foreign policy assignment

Foreign Policy: War & Peace and Everything In Between

Lesson plan.

Students learn what foreign policy means. First, they learn the distinction between foreign and domestic policy. Then they find out what role the executive branch plays in foreign policy and the primary tools it uses: foreign aid, the military, and treaties. In addition, students learn how foreign policy power is shared with the legislative branch.

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Teacher Resources

Get access to lesson plans, teacher guides, student handouts, and other teaching materials.

• Foreign Policy_Student Docs.pdf
• Foreign Policy_Teacher Guide.pdf

I find the materials so engaging, relevant, and easy to understand – I now use iCivics as a central resource, and use the textbook as a supplemental tool. The games are invaluable for applying the concepts we learn in class. My seniors LOVE iCivics.

Lynna Landry , AP US History & Government / Economics Teacher and Department Chair, California

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17.2 Foreign Policy Instruments

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Describe the outputs of broadly focused U.S. foreign policy
• Describe the outputs of sharply focused U.S. foreign policy
• Analyze the role of Congress in foreign policy

The decisions or outputs of U.S. foreign policy vary from presidential directives about conducting drone strikes to the size of the overall foreign relations budget passed by Congress, and from presidential summits with other heads of state to U.S. views of new policies considered in the UN Security Council. In this section, we consider the outputs of foreign policy produced by the U.S. government, beginning with broadly focused decisions and then discussing more sharply focused strategies. Drawing this distinction brings some clarity to the array of different policy outcomes in foreign policy. Broadly focused decisions typically take longer to formalize, bring in more actors in the United States and abroad, require more resources to carry out, are harder to reverse, and hence tend to have a lasting impact. Sharply focused outputs tend to be processed quickly, are often unilateral moves by the president, have a shorter time horizon, are easier for subsequent decision-makers to reverse, and hence do not usually have so lasting an impact as broadly focused foreign policy outputs.

BROADLY FOCUSED FOREIGN POLICY OUTPUTS

Broadly focused foreign policy outputs not only span multiple topics and organizations, but they also typically require large-scale spending and take longer to implement than sharply focused outputs. In the realm of broadly focused outputs, we will consider public laws, the periodic reauthorization of the foreign policy agencies, the foreign policy budget, international agreements, and the appointment process for new executive officials and ambassadors.

Public Laws

When we talk about new laws enacted by Congress and the president, we are referring to public laws . Public laws, sometimes called statutes, are policies that affect more than a single individual. All policies enacted by Congress and the president are public laws, except for a few dozen each year. They differ from private laws , which require some sort of action or payment by a specific individual or individuals named in the law.

Many statutes affect what the government can do in the foreign policy realm, including the National Security Act , the Patriot Act , the Homeland Security Act , and the War Powers Resolution . The National Security Act governs the way the government shares and stores information, while the Patriot Act (passed immediately after 9/11) clarifies what the government may do in collecting information about people in the name of protecting the country. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 authorized the creation of a massive new federal agency, the Department of Homeland Security, consolidating powers that had been under the jurisdiction of several different agencies. Their earlier lack of coordination may have prevented the United States from recognizing warning signs of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The War Powers Resolution was passed in 1973 by a congressional override of President Richard Nixon’s veto. The bill was Congress’s attempt to reassert itself in war-making. Congress has the power to declare war, but it had not formally done so since Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II. Yet the United States had entered several wars since that time, including in Korea, in Vietnam, and in focused military campaigns such as the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. The War Powers Resolution created a new series of steps to be followed by presidents in waging military conflict with other countries.

Its main feature was a requirement that presidents get approval from Congress to continue any military campaign beyond sixty days. To many, however, the overall effect was actually to strengthen the role of the president in war-making. After all, the law clarified that presidents could act on their own for sixty days before getting authorization from Congress to continue, and many smaller-scale conflicts are over within sixty days. Before the War Powers Resolution, the first approval for war was supposed to come from Congress. In theory, Congress, with its constitutional war powers, could act to reverse the actions of a president once the sixty days have passed. However, a clear disagreement between Congress and the president, especially once an initiative has begun and there is a “rally around the flag” effect, is relatively rare. More likely are tough questions about the campaign to which continuing congressional funding is tied.

Reauthorization

All federal agencies, including those dedicated to foreign policy, face reauthorization every three to five years. If not reauthorized, agencies lose their legal standing and the ability to spend federal funds to carry out programs. Agencies typically are reauthorized, because they coordinate carefully with presidential and congressional staff to get their affairs in order when the time comes. However, the reauthorization requirements do create a regular conversation between the agency and its political principals about how well it is functioning and what could be improved.

The federal budget process is an important annual tradition that affects all areas of foreign policy. The foreign policy and defense budgets are part of the discretionary budget, or the section of the national budget that Congress vets and decides on each year. Foreign policy leaders in the executive and legislative branches must advocate for funding from this budget, and while foreign policy budgets are usually renewed, there are enough proposed changes each year to make things interesting. In addition to new agencies, new cross-national projects are proposed each year to add to infrastructure and increase or improve foreign aid, intelligence, and national security technology.

