The Strategy Sessions is a limited-run podcast hosted by Emma Ashford, a senior fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center. Today, Emma talks with Michael Poznansky, a professor at the Naval War College.* Emma and Mike discuss how U.S. policy leaders can use lessons from the cold war in today’s strategic environment, how the rules-based order might provide some guidance in the US-China strategic competition, and what future U.S. engagement in multilateral institutions going forward might look like. Emma and Mike’s discussion is part of the New Visions for Grand Strategy Project, a collection of essays, videos, and podcasts in which out-of-the box thinkers discuss the future of U.S. foreign policy. *Michael Poznansky joined the Grand Strategy Sessions in his personal capacity. The views expressed in this podcast are of Michael alone and do not represent those of the Naval War College, Department of the Navy, or Department of War *The Strategy Sessions Podcast is hosted by the Stimson Center and produced by University FM.
The Strategy Sessions is a limited-run podcast hosted by Emma Ashford, a senior fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center. Today, Emma talks with Michael Poznansky, a professor at the Naval War College.* Emma and Mike discuss how U.S. policy leaders can use lessons from the cold war in today’s strategic environment, how the rules-based order might provide some guidance in the US-China strategic competition, and what future U.S. engagement in multilateral institutions going forward might look like.
Emma and Mike’s discussion is part of the New Visions for Grand Strategy Project, a collection of essays, videos, and podcasts in which out-of-the box thinkers discuss the future of U.S. foreign policy.
*Michael Poznansky joined the Grand Strategy Sessions in his personal capacity. The views expressed in this podcast are of Michael alone and do not represent those of the Naval War College, Department of the Navy, or Department of War
*The Strategy Sessions Podcast is hosted by the Stimson Center and produced by University FM.
(Transcripts may contain a few typographical errors due to audio quality during the podcast recording.)
[00:00:07] Emma Ashford: The 2020s are likely to be a pivotal decade in determining the future of America's role in the world. Global dynamics are changing. The era of unchallenged U.S. global dominance is ending. And China and other states are rising. At home, the United States is also going through a period of transition and change in foreign policy, from bipartisan consensus to debate and division. The only thing certain is that change in U.S. foreign policy is inevitable.
In these discussions, our guests engage with some of the most challenging questions facing U.S. policymakers, bring distinct perspectives to bear on these questions, and offer their own vision for the future of U.S. grand strategy. These are The Strategy Sessions.
Hello, I'm Emma Ashford, a senior fellow in the Reimagining US Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center. Welcome to The Strategy Sessions, a series of discussions with forward-looking, out-of-the-box thinkers on the future of U.S. foreign policy.
Joining me today is Michael Poznansky. He's a scholar at the Naval War College. And I believe you also have some interesting disclosures you have to tell us about.
[00:01:19] Mike Poznansky: Of course, just the obligatory disclaimer that I'm here in my personal capacity and that my views are my own and don't represent those of my employer.
[00:01:27] Emma Ashford: And your employer, the Department of Defense, makes its own strategy. But we are here today very much to talk about your ideas. So, let's start with a few general questions, because I think one of the more interesting questions facing people who want to do grand strategy is, what the shape of the world is going to look like over the next few decades where, in this period of geopolitical flocks, the world really doesn't look like it did over the last 30 years or even during the Cold War period? How do you see that emerging world? What's the structure, major players? What do you find interesting?
[00:02:01] Mike Poznansky: One of the more interesting things, you mentioned the Cold War, and people draw lots of analogies to the present moment with the Cold War, and there's a lot of hot debate about whether we are in a new Cold War.
I think it's clear, first and foremost, that the unipolar moment in which the U.S. had unrivaled military supremacy and influence is firmly behind us now. The last two administrations, starting with the first Trump administration, Biden carried it over, and now Trump, all agreed, effectively, that great power competition or strategic competition was here to stay. I think that's an accurate representation of where we are. The U.S. strategies tend to identify several main adversaries — China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and non-state actors. I think that list and that ranking is about right, where China is the predominant competitor for the United States, and Russia, Iran, and North Korea do present serious challenges in different regions.
