How the U.S. Can Adapt to Declining Global Influence

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: President Trump seems to have walked India into the arms of China and Russian. So, how can the U.S. navigate this shift? In her new book, “First Among Equals,” Emma Ashford offers some suggestions as she explains now to Walter Isaacson.

 

WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Christiane. And Emma Ashford, welcome to the show.

 

EMMA ASHFORD: It’s great to be here.

 

ISAACSON: Your new book, First Among Equals, it is a cry for a realist foreign policy. Explain to me what you mean by realistic foreign policy and how that’s different from what we’ve been doing.

 

ASHFORD: Yeah, so I mean, look, I think of realism as one of the two poles around which US foreign policy tends to cluster, right? Sometimes we are very idealistic, Woodrow Wilson, for example, and sometimes we are more realist. And I think Eisenhower or Nixon are great examples of that.

The argument that I make in the book is that during the post Cold War period, we have tended far too much towards that idealistic pole, that we have effectively engaged in a series of very transformative crusading foreign policy goals like the freedom agenda under Bush. And that we’ve forgotten that we actually have to operate in this world of great power competition of diplomatic politics. And we need to get back to thinking a little more about interests and what we do to try and achieve those.

 

ISAACSON: Well, you talk about great power competition and the balances of power that come with that. There were pictures this week that would just send shudders down the spine of a realist. A Metternich or a Bismarck would be appalled, and that was Prime Minister Modi meeting with President Xi of China and and president Putin of Russia. And I think Bismarck and Metternich — Kissinger for that matter — would say you never, when you have a realistic foreign policy, allow more than one of your potential adversaries to get close to each other. In this case, we’ve been able to do it to all three. Is this a really bad fumble in a realist foreign policy?

 

ASHFORD: I think so. And again, this is not something that is unique to the Trump administration. If, if anything, in many ways they’ve been slightly more realist than say the Biden administration or, or some of the others in, in the recent past. But yes, alienating India threatening sanctions related to the war in Ukraine, that is an example of putting ideals and values above what are actually US interests. And in this case, you know, we risk losing India as a partner in competition with China if we spend so much time on Europe and Ukraine and we elevate that over, over India and its role in the Indo-Pacific. And so those are the kinda hard choices that, that politicians, that realist politicians, have to make. But what I see from U.S. policymakers all too often is this willingness to talk very wonderful talk about values. But to ignore those, those sort of very concrete interests we might be leaving behind.

 

ISAACSON: Well, have we ever had a time when we were suddenly able to take what was an ally India — in many ways, an ally India was very much opposed to China. And likewise, Kissinger and Nixon take China’s relationship with Russia and pull them apart. That was part of their realism. Have we ever seen a time when you have three potential adversaries sewn together like we see this week?

 

ASHFORD: I mean, I don’t think I would necessarily describe India as an adversary, but I do think that this is a reflection of the fact the world is becoming more multipolar. There are more important players again, than there were for the last 30 years. And in some ways, what I think the United States needs to do is become a little more like those countries in how they pursue foreign policy. 

 

The Indians, they know they have an interest in cooperating with the United States on, on China. At the same time they have other options and they are going to exercise those. They’re going to try rapprochement with China. They’re going to continue to buy Russian oil. They have these options. The United States, if we continue to just lock ourselves into, you know, we have a Western alliance and we don’t talk to other states, right? That’s very restrictive and we are losing out when we could be doing something like the Indians or others are doing.

 

ISSACSON: When you look at the other great powers, are there any of them that we should be building better relationships with? And I mean, say India or perhaps China – that we shouldn’t try to fight both China and Russia at the same time?

 

ASHFORD: You know, I tend to think, and again, this is sort of somewhat a mainstream realist view, I tend to think the biggest challenge, the biggest threat to the United States at the moment is China and it’s growing influence in Asia. So for me, I would prioritize that. And that does mean improving relations with India. 

 

A little more controversially. It probably means improving relations with Russia. And I think, I don’t agree with the Trump administration in many things, but I think this is one area where they are correct. Reducing the U.S.-Russia relationship just to Ukraine and ignoring all the other areas – China, the Arctic – where we might need to talk to the Russians or potentially not have them just a junior partner to China. That would actually be in the US interest if we could — 

 

ISAACSON: You know, one of the things I don’t get though is why do you think China is such a big threat? Isn’t it mainly an economic competitor?

 

ASHFORD: China is a military and economic competitor. And if you actually look at which states could challenge the United States militarily in Asia in the world, it’s China, right? The Russians cannot conquer Eastern Ukraine. They are not going to be able to take over Europe. In the Middle East, there is no country that is poised to conquer the Middle East, right? So these are important regions. In Asia, the Chinese have that potential — 

 

ISAACSON: Well, wait, are the Chinese poised to conquer anything? Perhaps Taiwan, but they haven’t made a move there.

