America Can’t Escape the Multipolar Order

25:54This has been an argument, I mean, since the start of the war in Ukraine, but actually a much longer running argument in the sanctions literature, right? is if you push states like Iran or Venezuela out to the margins where the only states they can trade with or work with are other sanctioned autocracies, then you're necessarily forcing other states to basically build networks that maybe can get around your sanctions that you don't actually want. So, you know, for one example here, the sanctions on Russia after Ukraine that have led to the creation of the shadow tanker fleet that is no longer insured or recorded in London and so cannot be sanctioned as easily.

26:34So now we may think that's a fair trade-off in exchange for the sanctions related to the war in Ukraine. But I think there's a number of other more marginal areas where we might start to think about ways that we could inject some friction into this. And I think Venezuela, given that we're talking about it a lot right now, is a perfect example. This administration's policy actually started with Rick Grinnell going out, talking to the Maduro government about ways to get more Venezuelan oil back on the market, which would make sanctions against Russia more effective, etc. And instead, we appear to have pivoted back to regime change in Venezuela.

27:09But there's ways in which we can prevent these countries pulling together. And to me, that seems like a more effective approach than trying to sort of build up an alliance against them. You've surely spent a lot of time talking to officials and allied governments as they try to grapple with the consequences of this moment and navigate their own way forward. You noted that commitments at least to spend more on defense have been quite striking over the last several months with NATO allies pledging to go up to 5%, although that's clever accounting. It's not entirely a reflection of true defense spending, but it is still fairly remarkable.

27:43And you see, as you noted, these increases in defense spending at East Asia or at least commitments so far. Do you think the allies are handling this well? How do you kind of assess strategic discussions that are happening in allied capitals at this moment? I think we're seeing some of the same dynamics we saw under Trump one, which is to say a refusal to quite believe that this is happening and a hope that if they just hold on long enough that America will snap back to the norm. Where I do see the big difference is that I think this is now not the entirety of the debate in allied capitals. I think there's a lot more awareness of the political currents, the different factions here in Washington, even within the administration, and the different ways that US foreign policy could go.

28:33And I think also what I see is a much more willingness from US allies to consider hedging against some of these shifts. So, you know, back in 2017, 2018, when European states talked about burden shifting, they really genuinely had no fear that the US was going to pull back from Europe. I think now they are talking about contingency planning and they are, I think, genuinely dialing up their spending and looking for ways to improve burden shifting, maybe not as far as I would like, but I do think that willingness is there. So whether it is the way the Trump administration has approached this, or I think, to be honest, the fact he got elected again at all that is driving this, I do think the Trump administration is getting a better response from allies to this time around.

29:23Do you anticipate that more allies or at least American partners will opt to acquire nuclear weapons of their own in the coming decade or two? And if so, would that be a good thing in terms of burden shifting? Look, I think this is one of the biggest concerns about a strategy of additional burden sharing, like I talk about in the book. It's the fact that there are some states that are still relatively insecure and that even if they build up their own defense, they may not be able to entirely defend themselves. What makes me fairly confident that this is not going to be a catastrophic explosion of proliferation is that the places where this is being discussed are relatively limited.

30:06They're mostly in friendly or mostly friendly states at the moment. And I think there are very few places genuinely, South Korea, maybe Poland, where nuclear proliferation seems like an attractive option that doesn't have so many downsides. And even there, I think there are ways of ameliorating some of those concerns, right? In Poland, for example, the French and German nuclear umbrella could be extended to cover other members of NATO and the European Union. I tend to think that would be a pretty credible nuclear umbrella because of the way these countries are stitched together economically and politically.

30:42South Korea is a more interesting case. And I think in part because of the North Korean nuclear dynamics, right? Whether any nuclear umbrella could ever be fully credible in that case, I think is pretty questionable. And this is why we see the South Koreans already debating it, even though America's still present. But again, I mean, outside of those cases, maybe Ukraine, right? I struggle to see the countries where they would be willing to take the hit of obtaining a nuclear weapon just to be a little more secure. And there's a lot that can be done in the conventional defense space. So I am still fairly willing to make that trade-off, a little nuclear proliferation in exchange for, if we're frank, in exchange for a lower risk of great power nuclear competition.