A big difference from the Cold War, though, of course, are a number of factors. One, this moment of geopolitical competition lacks the clear ideological dimension of the Cold War. I think that's a major difference. And of course, just the level of interdependence between the U.S. and China is dramatically different from the Soviet Union. So, I do think it rhymes in some ways with the Cold War this moment that we're in but there are some real differences that have profound implications for U.S. foreign and defense policy.
[00:03:26] Emma Ashford: And perhaps, that's why, as we'll get into talking about your essay in a minute, you actually talk about returning to some of those Cold War structures. Before we do, though, one more general question, right? If I were to offer you the ability to write U.S. foreign policy grand strategy for the next couple of decades, what do you think your biggest guiding principles would be? What should animate U.S. strategists?
[00:03:48] Mike Poznansky: I could think of a few, none of which will be that surprising for, kind of, consensus U.S. foreign policy. Perhaps, one would be that America's challenges require multilateralism and multilateral cooperation. AI, climate, nuclear policy, and arms control all require both working with allies and pure competitors to solve major challenges. The second would be that the U.S. should remain a champion for the rule of law, human rights and democracy. Although, as we can get into how that was practiced during the unipolar moment might have got a little bit more in the direction of an interventionist manifestation of that. Whereas, I think the U.S. can champion these values in a little bit more of a restrained fashion. And then the third is that the U.S. global footprint, militarily, there's room for innovation and rethinking there. But the U.S. does benefit, in my view, from a robust presence in the three key regions where we've had that military presence for the last 80 years, which would be Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
[00:04:46] Emma Ashford: Yeah. So, you're very specifically not a prioritizer in this context.
[00:04:50] Mike Poznansky: Yeah. I think that's a really important line of thinking right now about prioritization, where, in an era of finite resources, can the U.S. continue to have a global footprint in all these regions? I think there's no question that the U.S. needs to pivot attention and resources to East Asia above other regions. And there are different ways of managing that process to ensure that Europe and the Middle East remains stable. So, I don't necessarily disagree with the premise of prioritization, but a total withdrawal from Europe, for example, I don't think is the right answer and, kind of, misdiagnoses the U.S. presence there, maybe likening it more to the Cold War era when we had 300,000 troops as opposed to today where we have 30,000.
[00:05:34] Emma Ashford: So, let's shift over to your essay then, because you, I think, make an argument that used to be extremely popular but I think is, perhaps, less common these days, which is that we should return to some kind of liberal international order – rules-based international order. And I think that argument has been beaten up a lot in recent years. But I'd like to start by giving it the best possible hearing. Tell me what an ideal liberal international order supported by the U.S. looks like for you. What is that U.S. role in the world?
[00:06:08] Mike Poznansky: Yeah. I think part of the issue with talking about the liberal international order — and this is not just on critics, this is also proponents — is it's a little bit of a fuzzy concept, right? I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but after World War II, the U.S. established a wide array of institutions, rules, and norms to manage great power competition and try to prevent some of the ailes that led to the major conflicts of the first half of the 20th century. But the liberal order itself, liberal international order, is not necessarily how policymakers, even at the time, thought about it. It was thought about, kind of, in discrete issue areas and then institutions and rules. So, one issue area would be economics. So, we have the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. We have the IMF and World Bank. In the military sphere, we have collective security institutions, most prominently in Europe and NATO, and then a series of bilateral institutions. And also, the prohibition on the use of military force and military coercion in the UN charter, which was itself a sort of collective institution but stymied, oftentimes, by the different players on the security council. And then the human rights regime with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and so forth.
So, I think, to talk about the renovation or return to the Liberal international order, it probably makes sense to go issue area by issue area. That's not as pithy as just talking about a return to liberal order. The essay primarily focuses on the use of force, in part because some of the most controversial departures in my view of U.S. foreign policy from the liberal order in the unipolar moment had to do with the use of force.
