Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.[1]

H-Diplo | ISSF POLICY Roundtable 1-6 (2017): Is Liberal Internationalism Still Alive?

Published on 14 March 2017 | issforum.org

H-Diplo/ISSF Editors: Robert Jervis and Diane Labrosse

H-Diplo/ISSF Web and Production Editor: George Fujii

Contents

Introduction by Robert Jervis, Columbia University

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.[1]

Perhaps it is over-dramatic to invoke Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” but for many scholars, commentators, and citizens it feels appropriate. In 2011 ISSF published a Forum on “Is Liberal Internationalism in Decline?”,[2] building on a 2007 article by Charles Kupchan and Peter Trubowitz, with responses by Stephen Chaudoin, Helen Milner, and Dustin Tingley, Brian Rathbun, and by Joshua Busby and Jonathan Monten.[3] The first authors were pessimistic about the future of liberal internationalism (LI), Chaudoin and his co-authors were more optimistic, and Busby and Monten took a position in the middle.

The debate was never settled, of course, but it is even more relevant today with Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the rise of right-wing populist movements in Europe. This has occasioned us to re-visit the topic, and in addition to the writers for the initial forum we have a contribution by Robert Shapiro, whose work was noted in the original contributions. Spoiler alert–authors continue to disagree, but with more data and arguments that build on what they and others said before.

Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley’s conclusion is summarized in their subtitle: “LI–Down But Not Out.” Domestic and international support for an active American foreign policy that supports democracy, human rights, and a relatively open world economy continues to be strong. Trump’s rhetoric and the vocal views of many of his supporters notwithstanding, dominant American interests still favor LI and the economic and political benefits of it are still seen as very great. Few believers in liberalism and no proponents of realism see American interests as aligned with a drastic withdrawal from the world. Alliances, even if the U.S. continues to pay a disproportionate share (as we would expect from the theory of collective goods), greatly strengthen the U.S., and lower barriers to the flow of goods and capital, although creating losers as well as winners within the U.S., greatly enrich the country as well as supporting political and economic systems in other countries that help align their interests with America’s. Even if some versions of realism would argue that supporting democracy and human rights is irrelevant to the national interest, American values for doing so remain deeply-rooted. Furthermore, international constraints reinforce domestic ones, and allies and trading partners have obvious means by which to retaliate if the U.S. abandons LI. So even if Trump does not change his ideas, he will not be able to implement drastic changes in the face of these forces.

Busby and Monten, on the other hand, see a continued erosion of domestic support for LI. Although elites are more internationalist than the general public, Trump’s election and the strong support for Senator Bernie Sanders shows that although issues of foreign policy are not of great salience to the public, these issues have become more politicized and the strong bipartisan consensus has now eroded.

Brian Rathburn sees two forces pulling in opposite directions. On the one hand, Trump’s own views strongly reject LI, as he sees the world in much more zero-sum terms and his transactional approach bodes ill, for LI. Robert Keohane’s defuse reciprocity is not for him.[4] On the other hand, Trump’s own position is incoherent, having some elements that appeal to much of his base and segments of the Republican party, such as getting “better” trade deals, while other elements, including significant restrictions on imports and the desire to come to a political understanding with Russia, are strongly at odds with these groups. So Trump will find it extraordinarily difficult to build and maintain the sort of domestic coalition that is necessary for sustaining his preferred policies.

Robert Shapiro analyzes the increase in partisan conflict over foreign policy. The mass public has polarized to an unusual degree, although not as much as the party elites. Furthermore, the latter sometimes underestimate the support for LI among their followers. It is hard to separate top-down from bottom-up influences here. To some extent, partisans seem to be adopting views that they think correspond to those of the party leaders, and when one party or the other becomes associated with a policy, public opinion can change accordingly. Thus one reason why both Democrats and Republicans have become less likely to view the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as having been worth the costs is that the former continue to associate them with President George W. Bush and the latter have come to see them as the responsibility of President Barack Obama. LI may not be dead, but if it is to be sustained it will have to survive in a deeply partisan atmosphere.

The diverse contributions show that even if scholars cannot agree, they can draw on data and theories to illuminate issues that are of central concern to not only our understanding of the world, but to pressing issues of contemporary politics and policy.

Participants:

Robert Jervis is Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics at Columbia University. His most recent book is How Statesmen Think (Princeton University Press, 2017). He was President of the American Political Science Association in 2000-2001 and has received career achievement awards from the International Society of Political Psychology, ISA’s Security Studies Section, and APSA’s Foreign Policy Section, and he has received honorary degrees from the University of Venice and Oberlin College. In 2006, he received the National Academy of Science’s tri-annual award for behavioral sciences contributions to avoiding nuclear war.

Joshua Busby is an Associate Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin. He is a Distinguished Scholar at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law and a non-resident fellow with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Dr. Busby has written extensively on the relationship between elite and public opinion in U.S. foreign policy in Perspectives on Politics, Political Science Quarterly, and for outlets such as the Council on Foreign Relations, RealClearWorld, and The Monkey Cage. His first book, Moral Movements and Foreign Policy, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2010. His second book AIDS Drugs for All: Social Movements and Market Transformations with Ethan Kapstein was published by Cambridge University Press in 2013 and won the 2014 Don K. Price Award (the APSA award for the best book on science, technology, and environmental politics). He received his Ph.D. in Political Science in 2004 from Georgetown University.

Stephen Chaudoin is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received a Ph.D. from the Princeton University Department of Politics in 2012 and a BA in Economics from Emory University in 2006. His research focuses on international institutions, international political economy, and formal and quantitative methodology. His most recent research has been published or is forthcoming in the Journal of Politics, International Organization, and the British Journal of Political Science, as well as other outlets.

Helen Milner is B.C. Forbes Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, and Director of the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance. She has written extensively on issues related to international and comparative political economy, the connections between domestic politics and foreign policy, globalization and regionalism, and the relationship between democracy and trade policy. Her book, Sailing the Water’s Edge: The Domestic Politics of American Foreign Policy, with Dustin Tingley, was published in fall by Princeton University Press, and was awarded the APSA Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book published in the field of U.S. national policy.

Jonathan Monten is Lecturer in International Relations and Director of the International Public Policy Program at the School of Public Policy at the University College of London.

Brian Rathbun is a Professor in the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California. He is the author of three books [Partisan Interventions (Cornell University Press, 2004), Trust in International Cooperation (Cambridge University Press, 2011), and Diplomacy’s Value (Cornell University Press, 2014)] as well as articles in leading disciplinary journals. He has recently completed a manuscript on rational thinking (and the lack thereof) in international relations.

Robert Y. Shapiro is the Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government and Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. His research has focused on the interplay of public opinion, policymaking, political leadership and the mass media in the United States.

Dustin Tingley is Professor of Government in the Government Department at Harvard University. He received a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton in 2010 and BA from the University of Rochester in 2001. His research interests include international relations, international political economy, and statistical methodology. His book on American foreign policy, Sailing the Water’s Edge, with Helen V. Milner, was published in Fall 2015 by Princeton University Press, and was awarded the APSA Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book published in the field of U.S. national policy.

Essay by Joshua Busby, University of Texas-Austin, and Jonathan Monten, University College London

“Has Liberal Internationalism Been Trumped?”

1945-November 8, 2016. The election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency may mean that liberal internationalism, already on life support, finally met its maker. The liberal order had a good run.

Nearly a decade ago, drawing on the work of Eugene Wittkopf, we argued that the animating ideas of liberal internationalism included a mix of cooperative tools (such as support for foreign aid and free trade) and coercive instruments (such as defense spending and the willingness to use force).[5] After examining party platforms, key congressional votes, and state of the union addresses, we concluded that these ideas still had rhetorical power, but that increasing partisan polarization led Republicans to increasingly support only coercive tools while Democrats primarily embraced cooperative ones.[6] When comparing changes in the attitudes of the U.S. public and U.S. foreign policy leaders over the period 1982-2004, we found that foreign policy leaders were more internationalist than the mass public on both dimensions of internationalism, although elements of internationalism still resonated with the mass public (such as cooperation with allies) in part because of concerns about burden-sharing.[7] We concluded that although the consensus underpinning liberal internationalism had been eroded by partisan polarization and other forces, its central ideas still attracted support among a majority of U.S. citizens and leaders.[8]

Donald Trump’s election throws a number of those core animating principles and commitments into doubt. His statements doubting the virtues of NATO, his opposition to free trade, and his embrace of Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian Russia all constitute fundamental challenges to the Western liberal order.[9] More broadly, Trump appears to favor a transactional approach to foreign policy, suggesting that he will seek the best ‘deals’ without regard to long-standing U.S. economic and security commitments. The threat Trump poses to the global liberal order is worsened by the fact that the United States is not an isolated case. Confidence in liberal democracy and the wider order is under strain around the world, reflected in the UK’s decision to leave the EU, the drift to authoritarianism in countries like Turkey and the Philippines, and the growing electoral strength of right-wing nationalist parties throughout Europe.[10]

In light of Donald Trump’s victory, what can we say about support for liberal internationalism in the United States?

