The Three Stages of Good Grief

Is Walter Russell Mead assessing the evolution of the Trump foreign policy correctly or engaging in wishful thinking in his column at the Wall Street Journal?

President Trump’s foreign policy has passed through two stages—one restrained and one more turbulent. The third and most decisive is now beginning to take shape.

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The liberal-internationalist vision, which holds that the world is a kind of greater European Union, moving inexorably toward its own kind of “ever closer union” via a strengthening network of international institutions, seems to be running out of steam.

As countries like Turkey, India, China, Brazil and Nigeria develop, they are striving more to strengthen their sovereignty than to pool it. By shifting America’s stance away from the losing defense of legacy liberal internationalism that characterized the John Kerry years, the Trump disruption might, might point the way toward a more sustainable U.S. diplomatic approach.

But for Mr. Trump to be remembered as something other than a diplomatic wrecking ball, his administration will have to rapidly shift gears. Destruction ceases to be creative when it doesn’t lead to the construction of something better. After the cautious first stage and the dramatic second stage, a third stage of strategy and leadership must follow.

In the Middle East, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen seem to be forcing the administration to review its strategic options. Simply outsourcing U.S. regional policy to Riyadh and Jerusalem won’t do. Washington needs a vision and a policy that both reassures our local allies and disciplines some of their wilder instincts. Walking away from the Iran deal was easy; implementing a new regional strategy will be hard. Like his predecessors, Mr. Trump will be judged not by his intentions but by his results.

The administration’s China policy has also reached an inflection point. The tariff card has been played. But what is the administration’s vision for the future of an economic relationship that, despite Chinese abuses, has benefited both countries and cannot be ripped apart without profound damage to many U.S. companies and industries? How will the administration balance its interest in building a strong global alliance to counter China and its efforts to extract more favorable trading terms from partners like Germany and Japan? Can the Trump administration develop an approach to China that is bipartisan enough to ensure Democrats don’t scrap it all when they return to power?

Unlike the Soviet Union, China has engaged successfully with the international market system and as a result has many more channels of influence around the world. How will the administration orchestrate a global response? This is a harder task than the Truman administration faced; is the Trump administration up to the job?

In Europe, President Trump has been blunt about the many shortcomings he sees in existing U.S. relationships with key allies. He hasn’t, however, put forward a compelling vision of the kind of trans-Atlantic relationship he would like to see instead.

It is the same on trade. We know Mr. Trump prefers bilateral deals to multilateral ones and that he sees reciprocity as the key to fairness. But what would a reformed World Trade Organization look like? How does Mr. Trump want trade disputes to be handled? Can Mr. Trump subject the international economy to an endless series of trade shocks without undermining the domestic prosperity on which his future and that of his party depend?

Donald Trump spent much of his pre-political career as a builder and a developer. President Trump has mostly been in the demolition industry where foreign policy is concerned. That will likely change in the next few months as the unrelenting pressure of world events forces the administration to define and communicate its objectives more clearly. As stage two gives way to stage three, it will become easier to see where this administration wants to take the world—and whether it is having any success.

There is another alternative that Dr. Mead doesn’t seem to entertain: that Trump could just back down. Will the Trump Administration enter a constructive phase in its foreign policy, continue to stir the pot, become more aggressive, or back down?

Fasten your seatbelts, we’re in for a bumpy ride.