International Relations
Strategic narratives give insight into how to understand the foreign policy of Donald Trump. Setting out the structure and actors within the international system, what constitutes US identity, and what makes individual policies legitimate, strategic narratives allow one to bridge the divide between foreign policy and IR theory. This highlights the fact that how the international system is conceived affects what is considered to be possible and desirable in the foreign policy realm. In the case of Donald Trump, one can identify his administration’s strategic narratives in a number of places, including in the White House newsletters sent to supporters. An analysis of Trump’s communication (including these newsletters) finds strategic narratives that were transactional and mercantilist in nature. There is little connection to values previously associated with US foreign policy and international relations. In addition, there are rhetorical devices found within the strategic narratives that supported Trump’s different conception of the international system and foreign policy goals. The move to mercantilist and transactional narratives creates significant challenges for US foreign policy, which will resonate for some time. Certainly, EU countries have recoiled as these directly challenge existing, historically based narratives which underpinned multilateral cooperation as a normative good. It also makes diplomacy more generic – less reflective of prior relationships. Our analysis points to changes that can be made under a new administration in the United States to address these issues. Specifically, narratives that build on normative goods associated with shared commitments, democracy, and alliance-building will bolster US foreign policy under President Biden.
This chapter, co-authored by a US and a Chinese scholar, compares the information and persuasion sphere of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to that of the United States. China, more than the United States, is engaged in areas of soft power competition that far exceed trade wars to include elite exchanges (aka exchange diplomacy), international broadcasting, and humanitarian assistance. We claim that soft power is a socially constructed concept that is mostly shaped by a media environment where global actors are portrayed as winners and losers in an information war. In 2020, China and the United States lost collective soft power, with China receiving low marks for its coronavirus management that include suppressing domestic whistleblowers. Likewise, the rogue management of US foreign policy, combined with domestic political polarisation and social unrest centred on racism and police misconduct, found global media consumers conditioned to believe in a perpetual zero-sum game between the world’s leading superpowers. By initiating a practical and theoretical discussion over the concept of soft power in the context of Sino-US relations, this chapter suggests that both countries have the potential to work together on problems that can lead to mutually beneficial, non-zero-sum results.
Today a country's national security, social cohesion, and economic wellbeing critically depend on a stable and secure cyber space. Moreover, because of their increased international salience, policy issues related to cyber space have grown progressively more politicised. Hence, governments are now commonly relying on diplomatic means to pursue their cyber-related national interests. This chapter provides an overview of the development of cyber diplomacy in the United States from the first Obama administration (2009), through the Trump administration (2017–21) to the first six months of the Biden one (2022). In particular, the chapter looks at how successive US administrations have adapted their diplomatic activity to promote the US national interest in this emerging policy area. Special attention is given to the key legislative measures, organisational reforms, and diplomatic initiatives that took place during these years. The chapter ends by offering a number of policy recommendations for the future direction of US cyber diplomacy.
Joseph R. Biden started his presidency with the vow to ‘lead not merely by the example of our power but by the power of our example’. After his inauguration on 20 January 2021, he promptly reversed some of the trademark foreign policy decisions of the previous administration that had cost the United States dearly in terms of attraction and reputation abroad. Accordingly, the Biden administration, by word and by deed, put a high premium on soft power in its dealings with the world from day one. Starting from these observations, the chapter discusses the state and future of soft power in US foreign policy. To that end, it first provides a brief introduction to the concept of soft power in international affairs. Next, it explores the devastating effects of the Trump years on US attraction abroad, especially in view of key foreign policy decisions and not least of the personality and demeanour of the 45th US President himself. Subsequently, it identifies and assesses the first steps taken by the Biden administration on the road to soft power recovery. In so doing, the chapter recognises US soft power as ‘America’s abiding advantage’ in a world faced with global challenges and challengers and as crucial for its future security and success on the world stage. Finally, and beyond these observations regarding US soft power, the chapter introduces the general rationale of the volume in hand, its structure, scope, and limitations, and lastly provides overviews of its twelve chapters.
The volume explores the role of soft power in US foreign policy – past, present, and future. Bringing together a diverse group of leading international scholars and practitioners, it combines conceptual contributions to soft power research with empirical studies examining the state and significance of US soft power. In so doing, the volume focuses on recent years as it discusses in particular the Trump presidency as well as the first year of Joseph R. Biden in the White House. While the Trump administration severely damaged US reputation abroad, President Biden has made clear his intention to drastically change the United States’ outlook on the world from an early point in his presidency. In this endeavour, attractive soft power has featured prominently from the start. The volume addresses select issue areas – including terrorism threats, foreign economic policy, and cultural diplomacy – as well as crucial foreign bilateral relations – including Sino-American, Russian-American, and transatlantic relations – from a soft power perspective. It offers an early assessment of Biden’s first year in office as well as future perspectives and recommendations regarding the role of soft power in US foreign policy. Consequently, the volume provides an essential and unique compendium – for students, scholars, and practitioners alike – on how soft power informs US foreign policy and diplomatic practice today and in years to come.
