When allies waver, adversaries grow bold

On the conduct of the Republic in the world

CNBC reports that as President Trump prepares to meet with China's leader, strains between the United States and its traditional allies are complicating Washington's efforts to marshal coordinated pressure against what the report calls "an increasingly resilient China." I am told the meeting approaches under conditions the architects of American foreign posture would recognize as disadvantageous: a great power that has grown more confident in its position, and a coalition of allied nations that is less certain of American steadiness than it once was.

I will speak plainly about the principle at stake, even if I must confess ignorance of the precise diplomatic mechanics involved. In my own time, I counseled the Republic to avoid permanent alliances that would entangle us in quarrels not our own — but I never counseled the abandonment of mutual confidence with nations whose interests align with ours. There is a difference between entanglement and partnership, and a wise statesman knows it. To arrive at a consequential negotiation having already spent down the trust of your friends is to weaken your hand before the first word is spoken.

A rival power — and I am told China is exactly that, a patient and capable one — does not need to defeat the United States in a single contest. It needs only to observe that the Republic cannot hold its partners together, and then adjust its terms accordingly. Resilience, as CNBC's report describes it, is not merely military or economic; it is the resilience that comes from watching one's opponent divide its own coalition. We would have called that a gift to the adversary. The name has not changed.

I am also conscious that the domestic temptation in such moments is to frame every foreign difficulty as a partisan weapon — to ask not "what serves the Republic's position" but "what injures the other faction." That temptation is precisely the poison I warned against. Foreign policy conducted for the purpose of domestic point-scoring is foreign policy conducted badly. The adversary abroad cares nothing for our internal quarrels except insofar as those quarrels weaken us, and they are perfectly content to wait while we indulge them.

Let me be careful here: I cannot speak to the specific grievances that have strained the alliances in question, nor to the technical details of trade or security arrangements I could not have known. I mark what follows as inference, not recollection. But the shape of the civic problem is timeless: a great Republic that signals unreliability to its partners signals opportunity to its rivals. The remedy is not to surrender independence of judgment — it never was — but to exercise that judgment with enough steadiness and transparency that allies can calculate on us. Consistency is its own form of strength.

My counsel, then, is this: before the meeting with China's leader, the more urgent work may be the repair of confidence among those nations whose interests run parallel to ours. Enter that larger negotiation with a unified front, however imperfect, rather than a fractured one, however proud. The office of the presidency carries the weight of the whole Republic's reputation — not of one term, not of one faction, but of the enduring character of the nation. Act accordingly, and the adversary will calculate differently. That is not a guarantee of success. But its absence is something close to a guarantee of a worse outcome.