Reorienting the American Foreign Policy, Need for a twenty-first-century version of the Truman Doctrine

Donald Trump’s entry into the White House as the 45th President of the United States has prompted a major reassessment of the United States’ global role – the most fundamental rethinking since World War II. It is already clear that Trump will continue at least one trend that has been under way since the collapse of the Soviet Union. For some 40 years following the WWII, the US had a fairly coherent foreign policy – the Truman Doctrine – which saw the world as a bipolar competition between the Soviet bloc and the US-led bloc. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Truman Doctrine lost its vitality; however, no administration has come up with a comprehensive plan to replace it.

Trump’s views on trade and the importance of international institutions are very different from those of his predecessors as he will prioritize immediate economic gains over security and human rights. Trump will probably also make foreign policy in an executive-driven, reactive way, without a clear or lasting strategic vision. Such an approach has some advantages: in theory, it’s a good way to avoid blunders and unnecessary adventures. But its risks are even greater. The country, and the world, needs a new, twenty-first-century version of the Truman Doctrine: a sustained US national security strategy that is proactive rather than reactive. Today’s world needs a reinvigorated campaign to promote the virtues of democracy over authoritarianism or extremism. The US is best suited to lead that campaign, and failure to do so will hurt both the United States and people around the world.

During the presidential election 2016 campaign, topics like the Islamic State, the Zika virus, terrorism, China, Russia, North Korea, the Middle East, cyberthreats, immigration, trade and diplomacy, and institutions e.g. NATO and the United Nations, dominated the scene. Yet each issue was briefly discussed without much context or connection. Beyond “America first,” little attention was paid to overall strategy.

Although it is common during campaigns, it’s not the way the US and its allies have always done things. Seventy years ago, in three famous speeches, leaders of the free world laid out a markedly different approach.

The first of these speeches was delivered by Winston Churchill in March 1946 – upon request by US President Harry Truman – at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Churchill urged the country to match its primacy with “an awe-inspiring accountability to the future.” Warning Americans about the rise of a militant Soviet bloc, Churchill called for the creation of an “overall strategic concept” to shape the US and allied response.

One year later, in March 1947, Truman sought to put these principles into practice. With Greece and Turkey facing threats from Soviet-backed extremists, Truman went to Congress. In his speech, he highlighted the dangers facing Athens and Ankara and pointed out that no other country had the means to help them. He declared, “It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures.”

A few months later, in June 1947, US Secretary of State George Marshall gave the third key speech, in which he sought giving shape to the emerging policy. In a commencement address at Harvard University, Marshall proposed that the US should assist in the rebuilding of war-torn Europe. The plan was designed to use economic aid to promote stability and reduce Soviet influence in Europe and, later, Japan. Congress agreed, and the US soon began providing aid to Greece and Turkey, and, then many of their neighbours, too.

For the next four decades, the United States would strive to reduce the threat of war, check Soviet communism and promote freedom. Washington would use international institutions as a first resort, but would act unilaterally when necessary.

The fact that the Truman Doctrine lasted as long as it did does not mean that it was perfect. Too often, in attempting to thwart real or perceived Soviet influence, the US threw its weight behind authoritarian regimes – thus turning a doctrine meant to promote its best values into one focused on checking its adversary.

Yet for all of the doctrine’s flaws, that doctrine, by its own terms, succeeded: the US dominated the second half of the twentieth century, and the Soviet Union, unable to compete, eventually collapsed. When it did, however, Washington suddenly found itself without an organizing principle to animate its foreign policy – and so it reverted to the pragmatic, case-by-case approach the country had pursued prior to the WWII.

There are downsides to such an approach. It is too often reactive. It doesn’t give allies, adversaries or the US public any way to predict what the US government will do. And it can lead to incoherence. During the 1990s, for example, the United States intervened to stop genocide in the Balkans but refused to do the same in Rwanda.

At this point, it seems unlikely that the Trump administration will articulate a clear strategy of its own. His promises to put “America first” recall the country’s isolationist bent in the years preceding the WWII. And the deep ideological divisions among his military, national security and diplomatic advisers make it likely that his administration will continue to deal with challenges on a case-by-case basis.

This approach may help the country avoid doing stupid stuff. But should Washington pursue it, it will miss clear leadership opportunities and produce a lot of confusion abroad at a time when the world still looks to the United States for leadership.

So how should the United States do things? Simply calling for the creation of a new grand strategy is easy. The problem is that the modern world is significantly different from the world Churchill, Truman, and Marshall confronted. Given how hyperdiffuse and hyperconnected power has become, it’s worth asking whether it’s even possible to conceive of a comprehensive national security strategy today.

It is, actually!

