We are in the midst of a possible sea change in US foreign policy and, in turn, international order. In the 1970s and 1980s, observers worried about the decline in US power, especially against a then rising Japan. In the 1990s and 2000s, analysts once again worried about US decline, this time relative to a rising China. Today, the largest threats to world order arise not from external challengers but from a growing schism between the United States and Europe and, more recently, the fracturing of the internationalist coalition at home that has dominated US foreign policy for eight decades. As the interests of the United States shift, its international legitimacy and authority threaten to evaporate, undermining the international order that has existed at least in “the West” since World War II. The question facing the United States now is not whether it can lead, but whether it wants to lead—and what this might mean for the future.
Understanding international legitimacy and authority requires going beyond the conception of anarchy that dominates the study of international relations and the division between domestic and international politics that separates the fields of Political Science. International order is the product of incentives for state-to-state hierarchy, the interests of the dominant and subordinate states—especially the distance between their policy preferences—and international legitimacy, a social construct formed by the beliefs of potentially millions of individuals in subordinate states. These three sets of factors are in complex interplay, producing the particular international order that exists in any region and period.
Conditions were especially favorable for an authoritative order between the United States, Europe, and Northeast Asia after 1945. The gains from cooperation were large and similar interests allowed a hierarchy to emerge that could be easily legitimated. The result was the Pax Americana, a regional order of nearly unprecedented peace and prosperity. By contrast, conditions have been less favorable in the Caribbean basin and Middle East. With only modest gains from cooperation, divergent interests in both regions have led the United States to rule through collaborationist and necessarily authoritarian elites. The resulting orders, such as they are, have benefited mostly the United States and the elites allied with it. Lacking legitimacy, US rule has sparked anti-American resistance and even violence. As the United States and Europe diverge, and US authority becomes increasingly fragile, the Caribbean and Middle East serve as cautionary tales of what can happen when international legitimacy is lost.
In this essay, I summarize my past research on the incentives for international hierarchy, integrate the role of domestic interests into that theory, and explore the nature and role of international legitimacy in the study of world order. I then examine the Pax Americana and contrast this order with those found in the Caribbean and Middle East. In the final section I outline the changing incentives for cooperation between the United States and Europe, discuss the recent rise of the populist coalition in the United States, and suggest ways of addressing the current challenges to internationalism.
Rule and Resistance in World Politics
For almost four decades, the concept of anarchy has structured the study of international relations and has, supposedly, distinguished world politics from other realms of social interaction. Although the concept has been in use by scholars since the inception of the discipline, Footnote 1 it did not feature in the study of international relations until Kenneth Waltz identified it as the ordering principle of world politics. Footnote 2 Although subsequent scholars argued about the meaning and implications of anarchy, few quarreled with its central analytic position. Footnote 3 Although it is a truism that the system as a whole is anarchic, it is a fallacy of composition to assume that all—or all important—relations within that system are also anarchic. Rather, as I and others have argued, the international system is better understood as a set of relationships that vary by dyad from pure anarchy, as in some great power relations, to pure hierarchy, as in the classic overseas empires, with many forms in between. Footnote 4 If we accept this premise, then the clear demarcation between domestic and international politics dissolves. The legitimacy of rule by one state over others—or the authority of a dominant state over its subordinate states—may vary with implications that are just as important for international as domestic politics. Footnote 5
To understand variations in international hierarchy requires attention to at least three analytic components: the incentives for hierarchy, the interests of states as rooted in and refracted through domestic politics, and the legitimacy of their relations. It is the interaction of these factors that lead to the degree and nature of the international order. As below, interests affect the incentives for hierarchy, especially whether subordinate states will act opportunistically, and the same ideas and norms that underlie principled legitimacy will influence how peoples and states conceive their interests. Although we can draw comparative static predictions from any single factor, it is the complex interactions between them that determine the degree and nature of international order that we observe. Having developed some of these foundations elsewhere, I summarize them briefly here and focus on legitimacy. Footnote 6
Incentives for hierarchy vary by dyad. The gains from cooperation, and their division between dominant and subordinate states, is the most fundamental. Without some benefit from pooling resources and coordinating actions, there is no reason for either party to construct any hierarchy of any degree to manage their relations. In turn, the larger the benefits, the more likely some form of hierarchy is to emerge.
Given appropriate gains, states are also concerned by the potential for opportunism by both subordinate and dominant states. The expected costs of opportunism to the dominant state increase with the degree to which assets are specific to a relationship and decrease with hierarchy. The more dependent the dominant country is on the subordinate, the more defection or a lack of cooperation will affect it, and this necessitates a degree of control over the subordinate’s policies. The cost to the subordinate state of greater hierarchy is the loss of sovereignty or autonomy in decision-making.
Conversely, the subordinate state is concerned with opportunism or the abuse of authority by the dominant state, and the dominant state incurs governance costs in restricting its own freedom of action to induce the other to subordinate itself to its rule. As theorized about states more generally, Douglass North and Barry Weingast argue that rulers must tie their hands to commit not to overstep the authority granted to them by subordinates. Footnote 7 As the control of the dominant state over the subordinate increases with hierarchy, and its potential for abuse does so as well, these governance costs increase with greater hierarchy, limiting the extent of authority in equilibrium. In general, the greater the gains from cooperation, the more specific the assets at risk, and the lower the governance costs to the dominant state, the more hierarchical the relationship will be.
