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The end of the “imperial republic” and the future of the transatlantic alliance

Summary

The end of the "imperial republic" might be lasting, transforming the transatlantic alliance; it could also be a moment in a cycle.

Full Text

Editor's note:

On June 4, the Center on the United States and Europe hosted the 20th annual Raymond Aron Lecture featuring keynote remarks from Camille Grand, distinguished policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

This is a lightly edited version of Grand’s delivered remarks.

Additional responses from discussants Mara Karlin and Peter Rough are also available.

In the preface to the U.S. edition of his 1973 “contemporary history” essay, “ The Imperial Republic: The United States and the World 1945-1973,” the French philosopher and foreign policy commentator Raymond Aron suggested that U.S. foreign policy might be entering a different era under President Richard M.

Nixon.

He noted:

“The United States’ rapprochement with its enemies (the Soviet Union and Communist China), trade and monetary disputes with its European and Japanese allies, the narrowing of the gap between the wealth of the United States and that of its partner-rivals, the revolt of the Senate against the President’s omnipotence, the massing of public opinion against the imperial burden, and the arraignment of those who had been responsible for the war in Vietnam.”

Any resemblance with current events (with the possible exception of the Senate revolt) is no doubt entirely fortuitous.

More seriously, this description of the post-Vietnam moment in U.S. policy offers an interesting echo to the current foreign and security policy debate.

The modern relevance of “The Imperial Republic”

Aron’s conceptual argument in this essay is that U.S. foreign policy as it emerged after World War II, defined as the “imperial republic,” is unique and distinct from traditional forms of empires and imperialism, but also that it could be a parenthesis in U.S. foreign policy.

As noted by Irving Horowitz in the introduction to the latest republication of Aron’s essay, “the present-day linkage of the two words: ‘imperial’ and ‘republic’, while quite clever, tends toward ambiguity.” It is therefore important to unpack Aron’s reasoning behind these terms.

Refusing to adopt the popular concept of an “American empire,” Aron above all distinguishes the American “imperial republic” from more traditional forms of imperialism (including colonialism), suggesting a more benevolent form of imperium.

Aron opens his essay by noting that, in the late 1940s, “commentators were noting that for the first time in history a republic had risen to the first rank without ever aspiring to the glory of dominion.

As the price of its victory, it had to take half the world in charge, guarantee the security of Europeans too weakened to defend themselves unaided, and concern itself with whole areas of the globe that were on the point of lapsing into chaos.” He further divides “the diplomatic history of the United States into three main periods: the first dating from 1783 to 1898, from the Treaty of Paris to the war with Spain; the second from 1899 to 1941 (or 1947); and the third, which begins with Pearl Harbor or the Truman Doctrine (March 1947),” and stresses the key elements of the first two periods:

“Taken as a whole, each of them contrasts with the other in essentials.

Whereas the movement of ideas and events from the end of the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth leads to a system devised and purposed by the Founding Fathers, a sovereign republic covering the greater part of North America, hence geopolitically insular—from the end of the nineteenth century onward the observer can discern neither the logic of the plot nor the aims of the actors.

By the end of the last century the national purpose of the founders of the American republic had been achieved.

Throughout the ensuing half-century, the republic searched anew for a purpose and swung from one line of conduct to the other as whim dictated.”

Aron captures well the essence of pre-1941 U.S. foreign policy as seen by Europeans when he further notes that:

“The insular power whose territory was sheltered from attack and which sent expeditionary forces to distant lands preserved—until 1945—the strange privilege of profiting politically from its errors.

By its abstention, by spreading the illusion that it would continue to remain aloof from hostilities in Europe, by its inability to choose between compromise with Japan and a determination of which massive rearmament alone would have given convincing proof, the United States historically bears some of the responsibility for the outbreak of the twofold war in the Atlantic and the Pacific.”

From his perspective, “the quarter-century of preeminence was the sanction—whether reward or punishment—of what everyone today calls an aberration in that a great power upset the system quite as much by its refusal to assume its due rank as by pride of primacy.”

Today as in 1973, quoting Aron’s essay again, “Europeans are once more beginning to fear this refusal after denouncing that pride.”

