As Trump Upends Foreign Policy, Berkeley Scholar Sees Irreparable Damage to U.S. Power and Prestige
M. Steven Fish, a professor of political science, explains how the Trump administration is reshaping long-time alliances and what's at stake for the future of U.S. leadership in the world.
Last week’s Oval Office blowup with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky exemplified what many foreign policy experts have long feared: that the U.S. under President Donald Trump is abandoning its role as a defender of democracies and aligning with autocracies like Russia.
It’s a seismic shift in international affairs, and one that will cast a long shadow of repercussions, said M. Steven Fish, a UC Berkeley professor of political science and expert on Russia, democracy and international affairs.
In Fish’s view, there’s the immediate matter of whether Ukraine is backed into a mineral rights deal that he called an “absolute absurdity.” There’s the uncertainty of Russia’s next steps and whether European leaders can fend off future aggression. And there’s the question of whether Trump’s isolationism will permanently tarnish the United States’ trust among allies.
“It’s hard to see the United States ever recovering its power and prestige,” Fish said. “The power and prestige and influence that it has enjoyed over the last 80 years have all been squandered by Trump.”
UC Berkeley News spoke with Fish about the fallout from the Oval Office meeting, what it might mean for the next phase of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and whether European allies will rise to the challenge as the U.S. signals its intent to retreat from its alliances.
What context should we be thinking about as we make sense of the dramatic shift in U.S. foreign policy from the past few weeks?
Over the past several weeks, we have seen events of world-historical proportions. The United States has switched sides. It was long the anchor of global democracy, and while its foreign policy sometimes did not honor its own values and principles, it was nevertheless a pro-democratic power that was deeply committed to the protection of its democratic allies.
Trump aims to drive America toward autocracy, and he is reorienting America’s foreign relations to align our country with foreign dictatorships.
M. Steven Fish
This was a magnificent case of enlightened self-interest, based on a positive-sum view of our relations with our partners. The United States’ relations with European and East Asian allies have been both boons to our allies and great force multipliers for our own country. Every president has understood that these alliances are crucial to something resembling a rule-governed order that promotes America’s own security, prosperity and global preeminence.
The Trump administration is abandoning that world order to suit the interests of Vladimir Putin and his fellow autocrats. This kind of thing would have been unimaginable under any other president. Under Trump, the United States is now abandoning its democratic allies in Europe and may well soon do the same to our allies in the Asia-Pacific, including Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Australia. Trump aims to drive America toward autocracy, and he is reorienting America’s foreign relations to align our country with foreign dictatorships.
The situation already seemed tenuous, with the U.S. joining North Korea and Russia in voting against a U.N. resolution condemning Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, right? And that was before the Oval Office meeting with Zelensky.
Trump’s disgracing of the United States in his meeting with Zelensky was, in some ways, the symbolic crucifixion of democracy, decency and our commitment to our democratic allies. None of this, of course, has anything to do with American interests; it is strictly about Trump’s personal interests. Putin was one of a few world leaders — Kim Jong Un was another — who supported Trump in 2016 when he was running for president. Trump also knows that Putin is the only person in the world who can make decibillionaires of his closest cronies. Trump wants a piece of that pie — and you better believe that Putin has hinted at matters of “mutual interest” to benefit Trump personally in their numerous secret conversations.
More broadly, Trump wants what Putin has: a press that can’t criticize him, unconstrained power, unfree elections that he can’t lose and more money than God.
The key now is that other world leaders, especially among our allies — or, tragically, perhaps I should now say former allies — need to understand that they cannot depend in any way on American security guarantees as long as Trump is in office. Trump has made that crystal clear. And the more quickly they realize that fact and adjust their own defense postures, their own defense spending and their own relations with each other to accommodate that reality, the better for them and for the world. Now we’ll see if Europe has leaders.
In 2018, you said that it was Putin’s goal to undermine the West and NATO. Here we are seven years later. Has Putin succeeded?
At the moment, it seems that he has. Putin deployed a multitude of Russian agencies and oligarchs to surreptitiously aid Trump’s 2016 campaign, an effort that some scholars and analysts believe might have tipped the election.
Of course, Putin didn’t make Trump. Trump was the product of the American political system. But in an election as close as that one, a feather can tip the scale. Now Trump is back in office and doing exactly what Putin would have him do, down to the details.
I follow the Russian press closely, and what Trump is saying parrots Kremlin talking points practically verbatim. Whether he’s talking about Zelensky, Ukraine’s supposed culpability for the war, the nature of the international system, or a host of other matters, Trump is literally using the language that he hears from Putin and that Putin passes on through his intermediaries to Trump administration officials. This is full surrender. Trump doesn’t view it as surrender, of course, because he thinks Putin’s on his side.
How should we understand this mineral rights deal the U.S. is pushing Ukraine toward? Would the U.S. having a stake in the ground — literally, in this case — really be enough to thwart any future Russian aggression?
It’s an absolute absurdity. Trump has said, “I want half a trillion dollars of your mineral wealth.” Ukraine doesn’t even have proven reserves on that scale. It doesn’t have a lot of rare earths, which Trump keeps nattering about. And Trump claims that the Ukrainians owe us this because we’ve given them so much money. In fact, the United States has transferred $67 billion in aid and military aid to Ukraine, and Trump is insisting that Ukraine fork over seven times that much.
It’s an absolute absurdity.