All of these incentives, in turn, are influenced by the policy preferences or interests of the dominant and subordinate states in international order. In addition to variations in hierarchy, it is important to recognize that different international orders have different distributional consequences—both within and between countries. As posited by Hedley Bull, any international order must provide the elementary goals of security against violence, assurances that promises, once made, will be kept, and confidence that possessions will not be subject to constant challenges without limit. Footnote 8 Within these goals, however, international orders vary in their content, some being more open or “liberal” in their rules, others being more closed and “mercantilist.” We need only compare the Pax Americana constructed by the United States in Western Europe and the Soviet Union’s informal empire in Eastern Europe after 1945 to see wide variation in form and substance. Footnote 9 As sets of rules, international orders affect individuals and groups in different ways, and these actors pursue their interests to the extent of their abilities, including legitimating the rule of some foreign country or resisting that rule. International order is not simply Pareto-improving cooperation, as often theorized in international relations, Footnote 10 but involves hard bargaining and winners and losers. To paraphrase Carl won Clausewitz, international order is the pursuit of politics by other means. Footnote 11
Policy preferences over different international orders follow from the desires of individuals, aggregated into groups and coalitions and refracted through domestic political institutions. Although I focus on the material interests of individuals as factors of production as a first cut, interests are also shaped by external threats—real or imagined—that affect individuals and motivate them to demand cooperation by their governments and by ideologies and ideas, some of which may embody normative ideals. Footnote 12
When the interests of the dominant and subordinate states are similar, hierarchy is less costly to both parties. The subordinate state can yield some sovereignty to the dominant state, knowing that the latter will act in ways it desires. Large and more favorable divisions of the gains from cooperation then secure the subordinate’s participation. The dominant state, in turn, trusts that the subordinate will not defect or otherwise act opportunistically. When the policy preferences of the dominant and subordinate states are dissimilar or far apart, hierarchy is more costly. The dominant state must assume that the subordinate state will act opportunistically if possible, and will insist on greater control over its policies or, in a word, greater hierarchy. The subordinate, in turn, must assume that the dominant state will seek to exploit its cooperation and turn outcomes to its own advantage. As a result, it requires greater constraints on the authority of the dominant state, which in turn create higher governance costs. The farther apart the policy preferences of the two states, the larger the gains from cooperation must be to sustain any hierarchy; at some point, there are likely no gains from cooperation that can bridge the policy divide and the two states will exist in purely anarchic relations.
The heterogeneity of policy preferences within each state also matter in important ways. The interests of individuals vary more or less in different societies, with broad consensus existing in some—as during the Cold War in the United States—and acute polarization prevailing in others, as in the current period of American politics. Domestic political institutions either exacerbate or mitigate these differences and express them as policy. When the policy preferences of both states are relatively homogenous, the incentives follow the “national interest” calculations as just outlined. When policy preferences are more heterogeneous, different international relations may follow. If the policy preferences of dominant state are heterogeneous, a minority might capture foreign policy (more likely in autocracies) and rule a subordinate despite the costs imposed on the broader society. Footnote 13 Conversely, when interests in the subordinate are heterogeneous, the dominant state may ally with a collaborationist elite, which must then govern autocratically and repressively. This characterized Soviet-East European relations during the Cold War and US-Caribbean and Middle Eastern relations, as described later. The greater the heterogeneity in policy preferences within states, the more likely hierarchy is to emerge even when it is suboptimal for one or both countries as a whole. Footnote 14
Finally, legitimacy transforms hierarchy into authority. All rulers seek to convert raw power (coercive ability) into authority. When successful, compliance is transformed from a response to threats and the coercive enforcement of rules into a duty or obligation in which subordinates surrender judgement and follow rules because they should. It is far less costly for rulers to police the behavior of subordinates (reduce opportunism) when the latter have accepted and possibly internalized the obligation to follow rules because they are rightful. Thus, in conjunction with incentives and interests, legitimacy plays a crucial role in establishing hierarchy and converting it into authority. Legitimacy rests on three complementary legs. Footnote 15 Some authorities at some times may depend more on one leg than another, but they form a tripod that, when lashed together, is more stable and can support more weight than any leg alone. Strategies of legitimation seek to cultivate legitimacy, and follow from each of these forms.
Performance (output) legitimacy is usually understood in the context of a social contract theory of authority. Footnote 16 Subordinates yield some measure of their autonomy in exchange for gains from cooperation enabled by the ruler and of benefit to them. In equilibrium, the ruler receives sufficient benefit from cooperation to enforce it, and subordinates receive sufficient value to compensate for the autonomy forsaken in complying with the necessary rules. At its core, performance legitimacy rests on a quid pro quo in which society accepts the restrictions of the ruler, and regards those restrictions as necessary or rightful to the extent they are necessary for cooperation. These considerations are captured in the incentives for hierarchy described above.
Underlying this exchange, in turn, are the interests of both the ruler and ruled. To create legitimacy, subordinates must want the type and level of order provided. The ruler might be “performing” at a high level by his own lights, but if subordinates prefer an order with different rules—perhaps one that redistributes greater income to the median voter—then little legitimacy will be produced. The ruler might choose to produce an order closer to the median preference, but then he receives fewer benefits from that order, at least in the short term, which then reduces his incentives to provide that order. In general, the further the distance between the interests of the ruler and the ruled, the less legitimate that ruler will be. Variation in interests is the primary driver of legitimacy within the cases below.
Procedural (input) legitimacy is defined by the correct following of established practices of decision-making. This holds for both ruler and rules. Was the ruler selected by the correct procedure, whether this be hereditary secession, anointment by some third party (e.g., the Pope or the Chinese emperor), or a democratic election? Violations of established practice call into question the legitimacy of rulers, whereas following the rules legitimates leaders, despite whatever personal qualities they may possess. In turn, was a rule adopted by correct procedure? Passed by a legislature and duly approved by the executive? If so, then it carries the presumption of appropriateness even though it may be ineffective or in conflict with other principles. This is, in effect, the core of Max Weber’s formal-legal approach to authority and legitimacy, but it is also consistent with tradition in conforming with existing practice. Footnote 17 In this view, procedures govern the appropriate process for adopting new rules, and when followed have the effect of legitimating the rule regardless of its intent or effect. Indeed, given that performance is often difficult to assess, procedures are often used as proxy even when it is outcomes that in some sense really matter. For this reason, disentangling performance and procedural legitimacy can be quite difficult.
