Project Syndicate – 04.12.2020<\/p>\n
By Joseph S. Nye, JR.<\/p>\n
America’s friends and allies have come to distrust it in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency. Joe Biden will do all that he can to repair the damage, but the deeper problem is that many are asking whether Trump was merely a symptom of the decline of American democracy.<\/em><\/p>\n CAMBRIDGE \u2013 Friends and allies have come to distrust the United States. Trust is closely related to truth, and President Donald Trump is notoriously loose with the truth. All presidents have lied, but never on such a scale that it debases the currency of trust. International polls show that America\u2019s soft power of attraction\u00a0has declined<\/a>\u00a0sharply over Trump\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n Can President-elect Joe Biden restore that trust? In the short run, yes. A change of style and policy will improve America\u2019s standing in most countries. Trump was an outlier among US presidents. The presidency was his first job in government, after spending his career in the zero-sum world of New York City real estate and reality television, where outrageous statements hold the media\u2019s attention and help you control the agenda.<\/p>\n In contrast, Biden is a well-vetted politician with long experience in foreign policy derived from decades in the Senate and eight years as vice president. Since the election, his initial statements and appointments have had a profoundly reassuring effect on allies.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s problem with allies was not his slogan \u201cAmerica First.\u201d As I argue in\u00a0Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump<\/a><\/em>, presidents are entrusted with promoting the national interest. The important moral issue is how a president defines the national interest.<\/p>\n Trump chose narrow transactional definitions and, according to his former national security adviser, John Bolton, sometimes confused the national interest with his own personal, political, and financial interests. In contrast, many US presidents since Harry Truman have often taken a broad view of the national interest and did not confuse it with their own. Truman saw that helping others was in America\u2019s national interest, and even forswore putting his name on the Marshall Plan for assistance to post-war reconstruction in Europe.<\/p>\n In contrast, Trump had disdain for alliances and multilateralism, which he readily displayed at meetings of the G7 or NATO. Even when he took useful actions in standing up to abusive Chinese trade practices, he failed to coordinate pressure on China, instead levying tariffs on US allies. Small wonder that many of them wondered if America\u2019s (proper) opposition to the Chinese tech giant Huawei was motivated by commercial rather than security concerns.<\/p>\n And Trump\u2019s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization sowed mistrust about American commitment to dealing with transnational global threats such as global warming and pandemics. Biden\u2019s plan to rejoin both, and his reassurances about NATO, will have an immediate beneficial effect on US soft power.<\/p>\n But Biden will still face a deeper trust problem. Many allies are asking what is happening to American democracy. How can a country that produced as strange a political leader as Trump in 2016 be trusted not to produce another in 2024 or 2028? Is American democracy in decline, making the country untrustworthy?<\/p>\n The declining trust in government and other institutions that fueled Trump\u2019s rise did not start with him. Low trust in government has been a US malady for a half-century. After success in World War II, three-quarters of Americans said they had a\u00a0high degree of trust in government<\/a>. This share fell to roughly one-quarter after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal of the 1960s and 1970s. Fortunately, citizens\u2019 behavior on issues like tax compliance was often much better than their replies to pollsters might suggest.<\/p>\n Perhaps the best demonstration of the underlying strength and resilience of American democratic culture was the 2020 election. Despite the worst pandemic in a century and dire predictions of chaotic voting conditions, a record number of voters turned out, and the thousands of local officials \u2013 Republicans, Democrats, and independents \u2013\u00a0who administered the election regarded the honest execution of their tasks as a civic duty.<\/p>\n In Georgia, which Trump narrowly lost, the Republican secretary of state, responsible for overseeing the election, defied baseless criticism from Trump and other Republicans, declaring, \u201cI live by the motto that numbers don\u2019t lie.\u201d Trump\u2019s lawsuits alleging massive fraud, lacking any evidence to support them, were thrown out in court after court, including by judges Trump had appointed. And Republicans in Michigan and Pennsylvania resisted his efforts to have state legislators overturn the election results. Contrary to the left\u2019s predictions of doom and the right\u2019s predictions of fraud, American democracy proved its strength and deep local roots.<\/p>\n But Americans, including Biden, will still face allies\u2019 concerns about whether they can be trusted not to elect another Trump in 2024 or 2028. They note the polarization of the political parties, Trump\u2019s refusal to accept his defeat, and the refusal of congressional Republican leaders to condemn his behavior or even explicitly recognize Biden\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n