31:30To me, that seems like a fairly worthwhile trade-off. And from an American perspective, it would not necessarily be a terrible thing as you see it to have a nuclear South Korea and a nuclear Poland? Look, in the post-Cold War period, our policy emphasized heavily preventing any nuclear proliferation, friendly or otherwise. And during the Cold War, we also worked to prevent friendly proliferation. But during the Cold War, I think we were also much more cognizant of the risks of actually coming into conflict with the Soviet Union. So you see these places where US policymakers declined to intervene, right?

32:07Hungary, 56, Czechoslovakia, 1968, because of the potential risk of nuclear exchange. And even though, you know, potentially in some of these cases, there would have been a risk of proliferation. So I think we probably just have to get back to accepting that some proliferation risk is the cost of doing business in this world of competing great powers. One of the most striking arenas for burden shifting in the last 10 months has been Ukraine, where the Europeans have taken on a much greater role as American support has diminished, American support in a variety of ways. Early in this administration, there was a lot of talk from Europeans about pretty expansive security guarantees for Ukraine as part of the formula for ending the war.

32:52European troops on the ground in Ukraine were thought to be one possible component of that. You've argued against a European reassurance force of that kind being a meaningful part of this. How do you see the debate over security guarantees now? And as you look at the path to ending the war in Ukraine, do you see any other ways forward, given how both Trump's diplomacy and some of the European efforts seem to have not fundamentally changed the dynamic on the ground? I might be in favor of European security guarantees if I thought they would actually work if I thought that a force existed that could do what the Europeans are promising.

33:29And it doesn't. And so what we've seen over the last almost a year at this point is European states making consistent promises that they will defend Ukraine, that they will send a force, that they will engage in ceasefire monitoring, that they'll provide tripwire forces. And then over time, those just getting walked back, you know, the force won't be 200 ,000 troops, it'll be 40 ,000. No, it'll be 10 ,000. It will be placed on the Dnieper River. No, it'll be placed back by Lviv. And it basically turns out that European states have neither the capacity nor the willingness to send these forces. And instead, what this coalition of the willing has become is in many ways an impediment to peace.

34:08The idea that Ukraine cannot enter any kind of negotiation until an external guarantor of its own security appears. For me, and I think I've written this in foreign affairs and elsewhere, Ukraine is the only possible guarantor of its own security. Because what we have proven in the last three years is that there is no country that's willing to step up and actually fight in Ukraine. Plenty of countries willing to send arms, to send people, to do training, to send money. That's what we can promise. And that's what European states can commit. And so, I mean, again, I just think external security guarantees are a bit of a red herring here.

34:44And in some ways, they're a useful tool for those who don't want to move towards negotiations. My sense is that Trump himself and many people around him expected that their diplomacy with Vladimir Putin really would result in a ceasefire in Ukraine, that they would give him Crimea, give him de facto possession of eastern Ukraine, give him a few other concessions on security arrangements for Ukraine, and that that would be enough to stop the war. They seem to have been a bit surprised that Putin did not take it. do you see another path to a ceasefire or if the kind of coalition, the willing approach is not the right one?

35:19What is the way of getting to peace? I applaud the Trump administration's willingness to sort of lean in on peace and negotiations and talking to everybody, right, to see what deal we could get, whether it's Hamas, whether it's Russia. I think that's really laudable. I think there's also common flaws across pretty much all of his peacemaking processes. And it is that he is very unaware of the details, and so are many of his key negotiators, particularly Steve Wyckoff, that they are not willing to trust to process or to bring in experts, whether it's from the US government or elsewhere, and that they tend to focus very much on sort of the handshake agreement, we're going to stop the fighting now, and then lose interest.

36:05And I think for all of those reasons, it's somewhat understandable that Moscow has not been hugely receptive to these overtures, right? You have a Trump administration saying, you know, well, we'll focus on territorial issues, but we won't talk about NATO accession for Ukraine. We won't talk about arms for Ukraine afterwards. We'll just talk about dividing the country. And I think the Russians don't know whether they can trust Trump. And they also correctly assess that a ceasefire is where he'll lose interest in all of this. And so they're trying to fight while they talk and see what more they can get from him.