We argue that the results of the 2016 election underscore the extent to which American support for the liberal order can be understood as an elite pact between the two political parties.[11] Over the past several decades, U.S. elites contained their disagreements so that a few core foreign policy commitments – such as support for NATO and the benefits of a liberal trading order – were never fundamentally questioned. Although there were partisan disagreements in the past, the strength of the dominant narrative of U.S. foreign policy limited the range of acceptable policies elites could defend.[12] Even if the notion of politics stopping at the water’s edge was overwrought,[13] the contours and boundaries of the liberal order were sustained by elites from both political parties. That order endured despite the failure in Vietnam and even held together in frayed fashion after the end of the Cold War diminished the exigency of its origins.

The Trump era threatens to politicize core terrain of the liberal order, namely (1) the relevance of alliances like NATO and with countries like South Korea and Japan, (2) democracy as the most desirable system of governance that supports human freedom and U.S. interests, and (3) the importance of fostering a more open global economy.

Our contribution to this forum is organized as follows. First, we review the survey evidence on support for liberal internationalism among the U.S. public and foreign policy leaders. Second, we explore whether foreign policy mattered in the 2016 election. Third, we outline the risks Trump poses to this consensus, focusing in particular on whether the “elite pact” underpinning liberal internationalism can survive an era of Trump-fueled hyper-partisanship. Finally, we conclude with some ideas for future research.

Liberal Internationalism and Public Opinion: A Review of the Evidence

Since 2011, we have carried out four sets of surveys with U.S. foreign policy leaders. For two of those surveys, we partnered with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in 2014 and 2016 to field similar surveys with the U.S. public and a cross-section of U.S. foreign policy opinion leaders drawn from a range of international-oriented professional sectors. Four key empirical findings emerge from this survey evidence.

First, as recently as 2016, public opinion polls continue to show relatively robust support for elements of liberal internationalism, including a willingness for America to play an active role in the world, support for multilateral institutions like NATO, and support for globalization. In the 2016 Chicago Council survey, 64% of the public favored playing an active role in global affairs, including majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and independents. Super-majorities favored keeping or even increasing the country’s commitment to NATO. Majorities of all partisan attachments even said globalization was mostly good for the United States.[14]

Second, surveys of U.S. foreign policy leaders consistently show that elites are more internationalist than the mass public. In a 2012 survey of approximately 50 Democratic and 50 Republican elites who had served in the executive branch, we found that “First, strong majorities of both Republican and Democratic respondents said they believed that working closely with other nations serves U.S. interests and makes the country’s foreign policy more effective. Second, foreign policy leaders from both parties agreed that international economic institutions and free trade agreements are valuable, and that working with regional and global multilateral organizations such as NATO and the UN is important.” [15]

However, we also found key differences between partisans on their approach to multilateralism. Republicans were more focused on preserving U.S. sovereignty whereas Democrats were more concerned about enlisting others to help solve problems wrought by interdependence (see Figure 1).[16]

Figure 1: Partisan Differences Among Leaders on Multilateralism

Source: The Authors

In 2013, we examined the results of a follow-up survey of nearly 90 Congressional staff. While there were partisan differences on issue like climate change, many of the traditional elements of the liberal order retained bipartisan support: “Somewhat to our surprise, we found a reservoir of bipartisan support for a number of international organizations, alliances, and treaties—such as NATO, the World Bank, the WTO, and the IMF—as well as for the importance of multilateral action on issues such as nonproliferation and international trade.”[17]

In 2014, to accompany a public survey, we carried out a survey of nearly 700 foreign policy leaders from diverse professional groups with the Chicago Council, helping to revive their leader surveys that had been dormant since 2004.[18] Despite the great recession, the survey yielded robust support among the public and elites for globalization and new trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. While the public was less enthusiastic than elites of international engagement, a majority of the public–58%–still wanted to play an active role in the world. NATO also retained the support of elites and publics of both parties. On questions such as support for key U.S. allies like Japan and South Korea, the American public was more lukewarm than elites.[19]

On other issues like the United Nations, the Republican public was actually more supportive than Republican leaders (see Figure 2 below). The same pattern was observed for several multilateral treaties such as small arms, disabilities, the law of the sea, and climate. Gaps were smallest on issues like the United Nations (UN) and climate change, where Republican elites have converged in opposition. This suggests the default position of most Americans is to support most initiatives to solve problems with international partners, barring partisan politicization.

Figure 2: Making Decisions within the UN

Source: The Chicago Council on Global Affairs[20]

A third empirical finding is that although U.S. foreign policy elites are more internationalist than the U.S. public, elites underestimate the level of public support for international engagement, globalization, and immigration. In a 2016 Chicago Council survey, we again repeated the leader surveys alongside a public survey.[21] For a few questions, we asked leaders not only to provide their views, but to assess what they thought public attitudes were as well.

Here, the results were striking.[22] The 2016 leader survey found overwhelming support among leaders for the U.S. to play an active role in the world, a view shared by more than 90% of Democrats, Republicans, and independents. The public survey found that 64% of the public said the United States should play an active role in world affairs, a view shared by a majority across party lines, including 70% of Democrats, 64% of Republicans, and 57% of independents. Interestingly, only half of people who supported Donald Trump in the Republican primary supported this view. However, when we asked leaders their view of public opinion, they substantially underestimated public support (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Leaders’ Perception of Public Opinion – Active Role

Source: The Chicago Council on Global Affairs[23]

We observed similar results for globalization. More than 80% of Democrats, Republicans, and independent leaders all said that globalization was mostly good for the United States. While lower, 65% of the American public shared this view, including 74 percent of Democrats, 59 percent of Republicans, and 61 percent of independents. Only 49% of Trump primary voters held this view.

Again, leaders’ views of the public were wide of the mark. Only 29% of leaders thought the public response would be positive. Republican leaders were the least likely to gauge public opinion accurately (see Figure 4). We find similar results for attitudes on immigration, where the public was more supportive of more open immigration policies than leaders expected.

Figure 4: Leaders’ Perception of Public Opinion–Globalization[24]

One puzzle raised by these results is how to reconcile survey evidence that the U.S. public remains broadly supportive of components of liberal internationalism with an election in which the more nationalist and protectionist candidate won the White House. On some level, an obvious answer is that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, suggesting that these survey results are accurately capturing the views of the American public.

A fourth empirical finding suggests a possible alternative explanation – public opinion polls may overstate the strength of public attitudes on foreign policy, both in terms of issue salience and the stability of the public’s foreign policy views. While the public may express support for liberal internationalism, these surveys provide little information about the salience or importance of foreign policy relative to other issue areas. Outside of crisis moments, foreign policy concerns are not usually the most important issues that voters care or seek information about.[25]

For example, in the 2016 Chicago Council survey, 60% of the public supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership, including 58% of Republicans, 70% of Democrats, and 52% of independents. However, a September 2016 survey from Politico and Harvard found that 70% of the public hadn’t heard or read anything about the TPP, and among the 29% who had, attitudes were mostly negative.[26]

As a result, there may be a number of foreign policy issues where the wider public holds moderate but weak opinions, while a politically active minority holds stronger and more extreme opinions. On so-called ‘intermestic’ issues like trade and immigration, those who care most passionately may hold more extreme views, may be more politically engaged, and may be the most visible. If leaders’ assessment of public opinion was based on the loud, extreme views of a passionate minority, this might help explain why they believed the public was much less enthusiastic about globalization, immigration, and international engagement than surveys actually show.[27]

In addition, because it is a low salience issue where citizens may be weakly informed, public foreign policy views may be unstable, and in particular highly sensitive to partisan cueing or framing effects. As Alexandra Guisinger and Elizabeth Saunders have recently found, whether informational or partisan effects dominate depends on the degree of polarization. Where elites are united on foreign policy goals, publics can be persuaded, but where they are divided on issues like climate change, the public tends to rally around the positions of partisans.[28]

For example, the recent swing in Republican attitudes towards Vladimir Putin demonstrates that public views can potentially shift quickly with changes in partisan framing.[29] The Republican Party was the bedrock of hardcore anti-communism, yet is now increasingly warming to Putin, the former head of the KGB, with more than a 50 point swing in six months according to polls from YouGov/Economist (see Figure 5). At the same time, Democratic views towards Russia hardened.[30]

This dynamic has also occurred on other issues such as climate change and trade. In a 2016 Politico-Harvard poll, 47% of Republicans said that trade agreements had hurt their families compared to 24% of Democrats. That’s a reversal from ten years ago when a Pew poll found Democrats much less supportive of trade agreements than Republicans. In a 2006 Pew poll, 41% of Democrats said trade agreements had hurt their families compared to only 27% of Republicans.[31]

Figure 5: U.S. Public Attitudes of Vladimir Putin

Source: William Jordan, using YouGov/Economist data[32]

One trend that may be magnifying the effect of partisan cueing on public attitudes is the decline in the public’s trust in elites, experts, and institutions.[33] Because many in the public perceive conventional elites of both parties to have failed on both the international and domestic fronts, the public may be more vulnerable to alternative elites, even singular individuals. Arguably, President Barack Obama benefited from this dynamic as a relative unknown who quickly rose, leapt to the U.S. Senate, and toppled a preferred party standard-bearer in then-Senator Hillary Clinton to become the Democratic Party nominee. The same is true of Donald Trump, who won the Electoral College and the Presidency, despite having no government experience.

