As the US enters the home stretch of the 2020 presidential election campaign, and with neither party’s nominating convention featuring much discussion of foreign policy, the contest between US President Donald Trump and former US vice president Joe Biden apparently is to be waged mainly on the battleground of domestic issues. In the long run, historians will ask whether Trump’s presidency was a major turning point in the US’ role in the world, or just a minor historical accident.
At this stage, the answer is unknowable, because it is unknown if Trump will be re-elected. My book Do Morals Matter? rates the 14 presidents since 1945 and gives Trump a formal grade of “incomplete,” but for now he ranks in the bottom quartile.
Top-quartile presidents such as Franklin D. Roosevelt saw the mistakes of the US’ isolationism in the 1930s and created a liberal international order after 1945.
A turning point was then-US president Harry Truman’s postwar decisions that led to permanent alliances that have lasted to this day.
The US invested heavily in the Marshall Plan in 1948, created NATO in 1949 and led a United Nations coalition that fought in Korea in 1950. In 1960, during the administration of Dwight Eisenhower, the US signed a new security treaty with Japan.
Over the years, Americans have had bitter divisions — among themselves and with other countries — over military intervention in developing countries like Vietnam and Iraq.
However, the liberal institutional order continued to enjoy broad support until the 2016 election, when Trump became the first nominee of a major party to attack it.
Trump was also a skeptic about foreign intervention, and while he has increased the defense budget, he has used force relatively sparingly.
Trump’s anti-interventionism is relatively popular, but his narrow, transactional definition of US interests, and his skepticism about alliances and multilateral institutions, is not reflective of majority opinion.
Since 1974, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs has asked the public whether the US should take an active part or stay out of world affairs. Roughly one-third of Americans have been consistently isolationist, reaching a high point of 41 percent in 2014.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, 64 percent favored active involvement by the time of the 2016 election, and that number rose to a high of 70 percent by 2018.
Trump’s election and his populist appeal rested on the economic dislocations that were accentuated by the Great Recession of 2008-2009, but even more on polarizing cultural changes related to race, the role of women and gender identity.
Although he did not win the popular vote in 2016, Trump successfully linked white resentment over the increasing visibility and influence of racial and ethnic minorities to foreign policy by blaming economic insecurity and wage stagnation on bad trade deals and immigration.
However, as president, according to former national security adviser John Bolton, Trump had little strategy, and his foreign policy was driven primarily by domestic politics and personal interests.
Just before Trump took office, Martin Wolf of the Financial Times described the moment as “the end of both an economic period — that of Western led globalization — and a geopolitical one, the post-cold war ‘unipolar moment’ of a US-led global order.”
In that case, Trump might prove to be a turning point in US and world history, particularly if he is re-elected. His electoral appeal might turn on domestic politics, but his effect on world politics could be transformational.
The current debate over Trump revives a longstanding question: Are major historical outcomes the product of political leaders’ choices, or are they largely the result of social and economic forces beyond anyone’s control?
Sometimes, history seems like a rushing river whose course is shaped by precipitation and topography, and leaders are simply ants clinging to a log in the current.
They are more like white-water rafters trying to steer and fend off rocks, occasionally overturning and sometimes succeeding in steering to a desired destination.
For example, Roosevelt was unable to bring the US into World War II until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but his moral framing of the threat posed by Adolf Hitler, and his preparations to confront that threat, proved crucial. After World War II, the US response to Soviet ambitions might have been different had former US vice president Henry Wallace (who was replaced on the Roosevelt ticket for the 1944 election), not Truman, been president.
After the 1952 election, an isolationist Robert Taft administration or an assertive Douglas MacArthur presidency might have disrupted the relatively smooth consolidation of Truman’s containment strategy, over which Eisenhower presided.
Former US president John F. Kennedy was crucial in averting a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis and then signing the first nuclear arms control agreement. He and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, mired the country in the unnecessary fiasco of the Vietnam War.
In the century’s last decades, economic forces caused the erosion of the Soviet Union and former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev’s actions accelerated the Soviet bloc’s collapse.
However, former US president Ronald Reagan’s defense buildup and negotiating skill, and the skill of his successor, George H.W. Bush, in managing crises, played a significant role in bringing about a peaceful end to the Cold War, with a reunified Germany in NATO.
In other words, leaders and their skills matter — which also means that Trump cannot be easily dismissed. More important than his tweets are his weakening of institutions, alliances and the US’ soft power of attraction, which polls show has declined since 2016.
Machiavellian and organizational skills are essential for successful US presidents, but so is emotional intelligence, which leads to self-awareness, self-control and contextual insight, none of which is evident with Trump. His successor, whether next year or in 2025, will confront a changed world, partly because of Trump’s idiosyncratic personality and policies.
How great that change will be depends on whether Trump is a one-term or two-term president. We will know after Nov. 3 whether the US is at a historical turning point or at the end of a historical accident.
Joseph Nye is a professor at Harvard University.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
In a meeting with Haitian Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Victor Harvel Jean-Baptiste on Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) vowed to continue providing aid to Haiti. Taiwan supports Haiti with development in areas such as agriculture, healthcare and education through initiatives run by the Taiwan International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF). The nation it has established itself as a responsible, peaceful and innovative actor committed to global cooperation, Jean-Baptiste said. Testimonies such as this give Taiwan a voice in the global community, where it often goes unheard. Taiwan’s reception in Haiti also contrasts with how China has been perceived in countries in the region
The world has become less predictable, less rules-based, and more shaped by the impulses of strongmen and short-term dealmaking. Nowhere is this more consequential than in East Asia, where the fate of democratic Taiwan hinges on how global powers manage — or mismanage — tensions with an increasingly assertive China. The return of Donald Trump to the White House has deepened the global uncertainty, with his erratic, highly personalized foreign-policy approach unsettling allies and adversaries alike. Trump appears to treat foreign policy like a reality show. Yet, paradoxically, the global unpredictability may offer Taiwan unexpected deterrence. For China, the risk of provoking the
On April 13, I stood in Nanan (南安), a Bunun village in southern Hualien County’s Jhuosi Township (卓溪), absorbing lessons from elders who spoke of the forest not as backdrop, but as living presence — relational, sacred and full of spirit. I was there with fellow international students from National Dong Hwa University (NDHU) participating in a field trip that would become one of the most powerful educational experiences of my life. Ten days later, a news report in the Taipei Times shattered the spell: “Formosan black bear shot and euthanized in Hualien” (April 23, page 2). A tagged bear, previously released
Young supporters of former Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) were detained for posting the names and photographs of judges and prosecutors believed to be overseeing the Core Pacific City redevelopment corruption case. The supporters should be held responsible for their actions. As for Ko’s successor, TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), he should reflect on whether his own comments are provocative and whether his statements might be misunderstood. Huang needs to apologize to the public and the judiciary. In the article, “Why does sorry seem to be the hardest word?” the late political commentator Nan Fang Shuo (南方朔) wrote
RSS