International agreements represent another of the broad-based foreign policy instruments. The United States finds it useful to enter into international agreements with other countries for a variety of reasons and on a variety of different subjects. These agreements run the gamut from bilateral agreements about tariffs to multinational agreements among dozens of countries about the treatment of prisoners of war. One recent multinational pact was the seven-country Iran Nuclear Agreement in 2015, intended to limit nuclear development in Iran in exchange for the lifting of long-standing economic sanctions on that country ( Figure 17.7 ).

The format that an international agreement takes has been the point of considerable discussion in recent years. The U.S. Constitution outlines the treaty process in Article II . The president negotiates a treaty, the Senate consents to the treaty by a two-thirds vote, and finally the president ratifies it. Despite that constitutional clarity, today over 90 percent of the international agreements into which the United States enters are not treaties but rather executive agreements. 8 Executive agreements are negotiated by the president, and in the case of sole executive agreement s , they are simultaneously approved by the president as well. On the other hand, congressional-executive agreement s , like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), are negotiated by the president and then approved by a simple majority of the House and Senate (rather than a two-thirds vote in the Senate as is the case for a treaty). In the key case of United States v. Pink (1942), the Supreme Court ruled that executive agreements were legally equivalent to treaties provided they did not alter federal law. 9 Most executive agreements are not of major importance and do not spark controversy, while some, like the Iran Nuclear Agreement, generate considerable debate. Many in the Senate thought the Iran deal should have been completed as a treaty rather than as a sole executive agreement.

Finding a Middle Ground

Treaty or executive agreement.

Should new international agreements into which the United States enters be forged through the Article II treaty process of the U.S. Constitution, or through executive agreements? This question arose again in 2015 as the Iran Nuclear Agreement was being completed. That pact required Iran to halt further nuclear development and agree to nuclear inspections, while the United States and five other signatories lifted long-standing economic sanctions on Iran. The debate over whether the United States should have entered the agreement and whether it should have been a treaty rather than an executive agreement was conducted in the news media and on political comedy shows like The Daily Show .

Your view on the form of the pact will depend on how you see executive agreements being employed. Do presidents use them to circumvent the Senate (as the “evasion hypothesis” suggests)? Or are they an efficient tool that saves the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations the work of processing hundreds of agreements each year?

Politicians’ opinions about the form of the Iran Nuclear Agreement fell along party lines. Democrats accepted the president’s decision to use an executive agreement to finalize the pact, which they tended to support. Republicans, who were overwhelmingly against the pact, favored the use of the treaty process, which would have allowed them to vote the deal down. In the end, the president used an executive agreement and the pact was enacted. The downside is that an executive agreement can be reversed by the next president. Treaties are much more difficult to undo because they require a new process to be undertaken in the Senate in order for the president to gain approval.

Which approach do you favor for the Iran Nuclear Agreement, an executive agreement or a treaty? Why?

Link to Learning

Watch “Under Miner” and “Start Wars” to see the take of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show on the Iran Nuclear Agreement.

Appointments

The last broad type of foreign policy output consists of the foreign policy appointments made when a new president takes office. Typically, when the party in the White House changes, more new appointments are made than when the party does not change, because the incoming president wants to put in place people who share the president's agenda. This has been the case in every presidential transition since 1993, when Republican George H.W. Bush left office and Democrat Bill Clinton took over. The pattern continued in 2001 when Republican George W. Bush became president, and then again with Democrat Barack Obama, Republican Donald Trump, and Democrat Joe Biden.

Most foreign policy–related appointments, such as secretary of state and the various undersecretaries and assistant secretaries, as well as all ambassadors, must be confirmed by a majority vote of the Senate ( Figure 17.8 ). Presidents seek to nominate people who know the area to which they’re being appointed and who will be loyal to the president rather than to the bureaucracy in which they might work. They also want their nominees to be readily confirmed. As we will see in more detail later in the chapter, an isolationist group of appointees will run the country’s foreign policy agencies very differently than a group that is more internationalist in its outlook. Isolationists might seek to pull back from foreign policy involvement around the globe, while internationalists would go in the other direction, toward more involvement and toward acting in conjunction with other countries.

SHARPLY FOCUSED FOREIGN POLICY OUTPUTS

In addition to the broad-based foreign policy outputs above, which are president-led with some involvement from Congress, many other decisions need to be made. These sharply focused foreign policy outputs tend to be exclusively the province of the president, including the deployment of troops and/or intelligence agents in a crisis, executive summits between the president and other heads of state on targeted matters of foreign policy, presidential use of military force, and emergency funding measures to deal with foreign policy crises. These measures of foreign policy are more quickly enacted and demonstrate the “energy and dispatch” that Alexander Hamilton , writing in the Federalist Papers , saw as inherent in the institution of the presidency. Emergency spending does involve Congress through its power of the purse, but Congress tends to give presidents what they need to deal with emergencies. That said, the framers were consistent in wanting checks and balances sprinkled throughout the Constitution, including in the area of foreign policy and war powers. Hence, Congress has several roles, as discussed at points throughout this chapter.

