America's search for a grand strategy

As we leave behind the first quarter of this century, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the United States is experiencing a serious crisis in defining its role within the international system. Having entered the 21st century as the world’s undisputed sole superpower, the American establishment was deeply shaken by the September 11 terrorist attacks at the very outset of the century, and since then it has struggled to formulate a coherent grand strategy. Unable to escape oscillating between different extremes since the Bush era, U.S. foreign policy under Trump has taken on the image of a nation-state that has abandoned claims of global leadership and is increasingly moving toward becoming a more regional power. In the first quarter of this century, Washington made the fight against terrorism global, open-ended, and limitless, yet it could not free itself from allowing the counterterrorism agenda to dictate its foreign policy parameters. As a result, the United States, unable to develop a comprehensive strategy and instead pursuing a far more reactive foreign policy, has increasingly fallen into the habit of following a course detached both from the demands of its own people and from its concrete international interests. Despite the growing weight of isolationist tendencies that periodically surface throughout American history, today’s United States is still trying to wield its global power, yet by pursuing a foreign policy that leaves it “caught between two stools,” it is steadily losing its capacity to shape global politics.

FROM THE WAR ON TERROR TO ISOLATIONISM

After the September 11 attacks, there was a strong sense that nothing would ever be the same again. Countries around the world stood by the United States as a victim of terrorism, and the Bush administration’s ultimatum of “you are either with us or against us” was generally met with understanding. However, by squandering this global goodwill through the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush administration plunged the United States into endless “forever wars” under the pretext of bringing democracy to these countries. Pouring trillions of dollars and a vast amount of the U.S. military’s energy into nation-building and democracy promotion, the Bush administration set in motion a process that upended regional balances. The “war on terror,” with neither clear objectives nor well-defined criteria for success, became a reality that legitimized America’s ability to strike any target anywhere in the world while rendering the need to build international coalitions largely meaningless. Numerous practices that disregarded international law not only undermined America’s claim to global leadership but also alienated its own allies.

The 2008 financial crisis, which followed the legacy of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, further cooled the American public’s faith in the system and pushed voters toward alternative candidates. The global crisis, which cost millions of people their homes and retirement savings, contributed to the growing perception that the nation-building projects in Afghanistan and Iraq were fundamentally illegitimate. This backlash, which brought an outsider like Obama to power, was also the single biggest factor behind Trump’s victory over Clinton, the candidate of the Washington establishment. The occupations and the economic crisis that turned the public away from international engagements paved the way for Trump’s isolationist rhetoric. The political legitimacy of the war on terror agenda became so deeply questioned that Trump was able to secure the Republican nomination despite directly targeting the Bush family. Reviving an updated version of American isolationism with roots stretching back to the founding fathers, Trump successfully used the resentment of those harmed by globalization as his most powerful political weapon. Yet both the “war on terror” and isolationist foreign policy were not the products of a strategy carefully designed around America’s interests and the public’s priorities, but rather outward expressions of reactive politics.

WHAT WILL AMERICA’S GRAND STRATEGY BE?

Efforts to put an end to America’s lack of strategy and reactive foreign policy have proven ineffective. For example, Obama’s attempts to improve relations with the Muslim world and ease America’s burden in the Middle East were primarily aimed at reorienting the United States toward an Asia-Pacific-focused strategy. Seeking to reduce American engagement in the Middle East through the nuclear deal with Iran and by narrowing the al-Qaeda agenda to counterterrorism, Obama was rendered ineffective by Israel’s policies that constantly pulled Washington back into the region. Unable even to freeze settlement expansion, let alone advance a peace process, Obama found himself compelled to reengage militarily in the region with the rise of ISIS. During the Arab Spring, Washington focused on preserving stability in countries like Egypt in order to safeguard America’s regional interests and Israel’s position, yet it never managed to implement a genuine pivot to the Asia-Pacific. Although both the Trump and Biden administrations attempted to strengthen ties with Asia-Pacific countries under the banner of countering China, it is difficult to say that a lasting grand strategy was ever put into practice. As a belated response to China’s rise was being formulated, the Asia-Pacific strategy was at times rebranded as the Indo-Pacific strategy, revealing just how deep the underlying confusion truly was.

The presidents of this century have also failed to manage the backlash against America’s international role. Obama’s inability to secure congressional approval for the Iran nuclear deal, Trump’s failure to generate broad support for either pressure on Iran or diplomacy with North Korea, and Biden’s difficulty in explaining aid to Ukraine to the public are just a few examples. Frameworks such as Obama’s Asia-Pacific strategy, Trump’s skeptical “America First” approach toward the Western alliance, and Biden’s narrative of a struggle between autocracies and democracies all fell short of winning bipartisan support. Whereas during the Cold War Washington was able to focus on a single enemy like communism and secure broad public backing, in this century it has been forced to produce policies plagued by deep divisions and polarization on nearly every issue. It is highly likely that these trends will continue in the period ahead, and if they do, the United States may increasingly transform into a country that thinks like a regional nation-state rather than a global leader. If American strategists fail to formulate a comprehensive grand strategy that enjoys bipartisan support and is embraced by the public, it will hardly be surprising to see the United States rapidly drift away from its position as a global power.