Matt Kroenig: Hi, Emma! I hope you are great. Spring is almost here. And there is much to discuss as always, but maybe we should start with an inevitability we have been putting off: the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Matt Kroenig: Hi, Emma! I hope you are great. Spring is almost here. And there is much to discuss as always, but maybe we should start with an inevitability we have been putting off: the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
It is official, this week, that President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have both secured enough delegates to win their parties’ nomination, so it is almost certain that we will have a rematch of the 2020 election.
Emma Ashford: Yay, I’m so excited. That’s sarcasm, if you can’t tell. I can’t think of a single person who really wants a Biden-Trump rematch, but here we are. And it certainly gives us an opportunity to discuss the questions our readers—and the world at large—are asking about the most: Will foreign policy matter in the 2024 election? And what might a second Trump term mean for the world?
MK: Let’s dive into those topics. You are right that there is great interest. European diplomats have been asking me almost daily what they should expect from a Trump 2.0 administration. Lucky for them (and you!), I have a new book on the past, present, and future of Republican foreign policy out next week, We Win, They Lose: Republican Foreign Policy and the New Cold War, so I have given more than a little bit of thought to this topic.
There is a common perception that the Republican Party is deeply divided between its traditional, Reaganite, internationalist wing and its ascendant, nationalist, isolationist, protectionist, populist camp, but my co-author, Dan Negrea, and I argue that the party actually remains united on the core principles of foreign and defense policy, a phenomenon we call the “Trump-Reagan Fusion.”
EA: Congratulations on the book! And congratulations on picking the title most likely to annoy me—that’s a real achievement.
MK: Well, annoying you is my safe space, after all. But please say more: Why don’t you like the title? We were looking for a pithy quote, and we were delighted when we landed on former President Ronald Reagan’s classic statement about his goal for the first Cold War. He said that some might think it is simple or even simplistic, but his policy for the Soviet Union is “we win, they lose.” In the book, we argue that this clear objective should also be the U.S. and allied goal for the new Cold War with China.
EA: Because it represents a very zero-sum view of the world. There are two problems with that: First, there are very few situations in world history where one side takes home a complete victory; most of the time, things are less clear-cut.
Americans already have an inclination toward unrealistic foreign-policy expectations, and I doubt that mantra helps much. Second, the notion that in order for the United States to triumph, someone else must lose is not going to be popular among many countries. America already has issues persuading countries in the global south and in parts of Asia that it isn’t trying to force them to choose between China and the United States; if this is your slogan, I don’t see how you could make that case at all.
MK: The first Cold War is a pretty clear example of a one-sided victory—just ask Russian President Vladimir Putin. But your point has some merit. For the United States and the free world to secure their interests, the expansive and aggressive aims of Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will have to fail, but, ultimately, the Chinese people would be among the biggest beneficiaries. And the global south will have a much easier decision about where to place its bets when it sees that the CCP does not offer an attractive alternate model to U.S. global leadership.
EA: I appreciate the clarity, at least. But that’s an astoundingly ambitious policy: like Cold War-era rollback on steroids. I’m not sure the appetite is there for that in today’s Republican Party.
Actually, I don’t think there’s as much of a foreign-policy synthesis as you suggest in the party in general. There are some pretty strong internal disagreements over the future of U.S. foreign policy in both parties today. Republicans have a fair amount of consensus on China (i.e., very hawkish), but there’s a significant and growing schism on the U.S. role in European security and very little consensus on America’s broader role in the world.
Even on China, there are practical disagreements between more traditional Republicans who want to maintain a strong presence in Europe and the growing faction of “Asia First” Republicans who want to pivot toward China more aggressively.
There are divisions in the Democratic Party, too, though at the moment it’s all about Israel and whether the war in Gaza will matter to voters.
But how do you reconcile those Republican differences? I don’t see it.
MK: Many misremember Reagan. He and Trump were more alike than many appreciate, and their policies have more in common with each other than either the Democrats on one side or the neoconservatives on the other.
They both (and, we would argue, the GOP today) were proponents of “peace through strength.” Both embraced the term explicitly and argued that the United States should be so strong that its adversaries do not challenge it. But the peace part is important. They were both skeptical of amorphous military interventions—which helps explain GOP demands today for the Biden administration to articulate a clear strategy for victory in Ukraine.
They were both free and fair traders, and both used protectionist measures to bring about fair and reciprocal trade. People forget that Reagan levied tariffs on several U.S. friends and allies to get better trade arrangements, including with Japan.
Free traders? Give me a break. Reagan used tariffs occasionally, including on European states that wanted to trade with the Soviets. But Trump is suggesting a 10 percent tariff on any good that enters the United States.
EA: Whoa, hang on a moment. I actually agree with you on the first part. Trump’s skepticism of at least some military interventions—and of endless wars more generally—is more a return to the Cold War-era norm among Republican policymakers than anything else. It’s only abnormal in comparison to the extremely bellicose administrations of the last few decades.
But his comments are way out of line with past precedent. Trump told a cheering crowd last month that he’d let Russia attack any NATO country that didn’t pay enough into the alliance!
And free traders? Give me a break. Reagan used tariffs occasionally, including on European states that wanted to trade with the Soviets. But Trump is suggesting a 10 percent tariff on any good that enters the United States. If he follows through on even half the things he’s promised to do, we’d be looking at trade barriers like the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs of the interwar years. There’s just no comparison there.
MK: But what is the ultimate goal of his protectionist measures? As he explained by tweet in his first term, the objective is: “Drop all tariffs, barriers, and subsidies! That would finally be called Free Market and Fair Trade!”