Perhaps the most famous foreign policy emergency was the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. With the Soviet Union placing nuclear missiles in Cuba, just a few hundred miles from Florida, a Cold War standoff with the United States escalated. The Soviets at first denied the existence of the missiles, but U.S. reconnaissance flights proved they were there, gathering photographic evidence that was presented at the UN ( Figure 17.9 ). The Soviets stood firm, and U.S. foreign policy leaders debated their approach. Some in the military were pushing for aggressive action to take out the missiles and the installation in Cuba, while State Department officials favored a diplomatic route. President John F. Kennedy ended up taking the recommendation of a special committee, and the United States implemented a naval blockade of Cuba that subtly forced the Soviets’ hands. The Soviets agreed to remove their Cuban missiles and the United States in turn agreed six months later to remove its missiles from Turkey.

Listen to President Kennedy’s speech announcing the naval blockade the United States imposed on Cuba, ending the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Another form of focused foreign policy output is the presidential summit . Often held at the Presidential Retreat at Camp David, Maryland, these meetings bring together the president and one or more other heads of state. Presidents use these types of summits when they and their visitors need to dive deeply into important issues that are not quickly solved. An example is the 1978 summit that led to the Camp David Accords, in which President Jimmy Carter, Egyptian president Anwar El Sadat, and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin met privately for twelve days at Camp David negotiating a peace process for the two countries, which had been at odds with each other in the Middle East. Another example is the Malta Summit between President George H. W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, which took place on the island of Malta over two days in December 1989 ( Figure 17.10 ). The meetings were an important symbol of the end of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall having come down just a few months earlier.

Another focused foreign policy output is the military use of force . Since the 1941 Pearl Harbor attacks and the immediate declaration of war by Congress that resulted, all such initial uses of force have been authorized by the president. Congress in many cases has subsequently supported additional military action, but the president has been the instigator. While there has sometimes been criticism, Congress has never acted to reverse presidential action. As discussed above, the War Powers Resolution clarified that the first step in the use of force was the president’s, for the first sixty days. A recent example of the military use of force was the U.S. role in enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya in 2011, which included kinetic strikes—or active engagement of the enemy—to protect anti-government forces on the ground. U.S. fighter jets flew out of Aviano Air Base in northern Italy ( Figure 17.11 ).

The final example of a focused foreign policy input is the passage of an emergency funding measure for a specific national security task. Congress tends to pass at least one emergency spending measure per year, which must be signed by the president to take effect, and it often provides funding for domestic disasters. However, at times foreign policy matters drive an emergency spending measure, as was the case right after the 9/11 attacks. In such a case, the president or the administration proposes particular amounts for emergency foreign policy plans.

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Foreign Policy in the U.S. Presidential Debate, and Other Headlines of the Day

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Top of the Agenda

Sharp foreign policy contrasts in first biden-trump debate.

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U.S. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump laid out their contrasting views on foreign policy in last night’s first presidential debate, with Biden emphasizing the importance of global alliances and Trump arguing Washington should take more unilateral actions on matters such as trade. Trump claimed he could “settle” the war in Ukraine by January 2025 without making it clear how, and accused Biden of escalating the conflict, as Biden warned against Trump’s bashing of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Trump asserted his goals to draw down military engagement abroad; Biden played up the importance of global alliances, but in doing so, erroneously claimed his presidency was the only one this decade without any troop deaths overseas. Trump described immigration as uncontrolled and made repeated sweeping claims about migrants’ role in committing crime, while Biden defended steps taken both at the southern U.S. border and in the U.S. asylum system. Meanwhile, Trump said his proposed new tariffs would not increase prices for consumers, which economists dispute .

The event was the earliest presidential debate in U.S. history, pitting against each other the two oldest main party candidates ever to compete for the presidency. Trump also reiterated false claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election and suggested he was not responsible for the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. He did not unequivocally commit to accepting this year’s election result, saying he would accept the outcome if it was “fair” and “legal.” The debate was closely watched by U.S. allies for signals of potential political changes. (CNN, Foreign Policy , AP, NYT, Reuters)

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What Is Foreign Policy? Definition and Examples

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• B.A., International Relations, Brown University

A state’s foreign policy consists of the strategies it uses to protect its international and domestic interests and determines the way it interacts with other state and non-state actors. The primary purpose of foreign policy is to defend a nation’s national interests, which can be in nonviolent or violent ways.

Key Takeaways: Foreign Policy

• Foreign policy encompasses the tactics and process by which a nation interacts with other nations in order to further its own interests
• Foreign policy may make use of diplomacy or other more direct means such as aggression rooted in military power
• International bodies such as the United Nations and its predecessor, the League of Nations, help smooth relations between countries via diplomatic means
• Major foreign policy theories are Realism, Liberalism, Economic Structuralism, Psychological Theory, and Constructivism

Examples of Foreign Policy

In 2013 China developed a foreign policy known as the Belt and Road Initiative, the nation’s strategy to develop stronger economic ties in Africa, Europe, and North America. In the United States, many presidents are known for their landmark foreign policy decisions such as the Monroe Doctrine which opposed the imperialist takeover of an independent state. A foreign policy can also be the decision to not participate in international organizations and conversations, such as the more isolationist policies of North Korea .

Diplomacy and Foreign Policy

When foreign policy relies on diplomacy, heads of state negotiate and collaborate with other world leaders to prevent conflict. Usually, diplomats are sent to represent a nation’s foreign policy interests at international events. While an emphasis on diplomacy is a cornerstone of many states' foreign policy, there are others that rely on military pressure or other less diplomatic means.