36:37And to be honest, in Ukraine, as in some of these other peace negotiations, right? I think there's still plenty of prospects for getting to a deal, but it would require this administration to actually change its mode of operation. I'm a little skeptical that they're going to do that. And what would that deal look like? I think the contours of a deal in Ukraine have actually been clear since, I mean, let's say May 2022, right? It would be some de facto division of territory with monitoring along a line of control. It would be a Ukraine that can mostly arm itself with some key restrictions, probably on long-range strikes.

37:18It would probably involve some commitment for Ukraine not to join NATO, but the Russians have suggested that European Union accession being tied into European markets is acceptable. And it would probably involve, if we're frank, the seizure of those Russian assets legally, in this case, in order to pay some reparations to Ukraine, and then the Russians would call it something different. But I mean, again, all of those parts of this deal have been very visible for a long time now. And really, what the fighting is over now is where the exact line of control will fall? And I think more importantly, can you actually trust, secure, monitor that ceasefire?

37:59Who can actually make this come together? And I think that's where we keep falling down. It doesn't seem at this moment that either Russia or Ukraine is particularly interested in that deal. I think the Ukrainians are aware that they're losing and that they're going to come out of this worse off. I think that's really unfortunate because there were times when they were in better negotiating positions. I think the Russians are not insensible to the fact that they're suffering economic problems, that this can't go on forever. But I also think they assess that there are maybe years, certainly months, before those things become such a significant problem that they have to seriously consider peace.

38:40So for them, continuing to fight while seeing what comes of this. I mean, again, I don't agree with it. I think they probably would do better to settle, but I can see why they come to that conclusion. Let me turn to China, which we've talked about a couple of times, but is in some ways the biggest and most challenging topic in this set of questions. You noted in your earlier piece that for the restrainer crowd, China has been a source of some disagreement, that there are different kinds of approaches that you hear from some of the major figures in that crowd. You have acknowledged that competition with China is a reality of American foreign policy and the international system at this point.

39:18Is there a way to prioritize competition that doesn't fall into the errors of the Biden administration, in your view? What's the right way of crafting that strategy, given the realities of the challenges to U.S. interests? Yeah, it's a difficult problem. I talk in the book about the US needs to pull back from Europe and the Middle East in order to focus on the Indo-Pacific. Prioritizer is now the common term for this. But one of the problems with that approach and one of the risks of that approach is that you lean in too far in the Indo-Pacific. In particular, you flood the zone with troops and ships and air patrols, and you end up accidentally stumbling into a conflict with China.

39:58And so I think the Biden administration never made it quite that far, but we can see moments where they started to worry that their policies, I think particularly some of the export controls had become so sort of draconian that they were prompting a response from Beijing and there were concerns that tensions were getting a little bit out of control. I think particularly we all laughed about the incidents with the spy balloons, but you can see after that, I think, an attempt to sort of calm tensions with China from the administration. So for me, focusing on the Indo-Pacific is not about sending a bunch more stuff or militarizing the region substantially.

40:37It's about rationalizing our existing presence so it focuses on the right areas. So less South Korea, more Philippines, right, would be one example. It's about leaning in economically. And I think this might be the most difficult part of the argument that I make because everybody hates trade now, but regional states want better economic ties with the United States. Again, there were all these conversations early in the Biden administration about friendshoring, about trying to bring critical minerals from other parts of Asia. There was talk about IPEF, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. And in the Biden administration, that all came to nothing largely because of protectionism.

41:17I actually think that would be something to do in practice that could really improve our standing in the region. How do you think Taiwan fits into this set of challenges? There are, I think, others in the restrainer crowd who are not exactly willing to give up Taiwan to accept the reality of control by Beijing in the near future, but trying to grapple with the consequences and kind of refashioning strategy to at least account for that possibility. a piece by Jennifer Kavanaugh and Stephen Wertheim and Arpeges is one example of an effort to do that. Do you see that as the right approach to Taiwan rather than what still strikes me as the mainstream approach in American foreign policy of kind of kicking the can down the road indefinitely and hoping that a solution gets easier for reasons we can't quite anticipate at this point?

