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Guest Essay
By Thomas B. Edsall
Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.
According to Pew Research, the share of voters who said that the United States provides “too much” support to Ukraine more than quadrupled between March 2022 and December 2023, going to 31 percent from 7 percent. Among Republicans, the share grew to 48 percent from 9 percent.
A Gallup poll found even more opposition to American aid for Ukraine among Republican and independent voters. The share of Republicans agreeing that the “United States is doing too much to help Ukraine” rose between August 2022 and October 2023 to 62 percent from 43 percent and among independents to 44 percent from 28 percent.
Both polls reflect the rapid increase of isolationism in the American electorate.
I asked a range of foreign policy experts to explain what was driving the shift.
Gordon Adams, a professor of international relations at American University in Washington, D.C., and a fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, attributed the growing reluctance to support foreign engagement to the history of the past several decades. In an email, Adams made the case that
the key international events of the past 35 years have been the fall of the Berlin Wall/the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the strategic disaster of U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and the inevitable rise of Chinese power. Together these events have changed the universe in which U.S. power is used, the reputation/influence of the United States in the global system and the willingness of the American people to support long-term engagement of the U.S. military overseas.
A combination of “bad decisions and inept execution,” in Adams’s view, has
continued to diminish the U.S. role — failure in Iraq, failure in Afghanistan, the demise of democratic movements in the Middle East (heavily supported by the United States), Libya’s collapse into anarchy, the rise of destabilizing extremism in Africa (despite rising U.S. funding and presence to counter terrorism). U.S. influence in the Middle East is clearly declining, as the actions of the Saudis, U.A.E., Qatar, Turkey and today Israel amply demonstrate. The Iranian regime is not isolated internationally but plays a clever game both in the region and with convenient allies, like Putin’s Russia. The U.S. secretary of state travels not as a power broker but a pleader seeking better behavior from once-solid allies who are no longer responding.
Because of these developments, Adams continued,
a public tired of external interventions has turned inward. There is little expectation that the United States can turn global situations around. There is no longer a political price to be paid for failing to support long-term commitments or interventions.
The world’s most capable military, Adams wrote, “is the only remaining tool the president has, and he can no longer deploy and use it effectively — it is unpopular at home to do so and unwelcome abroad (especially in the Middle East) as a force of stability.”
Some experts in foreign policy argued that declining support for American involvement in world affairs has come at a particularly bad time.
Charles Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown, emailed me his answer to my queries:
The relative stability of the post-Cold War era is eroding as great-power competition heats up. The international system is entering a period of transition; power is shifting from West to East and from North to South.
“Because such transitions in the distribution of power are usually accompanied by instability and war,” Kupchan argued,
the United States needs to continue playing a dominant role in shaping and anchoring world order. But times have changed. The United States and its democratic allies no longer enjoy pronounced ideological and material dominance.
Amid growing tensions with China, Kupchan wrote in an article in The Atlantic in June, the United States “must factor in its own political weakness.” In the post-World War II Cold War, “the West was, for the most part, politically healthy. Ideological moderation and centrism prevailed in liberal democracies on both sides of the Atlantic, buttressed by broadly shared prosperity.”
But, Kupchan continued,
those days are gone. Automation and globalization have taken a heavy toll on the economic welfare of workers in the West, undermining the social contract of the industrial era. Illiberal populism is on the loose on both sides of the Atlantic, and ideological moderation and centrist consensus have given way to bitter polarization and legislative dysfunction. Strategic steadiness has been replaced by inconstancy; U.S. foreign policy is regularly engulfed in political gamesmanship.
There is, Kupchan maintained, a “high probability that China’s raw power will soon catch up with and then surpass America’s,” but “neither Democrats nor Republicans are ready to acknowledge or even contemplate the potential end of America’s long run of primacy.”
The failure last year of Ukraine’s highly publicized counteroffensive, leaving the contest at a standstill, with Ukrainians suffering continued losses and destroyed infrastructure, also diminished public support here for the continuation of the war.
Richard Haass, a former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, argued in an essay on Feb. 9, “Will Ukraine Survive?,” that Russia’s ability to hold its ground revealed the limitations that are keeping the United States and its European allies from achieving their original goals for the besieged country:
Ukraine’s highly anticipated counteroffensive, designed to liberate territory and deliver a battlefield win or at least momentum that would set the stage for promising diplomacy, was largely rebuffed.
Western military sanctions have likewise been evaded: Russia has continued to sell weapons to India and others and buy them from North Korea and Iran. It has also been able to purchase ostensibly civilian technology and products that can be repurposed for military use.
