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100 Foreign Aff. 18 (2021)
Gone but Not Forgotten: Trump's Long Shadow and the End of American Credibility

handle is hein.journals/fora100 and id is 236 raw text is: Gone But Not Forgotten Trump's Long Shadow and the End of American Credibility Jonathan Kirshner In the first lecture of any introduc- tion to international relations class, students are typically warned of the pitiless consequences of anarchy. World politics, they are informed, is a self-help system: in the absence of a global authority to enforce rules, there are no guarantees that the behavior of others-at times, danger- ous and malevolent others-will be restrained. With their very survival on the line, countries must anticipate the worst about the world and plan and behave accordingly. Like most abstractions, IR 101's depiction of the consequences of anar- chy is a radical oversimplification, useful as an informal modeling device, as far as it goes. In the real world-that is, for most states, most of the time-survival is not actually at stake when they are deciding which among various possible foreign policies to adopt. And countries rarely retreat into a defensive crouch, unwilling to trust any others, paralyzed JONATHAN KIRSHNER is Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Boston College and the author of the forthcoming book An Unwritten Future: Realism and Uncertainty in World Politics. by the fear that today's apparent friend will become tomorrow's mortal foe. Still, also like most abstractions, there is an inviolable kernel of truth to the anarchy fable. Ultimately, the world of states is indeed a self-help system, and so countries must necessarily make guesses about the anticipated future behavior of others-about what seems likely and the range of the possible and the plausible. This is why even though Donald Trump has become a member of a rather exclusive club-one-term U.S. presidents-the Trump presidency will have enduring consequences for U.S. power and influence in the world. Leo Tolstoy warned that there are no conditions to which a man may not become accustomed, particularly if he sees that they are accepted by those around him, and it is easy, especially for most insular Americans, to implic- itly normalize what was in fact a norm- shattering approach to foreign policy. Level whatever criticisms you may about the often bloodstained hands of the American colossus on the world stage, but Trump's foreign policy was different: shortsighted, transactional, mercurial, untrustworthy, boorish, personalist, and profoundly illiberal in rhetoric, disposition, and creed. Some applauded this transformation, but most foreign policy experts, practi- tioners, and professionals are breathing a sigh of relief that a deeply regrettable, and in many ways embarrassing, inter- lude has passed. (It is exceedingly unlikely that any future president will exchange beautiful letters with and express their love for the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.) But such palpable relief must be tempered by a dispiriting truth, rooted in that notion of anarchy: 18 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

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