Donald Trump Should Embrace a Realist Foreign Policy

"Liberal hegemony is a bankrupt strategy. The United States has worked to topple regimes and promote democracy in six countries in the greater Middle East: Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. Each attempt has been an abject failure: wars are raging in every one of those countries except Egypt, which is once again a military dictatorship. This campaign has also made America’s terrorism problem worse: Al Qaeda has morphed and multiplied, and we are now at war with ISIS, which is largely a consequence of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In Europe, the United States foolishly tried to integrate Georgia and Ukraine into the West, precipitating an unnecessary crisis with Russia that upset the peace in eastern Europe and made it harder for Moscow and Washington to cooperate on other matters, like ending the bloodletting in Syria.

Spreading democracy, especially by force, almost always fails. It inevitably involves large-scale social engineering in societies that most Americans poorly understand. Dismantling and then replacing existing political institutions inevitably creates winners and losers, and the latter usually take up arms in opposition, which forces the U.S. military to wage costly counterinsurgency campaigns that are extremely difficult to win. The end result is precisely the sort of quagmire we faced in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Trump administration should abandon liberal hegemony and adopt a realist foreign policy. Realism is chiefly concerned with America’s position in the global balance of power, and it shuns doing social engineering inside other countries. Instead, Washington would respect the sovereignty of other states even when it disagrees with their internal policies. Americans prize their own sovereignty, which is why they recoiled at the idea that Russia might be interfering in the recent presidential election. The United States should treat other countries according to the same standard and respect their sovereignty as well."

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