Are we, at long last, seeing formerly friendly states begin to balance against a rogue America?
Such a shift would constitute a sea change in world affairs. If it does occur, it will be entirely due to the strategic myopia of the Trump administration and the predatory impulses of an increasingly erratic president.
Are we, at long last, seeing formerly friendly states begin to balance against a rogue America?
Such a shift would constitute a sea change in world affairs. If it does occur, it will be entirely due to the strategic myopia of the Trump administration and the predatory impulses of an increasingly erratic president.
For the past hundred years or so, America’s rise to global dominance was a partial exception to old-style balance-of-power theory, insofar as its preponderant position did not induce lots of other states to join forces to keep Washington in check. Although the United States did face a countervailing Soviet-led coalition during the Cold War, most of the world’s major or medium powers saw the United States as a valuable ally, even if they sometimes disagreed with particular U.S. policies. But as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told World Economic Forum attendees in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, that world is a thing of the past. Today, he said, “In a world of great-power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: Compete with each other for favor, or combine to create a third path with impact.”
Forgive me for invoking some of my own work in what follows, but I’ve been thinking and writing about this topic—the origins of alliances and the reasons why states balance—since I wrote my doctoral dissertation (and first book) some 40-plus years ago. I argued that states form alliances primarily in response to threats, and not just power alone. Power is one element of threat, of course (i.e., other things being equal, strong states are a greater danger than weak states are), but geography and perceived intentions matter, too. States that are close by tend to be more worrisome than those that are far away, and states with highly revisionist ambitions are especially dangerous, particularly when they seek to take territory from others or control who governs elsewhere. Although weak and/or isolated states sometimes try to accommodate threatening powers by “bandwagoning” with them, the more typical response is to balance against a threatening power, ideally in partnership with others.
Among other things, this formulation—which I termed “balance-of-threat theory”—explained why America’s Cold War alliance system was significantly larger and stronger than the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union’s assorted nonaligned clients. The United States had more aggregate power, but the Soviet Union was next door to many medium powers in Europe and Asia, it had a large army optimized for territorial conquest, and its leaders were openly committed to spreading communism. By contrast, the United States was separated from Europe and Asia by two enormous oceans and had no territorial ambitions there. Balance-of-threat theory could also account for lopsided alignments like the coalition that ousted Iraq from Kuwait in 1991. In that incident, an otherwise unlikely group of states whose combined capabilities far exceeded Iraq’s joined forces because they all saw its actions as posing a serious threat to regional stability.
Balance-of-threat theory could also help us understand the seeming anomaly of the “unipolar moment,” when the United States stood alone at the pinnacle of power, yet overt efforts to balance were confined to a handful of weak rogue states. America’s Cold War allies remained on board due to 1) institutional inertia (“If NATO isn’t broken, why fix it?”); 2) a desire to hedge against uncertainty; 3) the recognition that relying on American protection was a pretty good deal; and 4) the fact that Washington’s worst impulses were directed elsewhere. European leaders questioned U.S. judgment on numerous occasions, correctly fearing that blunders like the 2003 invasion of Iraq would affect them adversely, but they limited themselves to “soft balancing” and made no efforts to realign or become autonomous. That decision was facilitated because the United States still treated its allies with restraint, harbored no territorial ambitions toward them, and for the most part sought to work constructively with their governments. By contrast, Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran engaged in more active efforts to balance U.S. power, because they had reason to be more worried about potential threats from the United States.
That was then; this is now. Since beginning his second term as president, Donald Trump has done just about everything balance-of-threat theory warns against, and with predictably negative results. He has openly and repeatedly proclaimed expansionist aims toward Canada, Greenland/Denmark, and Panama, and his ambitions may not stop there. He and his closest advisors appear to believe that international law—including the norm of sovereignty—is meaningless and that the strong can just take whatever they can get. He has repeatedly brandished or imposed the threat of tariffs to try to coerce others into making economic and political concessions. He has used military force against more than half a dozen countries, often on highly dubious grounds, and threatened its use against loyal allies such as Denmark. He has treated other foreign leaders with unvarnished contempt and sanctioned the killing of more than a hundred foreign civilians without due process—yet another violation of international law. And by unleashing a renegade set of government thugs (e.g., Immigration and Customs Enforcement) on U.S. cities, he has made it impossible for other societies to see the United States as a stable, well-regulated society or to view his foreign-policy actions as an aberration. Both at home and abroad, in short, the U.S. government is acting like a dangerous bully and a compulsive predator.
In one sense, this behavior is peculiar. Clever predators try to mask their true intentions as long as possible, as Trump did in 2016 and during much of his first term, partly because he was checked by the “adults in the room.” But having gotten away with the crimes of Jan. 6, 2021, won reelection, and staffed his administration with cronies, loyalists, sycophants, and opportunists with no fixed principles, he has given free rein to his worst impulses. And the world is now taking notice.
How are they responding? To be sure, America’s closest allies have been slow to push back against Trump’s belligerence, for several obvious reasons. Reducing ties with the United States and moving to align against it is costly, and lining up enough states to pose a meaningful counterweight faces the usual dilemmas of collective action. It is understandable, therefore, that people like British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, NATO chief Mark Rutte, and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung opted to see if a combination of flattery, symbolic subservience, gifting, and minor concessions would preserve most of the benefits of a close partnership with Washington.
It was worth a try, perhaps, but that gamble has clearly not paid off. Trump’s own words and actions have exposed the folly of that approach: You can’t accommodate a predator who believes all prior agreements are open to renegotiation at any time and who interprets any concession as an invitation to demand more.
So, as balance-of-threat theory predicts, we are now seeing former friends distancing themselves, reducing their dependence on an unreliable and potentially hostile America, and making new arrangements with each other and potentially with some U.S. adversaries. When the prime minister of Canada—a country that has long been the best neighbor any state could wish for—flies to Beijing and outlines “the pillars of [a] new strategic partnership,” you know the tectonic plates are shifting. European leaders also seem to be growing some vertebrae again after decades of jelly-like waffling, because they have been left with little choice. Ed Luce of the Financial Times puts it clearly: “Standing up to Trump offers no guarantee of success. Submission, on the other hand, is certain to fail.”
Is it not too late to prevent the further erosion of America’s once-remarkable array of global partnerships and to construct new arrangements better suited to the emerging world? Certainly, but only if the Trump administration abandons its predatory playbook and begins to show that America is willing to work with others for the common good, and not just for unilateral advantage. Any bets on how likely that is?