Diplomacy has played a crucial role in the de-escalation of international crises, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 is a prime example of this. During the Cold War , intelligence informed President John F. Kennedy that the Soviet Union was sending weapons to Cuba, possibly preparing for a strike against the United States. President Kennedy was forced to choose between a foreign policy solution that was purely diplomatic, speaking to the Soviet Union President Nikita Khrushchev or one that was more militaristic. The former president decided to enact a blockade around Cuba and threaten further military action if Soviet ships carrying missiles attempted to break through.

In order to prevent further escalation, Khrushchev agreed to remove all missiles from Cuba, and in return, Kennedy agreed not to invade Cuba and to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey (which was within striking distance of the Soviet Union). This moment in time is significant because the two governments negotiated a solution that ended the current conflict, the blockade, as well as de-escalated the larger tension, the missiles near each other’s borders.

The History of Foreign Policy and Diplomatic Organizations

Foreign policy has existed as long as people have organized themselves into varying factions. However, the study of foreign policy and the creation of international organizations to promote diplomacy is fairly recent.

One of the first established international bodies for discussing foreign policy was the Concert of Europe in 1814 after the Napoleonic wars . This gave the major European powers (Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia) a forum to solve issues diplomatically instead of resorting to military threats or wars.

In the 20th Century, World War I and II once again exposed the need for an international forum to de-escalate conflict and keep the peace. The League of Nations (which was formed by former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson but ultimately did not include the U.S.) was created in 1920 with the primary purpose of maintaining world peace. After the League of Nations dissolved, it was replaced by the United Nations in 1954 after World War II, an organization to promote international cooperation and now includes 193 countries as members.

It is important to note that many of these organizations are concentrated around Europe and the Western Hemisphere as a whole. Because of European countries’ history of imperialism and colonization, they often wielded the greatest international political and economic powers and subsequently created these global systems. However, there are continental diplomatic bodies such as the African Union, Asia Cooperation Dialogue, and Union of South American Countries which facilitate multilateral cooperation in their respective regions as well.

Foreign Policy Theories: Why States Act as They Do

The study of foreign policy reveals several theories as to why states act the way they do. The prevailing theories are Realism, Liberalism, Economic Structuralism, Psychological Theory, and Constructivism.

Realism states that interests are always determined in terms of power and states will always act according to their best interest. Classical Realism follows 16th-century political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli ’s famous quote from his foreign policy book "The Prince":

“It is much safer to be feared than loved.”

It follows that the world is full of chaos because humans are egoistic and will do anything to have power. The structural reading of realism, however, focuses more on the state than the individual: All governments will react to pressures in the same way because they are more concerned about national security than power.

The theory of liberalism emphasizes liberty and equality in all aspects and believes that the rights of the individual are superior to the needs of the state. It also follows that the chaos of the world can be pacified with international cooperation and global citizenship. Economically, liberalism values free trade above all and believes the state should rarely intervene in economic issues, as this is where problems arise. The market has a long-term trajectory towards stability, and nothing should interfere with that.

Economic Structuralism

Economic structuralism, or Marxism, was pioneered by Karl Marx, who believed that capitalism was immoral because it is the immoral exploitation of the many by the few. However, theorist Vladimir Lenin brought the analysis to an international level by explaining that imperialist capitalist nations succeed by dumping their excess products in economically weaker nations, which drives down the prices and further weakens the economy in those areas. Essentially, issues arise in international relations because of this concentration of capital, and change can only occur through the action of the proletariat.

Psychological Theories

Psychological theories explain international politics on a more individual level and seek to understand how an individual’s psychology can affect their foreign policy decisions. This follows that diplomacy is deeply affected by the individual ability to judge, which is often colored by how solutions are presented, the time available for the decision, and level of risk. This explains why political decision making is often inconsistent or may not follow a specific ideology.

Constructivism

Constructivism believes that ideas influence identities and drive interests. The current structures only exist because years of social practice have made it so. If a situation needs to be resolved or a system must be changed, social and ideological movements have the power to bring about reforms. A core example of constructivism is human rights, which are observed by some nations, but not others. Over the past few centuries, as social ideas and norms around human rights, gender, age, and racial equality have evolved, laws have changed to reflect these new societal norms.

• Elrod, Richard B. “The Concert of Europe: A Fresh Look at an International System.”  World Politics , vol. 28, no. 2, 1976, pp. 159–174.  JSTOR , JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2009888.
• “The Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962.”  U.S. Department of State , U.S. Department of State, history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/cuban-missile-crisis.
• Viotti, Paul R., and Mark V. Kauppi.  International Relations Theory . 5th ed., Pearson, 2011.

Viotti, Paul R., and Mark V. Kauppi.  International Relations Theory . Pearson Education, 2010.

