Tools for Victory.

• Author: Grygiel, Jakub
• Position: United States foreign policy

To maintain the existing international order under pressure from China, Russia and Iran, the United States has three basic diplomatic options: to bring some (or all) rivals into the fold of "responsible" nations, to rearrange the international diplomatic configuration by developing new allies in order to counterbalance the revisionists or to strengthen the existing alliances making them more effective for the new security conditions. These three options are not mutually exclusive, of course, because solidifying NATO or the alliance with Japan does not preclude the possibility of developing a new ally such as India.

But at this point they do not have the same likelihood of success. The Trump administration's foreign policy can be understood as driven by the recognition that choices are limited, and the last one--reforming the existing alliances--is the best bet. This recognition arises from a process of elimination of the other options: rivals are not interested in participating harmoniously in international politics and there are few new allies that the United States can develop.

Take the first option: to bring rivals such as China or Russia into the "global community." This option was born out of a particularly giddy sentiment of the past decades. The acceleration of global trade, combined with the ideological victory over Communism, had spurred (or perhaps merely renewed) hopes that a new international reality was taking shape. The world, the belief went (and continues to survive under the cover of different catchphrases), may have transcended the old-fashioned realities of power and conflict. States, allies and rivals alike would become global partners tackling all softs of global challenges, as President Barack Obama put it in his 2009 inaugural address, from nuclear proliferation to the "specter of a warming planet." In this view, particular threats coming from specific actors mutated into broad "challenges" that required the "cooperative effort of the whole world." Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton echoed this ideology of global cooperation in a 2009 speech when she said that the role of U.S. foreign policy was to "build partnerships and solve problems that no nation can solve on its own" and to move "away from a multi-polar world and toward a multi-partner world."

Hence, the United States engaged China in the expectation that, by being exposed to the benefits of free trade, this country would appreciate the existing international order and even, at some point, abandon its authoritarian ways. Even more, the United States should welcome China as an "emerging player and partner," gently steering it toward a responsible behavior respectful of international norms.

Similarly, the Obama administration pursued, hope against hope, a "reset" policy with Russia. The underlying logic was similar: tensions were rooted in misunderstandings and old habits rather than in a fundamental difference of interests and principles. Consequently, the best approach was to assuage the purported Russian fears by accommodating Moscow. As a result, among other actions, Obama canceled plans to build components of a NATO missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. A more "conciliatory American approach," as Colin Dueck put it in...