And so for me, part of what a return to a liberal or rules-based international order would mean would be recommitting to the non-intervention principle in the UN Charter and making the exercise of U.S. power, both military and economic, more predictable, more restrained, and ensuring that it follows a core set of rules, essentially.
[00:07:55] Emma Ashford: So, I'm just curious because you're right, I think there are these, sort of, either, issue areas or you could consider them nested sets of institutions. And they cover the gamut, right? Some of them were exceedingly binding, institutionalized, bureaucratized, NATO being a good example. Some of them were practically binding. The GATT, for example, in WTO where we have international courts of arbitration that are as close to binding international law as you get these days. But then some of it, such as the UN, right, I mean toothless. So, do you see some of these as more important than the others?
[00:08:32] Mike Poznansky: That's an excellent point. So, some of these institutions, as you mentioned, in the trade regime and the World Trade Organizations, as you hit the nail on the head, highly bureaucratized, rule-focused, there's a court which can arbitrate disputes between different members. And the UN is a lot more amorphous. There's no real enforcement mechanism because the enforcement mechanism would be the great powers themselves and the security council.
That said, in a book I have coming out later this year, I found that time and again in the realm of the use of force, which is where the UN charter would be most operative, policymakers, especially during the Cold War, were obsessed, time and again, with the perception of complying with some of the core tenets of the UN charter and also some of these tenets manifested elsewhere. So, in Latin America, the non-intervention principle, which is core to the UN Charter, also shows up in the Organization of American States, the OAS charter, in actually a more robust form. So, the UN Charter talks about a prohibition on the threat or use of military force to change the political independence or territorial integrity of other states.
The OAS Charter also talks about economic influence and intervention, in part because of the complicated history of the U.S. and Latin America, where we had lots of interventions. But it is true that the UN charter, in terms of enforcement, requires a lot of self-restraint. And so, a lot of what I'm calling for in the essay is for the U.S. to relearn that kind of muscle memory, where even if the security council's deadlocked or there are pressing national security in interest to be gained, that U.S. policymakers during the Cold War fought hard about how to, at least, show the appearance of self-restraint. As I also talk about in the essay in this book, that wasn't, for the record of compliance, not perfect. Policymakers often pushed violations of the liberal order to the covert sphere. So, I think avoiding some of those excesses in today's moment would probably be advantageous.
But, the bottom line for me is that the strength of the enforcement within the institution itself doesn't tell the whole story about whether the U.S. can or shouldn't basically abide by certain rules.
[00:10:36] Emma Ashford: That's really interesting because, again, many of the criticisms of liberal order do focus on U.S. violations of it, but the policymakers felt themselves, in some way, to be constrained by it is still interesting. Let's talk for a minute about the return question, right? Because you keep saying going back to the Cold War, returning to the liberal order. What happens during the unipolar moment? And why is that a problem?
[00:10:59] Mike Poznansky: Yeah. So, the debate about U.S. foreign policy in the unipolar period, so let's call it 1991, something like that, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, until 2010s, at some point, when we had the return to great power competition. So, during the Cold War, part of the reason that policymakers were so concerned with the appearance of compliance had to do with the competition with the Soviet Union. And policymakers saw the appearance of compliance with the Liberal International Order as essential, basically, for three main reasons.
They viewed it as a tool for uniting allies, not all of whom would've necessarily defected to the Soviet Union but might have limited cooperation. Second, they saw it as a way to court non-aligned powers who might've been on the fence. I just read a really interesting paper who called these states international swing states, which I thought was an interesting phrase and analogy to U.S. politics. And then, third, they viewed it as essential for avoiding what some IR scholars call competitive shaming. In other words, if the U.S. is seen violating the liberal international order, the Soviet Union could use it as a cudgel to delegitimize the U.S. lateral order and potentially court adherents over to its side. And so, those three concerns made policymakers wary of being seen openly violating liberal international order.
