“THE world is a mess,” observed Madeleine Albright this week at a gathering of men and women who have, between them, witnessed every crisis to buffet American national security for 40 years. That crisp summary by the former secretary of state prompted bipartisan agreement at a “Passing the Baton” conference organised by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington, DC, on January 9th and 10th.
The meeting featured future leaders of Donald Trump’s national security team, their predecessors from the Obama government and—gamely emerging from post-election seclusion—folk who would have filled some of the same posts under Hillary Clinton. However, once participants began to ponder the ways in which the world is messy, agreement gave way to revealing divisions. On one side stood Republican and Democratic ex-ambassadors, officials, generals and academics who do not cheer a world in disarray. They see the rise of iron-fisted nationalists in China, Russia and Turkey, and fear that democracy’s post-cold-war march is over. They contemplate the fragility of international pacts, organisations and alliances and wonder if the rules-based order founded by America after the second world war will survive. On the other stand leading members of Team Trump, who call today’s global turbulence an exciting chance to reshape international relations to suit America.
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The first group make the American-led, rules-based order sound precious but brittle. Susan Rice, the national security adviser to Barack Obama, called the global security landscape “as unsettled as any in recent memory”. She listed some threats that worry Mr Trump as much as her boss, from North Korea’s nuclear ambitions to attacks by transnational terrorist groups. But then she ran through more divisive problems—areas of vulnerability which, in her telling, cry out for patient American attention. Ms Rice would have America lead global action on climate change, and prop up a Europe that feels buffeted by refugee flows from the Middle East, by the Brexit vote and by “Russian aggression”, including deliberate campaigns by Russia to meddle in elections across the West. Ms Rice lamented her boss’s fruitless efforts to ratify a trade pact with Asia-Pacific nations, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). “If we don’t define these rules of the road, others will,” she declared. “Failure to move forward on TPP is eroding American regional leadership and credibility, with China standing to gain strategically and economically.”
Jacob Sullivan, a close adviser to Mrs Clinton, cited the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the Paris agreement on climate change as examples of imperilled co-operation. Stephen Hadley, who held Ms Rice’s job under President George W. Bush, expressed concerns that the American-led international order itself is “under assault”. He imagined a conversation in which President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Xi Jinping of China agree that America is a menace peddling hostile ideas of democracy from Ukraine to Hong Kong.
Trump aides, by contrast, are impatient with talk of fragility and complexity. Though they worry about terrorism and rogue states with nukes, they also see a world in a thrillingly plastic state. It is anyone’s guess where Mr Trump’s foreign policies will end up—he shunned details on the campaign trail and has appointed figures with clashing views to some top jobs. But supporters of Team Trump express confidence that curbing the menace of Iran, for instance, requires more pressure and sanctions, not concessions to strengthen pragmatists within the regime. They scoff at the idea that the natural environment is fragile enough to need a climate-change pact—and indeed hail cheap American oil and gas as a source of global leverage.
As for nationalism and populism, they are not a menace: they are how Mr Trump won. Stephen Bannon, Mr Trump’s chief strategist, has told visitors to Trump Tower, with relish, that he thinks an anti-establishment revolt will sweep the far right to power in France and topple Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany. Mr Bannon would like America to unwind sanctions against Russia, imposed after the annexation of Crimea, in order to secure Russian help in constraining Iran, Islamic terrorism and even China.
Other people’s nationalists
A retired general, Mike Flynn, chosen as Mr Trump’s national security adviser, spoke freely in 2016 about his hopes that Russia and America could join forces against their “common enemy”, Islamist extremism. Now, amid a furore about Russian meddling in the American presidential election, as detailed in a report issued by Mr Obama’s spy chiefs, Mr Flynn contented himself with discreet hints that Mr Trump would “examine and potentially re-baseline our relationships around the globe”.
Mr Flynn’s deputy in the NSC will be K.T. McFarland, a veteran Republican hawk. She described a world where tectonic plates are moving, offering once-in-a-generation opportunities to exert leverage and realign policies. Where once Ronald Reagan promoted human rights in the Soviet Union, Ms McFarland chides America for “constantly” telling other countries “how they should think”. She sees Mr Trump gaining global strength, above all, from the breadth and intensity of his domestic support, after he drew in voters who had tuned out of politics. Such disaffected citizens feel “back in the game”, she says. That makes their country not just indispensable—the old claim made for America by Bill Clinton—but “unstoppable”.
Team Trump is making a bet on assertive nationalism as a way of imposing America’s will on a world that can stand a bit of arm-twisting. Peace through strength, they call it, reviving a Reagan-era slogan. But other countries have assertive populations, too. In the absence of clear global rules, Mr Trump may find himself pitting his populist mandate to “make America great again” against Chinese nationalism, say. Could get messy.
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