In international politics, procedural legitimacy is of increasing importance. As world politics has become more institutionalized, procedure has become more central to the legitimacy of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), private transnational regulatory organizations, and more. Procedural legitimacy, however, has mostly played a constraining or inhibiting role in state-to-state hierarchy. There is no established procedure by which one state rules another, so there is, in turn, no criteria to assess whether a dominant state is following correct practice. Even state-to-state hierarchy, however, has become increasingly embedded in multilateralism with its procedures of consultation and collaboration that give subordinate states at least some say in how they are governed. Footnote 18 It is this need for procedural legitimacy that prompted the United States to request authorization from some multilateral body for every use of military force between 1989 and 2003, and it was its insistence on acting against Iraq without explicit authorization from the United Nations that led many to conclude that the 2003 war was illegitimate. Footnote 19
Principled legitimacy derives from shared values or norms through which rulers promote and subordinates accept a moral vision that justifies rule. Rulers may be deemed rightful because of religious status—descended from the Sun God, selected by a priesthood, etc.—or they may claim superior knowledge, virtue, or social status. Today, many NGOs have authority because of their principled standing, and they extend their authority by linking new programs to accepted principles, often in quite strategic and intentional ways. Footnote 20 Other authorities draw their legitimacy from science as an accepted body of knowledge or form of inquiry. Climate scientists, for instance, are authorities on global warming because of the prior acceptance by Western societies of “science” as the supreme form of knowledge. Similarly, in the case of states, the “race for space” can be interpreted as a competition for legitimacy through scientific achievement. Footnote 21 Principles may also condition other foundations of legitimacy. What constitutes an appropriate outcome or procedure is itself often defined in terms of underlying principles, once again making the legs of the tripod virtually inseparable. Footnote 22
For state-to-state hierarchy, however, current principles do not legitimate international hierarchy but, rather, limit the authority of the superordinate state. The broad acceptance of the principle of state sovereignty implies ipso facto that the rule of one state over another is generally illegitimate. Footnote 23 This precludes empire, especially of the overseas form, in which one ethnically distinct polity governs another. It also forces states to adopt euphemisms to obscure the reality of rule, with scholars writing of hegemony as leadership and policy makers describing the United States as the “indispensable nation” to mask its international authority. As new principles are adopted, however, what is legitimate or not can change with surprising rapidity. As liberal principles of human equality and dignity spread, slavery, race-based laws, and empire quickly became illegitimate. Footnote 24 The responsibility to protect (R2P), in turn, may challenge the principle of sovereignty. Footnote 25
Performance, procedural, and principled legitimacy are mutually reinforcing. “Good” outcomes are often judged by the procedures and principles employed in their production, and consistently “poor” outcomes will call otherwise accepted procedures and principles into doubt. Even efficient procedures and welfare-improving outcomes that conflict with shared principles will likely be judged as illegitimate. For these reasons, actors seek to enhance their legitimacy using whatever raw materials and tools they have available, arbitraging between different sources and leveraging strengths on one dimension to offset weaknesses on another. The sources of legitimacy, as a result, are tightly bound up with one another, difficult to separate, and typically impossible to identify in their separate effects. As the following cases suggest, the foundations of legitimacy in international relations appear to move together—or not at all.
Incentives for hierarchy, interests, and legitimacy combine to produce particular, rule-based, and authoritative social orders. International order can, of course, emerge under anarchy through reciprocity, negotiated institutions, or widely held social norms. Footnote 26 None of these mechanisms, however, lead directly to an authoritative order in which one actor—the dominant state—legitimately sets and enforces rules over others. Authoritative international orders resemble domestic orders. When incentives for hierarchy exist, the interests of dominant and subordinate states are not too distant, and a measure of legitimacy exists, authoritative international orders are possible and, relative to other types of international orders, likely to be more robust and efficient in producing the cooperation on which that authority itself rests.
Absent legitimacy, however, any international order and especially the dominant state that underlies it is likely to encounter resistance from subordinates who fail to benefit given their policy preferences. Without legitimacy, the dominant state cannot rely on obligation to bolster compliance, but must use coercion to impose its will on others. This breeds further resistance and even resentments against the power of the dominant state, creating vicious cycles of repression and resistance. Anti-Americanism in Latin America in the twentieth century and in the Middle East today is one manifestation of such resistance, as is non-compliance and even violence in the form of insurgencies and terrorism. Resistance in any form makes it harder for the dominant state to accomplish its goals in world politics and undermines international order.
US Rule in World Politics
Since 1945, the United States has acquired and exercised a measure of authority over other states. This authority has been limited to certain policy areas—largely those dealing with international security and flows of goods and capital between countries—and certain countries, mostly in Europe and Northeast Asia. This authority, in turn, was never as broadly accepted or as legitimate as that found within liberal democratic states; though accepted by many, it is still denied or rejected by not insignificant numbers of citizens within each subordinate country who prefer autonomy or sovereignty in their security and economic relations. Nonetheless, despite this opposition, in some issue areas and some countries the United States has enjoyed a substantial measure of legitimacy and therefore authority. This “Western” system, misnamed because it additionally includes at least Japan and South Korea, is also known as the Pax Americana, and I will use these terms interchangeably. At the same time, the United States continues to interact with other states under hierarchy but without authority. It has ruled through collaborationist elites in the states bordering on the Caribbean, but it lacks broad-based legitimacy even in those countries and certainly in most of South America. Its more recent attempt to extend its rule to the Middle East is supported again by collaborationist elites, but also lacks popular support. Yet the United States today still possesses more authority over more states and peoples than any other country in history—with the possible exceptions of the Roman and British empires.
The United States and the Pax Americana
The Pax Americana, limited to security and international economic affairs and to Western Europe and Northeast Asia, has provided internal and external political stability, intra- and interstate peace, and generalized prosperity for subordinates, producing substantial international order. Footnote 27 For scholars of international relations, this order has been our muse, if you will, our baseline for international cooperation around which we have built many general theories. Footnote 28 By emphasizing its apparent voluntarism, however, we ignore the important role of legitimacy and authority in its success. Geir Lundestad famously highlighted this voluntarism within hierarchy in his description of the Pax Americana as an “empire by invitation.” Footnote 29 To fully understand this order, we need to recover the often invisible authority at its core.