Once the Soviet Union collapsed, early ‘90s here, Bush 41 started thinking about this even before the Soviet Union collapses. But it really happened during the first Clinton administration. And they're navigating this new world. You have the new world order under Bush. You have democratic enlargement under Clinton. They're trying to think about new grand strategies for this unipolar moment. And part of the reason, over time, that they begin to care less and less about the appearance of compliance is there's no other great power competitor to competitively shame the U.S., the compliance or keeping allies on the U.S. side is less of an imperative when national or perceived national interests crop up.
And so, yes, there's a lot of hand-wringing among allies and observers about overbearing and unrestrained U.S. foreign policy in the eyes of many, but policymakers just didn't care as much because they felt they didn't have to, even in the pursuit of nominally liberal ventures, like in Kosovo and Bosnia and Iraq and so forth.
[00:13:15] Emma Ashford: Yeah. Kosovo, I think, is a really interesting example here because you have the Russians really very strongly attempting to use these institutions, use this competitive shaming to try and stop the U.S. from an intervention going so far as to actually put troops on the ground briefly. It doesn't work. The U.S. just doesn't care. And I think that just speaks to the loss of Soviet Russian power in that period.
[00:13:40] Mike Poznansky: Yeah, and what's really interesting about that case is a lot of analysts attribute the birth of unilateralism to the neocons and the Bush administration. But as I show in this book, it definitely manifested during the Clinton administration, even going back to Bosnia in the middle of the 1990s. So, that humanitarian intervention, ultimately, is multilateral with UN backing. But in the declassified documents, the Clinton administration is basically ready to go alone. By the time in 1995, they ultimately get NATO and UN support to do it. And the Clinton administration feels burned by that experience. And so, by the time you have Kosovo, the UN Security Council is off the table. As you said, Russia is vehemently opposed to it, and Clinton, despite the fact of trying to court Russia and help usher democratization, goes anyway. NATO does ultimately come along, but there's also evidence to suggest Clinton administration might've went alone anyway. In Kosovo, the one exception would be the UK, which is, kind of, steady throughout this period. Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, willing to go with the United States, even when other core allies were not.
[00:14:48] Emma Ashford: So, what is the difference? I mean, part of the difference, clearly, between the Cold War and the post-Cold War period is the lack of constraints. But it also seems to me that the liberal order, or at least the U.S. understanding of it, morphs into something else. It's not necessarily about a system that can ensure interstate commerce and protect against the Soviets. And it becomes something, in many ways, more liberal, right? Liberal economically, liberal in values terms. Is that the kind of distinction you're drawing?
[00:15:20] Mike Poznansky: Yeah, precisely. So, this is always a really interesting tension with talking about the Liberal International Order, because part of what makes the Liberal International Order liberal is a clear set of established rules that are meant to bind, not only other states, but the U.S. also, in terms of constraints and restraints.
But another part of Liberal International Order is human rights, democracy, and so forth. That does manifest in some of the founding documents of liberal order. So, in the UN charter, the first article talks about self-determination, human rights, human dignity. We obviously have the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
The key distinction during the Cold War, so the original manifestation of the liberal order, was that the pursuit of those values were subordinate to the rules about how states could pursue them. The claim I make in the essay is that, during the unipolar moment, that flipped and the U.S. did pursue a series of liberal ventures. In Kosovo, obviously, the most prominent case of humanitarian intervention, including Bosnia and others from the 1990s, a deeply liberal venture. There's a lot of debate about, in the Iraq war, was that motivated by oil or national security or grievances about 9/11 or insecurity afterwards, but a lot of members of the Bush administration did articulate a, sort of, liberal vision for the Iraq war.
The big difference from the post-war period was that the pursuit of that liberal vision triumphed over the restraints around how use of force is meant to be used under the liberal order. And so, that was an inversion that happened in the unipolar moment because of a lack of constraints. And because of that interesting balancing act between liberal values and liberal rules, there has been a lot of confusion about whether those cases of use of force were a manifestation of the liberal order, or as I put it, a departure from the post-war version of it.