The Truman Doctrine was created by a Democratic president who was able to convince a Republican Congress to embrace it. For a new national security strategy to succeed, it, too, will need bipartisan support – since Congress, among its other prerogatives, retains the exclusive power to declare war. That said, the strategy itself must once again come from the president, to whom the Constitution gives significant power to formulate and execute foreign policy.

In trying to define a new grand strategy, a president should start with the same question that Churchill, Truman and Marshall asked themselves in the late 1940s: What is the current arrangement of power around the globe? Things are much more complicated today than they were during the Cold War. Wealth has become far more diffuse, and there is more parity among nations. At the close of the WWII, the US enjoyed both economic and military dominance. These days, it faces far more constraints, such as high debt levels, which have created a powerful push to reduce spending on international aid, diplomacy and the military. Such constraints narrow the country’s qualitative edge and limit its choices.

A second change from Truman’s day is the increase in interconnectedness. Today, travel, communication, information-sharing, technology, immigration and commerce draw nations together far more closely than ever before. And the post–WWII system of international norms, rules and institutions draws countries closer together. Immigration brings valuable flows of talent to the US but also raises concerns about security. More trade means more export-related jobs, but it also means fewer jobs in sectors where other nations’ lower costs give them an advantage.

A third key difference between Truman’s era and the present one is the tremendous increase in the power of non-state actors – from terrorist groups to criminal syndicates to international non-governmental organizations to transnational businesses. Many of these forces are benign, even beneficial. But the ability of non-state actors to use violence and evade laws and accountability is both pernicious and destabilizing. The rise of these non-state actors is undercutting the Westphalian consensus, which was based on the assumption that power, especially military power, was to be exercised by nation-states and only nation-states within generally accepted boundaries.

Today’s world is not bipolar, as it was during Truman’s day. It’s tripolar: power is now exercised by democratic states, authoritarian states and non-state actors. A contemporary US security doctrine must operate in that framework and offer a guide for action that treats each group distinctly. Any new US national security strategy should, therefore, start by looking for cooperative, not coercive, ways to shore up the world’s existing democracies. The US can do this best by making the best use of its own example and showing how its democratic institutions promote prosperity peace and happiness. The better the United States does, the more its example will inspire other democracies to keep improving.

Authoritarian states represent today’s second major global power base. The US should skilfully challenge such states in the hopes that they will increase their commitment to democratic values, as well as their commitment to peaceful relations with other nations and their integration into global institutions. Challenging authoritarian nations requires different tactics depending on the issue.

The final type of power the United States faces today is the non-state actors like NGOs. Many such entities help build bridges between nations and individuals. Such organizations should be supported. Those that use violence to achieve their ends, however, must be fought and defeated. This fight is the key area in which the United States has cooperated, and should continue to cooperate, with authoritarian states. Trump is, therefore, right when he argues that the US should work with Russia to defeat groups such as ISIS.

Terrorists aren’t the only nonstate actors who use their peculiar status to avoid accountability and legal restrictions. Speaking about ExxonMobil, Lee Raymond, then the company’s CEO, once famously said, “I’m not a US company, and I don’t make decisions based on what’s good for the US” On one level, corporations seeking to avoid paying taxes seem quite different from transnational drug cartels. But both types of groups now take advantage of the mobility of capital and people in a roughly similar way. The United States must, therefore, work with other nations to close the loopholes that allow organizations to amass economic power while evading accountability to any national legal system.

Conclusion

Today, the key question the US faces is whether it can continue along a reactive path and even reduce its commitments to its allies and the international institutions it helped create. Or it can start articulating a broad new strategy for re-engaging with the world as its leading democracy. Americans should recognize their country’s unique strengths without indulging in either paranoia or unnecessary self-congratulation. That is what Truman and the US Congress did 70 years ago, at a moment when bipartisan cooperation seemed unlikely. There is no excuse for failing to live up to the challenge today.

Highlights

1. Trump’s views on trade and the importance of international institutions are very different from those of his predecessors.

2. Today’s world needs a reinvigorated campaign to promote democracy over authoritarianism or extremism.

3. Marshall proposed that the US should assist in the rebuilding of war-torn Europe. The plan was designed to use economic aid to promote stability and reduce Soviet influence in Europe and Japan.

4. The Truman Doctrine was created by a Democratic president who convinced a Republican Congress to embrace it.

5. Things are much more complicated today than they were during the Cold War. Wealth has become far more diffuse, and there is more parity among nations.

6. During the 1990s, the US intervened to stop genocide in the Balkans but refused to do the same in Rwanda.

7. The ability of non-state actors to use violence and evade laws and accountability is both pernicious and destabilizing.

This article has been extracted from Tim Kaine’s “A New Truman Doctrine: Grand Strategy in a Hyperconnected World,” published in Foreign Affairs. Tim is an American attorney and politician and was Hillary Clinton’s vice-president running mate in the US presidential election 2016.