The post-Cold War demise of American foreign policy

With authoritarianism, fanaticism, aggression, and conflict growing alarmingly worldwide, it is clear that America’s post-Cold War foreign policy has been subpar. The response to emerging or reemerging threats to the free world’s security and way of life has been slow, inadequate, makeshift, and inconstant.

The United States and its allies have neglected proven principles and practices and let down their guard while enemies of freedom have seized the day. Complacent rather than vigilant, reactive rather than proactive, presidents and policymakers have, at critical junctures, such as the prologue to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, squandered America’s inherent moral-democratic leadership and military-strategic advantage.

Today’s troubled world bears the marks of deteriorating American foreign policy and waning American influence. The now-formidable China, Russia, and Iran “axis” relentlessly cultivates anti-American dictatorships and forces, feverishly spreads disinformation and propaganda, brazenly pursues “gray zone” subversion of democracies, and shamelessly revives imperialism. Russia wages a genocidal war in the heart of Europe while China advances in the South China Sea. The Taliban in Afghanistan are resurgent, and Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel preceded waves of attacks by Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The nuclear, missile, cyber, bio, and space weapons programs of hostile powers are advancing quickly while America’s relative deterrent capability has declined. Meanwhile, the number of countries beset by dictatorship and violent repression of religious, ethnic, and political minorities has steadily increased.

Making matters worse, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are poor “candidates” for these fraught and dangerous times. They stand in contrast to Cold War Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan, who met their own fraught and dangerous times with moral clarity, strategic vision, and military strength and resolve.

Forgetting critical lessons learned

Reeling from the horrors and devastation of fascism and total war, Cold War leaders resolved to stop expansionist aggression in its tracks and counter extremist ideologies with ideas of political liberty and human worth, to “never again” allow atrocities and hostilities to spiral out of control. Thus, inspiring presidential speeches for freedom and pro-democracy initiatives such as the Marshall Plan and the Voice of America existed alongside meticulous defense strategies, especially “containment” of the Soviet Union, and robust military alliances, especially NATO. American power, American ideals, and U.S. investment were considered “indispensable” to a traumatized, war-scarred world longing for peace and freedom but faced with communist repression and Soviet aggression.

The connection between internal dictatorship and external hostility was a recurring Cold War theme. Truman asserted in an address to Congress that “the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will [have] a way of life free from coercion” required helping free peoples “maintain their free institutions and their national integrity.” Totalitarian regimes, he warned, “undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States.” Similarly, Reagan, in an address on promising arms reduction talks with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, stipulated that “an improvement of the human condition within the Soviet Union” was “indispensable for an improvement in bilateral relations.” For “a government that will break faith with its own people cannot be trusted to keep faith with foreign powers.”

During the Cold War, the U.S. dealt with dangers not dissimilar to those we face today. While threats such as cyberattacks and the weaponization of space are new, the determination of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea and their antidemocratic cohorts to subvert and replace the U.S.-oriented world order rings an old bell. So, too, does the severe repression within these regimes and the camps and prisons in which innocents languish. Faced with the Soviet Union’s expansive communism, brutal subjugation of Eastern Europe, and attempts to destabilize and dominate governments in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, Reagan warned against “blindly hoping for the best while the enemies of freedom grow stronger day by day.” “We know only too well,” he counseled, “that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong but when they are weak. It is then that tyrants are tempted.”

Unfortunately, American foreign policy today devalues Reagan’s “peace through strength” strategy. For the sake of peace, Reagan rebuilt the military and insistently pursued missile defense systems (widely derided as “Star Wars”). Then-President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden backed out of commitments to install by then workable missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic despite mounting Russian aggression. Indeed, Biden often responds too little, too late to escalating provocations, hostilities, and atrocities. Prevarication when dealing with mounting threats was evident in Biden’s unwise “waiving” of sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline and “pausing” of military aid to Ukraine in advance of Russia’s full-scale invasion. It has been evident in the dithering and incrementalism with which the Biden administration has provided weaponry to war-torn Ukraine, a problem compounded by the recent costly delay in passing a foreign aid package in the House of Representatives.

U.S. military brass testify that China’s overall military might is on a trajectory to surpass the U.S. and warn about the lethal potential of China, Russia, and Iran combined. Military spending cuts and failure to stay ahead diminish credible deterrence. Especially problematic: U.S. adversaries maintain the energy and resoluteness that a war-weary, world-weary U.S. lacks. State and nonstate “bad actors” are fierce and emboldened, while the U.S., in general, and President Biden in particular, appears to be floundering.

Foreign policy degraded by politics

The Biden administration’s weak and ineffectual Iran policy exemplifies the fraying of the post-World War II American foreign policy framework. Resisting the “snapback” of sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program, the administration allowed billions in sanctions waivers and estimated billions more in unsanctioned oil sales. Iran’s nuclear advances and massive April 14 attack on Israel, and the Houthis’ continuous attacks on international shipping, show Iran is undeterred. Moreover, Team Biden is awfully quiet about Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism and brutal crackdown on women, religious minorities, and dissidents, as well as about U.S. hostages of Hamas.

Then, there are the repeated attacks by Iran-aligned militias on U.S. forces, bases, and ships and Biden’s tepid response. Recall the deadly position in which he put troops with his rash and ill-conceived withdrawal from Afghanistan and the way he abandoned the Afghan people to the Taliban and left U.S. allies behind to be hunted down despite pleas by military personnel. Recently, Biden put U.S. troops in charge of building a humanitarian aid pier in Gaza, possibly placing them in harm’s way. Hamas has already launched rockets at the pier.

