America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.” This Henry Kissinger quote is a perennial favorite of American realists, informing decades of American grand strategy. In recent years, from threatening to withdraw from NATO to praising Kim Jung-Un in search of a blockbuster nuclear deal, the Trump Administration ruthlessly implemented this adage, with the effect of alienating America’s traditional allies throughout the world. As the Biden Administration gets underway, many commentators see repairing the American alliance network as the 46th President’s biggest foreign policy challenge.
In response to the steady recession of democracy worldwide and the decay of American alliances, President Biden promised a “Summit for Democracy” to “strengthen our democratic institutions, honestly confront nations that are backsliding, and forge a common agenda.” This agenda will have a long list of objectives: preventing a conflict with China over territorial disputes in the “Three Seas” (East China Sea, South China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait), solidifying slow progress and preventing more state failure in the Middle East, and rolling back Russian meddling in former Soviet satellites and European affairs in general. [1]Some, including AHS’s Elbridge Colby and Robert Kaplan, have criticized the idea of building democracy-based alliances as a distraction that will prevent forging a broad coalition against China based upon common interests instead of common values. [2]
At first glance, this dilemma presents a classic trade-off between quality and quantity. However, the decisions to be made are not a simple country-by-country “yes vs no” choice on whether to pursue an alliance or not, but rather, the task before the Biden Administration is choosing which partnerships get prioritized before others. As liberal institutions are questioned at home and democracy steadily decays abroad, the long-term health of liberalism must take priority over short-term, fleeting efforts to gain a tactical advantage over an adversary. [3], [4] Increasing America’s wealth and power is not an end in itself; wealth and power are necessary inputs to securing the greater end of sustaining American self-government and economic prosperity while inching toward the triumph of liberty around the world. The United States is not the only state in the world that desires this outcome, so the United States must recommit to its liberal allies while also confronting the scourge of illiberalism that is festering within American partnerships.
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Image Source: U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Andrew Murray/Released, accessed via Wikimedia Commons
Nicholas J. Romanow 