Did Foreign Policy Matter in the 2016 Election?

In the period preceding the 2016 election, international events – including the terrorist attacks in France, San Bernadino, Orlando, and Belgium, Russia’s actions in Ukraine, and evidence of Russian interference in the U.S. election – served to remind the public of global dangers. Both candidates sought to capitalize on these events for their own benefit. Trump sought to persuade voters he would be a stronger leader on issues such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), while Clinton emphasized her opponent’s inexperience and unsteadiness to be commander in chief. Did foreign policy actually play a decisive role in the 2016 election? Did voters who prioritized foreign policy break decisively for either candidate?

Preliminary polling data on this question is mixed. Foreign and security issues appear to have been a more important concern for voters in 2016 relative to the last two presidential election cycles. According to exit polls reported by CNN, 52% of voters said the economy was the most important issue, 18% chose “terrorism,” and 13% chose foreign policy.[34] By comparison, only 5% cited foreign policy as the most important issue in exit polls in 2012. [35] In 2008, 19% of voters cited the combination of “the war in Iraq” and “terrorism,”[36] and 34% chose the same combination in 2004.[37] Thus, the combined total in 2016 of 33% is comparable to the high water mark of the 2004 election, which was the first presidential election after 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.

However, exit poll data also suggests those who said “terrorism” was their main concern broke for Trump, while those who said “foreign policy” was their top issue voted overwhelmingly for Clinton (see Figure 6). This suggests the impact of this resurgent concern for foreign policy in 2016 was mixed.[38] More sophisticated analysis might be able to tease out whether one candidate was advantaged over another, although, given the Electoral College, the state-level results necessary to carry out this analysis may not be readily available.

Figure 6: Top Issues in the 2016 Election Exit Polls

Source: CNN

Liberal Internationalism in the Trump Era

We think the combination of foreign policy opinion trends described above – low salience, a public that is weakly informed about foreign policy issues, rising partisan polarization, and rising extremist voices around issues such as trade and immigration – does not bode well for the health of liberal internationalism. A number of prominent public opinion scholars argue that the mass public largely responds to cues from leaders, some emphasizing that this should be particularly true for foreign policy issues.[39] While the foundations of liberal internationalism were buttressed by public support, an important mechanism sustaining the liberal internationalist consensus may have been the bounded nature of elite opinion. Partisan disagreements on core issues like NATO and trade were largely contained by elites, even as conflicts like Vietnam and Iraq were extremely divisive.

The speed with which partisan divides on important questions such as Russia and globalization have emerged over the past year suggests that this elite pact may finally be breaking down. As Thomas Wright argues, Trump has distinct views that are at odds with the foundations of the liberal order, most notably on alliances, trade, and the virtues of liberal democracy itself.[40] While he may face pushback from elite members of his own party, partisanship is a powerful force, and the Republican public may continue to rally around Trump’s world view, reinforcing the global resurgence of populist nationalism where zero-sum logics, mercantilism, and zealous regard for sovereignty and spheres of prevail. By politicizing foreign policy terrain that had previously been outside the bounds of partisan competition, Trump risks undercutting the foundation of the liberal internationalist compact in the United States, even if he does not act on his most extreme foreign policy statements.[41]

Concluding Thoughts

The unexpected election of Donald Trump raises a number of research questions about the relationship between the foreign policy attitudes of the U.S. public and U.S. foreign policy elites. One set of questions relates to our understanding of partisan and elite cues. A large portion of the Republican foreign policy establishment was opposed to Trump, who committed a number of Republican foreign policy heresies such as praising Vladimir Putin and criticizing the war in Iraq. And yet, Trump succeeded in shifting the Republican base in his direction. Why are certain types of foreign policy elite cues more effective than others? Are there limits to the effects of elite cues, both informational and partisan? To what extent can large policy failures like Iraq or the 2008 financial crisis create ideational change among the public that is resistant to or independent from elite attitudes?

A second set of questions relates to public opinion and liberal internationalism. We have imperfect measures of public support for liberal internationalism and an inadequate understanding of the extent to which public attitudes are or were important for its durability. If foreign policy is weakly salient, what does this say about the public underpinnings of liberal internationalism?

Recent survey evidence has given us a better picture of the relationship between public and elite foreign policy opinion and the potential malleability of public opinion. That said, we still have much more to learn. In the meantime, the Trump administration looks to provide a massive stress test for the durability of the international order and may yet remake the landscape of public opinion in ways unforeseen.

Essay by Stephen Chaudoin, University of Illinois, Helen V. Milner, Princeton University, Dustin Tingley, Harvard University

Introduction

An ongoing debate among prominent scholars of international relations concerns the future direction of American foreign policy. In particular, scholars, pundits, and commentators wonder whether the United States will continue to pursue a liberal internationalist stance. At its core, liberal internationalism entails international engagement, not isolationism. And despite the ‘liberal’ terminology, it is not a policy skewed towards Democrats and political liberals and away from Republicans and political conservatives. Instead the liberal component of internationalism embodies many bi-partisan principles: support for freedom, democracy, human rights, a free press, as well as an open world economy for the movement of goods, services, people, and ideas. Not surprisingly, an amazing amount of ink has been spilled on what the election of Donald Trump as President means for the trajectory of U.S. foreign policy and a possible break from liberal internationalism.

In this article we argue that the Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Congress will find it in its own interests to maintain many existing elements of U.S. foreign policy—which will continue to have substantial liberal internationalist components. In part, this is because liberal internationalism still advances America’s vital national interests. The many allies the country has help it coordinate its defense and security and, for a price, make America more powerful; they help extend American influence and assist in the fight against global problems like terrorism. The trade and investment agreements the United States has negotiated and its World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments help ensure a fairer and more open world economy in which the American economy can prosper. The international institutions the U.S. created after World War II, such as the United Nations (UN), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, still enable it to influence—though not determine—the structure of all international economic and political relations. Exiting or ending these agreements will not enhance U.S. power or security; renegotiating them may give the U.S. a bit more leverage in the short run, but in the longer run may also destroy any good will the country possesses. Moreover, disengaging from the world will only leave it more susceptible to the influence of other powerful countries that might not have America’s interests at heart, like China or Russia.

Some scholars have argued that liberal internationalism is no longer in the United States’ national interest[42] and that the government should pull back from its foreign commitments, abandoning its allies and treaties, and even pursue a policy of economic nationalism. While these policies may appear cheaper in the short run, it is not clear they will provide more security, prosperity, or peace in the medium to long run. One can imagine a world of spheres of influence where Russia and China dominate much of the world, leaving the U.S. with few friends or markets.

The many problems the Trump administration seeks to remedy are least of all caused by global forces and most of all self-inflicted by domestic politics. The financial crisis had few international sources; inequality is deeply related to tax and fiscal policy in the U.S. and also technological change; the Iraq war was one of choice. Changing America’s international relations is unlikely to fix any of these problems, and most likely to make dealing with our interdependent world even more costly. America’s allies and its multilateral engagements help it project its influence and make the country more secure and prosperous.

The crux of our argument is about two sets of constraints on Trump’s foreign policy actions.

First, domestic politics and the institutions that shape American foreign policy will be powerful constraints on Trump’s ability to depart completely from a liberal internationalist foreign policy. The individuals that have influence over American foreign policy have a wide array of heterogeneous policy preferences, and they inhabit institutional positions that give them powerful tools to resist radical changes. No matter the energy of the President and his policy team, politics in the American democracy, with its many checks and balances, is hard and time consuming, and policy directions that are deeply ingrained are difficult to change.

Second, structural factors of the international system will continue to position the United States as most likely to benefit from liberal internationalist policies. The U.S. occupies a favored position in many international institutions, which already allow it to enjoy favorable policies. Abandoning these institutions will be costly and painful for the United States—for its public, its economy and firms, its military, and its political elites. The loss of a leadership position in world affairs will not be costless, and the loss of legitimacy abroad will have consequences that make achieving American goals harder. Moreover, countries can retaliate if the U.S. adopts extreme policies that hurt them. The importance of international pressures has been evident many times before and after the end of the Cold War.

We note at the outset that we are intentionally optimistic in this article, much more so than many of our colleagues. On those optimistic about American foreign policy in the wake of Trump’s election, Philip Stephens recently quipped that “there are precious few of them around these days.”[43] We simultaneously recognize that Donald Trump, as President of the United States of America, along with the millions of Americans that voted for him, desires change. But as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. So we would urge Executive Branch and all policymakers to recognize the tremendous opportunities available to President Trump (that is, not candidate Trump) and to continue the ongoing process of engagement that continues to make America great.

Our intentional optimism might turn out to be misplaced. Many of our arguments and predictions were penned in late December/early January of 2016-2017. We nevertheless stand by them. We lay out a set of arguments that we hope provide positive reasons for following a path forward that recognizes America’s important role in the world. Our country has a mandate, not just for making America great. But also everyone else.

