Searching for America’s Future Role

Foreign policy is only discussed superficially during U.S. elections. After the decisions are made in November, a basic debate needs to take place. And not just in Washington.

When the ugliest and most primitive election in recent memory is history and Hillary Clinton has returned to the White House, a strategic debate needs to take place concerning America’s future role in the world. Nothing has been said about that for several months – at least anything with a seriousness that the subject deserves. Although the United States threatens to sink further into Trump Swamp, it nonetheless remains the world’s only superpower on which the rest of us depend – for better or for worse.

Listening to conversations in New York and Washington, visitors quickly realize just how urgent the need for such a discussion really is. The previous bipartisan consensus on several fundamental American foreign policy questions is now dead.

Under Barack Obama, America wanted to turn its attention more toward Asia because that’s where economies were booming, while plans had to simultaneously be made as to who would set the world political agenda in the Pacific, the established U.S. or the emerging China. It all seemed so plausible then and it still is today.

But meanwhile those visions have been overcome by events. Suddenly, a provocateur appeared on stage that Washington no longer had in its script: Russia reappeared on the world stage with cold-blooded cynicism by annexing Crimea and intervening in Syria. Today, nobody calls Putin’s Russia a “regional” power as Obama did in one high-spirited moment.

The same old familiar trouble spots are again demanding America’s attention and the U.S. is again sending more troops to Europe where they had actually hoped to gradually reduce their numbers; they are giving Israel more funds than ever before and seeking to come to terms with those Middle East autocracies from Egypt to Saudi Arabia whose end they saw coming with the advent of the “Arab Spring.”

And in Asia: Aren’t the visions there crumbling under the weight of reality as well? Economic growth is slowing in China, and in its South China Sea islands dispute with Japan the People’s Republic is becoming uncomfortably strident. The Philippines’ decades-long close alliance with the United States is now threatened by a brutal President Duterte who says he will throw the Americans out and turn to China and Russia for assistance.

Then there’s the conflict that causes concern for everyone: North Korea’s nuclear buildup. Because of Kim Jong-un’s hunger for nuclear weapons, China and the U.S. could quickly face a confrontation and calls for nuclear proliferation become louder in South Korea and even Japan. In other words, it could propel Asia into a catastrophe that would be the “hardest nut to crack” according to some diplomats.

Since the global situation is just as confusing as it is threatening, a former U.S. diplomat cites the necessity to redefine American and indeed Western foreign policy in general which inevitably raises the question of possible changes to the international system: Should it further develop the post-WW II system with the inclusion of China or should it follow the wishes of the “new powers” and include the ideas of India, Brazil, Indonesia and others?

But it is equally clear that a foreign policy “restart” will necessitate the West to confront its own problems. Nationalism, populism and protectionism are primarily homegrown products. Should the liberal Western-influenced world order need to assert itself against the new authoritarian temptations of Chinese, Russian or Turkish provenance, then Americans and Europeans must stand ready to heal the social fractures they cause with the greatest determination.

That’s what the Western agenda will look like after the Nov. 8 election. Berlin also eagerly awaits the end of the paralyzing transition in Washington and wagers that a Clinton administration will define America’s global role with new pride and renewed energy. One high-ranking government official said that reuniting the West was high on Hillary Clinton’s list of priorities.