 

ASHFORD: Potentially Taiwan. But then I think your last point about economic competitor is actually the more important one. So it’s not just a military threat. It is an economic problem. China has the ability to push the United States out of Asia through diplomacy, through economic statecraft, in ways that would leave us poorer and more isolated. And to me that is the big threat of growing Chinese influence. And so that’s why I would focus on that rather than on some of these other regions.

 

ISAACSON: You keep using the phrase in the book coercive economic statecraft. And I guess one of the great examples of it was when Russia did its latest grand assault on Ukraine, we put what we call crippling sanctions. And even Trump decided to do more. And the result of that is a Russian economy hasn’t collapsed and Russia has now created economic relationships with China and with India. Was that a mistake to try to deal with it, with — through crippling sanctions, or do we not do enough?

 

ASHFORD: Look, I mean, I think that one thing that we have learned from the last 30 years is that no matter how powerful the United States — you know, we are financially center of the world. We have this huge military — there are still things that, that are unachievable even for that power, whether that is transforming states into democracies in the Middle East, or whether that is forcing Russia, a country that provides, you know, 10 to 12% of the world oil supply to stop a war that it really wants to fight. And so we have seen the limits of our ability to force other countries to do what we want to do, and that was during this period of extreme US dominance. 

 

So again, you know, one of the arguments that I, I make in the book is that we need to think going forward as that preponderance of power declines is gonna get even harder to use coercion to force other countries. We need to think about other ways. And again, I think in the case of Ukraine, I understand why the Biden administration went the sanctions route. It was sort of a middle road between doing nothing and starting a war with a nuclear power. But we shouldn’t pretend that it was ever going to actually force another great power to come to, you know, to stop entirely what it was doing.

 

ISAACSON: Well, you’ve talked in the book about we need to have flexible partnerships. And I think you contrast in that book to what we used to think of our alliances as sacred obligations. I mean, it was almost invoked as it were moral, not just realistic. And you said, no, we, I think you’re saying in the book that we have to get away from sacred obligation types of alliances and move towards what I think you even used the word mundane, just sort of mundane and flexible partnerships. Let me ask you about that. How would’ve that helped in Ukraine?

 

ASHFORD: I mean, look, alliances are tools, and I think that is something that has been forgotten in many ways during the unipolar moment. Alliances like NATO always had this values component to them, right? We work with other democracies, it was focused on the communist Soviet Union. But at the same time, interests mattered a lot during that period. We had autocracies like Turkey that were welcomed into NATO because they were strategically important. When Joe Biden talked about alliance as a sacred obligations, and he started to talk about Ukraine, we saw things like in the run up to the war in Ukraine, the Biden administration refusing to negotiate or even consider the notion that maybe Ukraine wouldn’t join NATO even if it could prevent a war. And so for me, that is the difference, right? Does Ukraine have an absolute right to join a Western alliance of democracies? Well, that’s a value judgment, right?

 

ISAACSON: Well, so give me your solution there on Ukraine. What should we offer to end this war?

 

ASHFORD: I think earlier on before the conflict, I think potentially there were negotiations that could have created some form of neutrality for Ukraine, the way Finland had during the Cold War, for example. We — 

 

ISAACSON: Well, Finland doesn’t have it now. This thing is knocked Finland back into our orbit. 

 

ASHFORD: Yes, well, exactly. And they chose to join sort of the, the western coalition here. I mean, look, that ship has sailed at this point. I think for Ukraine, the best available option — I mean, it is a form of neutrality, but it’s a form of neutrality where they’ve lost a, a lot of territory. But I think what we saw in this war is the U.S., Western European countries, they’re not willing to fight a war against Russia for Ukraine. And again, for me, that highlights the difference between these values-driven statements. You know, Ursula Von Der Leyen of the European Commission saying, We’ll do anything for Ukraine. And the reality of no, the European states are not going to fight for Ukraine. So we need to actually have politics, diplomacy that reflects the reality of what we are actually willing to do, not just these sort of free floating value statements.

 

ISAACSON: So you wanna change a lot of what we would call sacred obligations and say, no, they should be more mundane, or I guess I’d just use the word flexible and practical partnerships. That include Israel?

 

ASHFORD: Israel is a really interesting case. It has a distinct sort of, we, we don’t commit to it the way we commit to NATO states, but we have a lot of different treaties that obligate us to certain things. I mean, look, I think the alliance with Israel should be open to question the same way that any other alliance would be. And in the current moment, I would say that our alliance with Israel is hurting our ability to work with, negotiate with basically every state in the Arab world, and frankly, some in Asia. Our relationship with Indonesia – a very important state in Asia – has got worse because of the war in Gaza. So we need to be able to think again about interests rather than saying, the alliance with Israel is a sacred obligation, and we must keep supporting them no matter what it means for us.

