Welcome to my new column. Why Eagle View? The bald eagle has been the national bird of the United States since 1782 – its official status is older than the US constitution. And this column will be looking at global affairs through a distinctly American lens.
A few decades ago, such a proclamation would have been unremarkable. During the Cold War and the post-Cold War eras, Americans often conflated international relations with US foreign policy, a source of perennial frustration for allies and neutrals.
In this century, the concept of positionality has become more important, so it is worth stressing my orientation at the outset. I have lived and worked in a number of countries, but my perspective is American.
More Americans have never held a passport than currently hold a valid passport
Americans have an international reputation for sounding simultaneously naive and blunt. Eagle View will trend towards the blunt. For example, one of my starting assumptions in writing about a US perspective on international relations is that it is primarily an elite-driven phenomenon.
The hard truth about Americans is that, by and large, most of them do not care all that much about world politics. In recent polling about presidential elections, voters always rank global issues low relative to economic or social questions. For all the casual talk about globalization making the world a smaller place, a 2021 YouGov poll showed that more Americans have never held a passport than currently hold a valid passport.
The United States is a continent-wide land mass protected by two oceans and two friendly neighbours. Few nations can afford to ignore the rest of the world – but the US is one of them.
This is the primary reason for the foreign policy naivety of most US citizens. When the average American bothers to think about the world, he or she usually excels at holding two diametrically opposed positions: the rest of the world thinks like Americans do, and yet the US remains an exceptional country. It can be frightening to consider that the most powerful country on the planet is populated by voters who rarely, if ever, think about international relations.
China and the United States both seem hell-bent on de-risking their economies as geopolitical tensions increase
This does not mean that there is no domestic US debate about foreign policy and international relations. As Elizabeth Saunders explains in her forthcoming book The Insiders’ Game: How Elites Make War and Peace, much of US foreign policy emanates from a bargaining process among elites – Congress, the military, executive branch officials, even outside experts like myself – who are all invested in how, where and when American power should be applied. The Eagle View will be observing this milieu and reporting its deliberations back to you.
I can identify a few key trends that will occupy this space.
Is the US perception of China changing? For decades, the Middle Kingdom’s rise has been taken as an article of faith among US observers. More recently, however, China’s myriad economic difficulties have caused some to question this. Will US policymakers change their thinking on China?
How will populism continue to colour international relations? Depending on whom one reads, populism is either a waning global phenomenon or a persistent source of stress on the system. The election of Giorgia Meloni’s government in Italy proved to be a minor tremor; Donald Trump’s possible re-election in the United States would be a massive earthquake. Is right-wing populism the new normal or a fading blip?
Global uncertainty tends to produce a lot of horse excrement disguised as savvy geopolitical analysis
Does the global economy really begin to decouple? China and the United States both seem hell-bent on de-risking their economies as geopolitical tensions increase. Does this surge of protectionism go global, or do third parties such as Vietnam and India become the new nodes in a continually re-globalizing economy?
How does climate change impinge on global priorities? This July was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth. In the United States the entire summer was filled with hurricanes, tornadoes, flash floods and heat domes. Way too much of Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry of the Future seems to be coming true. Will weather disasters force climate change to the top of the policy queue?
What am I missing? Power transitions, populist nationalism, geoeconomic fragmentation and climate change – these are all big topics! I am equally confident, however, that I am missing other big trends lurking at some subterranean level. What are the unknown unknowns of world politics in the 2020s?
