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Emma Ashford, "First Among Equals: U. S. Foreign Policy in a Multipolar World" (Yale UP, 2025)
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A
Welcome to the New Books Network. My name is Leo Bader and today I'm talking to Emma Ashford, Senior Fellow with the reimagining U.S. grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center. Emma's book, First Among US Foreign Policy in a Multipolar World breaks down what kind of international order we are currently experiencing and advocates a more restrained, flexible approach to US Foreign policy, one that would avoid unnecessary conflict and overextension while committing resources where we need them most. The book is a valuable addition to the American foreign policy discourse at a time when many seem unsure of what course the country should take. Emma, thanks for joining me.
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B
Thanks so much for having me.
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A
Why don't you start by giving us a brief lead up into how we got to where we are today. How did the famous unipolar moment descend into whatever we have now.
- [02:56]
B
Yeah. So I really appreciate you doing this podcast. And in the book, let me just start by saying I tried to do a couple of things right? So first I tried to give this overview of how we got here. Then I tried to talk a little bit about the world as it is and then offer some prescriptions for where we're going so people know potentially where we're going in this podcast, too. But your first question about the unipolar moment, I think, was actually one of my favorite parts to write in this book because I got to take a period of time, this unipolar moment that starts in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union that leaves America standing sort of above everybody else in the world. And then I got to actually think about this as a period with, if not a discrete ending, then at least a period that we know is coming to an end. Right. We know that some new world order is emerging and the US Is not in the unipolar moment anymore. And when I actually started to look at that 30 year period, as opposed to, you know, saying, let's say the world order since 1949 or just the last decade or two, when you actually look at that 30 year period, the thing that stood out to me the most was that the prevalence of, let's say, transformative or even crusading ideologies, Right. People in Washington starting in the early 90s literally competed to figure out what America was going to do with its power in this new world. How were they going to change the world? How were they going to lock in America's advantages? And over the next 30 years, that played out as the series of US foreign policy attempts to change the world. And so I talk about, I'll give you just a few here, right? So the attempt to lock in American military primacy over other states, the attempt to rewrite the rules of international sovereignty with things like the responsibility to protect, right to lock in humanitarian rights, things like NATO expansion, to try and make a Europe that looked qualitatively different than it did during the Cold War. And then obviously, the war on terror, which is the one that we all, I think, would intuitively understand. And so for me, this period, this 30 years, is basically the story of the rise and fall of these transformative notions. They seem very exciting. They're put into practice. And then the thing that ties them all together other than that is ultimately they all fail. And they're part of the reason why Americans start to sour on the foreign policy of that period.
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A
So where do you see the turn that ends the consensus of trying to figure out new ways to change the world? Where do people start to say, maybe this is not what we need?
- [05:40]
B
Yeah, it's a very good question. In the book, I basically, in the middle of the chapter, have a little vignette, and I talk about this specific incident, which was during the 20152016 presidential campaign, where Donald Trump basically, on one of the debate stages in the Republican primary, said, the war on terror, the war in Iraq was a mistake. We shouldn't have done it. It was stupid. Now, obviously that's not an actual turning point, but the reason I pinpoint that moment is we had been seeing the public sour on things like the war on terror, the war in Iraq, for quite a long time by that point. But until about 2016, until Hillary Clinton loses in the election that year, we see elite opinion in Washington very much continuing to cling to these ideas. And that only starts to change in 2016, as, you know, as sort of the shock of Trump coming to office hits. So for me, I think it's a gradual process of change that starts as early, probably as about 2008, maybe even earlier. But it really kind of becomes apparent that this is a problem starting in.
- [06:54]
A
The mid-2010s to describe what we're living in right now. I've heard bipolar being used. I've heard multipolar being used. I've heard post post Cold War. So you say multipolar. How exactly would you characterize what exactly that looks like? What are the most key characteristics?
