The Hoover Institution hosted a virtual online series featuring fellows’ analysis of the foreign policy challenges facing the incoming presidential administration.
In the three sessions, chaired by Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow Michael Auslin, Hoover fellows also discussed their essay contributions in America in the World 2020 a special edition of the Great Decisions journal co-edited by Auslin and published by the Foreign Policy Association.
The first session, featuring Senior Fellow Russell Berman, Senior Fellow Elizabeth Economy, and Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior H.R. McMaster, covered the activity of countries and regions of concern to American national security and interests.
Economy argued that American policymakers should not take a narrow view of challenges posed by Beijing including aggressive trade practices, intellectual property theft, and failures to combat climate change. Instead, these issues should be addressed as a competition over values. She maintained that while the United States and its security partners believe that China should adapt to a rules-based international order, Beijing wants the world to conform to its desires.
Economy outlined three ways in which Washington should address the China challenge:: 1) get America’s domestic house in order by eradicating COVID-19, recovering economically, and ensuring the integrity of its democratic institutions; 2) work with allies and partners to establish political and economic leverage over Beijing; 3) and assume leadership in international institutions so that member countries can more closely align policies and marshal capable responses to crises such as global pandemics.
During his remarks, Berman stressed the need for greater cohesion in the trans-Atlantic alliance, which has suffered in the past decade as a result of divergent interests between the United States and prominent EU member countries, France and Germany. While Washington has placed tough sanctions on Moscow, Germany and France have reaped economic benefits from oil and gas deals with the Putin-led government. Despite these EU countries’ friendly arrangements with Russia, the United States still assumes a large financial burden for Europe’s defenses. Berman also said that Washington should pay close attention to Turkey, whose aggression in Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean has threatened the unity of NATO, in which the Turks provide the second largest military.
Berman believes that the United States needs to engage Europe at multiple levels, recognizing the importance of the European Union and NATO as central political entities while also paying attention to the actions and subtle differences of their member states.
McMaster argued that inconsistency in US foreign policy toward the Middle East has created space for America’s adversaries, especially regarding Iran. He explained that policy makers made the wrong assumptions that Iran would abandon their nuclear ambitions and embrace the international community after signing the JCPOA (The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). The opposite has occurred, McMaster held. The regime gained millions of dollars with which it funded proxies in Syria and Lebanon that have exacerbated the Sunni-Shiite divide in the Middle East. McMaster said that Iran’s supports Hezbollah with the goal of weakening the governing authority in Beirut and keeping Lebanon dependent on Iran.
McMaster advocated that US policymakers should continue to place pressure on Iran and force it to make a choice between being a terrorist state or a responsible nation in the international community.
McMaster also lamented the drawdown of US troops in Afghanistan, explaining that the policy was based on the belief that there was an explicit demarcation between the Taliban’s designs to reclaim rule in the Central Asian country and Al Qaeda’s export of terrorism worldwide. He maintained that sustained engagement in Afghanistan would be far less costly than redeploying troops to counter future terrorism operations.
Session 2: Strategic Stability
In the second session, senior fellows Milbank Family Senior Fellow Niall Ferguson, Senior Fellow Larry Diamond, and Martin and Illie Anderson Victor Davis Hanson, provided insights on geopolitical trends, the state of democracy in the world, and the great challenges that lie ahead for America.
Niall Ferguson argued that the United States and China are already engaged in a Second Cold War. He explained that though China does not foment socialist revolutions as the Soviet Union did, the pathologies of both Communist regimes are very similar. China, like the Soviet Union has regional and global ambitions, as seen in its efforts to expand its military presence in the South China Sea and finance infrastructure projects in developing countries in exchange for political loyalty. He also added that much like the Soviet Union’s experience with the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, China also became a major environmental hazard to the world as a result of its failure to be transparent about the highly infectious nature of the COVID-19 virus that originated from Hubei province.
Diamond agreed with Ferguson that the United States is currently in a Cold War with China. He explained that there are growing prospects for a global coalition of nations willing to counter Beijing aggression, but it would be an uphill battle due to a decade long recession of democracy around the world. He maintained that as a result of this democratic recession, authoritarian regimes in China and Russia have become more capable of shaping global events.
Diamond said that a resurgence of democracy depended upon American power and the strengthening of alliances among democratic countries. He also urged US policymakers to more aggressively advance ideas of freedom, democracy, and human rights via instruments such as the United States Information Agency.
Victor Davis Hanson believes that a Biden administration won’t make a hard break from the Trump administration’s national security strategy. Hanson said that Trump was able to create a bi-partisan consensus against China’s unfair trade practices and currency manipulation that future administrations were unlikely to reverse.
Hanson argued that a reduction in energy dependence in the Middle East made future US interventions in the region unlikely. He maintained that stronger relationships forged with Arab states and increased sanctions against Iran have exposed the theocracy’s vulnerability thus making it less likely that Biden would attempt to revive the JCPOA.
Biden will not likely soften Trump’s calls for European nations to meet its two percent GDP requirement for NATO either, Hanson held. Even George W. Bush and Barack Obama criticized Berlin and other European capitals for not assuming thier share of the defense burden. Hanson said that he expects Biden will agree with his predecessors that the United States’ continual funding of one-third of NATO’s forces is unsustainable.
Session 3: Tsars, Trade, and T-Cells
In the final session, senior fellows Senior Fellow Lucy Shapiro, George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics John B. Taylor, and Peter and Helen Bing Senior Michael McFaul discussed the preparation of effective responses to possible future pandemics, the importance of free trade policies for America’s stable economic growth, and the application of the right policies in countering a resurgent Russia.
Shapiro, also a professor of developmental biology at Stanford, explained that factors such as climate change and globalization have redistributed pathogens thereby creating the conditions for the advent of highly contagious and lethal diseases such as COVID-19.
Shapiro argued that American policymakers weren’t able to muster a capable response to the public health crisis due in large part to a polarized political environment and citizens’ declining level of trust in their government.
She said that preventing future pandemics will depend on greater cooperation between public health authorities nationwide. She also stressed the need for creating reliable supply chains for personal protective equipment and directing human behavior toward voluntary compliance to government orders in order to protect both the health of citizens and the national economy.
John B. Taylor maintained that though the pandemic has created road blocks to international trade and further exposed the unfair commercial practices of state actors such as the People’s Republic of China, the United States still strategically benefits from reducing barriers to trade. Taylor also mentioned optimistically that new technologies such as Zoom have enabled the emergence of new industries such as telemedicine.
Michael McFaul, who was US Ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, said that he believes a Biden administration will continue sanctions against Russia. However, McFaul advocated that policymakers should follow the diplomatic playbook of Distinguished Fellow George P. Shultz. McFaul noted that when Shultz was secretary of state (1982-1989), he engaged the Soviet leadership on arms control, while indefatigably pressing them to yield to America’s concerns about human rights within the then USSR.
Click here to watch all three sessions.
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