This is Trump’s negotiating style that we should all know well by now. He starts with the big threat to generate leverage and then uses that to begin a negotiation. I suspect that is the rationale behind the threat of an across-the-board tariff and that he will agree to back off in exchange for concessions in trade talks.
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EA: It wasn’t just a threat the first time around. He imposed tariffs on European steel that persisted into the Biden administration, as well as tariffs on Chinese goods that are still in place. Ironically, though I don’t think it’s an area of agreement with Reagan, trade protectionism might be an area of agreement within the Republican Party today. Maybe it is just a threat, but he’s talking about 60 percent tariffs on all Chinese goods—and he might even be able to get Republicans in Congress to go along with it if it hurts Beijing enough. There is a real risk in a second Trump term of escalating global trade tensions, with consumers paying the price.
Even if Trump doesn’t follow through on that extreme threat, I’d be prepared to bet that he will place tariffs on a variety of specific Chinese imports. Foreign Policy had a great article last week about the cheap Chinese electric vehicles that are now looking to enter European and American markets. Putting tariffs on Chinese cars to protect American car manufacturers is an idea that would be as irresistible as catnip to Trump.
MK: It is not just an area of agreement within the Republican Party—it is the new bipartisan conventional wisdom. As you point out, Biden has kept in place much of Trump’s economic policy in this area.
Trump usefully upended a failed economic engagement strategy with China, and tariffs should remain in place unless and until China transforms itself into a market economy.
And I do think the purpose with China and allies alike for him (as he says repeatedly) is not protectionism for its own sake, but to bring about fairer terms of trade. After all, he did update free trade agreements with Canada, Mexico, and South Korea.
EA: I’m still not convinced. But regardless of his ends, I think we can pretty confidently predict many more trade wars if Trump is elected a second time. We’re all going to be poorer, and that persistent inflation problem is not going to get any better.
What else can we say about a second Trump foreign policy, though? It’s not just trade.
The real differences over Ukraine stand out as an exceptional point of genuine disagreement in the GOP.
MK: On America’s role in the world, Trump and Reagan (and Republicans today) believed in American exceptionalism, albeit in different forms. Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” and Trump’s “America First” are variants on this theme. Sixty-nine percent of Republicans agree that “America is the greatest country in the world,” but only 37 percent of Democrats agree.
In fact, on almost every specific issue, there is widespread agreement in the party. They believe China is the greatest threat to U.S. national security; NATO allies need to do much more to defend Europe; the Iran nuclear deal was a mistake and “maximum pressure” is a better approach; the southern border is in crisis and we need to stop illegal immigration; the climate threat is exaggerated and the clean-energy transition should happen through market forces, not heavy-handed government intervention; and so on.
There are real differences on Ukraine policy, with Reaganites calling for military victory and Trumpians favoring a cease-fire and negotiations. But, placed in this broader context, the real differences over Ukraine stand out as an exceptional point of genuine disagreement.
EA: A few of those areas of so-called agreement are pretty recent—and extremely shallow. “NATO allies need to do much more to defend Europe,” for example, is not something that most congressional Republicans would have even considered a few years back. Trump has brought the party along with him on questions of free-riding in alliances, and I’m not convinced that if he actually tried to draw down the U.S. military presence in Europe that Republicans would back him. After all, most voted for a recent bill that would bar Trump from withdrawing from NATO as president.
MK: There are two issues here. Every U.S. president since Eisenhower has wanted NATO allies to do more for Europe’s defense. And Robert Gates, George W. Bush’s (and Barack Obama’s) secretary of defense, and George H. W. Bush’s deputy national security advisor, famously used his last major public speech to ask NATO allies to do more.
And you are right that Republicans don’t want to pull out of NATO. Trump doesn’t, either. At least, he is not saying that he would. He has said that he might not protect countries that do not meet their burden-sharing commitments. Like with trade, I think his statements are generating leverage to induce greater burden-sharing.
So this is another area of intraparty agreement.
EA: I’m skeptical. I don’t think most Republicans are actually on board with Trump’s strange approach to NATO as an extortion racket. And while Trump hasn’t publicly stated that he would definitely pull out of NATO, he’s made a variety of other comments that suggest he might.
What about Ukraine? There’s a massive gulf between Republicans, ranging from those who think Biden hasn’t gone far enough in his support of Ukraine to those who want to push Ukraine to sue for peace. These are not small areas of disagreement!
MK: I agree that Reaganites and Trumpians disagree on Ukraine strategy, as I noted above.
But even here there is some agreement. They concur that Putin launched attacks on Ukraine under Obama and Biden, but not under Trump. They also criticize the Biden administration for not articulating a clear strategy and for wanting to fight the war for “as long as it takes.” Reaganites and Trumpians both want a quick end to the fighting, although they have meaningfully different ideas about how to get there.
EA: They agree that it’s easier to blame the guy from the other political party? Not exactly a courageous stance from Republicans there. And I do think you’re grasping at straws here. Both sides wanting to end the fighting quickly is not going to produce a unifying policy agenda if Trump is elected. To be honest, I still see a lot more disagreement than you on foreign policy within the Republican Party.
I think the choice of advisors will be key for the policies that Trump ends up being able to implement. So will some of the internal fights that are going on right now in things like the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which brings together a coalition of right-wing experts to write concrete policy proposals for the next Republican administration.
One thing is certain, though: This election will put foreign policy front and center in a way that it hasn’t been for a long time. It’s just a pity that both candidates have such poor foreign-policy records to point to.
Any parting thoughts on Trump and Republican foreign policy?
MK: Yes. In fact, I have a fascinating take based on exclusive information that will rock the world. But to find out what it is, you’ll have to read the book!
EA: I’m guessing the book also predicts how you’d like this column to end. You win, I lose?
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