• Who Were the Democratic Presidents of the United States?
• List of Current Communist Countries in the World
• Why Did the U.S. Enter the Vietnam War?
• The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962
• The Art of Atomic Diplomacy
• Foreign Policy of the U.S. Government
• U.S. Foreign Policy 101
• Diplomacy and How America Does It
• What Is Imperialism? Definition and Historical Perspective
• Successes and Failures of Détente in the Cold War
• What Is Interventionism? Definition and Examples
• What Is Multilateralism?
• The Reagan Doctrine: To Wipe Out Communism
• Gunboat Diplomacy: Teddy Roosevelt's 'Big Stick' Policy
• National Security Definition and Examples
• What Is an Embargo? Definition and Examples

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• Prof. Stephen Van Evera

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• American Politics
• International Relations
• Military Studies
• Public Policy

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American foreign policy: past, present, and future, first paper assignment.

Select an episode in American foreign policy and write a short paper that identifies what you believe is the single best explanation for American policies. Please also identify one or two competing explanations and explain why you find them less compelling. Finally, feel free to identify policy prescriptions that follow from your analysis, if any do. Use historical evidence to support your argument. You may want to draw on theories discussed in this course to construct your explanation but can also rely on other theories. 

Following is a list of suitable episodes for your paper. (This list is not exclusive; other episodes are also allowed).

• United States policy before U.S. entry into World War I, and /or U.S. entry into World War I, and / or U.S. conduct of World War I.
• U.S. policy before U.S. entry into World War II, and / or U.S. entry into World War II, and / or U.S. conduct of World War II.
• The U.S. decision to wage the Cold War.
• U.S. strategies and tactics in the Cold War.
• U.S. entry into and / or conduct of the Korean War.
• U.S. conduct of the War on Terror, 2001–present.
• U.S. decisions toward the Soviet installation of missiles in Cuba, October 1962 (the Cuban Missile Crisis). E.g., the U.S. decision to insist on the missiles’s removal; or to pursue a blockade instead of bombing and invading.
• U.S. intervention decisions, e.g., the U.S. decisions not to intervene in Rwanda in 1994; to intervene in Libya in 2011; to intervene in Iraq 2003; to intervene in Vietnam 1965.

If the facts you need to fully assess your explanations are not found in the available course readings, describe what additional facts you would need to provide a more thorough assessment, and explain why these additional facts would shed light on the questions you address.

If you want to pursue a paper on another topic-for example, a paper that uses a case to test a theory of US foreign policy, or a paper that evaluates a US foreign policy-we are open to it. Consult your TA.

Your paper should be roughly eight typed double-spaced pages, with normal 1’’ margins and normal-size typeface.

Start your paper with a short summary introduction that states your guestion(s) and distills your answer(s) . And offer a conclusion.

Your paper is due at the beginning of Session 17.

Your TA will give you feedback on a draft of your paper if you submit a draft a week before you submit your final paper. You must do this for one of your two papers. You are wise to do it for both papers.

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Transcript: US foreign policy under Trump 2.0

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Gideon Rachman

This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘US foreign policy under Trump 2.0’

Gideon Rachman Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review . I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times. This week’s podcast is about Donald Trump and his potential impact on US foreign policy. My guest is Jeremy Shapiro, director of the US program for the European Council on Foreign Relations and co-author of a recent paper, Imagining Trump 2.0.

With Trump the bookmakers’ favourite to win November’s presidential election, governments all over the world are scrambling to understand the implications for their countries. So what could the world expect from a second Trump presidency?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Donald Trump voice clip I think Zelenskyy is maybe the greatest salesman of any politician that’s ever lived. Every time he comes to our country he walks away with $60bn.

Gideon Rachman That was Donald Trump in a recent campaign appearance, suggesting that America is pouring far too much money into Ukraine. The prospect of a cut-off in American aid to Ukraine if Trump gets back in is very real. But a second Trump administration would have implications for every aspect of US foreign policy, from China to Europe and from trade to migration. Figuring out exactly what would happen is much harder. That’s partly because there are several different ideological camps competing for Trump’s attention. Jeremy Shapiro is a former senior official in the US state department. We met up at a recent conference in Brussels. Afterwards, I asked Jeremy to describe the three schools of foreign policy thought in Trump world.

Jeremy Shapiro The intellectual divisions, I would preface by saying, are quite important because nobody really knows what a Trump administration will be like, because Trump himself is pretty erratic and inconsistent. And I think in the interim period, in the period since he’s been president, a sort of ecosystem has arisen amongst the Republican foreign policy establishment or the Republican foreign policy thinkers, which has been quite an intellectual ferment, actually. And what all of these people are trying to do is win what I call the war for Trump’s mind. They’re trying to come up with a foreign policy concept that definitely works with all of the strong through lines that Trump has, and there are a few, but also fills in a lot of the details and tries to create a bridge from what they want to accomplish to where he is. And there are three main efforts to do that, three main tribes that are doing it. The first are the “restrainers”. These are people who think that US foreign policy has been much too active abroad, and want US foreign policy to focus at home. The second school of thought are the “prioritisers”. These are the people who see the China threat as overriding, and really want US foreign policy to focus almost exclusively on China and Asia, and to reduce commitments in Europe and the Middle East, particularly. And then the third school are the more traditional “primacists”, who want US foreign policy to focus on everything, and the US to be the traditional leader in all of the main strategic regions of the world, as it has been for the last several decades.

