Donald Trump had a point, did he? One theme during the 2016 campaign was his attack on U.S. foreign policy that dovetailed easily with his pseudo-populist message of resentment. The foreign policy establishment—which counted Hillary Clinton in its ranks—committed the U.S. to costly wars, spent billions on failed efforts to replicate the American way overseas and entangled the country in expensive alliances whose benefits can seem small from the perspective of our shores. What’s to like about that?
In The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Stephen M. Walt concedes that Trump wasn’t entirely wrong in his criticisms, scattershot as they were. The problem is that Trump lacks the focus and character to construct a viable alternative. He’s the man who threatens an ill-designed house with a wrecking ball, but can’t draw a blueprint—much less build a foundation—to save his life.
As an international affairs professor at Harvard, Walt is a member of that foreign policy establishment—but a dissident among them. In The Hell of Good Intentions, he castigates many of his colleagues for a groupthink that overlaps party lines, especially their unswerving belief in America as the linchpin of a world order where democracy and free markets are inevitable. Walt reminds us that the U.S. proved unsuccessful in spreading its professed values at a time of greatest opportunity after winning the Cold War. Instead, “existing dictatorships proved resilient, several new democracies eventually slid back toward authoritarian rule, U.S.-led efforts at regime change produced failed states” and American hypocrisy grew in light of torture, war crimes, massive electronic surveillance of citizens and a pick-and-choose approach to dictatorships. Muammar Gaddafi could go to the dogs but China, he says, “was too big to push around.”
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If Trump identified real problems, he offered only “bluster, empty threats, and childish tweets” in place of solutions. Walt was prescient in identifying the Saudi crown prince’s “reckless gambits” (the book was out before the murder of Jamal Khashoggi) and Trump’s foolishness in giving the monarch unconditional support. Walt defends NATO against Trump’s sweeping claims of its obsolescence and points out that reversing the globalized economy hasn’t proven as easy as Trump promised.
Many readers will be dismayed, however, by Walt’s conclusion that despite his brow-furrowing assault on democratic norms, Trump’s “impact on the substance of policy was more limited.” Time will measure the damage done.
