There are great reasons for the United States to adopt a non-interventionist foreign policy. Some of these are ethical, such as not violating the rights of other people and not supporting or engaging in aggressive conduct generally. Others are partly ethical and partly prudential, such as not wasting taxpayer’s money on foreign adventurism and limiting the influence of arms dealers and the like on our political system. But one overriding prudential reason for a non-interventionist foreign policy is to avoid becoming entangled in foreign intrigues and conflicts where we lack control over our involvement and the outcome.
For all his “America First” bluster, President Donald Trump seems to understand none of these, and it is the third that I will focus on here. His apparent belief that he can control other countries and the outcomes of our involvement in their wars and schemes is problematic, because despite his foreign policy failures thus far, it is likely that he will continue the pattern of intervention that he has established in his second term.
The recent Israel-Iran rollercoaster saw Trump step into an international conflict and promptly lose control over it. He seems to have believed a few threats would convince Iran to give up uranium enrichment, but when Israel launched air attacks on Iran, Trump responded by joining in and bombing the facilities he had claimed he would negotiate over with the Iranians.
Trump was thus drawn into armed conflict by the Israelis’ independent decisions, and when Trump didn’t get the “unconditional surrender” he wanted from Iran, he declared a ceasefire, claiming that Israel and Iran had agreed to this. Neither Israel nor Iran said they had agreed to a ceasefire and instead continued to pound each other with missiles and air raids. Trump reacted angrily to the continued fighting, commenting that Israel and Iran “don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.” Israel finally stopped when it claimed it had achieved its military objectives.
Watching this unfold gave the impression that there had never been an agreed-upon ceasefire and that Trump believed he could force one by declaring it unilaterally. Regardless of whether he invented the ceasefire or convinced Israel to relent after the fact, Trump seemed surprised that the two sides didn’t want to stop fighting, and that perceptive failure is a key to understanding Trump’s deficiencies in foreign policy.
Donald Trump seems to regard the leaders of foreign countries as akin to market actors looking to make beneficial deals, and since peace is more conducive to profit than destruction, he assumes that rational actors would choose peace. Unfortunately, international politics doesn’t work that way at all. The leaders of governments around the world are not New York real estate developers. Israel and Iran want victory over their enemies, not peace. For them deals are just intermediate stepping stones to the ultimate political and military victories they really desire. Whenever the United States gives them an opportunity, they will take it, whether it’s Israel urging the U.S. to bomb Iran, or Iran getting a temporary respite from being on the losing end of an air war with Israel. At the moment, there is a break from active fighting, but there is no reason to expect it to last.
Whatever Trump may want, the underlying causes of the political conflict between Israel and Iran are still in place, and he cannot make them go away. What he can do, and nearly did, was to drag the United States into another disastrous Middle East war, and that could still happen if Trump insists on engaging politically with these countries. Both of them can be counted on to seek to use anything the United States does in the region to their advantage, and there is no reason to expect whatever comes of our active engagement there to serve the interests of the American people. There are currently about 40,000 American service members in the Middle East, and their very presence in the region involves the U.S. in Middle Eastern politics and military affairs. With Trump at the helm, the U.S. could readily wind up in another large-scale Middle East war.
In all the Middle East excitement, the war in Eastern Europe has faded into the background. Rest assured, it will come to the fore again after Trump attended the NATO summit this past week. Predictably, the Europeans want “leadership” from the United States, which means more money, weapons, and bellicosity. The Europeans agreed to increase their defense spending, which the U.S. has essentially subsidized for decades so European governments could spend more on social welfare programs.
Trump declared his unequivocal support for NATO, stating “We’re with them all the way,” and that “we’re here to help them protect their countries.” Trump suggested he would send more military aid to Ukraine if the Russians do not end the war. Trump has already given the United States a stake in Ukraine’s military success. And although the U.S. has no vital interest in Ukraine, Trump entered into a joint mineral resources agreement with Kiev, which provides economic benefits to Ukraine and obligates the U.S. to provide more military aid.
Candidate Trump claimed he would resolve the Ukraine-Russia war in short order, but the Russians and Ukrainians had other ideas. Like the Israelis and Iranians, Ukraine and Russia are interested in political and military victory, not mutually profitable compromises. Trump has expressed frustration with the Russians’ and Ukrainians’ obvious lack of interest in a negotiated resolution to their conflict because, again, he views the world through the eyes of a New York real estate developer and assumes he can persuade, cajole, or pressure everyone into a mutually agreeable deal. Trump cannot control the Russians and Ukrainians any more than he can control the Israelis and Iranians. So far, rather than resolving their war and extricating the United States from the conflict he has, to the extent of the mineral resources agreement at least, deepened our involvement in it.
A key prudential reason for a non-interventionist foreign policy is that the United States cannot count on its ability to control other countries’ decisions and the outcomes of our political engagement with them. In his second term thus far, Trump has shown that he does not understand this. As long as he does not understand this, we may expect him to continue to involve the United States in conflicts that do not serve American interests, with him believing he can use persuasion or force to get the results he wants.
A principled non-interventionism does not count on these kinds of contingencies, and it is indeed unfortunate that Trump does not understand this. To date, he has given us no cause for optimism that he will learn. Recent history offers many illustrations of how American foreign policy hubris yielded failures in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Southeast Asia, and while Americans voted for change, they are likely to get more of the same failed interventionism from Donald Trump.
