Analysis Of John Ikenberry's The Plot Against American Foreign Policy

In his piece, The Plot against American Foreign Policy: Can the Liberal Order Survive?, John Ikenberry paints a bleak picture of what’s to come from the Trump presidency. Ikenberry warns readers that the new revisionist leader is going to end the liberal international order as we know it. Trump’s transactional view of foreign policy is unique from past approaches, but America, consequently, displays a far more hostile image. William Galston is baffled by what he sees, the Leader of the Free World is out on a revenge tour. Matthew Kroenig in, The Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy: The Right People, the Right Position, argues that Trump has arrived at a time of great chaos, but he can revitalize the liberal order that Obama left behind. H.R. McMaster and Gary Cohn express a similar sentiment in their piece, America First Doesn’t Mean America Alone. McMaster and Cohn explain that the …show more content…
A majority of nations in NATO do not pay their fair share and the US has carried on the burden for far too long. If Trump did not address the issue and place pressure on others to pay into the security community than these nations would continue to free-ride. Free-riding makes collective action far more difficult. Thus, if free-riding isn’t addressed, NATO may fall into disaster sooner rather than later. Ikenberry and Galston argue that Trump’s actions are inconsistent with core American principles and that the preservation of the security community should be paramount not payment. However, they fail to recognize that Trump’s disdain is similar to our widely-held resentment of communism and the welfare state. Communism, as history dictates, failed, because citizens developed greater and greater expectations of the state, because of guaranteed public goods. However, since citizens were not incentivized to contribute back to society and stayed being beneficiaries, the state