[00:17:08] Emma Ashford: Yeah, there's been a pretty active and healthy debate, I think, about whether Iraq and other ventures were, you know, is the liberal order a slippery slope to that? Is it inevitable or is this some aberration? Another way we could ask this is to think about whether it is possible to put the genie back in the bottle. And I think many people accept what you're saying. I think I agree with what you're saying. I remember an essay from Mr. Jake Sullivan prior to the Biden administration coming into office, where he pointed out the inherent tension between, you know, some U.S. interventions and sovereignty is an international norm and all the problems that creates. It's easy to say, “Well, let's just go back to what we had before.” Can you put the genie back in the bottle when you've spent 30 years violating all of those rules?
[00:17:56] Mike Poznansky: It's definitely difficult, no doubt. And it remains to be seen, to a large degree. Part of my assessment for why it is possible to put the genie back in the bottle comes from two assumptions. One is that, just structurally, countries that feel threatened by, say, China or Russia will feel more imperative to grow closer to the United States than those countries, which, kind of, primes them, I think, for accepting maybe U.S. policymakers articulating a return to the post-war order constraints.
And the other thing is, after the opening of the Russia-Ukraine War, the U.S., sort of, led the way in Europe and elsewhere in marshaling aid and assistance to Ukraine and put as the centerpiece the reinvigoration of NATO and the rules-based international order and resisting Russia, the Russian invasion as a violation of this court tenet of sovereignty and that you don't rewrite borders or revised borders at the point of a gun. And some of the public polling from that time actually suggested that, in a lot of countries, not all, there was faith that the United States was a force for good, even though there were also high numbers that the U.S. interferes in other countries.
So, that's clearly circumstantial, but it leads me to believe that, with the right actions, deeds and words, plus the structural imperative pushing a lot of countries toward the U.S., who I think are eager to cooperate with the United States if the U.S. can be trusted, those factors together lead me to believe that it is possible, although it is difficult.
[00:19:26] Emma Ashford: Yeah. I think it's the actions part of it that strikes me as particularly difficult. And you say in the essay at one point that, basically, the liberal order was successful because it was a, you know, honey not vinegar approach, right? They were trying to attract states. And that sounds like what you were saying there, too. But from my perspective, I think the U.S., these days, does a lot of vinegar. It does a lot of coercion, a lot of sanctions, a lot of tariffs and export controls, a lot of using military force to coerce other countries. Again, it feels like, even though we're saying we're maybe a little more chastened and we're returning to these things, we're still doing a lot of the coercion that we did during the unipolar moment. Is that a concern?
[00:20:08] Mike Poznansky: Yeah. I think you're seeing with the Trump administration and America first, there's definitely — no surprise — a different approach from the Biden administration. I think I've personally been surprised that some of the initiatives, for example, to get NATO to NATO countries to spend more on defense has changed my view, the Trump administration's view of NATO. And you see a fairly close relationship between the Trump administration and Mark Rutte, the secretary general, which I think is a positive sign.
I think a lot of analysts who might be sympathetic to liberal international order might have preferred different tactics that were a little more of the honey variety and a little less vinegar. I think if, ultimately, it ends up encouraging European countries to spend more and the U.S. is more willing to commit to NATO, both in rhetoric and deed, as I think we're starting to see, that could be positive. I know some of the negotiations around trade, South Korea and Japan, for example, have promised or suggested to the Trump administration that we strike some sort of mutual ship building capacity to court the U.S. and try to lower the number with tariffs and so forth.
So, tactically, I think it's definitely to be determined in terms of whether it works, but I don't think it's preordained that it will necessarily lead us in a totally different direction than the one we've been in.
[00:21:25] Emma Ashford: It's interesting to hear you say that Trump's use of coercion is different from Biden's, because I think you could also make an argument that Biden's policies were, in general, quite coercive — use of export controls, not returning to diplomacy with Iran, things like that. So, I do see a slightly larger problem with some of these tools. If the U.S. were to return to, kind of, a more liberal order, what tools of statecraft would you emphasize?