Gideon Rachman So give me a few names, because people attach ideas to names, and obviously who Trump appoints might give us a signal to which of these schools he’s going with. Let’s start then with the primacists. Who would be in that school?

Jeremy Shapiro I think a classic primacist is his final secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who is very much vying for a new job. He might be secretary of defence. He has been very careful to be quite loyal to Trump and to never contradict Trump. But you can see in his approach, particularly to Iran, but to most problems in the world, that he is very much a believer in American power, and he wants American foreign policy to be present everywhere. So to me, he’s one of the likely to be more influential primacists. But the primacists, they still dominate, I would say, the Republican establishment. Probably something on the order of 70, 75 per cent of the Republican congressional delegation are still primacists. There are fewer and fewer of them every year. But as we’ve noticed, Congress turns over quite slowly. So, in fact, they are still the dominant school when it comes to the Republican elite.

Gideon Rachman And so the others, the prioritisers. The name, I think maybe because he’s very active on Twitter, but you hear a lot is Elbridge Colby, who’s written this book and lots of articles saying we really don’t have the resources to be primacists. There’s one overriding threat, that’s China. Let’s go all in on there. And it looks like this article that everybody at this conference we’ve just been out was talking about, by Mr O’Brien, where he talks about switching the entire Marine Corps to Asia. Does that make him a prioritiser as well? And how powerful is that group?

Jeremy Shapiro Yeah. So it’s interesting. I think Elbridge Colby has been almost a sort of evangelist for prioritisation, and he’s definitely become the name that people most associate with that school. I do think it’s important to understand that he’s following to a degree in the wake of a couple of Republican politicians, particularly Senator Josh Hawley, who is, interestingly, the only senator to vote against Swedish and Finnish adhesion to Nato, and particularly saying because we need to be concentrating in Asia. Senator JD Vance, who a lot of people are tipping to be a possible vice-presidential candidate, is a restrainer. Robert O’Brien, I think, is a little bit difficult. From that article, he certainly advocates doing a lot more about China, but if you read the article, he also advocates doing quite a bit more about Iran and actually quite a bit more about Russia. So to my assessment, he would probably still be a primacist, but I think he’s quite flexible.

Gideon Rachman Yeah. And just to be clear, O’Brien and Colby are both names people are talking about as possible national security advisers.

Jeremy Shapiro Yeah, I think that all of the names that we’ve mentioned are being talked about for various jobs. I think it’s important to understand that anybody who tells you that they know who’s gonna be in any of these jobs is a liar. And that includes if that person’s name is Donald Trump. These are decisions that clearly will be made as packages and will be very much done — if the first term is any indication — if Trump is re-elected, from his gut and from, you know, how they look and, you know, what they said on Fox News the day before they met him.

So I think what’s maybe more important to understand is that all three of these schools will almost inevitably have representation in the administration. And I think we can learn a lot from understanding these schools and who’s in them about what the balance of power will look like in the administration once those people are picked, because Trump probably won’t be picking these people on this criteria. And so he will pick people almost inevitably from all three schools.

Gideon Rachman Yeah. So let’s get to the third school — restrainers. Is there any difference between restrainers and what is more commonly called isolationists? Basically people saying we’ve had enough wars, let the Europeans look after themselves. We’re a continent. We can look after ourselves.

Jeremy Shapiro Yeah. I think that there’s an important difference, frankly, between isolationists and restrainers. In the first instance, it’s because isolationist is kind of a pejorative term. So it’s a term that people use to create an association with the 1930s and to discredit the entire school of thought. So I’ve never met anybody who has defined themselves as an isolationist. And I have to say, when we were writing this paper, we were quite determined not to name the schools something that people wouldn’t accept for themselves. But I would say, you know, more conceptually, the difference is that restrainers are not interested in isolating the United States from the world in any way. They are interested in making sure that the US has an outward policy, that it is participating in international trade, that it is participating in international politics. What they are interested, I think, in slowing down and reversing is this concept of the US as the global leader, which has a responsibility and a métier to solve all of the regional problems of the world. So just because a war arises in Ukraine doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the US’s responsibility to fight it or win it.

Gideon Rachman I get the impression you might be a Democratic restrainer.

Jeremy Shapiro I’ve been called such a thing. Yeah, I think let’s put it this way. Restraint is a policy which has a lot more adherents in the academy than it does in the government. And when I was in the government, which I was in the Obama administration, I found that, you know, it’s not very popular among policymakers of any type because it sort of reduces their influence, and it’s not what they’re used to doing. So restraint, I think, has to come from the outside. And I think it makes sense for an outsider like me not just to be cheering on the government in its sort of natural path towards ever greater American involvement in every problem in the world, but to be questioning whether that makes sense in any given circumstance.

Gideon Rachman So since we’re talking about Trump, who are the Republican restrainers? The names we need to look out for, and how influential do you think they are within the school?

Jeremy Shapiro Well, it’s interesting. I think that the main restrainer is Trump himself, whose instincts are restrained, and we saw this in the first term from his approach to the, for example, the Aramco attack, an attack by Iran on Saudi Arabia, which United States had always promised to help the Saudis retaliate for. And in fact, Trump refused to do so. It’s interesting that in Robert O’Brien’s foreign affairs piece recently, talking about all of the sort of weaknesses of the Biden administration, he never mentioned that very consequential decision of the Trump administration, which totally alienated the Saudis from the United States. So Trump is the sort of leading progenitor.

