Surviving as a Liberal Internationalist in the Era of Trump’s Illiberal Nationalism

Constructive engagement and respectful opposition are the only viable options.

In my last essay on Substack, I outlined three major foreign policy debates in American history: isolationists vs internationalists, unilateralists vs multilateralists, and realists vs liberals. As I explained in detail there, Trump is an extreme isolationist, unilateralist, and realist, unlike any American president over the last century. In his foreign policy, he aspires to depart radically from previous Republican and Democratic administrations. They themselves say as much.

Regarding these debates about American foreign policy, I am an internationalist, multilateralist, and liberal—the exact opposite of Trump’s worldview. Let me briefly explain why.

To advance American security and economic interests most effectively, the United States must be engaged in the world, not withdrawn from it. Isolationism may have worked fine in earlier centuries of our history. (On that history, read Charles Kupchan’s Isolationism). But it certainly failed us in the 1930s and will fail us again today. (On that 1930s history, read the terrific book by Robert Kagan called The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941). If Putin prevails in Ukraine, the threat to American allies in Europe will grow. We will have to send more American soldiers to help defend our NATO allies. And if we don’t—or if we withdraw from NATO altogether, as some isolationists now recommend—the probability of a larger war in Europe will increase. If Putin attacks Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, or Poland, the United States will eventually have to get involved, just like it happened during World War II.

Similarly, China’s invasion of Taiwan would also impact American security and prosperity. Imagine the Communist Party of China controlling all the chips we currently buy from Taiwan. To pretend that we don’t have a stake in that fight is naïve, especially since all our technological giants rely on those chips for innovation and growth. And, by the way, a victory in Ukraine on Putin’s terms makes a PRC invasion of Taiwan more likely.

President Trump Signs Executive Orders In the Oval Office. January 31, 2025. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

We have entered a new era of great power competition, and my next book, Autocrats versus Democrats: China, Russia, and the New World Order, explains it in great detail. (While the book is still in publication, you can read a preview of some arguments here: “Lessons from the Cold War for Competing (and Cooperating) with China Today”). We cannot compete effectively with China by pulling back from international engagement. For instance, the freezing of U.S. foreign assistance this week sent a terrible signal to our partners worldwide about our new isolationist proclivities. That move was a gift to China. As China continues to build roads, airports, and railroad lines across the developing world through mechanisms like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), we cannot disengage and then hope that the countries we abandoned will continue to host our military bases, buy our products, or vote with us at the United Nations. Imposing tariffs on our allies and partners, as Trump plans to do tomorrow against two of our neighbors and close friends, Canada and Mexico, to try to isolate the American domestic market is also imprudent. Again, we should learn from the 1930s to remember how dangerous this isolationist impulse in support of tariffs can be.

Unilateralism also does not advance American national interests as effectively as multilateralism. To be sure, there will be moments when the United States must act alone. But as an effective grand strategy for American foreign policy, we are better off acting together than alone. During the Cold War, one of our greatest advantages over the Soviet Union was our strong, prosperous, and reliable allies. In competing with China and Russia today, the same is true. Insulting our allies by imposing tariffs on their goods or threatening to seize parts of the territories does not serve long-term American security or economic interests. When the United States was last attacked on September 11, 2001, our allies came to our aid, deploying soldiers to Afghanistan to die side by side with our soldiers. If we must fight a future war in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, we will be better off doing so with allies rather than alone.

Likewise, pulling out of treaties and multilateralism institutions, as President Trump did during his first term as well as on his first day back in office, does not advance American interests. When we leave, China stays. Yes, some multilateral economic organizations, such as the World Trade Organization, need reform, but we can better advance our economic interest by participating in the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank than by “walking out,” as Michael Beeman calls it in his new excellent book.