Briefly, there were large gains from postwar cooperation between the United States and what are euphemistically known as its allies. Collective security through the US nuclear umbrella and NATO both deterred the possibly expansionist Soviet Union and provided a vehicle for reintegrating Germany into Europe. This dual move required a forward-based defense strategy. Aimed to protect Europe at the intra-German border, without the autonomous rearmament of Germany itself, the United States deployed troops to make credible its commitment and substitute for German defense capabilities. In the famous words of Lord Ismay, the first Secretary General of NATO, this cooperation aimed to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Footnote 30 US troops at the intra-German border, however, created site-specific assets that required a degree of control or hierarchy over German foreign policy, lest the Socialists pursue the neutral foreign policy they preferred and Germans consent to that control (legitimacy). The limited sovereignty of the German state was the result, first under the occupation and later under international agreements. A similar bargain emerged in Northeast Asia, with the defense perimeter linking Japan (Okinawa), the Philippines, and Guam, with island bases being highly site specific. Japan possessed only limited sovereignty over its foreign policy, with some restrictions remaining today through its constitutional provision limiting its military to self-defense. Though nominally independent, the Philippines remained an informal empire of the United States, and Guam, of course, remains a US possession.
Similarly, free trade created large gains from cooperation and economic interdependence between the United States, Europe, and Northeast Asia. As specialization deepened, and foreign direct investment expanded as well, site- and industry-specific assets grew, requiring new rules to govern international exchange. Here, too, the United States asserted a degree of authority embedded in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Both security and economic cooperation called for at least a measure of hierarchy.
The building of this hierarchy, in turn, was facilitated by a convergence of interests between the United States and its allies. In the United States, greater cooperation was desired by a new internationalist coalition of business and the military that consolidated its political dominance during World War II and was willing to expend the resources necessary to produce a new international order. Economically supreme given its expansion during the war and near lack of competition from war-devastated industries abroad, US business eschewed its pre-war protectionism and turned outward to conquer new international markets. Likewise, the United States emerged from the war with what President Dwight Eisenhower later called a military-industrial complex that both facilitated and advocated for a greater international presence. Footnote 31 These forces came together in the “Eastern Establishment” that triumphed over the remaining isolationists and sustained internationalism in the following decades—even after the Cold War consensus otherwise broke down during the Vietnam War (discussed later). Footnote 32
The interests of its subordinates, in turn, were unusually plastic or malleable after the war and were easily reshaped to conform with the US-led order. Footnote 33 With substantial industrial capacity destroyed by the fighting, and old elites delegitimated by the war itself and especially by defeat, there were few “vested interests” in society, or at least few interests that had the means and the will to fight to regain their lost political power. Footnote 34 The United States dangled the attraction of participating in an open international economy before European and Asia industrialists, sidelined any residual militarists, and actively intervened—mostly covertly—to prevent communists from winning elections in France and Italy. Footnote 35 Faced with some opposition from the left in both Europe and Japan, the United States promoted and ruled through new elites drawn from among moderate conservatives—most notably Konrad Adenauer in Germany and Yoshida Shigeru in Japan. Footnote 36 These moves reshaped the domestic political economies of its allies and created new interests dependent on the US-led order. Benefiting from the lower defense expenditures permitted by the US security umbrella, and dependent on access to the US market, these new interests became rapidly vested in supporting and preserving the Pax Americana. Through export-led growth, industries that enjoyed a comparative advantage in international markets grew more rapidly than their comparatively disadvantaged counterparts, increasing their political clout and becoming wedded to the new internationally liberal economic policies. The initial direction of the postwar order created by the United States became self-enforcing by restructuring the domestic political economies of its subordinate states. In this way, the interests of the United States and its subordinates converged in ways that made US hierarchy compatible with democracy.
The peace and prosperity engendered by the Pax Americana combined to legitimate US rule, producing at least a measure of authority. Performance legitimacy was reinforced by a principled narrative of liberalism and open markets. Footnote 37 The social plasticity resulting from the war helped here as well. With nationalist narratives delegitimated, a liberal internationalism that promoted capitalism, democracy, and progress could more easily take hold. Around this core of liberalism was wrapped a further narrative of the “West” as a common identity with a constructed but shared history. Footnote 38 Though somewhat less relevant, this narrative even worked in the case of Japan, which had long admired the West and emulated its beliefs, practices, and even fashions—never more deeply than after defeat. Footnote 39 In conjunction with the moderate conservatives promoted by the United States, these liberal and Western narratives provided a moral vision that welded together the so-called allies.
Finally, the Pax Americana was formed in a unique experiment of governance. There were few, if any, established procedures by which one state could rule others. Having forsaken formal empire, what were the meta-rules or constitutional provisions that would guide the creation and maintenance of an empire by invitation? Even the principle that all states are or should be sovereign was relatively new. Footnote 40 For this reason, procedural legitimacy did not figure prominently in the early years of US authority. Over time, however, procedures were elaborated that have come to play an important role in legitimating US authority. Sovereignty is one such institution that limits what the United States can and cannot do legitimately. Multilateralism is a second and perhaps more important institution, at least in relations with Europe and extending more broadly in economic governance. Footnote 41 Grounded in sovereignty, multilateralism is a procedural institution that grants subordinate states a formal voice over policies of the United States. Multilateralism does not prevent the United States from acting in its self-defined interests when necessary, as proven by the Iraq War, but it aggregates the voices of subordinate states and establishes “red lines” that, when crossed, allow subordinates to coordinate their assessments of whether an action is or is not legitimate. Footnote 42 Though beginning with performance and principled legitimacy, procedural legitimacy has become increasingly important in assessing US rule in recent decades.
In summary, then, all three bases of legitimacy have been lashed together to create and sustain US authority in the postwar era. In conjunction with incentives and convergent interests, US legitimacy transformed hierarchy into the authoritative international order that we have known as the Pax Americana, one of the most effective regional orders in history. It is this legitimacy that is now under threat.