42:03Oh, come on. That's all of US foreign policy. We do that on everything. No, look, I mean, you're absolutely right. I mean, I think there is always an element of the Taiwan question that is because of the fact that we embrace strategic ambiguity, nobody wants to actually come out and say anything different because doing so could undermine that ambiguity. So that's one aspect of the problem. But I do think that, you know, folks within the restraint community, for the most part, come down on Taiwan as Taiwan should defend itself, right? We should be pushing for Taiwan to build by purchase the capabilities that it would need to make itself indigestible for China to swallow.

42:49Now, the Taiwanese have not necessarily taken the steps that they would need to if that were the case. That concerns me a lot. But I think there are folks in the restraint community that might not want to defend the Philippines, might not want to defend Japan. I absolutely would. But I think there's a fair amount of agreement on Taiwan. And in part, in large part, that's because Taiwan is, if not indefensible, then certainly indefensible at a reasonable cost to the United States. Let me shift to your first book, which is about oil and foreign policy or oil and strategy. It's striking that we're at this moment in which control over resources and control over supply chain seems to be one of the major weapons of competition.

43:36The rare earths versus chips, I suppose, is the key example here. As you reflect on the history of energy in foreign policy and energy in geopolitics, how does that allow you to understand the moment we're in now? And how do you think rare earths in tech competition will play out similarly or differently to competition over energy in the past? Yeah, I mean, look, I am actually somewhat of a skeptic on the rare earths notion. And that's because they're not rare. They're found everywhere. As people, I think, are starting to talk about more, this is a processing problem. And it is one that we could actually solve with a fairly moderate investment here in the US or in friendly states.

44:14Energy, though, is a much more interesting question even today. If you'd asked me five years ago, I would not have called the US abandoning a green transition and going for sort of global energy dominance, the way that this administration does. But there's an interesting theory here, right, that the US is capable of remaining a hydrocarbon power and oil and gas superpower in ways that other states are not for quite some significant period of time going forward. The energy marketplace, the energy landscape has changed pretty dramatically, even from our assumptions of five years ago. The other place that I'll point to where this actually becomes quite interesting is we've seen this really strong interaction over the last couple of years between US sanctions policy and energy prices.

45:02In effect, the limits of where the US can use sanctions without actively harming global energy markets. And this is because we have simultaneously sanctions on Russia, Iran, Venezuela, right? We've got all these big energy exporters, and we're starting to talk about trade-offs. And so to me, this is interesting. We have all of these flows of energy moving through either grey markets or going through places like the Gulf for reprocessing, going through Turkey, even though we're sort of talking up here at a level about global geopolitics, in practice, the economics of global energy flows, those already look really multipolar, really flexible, and with lots of states sort of hedging their bets and working around, you know, either US sanctions or oil exporters they don't want to deal with.

45:51I want to close by getting a bit meta. You've been a critic at various points of the state of conversation or state of debate in the American foreign policy establishment. You wrote a piece for us several years ago called Build a Better Blob about creating a better kind of conversation, more diverse conversation. How do you assess the state of that debate right now as you look at both this moment in the Trump administration, but also step back and look at the way that that debate has developed over the last few years? I still see significant debate and contestation within the foreign policy community.

46:25And I think, if anything, it is more diverse than it used to be, right? If we had been having this conversation five years ago, this would have been a story about an old bipartisan consensus and folks mostly on the more restrained or realist side challenging that consensus. Now, to my mind, this entire debate has broken open. We have lots of different camps. We've got the sort of Biden post-liberal internationalists who want to build global alliances, the Trump America first folks. They're very Jacksonian, very focused on power. But there's also the progressives over on the left side of the Democratic Party who have all these universalist notions.

47:05They're anti-corruption. They're pro-democracy, but they don't want to use military force to do it. And all of these voices are talking about slightly different things. So, I mean, look, to me, the debate has, if anything, become more vibrant over the last few years. I do not think, however, that we have achieved anything approaching a new consensus yet. I can see the Republican Party trending in one direction, and I think they're a little more settled on the direction of their foreign policy, which is going to be even post-Trump, I think is going to be much more nationalist, militaristic, but probably not as forward leaning.