Finally, supporting liberal ideas —freedom, liberty, democracy, markets, and human rights—abroad also serves American interests. Trump is short-sighted in abandoning a longstanding, bipartisan tradition of promoting democracy around the world. Think about our history of conflict and cooperation. Our best allies have always been democracies, and our worst enemies—autocrats like Hitler, Mussolini, Japanese generals, Stalin, Mao, Saddam Hussein, Milosevic, etc. Today, we face the greatest threats to American national security from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—all dictatorships—as well as illiberal and anti-democratic non-state actors like Hamas, Hezbollah, and ISIS. And when democracy expands, we become more secure and more prosperous. After World War II, democratization in Germany, Italy, and Japan made the U.S. more secure and also gave us new trading and investment partners. The same was true when we gained new democratic allies in Eastern Europe after communism collapsed there in 1989 and 1991. As former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright wrote in a blurb for the cover of my 2010 book, Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can, “Promoting democracy and human rights is not just the right thing to do. For America, it is the smart thing to do.”

More broadly, our ideas about freedom and democracy are among our most significant competitive advantages in today's competition with China and Russia. Public opinion polls worldwide show that the majority of people in most countries favor democracy over other forms of government. At times, of course, effective diplomacy requires talking to dictators. I most certainly did in Central Asia when I worked at the National Security Council in the first years of the Obama administration, as well as in Moscow when I worked there as the U.S. ambassador to Russia. But no American president or diplomat must check our values at the door when we engage with these autocratic regimes. If we abandon our commitment to supporting democratic ideas, we will lose Cold War 2.0.

So, there you have it—my quick take on why a grand strategy of internationalism, multilateralism, and liberalism more effectively advances American national interests than isolationism, unilateralism, and realism. But my problem is that the new American president and many people in his inner circle do not agree with me! So, what is a liberal internationalist like me to do in a new feverish era of illiberal nationalism?

One move would be adaptation. This is the approach Meta’s Marc Zuckerberg has taken, wanting to make his social media platforms have more “masculine energy” that is allegedly more in line with the zeitgeist of our times. At the highest levels, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has realigned his worldview—or at least, what he says and does publicly—to be more consistent with his new boss. At lower levels, I see hints of the same. If you want a job in the Trump administration, you need to explain the advantages of buying Greenland or imposing tariffs. Mentioning President McKinley in your job interview is a smart play as well. In the think tank world, too, many policy advocates are reframing their ideas and even changing their personnel to better interface with the Trump administration and its new ideological orientation.

I understand that strategy. But it’s not for me. I still believe that liberal internationalism better serves American national interests than illiberal nationalism. I might be wrong. I am ready to reconsider. To some, especially younger foreign policy specialists, I’m sure I sound like a dinosaur from the ancient past. They might be right. But I am not ready yet to accept that fatalism. Liberal internationalists were also deemed intellectual dissidents in the 1930s and 1970s. But our ideas survived, revived, and eventually thrived again. I’m betting on a new era of renewal for liberal internationalism in the future, even if this current interregnum of illiberal nationalism might last a long time.

A second strategy is withdrawal. Many people with my ideological orientation grew tired of fighting Trump during his first term and have no energy to do so for his second term. After all, just as Trump and his team promised, his first two weeks of initiatives—making Canada a 51^st state, buying or seizing the Panama Canal and Greenland, threatening Colombia, freezing all foreign assistance, imposing tariffs on allies, and committing to build a missile defense “iron dome” to protect the entire country—have been indeed shock and awe. I sympathize with the withdrawal impulse and most certainly have pledged not to respond to everything that Trump says and only focus on what he does. But disengagement is not an option for me. The stakes are too high.

So, that leaves me with only one viable option: constructive engagement and opposition. Regarding constructive engagement, I don’t think I will have many opportunities. During the Biden administration, I had direct lines of communication with some of his most senior foreign policy advisors, including, at times, President Biden himself. They did not always agree with me, but they engaged and even adopted some of my ideas. That kind of interaction will most likely be unavailable to me during Trump’s second term. During Trump’s first term, I visited the White House only once, to try to dissuade his team from handing me over to Putin! (Read about that here: “Putin Wanted to Interrogate Me. Trump Called it ‘an Incredible Offer.’ Why?”) So, instead, I will remain engaged in these debates in the public domain, in the media, and with Congress. When the Trump administration adopts a policy that I believe advances American national interests, I will praise them. (I already wrote about how constructive disruption in the national security state could be beneficial. Read that piece here.) When Trump and his team pursue policies that I believe damage American security and economic interests, I will criticize them. We are still a democracy; public debate can and should still influence foreign policy decisions.

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