 

ISAACSON: One of the things you argue for is a pivot to Asia. Of course, I remember Barack Obama and Kurt Campbell and others in that administration say, Okay, we’re gonna pivot to Asia. I never quite knew what that meant. Did that mean we were gonna engage with China more, have better economic relationships with them? Did it mean we were gonna put more warships there so that we could counter China? What is pivoting to Asia mean, and why would you have to give up Europe to do it?

 

ASHFORD: I mean, look, I think pivoting to Asia — again, very corny phrase at this point because it hasn’t happened — but I think what we mean by that, what I mean by that is we need to focus more of our attention on Asia, on the Indo-Pacific as a region. You know, that is the world’s most populous region. It’s growing fast, it’s most economically important region. We need to focus more of our attention there and less on the Middle East and Europe.

And so that does to some extent mean military deployments. If you look at recent debates, for example, in the Trump administration over some of the weapons to Ukraine, there is a concrete trade off between weapons being sent to Ukraine and ones that might be needed to defend US bases in the Indo-Pacific in the event of a conflict with China. So there are concrete trade-offs there. 

 

But there are also other places where, you know, we need to simply build up our capacity. And I’ll give you an example. A colleague of mine does a bunch of work on the State Department, dug into the, the details and looked at, you know, the State Department’s pivot to Asia, right? They say they’re prioritizing Asia ever since the Obama administration, what has actually happened? And he found that basically nothing had changed. No more State Department employees were focused on issues related to Asia. They were mostly still focused on Europe, Middle East, and then on human rights issues, all of these things that weren’t as relevant for Asia. So we just need to build these capabilities up.

 

ISAACSON: You say, in a multipolar world, we really have to build up the capabilities of our friends. I’m wondering now in the past 4, 5, 6, 7 years, who are these friends you’re talking about? If we’ve decided we’re not gonna build up NATO, we’re not gonna build up Europe, we’re having disputes with many of our European allies, and we’ve pushed Russia, China, and India altogether into being adversaries, who are the friends that we now have? Do we have more friends than we used to?

 

ASHFORD: Look, I talk about enabling U.S. allies to carry more of the weight. And I think, you know, there is a, not a trade off, right, but if you are going to get allies in NATO, for example, to do more for their own security, to spend more on defense, to build up those military capabilities so that the U.S. can do less, you are gonna need a little tough love. Now again, I think this administration has gone perhaps a little too far in that direction. 

 

But when I talk about enabling our friends to do more, what I mean is finding these alliances where the U.S. has carried most or all of the weight for a couple of decades now, right? European states just don’t spend enough on defense. They’re not capable of defending themselves. They rely on the United States. We should be doing less, they should be doing more.

 

ISAACSON: Does that mean we should be pulling all our troops out of Europe within the next 10 years?

 

ASHFORD: I think over the next 10 to 15 years, yes, the U.S. should engage in a phased withdrawal from Europe. I think that is the only way in which you successfully transfer the burden of defense to European states. Now that’s —  

 

ISAACSON: Why? 

 

ASHFORD: Because if we don’t pull back, they won’t do it. And I think we’ve seen this from history. Basically the only times where European states — 

 

ISAACSON: Wait, you don’t see ’em doing it in Ukraine now?

 

ASHFORD: I do see ’em starting to step up. And I think in many ways that’s because the Trump administration has pulled back. We have seen European states start to do more. We saw that spending pledge at the summit in the Hague, which again, may or may not be reflected in in capabilities. But again, that is perhaps the most for, forward thinking version of burden shifting that we have seen. We have the most obvious example where we’ve seen European states actually start to step up. 

 

And so I think that a properly communicated, properly phased U.S. withdrawal from Europe over time that lets European states build the capabilities and step up, I think that would be good for both sides. I think it would result in a much more balanced alliance where countries that are, you know, populous, economically advanced just like us, they can do more for themselves and then we have to do less and can focus our scarce resources elsewhere.

 

ISAACSON: Near the end of this book, you talk about President Xi and President Putin having a meeting a while back, and they said, we’re going into the multipolar world. And they said that that would inevitably be a harbinger of the decline of the United States. Are they right?

 

ASHFORD: I don’t think that’s true. I used the phrase relative decline earlier. And that is to say that the U.S. is seeing other countries rise to meet it, right? Our predominance of power, the the amount that we are out ahead of everybody else, that’s shrinking. That doesn’t mean that we are in decline. 

 

And I think the United States is very capable of pivoting its, you know, scarce resources to meet the challenges of this multipolar world. My concern is that we don’t shift in time. We continue to pursue, you know, an extremely ambitious global strategy that overstretches us, that adds to the debt. That means that we can’t really accomplish anything anywhere. We’re so stretched thin. If we don’t adapt, I think then we might be in much more trouble. But I think the opportunity is there for us to adapt to this emerging world and to, to build a very good place in it.

 

ISAACSON: Emma Ashford, thank you so much for joining us.

 

ASHFORD: Thanks for having me.