President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, too, seems to oscillate between the three Republican tribes described by my European Council on Foreign Relations colleagues Majda Ruge and Jeremy Shapiro: “restrainers,” “prioritizers,” and “primacists.” The rather traditional isolationism endorsed by the “restrainers” aims at limiting U.S. engagements and presence abroad through burden sharing/shifting and a strong reluctance to take part in new conflicts after decades of costly wars overseas and entangling alliances in Europe and Asia.

Aconsistent variant of this trend is the new (but very 1898) “ hemispheric imperialism,” with its emphasis on the need to control or acquire territory in the Western Hemisphere, like Greenland, Canada, and Panama.

The “prioritizers” focus on the Indo-Pacific and view China as the critical challenge, whereas traditional “primacists” argue for continued U.S. global leadership.

It is clear that the president’s instincts, as well as the views of many senior figures in the cabinet and senior national security leadership, are moving away from this third view (even if Trump is not consistently aligned with one tribe).

This suggests that the Europeans are right to express concern at a profound shift in U.S. foreign and security policy closing a long chapter opened in 1941, as already foreseen by Aron in 1973.

It is also probably fair to note that, notwithstanding the policy and rhetoric of Trump and his administration, these trends affecting European security are older and their roots go much deeper and broader.

The United States faces many challenges, the burden-sharing debate is almost as old as NATO, the pivot to Asia has been on the table at least since the Obama administration, and the public fatigue with “forever wars” goes well beyond the MAGA base.

In this context and to refrain from lecturing further on U.S. foreign policy in Washington, it seems appropriate to break down scenarios for the future of transatlantic relations and the associated challenges for the Europeans in this emerging new era.

Four scenarios for the future of transatlantic relations and NATO

As the debate crystallizes on the eve of the Hague NATO summit, four hypotheses are taking shape, all of which point to a NATO 3.0 that bears little resemblance to the NATO 1.0 of the Cold War or the NATO 2.0 of the post-Cold War era: a NATO that is less American, fundamentally moving away from some of the core elements of the “imperial republic” as defined by Aron.

The first scenario is an organized transition to a more European alliance.

In this scenario, the Europeans continue to increase their defense spending and work closely with the United States to build an alliance that is less dependent on American conventional resources, but without calling into question American commitment and especially the extended American nuclear deterrent.

At the end of a coordinated evolution, probably spreading over a decade, NATO has become more European with a strong European pillar, and a significant portion of the burden has been transferred.

The European Union (EU) plays a more important role even if the United States remains committed to European security and the U.S. military presence in Europe endures.

In the second scenario, this transition occurs in a chaotic way, through a succession of crises and brutal unilateral decisions.

The United States decides to withdraw troops and resources without serious consultation and further signals a reduction in its interest in the Euro-Atlantic theater, undermining European security and, no doubt, forcing the Europeans to move forward at breakneck speed.

Such an evolution could be imposed by a major crisis in Asia or unfavorable American trade-offs between various theaters (Indo-Pacific, Middle East, and the Americas) at the expense of Europe.

Even if the outcome is more or less comparable to the previous case, this chaotic scenario is not without risk for the alliance.

In addition to inevitable internal political tensions, this scenario generates moments of strategic vulnerability during the transition phase.

Indeed, it becomes tempting for NATO’s adversaries, led by Russia, to test the solidity of the alliance and the robustness of Article 5 in such a scenario, for example by multiplying hybrid attacks or conducting a limited operation against a Baltic state.

In the third, more radical scenario, an American administration, maybe frustrated by the lack of European progress—whatever the reality of that progress—and determined to reduce American commitments, pushes a withdrawal from European affairs (with or without priority given to Asia) to its logical conclusion.

The logic is one of radically reducing American participation in NATO and presence in Europe, even without effectively withdrawing from the Washington Treaty.

In practice, and within the space of a few months or years, the United States would multiply the signals of disengagement: abandonment of Ukraine; rapid, massive, and uncoordinated troop withdrawals; closure of American bas

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Document ID: the-end-of-the-imperial-republic-and-the-future-of-the-transatlantic-alliance