After nearly four years of President Donald Trump, are Americans still broadly committed to a globally engaged foreign policy? Or have they become dangerously polarized on issues of how the US should approach the world — and even of how the country should see itself? The answer, according to a new survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, appears to be “both.”
Fears that Americans would flee headlong into isolationism under Trump have so far proved mostly unfounded. Yet there have emerged key areas of disagreement between Democrats and Republicans, which could cause instability in America’s dealings with an unsettled world.
From the time he announced his bid for president in 2015, Trump has repeatedly critiqued the logic of US internationalism. “We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon,” he declared in his inaugural address. Yet most Americans don’t seem to be buying his argument that the world is exploiting a naïve, overly generous superpower.
The number of Americans who believe that the US should play an active role in global affairs has actually risen since its low point in 2014, reaching 68%. Over 70% of Americans voice support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the principle of close consultation with allies.
And even amid a pandemic that raced across an open world, support for globalization is as high (65%) as it has been at any point in recent decades. The paradox of the Trump presidency is that Americans seem to have become more committed to many of the arrangements and policies he has assailed.
There is also an emerging, if still incomplete, consensus on China. A clear majority, 55%, now sees China’s emergence as a world power as a critical threat to the US. Although Republicans are more hawkish than Democrats, the broad trend of recent years has been growing support among both parties for a sharper approach. Democrats and Republicans now favor measures that might have seemed extreme only a few years ago, such as sanctioning Chinese officials involved in human rights abuses and limiting high-tech exports to Beijing.
And overwhelming majorities of both parties favor giving precedence to Washington’s relations with its Indo-Pacific allies over its ties with China. The American public is warming up to great-power competition.
Look a bit more closely, however, and a broad consensus starts to fray. In particular, there are three partisan fault lines in how Americans view world affairs.
One involves whether the US should primarily focus on “hard” or “soft” security threats. Although Democrats are skeptical of China, they are more worried about nontraditional threats that can imperil the stability and health of US society without a shot being fired: climate change, Covid-19, the effects of racial and economic inequality, among others. Republicans, meanwhile, are more likely to identify traditional security issues — China, Iran, terrorism — as well as immigrants and refugees as America’s top threats.
The first divide relates to a second, which involves the question of self-reliance versus solidarity. Democrats still tend to think that the US is part of a larger global community, and 80% of them believe that addressing transnational threats such as the coronavirus pandemic will require enhanced international cooperation. The only solution to the dangers of a globalized world, in other words, is more and better globalization.
A majority (58%) of Republicans desire greater self-sufficiency: The best approach to the perils integration brings, they believe, is to better insulate the US from the world.
In the same vein, the figures on trade conceal a partisan gap that indicates a striking role reversal. Democrats, once the party of protectionism, have become America’s chief advocates of free trade. Republicans have become more inclined to support restrictions on commerce.
The third fault line is the starkest. Republicans believe deeply in American exceptionalism, with 80% agreeing that the US is not simply unique but the greatest nation in the world. Democratic support for that proposition has nose-dived under Trump, falling from 55% in 2016 to just 35% today.
Ironically, the American president has repeatedly argued that his country is no better than other global powers (even as he has, more recently, called for a program of “patriotic education” in the country’s schools). After four years of watching him in action, it is Democrats who most share that outlook.
The pessimistic view of these divides is that we are entering an era of sustained turbulence in US foreign policy. Under both Democratic and Republican leadership, the US would still play a profoundly important role in world affairs. But it would seesaw back and forth on issues such as climate change, global health and perhaps even participation in international trade agreements and institutions such as the World Trade Organization.
The degree of multilateralism or unilateralism in policy would vary dramatically by administration. Major initiatives undertaken by one administration might not survive the transition to another.
Trump's head-snapping reversals of so many policies of President Barack Obama’s era would become the norm. The US would be an increasingly erratic, if extremely powerful, actor; domestic polarization would make it ever more difficult to chart a steady, consistent course that friends and allies could confidently follow.
Or maybe things won’t be so bad. It is not surprising to see partisan differences (even sharp ones) within a basic agreement on the need for a globally active America. Some cleavages that seem profound today could actually be bridged: For example, by a policy that makes the US less reliant on China by deepening its integration with friendly democracies.
Finally, it may be that some of today’s divides are about Trump — a uniquely idiosyncratic president — more than anything else. No one should be shocked if Democrats decide that the US is once again special when it is again led by a Democratic president.
It is too soon to write off America’s ability to carry out a coherent, long-term approach to a world where stability is too often in short supply. It is not too soon to wonder whether a superpower that finds itself zig-zagging due to its own domestic divisions might end up adding to that volatility.
Bloomberg