The United States, Caribbean Basin, and Middle East
By contrast with the Pax Americana, the United States has ruled the Caribbean Basin since before 1898 and has sought to rule the Middle East since the 1930s without broad legitimacy. It has imposed hierarchy coercively and governed through collaborationist elites. In turn, resistance has been rife, spurring anti-Americanism in its mildest form and violence in its most severe. Such dissent has required the United States to intervene militarily to quash opponents and bolster client regimes, creating vicious cycles of repression and resistance. Although the two regions differ in their particulars, the broad patterns are similar. Footnote 43 If the Pax Americana is the muse of international relations scholars, these are the ignored regional orders—perhaps because of their far less happy consequences.
In both the Caribbean and Middle East, the gains from cooperation with the United States were not large, at least compared with postwar Europe and Northeast Asia. In the Caribbean, the previous order created by the European empires was not necessarily failing, with the possible exception of Spain in Cuba, and in any event the United States provided little additional security for the region, mostly mediating outstanding territorial disputes. In the Middle East, especially in the early years, the United States also contributed little beyond the old imperial order. These modest gains from cooperation imply there are few benefits to share between the United States and its subordinates and few ways to induce local states to give up their sovereignty.
The United States has pursued hierarchies in both regions, instead, largely to protect site-specific assets and investments by its nationals. In the Caribbean, the United States was concerned with control over any transisthmian canal and with securing its investments in plantation agriculture, resource extraction, and infrastructure. Similar investments in the past had required formal colonialism, but the United States was able to protect its assets mostly through informal empires. Footnote 44 In the Middle East, oil has been the primary site-specific asset at risk, along with strategic choke points through which that oil must pass on its way to market (the Suez Canal, straits of Hormuz). With the exclusion of the Soviet Union from Iran and Britain’s withdrawal east of Suez, the United States has also eschewed empire; once US dominance was established in the region, it relied on more informal forms of hierarchy. In both regions, however, high site-specific assets required some measure of political control by the United States and, once in place, hierarchy permitted greater investments in yet more site-specific assets over time.
The interests of the US traders and investors propelling hierarchy, however, and the interests of the majorities in both regions were and remain quite different. Societies in both regions suffer from high inequality, with economic wealth and political power concentrated in narrow and rigid elites. If given a chance, the masses would likely push for wealth and land redistribution. Under threat from their own populations, the elites govern autocratically and often repressively. Concerned mostly with the security of its own site-specific assets and subsequent investments, and opposed to the economic populism of the majority populations, the United States has allied itself with the elites across both regions. In a devil’s pact, so to speak, it has exchanged guarantees of external and especially internal security against perceived political opponents of these elite-based regimes for protection and control of its site-specific assets. In essence, the United States governs indirectly through elites who are dependent on Washington for their political survival, and gets protection for its investments in return. It follows that the United States must intervene when necessary to protect its client regimes from threats both external and internal.
Opposed to the majorities of citizens, however, the United States—not surprisingly—has been unable to build broad legitimacy in either region. Although elites may view the exchange with the United States as rightful and legitimate, the masses do not. Performance is biased. The security provided by the United States mostly protects the elites from their own people. Indeed, from the perspective of the majority in each society, the United States is not providing valuable services but is often the primary threat to their well-being, at least compared to any ideal world in which wealth and power are distributed in more egalitarian ways. Similarly, the United States has eschewed multilateralism and asserted the right to intervene at will, undermining any procedural legitimacy it might have otherwise accrued. Finally, the principled narrative of liberalism and democracy that works in Europe rings hollow, even hypocritical, to citizens in both regions. Despite lip service to democracy, even by the neoconservatives who promoted the Iraq War or President Barack Obama during the Arab Spring, when push comes to shove the United States ends up backing its autocratic clients. Even more so, the “Western” values emphasized in uniting the North Atlantic fail to resonate and indeed even exclude indigenous peoples in the Americas and Muslims in the Middle East. The strategies of legitimation that worked in the Pax Americana are either inapplicable in the Caribbean and Middle East or actually counter-productive.
In the absence of legitimacy, and under rule distant from their policy preferences, subordinate peoples resist when and how they can. Although relatively quiescent at present, anti-Americanism has been prevalent throughout Latin America for more than a century. As in Venezuela today, it can still be mobilized by populist regimes to bolster their domestic support. Leftist rebels have periodically challenged—sometimes successfully—local regimes and the United States in Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1959), the Dominican Republic (1965), El Salvador (1979), and Nicaragua (1979), requiring direct or indirect intervention from Washington. In the Middle East, anti-Americanism is also widespread. Iran is the clearest example, where chants of “Death to America” continue to ring out during demonstrations. But anti-Americanism is also a problem even in countries like Jordan where the United States secures some political support, but only from political moderates fearful of even more extreme opponents. Footnote 45 Violent resistance in the form of transnational terrorism has plagued the United States itself since the 1970s, when airplanes were routinely hijacked, through the attacks of 9/11 and beyond. The United States, in turn, has fought three major wars in the region since 1990 to protect its clients and suppress terrorists, and has conducted many more military operations of a lesser nature for the same ends. The vicious cycle of repression and resistance is in full swing.
The contrast with the Pax Americana is stark—and challenges notions of international cooperation derived from that experience. As the legitimacy of US hierarchy in Europe and Northeast Asia decays, as I explain later, I am not suggesting those regions will come to resemble the Caribbean or Middle East. The gaps in preferences between the United States and the latter are much larger than those with Europe or Northeast Asia are likely to be in the foreseeable future. Deeply embedded into the Pax Americana, the domestic societies of Europe and Northeast Asia have been reconfigured in ways that align their preferences with those of many Americans. Nonetheless, the Caribbean and the Middle East suggest what can happen in the absence of legitimate rule.
