“Politics must never be a literal battlefield,” President Joe Biden said after the attempt on former President Donald Trump’s life.
The globe is scarred by enough battlefields. The urgent work of the coming years is to reorient foreign policy with a focus on deterring our enemies and thus preventing the battles boiling on the Free World’s frontiers from exploding into something unthinkable.
The challenge we face in carrying out this work is threefold.
First, as Americans wander toward the terrain of the 1960s or 1850s, it’s obvious that we’re deeply divided. Swallowed up by these divides, it’s easy to forget but difficult to see that we have real enemies in this world—and that Americans who are voting for the other guy don’t deserve that label.
Second, our enemies don’t alter their plans or beat their swords into plowshares based on the trajectory of an assassin’s bullet—whether in 1901 or 1912, 1933 or 1950, 1963 or 1981, 1996 or 2024.
Third, given the uniqueness of 2024, this election will likely mark not an inflection, but a continuation of Biden’s foreign policy or a resumption of Trump’s. While Biden stepping aside would provide the opportunity for reorienting foreign policy, his likely successor—his vice president—would likely stay the course.
The Free World needs more than more of the same from America.
Adjustments
It’s rare for a president to dramatically change his foreign policy. There are exceptions, but it’s usually due to some intervening event.
For President Woodrow Wilson, it was Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare and attempt to lure Mexico into the Great War.
President Harry Truman reversed America’s postwar drawdown and pullback in response to communist aggression.
For President Jimmy Carter, it was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, triggering a military buildup long before the 1980 election.
September 11 transformed President George W. Bush from a “clear-eyed realist” vowing to “encourage stability”—his words—into a Wilsonian idealist committed to “ending tyranny in our world.”
While July 13 was definitely an intervening event and surely impacted America’s presidential campaign, it seems unlikely to impact America’s foreign policy.
In his first campaign, Trump declared, “We have to build our own nation” and “focus on ourselves”—surprisingly similar to what President Barack Obama had said: “It is time to focus on nation-building here at home.”
Trump slapped tariffs on imports from allies, ordered a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria and negotiated the Afghanistan pullout (without the involvement of Afghanistan’s democratically-elected government). He demanded that Japan and South Korea “pay up” and hinted his administration wouldn’t defend them; suggested he’d defend NATO members under attack only if they had “fulfilled their obligations to us”; and raised the possibility of withdrawing from NATO—a foundation stone of the post-World War II order.
Trump recently doubled-down on his NATO-skepticism, recalling that when NATO allies asked how he would respond if Russia attacked alliance laggards, he answered, “I would not protect you…I would encourage them (the Russians) to do whatever the hell they want.”
Trump’s plans for a second term include: across-the-board tariffs, “downsizing America’s security role,” “radical reorientation” of the U.S.-led alliance system and devolution of NATO into “a two-tier…system.” For Ukraine, Politico reports, he’s “mulling a deal whereby NATO commits to no further eastward expansion…and negotiates with Russian President Vladimir Putin over how much Ukrainian territory Moscow can keep.” This would upend the principle that borders cannot be changed by force—another foundation stone of the postwar order.
Speaking of order, throughout his presidency, Trump left chaos in his wake. Chaos doesn’t serve U.S. interests, which is why the U.S. has promoted a liberal international order since 1945. God is deeply interested in order. Jeremiah says God “made the earth…and gave it order.” Paul reminds us that governing authorities exist to promote order.
Escaping death can transform a person. “This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together,” Trump said after he survived the assassin’s bullets. May all people of goodwill pray for that.
Recognizing that, for America, national security is intertwined with international security, Biden has stood up to Moscow, assisted Ukraine, vowed that “the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory,” and declared that “our allies are looking for U.S. leadership.” The problem is he hasn’t always provided it.
