by Lafayette Lee & Voodoo

How President Trump can reshape America’s foreign policy for generations.

At a news conference at Mar-a-Lago last week, President Donald Trump raised eyebrows around the world when he refused to rule out the use of force to seize control of Greenland and the Panama Canal. 

“Look, the Panama Canal is vital to our country,” he said, before delivering a history lesson on the Torrijos–Carter Treaties. “We need Greenland for national security purposes… People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it, but if they do, they should give it up because we need it for national security.” 

“But sir, real fast, you said you were considering military force to acquire Panama and Greenland,” a reporter asked. “Are you also considering military force to annex and acquire Canada?”  

“No—economic force.”

The exchange drew the ire of several heads of state, including Justin Trudeau, the outgoing Prime Minister of Canada, and was reported in the media as a diplomatic disaster. Nevertheless, as columnists and fact-checkers cherry-picked the transcripts, an enthusiastic seminar on geopolitics raged across social media, complete with maps of maritime shipping routes, quotes by George Kennan, and citations of the Monroe Doctrine, as well as a flotilla of memes. 

By now everyone is familiar with Trump’s rhetorical style. The fact that he sounds more like a Tammany grand sachem than a post-national technocrat is part of his power. Via anecdotes, storytelling, hyperbole, and other populist devices, Trump is able to bypass censors and connect to the political imagination of the people. And contrary to what the “experts” might believe, this talent, more so than principles, ideals, or moral values, is what sustains the American constitutional order. 

Trump’s forays into geopolitics demonstrate a sensibility that has resisted runaway idealism throughout American history. Forged on the frontier and rooted in pragmatism, the core of US statecraft is a simple, cold-blooded realism which mediates between two other powerful American impulses: idealism and isolationism. This sensibility may wax and wane over time, but it will always strive to overcome the country’s base impulses and inspire restraint at pivotal moments. 

Today, as another period of runaway idealism comes to a close, American realism, or Realpolitik, is returning. After the end of the Cold War, liberal idealism ran amok for more than thirty years, with the triumphalism of Fukuyama’s “End of History” displacing isolationism and Realpolitik. But this decades-long victory dance was premature. Globalization has stalled, the post-war international order is fraying, and isolationism is making a comeback. To the horror of liberals everywhere history and its ancient spirits have reemerged.

Trump is sometimes painted as favoring isolationism, but he is best understood as representing Realpolitik. His approach to foreign policy is practical and undogmatic. Like his communication style, it harkens back to an earlier period when American statesmen emphasized common sense, eschewed entangling alliances, and pursued the national interest without caveat. 

Realpolitik is the deepest tradition of American statecraft because it is the vision that most closely approximates American sensibilities. Fundamentally, it is not a grand theory of politics, but a method or approach. It is prescriptive rather than descriptive, emphasizing what could be over what should be. In contrast to quasi-theological or more ideological conceptions that aim to use politics to realize ideals or answer questions of the soul, Realpolitik is concerned with power, the pursuit of interests, and achieving concrete ends. 

Realpolitik emerged from the wreckage of Germany’s doomed 1848 revolution, following an era of rapid development, wild utopianism, and widespread unrest not entirely dissimilar to ours. From exile, failed revolutionary Ludwig von Rochau reflected on the events of 1848 and concluded that his generation had become intoxicated by their own ideals, mistaking the power of words for political power. 

By way of correction, in his 1853 book, Grundsätze der Realpolitik angewendet auf die staatlichen Zustände Deutschlands, or “Principles of Realpolitik applied to the national state of affairs of Germany,” Rochau asserts “the law of the strong” as the “foundational truth” of politics. Just as gravity dominates the physical world, the law of the strong dominates the life of the state. “Power alone is in a position to rule,” Rochau declares, and sovereignty is only its reflection.