We recognize this is a tall order. We also recognize that in the coming years bipartisan and nonpartisan forces in Congress, in the courts, in cities, and in dining rooms will be necessary to check, and guide, the awesome power of the President of the United States of America. Democracy is about disagreement, reasoned argumentation, and the upholding of core principles that are not beholden to one set of partisans.

Our analysis unfolds as follows. First we provide a brief overview of the concept of liberal internationalism and then discuss whether or not it declined during the Obama Presidency. Then we point out the domestic and international constraints that make deviating from liberal internationalism more difficult for any American President. We analyze several policy areas, like trade and immigration, to explore whether or not we should expect a retreat from liberal internationalism. We consider this first from a domestic political-economy perspective and then from a more international strategic view.[44] We then consider an issue area that might seem particularly imperilled by the Trump administration: global climate change. A final section concludes.

1) Liberal Internationalism: An Overview

Often lost in prognostications about Trump’s future foreign policy is that Trump’s election is but the latest data point in an ongoing debate among academics and pundits over the past, present, and future of liberal internationalism.[45] This debate seems especially urgent today because Trump’s election has also coincided with watershed events like Brexit, the Matteo Renzi Italy referendum, and the rise of populist movements in a range of Western countries, such as France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Denmark.

As is often required of debates over concepts that have been used over long periods of time, it is helpful to first isolate what we mean by liberal internationalism. First, there is the internationalist component of liberal internationalism. Many scholars seem to agree on what this element of the concept means.[46] Does the U.S. engage abroad or not? Is it willing and does it feel responsible for dealing with the major problems around the world, or should it let others take care of their own problems? Such engagement is the opposite of isolationism and a retreat from global affairs. A key question is: how much of what type of engagement? The U.S. has many policy instruments it can use.[47] And it can employ these singly or in combination to pursue many different types of goals. An internationalist foreign policy is one that actively tries to use those policy instruments to deal with myriad problems outside the country, and even ones that do not directly threaten its core national security. Internationalism in today’s context means similar things to what it meant in President Woodrow Wilson’s time.

The question then is whether the internationalist foreign policy the U.S. has followed since World War II will continue. Will the U.S. maintain its alliances and build coalitions or leave others to fend for themselves and go it alone? Will it maintain its commitments to international institutions or abandon them? Will it support an open world economy or turn to protectionism?

The liberal component has been more contentious to define, but is essential to understanding the direction of policy. President Vladimir Putin and Russia today seem to be following a much more internationalist foreign policy than since the fall of the Soviet Union, but it is not a liberal one. As discussed above, this is not an antonym to conservatism. Instead we take the term to derive from the traditional political theory notion of liberalism, and thus in foreign policy to be about valuing and promoting democracy—especially liberal democracy—as well as human rights broadly construed and an open world economy. A liberal internationalist policy is actively trying to use policy tools to forward these types of goals. We further add that liberal internationalism does not foreclose the use of military force when it comes to protecting and promoting these values.

In light of this, how should we interpret Trump’s expressed foreign policy views? Are Trump’s expressed positions the antithesis of liberal internationalism? A useful starting point is to ask: does his slogan of ‘America First’ mean isolationism? The answer is no. Trump is often talking about renegotiation, not withdrawal. Wanting a ‘better deal’ does not mean abandoning all existing agreements or severing all relations. On many occasions, he and his policy team have emphasized searching for better deals within existing international institutions. For example, he has expressed a desire to take disputes with China to the World Trade Organization.

Similarly, his evaluations of existing foreign policies have focused on transactional cost-benefit analysis. As evidenced by the approach of his transition teams, he has asked ‘what does this foreign policy cost us and what do we get in return?’ While that question often belies a skepticism that the benefits may not justify the costs, the question itself does not imply a departure from liberal internationalism. As much as past politicians might have protested otherwise, liberal internationalism in American foreign policy has never been about benign charity for the world beyond U.S. borders. It has been a calculated policy to protect and advance American interests.

It might be argued that Trump’s view is antithetical to liberal internationalism because he sees the world in purely zero-sum terms and only wants a short-term transactional relationship with other countries that entirely benefits the U.S. In contrast, liberal internationalism, it is argued, implies a positive-sum worldview and a more diffuse, long-term reciprocity norm among countries. John Ikenberry’s work on liberal internationalism might be construed this way.[48] However, as any businessman who has made deals knows, voluntary agreements occur only if both sides gain something. How much each side gains is a matter of negotiating power, but both sides much get enough to accept the agreement. And as we note above, characterizing liberal internationalism as failing to maximize the gains the U.S. gets from any agreement seems naïve. The U.S. built the postwar system to maximize its influence over the long run. Hard but polite bargaining with other countries has been the norm, despite Trump’s unsupported claims to the contrary.

Trump’s commitment to liberal policies is less clear. Promoting democracy and human rights has not to date been a cornerstone of Trump’s foreign policy remarks. He does not appear likely to support the International Criminal Court (ICC), especially if it moves forward with its investigations into torture committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Trump also appears unlikely commit the U.S. to new obligations, such as the long-standing UN Convention on the Law of the Seas or a new climate change treaty

Yet, even during purported periods of the ‘heyday’ of liberal internationalism, the United States regularly violated principles of democracy promotion and human rights in its policies.[49] Even before Trump, the U.S. had failed to ratify international agreements like the UN Law of the Sea Convention, the International Criminal Court, and the Kyoto Protocol. These failures to engage have largely been due to domestic politics and failure of Congress to ratify the agreements.[50] Casting Trump as a major deviation might be a mistake.

2) The Decline of Liberal Internationalism?: The Obama Administration

During the decades of debate over liberal internationalism, there has been a strong temptation to select particular windows of time or events and extrapolate from them broad temporal trends and predictions. This approach discounts the extremely slow-moving nature of ideological changes in American foreign policy. Our entries into previous debates[51] over liberal internationalism were well-timed to demonstrate this phenomenon. In 2010, we wrote about trends in the politics of liberal internationalism, ending in the mid-to-late years of the George W. Bush administration. We revisited this debate in this forum in 2011, with more emphasis on predictions regarding the Obama administration.

In 2011, many predictions were dire. One side of the debate (not ours) argued that deepening political polarization meant that American foreign policy was turning its back on liberal internationalism. For example, Charles Kupchan and Peter Trubowitz argued:

“In contrast, the Obama administration has backed away from this [liberal internationalist] agenda. As we predicted in “Dead Center,” growing income inequality and economic troubles at home have curtailed the appetite for further liberalization of U.S. foreign trade, particularly among Democrats sensitive to trade union support.”[52]

The fear was that Obama was abandoning America’s long standing role in world politics. Ironically now, much angst over Trump’s trade policy surrounds his willingness to roll back the gains of the Obama administration’s later years. President Barack Obama received trade negotiating authority from Congress (admittedly after a drawn-out fight with Republicans), negotiated several major free trade agreements and ratified several Preferential Trade Agreements.[53] To be fair, our own prediction was also wrong, because it was so understated. In early 2011, we wrote that Obama’s ability to “avoid rampant protectionism against the backdrop of the current global economic climate” was evidence that his administration would stay the course on free trade.[54] Clearly, he far surpassed that low hurdle with his concrete actions to deepen free trade, even as the economic recovery remained less than stellar.

In terms of international institutions, Obama forged ahead in some areas and resisted retrenchment in others. For example, the New START treaty with Russia was ratified with bipartisan support, as thirteen Republicans crossed the aisle to vote for it. He decreased the leftover animosity towards the ICC from the Bush administration.

Obama’s record on the use of force to promote liberal internationalist ideals is more difficult to assess. Much like the Trump campaign, his record provides a screen on which pundits can project their own leanings, with Obama having done too much or too little depending on the particular commentator. His drawdowns in Afghanistan and Iraq tended to be too slow for those on the Left, while his increases in troop deployments in response to changing conditions on the ground were too little, too late for those on the Right. His refusal to commit troops to Syria was either prudence or cowardice depending on the commentator. Some might call this an illiberal decision since he refrained from an opportunity to promote democracy in Syria and overthrow a dictator. Others might give him liberal credit for at least not helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad destroy the rebels. In Ukraine, some might fault Obama for failing to prevent the decidedly illiberal annexation of Crimea, while others might credit him for a tough sanctions regime that hurt Russia. In Libya, NATO forces helped speed the overthrow of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, yet then also failed to stay and build peace. (Again, ironically, following a policy trajectory in which the U.S. wins a war over regime change and then loses the peace, as occurred during the G. W. Bush administration.)

In sum, the Obama administration was marked by some distinct victories for liberal internationalism, especially on trade and climate change, but also was checkered in areas like democracy promotion. What is clear, however, is that the historical record of the Obama administration cannot be characterized as an abandonment of the liberal internationalist agenda, driven by partisan rancor. Rather, it was generally favorable towards liberal internationalism, with significant strides forward in certain areas. Yet, it was also decidedly transactional in other areas, making cost-benefit calculations about each decision based on the facts on the ground of a particular issue. Sound familiar?

3) The U.S. Political System Prevents Isolationism, Encourages Liberalism

While the pessimists often point to partisan rancor as a constraint on pursuing liberal internationalism, they also overlook how the diversity of interests and opinions in domestic politics, combined with democratic institutions, are powerful constraints on attempts to roll it back. It is extremely difficult to turn the battleship of American foreign policy; there are many captains, each tugging in different directions on the steering wheel, and each representing constituencies with particularist interests.