Threats to International Legitimacy
The international legitimacy of the United States is fraying. The ties that bind the United States to Europe and Northeast Asia have not snapped yet, although as a social construct dependent on the beliefs of many individuals in subordinate countries, legitimacy can be subject to rapid changes in attitudes. The risk of a major break has been increasing for decades. The fraying of US international legitimacy is most evident—and important—in its relations with Europe. With China’s rise and the regional instability generated by North Korea, Japan and South Korea remain closer to the United States. Footnote 46 The strain on the Pax Americana arises from two sources: the changing interests of the United States and Europe after the Cold War and the recent populist challenge to the dominant internationalist coalition within the United States. Although we are often distracted by the latest presidential tweet, neither of these are directly related to President Donald J. Trump. He is the manifestation of these challenges, not their cause. As I explain later, some of his personal characteristics may exacerbate the threats to legitimacy, but I have never put much stock in great men theories of politics—and do not believe we should do so now.
Americans Are from Mars, Europeans Are from Venus Footnote 47
The interests of the United States and Europe have been slowly drifting apart since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The disintegration of the Soviet Union dramatically reduced the gains from security cooperation for both Western Europe and the United States. No longer did the allies on either side of the Atlantic need to fear Soviet tanks pouring through the Fulda gap. By the early 1990s, the security situation for the major Western European states changed dramatically for the better and rendered the US security umbrella less relevant. Footnote 48
At the same time, the United States took advantage of its new unipolarity to expand its role as protector of the political and territorial status quo in the Middle East. As already related, the United States had long played a role in the region. But as the Soviet Union began to fracture, President George H.W. Bush seized upon Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait to deepen the US relationship with the conservative monarchies and develop a permanent military presence in the Persian Gulf. The New World Order, as President Bush called it, was nothing if not an attempt to expand and solidify US hierarchy in the Middle East.
Though Europe is the primary beneficiary of Middle East oil, and followed the United States into the Persian Gulf War of 1991, it does not share the newfound ambition of Washington in the region. Indeed, in the most dramatic break, the administration of President George W. Bush was outraged when “old Europe,” as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called it, “defied” the United States—an odd term if, in fact, the previous relationship was one of anarchy—and would not follow it into the Iraq War of 2003. The blowback from US attempts to expand its rule in the Middle East also disproportionately affects Europe. As Islam has emerged as the primary vehicle of political resistance, some members of Europe’s large but poorly integrated Muslim community have become radicalized and are carrying out terrorist attacks at home, a development from which the United States has been somewhat but not entirely immune. As the proxy wars between US client Saudi Arabia on the one hand, and Iran, Qatar, and sometimes Russia on the other, play themselves out in Syria and elsewhere in North Africa, Footnote 49 Europe has also had to cope with an influx of refugees for which the United States has absolved itself of responsibility. Though Europe has not yet forged an independent strategy for dealing with the conflict sweeping the Middle East, perhaps reflecting a residual dependence on the US security umbrella, the interests of the United States and its subordinates are diverging in ways that render cooperation and US authority over Europe quite problematic.
Overall, the United States and Europe no longer see eye-to-eye nor necessarily share close geopolitical and strategic interests. This difference is sometimes denigrated in the United States as a reluctance by Europeans to use military force—thus the widely discussed phrase coined by Robert Kagan in the subtitle for this section. The United States built an enormous military capability during the Cold War and has continued to invest in this capacity—and having built a hammer, every problem looks like it can be solved with more nails. Without a similar capacity, Europe pursues more diplomatic and economic solutions—even in the face of Russian revanchism in its “near abroad” and especially Ukraine. Indeed, having solved its greatest political problems of the twentieth century through union, Europe’s natural inclination is one of inclusion and community-building. But the differences go beyond strategy and reflect major changes in interests that reduce the gains for cooperation and weaken the incentives for the United States to invest in hierarchy and for the Europeans to accept it.
Populism and Economic Nationalism
The second major challenge to US legitimacy is the rise of populism within the United States itself. Populism is the label we have given to a newly mobilized constituency that has been economically disadvantaged by globalization and technological change, as well as changing social norms. Populists generally oppose freer trade and immigration and believe the current political system is largely broken and must be transformed if it is to meet their needs. In both of these central tenets, populism threatens the internationalist coalition that has dominated US foreign policy since at least World War II. Footnote 50
Central to US foreign policy over the last eight decades has been a domestic consensus on the need for engaged international leadership. Most Americans recognize that this requires them to sometimes compromise their own “national” interests, accept constraints on their international freedom of action, and invest in acquiring authority by cultivating legitimacy from subordinates. There were, of course, some significant disagreements. The Vietnam War was a major challenge to this consensus, especially in undermining the notion that there could be a single (anti-communist) national interest. Yet even defeat in Vietnam did not erode the belief that the United States needed to lead the international community. Soon thereafter, President Jimmy Carter redefined liberalism to champion international human rights and proclaimed that the United States would use force to defend its interests in the Persian Gulf, and President Ronald Reagan broke with détente, pursuing “peace through strength” and taking the United States into a second Cold War before ultimately reconciling with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Out of these disagreements, liberals generally grew more skeptical about the utility of military force as an instrument of foreign policy, while conservatives became more skeptical about the value of multilateralism, which they saw as an undue constraint on US freedom of action. Despite these disagreements, the various factions continued to agree that the United States was the “indispensable nation,” as then Secretary of State Madeline Albright termed it. Footnote 51 Over the longer sweep of history, the differences pale by comparison to the underlying agreement. It was this internationalist consensus—and Europe’s essential agreement on the special role and responsibilities of the United States Footnote 52 —that allowed Washington to invest in the order that made its hierarchies possible and legitimate.
Though scholars debate the notion of critical elections, the surprise triumph of President Trump in November 2016 represents a significant shift in the coalitional basis of the Republican Party. Footnote 53 For several decades, both major parties in the United States had largely ignored an important and increasingly disaffected constituency of low-skilled, largely white workers harmed by the forces of technological change and globalization. Men with a high school education or less saw their real wages peak in 1972 and fall by 10 percent or more by 2012. Men with a post-graduate degree saw their real wages grow by almost 200 percent over the same period. Footnote 54 As a group, these disadvantaged workers flipped from party to party, first as Reagan democrats, then supporting Clinton’s centrism as he “felt their pain.” Footnote 55 As American politics became more polarized and each party focused on its base, this constituency was mostly left behind both economically and politically. Although populism is complex and driven by divides on race, gender, and other social issues, there is a legitimate economic grievance at its heart.