By turning the morality of “might makes right” on its head, liberals had forgotten the law of the strong. They became convinced that power would quietly subordinate itself to their laws, and in the process abandoned concrete politics for abstract constitutions. Rochau reminds his readers that the powerful submit only to greater power and follow constitutions only when it serves their interests. After all, constitutional politics are less about “abstract-scientific lines” and political principles and more about social forces demanding recognition from the state. Constitutions and contracts that fail to reflect the interplay of these social forces are doomed, regardless of the elegance of their design and the purity of their principles.

Rochau sees the law of the strong and the follies of liberalism extending beyond a nation’s borders. At the same time as he criticizes liberal delusions of power at home, he dismisses Gefühlspolitik (“sentimental politics”) and Prinzipienpolitik (“principled politics”) abroad. Sentimentalism overestimates allies and underestimates rivals. Unlike internal social conflicts, which are usually absorbed into the state, external dangers routinely pose an existential threat. Accordingly, foreign affairs must be handled with prudence and clarity. Friends and enemies alike obey the law of the strong, and international agreements are only as good as the balance of power allows. What is required, therefore, is a foreign policy devoted to narrow national interests and a cadre of capable diplomats to carry it out.

Principles of Realpolitik reads more like a political pamphlet than a magnum opus of political philosophy.  But Rochau’s insights on power are profound, and his scathing critiques of liberal idealism still resonate today. Rochau sought to combine the idealism of the Enlightenment with the pursuit of power practiced by the older order. To achieve noble political goals one had to play the same games as the ignoble, and play them better.

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From the land grabs during the fall of the Roman Empire, to Pope Pius IV’s and Spanish governor García Álvarez de Toledo’s decision to withhold reinforcements from the Knights of St John during the Siege of Malta, effective leaders have always made decisions from a desire to maintain their power. It would never have occurred to Frederick II, Duke of Austria in 1241 that, for moral reasons, he should not seize part of allied western Hungary as they fought for their lives against a Mongol invasion. He seized it to create a buffer for his own kingdom, and later died in battle trying to keep it. Modern Turkey and Israel follow the same logic when they seize buffer territory in a collapsing Syria. Their calculation is that it serves their national interest: no more, and no less.

The case of the United States is more complex. The country is divided, trust in institutions has fallen, inequality is rising, and Americans are more pessimistic about the future than ever. At home, the nation seems weak and unsure of itself. Yet at the same time, the United States is viewed from abroad with envy and fear. It still boasts the world’s largest economy and most powerful military, and its alliances throughout Europe and Asia continue to grow stronger. 

If Rochau were alive today, he would view this contradiction with concern. Observing America’s competing impulses — idealism and isolationism — and the gulf between the people and the policymakers, he would remind us that a nation’s internal and external strength are linked, with internal social forces determining the “form and fate” of the state. Historically, in times of crisis, the state could count on nationalism to hold such forces together. Today, with Americans unsure about whether their homeland is a place or an idea, that prospect is less straightforward.

Without internal harmony, the United States cannot pursue the national interest. This fact puts Donald Trump in the difficult position of trying to heal the domestic body politic while charting a new course abroad. To achieve this, he should set forth a new vision of America, reminding the world that the United States is a nation first and foremost. He should embody the law of the strong, as the Commander in Chief and the people’s tribune. He should remember that power submits only to power, and that treaties are only respected so long as power secures them.

Trump must also repair the vital connection between domestic politics and foreign policy by acknowledging that in recent years an idealist diplomatic corps has done considerable harm to American national interests. He should replace them with a new generation of statesmen, devoted to concrete geopolitical objectives and ready to restore the concerns of the common citizen to the center of decision-making. 

Above all, Trump should repudiate the utopianism of idealists and isolationists, and restore a foreign policy based on realism. He should boldly proclaim the national interest, including retaining hegemony over the Western Hemisphere, containing China, and maintaining American supremacy over the sea. He should be willing to use every diplomatic tool available, including economic force, to secure the national interest, while remembering that prudence is a realist’s greatest asset.