- [07:12]
B
Yeah, I mean, at some point we'll have a name for this era, I'm sure, and it won't be post post Cold War, but it's difficult foreign affair. This huge package last year in which they had about a dozen different scholars arguing over unipolarity, multipolarity, bipolarity. What are we in, in terms of the polarity of the system? There's also, I think, people sometimes throw in apolarity or non polarity, which is to say it doesn't matter anymore. My take on this is I get into a bunch of data in the book and I think you can cherry pick pretty much any answer that you want from the data that is available. Right. And this is, I think, a consistent problem with debates over polarity. One of the things that I did was I actually went back and I dug into some of the early academic literature on polarity, very prevalent in the 1950s and 1960s. And then they are doing debates about, you know, what was the polarity of the system in the interwar period or prior to World War I. And you know, we don't typically, as, you know, going through grad school as political scientists, whatever, we don't typically read a lot of that anymore. We just read maybe the one article that emerged from it. But what I found actually was back then there was a huge amount of disagreement too. This has been sort of a consistent feature of these debates is it's a little bit in the eye of the beholder. So my argument, or what I will posit to you and to the reader, is when you look holistically at military data, economic data, power metrics more broadly, what we see is the US And China are both out ahead of the pack. They are, if not equal, then beginning to become more equal in some places and at some times. And then below them is a whole rank of second tier powers. Right. And again, this is something that pops up in much of that earlier literature that hasn't been talked about as much in the modern debates. But you know, we're talking about countries like Russia or like the uk, like Japan, South Korea, Australia, countries that play a major role in their region that are to some extent would have been great powers if it were not for the existence of these larger powers. And they can impact things and they can really shape events in their region or with others. And so for me, that suggests this kind of unbalanced multipolarity is what's emerging. And the reason I want to emphasize that is we can say this is all an academic debate, but even if we are talking about some kind of competition between the US And China in this century, it's those middle powers, those second tier powers, that are the ones that the US Is going to have to work with and through and around in order to achieve its goals. So I think calling that out rather than just pretending it's the US and China and everybody else, I think is a very helpful frame.
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A
So in your book, you describe four different types of American foreign policy stance, which are America first hawks, proponents of liberal Primacy, progressive world builders and realists or restrainers. So maybe you can give us a brief overview of what these four categories promote.
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B
Yeah. So this chapter actually started before the book or outside the book. And in part, excuse me, and in part, it actually grew out of some of my day job, which is working on foreign policy debates in Washington. And again, looking back at previous times when we have had debates over what should US grand strategy be? What does the shape of the world look like? I went back and I looked at the early post Cold War period, at what scholars were doing, trying to outline the various types of strategy that were emerging. I tried to do that in this chapter, but for the current moment. So rather than simply saying, I think a lot of the debates for the last 30 years in US foreign policy have been to oversimplify it dramatically, right? In or out, you're either, you know, America should be all in or we should get all out. But as you say, I highlight instead that I think there are a variety of different options being offered in Washington right now. A couple of these are familiar or at least modifications of existing grand strategies. So the one group that I identified that I think is most closely tied probably to the Biden administration at this point would be these liberal order primacists. And that does look very much like liberal internationalism in the unipolar moment, albeit without the focus on humanitarian interventions and focus on regime change, things like that. But this is very much a liberal global. We want to protect the world order, right? It's not necessarily U.S. interests. It's about protecting the liberal order. And that is sort of one group. There's another group that we could associate, the Trump administration, the America first hawks, you know, prioritizers sometimes used to describe them, but. But in short, very willing to use military force, very unilateralist, but, you know, not worried at all about liberal order or institutions. They're worried about U.S. interests. And, you know, I think America first again, is just such a good description of this approach. And then I've got these two other groups which are less represented in policy, but both having an impact. One is the progressives in the Democratic Party, and that is a very ideological, internationalist approach to the world. Very idealistic, but it is impacting debates inside the Democratic Party these days, and then the realists and restrainers. And that's sort of the group that I would put myself in, who are, again, more focused on interests, more focused, less focused on values, but are also a little more concerned about the use of military force, in that they think that Maybe huge forward presence to deter other countries is not perhaps the best way to avoid conflict. So, in a nutshell, I think that's sort of where the core points of this debate are.
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A
And these are principled stances on foreign policy. But I'm curious, when you look at how it's actually made in Washington, how much do you think foreign policy actions come from sort of very grounded stances on what should be done versus party bickering or domestic opportunism?
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B
Yeah, I mean, look, the old debate about whether grand strategy is something that is actually made or is something that is defined in retrospect, laid on the past, I think has some relevance here. And I've tried to, in this chapter, portray the debates as I see them currently. Not necessarily just as, you know, this very abstract idea, but you know that these are things that actors in the policy debate are actually talking about. But even then, right, I said that the Trump administration is closest to this America first hawks, but there is also significant representation from these realist restrainers inside that Trump administration. And so, to some extent, one. One thing I would really highlight here is that these debates are not particularly happening between the parties as much as they're happening within the parties. And it's about, you know, whether the Democratic Party is going to be, you know, again, very internationalist, whether they're going to be very military focused or not. And in the Republican Party, it's about, you know, the extent to which America retrenches, focuses on China, the extent to which it pursues unilateralism versus a more multilateral approach. So these are intraparty debates.
