President Trump has not been shy in broadcasting his displeasure with the permanent U.S. alliance structure, which he views as costly obligations to defend other nations. Skepticism of supposed U.S. defense commitments with other nations remains one of the most consistent themes in Trump’s worldview.
Unsurprisingly, Trump’s oftentimes negative assessment of Washington’s overseas commitments, which parallels the worldview of a majority of Americans, makes Beltway types nervous.
The president’s sharp demands on European countries to increase their military budgets, his jaded battles with the EU on trade, and his past statements on the campaign trail about the U.S. unnecessarily defending wealthy, first-world countries like South Korea and Japan have convinced much of Washington that Trump scorns alliances in general and that he would prefer to focus more of his energy on negotiating bilateral trade relationships. Reports of Trump privately discussing a U.S. withdrawal from NATO caused such a ruckus that House lawmakers introduced legislation to prevent adjustments to the transatlantic alliance.
By reviewing U.S. defense relationships and treaty commitments overseas, Trump is assessing our security obligations precisely as a president should.
The description that we often hear about alliances as everlasting, happy marriages that can overcome all odds is oversimplified and historically misleading. Alliances between countries are by their very nature not supposed to be permanent structures that stand the test of time, but rather temporary, pragmatic arrangements that serve the national security interests of the countries involved during a particular period of time. An alliance is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. Traditionally, when the geopolitical situation that gave rise to the alliance dissipates or is no longer relevant, the alliance is no longer necessary, and new arrangements are made.
In today’s Washington, downgrading an alliance is looked at as dangerous, strategically unsound, and in the most extreme examples, grounds for congressional censure. There is an overwhelming, misguided assumption in the current U.S. foreign policy conversation that even re-evaluating a treaty or mutual defense commitment is a self-defeating exercise.
It is essential for policymakers in the national security bureaucracy to undergo a thorough, predictable, whole-of-government review of America’s alliances and defense treaty commitments. To treat these same commitments as automatically renewable despite changes to the global political structure is part of Washington’s problem. It is inappropriate, harms American foreign policy, and has even led us to blunder into armed conflicts — as in Libya — that have provided the very enemies the U.S. is concerned about with more freedom of movement.
The world has rapidly changed over the preceding quarter-century, but the alliance structure that was largely created in the 20th century has remained static in the 21st.
The U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation signed in January 1960, a partnership designed to continue Japan’s democratization and prevent Tokyo’s re-emergence as a U.S. rival in the Pacific, still mandates Washington to come to the defense of all Japanese-administered territory in case of an external attack. While the U.S.-Japan alliance grants Washington considerable access to Japanese land, naval, and air force facilities, the treaty also brings Washington closer to a potential armed skirmish with a nuclear-armed Beijing.
Any miscalculation or provocation between Chinese and Japanese naval or air forces in the vicinity of the Senkaku Islands would prompt likely intervention from American military personnel, thereby forcing a confrontation with the world’s second-largest economy and biggest Asian power. Such a conflict could quickly spiral into a larger-scale war. Protecting the Japanese mainland is one thing, a mission the American public could very well understand. But it is an entirely different prospect for the U.S. to send their sons and daughters in uniform into harm’s way to assist Tokyo’s control of a bunch of rocks in the East China Sea. Americans are highly unlikely to support such a mission.
The U.S.-Taiwan relationship is another case study. Although not a conventional alliance on par with NATO or the U.S. and Japan, the U.S. has provided security assurances to Taipei for 40 years.
It is the policy of the United States to ensure that the self-administered island retains the defensive capability to defend itself from a Chinese attack. That policy, however, is exceedingly archaic at a time when China’s military capacity and capability is exponentially more powerful than it was even a decade ago.
Only 35 percent of Americans surveyed by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs support the deployment of U.S. troops against China if Beijing invaded Taiwan. The number buttresses a fundamental point too few in Washington recognize: the more security commitments the U.S. provides, the more likely there will come a time when a president will be confronted with the decision to send service members into conflicts that have little to no impact on the country’s national security.
Washington has a national security interest in preventing a Chinese hegemon from dominating a strategically important region. Increased engagement in Asia, primarily through free trade and diplomacy, is critical to securing America’s economic and security interests.
What policymakers should keep in mind, however, is that not all alliances with other countries are risk-free and high-reward. By extending a defense umbrella over so many nations, the U.S. is increasing the risk of military overextension and economic misallocation.
In his farewell address to the nation in 1796, President George Washington argued that permanently attaching the United States to any foreign nation would conflate U.S. security interests with the interests of other partners. In Washington’s own words: “Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists … betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.”
This advice was channeled by President Thomas Jefferson during his first State of the Union address in 1801, where he considered “entangling alliances with none” as one of the “essential principles of our Government.”
The message is clear: In striking partnerships with other nations, the United States should take constant care to keep the interests of the public front-and-center. Political leaders in Washington today would do well to remember the words of America’s founders.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a fellow at Defense Priorities.