M. Steven Fish
Second of all, the argument that if our businesspeople are over in Ukraine, making deals and extracting minerals from the ground, we’re going to have an interest in defending Ukraine against Putin is, again, total nonsense.
We know whose side Trump is on. Trump is with Putin, and splitting the spoils in Ukraine with Putin would suit Trump very well. Is anyone so naive as to not realize yet that this is what’s going on?
Imagine in 1941 that President Roosevelt just decided to switch sides. He called Winston Churchill and said, “I decided you’re going to have to take any terms that Germany gives you. That might include ceding a good deal of British territory to Hitler, but that’s your problem, and anyway, you provoked his bombing of your cities. And as for the French resistance, I’m going to speak with their leaders and they’re just going to have to accept German occupation and perhaps annexation. Oh, and Hitler and I are going to meet without you and decide on your future. And by the way, Winston, you owe me your country’s entire coal reserves in exchange for the aid that we’ve given you so far to resist the Nazis.”
Imagine what this would have meant for the future of the world. Imagine what it would have meant for American interests.
This historical comparison is not an exaggeration. It is precisely analogous to what’s going on right now.
Trump threatened in his first term to withdraw the U.S. from NATO. Now he talks about this ‘big, beautiful ocean’ separating us from Europe as a reason why there’s no need for us to be involved. Why does NATO matter today?
NATO matters today more than ever. Russia is a resurgent imperial power intent on pressuring and even conquering its neighbors. When Putin talks about “historical Russia,” he’s probably got a map of the Russian Empire in 1914 in mind. That included Krakow and Warsaw, by the way, as well as all of Finland. At the very least, Putin means all the lands that were part of the USSR, as he has spelled out explicitly in numerous public addresses. NATO is the force that restrains Putin from seeking such conquests.
Without NATO, Putin will go as far as he can go and conquer as much territory as he can. He certainly believes that Russia must include Ukraine in order to be an empire, and that Russia must be an empire to be great, sovereign and secure. He’s made that clear for many years.
Without NATO, Putin will go as far as he can go and conquer as much territory as he can.
M. Steven Fish
Without NATO, Europe will be under constant pressure from Russia, and the United States is going to have to expend immensely more blood and treasure later to defend its allies after they’ve been pressured or invaded. Or it can simply allow its allies to be overrun and watch American power and influence diminish drastically. This approach involves completely unlearning the lesson of the 20th century, which is that the United States cannot ultimately defend itself effectively as a fortress that ignores the security of its overseas allies.
It’s tragic that it’s come to this because NATO has been such a force multiplier for the United States. It’s made living in an international order in which the United States has enormous influence relatively cheap. With NATO, America has leveraged the synergies of our relations with our allies to greatly reduce the cost of our own defense. NATO has helped make it possible for the United States to become the world’s preeminent economy and most prosperous major country.
And now Trump is abandoning all that for Donald Trump. It has nothing to do, obviously, with American interests.
What are you going to be watching for in the weeks and months ahead regarding the developments with Russia, Ukraine, our European allies, and U.S. foreign policy writ large?
Trump wants to return to a world in which great powers take what they’re capable of taking and everybody else just has to live with it. But more than that, he’s actually attempting to create a world that is dominated by autocracies because he wants to create autocracy in the United States and ally with autocracies abroad.
Trump’s disgracing of the United States in his meeting with Zelensky was, in some ways, the symbolic crucifixion of democracy, decency and our commitment to our democratic allies.
M. Steven Fish
In this world, Putin will get Ukraine and any other countries he can overwhelm — the Baltic States, for example. He will be able to terrorize our West European allies. Xi Jinping will get Taiwan and will be able to terrorize or pressure South Korea, Japan and Australia. What will America get? Greenland and the Panama Canal, the right to bully Canada and the oh-so-precious claim to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Trump has made it absolutely clear that this is the world he seeks. So I don’t anticipate any departure from that broad picture when it comes to U.S. foreign policy as long as Trump is president.
I think what we really have to keep our eye on is how Europe responds. We’ll see if the Europeans get their act together and realize they have to collectively protect themselves and each other apart from the United States. That will require very substantial increases in their defense spending, even at the cost of social spending, as well as rapid development of their own arms industries.
Are the Europeans up to it? It’s too early to say.
What about beyond the next several months or even years? Are the effects we’re talking about reversible if a Democrat were to win the presidency in 2028?
It’s possible that the United States will recover its global leadership role and recommit to its traditional allies. Certainly that is what any Democratic administration would strive for.
But we have to recognize that our allies, former allies and enemies will know that the Republicans can always win the next election. And if they do, barring the Republicans returning their former incarnation as the party of Eisenhower, Reagan and McCain, we — and the rest of the world — are going to be at risk of witnessing a replay of the shitshow that we’re now watching. If a large number of Republicans who long stood for our global responsibilities and leadership were standing up to Trump on behalf of American interests, things might be different. But nothing of the sort is happening. Exhibit A is Marco Rubio, who spent his career in the Senate as a pro-NATO stalwart and foe of Putin. Now, as secretary of state, Rubio is backing Trump’s every treachery to the hilt and joining his boss in bending over for Putin.
We now live in a post-American world — an America-last world, or an America-also world — not an America-first world. Until just a few months ago, the United States was the leading democracy and, let’s face it, the world’s most powerful, respected and important country in both security and economic terms. We are now in Trump’s world, one in which America is dramatically diminished and, if Trump has his way, becomes just another two-bit autocracy.
Democrats, where are you?
This interview was lightly edited for length.