We think that the U.S. domestic political system and economy will help to prevent a turn to isolationism. While the Republican Party has unified control of government, this does not mean that pro-isolationist forces will have unlimited freedom to enact favored policies. The Republican Party has long supported free trade, an open world economy and democracy abroad, as emblemized by President Ronald Reagan. Nor does it mean that the incentives of individual legislators—of both parties—will be the same as the President’s. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out in “The Burden of One-Party Government,” “…controlling the White House and Congress is no guarantee of success. As often as not, presidents who have enjoyed one-party rule have found themselves at war with their fellow partisans on Capitol Hill.”[55]

Following the framework in Milner and Tingley’s book Sailing the Water’s Edge: The Domestic Politics of American Foreign Policy,[56] we discuss several “foreign policy tools” and how their use is conditioned by the incentives created by American political institutions.[57]

Trade

International trade, almost without exception, has attracted the ire of presidential candidates on the campaign trail. Often forgotten in prognostications about Trump is that President Obama also called for a renegotiation of NAFTA during his primary battle with Hillary Clinton, who herself expressed displeasure with the agreement.[58] While we have no doubt that Trump will attempt to be more antagonistic towards trade than his predecessor, it is unclear how significant and different his policy will be.

The main reason is that many other parties beyond the Oval Office have influence over trade policy. Congress has always been extremely assertive on trade issues since the Constitution gives it the legislative power over trade. It was not easy for President Bill Clinton to pass NAFTA because of legislators in his own party. And there is ample reason to suspect that many Republican legislators have substantial interests in remaining in an agreement much like NAFTA. As with Central American-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and every other free trade agreement in modern history, it has been the Republican Party driving free trade policy. And while no one would suggest that the Republican Party is the same as it was in 1993 when NAFTA passed, free trade still featured prominently in the 2016 Republican platform.[59] While at times aimed at undermining passage of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), this Party document clearly cements the importance of trade liberalization to the Republican Party.

Vast portions of the U.S. economy depend on free trade.[60] According to one estimate, imports and exports play important roles in more than 41 million American jobs.[61] Trade also has an outsized impact on the economics of many traditionally Republican states. According to the Farm Bureau, “one in three acres of America’s farms is planted for exports.”[62] Thus while the Republican platform states that “Republicans understand that you can succeed in a negotiation only if you are willing to walk away from it,”[63] individual legislators whose constituents depend on the economic gains from trade will not readily support high tariffs, rancorous renegotiations and other policy changes that would have devastating consequences for their states and districts.

Thinking about NAFTA specifically, Republican Senators have much to lose from a trade war with Mexico. Corn is a major export to Mexico and has been mentioned as a likely target for Mexican retaliation.[64] The top five corn producing states in the United States are represented by five Republican Senators.[65] During the spat over trucking duties, Mexico retaliated against U.S. apple exports.[66] Michigan and Pennsylvania, states of clear importance on the electoral map, are two of the top four states in apple production.[67]

Beyond Mexico and NAFTA, Trump’s other favorite target, China, is responsible for trade that is tremendously beneficial for many legislative districts. Even crucial members of his Cabinet have benefited from exports to China. For example, Terry Branstad, (Governor of Iowa) and the proposed Ambassador to China oversaw a deepening of trade relations with China in agricultural products. China is Iowa’s second biggest export destination (behind Canada) with $2.3 billion in exports in 2015.[68] This is a large number for a state with an estimated GDP of approximately $150 billion.[69] Iowa and Indiana are also major soybean producers, a product that has been mentioned as a likely target for Chinese retaliation against trade barriers.[70] Boeing, another target mentioned by China, employs thousands of workers in red states and swing states like Missouri and Pennsylvania.[71]

The political reality of trade policy is already setting in on Trump’s plans for tariffs and renegotiations. One Republican Senator has introduced legislation to limit the President’s ability to implement tariffs.[72] This is particularly noteworthy given the fervor with which Trump vowed to retaliate against politicians who withheld their endorsements during the campaign.[73] Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has already stated that he opposes efforts to raise tariffs.[74] Stock market and business analysts also think Trump’s limitations on trade will ultimately be muted.[75]

In his first week in office, Trump faced the constraints of Republican legislators whose districts stood to lose from antagonistic trade policy. To follow through on his campaign promise to build a wall on the US-Mexico border and make Mexico pay for it, Trump’s spokesperson described an idea that was widely interpreted as a 20% tariff on imports from Mexico.[76] Senators John Cornyn, Lindsey Graham, Benjamin Sasse, and John McCain, and several Republican Representatives quickly and publicly objected to the plan. In less than 24 hours, Trump stopped emphasizing this proposal.

Foreign Aid

Foreign aid was not a key issue in the Presidential campaign, even though it is well positioned to be cut as part of any budgetary retrenchment. To the extent that Trump weighed in on the topic during the campaign, it was in contradictory ways. At times he criticized aid, preferring that funds be spent at home, but at other times he highlighted its importance for strategic and humanitarian purposes. His transition team’s initial questions regarding Africa seem to fall more in line with the former, with some questions explicitly asking whether expenditures on aid in Africa could be better spent at home or whether initiatives like PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) were simply “entitlement programs.”[77]

Foreign aid does not have as strong a political backing behind it, although there are non-trivial numbers of supporters, many of whom are Republican. The major foreign aid initiatives of the last Congress were mostly bills sponsored by Republicans.[78]

Republican support for foreign aid is often founded on the same objectives that characterized the Trump electoral campaign. For example, the last major pieces of foreign aid legislation focused on accountability and mitigation of corruption and misuse. Strong Republican support for foreign aid also stems from its role in helping combat Islamic extremism, which is a goal that is clearly in line with the Trump campaign’s preferences.[79] Foreign aid also finds direct support in the 2016 Republican convention platform, which lauds aid as a tool for advancing U.S. security and business interests.[80] A large amount of foreign assistance is spent on products and services provided by U.S. firms. Some academic research has suggested that major foreign aid donors use aid as a way to slow migration into their countries, an objective that clearly fits with Trump’s goals.[81] The powerful backers of foreign assistance in the Republican Party are often connected to public health campaigns supported by evangelicals, the very same segment of the Republican base that spurred Trump’s choice of Indiana Governor Mike Pence as a running mate.

What is most likely are changes in priorities. Support for programs that deal with climate change, LGBT issues, family planning will probably be challenged. But much foreign aid continues to be money spent by U.S. companies. On the one hand, there is substantial consensus internationally that such “tied aid” can be inefficient.[82] On the other hand, proponents of foreign aid at least gain a domestic interest group. Promises to ‘drain the swamp’ have not exactly been followed by government consultancies and lobbyists shutting down their shops. We think foreign aid will continue roughly in the same size because it supports U.S. national interests, but with different primary aims and targets.

Immigration

Immigration was clearly a major campaign issue. But here too domestic political forces will make it difficult for Trump to deliver major anti-immigration policies.

First and foremost are simple demographic realities. Demographic trends point to rising percentages of Latino voters and a shrinking White population. Before Trump’s victory, Republican strategists and candidates recognized their need to court votes from minorities, and especially Latinos/as, with whom they often shared similar views on social issues. In the primary, several Republican candidates touted their credentials as Spanish-speakers or their ability to empathize with Latino/a voters.

But then Trump won the election despite winning less than a third of Latino/a voters.[83] While some within the Republican Party see this as proof that they need not work so hard to court minorities, others see Trump’s success as one-off, and they do not think Republicans can ever go back to a perceived lack of attention to minority voters. Henry Barbour, a RNC member who co-authored a 2013 RNC strategy guide that explicitly emphasized the need to improve the GOP’s standing with Latino/a’s, described this as still a “fundamental truth,” even after Trump proved that he could win without strong minority support.[84]

Because of demographics, the Republican Party simply cannot afford to cede 70% of the Latino vote to the Democrats with policies and rhetoric that continually antagonize immigrants and recent-generation citizens. The successful strategies of the GOP over the last few electoral cycles—gerrymandering and voter restriction laws—are tools whose effectiveness may wane over time in part due to more organized Democratic responses. At some point, Republicans will have to make a positive case to these citizens to attract their votes.[85] Social issues seem to be sufficient to sway approximately 30% of these voters, but alienating the other 70% cedes millions of votes to the Democrats.[86] Even Newt Gingrich has recognized this reality, urging (unsuccessfully) Trump to include at least one Hispanic person in his Cabinet.[87]

Second, many of the constituencies Trump has emphasized his support for, such as the high- tech industry, desperately need to fill high skill jobs with immigrants. Trump’s campaign initially mentioned H1-B visas with contempt, arguing that they were overused. However, Trump’s inner circle is also comprised of many who advocate for increased H1-B visa use[88] and Trump has also signalled a more positive position.[89] They recognize that the program brings in highly skilled individuals for jobs that many Americans are not qualified for, and that the overall economic effect is net-positive for American jobs.