Recall that Biden served as vice president during the Obama administration. The Obama-Biden team pulled out of Iraq and opened the door to ISIS, pulled back from NATO, exasperated allies by “leading from behind,” answered Putin’s first invasion of Ukraine with nonlethal aid, and slashed defense spending. While vice presidents don’t craft foreign policy—there’s no Barkley or Cheney doctrine, after all—Biden never distanced himself from those policies. Once in charge of foreign policy, he tended to revert to those old ways.
Biden’s chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal left a frail democracy to the tender mercies of the Taliban and undermined NATO unity. “It is the biggest debacle that NATO has suffered since its founding,” a German official concluded.
Before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Biden froze and delayed military assistance earmarked for Ukraine. After the invasion, when the Ukrainians asked for fighter-bombers, missile defenses, tanks and rocket artillery, Biden’s response was “no,” then “maybe,” then belatedly “yes with an asterisk” on where to use the weapons.
Similarly, Biden withheld weapons from Israel as it prepared to strike Hamas’s Rafah redoubt.
Needs
That brings us to what’s needed on the world stage.
America must stand by Free World allies and defend the Free World’s frontlines. Regrettably, the Obama-Biden administration failed at the former during NATO’s Libya intervention and at the latter in Iraq. Trump put allies on edge, disregarded Afghanistan’s democracy and appears willing to abandon Ukraine. The Biden-Harris administration abandoned Afghanistan’s democracy, beta-tested a no-yes-maybe doctrine on Ukraine and fell short in Israel.
America must reengage the battle of ideas. “A little less détente,” Reagan argued, “and more encouragement to the dissenters might be worth a lot of armored divisions.” America’s president should offer high-profile platforms to victims of Putin, Xi and Khamenei; draw attention to Xi’s laogai prisons, genocidal campaign against Uighur Muslims, and brutal treatment of Christians and Tibetans; wield China’s willful mishandling of COVID-19 to counter Xi’s claim that business-suit autocracy is the future; provide tools to help Russians, Chinese, Iranians and North Koreans break the information blockades their governments have erected; and point neutral countries to Donetsk, Gaza, Xinjiang,Hong Kong and Aleppo as evidence of what Xi, Putin and Khamenei envision for their vassals. Regrettably, Biden lacks the energy to play that role; Trump lacks the conviction.
America must rebuild deterrent strength. “Freedom must be armed better than tyranny,” President Volodymyr Zelensky observes. When it’s not, the result is Ukraine 2022, Korea 1950, Poland 1939. To ensure Taiwan, the Baltics and the Philippines aren’t added to that list—to prevent Cold War II from metastasizing into something worse—America must restore deterrent capabilities. The rationale for this smolders all around us. Russia has dismembered Ukraine and threatened NATO allies. China has absorbed Hong Kong, threatened Taiwan, constructed illegal islands and supersized its nuclear arsenal. North Korea is arming Russia and testing missiles that threaten Indo-Pacific allies. Iran ships kamikaze-drones to Russia, bombs Israel, edges toward nuclear breakout and has unleashed its Hezbollah-Hamas-Houthi hydra.
Regrettably, the Air Force has only 19 bombers capable of penetrating and surviving peer-adversary defenses. The Army is scrambling to deter Moscow with one-third the soldiers it deployed during Cold War I. The Navy needs 500 ships; it has 296. The reason for these shortfalls: U.S. defense spending hovers in the 3-percent-of-GDP range—less than half the Cold War average. Trump’s claims notwithstanding, he didn’t “rebuild” the military; defense spending topped out at 3.4 percent of GDP under Trump. Biden-Harris defense-budget proposals haven’t even kept pace with inflation.
The good news is that senators, congressmen, diplomats, DOD officials and think tanks have presented thoughtful blueprints for restoring deterrence. The bad news is that senators, congressmen, diplomats, DOD officials and think-tankers don’t stand behind the bully pulpit, serve as commander-in-chief, or steer the ship of state. Only the president plays those roles. Only the president can wield the political, rhetorical, and institutional tools needed to restore deterrence and reorient foreign policy.
That’s what the president must do. That will require the president to make a dramatic change in how he (or she) acts on the world stage.