47:41on the Democratic side of the aisle, though. You know, I don't see a consensus emerging anytime soon. There's a lot of debate about whether, you know, Biden was right or wrong to keep America in this indispensable moment mold. And I think they're going to be fighting over that for quite some time. If you had the influence or the power to shape that new consensus, what would it look like? What would it entail if you were able to decide what it is? The argument that I make in the back half of my new book is for something I ended up calling it realist internationalism, but for a, again, more restrained, but more realist approach.

48:17So do less in Europe, do less in the Middle East, lean in a bit in the Indo-Pacific, lean in economically. But, you know, importantly, policymakers need to start thinking about interests in a much narrower way, right? So focusing very much on American security, American prosperity, rather than necessarily saying it's all about alliances. It's all about protecting everybody in the world. We need to get more narrowly focused. And that sounds a little bit like America first and the Trump administration to me. In some areas, I would definitely agree that it is. I think the Democrats also need to move in that direction because I think they're certainly not going to embrace a bunch of migration restrictions.

49:00They're not going to become nationalists. But I do think that even the Democratic electorate wants a foreign policy that works for Americans. If you remember that report the Carnegie Endowment put out before the Biden administration, foreign policy for the middle class with Jake Sullivan. This is, I think, what the American public wants. And so I think a stable new consensus would be a more interests-driven, pragmatic, nationalist foreign policy. Whether I get it or not, I think that's anyone's guess. It does make me think back to a piece that Rebecca Lesnar and Mira Rapp Hooper wrote in our pages six or so months ago, making the case for what they call a zero based foreign policy.

49:39They were both relatively senior officials in the Biden administration and I think would probably themselves fall into the post liberal internationalist camp that you were describing. But they argue in that piece that we should go back policy area by policy area and really scrutinize to what extent existing policies, in fact, align with American interests or not. if you were going to zero out two or three major elements of policy, what would those be? Yeah, no, I mean, I think they're absolutely right, because I think the Trump administration, I mean, clearly, they like to destroy things. They do not so much like to build new things.

50:10So whatever the next administration is, whether it's a, you know, a Vance or an AOC presidency, they're going to have a lot of scope to reinvent things. I mean, look, for me, I think the most important things policymakers could focus on right now are burden shifting, particularly in Europe. I think that's going to take time if it's done well. It's going to take 10 to 15 years. We should have started 10 years ago. We need to start now. So for me, that's a really important one. And does that mean all American troops out that we're still part of NATO? What does that look like? What is the ideal outcome of burden shifting?

50:40Yeah, so I would advocate for a phased program of transition over 10 to 15 years where we start by removing the most easily replaceable things, that's infantry, mechanized divisions, that kind of stuff. And we end up 12 to 15 years out talking about removing long-range strikes. But the end result would be an America that's still in NATO, but NATO is fundamentally Europeanized in the forces that are actually on the ground for deterrence and fighting. And I think that's a sustainable policy because I think European states can do it if they're given the incentive. So that's one area where I would really prioritize.

51:14And then the other one that we've talked about a little bit already, but is on the economic side. I mean, to some extent, you know, if we're talking about what the next administration would do in three years, it's not really helpful for me to say, stop antagonizing everybody and destroying the global trading system right now. But I do genuinely worry about the damage that is being done there. If by the end of this administration, we are living in a tariff first world where there are no sort of default free trade mechanisms between states, I think that would be a really bad outcome for us. And, you know, a new administration would have to think about how you build new institutions for economic engagement.

51:54That would be extremely difficult. Emma, thank you so much for doing this. Your most recent piece is called Making Multipolarity Work. It draws from the book that you published recently called First Among Equals, and that follows on a series of fascinating pieces you've done for foreign affairs over the past few years. So thank you for all of those. No, thanks again for giving me the opportunity.

52:18Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show at foreignaffairs.com. This episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Ashley Wood, Ben Metzner, and Connish Kleror. Our audio engineer is Todd Yeager. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Arena Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you like what you heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in.

53:06We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview. Don't forget to visit foreignaffairs.com slash spotlight to sign up for Dan Kurtz-Felan's free weekly newsletter. Featuring more of the clear-headed analysis that you enjoy here on the podcast. Sign up today at foreignaffairs.com slash spotlight.