In our initial writing of this piece, we wrote that “Trump might deliver on his promises to target Muslims, preventing their entry into the United States or even curtail the civil rights of American Muslims.” The former has already been proven correct, as President Trump has signed an Executive order barring entry for non-U.S.-citizens (and eventually green card holders) originating from several Muslim-majority countries. The order also suspended immigration for refugees from those countries for a certain period of time.

This is clearly illiberal. And it is misguided. Terrorism is an issue that has to be dealt with, but not with blanket policies against a community that by and large respects the values and principles of America. It may in the short term be tempting to ban immigrants but in the long run this can create damaging results.

The political reaction to the Executive Order has been mixed, to put it mildly. On one hand, some polls show a slight majority disapproving and others a slight majority approving of the policy.[90] On the other, the policy has triggered massive protests. And while the most common response from Republicans has been silence, many have spoken out against the ban. The influential politically active billionaire Koch brothers have spoken out against the ban. The intensity of the criticism of the ban makes it likely that it will not be renewed when the 120 day time period elapses for most countries. Trump would do well to claim improved scrutiny of immigrants and their vetting procedures and move on.

Other Domestic Political Constraints

Finally, it is important to consider two additional constraints that we have not emphasized: the electorate and the judicial branch. With respect to the ‘voice of the people,’ there are signs that overall support among the public for liberal internationalism has not plummeted. While the media has a tendency to cover communities that appear to have been negatively impacted by trade, on the whole the public still supports trade and immigration. A YouGov 2016 nationally representative survey showed a majority of Americans (and individuals from 19 other countries) supporting trade.[91] Similar majorities showing positive attitudes to other liberal internationalist policies, such as immigration and U.S. engagement, can be found in other surveys.[92]

Our analysis has also largely focused on lawmakers, yet the judicial branch will undoubtedly have a large say in the legality of many of Trump’s policies, just as they were involved in much Obama’s signature policy initiatives, like the Affordable Care Act. Legal challenges to the immigration ban began almost immediately, and immigration is one of the areas that we’ve covered in which the President is thought to have the most legal discretion.

Withdrawal from treaties and agreements is a murkier legal question. The President can clearly withdraw from ongoing negotiations of agreements and treaties that have not yet been signed or ratified, for example the TPP. The President also has broad discretion in withdrawing from mutual defense pacts (for example, Jimmy Carter’s withdrawal from a defense pact with Taiwan). Withdrawal from Congressional-Executive Agreements, of which NAFTA is the best known example, or formally ratified treaties like the U.S. accession to the World Trade Organization are a legal grey area, and the courts have generally preferred that the other branches reach a compromise on these political situations, rather than intervening judicially. Raising tariffs is also possible, but constrained by a dense set of laws that govern the conditions under which the President can raise tariffs and by how much.

So far, the Trump administration seems to be willing to take actions even if their legality is not clearly established by previous precedent. Ultimately, the judicial branch may prove to be an ineffective constraint on President Trump’s ability to change foreign policy, especially in the short to medium run. He will likely win some cases, and even defeats often take years to play out in the courts.

International judicial bodies, like the World Trade Organization’s Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU), are also unlikely to be particularly constraining in practice. WTO disputes take years to resolve, and the ultimate enforcement mechanism is retaliation by other member states. Those states will likely resort to retaliation before waiting for the full DSU process to play out, meaning that the threat of international legal sanction likely does not add additional constraint.

4) The World Prevents Isolationism

In addition to these domestic constraints, American presidents face international pressures that support an ongoing liberal internationalist foreign policy.[93] We think that liberal internationalism remains in the United States’ best national interests. This means that policies that go against it will have great costs, ones that outweigh the benefits, for American security and the national economy. In part this is because the way in which other countries react to American policies or threaten to react to them can create costs and benefits for the U.S. that change its foreign policy calculus. Actions that seem to have net benefits for the U.S. at first, such as decreasing funding for an international organization, may trigger reactions from foreign countries that make the policy very costly for the U.S. in the end. Most of all, American withdrawal from the international system will open the doors to the influence of other countries that do not share American priorities, such as China and Russia.

First, the United States benefits a great deal from the institutions it set up after World War II. These institutions help the U.S. coordinate policies globally and engender willingness to share burdens with other countries. Were it to exit these institutions, other countries might take them over and make them-or replace them with ones- much less beneficial to the U.S. Second, American behavior that creates serious costs for other countries can be met by all sorts of retaliatory behavior. The United States cannot just count on other countries to do nothing if it drastically changes its policies toward them. And these reactions can be very costly. Finally, it is not clear that if the U.S. retreats and leaves foreign problems for others to deal with that it will not be hurt by its failure to engage. For instance, ignoring poverty and war in other countries may seem smart until it leads to the massive migration of people into the U.S. or global epidemics that infect the U.S. as well. A closer example is Mexico; the biggest forces driving immigration from there into the United States are the disparities between the two countries’ economies. Putting America first and making its economy boom at the expense of the Mexican economy—if it is even possible to decouple the two in this age of interdependence—is simply going to create massive pressure for migration into the United States. Climate change may be another example of this, as we discuss later. We elaborate on each of these below.

4.1 Benefits from Institutions

Doubters of a liberal internationalist future for the U.S. might suggest that a Trump administration will end or substantially reduce U.S. participation in forums like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, NATO, the UN, and the World Health Organization. Trump’s constant refrain regarding these institutions is that they no longer promote U.S. interests, are obsolete, and that a better deal awaits. He wants to bargain for a new relationship or to try to bilaterally negotiate a new deal with each partner. It remains to be seen how close this is to the thinking of Prime Minister Theresa May and her Brexit supporters in the UK.[94]

We suspect the Trump administration will eventually realize a very different picture: that many of these institutions were designed with American interests very much at their heart. Lofty rhetoric of past administrations aside, these institutions were shaped and supported by the U.S. predominantly because they furthered American interests, not because of an altruistic worldview. The U.S. negotiated hard in each case and got much of what it wanted, as the most powerful country in the world. Other countries joined in these multilateral deals because they too gained. One feature of media coverage and punditry regarding these international institutions is that they are quick to highlight the times in which foreign nations and their actions in these institutions diverge from American interests. However, these events are generally the exceptions that demonstrate the rule. For example, it is not headline-grabbing or noteworthy to say ‘The International Monetary Fund again makes a decision that is clearly based on U.S. interests.’ Nevertheless, a wealth of scholarly evidence demonstrates how American interests shape the recipients, amount, conditionality, and enforcement of IMF loans.[95] Moreover, if one believes that the U.S. is actually weaker today than in the past, then one should not renegotiate these deals since the United States will only get a worse outcome.

Trump’s Cabinet picks have frequently mentioned the recent United Nations resolution condemning Israeli settlements as an example of the UN run amuck. Yet the resolution’s significance for U.S. foreign policy lies not in the fact that nations abroad condemned Israel, a regular occurrence, but rather that the Obama administration declined to veto the resolution. Defunding or defanging an institution where the U.S. has complete veto power over the most meaningful institutions will not advance U.S. interests. The United States’ Security Council veto ensures that absolutely no policy can get through that body if the U.S. decides that it is not in its interests. There is no way to re-negotiate that deal to make it any sweeter on paper. Abdicating a leadership role in them will simply open up opportunities for other countries to occupy a position of greater power and even rewrite the rules in their favor.

Furthermore, other countries need to agree to any arrangement posed for a new bargain to be struck. The terms of a bargain get more favorable as a party’s bargaining power increases, and it is not clear that the U.S. is in a better negotiation position today compared to the 1950’s when these institutions were created. The Trump administration has focused on its willingness to walk away from institutions as their source of leverage, and few would argue that it has failed to convey this willingness at top volume. But Trump also presides over a country that has seen its soft power, another important component of bargaining leverage, decline because of the Iraq and Afghan wars as well as the United States’ role in the global financial crisis. The Trump administration has focused solely on its stick, ignoring its paucity of carrots. The most effective strategy will be able to use both tactics.

As demonstrated by Brexit, brinksmanship with international counterparts is a high-risk, low-reward strategy. The potential gains are often minimal. The U.S. pays approximately $10 billion annually to the United Nations. Its annual military budget is close to $600 billion, and its annual government spending is almost $4 trillion. Even if Trump cut U.S. contributions in half, with no strings attached, a savings of $5 billion is a drop in a drop of the bucket for the United States. Yet, consider the consequences when other countries call your bluff and you are forced to follow through on withdrawal or defunding. As the UK is learning, your bargaining power evaporates and you are forced to start from square one. The situation with international institutions is even worse for the United States than Brexit is to Britain; there are other countries like China who would happily step in to cover those contributions in exchange for greater influence. The international institutions the U.S. created are part of the global balance of power; they shape that balance in ways that are favorable to the U.S.

A bilateral approach to dealing with the issues covered by these international institutions, with the hopes of gaining better bargaining power, would be ineffective and extremely time consuming. Banding together with other countries that share some common interests with the U.S. enables it to get a lot of what it wants, while sharing some of the burdens of paying for these institutions.[96] This sets up a classic tradeoff that we have studied elsewhere.[97] Going it alone gives you more control over policy, but you lose burden sharing. The Trump administration may try to navigate mechanisms for contributing less while retaining the same power. This may at times be effective, but it will be less effective in contexts like the IMF where power is nominally linked to contributions. The same will go for other institutions like the World Bank, which has long played a role in foreign aid and economic development.