[00:21:50] Mike Poznansky: Well, I think you hit on something important with the Biden administration and its use of more coercive tactics. So, you could separate out the approach towards those kinds of four main adversaries that the United States has identified — China, Russia, North Korea, Iran.
It's definitely true that the Biden administration was putting a lot of pressure on Iran in much the same way we're seeing today. Obviously, we recently had the use of military force against Iran's nuclear program, but Trump himself, even afterwards, suggested that it was the time for diplomacy to be determined on whether Iran comes to the table, but I think it suggests a willingness on that front.
I think, also, when it comes to core allies and partners, that's where you would want to see, either a more cooperative approach towards getting concessions or trying to nudge policy along in ways that are favorable in the context of great power competition while keeping them on the U.S. side. Trump is obviously not the first president, for example, to complain about NATO contributions. This dates all the way back to the Cold War. Obama complained about them. Biden complained about them. If Trump ends up being the one that ultimately gets Europe to contribute more and then is happy with those contributions and recommitting to NATO, I think that would ultimately could be a positive thing.
And so, I think it, sort of, depends on which context we're talking about vis-a-vis the liberal order. But diplomacy, obviously important, especially with adversaries. The use of military force isn't inherently outside the bounds, but as I said in the essay, it would have to be done multilaterally in cooperation, at least with regional institutions, if not with the UN. Although, in a lot of these cases, the security council will be off the table, for obvious reasons.
[00:23:25] Emma Ashford: Yeah. So, you're talking a fair amount about the UN, but U.S. alliances are, obviously, central to this as well. Most of the, let's call them alternate liberal visions that are out there at the moment in the discourse are basically talking not so much about a return to the liberal order, but rather some modification of it. So, proposals for allied scale, that's defense, industrial cooperation, the Biden administration trying to network together Indo-Pacific and European alliances, prioritization, which is, you know, some alliances become more equal, others get priority. Where does your vision fit in this? Do you think that the old order is fit for purpose for China, or does it need modification?
[00:24:09] Mike Poznansky: I think a lot of the debate about these different orders or different proposals, so exactly the ones you mentioned, allied scale, the idea that the United States needs to deepen its cooperation and integration with allies on industrial capacity and economic innovation and things of that nature. The prioritization argument, which basically suggests that Europe should do more for Europe so the U.S. can focus attention on Asia, these are often pitched as intentions with one another.
I don't necessarily see it that way, actually. I think the rules-based order as a core North Star basically suggests that predictability, multilateralism rules agreed upon norms should be predominant, basically, in U.S. foreign policy. So, if Europe was able to provide more for the collective defense of Europe and the U.S. didn't abandon Europe but maybe shifted more resources towards Asia, I don't inherently see that as intention with the rules-based order, theoretically or conceptually.
I think the big question there is whether Europe can do it. And that's just a big unknown, because for 80 years, the U.S. security guarantee in Europe has basically meant that Europeans have not mobilized the kind of resources domestically to provide for the security of Europe without the United States. But that seems to me an untested assumption of prioritization. They believe Europe can. I mean, certainly, economically and in terms of industrial capacity and latent capacity, I feel like Europe can. But whether that would actually occur if the U.S. withdrew or pulled back, I think, is uncertain. But the allied scale argument, I think, is doing more with U.S. alliances than we've done in the past, but I see those as, perhaps, complimentary in a way that maybe other grand strategies restraint, for example, I think is a little more incompatible with the rules-based international order in terms of its notion, not that the U.S. just should prioritize, but that it can pull back a little bit more than it has been.
[00:26:05] Emma Ashford: So, if you'll forgive me, I guess one last slightly tough question. It seems to me that the biggest point of divergence between the liberal order as was and almost all of these visions looking forward is the economically liberal part of it, right? The biggest, most problematic institutions are the WTO. It's free and open trade. And I don't see any openness to that from pretty much any side of political spectrum here in the States. Do you see a place for, sort of, open commerce in a new liberal order? Or, is that something that's going to have to, I think, Hal Brands has actually explicitly made the argument that policymakers need to abandon that side of it to avoid the negative side effects of globalization and actually keep the security order intact? So, I don't know if you would go that far.
