Is a Post-American World Inevitable?

Ever since Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, a big question has loomed over any discussion of global politics: How much of the change he has brought to U.S. foreign policy, and to the international system, will endure beyond this presidential term?

Read more The Abandoned Order

Two essays that open the new issue of Foreign Affairs offer different answers to that question. Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi, both senior officials in the Biden administration, argue that the U.S. alliance system will not just survive Trump but can emerge stronger, even better suited to countering China and its partners. Mark Leonard, the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, argues that policymakers in allied capitals and beyond must accept that the United States has fundamentally changed—and get ready to survive a more turbulent and contested world.

Dan Kurtz-Phelan wanted to bring Campbell, Doshi, and Leonard together in one conversation to lay out and test these contrasting arguments. They spoke on August 12 about possible futures for U.S. foreign policy—and what those paths mean for a global order built by a very different United States.

Read more How AI Could Hollow Out the U.S. Military

Sources:

“How Alliances Survive” by Kurt M. Campbell and Rush Doshi

“The Abandoned Order” by Mark Leonard

This episode of The Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Elise Burr and Kanishk Tharoor, with audio engineering by Christopher Koch and Markus Zakaria and original music by Robin Hilton. Special thanks to Irina Hogan.

Read more AI and the New Age of Bioweapons