- [15:02]
A
Well, let's get into what you advocate for the US which you term realist internationalism. In broad terms, what does this advocate?
- [15:11]
B
So I think one of the things that I really do try to highlight in the book is I'm not offering a new grand strategy here. There are a lot of very innovative, interesting new grand strategies. But what I want to do instead is basically unearth parts of realism that we might have forgotten about and bring them back into the discussion and into the mainstream. And so, for me, this is less about formulating a new American approach to the world and more about returning to some of those moments in American history where we have successfully pursued, let's call it just an ecumenical, realist approach to the world. So by that, I mean a pragmatism in approaching the world that understands that there are things the United States can achieve and things it cannot achieve with the resources at its disposal that recognizes that we need to Find a way to bring means and ends into balance, because these have been out of balance for more than 30 years at this point. And that thinks about how to pursue American interests in the world. And again, this is very specifically a nationalist national interest approach to foreign policy that thinks about how to achieve the best interests of Americans in this emerging world. And so I call out some past examples from Eisenhower to Nixon and others, but I think it's very much about embracing the core tenets of realism, that states are the main players in world affairs, that we need to try and prevent accidental conflict through the security dilemma. So a lot of these insights that realism already gives us, I want to try and update for today.
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A
So you argue that there are two main areas of the world where pulling back a little bit or a lot would be the right move, and those are Europe and in the Middle East. So what would this look like? And how does retrenchment differ from full on withdrawal?
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B
Yeah, and that's a great question because frankly, there isn't a difference. Right. Retrenchment is a withdrawal. It's just some withdrawal of some kind of scope. So that said, look, I think these again are arguments that have been made for a number of years now, but have become, I think, increasingly important in policy debates. So the US has limited resources. We have seen this over the last few years. We are starting to have debates about whether there are enough weapons to protect US Servicemen on bases in the Middle east and the Indo Pacific. Do we have to choose? We're having debates about whether weapons we send to Ukraine are drawing away from something we need elsewhere. And the defense budget has grown and grown. So prioritizing, thinking about where the biggest risks and problems are and then where there are those places where the US can withdraw and pull back. And the two areas, as you say, that I highlight in the book, are Europe and the Middle East. The Middle east argument, I think is quite simple, which is to say that the US Has a significant military presence in the Middle east and very little of it is actually needed. In practice. We had a posture in the Middle east all the way until 1990, where we had basically a small maritime presence and an air base. And that was about it in the Middle east since the war in terror, since the Gulf War before that, we've had tens of thousands of US Troops in the region. And to be frank, they are not needed in the region these days. Instead, the US needs, as I said, a small maritime presence, some air assets, and working with states in the region politically and economically. In Europe, it Might sound a little crazy to say that this is a great time for the US to get out of Europe, given Russia's behaviour in the last few years. But in fact what we've seen is first of all that the Russians are not capable of rolling across all of Europe. They're barely capable of rolling across parts of Ukraine. And also that European states can stand up when they're pushed to do it. So in Europe, it's not that there is no threat. In the Middle east, there's no clear threat. In Europe there is a threat. But European states are very rich, very populous and capable of handling this. So I advocate for a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces from Europe, not necessarily pulling out of NATO. Right. But the idea that the U.S. should be the last resort rather than the first resort in Europe. And so for both of those regions, this is a significant retrenchment that I'm advocating, but I think it's necessary because of the other places where we need those resources.
- [20:00]
A
What kind of things should the US leave in Europe or continue providing to Europe? Because the continent has a reputation for having bits and pieces of what might make an effective defence force, but not really being capable as a whole. So what can the US take out and what does it need to keep there, at least for the coming years or decades?