It is also the case that pretty much all of the primary candidates, the people who are vying against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, with the exception of Nikki Haley, ended up as restrainers. So that includes DeSantis, notably Vivek Ramaswamy. And I would say that the reason is because if the primacists dominate the Republican elite, the restrainers really dominate the base of the party. And that the political message that’s coming through from the Republican base is very much a restrainer one. And that is affecting most prominently, the people who are running for new offices. It doesn’t affect incumbents too much, but it’s affecting Trump. It affected Ramaswamy, it affected DeSantis. And so I think we can expect that a lot of the new senators or congressmen will end up as restrainers.

Gideon Rachman So it’s all, I think, very interesting from a kind of conceptual level, but let’s now translate it into what it’ll actually mean for what America does in the world. Let’s say Trump wins. As you say, all three schools are likely to have their representatives in the administration, but go through a couple of issues. Ukraine is obviously first and foremost. People have jumped on the fact that Trump has said he’d make peace in a day, to say, well, he’s gonna pull the rug out from under Ukraine. Do you think that’s right? And is there anything more kind of nuanced or subtle than one can say about how he’s likely to approach it?

Jeremy Shapiro Yeah, slightly more nuanced. I would say that Trump’s approach, because he will have a fair number of primacists in his administration and particularly in the Congress, he’s not simply gonna be able to pull the rug out from under them. And he’s not really even gonna want to in the first instance. It seems to me that what the prioritisers and restrainers will be saying to him who will want to get out of this war is what you need to be doing, and this is part of the sort of bridge from their policy to his, is that this is an opportunity for a deal, which always appeals to Trump. And the prototype for this might be what he tried to do with North Korea in the first term. And so what that means is that Trump will probably put forward a new aid package of some size. We’ve just written a paper which goes through a bunch of different scenarios and rehearses exactly what you’re talking about, how the different camps will interact to determine policy. They’re just guesses, but we think they’re all plausible, and they all use ideas that come from all three camps.

And so in the Ukraine situation, they’ll convince him that a deal is reachable. And when Trump sees a deal, he becomes a sort of deal-seeking missile and nothing else matters. And then I think what will happen is that he’ll use the aid as a lever against both Ukraine and Russia, actually. So he’ll go to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and say, I’m gonna have a peace summit and if you don’t show up, I’ll cut off the aid and he’ll go to President Putin and he’ll say, I’m gonna have a peace summit and if you don’t show up, I’ll double the aid. And that will be something that will allow him to satisfy all of his camps and give him the stage that he wants for that deal. I don’t know how that summit will come out. I would be very sceptical that it would get very far at all, but I think he would be able to hold it, and just holding it would probably shatter the western coalition that is supporting Ukraine, because essentially what the Europeans would be confronted with just by the prospect of such a summit is that the Trump administration would come to the European allies and say, you have to support us in this summit. If you don’t, we’re gonna put our support to European security in question. And then the European allies would be confronted with some very difficult decisions about whether to go along, whether to support the Trump administration, whether to oppose them. And I think, in fact, European allies would make very different decisions on that question.

Gideon Rachman So they would split.

Jeremy Shapiro They would split.

Gideon Rachman Which actually then brings us to another of the topics that you discuss, which is Trump playing a kind of almost ideological role and seeking not necessarily to unite the alliance, but to forge new alliances with ideological soulmates.

Jeremy Shapiro Yeah. Another one of the scenarios in our paper, I think, which is particularly problematic for Europe, is this idea of the Trump administration not having much, let’s say, nostalgia about the types of value-based alliances around the world that have animated US policy since World War II, and particularly being more focused on like-minded ideological leaders in various European and extra European countries.

The prototype of this for sure is Viktor Orbán in Hungary, who has cultivated, particularly since Trump left office but certainly even before, very strong relationships with key factions in the Republican party and including with Trump himself. And what’s interesting about this relationship is that ideas are flowing in both directions, which is unusual for a US-European ideological movement. And in fact, the Trump ecosystem is picking up quite a lot from Viktor Orbán. You can see it, I think, in, for example, the Heritage’s Project 2025 idea of how to deal with the deep state.

So I think that there’s really ample room there for an alliance which is really focused on how they can help each other and the ways that they can help each other is, you know, we used to say before Brexit that the UK was the sort of Trojan horse for the US in the EU. I think countries like Hungary and possibly Italy or Slovakia could be Trojan horses for a Trump-led US in the EU, and they could be very effective at helping the Trump administration get its way in US-EU disputes on trade or whatever. And in return, a Trump administration could be very helpful in the multiple fights that Hungary and other countries, led by populist governments in the EU, are likely to have with Brussels.

Gideon Rachman And another thing that you discuss is the way in which Trump will use American commercial policy, particularly strength in energy as a lever.

Jeremy Shapiro Yeah, this one is a bit of a gimme when you look at the three different schools, because it’s one of the issues on which all three of them agree, and all three of them very much believe that US climate policy under Biden has been a disaster, and that a real American strength is its capacity to be an energy superpower. And all three of them, each for somewhat different reasons, but nonetheless all three of them reach the same conclusion that there should be a freeing of American energy resources.

