Across America today, some of the most remarkable debates are raging in the public square, while credentialed experts in established centers of inquiry race to keep up. We can see this in discussions about citizenship and borders, about the nature of sex and the ethics of human reproduction, and about trade. It is also true in discussions of foreign policy. The conflict in Ukraine, especially, has sparked defining debates about core principles, which have been ongoing in public for a while, as experts are racing to keep up or trying to frame new debates in old categories or theories.
And yet, there is so much to think through in foreign policy, the topic of Emma Ashford’s First Among Equals. The last twenty years of US foreign policy seem to have been a blip of mistaken visions, many of which ended tragically. Americans have had big failures in the Middle East, but also failures to foresee or prepare for Russian bellicosity toward the West and the Chinese effort to win at least regional, if not global mastery. These developments seem to call for novel strategies that reflect the new geopolitical realities and are appropriate to the limitations of American power. The author proposes an allegedly new approach to US foreign policy, calling it “realist internationalism.” It is typical to devise new terms to suggest novelty, but in essence, “realist internationalism” is another version of the doctrine of retrenchment (or restraint, or, a word that is not to be spoken, isolationism), a particular version of the academic theory of Realism. The policy prescription is that the US must withdraw from Europe and the Middle East, while maintaining only a maritime presence in Asia. According to the author, the world, or at least Eurasia, will be better off with such a posture, and the US will be more secure.
This is a bold claim, but not much that has not been said or written before appears in the book. Often what is there is wrapped in generalities that obfuscate more than clarify. Just one, albeit important, example: the author advocates that the US should define its interests more narrowly, “confined primarily to territorial security, nuclear deterrence, American democracy and prosperity at home, and the avoidance of the rise of a peer hegemon elsewhere in the world that could threaten the nation over the long term.” I don’t know who, except for some extreme crank, could possibly disagree with this list, which is very broad and ultimately does not supply a clear answer to how much and where the US should act. Certainly, this lengthy list of foreign policy goals does not include humanitarian interventions or foreign aid, tasks favored by liberals. But these call for relatively small expenditures of resources, and in some cases may be useful to achieve the objectives presented by Ashford. Even the Trump administration has not fully eliminated foreign aid but moved its management under the oversight of the Department of State to make sure that financial outlays abroad clearly support US national security. Similarly, American prosperity, for instance, may require maintenance of stability in the Middle East, military presence near Iran, or protection of Europe and its markets; to prevent the rise of a peer hegemon may demand more than a naval presence in the Pacific; and to preserve nuclear deterrence may require physical presence of military capabilities, including American tactical nuclear weapons, in Europe. But that’s the opposite of what the author proposes.
From a generic and broad list of goals, it is impossible to derive unequivocal paths of action. In fact, as the author writes, the ultimate task of American leaders will be to avoid “war whenever possible, but not at any cost.” Again, it’s hard to disagree with such a statement. Has any leader claimed to seek war regardless of the costs?
Without American presence, many Europeans, eager to avoid a military buildup, may align more with Russia (and China), opposing our interests.
Despite the infinite flexibility that these generic goals offer, the argument of the book is, in the end, very rigid. To a large degree, this is due to the fact that the breezy overview of US foreign policy and of the proposed new realist strategy is wrapped in an old debate among US academic theories. On the one hand, there are theories, like liberalism, that want to alter the world through trade, international institutions, or democratic regimes. The telos is peace, even a Kantian perpetual peace. On the other hand stands realism, the theory of the eternal struggle for power due to human imperfections residing in original sin (think Saint Augustine) or imperfect rationality. Realism is thus seen as the realistic vision, grounded in a clear assessment of political possibilities, which is opposed to ideological aspirations to change the world here and now. The argument of the book is placed in the latter theory, with chapters sprinkling in realist concepts such as relative power or polarity.
All this is standard and light American academic fare. But the version of realism presented in this book—arguing that a retreat from parts of Eurasia is a necessary and beneficial policy—is neither realistic nor ideology-free. Naturally, every policy prescription, whether coming from the left or the right, from the realist or the liberal camp, is defined by its proponents as pragmatic, realistic, prudent, and not utopic or ideological. As the author puts it, the book offers a “prudent, yet non-doctrinaire, realist foreign policy.” Prudence is by definition non-doctrinaire, and yet the proposed strategy is really neither. Beyond the broad claims that the telos of history is not imminent and that here and now we live in a fallen state that requires us to manage power dynamics, many policies advocated by realists like the author of this book are neither realistic nor grounded in a nuanced appreciation of the complexities of politics.
In fact, this book’s “realist internationalism” (and, more broadly, retrenchment) is a doctrine based on several articles of faith that, regardless of how much they can be proven wrong in day-to-day geopolitics, undergird the policy prescriptions. It is an ideology that is as risky as its liberal nemesis: both share a faith that a more secure international environment can arise with less American presence. The former hopes others will do our job with no costs to us; the latter hopes international organizations or trade or the rise of democratic regimes across the map will obviate the need for the US.
