US Diplomatic Decline and the Lost European Mind

Donald Trump and his administration have a problem: As I have outlined elsewhere, I think that the United States is pursuing a strategic foreign policy – often called the Donroe Doctrine – that aims at carving out a hegemonic position in the Western hemisphere, while maintaining a strong footprint in Europe and Asia. Maintaining said footprint would be much easier if the regional powers would not be coerced into accepting American hegemony but would actively support it. Alas, for reasons I will try to explain in this essay, the US has been using lots of sticks, but not too many carrots. With the Supreme Court now limiting Trump’s ability to coerce others via tariffs, the inability to make friends (and the talent to create unnecessary tensions, as with Denmark over Greenland) could become a serious problem. Although not a cold war but transforming relations with Europe into a “cold friendship” has, simply put, not been a boon to US grand strategy. But I believe the current troubles reveal something deeper: The United States has never truly mastered the finer art of diplomacy, and there is a historical reason for that.

For starters, unlike Europe, America never needed it the way the European powers did. Geography made diplomacy a secondary skill. Two vast oceans to the east and west, and non-hostile neighbours to the north and south—Canada and Mexico—meant that for most of its history the United States could afford bluntness. The subtle sword of diplomacy was a tool to be used sparingly, not an art to be cultivated. Europe’s experience was the opposite. On a crowded continent where great and middle powers continuously jockeyed for influence, diplomatic sophistication was a matter of survival. Since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the European state system has forced rulers to refine the craft of negotiation and statecraft simply to endure. 

In the United States, diplomacy developed as a defensive posture, not an imperial vocation. The Monroe Doctrine, America’s ventures in the Philippines, and its interventions in Latin America were all framed as acts of self-protection or “civilising” missions rather than a candid imperial project. The US became an imperial power by accident and often denied it was an empire at all. Isolationists in Congress, well into the 20th century, argued for keeping America aloof from European power politics and limiting engagement in world affairs. While European thinkers like Rudyard Kipling articulated the moral and strategic logic of empire, American political discourse rarely developed a comparable, self-conscious imperial doctrine, even as Washington exercised effective dominion across the Caribbean, the Pacific, and Central America.