Russia shows few signs of exhaustion. Despite the extraordinary human toll of the war, estimated to be more than 300,000 Russian troops killed or injured, Putin’s control of the media and public narrative has allowed the Kremlin to minimize dissent and persuade many Russians that their country is the victim rather than an aggressor.
Haass contended that a Russian victory in Ukraine would be a major setback for the West:
The stakes for Ukraine, for Europe and for the world are enormous. Chinese President Xi Jinping, with his own designs on Taiwan, is watching with keen interest how this plays out. So, too, is Iran. If the United States proves unwilling to meet its obligations and uphold the rule of international law that territory may not be acquired by force, we are looking at a future far more violent and dangerous than the past.
In an email elaborating on his views, Haass wrote: “This is a moment of increasing distribution of power, what I once described as nonpolarity is better described as hyperpolarity. There are more actors willing to take us on in the military, economic and diplomatic realms.”
In this environment, Haass wrote:
our foes sense opportunity; our friends and allies are beginning to hedge and will have to choose some mix of accommodating powerful neighbors, becoming more self-reliant and/or finding alternative partners. The result will be a world of diminished U.S. influence and diminished order, all of which will come back to haunt us.
The bigger problem, Haass pointed out,
is that we have become unreliable and unpredictable. It is not a matter of capability, although we are short of what we need, given the many challenges, but rather will and consensus, even when the costs are relatively modest. We are seeing a resurfacing of classic isolationism, mostly on the MAGA, i.e., Republican, right.
Andrew Bacevich, a professor of international relations and history at Boston University and the chairman of the Quincy Institute, responded to my queries by email:
Ordinary Americans are increasingly doubtful that the burdens of global leadership are worth bearing. Events since 9/11 have undercut public confidence in establishment thinking regarding America’s role in the world. That Trump’s views attract as much support as they do from ordinary citizens is an indication of the extent to which the establishment has forfeited public support.
Polling conducted annually by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs shows a recent sharp decline in support for the engagement of the United States in international affairs. From 1974 to 2020, the share of Americans surveyed agreeing that “it will be best for the future of the country if we take an active part in world affairs” barely changed, going to 68 percent from 67 percent.
That abruptly shifted over the next three years as the percentage supporting the United States taking an active role in world affairs steadily declined by 11 points, to 57 percent. The drop cut across partisan groups: Democrats by eight points, independents by 10 and most precipitously among Republicans, a 17-point drop to 47 percent from 64 percent.
The Chicago Council noted that in the 49-year history of the survey, “for the first time, a narrow majority of Republicans (53 percent) say the United States should stay out of world affairs rather than taking an active part (47 percent).”
“The fundamental reason for the change in Republican attitudes on Ukraine, Russia and indeed in their overall worldview, is simple: Donald Trump,” Ivo Daalder, the chief executive of the council, wrote by email, adding:
Trump is unlike any Republican Party leader since the 1930s. Trump was the first postwar president not to embrace America’s global leadership role — rejecting security alliances, open markets and the defense of democracy and human rights that have been at the very core of American foreign policy since 1945, supported by presidents of both parties.
There are experts who contend, however, that the trend toward insularity and American withdrawal began well before Trump became a dominant political figure.
Ian Bremmer, an adjunct professor of international and public affairs at Columbia and the president of Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm, wrote by email:
A decade ago, I suggested we were heading into a G-zero world, where the United States would no longer be the global policeman, architect of global trade or promoter of global values and that no other country would be able to step into the shoes of the Americans. We’re clearly there today.
I asked Bremmer whether declining support for aid to Ukraine reflected a larger trend among Americans. He replied:
It reflects an understanding that the average American no longer believes that their political leaders effectively represent them and accordingly doesn’t want to support a globalist agenda. To the extent that political divisions in the United States undermine the projection of power of the country, this is a realistic assessment.
Joseph Nye, a former dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School, argued in an email that “the trends in U.S. power resources show up and down over the American Century, but compared to China, (our nearest peer competitor), we are still ahead.”
However, Nye warned, “measures of power balances are irrelevant if domestic politics prevents us from using them. I worry more about the rise of populist isolationism than the rise of China.”
What is new, Nye continued, “is that Trump has been able to mobilize and shape this latent isolationist minority into a powerful political force as part of his takeover of the Republican Party. The votes on aid to Ukraine are the latest manifestation.”
A majority of Republicans in the Senate have consistently voted to block consideration of legislation providing $95 billion in aid to Ukraine and Israel. In these procedural votes, 16 Republican senators supported the bill.