The genius of Trump as a campaigner was to mobilize white, less educated workers and wed them to traditional values voters in the existing Republican coalition around a vision of a halcyon past. This coalition was drawn in by the “us versus them” rhetoric of Trump’s campaign, and was united in opposition to globalization, multiculturalism, and coastal elites. Trump was instrumental in forging this coalition, but its raw materials—if you will—were lying around for any political entrepreneur to pick up. Whether Trump saw the strategic possibilities before others, was simply the candidate from a field of 17 who happened to articulate a position that resonated with the members of this coalition, or responded to applause from his audiences and fashioned his platform in response is almost irrelevant. If not Trump, then someone else would have eventually identified the same political opportunity. Having mobilized this constituency and formed a new coalition at the heart of the party, however, it is unlikely to be broken apart quickly or easily. Trump may be the angry voice of America First, but he is merely the front man for this new alignment of interests in the Republican party and American politics more generally.
Populism almost everywhere has two key tenets, both fully embraced by President Trump. First is a new economic nationalism that opposes the free movement of goods and people around the globe. In the United States and elsewhere in the developed world, this economic nationalism embodies the interests of low-skilled workers, the scarce factor of production. Limiting both imports and immigrants would increase production of labor-intensive goods at home and increase real incomes for these otherwise disadvantaged workers. Most labor displacement has likely happened in response to technological innovation, but some portion (estimated to be 25–33%) of the decline in real wages for low-skilled workers can be attributed to globalization. Footnote 56 In the early years of the Pax Americana trade liberalization was relatively gradual and cushioned by safeguards and trade adjustment assistance to displaced workers. John Ruggie famously described this mix of liberalization and social welfare spending as “embedded liberalism,” a political deal that permitted freer trade while protecting workers and sustaining a consensus in favor of international economic openness. Footnote 57 After the Tokyo Round tariff cuts of the late 1970s, globalization began to pick up in earnest. At about the same time, under President Reagan, the United States began cutting its social safety net, reducing protections for workers, and undermining labor unions. As a result, low-skilled workers became both more exposed and more vulnerable almost simultaneously. Yet the leadership of neither major political party sought to address the plight of these voters.
President Trump has consistently opposed globalization. As a candidate, he championed a “made in America” industrial policy, threatened to renegotiate NAFTA to create a better deal for US workers, and promised to reduce both legal and illegal immigration—most famously in his pledge to build a “big beautiful wall” on the Southern border of the United States and have Mexico pay for it. One of his first acts as president was to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free trade agreement negotiated by his predecessor. Although it remains unclear just how much of the Trump platform will be transformed into action, he has positioned himself as the most protectionist president since Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930.
Second, populism also challenges elites—the “establishment”—and institutions at home and abroad. For populists, the political system is not working for them and, thus, must be dramatically reformed or even overthrown. After decades of economic decline while being largely ignored by both parties, a good many low-skilled workers are ready to blow the system up. Although misdirected in its particular audience, candidate Trump famously captured this sentiment in his question to black and Hispanic voters (however, asked to a largely non-Hispanic white audience): in voting for him, “what do you have to lose?” Footnote 58
The attack on the establishment is reflected in Trump’s foreign policy. Though conservatives have been skeptical about multilateralism in the past, President Trump and his supporters appear to hold international institutions and agreements almost in contempt. Accordingly, the president has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accords, even though the US commitment could be complied with relatively easily. After questioning our commitment to NATO—later, reluctantly reaffirmed—he has also isolated the United States at the NATO, G-7, and G-20 summit meetings. More recently, he has once again threatened to withdraw from NAFTA, actually withdrawn from UNESCO, and refused to certify Iran’s compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the “Iran agreement,” restricting its nuclear program), setting in motion the possible collapse of that agreement. In his inaugural address to the United Nations in September, President Trump repeatedly appealed to sovereignty as the guiding principle of his foreign policy and international relations more generally. Attacking multilateralism is not entirely new, of course. The willingness of President George W. Bush to invade Iraq without the explicit consent of the United Nations caused many to judge that an illegitimate war. But as in his disruption of domestic institutions and norms, President Trump appears to regard disruption of the procedural limits of multilateralism as a useful end in itself or, at least, a useful bargaining tool. Footnote 59
Populism as embraced by President Trump threatens to undermine the international legitimacy of the United States. The assault on procedural legitimacy was just noted. The new president and his constituents also appear willing to forfeit performance legitimacy for more “wins” for the United States. In a more zero-sum view of world politics, President Trump at least says he wants to shift the gains from cooperation in favor of Americans. Footnote 60 In this transactional mode, President Trump threatens to undermine performance legitimacy. At the same time, he further undermines this legitimacy by questioning commitments to established institutions like NATO and NAFTA. Though he has, on reflection, later affirmed some of these commitments, the mere fact they were publicly questioned raises doubts in allies and fosters new concerns about whether the United States will honor its commitments when called upon to do so in the future. As Chancellor Angela Merkel remarked after her first meeting with President Trump, Europe may need “to take our fate into our own hands.” Footnote 61
Finally, as implied in his embrace of the American First slogan, the president is not attempting to craft a narrative or moral vision that would give the United States a principled legitimacy in foreign affairs. Footnote 62 It is here, perhaps, that the attributes of Trump as an individual, as opposed to his supporters, make the most difference. Groups of individual voters, no matter how united, do not craft political narratives. Rather, this is a task for political entrepreneurs. Trump’s narrative is one of disruption, the need to shake up a system that is moving against his supporters. But this is largely a negative rather than a positive message. As part of his emerging narrative—perhaps reflecting his personal values—is also an authoritarian streak in which he maintains that he alone can fix America’s problems. Accordingly, he has actively undermined the liberal narrative of past administrations by praising autocrats like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and criticizing American institutions even while abroad, including not only the media but his own intelligence agencies. He has also called out past US misdeeds, as when in defending President Putin he stated that the United States has not always acted honorably either, asking “Well, you think our country is so innocent?” Footnote 63 It is, of course, not unusual to criticize US foreign policy, even for presidents. But by placing the United States on a moral par with Russia, the president forfeits any claim to principled legitimacy for the country he leads.
