Foreign Policy Realism
7th March 2025
Zman’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.
One of the interesting things about the shift in foreign policy initiated by the Trump administration is that it is a break from what has been policy for a century. This sudden lurch into realism is a departure from Wilsonian democracy. Trump wants to center policy on the material interests of the country. Up until now, policy was centered around moral claims about how the world ought to be ordered.
Through the Cold War it was assumed that pragmatism was the rule because of the threat of nuclear annihilation. The better way to view it is that Wilsonian democracy was on a leash for forty years. Once the Cold War ended, it was like a hyperactive dog that got under the fence. The last thirty years has been an explosion of Wilsonian democracy playing catchup for lost time.
Even during the Cold War, American policy makers and politicians had a fondness for moralizing about the world. There were endless debates over the morality of dealing with dictators who happened to be anti-Soviet. This was finally resolved in the 1980’s with the distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian. The former was a temporary compromise, while the later was a forever enemy.