R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Alex Cooley and I have an article in the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs about U.S. foreign policy, Trump 2.0, and international order. The anchoring theme of the article is that “The Liberal International Order” (if it ever existed) is firmly in the rearview mirror, yet neither internationalists nor so-called “nationalists” have really grasped what that means. Consider the “America First” hatred of multilateralism:

In their antipathy to all things “liberal,” many Trump advisers are playing into the hands of America’s rivals. The irony is that the United States’ authoritarian adversaries have no difficulty distinguishing between multilateralism and liberalism. Indeed, they are building out their own infrastructure of international institutions and multilateral forums. China has already made significant progress on this front, having founded or taken the lead in a large number of new institutions, including the BRICS, in which Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa were the first members; the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with other Asian states, including Russia; the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank; the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation; the China-CELAC forum, a set of summits in which it meets with Latin American and Caribbean governments; and the newly established China–Central Asia mechanism. Beijing is leveraging these to promote its goals—many of them profoundly illiberal—and to explicitly counter the United States. The Astana Declaration, for example, which the Shanghai Cooperation Organization adopted in July 2024, opposed protectionist measures and “unilateral missile defense systems,” thinly veiled references to the United States.

Alex and I highlight a number of specific ways that Trump is likely to undermine U.S. power and influence. How Trump handled the dispute with Colombia ticks all of those boxes.

It seems likely at this point that Colombian President Gustavo Petro was engaged in a bit of political theater. There was no way that Colombia would be permanently refusing to allow U.S. deportation flights to land. Petro’s stated conditions, that the U.S. treat deportees with more dignity, are amorphous enough to allow him to claim “victory” pretty much no matter how the fight played out. As the New York Times reports:

The two leaders had engaged in a war of words on Sunday after Colombia’s move to block Mr. Trump’s use of military aircraft in deporting thousands of unauthorized immigrants.

But on Sunday night, the White House released a statement in which it said that because Mr. Petro had agreed to all of its terms, the tariffs and sanctions Mr. Trump had threatened would be “held in reserve.” Other penalties, such as visa sanctions, will remain in effect until the first planeload of deportees has arrived in Colombia, the statement said. 

“Today’s events make clear to the world that America is respected again,” it added. 

Colombia’s foreign ministry released a statement soon afterward that said “we have overcome the impasse with the United States government.” It said the government would accept all deportation flights and “guarantee dignified conditions” for those Colombians on board.

So why should we care about this apparent footnote to contemporary diplomatic history?

First, the sanctions that Trump threatened were roughly the equivalent of launching a tactical nuclear attack in retaliation for a pair of military aircraft briefly violating U.S. airspace. The mix of measures—which included major tariffs, visa suspensions, and financial sanctions—is the kind of thing that we’d normally expect Washington to impose on a country that invaded a neighbor or, depending on the geopolitical circumstances, a regime engaged in a full-scale genocide.

The inclusion of financial sanctions, in particular, risks blowing up the tacit arrangement that underpins U.S. financial and monetary power. In our article, we used the hypothetical example of corrupt uses of sanctions, but the logic is exactly the same:

The post–Cold War unipolar moment allowed the United States to build a huge toolbox of policy mechanisms by which it influences countries, companies, and individuals around the world. Like some of the kleptocratic regimes he mistakenly admires, Trump could easily repurpose these instruments to enrich himself and his friends. A politicized Justice Department and Treasury Department could deploy the anticorruption measures found in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Foreign Extortion Prevention Act, and the Magnitsky Sanctions Program to persecute foreign officials who offend Trump or target foreign leaders’ opponents with time-consuming corruption investigations in return for payments or favors. An illiberal American leader could selectively and arbitrarily use such tools to punish governments that refuse to transact with his cronies.