Trump’s bellicose foreign economic policy served to undermine US economic relations across the globe. In an attempt to extract concessions with threats and extortion, rather than cultivate accommodations, Trump’s truculence ended up being self-defeating for the United States’ most important international economic interests. Beyond directly placing other nations in a confrontational posture, this combative style has served to undermine US economic interests in a deeper way as a result of compromising the soft power that had for years buttressed stable relations with the United States’ economic partners. This chapter evaluates the ways in which this soft power was undermined and offers suggestions for rebuilding that soft power in the post-Trump years.
Over the past several years, the United States has belatedly undertaken a shift in its counterterrorism posture from prioritising international threats to dangers emerging at home. The 6 January riot at the US Capitol provided perhaps the most painful evidence that the terrorist threat to the US homeland is now almost entirely made in America. Motivating ideologies are diverse – from white supremacists to ‘jihadists’ – but America’s terrorists today are almost all emerging from the country’s own communities, not from abroad. This reality will require a new counterterrorism strategy. During its twenty-year ‘War on Terror’, the United States largely ignored soft power opportunities, choosing to mostly respond to violent extremist threats militarily – with the inadequacy of the approach highlighted by defeat in Afghanistan. The threats of today and tomorrow require a comprehensive community-driven effort to build inoculation and resilience to ideologies of hate and extremism. In ‘Soft power for an age of shifting terrorism threats’, Farah Pandith and Jacob Ware present an aggressive but realistic five-point plan for countering the array of terrorism threats now facing the United States. Combining foreign and domestic policy tools, the strategy aims to empower everyday Americans in the fight against hatred and extremism, restore international alliances, and entice new stakeholders to contribute to the battle.
George Washington warned of parties (unmentioned in the Constitution) pursuing ‘alternate domination’. Some 30 per cent of his Farewell Address addresses foreign policy; the rest addresses virtuous governance shaped by civic virtue that can have valence abroad unlike dominance. While partisan politics has been common, the United States has presented, with some deplorable exceptions, an attractive spectacle of republican democracy to like-minded observers abroad. There are implications for US foreign policy in Alternate Domination impinging on national security. When acquiring a position of dominance (controlling the White House and Houses of Congress) overrides the superordinate system ideology of democratic governance, national security interests are compromised. This chapter draws on theories of soft power; systems and entropy; and the politics of outbidding, realist conflict theory. Congressional voting data shows the extent of bipartisanship vis-à-vis US–Iran nuclear legislation under ‘numerical domination’: full (29.7%) when a party controls White House and both Houses; partial (29.3%) where a party controls White House and one House; and no (33.6%) when White House and Congress are controlled by different parties. Despite international affairs being the top reported policy area for both parties there have been over 40 Executive Orders on Iran in the period researched – 1977 to 2016. Deficits in bipartisanship exist despite the US deeming Iran’s nuclearisation as an existential threat to Israel and potentially to itself. Policy management on major security challenges such as Iran could be enhancement through bounded bipartisanship that would have a soft power engenderment effect.
Foreign policy is not only complex, it is sensitive – to both change and perceived insult. While emotions might not be the first word to spring to mind when thinking of US foreign policy this chapter illustrates how emotions matter in our analysis, and understanding, of US foreign policy. It does so by investigating their role and impact in recent US foreign policy behaviour by analysing the role of emotions in Trump’s discourses and juxtaposing these findings with a competing framework set out by the Biden administration. A comparison which suggests that both visions of America are emotionally informed but of radically different natures. Despite the fact that emotions continue to be seen as individual, private, often ‘irrational’, and largely undesired in policymaking, this chapter sheds light on their influence, and pervasiveness, in political life, specifically – in this instance – on the production of US foreign policy. Emotions, it is argued, play a role in perceptions, and assessments as to what constitutes a threat, and what constitutes an interest in international relations. They inform how relationships and external developments are ascribed meaning. Being aware of this in the academic sphere will help the discipline gain a more accurate understanding of developments taking place in the world. Being aware of this in the policy sphere, and adopting more emotionally intelligent approaches to managing relationships and commitments in the international sphere – it is forwarded – will help avoid conflict, and hold considerable potential in terms of the attainment of soft power in future endeavours.
How do contemporary political parties envision intergroup relations in South Africa? The visions of political parties are important for peace as these can either mirror or shape people’s views and behavior. The transition from apartheid to democracy was eased by the idea of the Rainbow Nation, which encapsulates a recognition of diversity and a sense of colorblindness whereby South Africa belongs to “all who live in it,” as the preamble to the constitution states. Using the relational peace framework, this chapter contributes to the literature on nation-building by investigating how contemporary political parties (the African National Congress, Democratic Alliance, Economic Freedom Fighters, and Freedom Front Plus) discuss intergroup relations of peace and violent conflict and how they describe a vision of future intergroup relations. Parties based on civic nationalism champion a common identity and aim for a society where ethnicity and race are politically irrelevant. By contrast, both multiculturalism and ethno-nationalism recognize ethnicity as important for intergroup relations. The relational peace framework helps identify which dyads are seen as important in the political party manifestos – who is seen as a legitimate counterpart and who is excluded from discussions related to nation-building and intergroup peace. The assessment of the manifestos using the framework’s elements proves fruitful in capturing the type of nation-building. The analysis of 2019 election manifestos shows a variety of competing visions. These disagreements on who belongs to the South African nation pose a challenge to the legitimacy of the state and peace.