ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests the president’s controversial foreign policy preferences can be linked to long-standing systemic challenges, specifically the structural trend towards multipolarity. Here, the president and his officials embrace and champion Kissingerian realist principles to deal with a more competitive international arena – one akin to that which confronted the Nixon–Kissinger administration in the 1970s (indeed, Henry Kissinger acts as a personal link between the Nixon and Trump administrations). In this, realpolitik and flexibility, rather than liberal values, play key roles in efforts to maximize US influence in an international system comprised of multiple great powers. To the Trump administration, ideological impulses will leave America disadvantaged in its competition with China. The chapter also addresses the triangle of relations between the US, Russia, and China, showing that structural pressures generate incentives for Washington to seek to improve ties with Moscow to shift the balance of power away from China. Here, as in other areas, policy substance has not significantly shifted due to bureaucratic opposition in the foreign policy establishment (known as ‘the Blob’). US relations with authoritarian states and America’s European NATO allies are considered, providing a broader basis to judge whether a Kissingerian strategy has produced positive outcomes. It finds that it has produced some, albeit limited, benefits for US relations with authoritarian states but risks fracturing US affiliations with Washington’s European NATO allies who are incrementally shifting towards greater strategic autonomy. In the worst case, European states may choose to hard balance against American power.