In the final vote on Tuesday approving the measure, Republican senators split — with 26 opposed, 22 in favor and one not voting. Speaker of the House Michael Johnson, a Republican, has signaled that he would not allow a vote on the bill.
Nye is by no means alone in his assessment of the crucial role of domestic politics in shaping foreign policy. Timothy Frye, a political scientist at Columbia, wrote by email: “The place of the United States in the world in the coming years will largely be decided by domestic politics in the United States rather than by international events.”
A Trump presidency, combined with a “resounding Republican win in Congress races, could sharply reorient U.S. foreign policy away from our traditional allies and NATO commitments in Europe. This would embolden Russia and risk renewed confrontation in Europe.”
Christopher Nichols, a professor of history at Ohio State with a focus on national security, wrote by email that
there is no doubt that the United States has the capacity — militarily, economically and diplomatically — and the overall affluence, to remain in a dominant role in maintaining or reshaping the current world order. The question right now is: Does the United States have the will to do so?
Nichols answered his own question:
A provisional honest answer has to be that the U.S. role in the international system is in flux, has been reduced and, despite the Biden administration’s slogan “America is back,” longer-term trends of U.S. decline, amplified by the at times incoherent amoral transactionalism of the Trump administration, have had serious effects on the U.S.’s ability to backstop a world order that the nation benefits from tremendously.
The United States “held preponderant power in the immediate wake of World War II in ways that almost no nation has in world history,” Nichols wrote.
Now, however,
there is far more anti-Americanism across the world than there was in the late 1940s and 1950s, largely the result of the ways the United States wielded power in the past 75 years, which means U.S. motives for action and support, or lack thereof, are subject to tremendous scrutiny and castigation.
Nichols maintained that
the world today resembles not a new cold war, as many have warned regarding the United States and China but, rather, is more comparable to the late 19th century. In this comparison the United States is like the British Empire, still hegemonic but showing signs of weakness and fracture at home and abroad.
Trump’s declaration on Feb. 9 that he would not only decline to come to the assistance of a NATO country attacked by Russia if that country was behind on its “dues” but also would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” has inflicted profound damage on America’s stature, according to Nichols.
In the past, Nichols wrote,
U.S. security and alliance commitments — and the credibility and assurance that go with them — have been sacrosanct. That is no longer the case, and the world community, allies and adversaries alike, recognizes this new reality. It is not just retrenchment. This is deeper and potentially more disruptive. This shift represents a willingness to discard the nation’s word at the highest levels, not just occasionally and opportunistically but wholesale.
In this exceptionally volatile moment, Trump’s abandonment of NATO’s Article 5 — the mutual defense agreement — places a heavy political burden on President Biden or whoever ends up as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Amid declining support for America’s role as protector of the democratic world order and amid increasing demands to reach a compromise in Ukraine, the Democratic nominee will be pressed to enunciate what would amount to a diminished international agenda for the United States.
It may be that lowering expectations is a realistic response to the shifting international and domestic balance of power, but there are few American politicians who want to campaign on a theme of declining American stature.
In the eyes of many, Trump embodies declining American stature; indeed, Trump is driving it and campaigning on it.
In November 2020, Pew Research reported in “The Trump Era Has Seen a Decline in America’s Global Reputation” that
no more than a quarter of adults expressed confidence in Trump in any of the 13 countries surveyed by the center this year. And in many nations where we have survey data for the past three administrations, the lowest ratings we’ve seen for any president have come during Trump’s time in office. For instance, just 5 percent of Mexicans voiced confidence in Trump’s leadership in 2017, the smallest share who expressed that view in surveys that date back to 2007.
Pew asked, “What have people around the world not liked about Trump?”
The answer: “Our 37-nation survey in 2017 found that many did not like his personal characteristics or leadership style. Majorities said he was arrogant, intolerant and dangerous. Few considered him well qualified or believed that he cares about ordinary people.”
This low opinion of Trump has dragged down the international reputation of the United States. “Trump’s unpopularity has had a significant negative effect on America’s overall image,” according to Pew’s report. “Ratings for the United States plummeted after he took office in 2017. In fact, in several nations that are key U.S. allies and partners, the share of the public with a favorable view of the U.S. is at its lowest point in nearly two decades of polling.”
If Trump’s first term in office severely damaged the reputation of the United States, his second term, should it come to pass, would complete the dismantling of the nation’s international standing.
Or should we say “shattering” rather than “dismantling”?
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Thomas B. Edsall has been a contributor to the Times Opinion section since 2011. His column on strategic and demographic trends in American politics appears every Wednesday. He previously covered politics for The Washington Post. @edsall
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