Furthermore, foreign aid is increasingly dispersed by a range of multilateral actors, and new bilateral actors like China. Recent work suggests that this increased competition will only make it harder for the U.S. to use foreign aid to influence the policies of other countries.[98] Thus bilateral approaches to aid that try to achieve U.S. foreign policy goals will become harder, not easier, than multilateral engagement.

A similar set of considerations applies to the role of the U.S. in the world militarily. Continuing the discussion about multilateral institutions, the same burden sharing versus control tradeoff obtains.[99] Take NATO for example. During the campaign Trump actively used rhetoric about NATO ‘ripping’ the U.S. off, claiming that other countries did not pay their fair share. While in a campaign these types of statements might persuade individual citizens who do not know the details of United States’ and other country’s contributions to NATO. But as President, Trump will face the facts at the negotiating table. U.S. direct contributions to NATO are calculated based on gross national income.[100] As such, contributions across all members are now proportionate to their economies and do change over time.[101] Instead of being focused on dramatically renegotiating NATO as an institution, his focus seems to be on others spending more on their own militaries overall.[102] But if countries like Germany, Italy and Canada spend more on their militaries due to this push, the U.S. should expect these countries to demand a greater say in NATO.

It will also be interesting to see how Trump handles playing hardball on this while still maintaining the United States’ role as the world’s top arms exporter: pull back from its alliances and see these American jobs evaporate?[103] U.S. arms sales abroad are measured in the tens of billions of dollars. Changes in foreign purchasing decisions would offset any gains from renegotiation.

4.2 Retaliation

The preceding section presumed that U.S. partners abroad would demand a greater say in return for greater burden sharing. However, a more direct way in which the international system can exert pressure on the United States is via retaliatory measures. These measures need not be explicit nor directed to the same area and often they are not. But they can change the cost-benefit calculus of policies. For instance, in the G.W. Bush administration, the attempt to reduce steel imports in 2002 met with retaliation by the Europeans against key products exported from the United States. The Europeans were particularly savvy. They targeted key congressional districts with their retaliatory measures and they took the case to the WTO. They targeted oranges from Florida, motorcycles from Ohio, and textiles from South Carolina—all states of electoral importance. Once the Bush administration understood the political implications of these measures, it recalculated the benefits of steel tariffs.[104] In 2003 just as the European measures were coming into play after the WTO had ruled against the U.S., the Bush administration gave up on the steel tariffs. Such direct, explicit retaliation is rare in international politics; more often it is tacit and aimed at other areas, and thus harder to pinpoint as the cause of a policy reversal. But retaliation and its threat are potent sources of international constraint on states.

One way to think about retaliation is to put it in the context of the many large, multinational, firms that constitute a sizable part of the U.S. economy. These multinational companies have huge globally distributed production chains.[105] Analysts expect that the Chinese might target retaliation to include major U.S. manufacturing firms like Boeing and Caterpillar, as well as the agricultural exports mentioned above. Apple also seems to be in the crosshairs, perhaps because of Trump’s praise of the company during the campaign.[106] Indeed, in his “summit” with technology leaders Trump pledged he would help these firms.[107] It would hardly be in Apple’s interest, for example, to have its global supply chains disrupted, which would happen if retaliatory tactics were used.

Finally, even if the U.S. did not face retaliation for applying tariffs on imports, efforts to punish importers will punish the big U.S. exporters: “While it might sound like a good idea to punish firms that import and help firms that export, the fact is that most exporters, and certainly the biggest exporters, are importers too. (Likewise, most of the biggest importers are big exporters). Therefore, there is no way to punish importers without hurting the top U.S. exporters.”[108] The most recent economics research on the subject highlights just how interconnected all of these flows are for the largest, most global firms. Their choices of sourcing for inputs as well as their ability to export are interrelated, meaning that disruptions or changes on one margin—say a U.S. tariff on imports of steel, a key intermediate good—have widespread reverberations in sourcing and exporting decisions that may reduce profits and hurt employment.[109]

4.3 Externalities

A failure by the U.S. to engage is likely to have consequences back home. Many global problems have externalities that will affect the U.S. directly. Allowing countries to fail and then become havens for drug production, terrorists, and crime is likely to enable those forces to become stronger and more threatening to the United States. This is the sad story of Afghanistan for the past 30 years. But it is also important in other areas such as global health, where the U.S. wants and needs other countries to prevent epidemics and control them if they start; immigration, which can spike if a country descends into violence (witness Syria) or is plagued by poor development[110]; and financial regulation, where crises can spread globally and undermine the global economy. For example, if the United States makes Mexico’s economic situation worse, and takes away opportunities for jobs there (including ones by foreign firms), then it makes disparities between the countries larger. The temptation to migrate increases. While a retreat into isolationism may appear costless and appealing, it will actually have many costs and few benefits in the interdependent global system.

5) Emerging Areas for Liberal Internationalism: Global Climate Change

When it comes to foreign affairs, the next four years will not just be about trade, foreign aid, immigration, and the role of the U.S. military. Key emerging issues like climate change will come up. While the President and his proposed director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seem to be climate sceptics,[111] there are ample reasons to suspect that this scepticism will be moderated when it comes to policy outputs.

On the domestic political economy side (analogous to the discussion in Section 4), there are several forces at play. Most important is the fact that the development of low-carbon technology is a source of growth and jobs. The fact that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton proposed a detailed path forward on this,[112] rather than President Trump, does not undermine the economic arguments.[113] Does the Trump administration want China to control the market in green technology?[114] Second, local level (state and city) efforts that the Federal government will struggle to overturn[115] are already highly developed.[116] Third, the U.S. military, a non-partisan institution, has repeatedly called climate change a major issue that is not just a projection, but an existing reality.[117] Fourth, deniers that humans are causing climate change are in the minority, a result replicated across numerous public opinion polls.[118] It is not just American scientists, or scientists throughout the world, or publics across the world, it is also the American people who want solutions.

Nevertheless, Trump’s reluctance about acknowledging the connection between human fossil fuel emissions and climate change is perhaps justified by a desire to protect the livelihoods of individuals working in coal and related industries. Here we find an opportunity. In separate work, Tingley is studying support for what he provisionally calls “Climate Adjustment Assistance” (CAA). Analogous to Trade Adjustment Assistance, this program would help workers in these sectors transition away from these industries and retrain. It is not the fault of American citizens working in coal or other carbon intensive industries to be in an industry that contributes to health and other problems, just like it was not the fault of those working in asbestos when it was outlawed. In a recent nationally representative poll, Tingley finds dramatic bipartisan support for this policy.

Bipartisan agreement on climate change is possible. To take another example, efforts to support a carbon tax as long as it offsets income or payroll taxes has long appealed to conservatives and liberals (including former Vice President of the United States Al Gore).[119] We suspect there might be a larger gap between Congress and some of Trump’s Cabinet/his advisers than between Congress, President Trump, and the American people.

The structure of the international system also creates an impetus for U.S. leadership on climate change. Whether or not efforts to reduce climate changes operate through government regulations via the EPA, market mechanisms that capture the negative polluting effects of coal, investment in safe nuclear energy,[120] geoengineering,[121] and/or other bipartisan ways to deal with this complicated issue, U.S. leadership is a must.[122] The quickest way for the United States to get a bad deal on global climate change initiatives is to stay out of them, and let other countries lead and control the future markets for energy technology, which may be a major source of jobs and profits.

Conclusion

The title of our article is “Maybe Down but Not Out” instead of “Business As Usual” because there are undeniably threats to liberal internationalism. Some Americans feel that liberal internationalism has caused their problems, or at least contributed in a major way to them. And Trump has responded to this sentiment by arguing for ‘America First.’ The effects of liberal internationalist policies create domestic winners and losers, even if they benefit the U.S. overall.[123] For instance, in addition to creating jobs and raising wages for some, freer trade has meant that some people lose their jobs; for others it has contributed to stagnant wages. Trade, like all other policies, creates winners and losers. But trade and international engagement are only partially responsible for the troubles Americans feel they face. Recent estimates, for example, suggest that technological change and automation have played a much larger role in determining these outcomes.[124] Moreover, inequality has grown worse in the United States than in other rich countries because of domestic policies related to taxes and spending. Solutions to America’s problems will not come from abandoning liberal internationalism but from making domestic policy changes.