[00:26:52] Mike Poznansky: I think one of the interesting things about the liberal order debate is that, on the security side, it's often really difficult for Americans who don't pay much attention to foreign policy and are focused more on domestic issues, it really is tough sometimes to connect why we should care about Ukraine or Taiwan to the United States, the average American. And policymakers, both sides of the aisle, need to do a much better job of connecting why security issues abroad matter to the United States.
Economics is one area where it just touches Americans much more directly and is, as you mentioned, deeply intertwined with liberal international order, right? Free and open commerce, free trade agreements that, in some ways, have been beneficial for American economic growth over the decades, but it’s also hollowed out many American industries. And many countries don't have fair trade practices. And what you see in the data is that there is still pretty robust support for free trade, in general, but there's a lot of skepticism about the unfettered free trade without any sense of how it will impact American workers and whether other countries are taking advantage of the United States. And so, I definitely see a lot of appetite for moving away from the unfettered, at least neoliberal economics of the ‘90s, towards an economic policy that is at least sensitive to how it affects American workers and prosperity.
And so, I do probably think of the areas you might think of for the liberal order security, maybe international organizations, generally, like the nuclear Non-proliferation treaty or the UN, and military presence abroad. Fairly robust support for that. I think the one area where you're most likely to see modifications is exactly that one. And I don't think that means the U.S. can or should abandon free trade entirely, but it's pretty clear that public sentiment and reality were overdue for a correction of some kind there.
[00:28:47] Emma Ashford: So, before we wrap up, I do want to ask you one last general question, as we're asking everybody this, because here at the Reimagining US Grand Strategy program, we are all about questioning assumptions. And so, let me ask you, what's one assumption about U.S. foreign policy that you would like to see questioned? I think you actually mentioned one already, that prioritization is untested as to whether Europe can do it. So, that one was good, but maybe another assumption that you would like to see tested.
[00:29:15] Mike Poznansky: One assumption, this is not my own, it's a friend and colleague, but is that there is a prevailing assumption out there that, in this era of deep polarization within the United States, that the U.S. is no longer capable of sustaining a coherent grand strategy. And this friend and colleague has this really interesting project, so I'm cheating a little bit. I'm using his work, Jeff Friedman at Dartmouth. But I'm totally persuaded by it. It's really compelling. But I don't think it's the conventional view, and I think it would be good to interrogate it further. He basically finds that, actually, there's pretty robust support for what he calls the Truman-Eisenhower consensus. This is, kind of, the tenets of deep engagement that Americans generally support a strong military, they support participation in international organizations, allies, supporting allies, and free trade. That's where I was already thinking about that, so you teed me up nicely.
And what he finds is that, in each of those areas, there's been remarkably consistent support across the last eight decades, and that, when we have seen the most divergence in tension and fighting, it's when each party diverged from those core tenants, in different ways. So, Democrats and Republicans have both expanded or contracted those commitments in various ways. And you do really see deep contentiousness and polarization when they do that. But he finds that there's this core of U.S. foreign policy and grand strategy that is status quo-oriented, which actually gives me a lot of optimism that, despite the political ranker at home, we can, sort of, agree on a status quo set of principles and it would be good to surface those, debate them, and talk about them so that, perhaps, we could have more consensus moving forward.
[00:30:55] Emma Ashford: Well, I think that's a great place to wrap up. So, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today. Thanks!
[00:31:02] Mike Poznansky: Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.
[00:31:07] Emma Ashford: That's all for this episode of The Strategy Sessions. You can find the full set of episodes, along with the accompanying essays at stimson.org, or by searching for us on your favorite podcast app.
A big thanks to Stimson's communications team for their assistance with the taping, and to University FM for providing audio editing services. I'm Emma Ashford. Thanks for listening!