In the paper, we are building on ideas that are in already the Republican ecosystem, so it’s not original, propound this idea of American policy of total energy dominance, which is basically using this idea of industrial policy that the Biden administration sort of pioneered in the Inflation Reduction Act, but we’re doing it to promote green technologies. The Trump administration will take that idea of industrial policy and base it on fossil fuels, and will promote a fossil fuel-based industrial policy that looks to subsidise both fossil fuel production and fossil fuel-intensive industries like data centres and cement and steel.

And further, I think they have the opportunity, although this is a lot more speculative, to use this as a competitive advantage against competitors like the EU and the UK. And the way that they can do this is by noting that prior to Russia’s war in Ukraine in 2022, there was a massive gap between US energy prices and European energy prices. The US natural gas price at times was a quarter of what the European price was. That gap has closed significantly since the Ukraine war, because the US has been exporting a lot of natural gas to Europe. But at the same time, Europe has become very, very dependent on US liquefied natural gas. So what the Trump administration could do is seek to restore that gap by creating an export tax on US LNG. Europeans would have really no choice but to pay it, because there just aren’t any more excess supply options for getting LNG elsewhere except Russia. And that would mean that the gap would widen and that would create a big competitive advantage for energy-intensive industries in the United States and help US reshoring. But it would be quite a challenge for deindustrialisation in Europe and the UK.

Gideon Rachman Yes, it would seem like an act of aggression.

Jeremy Shapiro From a trade perspective, it would be an act of aggression. But I think Europeans probably need to be asking themselves what would they do about it?

Gideon Rachman Is this idea in circulation? Or is this just something you kind of think . . . 

Jeremy Shapiro Little bit of both? I’ve put together a bunch of different ideas. They’re all out there. And in the scenario, in fact, you can see we’ve made, probably contrary to his wishes, Marco Rubio, secretary of commerce. But the reason that we did that is because he gave a speech in 2019 and then wrote an op-ed just a few months ago advocating a lot of these ideas. The export tax isn’t quite there, but the rest of it all comes from the Republican embrace of industrial policy, which was always a Democratic policy which the first Trump administration never even considered. But I think the environment for that in the Republican party has changed dramatically since 2020.

Gideon Rachman Do you think if they pursued policies like that and also cultivated Orban, who is regarded in this town in Brussels as, you know, a threat to democracy in Europe, it might backfire on that Trump-led America in the sense that Europeans would begin to consider China again as an option and say, well, look, if America is going to treat us like that, maybe we will just take Chinese EVs, solar power, you know, do a trade agreement with China. Was that off the table as well?

Jeremy Shapiro Could be. Honestly, I would think that Europeans would be wise to at least preserve that opportunity just as leverage. I would prefer that they don’t end up there, but it should be a way of preventing some of these things from happening with a putative Trump administration. I would be very dubious that they would be able to do that, in part because China divides Europe quite a bit, in part because the Chinese are, in their own ways, incredibly obnoxious and have not been endearing themselves to Europeans in recent years. So it’s a real question as to which is the fire and which is the frying pan. So if I was in a putative Trump administration, I wouldn’t be super worried about that threat. But if I was going to advise Europeans about how to forestall some of these things, I would say they should try to use that leverage.

Gideon Rachman Finally, China itself, the most important issue facing the United States. I think there’s almost a bipartisan consensus on this. How do you think these three schools are gonna battle it out over policy, and what do you think the practical implications are?

Jeremy Shapiro Yeah, I think it’s very interesting that although I agree with your point that there is a bipartisan consensus on China in the United States, I would say that Donald Trump isn’t really part of that bipartisan consensus, which makes his China policy quite a bit more complex in some ways even than the Biden administration’s policy. It’s not simply the case that the Biden administration continued his policy or that he will continue theirs. In fact, the Biden administration’s policy toward China has been much more full-fledged than the Trump administration’s was. And what I mean by that is that they have elements of geostrategic containment through their military dispositions and their alliance relationships in the Indo-Pacific. And they have a geoeconomic strategy, which is based on not just tariffs, but actually export controls and technological constraints and investment restrictions.

Trump was just about tariffs. And actually it’s been very clear in his thought that he doesn’t really care very much about the geostrategic elements. At the same time, at least two of the schools, the primacists and the prioritisers, very much do. And so I think it’s predictable that even though Trump doesn’t precisely want it, that the prioritisers are in a very good position to win out on China policy, because essentially what they’ll be doing is saying to Trump and the other restrainers in the administration, look, we can cut back everywhere else, but China is the place where we really need to have a geostrategic containment policy. You can buy off most of the primacists with that. The Congress will be happy with it. And it’s Europe and the Middle East that we can really pull back. So I do think that overall, because of the importance of China policy for the primacists, it will be the prioritisers, despite the fact that they’re at least represented in both the base and the establishment, that will probably dictate the overall foreign policy of a putative Trump administration.

Gideon Rachman That was Jeremy Shapiro of the European Council on Foreign Relations, ending this edition of the Rachman Review . Thanks for listening, and please join me again next week.

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