As the “great disrupter,” the president appears to be relatively successful. What he has not done, however, is craft a positive narrative that might appeal to non-Americans or those outside of his political coalition at home. To the extent that President Trump has articulated a positive narrative, it has focused on the defense of the West against the rest, by which he appears to mean the Muslim world. In a recent speech in Poland in July, this was his most prominent theme, as indicated by his claim that “the fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.” Footnote 64 This us-against-them posture may rally his base in the United States, and perhaps nationalists in Europe, but it does little to reassure subordinates about US intentions.
As suggested by the cases of the Caribbean and Middle East, legitimacy has never been the only or even the primary goal of US foreign policy, and perhaps it should not be, though the long-term consequences of broad anti-Americanism are worrisome. Nonetheless, what is remarkable about President Trump’s foreign policy is its lack of concern for international legitimacy and his active and, one must assume, intentional efforts to undermine what legitimacy the country has carried over from the past. As a conservative commentator for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation concluded about the G-20 summit, President Trump has “managed to diminish his nation and confuse and alienate his allies. He will cede . . . power to China and Russia—two authoritarian states that will forge a very different set of rules for the 21st century. Some will cheer the decline of America, but I think we’ll miss it when it is gone.” Footnote 65
Consequences
The United States “won” the Cold War not because it alone was more powerful and could deter the Soviet Union, but because it was backed by a solid phalanx of subordinates who augmented its economic and military capabilities. By one estimate on the eve of the end of the Cold War, the ratio of US GDP relative to that of the Soviet Union was 1.8, not enough to establish clear superiority. Yet the United States and its allies dominated the Soviet Union and its immediate allies by a ratio 2.9, and the United States and all its partners dominated the Soviet Union and all its partners by a ratio of 3.3. Footnote 66 This bandwagoning with the United States is sometimes explained by the fact it did not threaten others or by its liberal nature. Footnote 67 Such explanations are likely correct, but do not go far enough. Common interests and liberalism permitted the United States to acquire international authority, but it was that authority itself that allowed Washington to consolidate the Western alliance into a coherent and effective entity in the struggle against the Soviet Union.
More generally, though material capabilities are necessary to protect subordinates and enforce discipline, authority is not a simple function of power as traditionally conceived in international relations. Rather, authority can augment substantially the influence that comes from national wealth. In a type of “hegemonic afterglow,” for example, authority can endure long after national capabilities have waned. Footnote 68 This was true for Britain and its empire, allowing it to lead the international economy for decades after the rise of the United States and Germany. This was also true as US power declined after the 1970s. Its allies remained supporters of the US order, Footnote 69 and together a more powerful United States, Europe, and Japan eventually defeated the Soviet Union despite the decline in US capabilities. Authority matters.
In worrying about the decline of US legitimacy in Europe and Northeast Asia, where it has been strongest, I am not concerned that relations will devolve into those found in the Caribbean or the Middle East. Though interests are moving further apart, they are unlikely to reach the extremes that have blocked legitimacy and stimulated sometimes violent resistance in those regions. Rather, like James Scott’s everyday acts of peasant resistance, Footnote 70 European resistance is more likely to take the form of non-participation, as in the Iraq War. Yet this too is important. Without European support the United States will be poorly positioned to deal with the emerging challenges of the twenty-first century. A rising China, a nuclear North Korea, and terrorism are all more easily addressed with an array of subordinates willing to follow the US lead than by Washington alone.
Conclusion: What Is to Be Done?
We cannot hope to roll back time to the good old days when the Cold War united the United States and Europe as well as Americans of all political persuasions. To sustain its international legitimacy and authority, the United States needs to make two new bargains—new New Deals, if you will—one at home, one abroad. These deals, if made, might resuscitate the authority of the United States over Europe and Northeast Asia. They would have the extra payoff of possibly expanding US authority in other regions as well. Footnote 71
First, the United States must renegotiate its relationship with Europe and other partners. This does not mean cutting better deals for the United States as envisioned by President Trump—quite the opposite, in fact. As US and European interests drift apart, the United States must share even more of its gains from cooperation with its allies. This holds for subordinates and potential subordinates in other regions as well. There, the United States may need not only to share the gains from cooperation more broadly but also ensure that they are distributed more equitably within countries.
Given the conflicting interests, moreover, the United States also needs to further constrain its potential for opportunism. It should not seek to break the fetters of multilateralism. Rather, it needs to tie its own hands more tightly than ever to demonstrate to the Europeans and others that it will not abuse the authority they grant it. The unilateralism of the Iraq War and, later, the hostility to international institutions of the Trump administration is exactly the wrong response. To lead requires followers—and that requires leading others where they want to go. We might debate how best to check and balance US international power, but some such fetters are necessary to strengthen its fraying legitimacy.
Second, the United States must address the distributional effects of globalization and technological change that have fueled populism at home. We are now in a human-capital intensive economy in which the rewards go to the highly educated. Many of the less-skilled workers in the United States are older white males, some of whom may hold views on race and gender that conflict with those of the more highly educated. It is too easy, however, to dismiss those disadvantaged by the modern economy as racist, misogynist holdovers from an industrial past. To rebuild domestic support for internationalism, prevent the gap in interests with Europe from growing wider, and sustain international legitimacy, the winners from globalization must share their gains with those who lose from freer trade. There are many ways of doing this, and again we might debate how those advantaged by the human-capital intensive economy can best share their gains with those harmed by greater international economic integration. That we need a re-embedded liberalism seems obvious, even if how to create this is not. Failing to redistribute the gains, however, simply leaves a disgruntled and disenfranchised constituency for some demagogue to mobilize in an anti-systemic, potentially undemocratic, and certainly isolationist program. Without domestic support for US international leadership, the Pax Americana under which we have lived and prospered for so long will be lost forever.
