Civilisationalism’s train may well have left the station. That may
also be true for a fundamental re-definition of US foreign policy.
To what degree, civilisationalism continues its march and how US
foreign policy will be re-defined is likely to be determined by who wins this
year’s US presidential election.
With Donald J. Trump the undisputed Republican candidate and Bernie
Sanders the Democratic frontrunner, the fight for the highest office in the
land could be one between two very different but no less radical visions of
America’s role in the world.
For civilizationalist illiberals, authoritarians and autocrats in the
Middle East and North Africa and beyond, the stakes could not be higher.
InThe Economist’s words, a race
between Messrs. Trump and Sanders would be between, “a corrupt, divisive
right-wing populist” with an empathy for autocrats, like his favourite,
Egyptian general-turned-president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and “a
sanctimonious left-wing populist, ” who, despite emphasizing human
rights, democracy, diplomacy and re-committing the United States to the
trans-Atlantic alliance, “has a dangerous tendency to put ends before means”
and “displays the intolerance of a Righteous Man.”
The obvious differences notwithstanding, Messrs. Trump and
Sanders share scepticism about America wielding power overseas and a reluctance
to use military force.
On the surface of it, Mr. Sanders
would likely agree thatMr. Trump
wasn’t wrong when he took aim at a post-Cold War US foreign policy that had
primarily produced disastrous failures since the demise of Communism by
declaring“our
foreign policy is a complete and total disaster.”
“Instead of building an ever-expanding zone of peace united by a
shared commitment to liberal ideas, America’s pursuit of liberal hegemony
poisoned relations with Russia, led to costly quagmires in Afghanistan, Iraq
and several other countries, squandered trillions of dollars and thousands of
lives, and encouraged both states and non-state actors to resist American
efforts or to exploit them for their own benefit,” Mr. Walt argued.
From a civilisationalist’s point of view, Mr. Trump was the right
person at the right time.
He promised a radical departure from the United States’
internationalist agenda and dumped the concept of American exceptionalism that positioned
the United States as the linchpin of a liberal world order, the indispensable
policeman that would keep the world from falling apart. Foreign policy would no
longer be informed by a longer-term overarching worldview.
Instead it would be driven by short-term transactions that served
immediate goals, struck advantageous deals and shifted burdens to others.
Ironically, Mr. Trump’s chaotic and impulsive policymaking and
management style, narcissism, and ineptitude allowed civilisationalists with
whom he instinctively empathized take center stage while the United States
continued to fight wars in distant lands and shoulder much of the burden of
policing global security.
Rather than “bringing America’s commitments and capabilities into
better balance, Trump has undermined the latter without decreasing the former,”
Mr. Walt concluded.
Mr. Trump’s approach bolstered Russian president Vladimir Putin’s
declaration three years into the real-estate mogul-turned president’s
administration thatliberalism had “outlived its purpose.”
Against the backdrop of unproven allegations of illicit cooperation
between Russia and the 2016 Trump electoral campaign, Mr. Frankel suggested
that “there was no need for detailed electoral collusionbetween
the Trump campaign and Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy because they had an
overarching deal: the quid of help in the campaign against Hillary Clinton for
the quo of a new pro-Russian foreign policy.”
Igor Yurgens,
president of the Institute of Contemporary Development, and a former advisor to
erstwhile Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, expressed a similar sentiment.
Mr.Trump is “our wrecking
ball.He shares our ideology and has shown as much sympathy to Russia as
was humanly possible,” Mr. Yurgens said.
Mr. Yurgens assertion
is seemingly mirrored in Mr. Trump’s empathy for Mr. Putin and autocrats like
Mr. Al-Sisi and Emirati and Saudi crown princes, Mohammed bin Zayed and
Mohammed bin Salman as well as his anti-immigration policies that favour
Europeans and discriminate against Africans, Asians and Latin Americans and his
repeated refusal to convincingly condemn racist and neo-Nazi groups.
Mr. Trump’s ambiguity
towards far-right thinking neatly aligns itself withRussian
support for racist and neo-Nazi groups in the United States and across Europethat is designed
to fuel civilizationalist attitudes, bolster opposition to European Union
sanctions imposed after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and drive a
wedge in the trans-Atlantic alliance that Mr. Trump has repeatedly questioned.
By contrast, Mr. Sanders, a self-styled democratic socialist, would
likely bring a different, more civil tone to the presidency, but no less of a
redirection of US foreign policy.
If Mr. Trump attempted to reduce foreign policy to business-like
transactions, Mr. Sanders would transform policy into what scholars Ben Judah
and David Adler have termed‘foreign politics.’
“He is targeting the global architecture of kleptocracy in which many
U.S. firms and passport holders are complicit and building ties with social
movements around the world that can serve as allies in the fight against state
corruption,” Messrs. Judah and Adler argued in The Guardian.
In doing so, Messrs. Judah and Adler suggest, Mr. Sanders as president
would, unlike his predecessors, target three pillars of Mr. Putin’s disruptive
polices: oil and gas revenues, a kleptocratic power base, and information
warfare.
Mr. Sander’s tools shy away from the centrality of military power.
Instead they include the promotion of renewable energy that would reduce
European reliance on Russian fossil fuels, the dismantling of offshore tax
havens and corporate shells that facilitate Putin’s kleptocracy, andUS reengagement in the battle of ideasby
promoting human rights and other democratic values.
From a foreign policy perspective, the problem with Mr. Sanders is not
the loftiness of his goals and principled positions or the practicality of his
domestic policy proposals. It is that, given deep polarisation in the United
States, he could prove to be as divisive as his nemesis, Mr. Trump.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture.