This insightful article by Peter Berkowitz is called “Trump-Reagan Fusion Can Win the New Cold War.” At first blush, the idea of a Trump-Reagan fusion sounds strange. Reagan and Trump stood/stand for too many divergent policies and approaches.
It’s difficult, for example, to imagine Reagan balking at providing military assistance to an ally under attack by the natural and almost equally evil successor to the Soviet Union. Or to praise dictators who run hostile nations. Or to excuse their murderous behavior by saying, in effect, that America kills people, too.
However, Peter ably defends his thesis by presenting the views set forth in “We Win, They Lose: Republican Foreign Policy and the New Cold War,” a new book by Matthew Kroenig and Dan Negrea. Both served in the Trump administration — Kroenig in the Defense Department, Negrea in the State Department (where Peter was director of policy and planning).
Here is how Peter describes the Trump-Reagan fusion that Kroenig and Negrea posit:
The fusion, according to the authors, comprises three chief elements.
First, the Trump-Reagan fusion seeks peace through strength. In the absence of world government – agreed upon international authorities with the power to make and enforce laws and adjudicate the controversies that arise under them – the United States must maintain the world’s most powerful and adroit military and make clear its readiness to use it to secure the nation’s vital interests. . . .
Broadly speaking, Reagan and Trump stood/stand for peace through strength, and there’s no denying that Trump favors maintaining the world’s most powerful and adroit military.
But a powerful military isn’t enough to bring peace. A president must be willing to project our military strength and avoid military defeat. On that score, Trump’s record is mixed, in my view. He projected strength against ISIS and, to a limited degree, against Iran. He didn’t project it in Afghanistan and balks at projecting it in Ukraine.
Second, the Trump-Reagan fusion upholds free and fair trade. Reagan championed free-market and free-trade policies that sparked an economic turnaround in the 1980s and set the stage for dramatic innovation, entrepreneurship, and growth in the 1990s. But the freedom in free trade must be reciprocal, Reagan explained: “If trade is not fair for all, then trade is free in name only.” Trump applied this principle. . . “countering countries like the PRC that systematically violate the rules of international trade.”
Reagan and Trump both favor free and fair trade, again broadly speaking. And Trump did apply this principle to China.
But would Reagan have favored nickel and diming our allies on trade as if they were participants in a real estate deal? Would he have scuttled a trade agreement — the TPP — that was designed, in part, to tighten our alliances in the Pacific region and to contain China? I don’t know, but the questions seem fair.
Third, the Trump-Reagan fusion takes pride in American exceptionalism. The United States is the world’s only rights-protecting and democratic superpower. Its constitutional system furnishes “an unending source of economic, diplomatic, and military strength that helps the United States excel in geopolitics.” Since the construction of the U.S.-led international order following World War II, the authors observe, democracy has proliferated, poverty has fallen dramatically, and the world has become, by any objective measure, “much safer, richer, and freer.”
Here, I think the Reagan-Trump fusion breaks down, at least so long as Trump is calling the shots. As noted, Trump seems skeptical of American exceptionalism in some contexts, anyway. And while I don’t consider Trump an “existential threat” to “our democracy,” his commitment to our constitutional system seems less than robust. It’s too conditional on whether the system serves Trump’s interests at any given time.
Perhaps most significantly, Trump doesn’t appear to be a fan of the U.S.-led international order. In my view, a commitment to that order entails a firmer commitment to preventing Russia from conquering Ukraine.
Listening to Trump allies like Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson, and at times to Trump himself, I get the impression that the MAGA movement has a low regard for the U.S.-led international order, regarding it as something of a scam in which America plays the sucker. And the view (correct, in my opinion) that the post- World War II international order produced excellent results for America and the world is contested in MAGA-world, where the contrary view that it has yielded an “American carnage” seems to hold sway.
Expanding on the vision of a Reagan-Trump fusion, Peter continues:
The authors also highlight three transnational issues central to American strategy. First, “America needs to strengthen traditional ties to allies and partners (NATO, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and so forth), attract new ones (Vietnam, for example), recommit to previous international institutions that work, create new ones, and tear up or adapt those that have outlived their usefulness.” Second, mindful that China is by far the world’s leading polluter and skeptical of toothless climate treaties and clumsy government interventions, the United States should rely on free markets and technological breakthroughs to effect the long-term transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Third, security and immigration policy should “focus on strengthening border security while expanding pathways for legal immigration for high-skilled workers who can help the United States in its struggle with China.”
The second and third items seem like highly plausible candidates for a Reagan-Trump fusion. However, strengthening traditional allies is another matter.
It’s true that the increased financial commitment to NATO by European members Trump has demanded would strengthen NATO and has, I think, started to do so. On the other side of the ledger, there’s Trump’s generally bellicose behavior towards our NATO partners, which contrasts with his relative warmth towards Putin.
However one thinks these two factors balance out, Trump’s unwillingness to stand firmly in favor of aiding Ukraine and, indeed, his opposition to the recent aid package, constitute an insurmountable barrier to strengthening ties with European allies in a Trump administration Only if, as president, Trump reverses course, stops suggesting a moral equivalence between Ukraine and Russia, and displays seriousness about the effort to thwart Russia will a strengthening be possible.
My view, then, is that (1) the foreign policy prescriptions Peter labels a Reagan-Trump fusion are all desirable and very well could “win the new Cold War”; (2) it’s plausible to label the package a Reagan-Trump fusion in the sense that there are elements of Reagan and Trump throughout and some elements common to both presidents; but (3) the fusion is very unlikely to come to fruition as long as Trump sets that the Republican/conservative foreign policy agenda.
Trump is afflicted with (and to a disquieting extent a sponsor of) the isolationism of an influential part of the Republican Party, which stinks but overall is preferable to the pro-Hamas views of an influential part of the Democratic Party. But the main thing that makes the Republicans better is at least they view the USA as a force for good in the world that's worth defending, while the Democrats (who gave away Iran and tried to give away Egypt) have grave doubts about whether the country actually is a force for good, and therefore are conflicted at best about whether it's worth defending, still less worth defending with the boldness and courage that will be needed against the ruthlessness of our enemies.
I dont think there is any question that as a general rule the Republicans have to be considered preferable to the cowards and lunatics that make up the political and diplomatic class of the Democratic Party. I think Paul underestimates the degree to which Trump is quite simply incoherent. There is no way to predict what a second Trump administration will do but there are a couple of things we can be sure of.
1. A second Trump team will not be populated by Reagan Republicans (like Nickey Haley for example) who understand the world, the American role in it and the need to stand squarely with allies against the nefarious actors in the world. It will be populated by Trumpsters who are in all likelihood more Trumpish than Trump.
2. The inevitable "resistance" of the Democrats and the establishment, bad enough on its own will almost certainly consume Trump. His entire attention is likely to be on his need to get back at those who wronged and in his eyes continue to wrong him.
Trump may end up implementing some good policies. But they will be by chance not design. And sure the alternative is simply horrific. We are in some kind of pickle in this country and in the world and I hope we come out of it as we have before but without a massive disaster first. I'm not optimistic right now. It feels like Weimar times with the choices that swell period gave for Germany.