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America First will put America last

Here, according to National Security Adviser McMaster and National Economic Council Director Gary D. Cohn is the essence of President Trump’s America First foreign policy:

In short, those societies that share our interests will find no friend more steadfast than the United States. Those that choose to challenge our interests will encounter the firmest resolve.

Like many policy statements, this one is more notable for what it omits than what it includes. Pursuit of national interests is a vital ingredient of any worthy foreign policy. But it is not the be-all and end-all.

Values are important as well. Their pursuit distinguishes the United States from many other countries and is, in my view, the essential and proper basis for American exceptionalism. We are a nation based on the proposition that all people are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If you believe that proposition, you are condemned to pursue a foreign policy that is based in part on the values it embodies.

That is what America has done since World War II: through the Cold War, the unipolar decade, and the war on terror. Values have not always prevailed over interests, but they have been a serious factor that could be subsumed but not completely ignored. They are an indispensable basis for our alliances, especially NATO.

No longer. In Trump’s worldview, the world simply doesn’t permit it, McMaster and Cohn say:

The president embarked on his first foreign trip with a clear-eyed outlook that the world is not a “global community” but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage. We bring to this forum unmatched military, political, economic, cultural and moral strength. Rather than deny this elemental nature of international affairs, we embrace it.

This Hobbesian jungle makes even partial reliance on values seem a luxury, one this President thinks the United States can ill afford.

McMaster and Cohn also say Trump reiterated American commitment to Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, which provides for the common defense (usually abbreviated as “an attack on one is an attack on all”). He definitely did not do that. The allies noticed and are preparing themselves for a world without US leadership as a result. Trump’s worldview is a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you treat the world as a Hobbesian jungle, it will likely react like one.

This radical reorientation of US foreign policy away from its post-World War II dual focus on both interests and values is a radical departure, but it is not an innovation. Many countries act the way Trump wants America to act, feeling they can’t afford the values part. None of them however find themselves appreciated or followed the way the US is appreciated and followed, or at least has been until now. Rather than making America great again, Trump’s foreign policy aims to make America ordinary again. It will be just one of those nations engaging and competing for advantage. It will not be a leader or catalyst.

It should therefore be no surprise Trump is ready to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, which will relegate the US to renegade status in the eyes of much of the world. My colleagues tell me we are on track to meet the targets we ourselves set for reducing carbon emissions, largely because of the market-driven substitution of natural gas for coal in electricity production. So unless you think, as Trump does, that coal is going to revive magically, withdrawal now from the Paris agreement is pointless.

Trump hopes US withdrawal will cause the agreement to collapse, thus proving that his view of the world is correct. It won’t. Like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the countries involved are likely to realize that collective action will work even in the absence of the US, because values do really count. Nor will the rest of he world easily forget US abandonment of them. Recovery from Trump’s denigration of American values will be long and difficult. America First will put America last.

This is where America First foreign policy lands you (it’s Stu Jones, a professional former ambassador and acting assistant secretary for the Near East): in a long silence that speaks much more loudly than the illogical words that follow.