Towards a More Prudent American Grand Strategy

Bottom Line: The Trump administration has disrupted the foreign policy status quo. American leaders should take advantage of this moment to enact a foreign policy of restraint.

Since the Cold War, conventional wisdom has held U.S. power to indispensible.

Foreign policy experts have long asserted that global trade depends on U.S. military presence, that our allies around the world rely on U.S. power to deter threats from China, Russia, and other powers, and that U.S. military intervention is the solution to many problems. But neither trade nor international peace rely on U.S. power, and intervention is frequently impractical and rarely popular.

President Trump has thrown the foreign policy establishment into a tizzy.

“The expert community is engaged, for the first time in a long time, in a healthy conversation about the future of U.S. grand strategy.” Many Democrats and Republicans have begun pushing for a more isolationist stance in response to the unilateralism of the President’s “America First” attitude. Conversely, many others have adopted a hawkish demeanor in response to the President’s perceived isolationism. But the United States should look beyond these positions to a third alternative.

America and the world would benefit from a more restrained foreign policy.

U.S. leaders should adopt “a foreign policy of restraint” that sets and is guided by “modest, achievable objectives." This foreign policy should privilege diplomacy and trade over intervention, and seek to apply the liberal norms the U.S. follows at home in foreign affairs. Such a foreign policy would keep the U.S. out of costly, unpopular entanglements abroad, and help rebalance the international arena to be more collaborative and rely less on a single power.

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