asserted in terms of what options are actually on the table. Speaking in terms of the Biden Administration’s foreign policy is no longer plausible. We face direct challenges around the world, challenges to America’s interest, challenges to America’s security, challenges to American lives. We talk about challenges such as China under the leadership of the Communist Party. We look at an assertive and nationalistic Russia under an autocratic leader. We look at Iran and North Korea and an alliance of those now identified as the axis of opposition. And we understand there is no way for America simply to stand on its own, we desperately need allies. And frankly, our allies need us. Most important at the top of that list would be nations such as Great Britain or the United Kingdom, but also near the top of that list would be other European allies with which our relationship is sometimes quite problematic, such as France and Germany.

At the very least, it’s important to say we share a lot of common interests, but we do not totally share common interests. And then you look, for example, at the crucial American alliance with Israel. And you come to understand that Israel needs the United States, but it is also important to recognize that the United States desperately needs Israel. Another very important factor is that the United States has a role in the world arena that is absolutely crucial in the defense, not only of democracy and freedom, constitutional self-government, but also of religious liberty. And frankly, the welfare of other nations. We cannot disconnect the United States from this important leadership role in the world scene. On the other hand, I think the president-elect is on very firm ground in saying that much of America’s foreign policy, as has been articulated during the Biden Administration, is based upon clouds. It is also based upon an evasion of the reality on the ground.

And the Christian worldview reminds us that reality has a way of showing itself. I think that that realism will more than justify America staying in NATO and especially increasing our relationship and alliances with nations such as Japan there in the Pacific. That is in America’s self-interest. But that comes to a very interesting point. Nations eventually do relate to other nations on the basis of self-interest. And so yes, sometimes nations do things that are costly and even sacrificial at the time. Generous, such as say the Marshall Plan, which the United States funded in order to help European recovery after World War II. But in the end, nations do long-term what is understood to be in the nation’s self-interest. In that sense, no American administration is wrong in acknowledging that. For that reason, I believe that the United States is likely to remain in NATO and to keep those crucial alliances.

At the same time, a reconsideration is based in a worldview known as realism. And that realism understands there are real-world threats. That realism is based in an understanding that sin is actually a very relevant category, not only when it comes to personal behavior, but when it comes to, say, even the moral behavior of nations. And of course, that’s irreducible from the human factor. It’s not geography that goes to war, it is political leaders. But political leaders actually often do just that.

Part III

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Our Dangerous World: Russia Attempts Major Incendiary Operation Against American Cargo Aircraft

But next, I just want to make reference to the fact that there’s a big news story that made headlines, but because of the American presidential election happening right at that time, these headlines probably escaped a lot of attention. Here’s a headline from the front page of The Wall Street Journal from last Tuesday. Let me just remind you, that was election day. That’s the reason why I think so many people didn’t take notice.

Here’s the headline, “Russia Allegedly Targeted Jets Flying to the US.” Subhead. “Security Officials Say Incendiary Devices Ignited on Two Cargo Planes as Part of the Plot.” An entire team of reporters for The Wall Street Journal offer this story. It’s been backed up by, frankly, a media consensus and multiple reports on this issue. “Western security officials say they believe that two incendiary devices shipped via DHL were part of a covert Russian operation that ultimately aimed to start fires aboard cargo or passenger aircraft flying to the US and Canada as Moscow steps up a sabotage campaign against Washington and its allies.” The report goes on and says, “The devices ignited at DHL logistics hubs in July, one in Leipzig, Germany, another in Birmingham, England. The explosions set off a multinational race to find the culprits.”

Well, the whole point of the article is that Western security analysts believe that the culprit was Russia. Let’s just face what we’re looking at here. We’re talking about a nation that has undertaken this kind of attack upon American aircraft. Under any normal circumstance, this would be defined as a hostile act, which could be tantamount to some kind of instrument of warfare. You’re looking at a state ultimately being responsible, that is to say a government, for an attack upon the assets or the citizens or even the cargo of another nation. In this case, we’re talking about Russia and the United States of America. It’s hard to overestimate exactly what kind of impact this development could have. By the way, the media reports about the investigation underline the necessity of the United States having allies around the world. It took the intelligence agencies of several European nations along with other unnamed nations, frankly, in this situation, they could be located anywhere in the world, who worked with American intelligence, our own government’s agencies, in order to determine who was behind this attack.

And what’s even more ominous is that this apparently was a form of a trial about something that could be undertaken on a far larger scale later. It’s one thing, by the way, to talk about a cargo plane. Of course, there are human lives aboard. It’s another thing, however, to talk about a passenger plane. So we really are looking at this undeniable affirmation of the fact that we live in a dangerous world. And sometimes Americans want to think that we can just wish that danger away. But North Korea is not going to be wished away, neither is Iran or Russia. And you could go down the list. Iran would have to be put near the top of that. And we recognize we are living in a dangerous age. And even as there is a call for a reconsideration of American foreign policy, it must be predicated on a realistic understanding that we live in a fallen world. We live in a world marked by sin. We live in a world in which there are actors, not only at the individual level, but at the level of states and governments.

As we look at the future, we’re concerned not only with American foreign policy tomorrow, but with American foreign policy with the view to successive generations. There is a clear need for a reconsideration of American foreign policy. But it can’t just be about one four-year presidential administration. It needs to be part of a far larger picture of an honest assessment of America’s role in the world. And the threats to America from around the world, as well as the opportunities. Where we should find alliances and where we need to acknowledge real dangers, and frankly, world and global challenges.

But here’s something that is a fundamental aspect of a biblical understanding of the world, and that is this. We are to work for peace, but we are also to understand that there will be no final global peace until the Prince of Peace makes that peace. Until then, we’re living in a dangerous world and it’s dangerous not to know so.