- [20:23]
B
Yeah, this is one of the bits of the book where during the period between writing and publication, reality and policy actually moved a significant amount. And so in some ways these are actually debates that we are having right now in the policy space about how would the US retrench from Europe in a reasonable way that does not leave vulnerabilities. And so the approach I advocate in the book, which I still think is the right approach, is a phased withdrawal. So starting with the things that the Europeans can easily replace. And actually that's mostly bodies, right? It's much easier to replace troops than it is to replace a very complex air defense system. So starting with troops, the US would start to pull back, but would continue to provide some of these things that take longer to replace the high end assets, the enablers that it provides, the intelligence assets, stuff like that. But over a period of 10 to 15 years, in coordination with European allies, the US would start to pull back on more of those as well. I do not, as I said, I do not necessarily advocate that the US should pull out of NATO. I also do not think, however, it is credible for the US to continue to provide a primary nuclear deterrent for Europe because with no troops on the ground, it's simply not Credible. And so again, I think that's an area where European states, particularly the French, to some extent the British, but particularly the French, because it's unhooked from the Americans, are going to have to think about that deterrence. So my ideal world would be that the US still cares very much about European defence, but within 15 years or so the burden should be almost entirely carried by the Europeans.
- [22:05]
A
Do you worry at all that in the long term this might lead to Europe to be less willing to accommodate US interests when there's some level of conflict? And should policymakers be considering this when making their decisions?
- [22:20]
B
Yeah, I mean, look, this has always been the trade off and we don't put it explicitly, but we really should. It's control versus capability. Right. We give the Europeans our defensive capabilities and to some extent they follow the US lead. Now, for me, I will note first of all that there are limits to that. Well, control is the wrong word, right, Because European states may follow the US on defense issues in many cases, but we have cases even just in the last 30 years where European states have very much resisted, such as the US decision to go to war in Iraq. The French and the Germans weren't exactly happy about that. And then when it comes to things like economic issues, trade issues, we have seen a relative amount of divergence even with a significant US military presence. My opinion is that Europe and the US share enough common interests and will continue to do so that I'm not overly concerned about divergence in opinions. I don't think we're giving up maybe as much as we think we are by sort of letting Europeans do their own thing. And I'm not particularly worried that they're going to turn on us in some sense now, maybe in 100 years we'll have a discussion about that, that's different. But I think for the next few decades we're definitely not looking at that.
- [23:46]
A
On the subject of the Middle east, this might be a facile question, but why do you think we have kept so many troops there? It seems abundantly evident that conflict has continued despite having such a massive force posture.
- [24:00]
B
Yeah, I mean, look, so there was a great article a number of years ago at this point actually, from Josh Rovener and Caitlin Talmadge, that looked at force posture in the Middle east from the Cold War through the post Cold War period. And if we extrapolate that out, I mean, basically you see, again, very low presence during the Cold War, and that's in part because, right, the Soviets wouldn't permit a significant US presence We have the Gulf War. That number goes up by an order of magnitude. Ten years later, the wanted terror starts and it goes up by another order of magnitude. And so even as we have dialed that back down, we've got nowhere near that Cold War era posture. And to be honest, I do attribute this to some extent to path dependence and inertia. Policy debates will often say, well, we have so many fewer troops than we had there in 2005. But you're talking about comparing it to the high point, not to the median number of troops. And so from my point of view, I think we've seen again in intra Pentagon fights, CENTCOM has become very powerful. They get a lot of the resources. They want to keep those. That's one aspect here. Policymakers fear terrorism even now. This is what I think prompted Obama to send troops back into Syria with regard to isis. And then there are regional allies that want to keep the U.S. now, we often talk about Israel in this case, but it's also the Gulf states and others who very much want to keep the US presence. And so these are all political factors, not really strategic ones, but they make that decision to pull back down much more difficult for policymakers.
- [25:54]
A
Conversely, you argue that the US Needs to be more engaged in the Indo Pacific. Does this mean a massive increase in U.S. forces there? Does it mean the U.S. pushing for collective defense among Indo Pacific nations? What would be the best avenue forward?
- [26:10]
B
This is the area, I think, where my argument, where I diverge, the realism diverges from restraint in this case. And I do think that China is the only significant threat to US interests economically, militarily, and even in terms of the US Role in the world. And so China has the capabilities and potentially the intention to challenge the United States. So for me, that's a primary concern, and we just don't see that replicated anywhere else. That said, I also would resist the notion that China is such a threat that the United States needs to build up massive numbers of troops in Asia, that it needs to devote every resource available to this. I think that there are ways to lean in in Asia that accept the, you know, the right size, the China threat. Right. So that would probably involve, you know, military assets in Asia that are, you know, maybe not that dissimilar from the military assets we have today, but in different configurations. Right. So maybe instead of 60,000 troops in South Korea, we build up our military partnership with the Philippines more effectively. Right. It would mean leaning in on things like Aukus, which is one of the few things the Biden administration did That I think is actually quite good and trying to build flexible coalitions around not just military issues, but also some of these economic and trade issues. And that's the, that's actually the second part of this chapter, because I think they're very much inextricable. If you are going to resist China in Asia and elsewhere, you can't just lean in with the military. This is a problem I think US Policymakers have had for a number of years now. You can't lean in in the military sense while pulling back in the economic sense. And so I also want to see US Policymakers lean forward on sort of diversifying and making trade networks more resilient in Asia and elsewhere as well.