Inequality, and the dissatisfaction in Western democracies (not to mention other countries) it has generated, has resulted from many sources—technological change, tax policy, deregulation, economic crisis, the decline of unions, outsourcing, austerity, immigration, etc. Unfortunately policies to help those who did not gain and those who lost from globalization and technological change have been largely stymied. Republicans have prevented any such measures for many years by opposing programs like Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA). For example, they incorporated their opposition to TAA into their stances on Trade Promotion Authority and the U.S.-South Korean free trade agreement.[125] Such programs have been the cornerstone of what scholars called “embedded liberalism.”[126] And the numerous loopholes in the tax system that favor the wealthy made the tax system less progressive. So the rich got richer.[127]

Trump’s appeal was clearly driven by these frustrations, regardless of where the blame lay for them. But if Trump is serious about helping his fellow citizens working blue collar jobs, he will need to be serious about more than cutting one-off deals with particular firms, and instead develop policies to help U.S. workers be more competitive against foreign workers and automation and to ready them for new jobs that are coming. The trick will be to make sure that these new policies, be they re-negotiations of trade deals or other strategies, do not lead to others losing their livelihoods or cause spikes in prices for consumers purchasing U.S. manufactured goods (as happened in the “Carrier deal” where a US manufacturing company was compelled to keep some U.S. jobs from moving overseas).[128]

Retooling and retraining for the global economy of the next 20 years, or even 4, will not be easy (no matter the negotiating prowess of the President), especially for individuals closer to retirement. Fortunately, though, the years of experience these older workers often bring to firms are an asset in their own right.[129] But for both them and younger workers, the changing industrial basis of the United States is not to be taken lightly. A key guideline for policy should be to protect workers, not the industry they work in. The government should improve its assistance programs for workers who lose their medical benefits and pensions when firms fail or depart, it should find ways to make such programs portable so that mobility is less costly, and it should look at novel and more generous ways of helping workers train for and find new jobs, as some European countries do well. Negative income taxes or universal basic incomes might also be explored to see if they can help.

Yes, the United States’ role in the world does change and fluctuate. But our argument is that there are structural global as well as domestic institutional forces that tether the U.S. to the rest of the world.[130] American policy may oscillate, but it seems unlikely that the American government is going to abandon liberal internationalism writ large. Some scholars like Kupchan and Trubowitz argue that large events like the Vietnam War and the end of the Cold War would undermine the political consensus that supported liberal internationalism. They predicted “wide oscillations in policy as power changes hands between Republicans and Democrats.”[131] Those two events were as important as they come. Yet, they did not cause a U.S. withdrawal or rampant vacillation.

Liberal internationalism is still in the American national interest and because of this both domestic and international pressures will moderate any of Trump’s preferences for drastic measures to change U.S. foreign policy.[132] We have tried to outline those constraints above. What is interesting from a scholarly perspective is that this administration will also provide us with evidence for the strength of such institutional and external pressures. We could be wrong of course. Trump and his team’s preferences for isolationism and economic nationalism may be so strong and persistent that their aggressive and undiplomatic rhetoric alone poisons U.S. relations with allies, rivals, and enemies alike. Or it may be that domestic institutions with their checks and balances are undermined by other actions and policies, leaving the United States less liberal and presidential power more unchecked.

If Trump takes U.S. foreign policy on a dramatic new course, then we will need to reassess our theories about foreign policy and international relations. It may be the case that leaders and their preferences are far more important than many of our theories allow. Or it may be that we need much better theory to assess what is in the national interest and how we can discern it. We may also need a more refined model of the political economy of foreign policy, in which the losers from globalization have a far more outsized impact on policymaking than many of our theories expect. In any case, Trump’s foreign policy will provide an interesting challenge for the study of international relations.

What we do expect to see, however, is an administration that makes some incremental changes in the directions it promised, with a very large amount of credit claiming. We have already seen this with the Carrier deal. According to the President-elect’s rhetoric, he demanded and received a better deal from a traitorous U.S. firm seeking to move jobs abroad and convinced the firm to invest in its factories. Others say the job gains were minimal and that the company plans on using its investment to increase automation in its factories, which decreases jobs. What is clear, however, is that small-bore, one-off deals with particular companies will not have an outsized impact on jobs or trade in either direction. These single actions are not a policy.

There is similar low-hanging fruit in other areas that would allow Trump to claim credit, without radically altering the status quo. For example, a modest increase in funding for border patrol could be sold as an achievement to curb illegal immigration, setting aside that the U.S. Mexican border is already heavily patrolled and that Trump’s estimates of the quantity of illegal immigrants are orders of magnitude beyond the actual numbers.[133]

It will take something even more huge than the populist tide that swept Trump to the White House to dismantle the many positive aspects of U.S. liberal international engagement. And for now, we pray that our incoming President realizes that making America first does not mean making everyone else last. Good deals for the United States are good deals for others as well; if not, they will not sign or enforce them. And we hope that leaders throughout the country, from teachers to corporate decision-makers to Congress to Generals, realize how much they matter: yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Essay by Brian Rathbun, University of Southern California

Does the election of President Donald Trump herald the end of the multilateral order created by the United States in the wake of its victory in WWII? How is his new populist foreign policy different from that which would have been pursued by other Republicans had they won the election?

The question puts me in a somewhat curious spot. On the one hand, I have spent my career noting the importance of political agency, which I have found necessary so as to combat what I see to be the overwhelmingly and overstated structural character of most international relations scholarship. On this very question of the bipartisan, multilateralist foreign policy of the post-WWII era, I have made the case that bipartisanship was from the very beginning something of a myth, one held together by the common threat of the Soviet Union, and which quickly dissipated after the Cold War ended. We did not have to wait for Trump to hear disparaging things about the United Nations and multilateralism. The bipartisan support for the United Nations and NATO, for instance, was a bargain between Republicans and Democrats, the latter making sure for the former that neither institution could really constrain American foreign policy in any meaningful way.[134]Article V, now treated as a sacrosanct and fixed commitment to respond to any act of aggression against NATO partners, is at least on paper nothing of the sort. It has a loophole big enough to drive a Soviet tank through, asking only that member states do what they individually deem necessary to restore the security of the North Atlantic area. And the same treaty contains Article III, requiring self-help and mutual aid, at the request of Republican Arthur Vandenberg, who served as Senate chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. This was to assert the very same concern about free-riding that Trump and his team now make, but was one of the most familiar lines of attack against the treaty in 1948 and 1949. Constructivist scholars have argued that, legal niceties aside, a community of values was developing or has developed, one that is deeply rooted in social structures. We all have a common liberal identity.

And now, a few weeks into Trump’s presidency, in my conversations with other scholars, I hear concerns that those very foundations are supposedly crumbling with just a few small pushes from a new president. Surely if structural constraints are real at all, they should be able to stand a bit more than a few tweets about NATO’s obsolescence. I think that the structural foundations of bipartisan multilateralism were shallower than most others do, but it seems these concerns are overstated. However, I think so not for structural reasons, such as the deep and abiding trust among the democratic powers, but for political and psychological ones. I do not see how Trump can put together a foreign-policy coalition that can sustain his populist foreign policy given the intense antagonism of Democrats to his agenda and the fragmentation of the right on foreign policy issues as well. His positions do not offer any possibilities for ‘Baptist-bootlegger’ coalitions of the kind that the creators of the postwar multilateral order, the Democrat administrations of Roosevelt and Truman, used to cement their plans. And Trump’s psychological make-up will make it impossible for him to secure any real lasting benefits in the foreign policy arena. We will see, as we did after the George W. Bush years (remember those?) a regression to the mean.

What is Trump’s foreign policy? Putting America first is not a new slogan and not one that many (particularly on the right, most also on the left) would argue against in private. There have been some online kerfuffles about whether Trump is simply a realist laying bare his dog-eat-dog view of the world.[135] He is not, partially because, as I will explain, a realist would never say something so transparently counterproductive for one’s own egoistic interests. Trump is first and foremost a walking foreign policy “Id” capable only of thinking only of satisfying his and American wants and desires and lacking the cognitive capacity to realize that one can only succeed in such a task if one knows how to use others. He lacks not only empathy, but also instrumental empathy, the ability to pretend that one is concerned about more than oneself or one’s own country’s interests in order to secure egoistically beneficial outcomes. This awareness of others’ interests is at the heart of Realpolitik and its absence is what drives realists most crazy. It is one thing to pursue a Mexican contribution to and cooperation on border security; it is another to publicly claim that another country is going to pay for something they do not like.

Trump has a terrifically overstated view about how even a military hegemon like the United States can force its own agenda through, evident in his frequent tirades against the “horrible,” “disgraceful,” “terrible,” “disastrous” deals that the United States has concluded on trade (TPP, NAFTA, etc.) or security (Iran). He insists that he could have gotten better deals.

He could not. It is impossible to know whether there were bargaining gains left on the table, for instance in the Iran deal. However, I am comfortable saying that Trump would not have found them and will not do so in any meaningful way if he attempts to revisit them. In research I have done with Joshua Kertzer at Harvard University with undergraduates, we had students who were playing an incentivized laboratory game identify their social value orientation, crudely whether they were egoists interested only in their own gains or prosocials who had regard for others.[136] However, egoists were further distinguished, through self-reported measures, between those with lower and higher levels of epistemic motivation, essentially an enjoyment of and commitment to thinking through problems. We can call this rational thinking. Egoists who lacked epistemic motivation bargained more or less the same way regardless of whether they were more or less powerful in the game itself: they demanded more. Egoists with epistemic motivation–I would call them realists–adjusted their behavior to suit the structural circumstances. When they were weak, they made better offers. When they were stronger, they turned the screws a bit. And they did better overall in terms of monetary payouts in the end. Egoists with low epistemic motivation did worse than prosocials committed to more egalitarian outcomes because the 