The Democrats' Foreign Policy in the Shadow of Trump

My policy paper on the foreign policy of the U.S. Democratic Party after Barack Obama's presidency and Hillary Clinton's failed presidential candidacy was published this week by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. I've been working on this for a few months, with the idea to explain where the party might be going on foreign policy to U.S. allies in Europe and beyond as well Americans inside and outside the Beltway. I focused on the rhetoric and legislative initiatives of a few key players in the party, include Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, and others. The paper is more descriptive than prescriptive, but I call for a more broader and serious debate on policy towards Russia, and on foreign policy generally ahead of the 2020 election.

Per my executive summary:

Despite the broad success of Barack Obama’s presidency, America’s Democratic Party finds itself debating the political path back to power amid the chaos of the Donald Trump administration, which has jumbled expectations for what a Republican foreign policy looks like. This paper examines where the Democrats might be headed on foreign policy — in opposition, for the coming 2020 presidential campaign, and for their eventual return to the White House in 2021 or later — focusing on the arguments of Congressional Democrats who might have a future in national politics. 

Foreign policy did not play a major role in the 2016 primary campaign between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, and the de facto Democratic foreign policy may be a continuation of Obama’s championing of the liberal international order mixed with pragmatic strategic restraint. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy has articulated this “progressive foreign policy” direction most vocally. This Obamanian path competes with a somewhat more interventionist liberal hawk camp, including Clinton and her running mate Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, and a more critical left, which claimed victory over the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement during the primary and which includes Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, a sharp critic of regime-change military interventions. 

With Democrats more committed to multilateralism and diplomacy, particularly compared with Trump, America’s liberal democratic allies and partners will welcome the return of the party to the White House, but the post-Trump clean-up job will be Herculean and will require the rebuilding of Washington’s diplomatic apparatus itself. Congress is also playing an important role on foreign policy in the Trump era and Democrats must work with their colleagues across the aisle to mitigate Trump’s damage. Democrats should sharpen their foreign policy skills and debates in search of solutions to prevent catastrophic wars and ameliorate international problems. This includes finding a proactive and sensible policy toward Russia, despite the politicization of all things Russian in the aftermath of the 2016 election.

A paper on the Republicans is forthcoming from GMF colleagues. I also wrote a related blog piece on Bernie Sanders' foreign policy speech in September for GMF's Out of Order blog on Medium. 

Penn Kemble Forum and Democrats' Foreign Policy

Hello all, here's an overdue update. 

I was recently accepted as a 2017-2018 Penn Kemble fellow with the National Endowment for Democracy, and as such will participate in monthly dinners and online conversations about democracy, human rights, and policy with foreign policy experts, government officials, and democracy practitioners. The full group of fellows has just been named and I'm very much looking forward to these conversations and some related writing.

On a related note, most of my work as a resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States this summer has been focused on a paper on where the Democrats are headed on foreign policy, which should be out in a month or so. (I also did a few interviews on the occasion of Trump's second European trip - here on Al Jazeera - parts one and two). Zach Beauchamp at Vox has a good piece out this morning on the Democrats' lack of foreign policy ideas and structural reasons for it. I argue Barack Obama managed U.S. foreign policy pretty well, but the Democrats need a more vibrant debate going forward, accounting for both smarter policy and the realities of public opinion, to do what they can as a congressional minority and prepare for retaking the White House and repairing a damaged U.S. leadership role in the world, and I analyze what's already there in the Democratic debate. More soon.

Suspicious Minds: U.S.-German Relations in the Trump Era

Earlier this week, the Transatlantic Academy published its latest annual collaborative report, Suspicious Minds: U.S.-German Relations in the Trump Era. I edited the report as the Academy's program officer, and am one of 11 co-authors, along with executive director Stephen F. Szabo and our fellows Frédéric Bozo (Sorbonne Nouvelle), Stefan Fröhlich (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg), Wade Jacoby (Brigham Young University), Harold James (Princeton University), Michael Kimmage (Catholic University of America), Hans Kundnani (German Marshall Fund of the United States), Yascha Mounk (Harvard University), Mary Elise Sarotte (University of Southern California), and Heidi Tworek (University of British Columbia). 

The Academy works on a different topic related to transatlantic relations every year. The future of relations between the United States and Germany was a good fit for the final year of an institution which had been a German-American partnership. Despite the close cooperation between the Obama administration and German government under Angela Merkel, especially close after the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis in 2014, we saw some long-standing and developing tensions in the relationship - revelations of National Security Agency surveillance badly damaged German trust in the United States including on the elite level, German distrust of U.S. corporate power has made the chances of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership highly questionable and is heightened in relation to digital giants like Google and Facebook in our digital age, Washington has complained about Germany's low defense spending, its unsustainable  policies towards to eurozone, and its huge trade surplus, Berlin joined the BRICS in abstaining on the Libya intervention resolution at the Security Council, and the sharp divide over Iraq - where Germany was far wiser - was not so long ago. 

Into this already more-fragile-than-it-seems situation comes the global catastrophe of Donald Trump as U.S. president. As we write, Trump "challenges four key assumptions on which German foreign policy has been based since the creation of the Federal Republic in 1949: the assumption that the United States’ posture toward Western Europe is predictable; the assumption that the United States sees Western Europe’s security as vital to its own strategic interests and would therefore come to Germany’s defense if needed; the assumption that the United States will defend and extend the liberal international trade and financial order; and the assumption that the German–American alliance is underwritten by such key political values as democracy, the rule of law, and human rights." Trump leaves U.S. allies (and especially security-exposed trade-dependent status-quo ones like Germany) with a nasty dilemma - "If they assume the best and embrace the status quo, they risk being caught unprepared. But if they assume the worst, act suspiciously, and formulate a radically new foreign policy strategy, they could hasten the demise of an alliance that has protected them for many decades. So far, Germany is taking a pragmatic wait-and-educate approach, trying to inform and advise a president unschooled in transatlantic issues and history and hoping that the lessons take."

Our recommendations for the Trump administration essentially boil down to continue to cooperate with the Europeans, don't change U.S. foreign policy too much, and don't try to destroy the European Union. The federal bureaucracy, state and local governments, and the private sector should try to maintain the benefits of transatlantic cooperation amidst the chaos at the top. Meanwhile, Germany does need to do more to provide for its own security, in its own interest, and we have some good suggestions on creative ways to do so including DARPA-style defense research that could yield long-term economic gains and hiring top-notch cybersecurity people away from the private sector with good salaries (for more detail on these ideas, see Heidi Tworek in War On the Rocks). It also needs to strengthen Europe by rebalancing the European economy, and play the long game and not give up on the United States. This Trump shall pass.

Give the report a read if you get a chance - I'm proud of it. The Transatlantic Academy is closing shop at the end of May, but we'll have a few more policy papers come out later this month, potentially in to June, and a few more events.