By Steven Erlanger<\/p>\n
Sept. 22, 2018<\/p>\n
BRUSSELS \u2014 President Trump seems determined to upend 70 years of established American foreign policy, especially toward Europe, which he regards as\u00a0less ally than competitor.<\/a><\/p>\n The Trump turnabout has set off a fervent search on both sides of the Atlantic for answers to hard questions about the global role of the United States, and what a frazzled Europe can and should do for itself, given a less reliable American partner.<\/p>\n The German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, speaking before a conference of all Germany\u2019s ambassadors last month,\u00a0argued for\u00a0<\/a>a stronger European foreign and defense policy in the face of a suddenly uncertain future.<\/p>\n \u201cThe rules-based international order\u201d is eroding in a world where \u201cnothing can be taken for granted any more in foreign policy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n As a measure of just how cross-fertilized the thinking has become, Mr. Maas, a Socialist, cited the conservative American thinker Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution and his forthcoming book,\u00a0\u201cThe Jungle Grows Back:<\/a>\u00a0America and Our Imperiled World.\u201d<\/p>\n His is one of several new books to take on the issues. In Mr. Kagan\u2019s view, the United States\u2019 retreat as the enforcer of the order it created after World War II is returning the world to its natural state \u2014 a dark jungle of competing interests, clashing nationalism, tribalism and self-interest.<\/p>\n \u201cThe liberal world order established by the United States a little over seven decades ago is collapsing,\u201d Mr. Kagan writes, a function of American exhaustion with global burdens that began before Mr. Trump was elected and was one of the reasons for his victory.<\/p>\n But as a tired America pulls back from tending what Mr. Kagan calls \u201cthe garden\u201d of the liberal order \u2014 an exceptional 70 years of relative peace and free trade, \u201ca historical anomaly\u201d made possible by U.S. leadership \u2014 the dangers are considerable, especially for Europe, he argues.<\/p>\n Already strained by populism and identity politics, Europe is in danger of returning to the strife that produced totalitarianism in the 1930s, he warns.<\/p>\n \u201cThe crucial issue is not the Middle East or even Russia, and it may not even be China,\u201d Mr. Kagan said. \u201cThe big game is what it\u2019s been for over a century. If we lose Europe, if we send Europe back to its normal condition, it\u2019s over.\u201d<\/p>\n But his prescription \u2014 that the United States suck it up and understand that it must remain the indispensable guarantor \u2014 is hardly universally shared at a moment when many appear sympathetic to Mr. Trump\u2019s complaint that America\u2019s allies do not do enough for collective defense.<\/p>\n Julianne Smith, a former adviser to Vice President Biden and now a visiting fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, recently traveled the United States talking about foreign policy.<\/p>\n \u201cIf in Washington the bipartisan view is do more, outside people ask if we\u2019ve been too ambitious,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re in a situation where the public doesn\u2019t see the evidence to support Kagan\u2019s arguments,\u201d she said. \u201cCongress is not there, the media is not there, the public is not there, and business is there only sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University argues in his own forthcoming book, \u201cThe Hell of Good Intentions:<\/a>\u00a0America\u2019s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy,\u201d that the United States should do less in the world, and a lot more selectively.<\/p>\n Part of the \u201crealist\u201d school, Mr. Walt says that since the end of the Cold War, the United States has engaged in a series of expensive, largely unnecessary and ultimately failed efforts to remake nations in its own unusual image.<\/p>\n The metaphor of a garden \u201cimplies our role is benign and benevolent, when actually we\u2019ve been blowing up a lot of stuff,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we go running around the world on idealistic crusades, and some go badly, as they will, then public support for an activist foreign policy will decline.\u201d<\/p>\n Tomas Valasek, who runs Carnegie Europe, a research institution, considers that view too pessimistic.<\/p>\n \u201cI agree that it\u2019s not inevitable that the U.S. will always play the same role, but I disagree that mayhem necessarily follows,\u201d he said. \u201cThe U.S. has changed Europe\u2019s security culture,\u201d making Europeans more conscious of the need to defend themselves.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not the 1930s,\u201d Mr. Valasek said. \u201cThere are ugly forces at work in Europe but not of the same kind, and I don\u2019t share Kagan\u2019s assumption that European elites will fail to respond.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe must make clear to the American people that it\u2019s in their enlightened self-interest to stay engaged, and that others are stepping up, paying and doing their share,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The shift in American attitudes \u201ctoward a post-imperial role\u201d began before Mr. Trump, with the failure of the Iraq war, noted Nathalie Tocci, director of Italy\u2019s Institute of International Affairs and an adviser to E.U. foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini.<\/p>\n But for her, \u201cthe silver lining in Europe is that even the current dodgy leaders realize we\u2019re all very small.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a growing realization that a stronger Europe and European Union are a necessity, whatever the faults,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Daniel W. Drezner, who teaches international politics at Tufts University\u2019s Fletcher School, argues that \u201cAmericans are sick of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,\u201d but that both Mr. Kagan and Mr. Walt are wrong about American public opinion.<\/p>\n \u201cAsk them about trade, immigration and alliances, and it turns out that Trump has made liberal internationalism great again,\u201d he said, with Americans favoring international trade and alliances with European and Asian democracies.<\/p>\n