A recurrent belief behind retrenchment is that the US is the primary cause of the behavior of other states. For instance, Russia is aggressive because of American behavior. Its imperial expansion is therefore, as the author writes, “newfound,” a result of NATO enlargement (the book calls it, erroneously, “expansion” as if NATO troops had marched to Warsaw and Riga in an analogous fashion to the Red Army, which expanded Russia’s empire half a century earlier). This view implies that Russian imperial desires are a product of the West (NATO and the US mostly) rather than a historical constant going back to Peter the Great, if not earlier, or, more immediately, a fruit of Putin’s ambition to die as the great restorer of the Muscovite empire. Such a belief then leads to the dodgy suggestion that American absence from many regions in the world will eliminate many of our enemies. We leave Europe and certainly its eastern flank, and Russia will stop its westward imperialism. Similarly, the author suggests that Iran’s Islamic regime has developed its military capabilities, including support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, because the US has a sizeable military role in the region. The cause of Tehran’s regional aspirations is America: remove America, and Tehran loses its aggressiveness. This is another article of faith that flips the line of causation in ways unproven by history and dangerous for the future. To act upon it would amount to a bet against historical evidence.
A related belief behind this ideology of retrenchment or “realist internationalism” is that an American absence will be filled by our allies in their respective regions. As Ashford puts it, a “United States that is not present overseas and is less capable of trying to solve every problem will tempt policymakers less and allow other countries to step up.” But this is a big assumption, based on a flawed analysis. The fact that many countries, including our allies, do not spend much on defense is not because the US, or even a mere US presence, does not “allow” them to do so. On the contrary, many US political leaders from Eisenhower to Trump have been haranguing Europeans to step up and devote more resources to their own defense. Allies are encouraged to do more, but they simply do not want to, because for many, opposing Russia or China is not a core interest due to distance (Portugal is far from the Dniepr), economic interests (some, like Germany, rely on the markets or resources of these great powers), or other local dynamics (Hungary may be balancing EU domestic pressures with warmer relations with Moscow). In fact, it is plausible to foresee the exact opposite happening: without American presence, many Europeans, eager to avoid a military buildup, will align more with Russia (and China), opposing our interests.
Nevertheless, the author assures us, once the US has no military presence in Europe, allies there “should” fill the military void, “should” develop naval forces to provide security in the Mediterranean and the Baltic seas, and “should” more broadly have a serious commitment to their security. Ashford even puts a clear date on this proposal: in ten years, there should be no American troops in Europe. This may be desirable in an abstract theoretical way, but with the few exceptions of states that are the most threatened by Russia and have already increased their defense spending, it is doubtful whether Europeans will be willing to trade their social welfare for more artillery shells or be politically and fiscally capable of incurring higher debt levels for defense purposes. Italians will not cut their social welfare to build a navy to patrol the Mediterranean or the Red seas, and the French or the Germans will not send soldiers (which they don’t have anyway) to man trenches facing Russian tanks. Hope, or the expectation that somebody “should” do something, is not a good strategy, especially as the evidence points in a very different direction.
The academic theory of retrenchment has never been influential in American policy. Most US political leaders, in fact, shy away from the rigidity that a doctrine imposes.
One of the key reasons for American involvement and presence in various regions of Eurasia is the experience of what happened—and continues to happen—when the US stays offshore. By only floating on the seas, other great powers in history had a very limited effect on the politics on land, and only insofar as the polities on land were dependent on sea lanes. The US is not immune to this problem, and its maritime power is a necessary but insufficient tool to shape the geopolitical dynamics in Eurasia. Balancing on the continent does not just happen automatically, and, in fact, Eurasia has been prone to dramatic collapses of its equilibrium that required costly and massive American interventions in the last century. To leave Eurasia is to place naive hope over hard-won experience. And yet Ashford wants the US military to be smaller, and what is left should have “a substantially heavier emphasis on naval and air forces.” A smaller land force may not save that much money, as ships and places are more capital-intensive assets. Moreover, a navy and an air force can bomb places, but bombing alone doesn’t win wars.
The greatness of the realist tradition is the flexibility of its policy prescriptions. In its best form, realism is a simple belief that power is necessary and a position of strength should not be relinquished. It is not a doctrine proscribing what “should” happen or a grand theory explaining every motion in the world. Realism is also a tradition that accepts the perennial existence of difficult trade-offs. Any decision carries some costs and risks, exactly because the outcome is never certain. The virtue of the leader is thus prudence, right reason in action, and not blind faith in new or old axioms.
And this—prudence—is exactly what is missing in this book, despite the recurrent use of the term to describe the advocated policy of retrenchment or “realist internationalism.” The certainty of outcomes—good if the US leaves Europe and the Middle East, bad if the US stays there—leaves little room for this virtue because the right path is doctrinally prescribed. US security can be engineered if only we follow the proposed doctrine, untested in history, but confident in the results it will produce.
Unsurprisingly, the academic theory of retrenchment has never been influential in American policy. Most US political leaders, in fact, shy away from the rigidity that a doctrine imposes. And Donald Trump is attracted to policy flexibility, perhaps even more than his predecessors. It is not in think tanks or academia, therefore, that a new US foreign policy is being and will be shaped. In fact, one of the effects of the Trump administration is the marginalization, already well advanced before him, of both, as they have been unable to offer a strategic vision attuned to the American electorate and to the increasingly more competitive relations with rival great powers. These places offer less prudence and more doctrine.
This book is not an exception and is a product of academic theories and niche think tank debates. It restates the old doctrine of retrenchment, theorizing with great conviction that the world will be safer for the US with less American presence abroad. If not even Trump, a revolutionary figure capable of disrupting many existing policies, is willing to adopt this doctrine, it is likely that retrenchment will remain the academic abstraction that it is.