Such behavior would pose obvious dangers to U.S. national security. But it would also destroy important instruments of American power. Consider the United States’ ability to impose targeted sanctions, enforce broader sanctions regimes, investigate corruption in other countries, and target terrorist groups’ finances. It is able to do these things effectively in part because of the ways in which it dominates the global financial system, such as prohibiting sanctioned actors from transacting in U.S. dollars in the United States and across the international financial system. Many foreign governments tolerate their vulnerability because the United States uses these instruments in relatively predictable ways. But if an American president started deploying them for corrupt purposes, other countries would become much less willing to accept how vulnerable they are to U.S. financial pressure. And finding ways to limit the United States’ influence over the global financial system—by increasing nondollar reserve holdings, including digital assets and cryptocurrency, and their use in international transactions—would become much more appealing. Although a single credible alternative to the U.S. dollar, such as a BRICS currency, is still a long way off, sanctioned countries including Iran, North Korea, and Russia are making international de-dollarization a priority.

Second, while we need to dispense with the shibboleth that is “The Liberal Order,” that doesn’t mean the U.S. should banish liberal internationalism, and liberal values, from its foreign policy.

In the short term, if Trump withdraws from alliances and multilateral institutions, his purely transactional foreign policy may succeed in extracting greater concessions from countries that depend on U.S. security guarantees or cannot afford to lose access to American markets. But great-power competition will give many of those countries exit options. They can shift toward other export markets, find alternative sources of development assistance, or seek military protection from a rival great power.

And if the United States abandons, explicitly or implicitly, even a minimal commitment to some of the foreign policy principles it has long espoused—such as human rights, democracy, and good governance—little will set it apart from its great-power competitors. To be sure, the country has never lived up to the loftiest articulation of its values in either its domestic politics or its international behavior. When it comes to naked power politics, the United States can give any great power a run for its money. But despite that history, the United States has also won allegiance from other countries because it has stood for ideals with widespread international appeal. It is vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy because its support for those principles is inconsistent, not nonexistent. If Trump’s most transactional impulses become U.S. policy, however, the United States will lose a tarnished but nontrivial asset in its power-politics toolkit. When other governments ask themselves why they should partner with the United States instead of, say, China, the only answer will be “better compensation.” That means the United States will have to spend more to get less.

Trump is basically an insecure bully. He targets people who are weaker and poorer than he is, but shows deference to those he admires for their “strength” or wealth. This is a toxic combination in U.S. foreign policy, because it encourages Trump to pick fights with U.S. allies—especially democratic ones—and to make nice with authoritarians and rivals.

As Dan Drezner put it this morning:

.., this episode was a gift to China’s interests in the region. China will love to play the role of “black knight” in Latin America, providing an alternative source of demand and finance to the region. The more the United States acts like a regional bully, the more countries will start hedging ties by sidling up to China.

A final note. Recall that line from yesterday’s White House statement: “Today’s events make clear to the world that America is respected again.”

U.S. foreign policy has a number of traditional axes of disagreement, such as whether, and where, the United States should extend security guarantees. Americans have also long argued about how much the United States should care about overseas democracy and human rights.

Anyone who follows debates about U.S. foreign policy will quickly encounter arguments about “credibility” and “resolve.” These usually concern how the U.S. responds to acts of aggression, how much support it provides to allies, and the like.

This is not, however, what Trump and MAGA means when they invoke “respect.” They are talking about status hierarchies, and specifically about dominance and deference. We might tie this to anxiety about American and ‘Western’ decline. We could certainly ‘unpack’ how it relates to the reactionary backlash against the growing power and influence of women and minorities. We would do well to study the interaction between these two dynamics.

Regardless, it strikes me that, in the age of Trump, “respect” is emerging as a key axes of disagreement. And yesterday’s kerfuffle helps clarify the nature of that disagreement.

If you’re in the “America First” camp, then you think that one earns “respect” by, in essence, forcing a friend to fork over a nickel in exchange for not beating the crap out of his puppy. Keep in mind that, in this analogy, that friend is 1/76th your size.

If you’re not in the “America First” camp, you find this belief both delusional and dangerous.