A bigger picture is at play here. Setting a standard for Cold War foreign policy, the 1948 Republican platform and Truman at the 1948 Democratic convention emphasized “stopping partisan politics at the water’s edge.” In contrast, the Democratic Party’s current-day leftism and catering to the voter base can politicize foreign policy. Thus, the Biden administration has treated domestic oil and gas companies too stringently while treating the oil and gas companies of Iran and Venezuela (and leftist dictatorships in South America in general) too indulgently. Concern for the youth vote exacerbates Biden’s Israel policy contradictions, as when he suddenly threatened to block the transfer to Israel of U.S. weapons. Meanwhile, Trump mockingly threatens to abandon NATO allies that don’t spend enough on defense. Privately pressuring allies is acceptable, but undermining or humiliating allies is a bridge too far and hurts America’s credibility and appeal.

Border policy so “liberal” that it allows foreign nationals, including thousands of Chinese military-age men and hundreds on terrorism watch lists, to stream across the U.S. border and fentanyl to flood streets is another bridge too far … taken for the sake of domestic politics. No foreign policy analyst wants to focus on the border, but news that U.S. special ops forces have been surveilled and worse by migrants here illegally shows this is now a national security problem.

Similarly politicized, today’s State Department advocates American-progressive tenets internally and abroad (not the best way to win hearts and minds in developing countries), and the military must undergo progressivist “training” (not the best way to attract recruits). The U.S. Military Academy recently removed the words “Duty, Honor, Country” from its mission statement. U.S. elites would do well to make the military more attractive to patriots willing to put their lives on the line for their country. Military recruitment has dropped precipitously in times so perilous that the U.S. and U.S. allies should prepare for war while doing everything possible to deter and preempt it. The Democratic Party should reconsider its unabated post-Cold War slide to the left. Young Americans must learn about the horrific abuses and economic decay inherent in communism.

So, too, the New Right should reconsider selfish, misguided isolationism and stop associating military service with “endless war.” And the Republican Party should unequivocally reject and debunk Tucker Carlson’s version of libertarianism, which includes apologetics for Russia and absurdly/implicitly associates murderous Vladimir Putin with Christian values. Perhaps it’s an old-fashioned concept, discarded along with the hard lessons of World War II, but democratic politicians should have higher stakes in mind than their own or their party’s political power.

Rediscovering America’s voice

Truman often spoke of the “truth” about communism and warned that those who fall for the collectivist ideology have “deceit and mockery, poverty and tyranny” as their reward. But just as American foreign policy today devalues the imperative of peace through strength, it also devalues the power of truth when it is raised against propaganda. While the U.S. should know and say what it stands for and why, Trumanesque and Reaganesque addresses delineating threats to democracies and making the case for freedom are conspicuously absent. America’s “voice” is only a whisper on the world stage.

Reagan said America’s greatest allies in the Cold War were Soviet subjects and spoke frequently of universal, God-given human rights. In contrast, Biden rarely reaches out to or speaks up for people trapped in severely oppressive regimes (such as Uyghurs in China). Although Trump’s first-term policies were, in certain regards, tougher on adversaries than Biden’s, he, too, had little to say for the oppressed and even went so far as to speak flatteringly of dictators occasionally.

Moreover, Trump’s campaign rhetoric indicates that a second term could involve unprincipled, unwise “deals” with dictators, even Putin.

How far we are from Kennedy’s and Reagan’s impassioned pleas for people behind the Iron Curtain as they stood at the Berlin Wall. Kennedy: “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’” Reagan: “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Today, America is in a propaganda war in which it is hardly participating. American leaders should respond to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s purported enthusiasm for concepts such as multilateralism, peaceful coexistence, and noninterference with truth-telling. The truth is that when Chinese elites say Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet are “internal affairs,” they mean China must be free to crush them. The truth is that China is an imperialist power that plans to subjugate Taiwan. Washington should compellingly counter China, Russia, and Iran’s insidious falsehoods about democracies and expose their attempts to destabilize democracies. For, around the world, they are exploiting moral, military, and strategic deficits in the U.S. posture and pushing the idea of a new world order hard. Even in Latin America, the three countries have significantly increased their military presence, backing of dictatorships, and dissemination of propaganda and disinformation.

The U.S. must re-find hard and soft power backbone and resourcefulness. The U.S. and NATO should immediately forge a decisive strategy for Ukraine to win, not just to hang on. Voice of America-type programs, essential in the Cold War, should be revived and updated for the digital age. Crafting alternative global initiatives to China’s Belt and Road, Global Security, and Global Development initiatives should be an American foreign policy priority. More effort should go into strengthening commercial ties, liberalizing trade agreements, and demonstrating humanitarianism. Tougher sanctions should be imposed on atrocities and illicit weapons programs. China, Russia, and Iran’s feverish espionage and disinformation, blackmail and bribes, cyberattacks and “cognitive warfare,” and hostage-taking and transnational repression should meet staunch resistance. Critical supply chains must be diversified away from China, and U.S. capital and technology must never be allowed to assist China’s military buildup and rights abuses.

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Of course, none of this is a substitute for superior military-industrial capability, strong alliances, and demonstrated resolve, so that adversaries’ calculations include fear of overwhelming retaliation. Biden administration hopes that diplomatic engagement will meaningfully change the course of extremist regimes and groups is unwarranted.

On the other hand, engagement with peoples China, Russia, and Iran seek to control could help thwart totalitarian/imperial ambitions. Reagan saw U.S. commitment to universal rights and the corollary “ability to inspire” as America’s “key strategic advantage.” Truman warned the advantage would be squandered if “in many parts of the world … the story is going untold.”

Anne R. Pierce is an author of books and articles on American presidents, American foreign policy, and American society. Follow her @AnneRPierce.