Shifrinson Publishes Essay on Trump and NATO
Joshua Shifrinson, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, recently published an essay examining the relationship between the United States and NATO under President Donald Trump.
Shifrinson’s essay, entitled “Sound and Fury, Signifying Something? NATO and the Trump Administration’s Second Year,” was published on July 15, 2018 as part of the the H-Diplo/ISSF series “America and the World-2017 and Beyond.”
From the text of the essay:
As the Trump administration’s second year in office rolls onward, what is the state of the transatlantic alliance? Writing for H-Diplo last year, I argued that Trump’s first year in office saw the emergence of a “Trumpian NATO policy.”In brief, this policy encompassed significant continuity with the substance of prior U.S. policy towards NATO, coupled with highly conditional U.S. rhetorical backing for the transatlantic relationship. As Trump—in a break from his campaign rhetoric—emphasized through mid-2017, NATO provided value to the United States, even as he suggested the United States might exit the alliance should its allies not agree to U.S. demands in intra-alliance discussions.
One year on, the fundamentals of this policy have not changed. The substance of U.S. policy towards NATO is strikingly similar to that of prior administrations, whereas the rhetoric remains a stark departure from past practice. Moreover, the bifurcated European response to Trump’s policy—praising the substance and decrying the rhetoric—has, if anything, grown clearer. Instead, the big shift has come in how many analysts themselves assess the long-term impact of Trump’s strategy. If 2017 saw analysts worried that Trump would rock the foundations of the “liberal international order”—with NATO at its core—then 2018 has seen scholars and policymakers alike increasingly debating whether the liberal order can recover at all from Trump’s assault. This situation, in turn, raises questions over the factors—rhetorical, substantive, or some combination—that have allowed NATO to survive and thrive over the last seventy years, and whether there is sufficient give in the transatlantic relationship to endure a potentially rocky road for the indefinite future.
Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson’s teaching and research interests focus on the intersection of international security and diplomatic history, particularly the rise and fall of great powers and the origins of grand strategy. He has special expertise in great power politics since 1945 and U.S. engagement in Europe and Asia. Shifrinson’s first book, Rising Titans, Falling Giants: How Great Powers Exploit Power Shifts (Cornell University Press, 2018) builds on extensive archival research focused on U.S. and Soviet foreign policy after 1945 to explain why some rising states challenge and prey upon declining great powers, while others seek to support and cooperate with declining states.