- [28:16]
A
I'm curious about how much you think the US can compete with China on this economic statecraft element where we see China being able to make very decisive investments all across the globe. We see them gaining a massive lead in technologies like renewable energy or electric vehicles. Meanwhile, the US Is scrapping US aid, but more generally maybe just has more difficulty and more domestic resistance to really engaging its economic weight constructively elsewhere. So is this a battle that makes sense to fight through and through?
- [28:52]
B
I mean, look, I think the current policy approach of both Republicans and Democrats, which is to pull back from, from trade and engagement to erect barriers around US Technology, I think that's precisely the wrong approach that potentially just turns us into a military fighting force with absolutely nothing else to offer the world. And I don't think the world wants that, frankly. Where I think the US can compete is in the places that we have always competed. It is in technological and industrial innovation. Right. You don't have to look far, even in today's America, to find that we are undoubtedly, you're right, losing the race on some green technologies, but we are clearly winning it in, for example, space exploration. And so there are technologies, chip design, all kinds of things where the US has these advantages. And what I want to see us do is stop weaponizing our advantages the way we have for the last couple of decades. So we've spent a lot of time doing sanctions and export controls and now tariffs and basically just weaponizing our economic power. I want us to stop doing that potentially entirely and turn instead to some kind of positive engagement. If the US Has a vision to offer the world in terms of what we can provide, I think other countries will be very interested in that. And I think it can compete with China. But right now, that's not the way policy is pointed.
- [30:20]
A
Do you see the US Being able to reach some kind of stable equilibrium in its relationship with China, even if it's not necessarily a friendly one, one that seems to not move so much as to cause constant stress and worry.
- [30:34]
B
I actually think so. And I think one of the more interesting things about this administration, it's not the book because it's so recent, but one of the more interesting things about this administration is we actually maybe do seem to be trying to find some place where we can sort of live with. With China. What. What I want to avoid, and I have again in the book, a little vignette about this. I want to avoid the hysteria that we see, the panic about China. And I, I talk. This little vignette basically looks at a period about two years ago now when we had Chinese spy balloons over the US and everybody freaked out, right? There were bills in Congress, there were shows on the news, we shot down a bunch of Boy Scouts projects, you know, because panicked about this, we need to get to a place where we're not doing that. And then there are the big issues that we need to worry about. Right. We need to find some kind of modus vivendi on Taiwan. And again, that's very difficult. Right. The strategic ambiguity that the US has had for so many years has been falling apart slowly. And I don't think strategic clarity is necessarily the answer that some people think it is, but there are, again, there are ways that the US can try and bolster Taiwan without necessarily directly threatening China. And in doing so, if we can park that issue, then suddenly the stakes are a lot lower of US China, competition, the risks of conflicts are a lot lower. And so for me, part of this is about. It's not just about leaning in. It's about trying to mitigate the risks of conflict while continuing to compete. And I do think that is achievable.
- [32:19]
A
To finish up since we can't snap our fingers and make all of these changes happen at once. And there's a lot of domestic political strife in the U.S. where do you think makes most sense to start? What is the path of least resistance that can get the ball rolling without trying to effect every single change at once?
- [32:40]
B
Yeah, look, again, it's a great question. It's something that's always driven me a little crazy about brand strategy books is they they just sort of assume the world is this tabula rasa and I will snap my fingers and tomorrow we'll have a grand strategy of deep engagement or restraint or whatever that is. So, I mean, I don't think this is going to emerge fully formed. And I'M very conscious that even, you know, even though I lay this out in the book as a sort of one coherent strategy, I suspect what we'll get will be bits of this and maybe bits of other strategies. And ideally it will be a mix that can work and can actually get the US to a better place. For now, I think the most effective places to focus are going to be particularly on the US European relationship. And there is actually being progress made there. And if this administration, for all its many flaws, if they start that ball rolling, we've already seen Europeans commit to higher defence spending. If we see them actually stepping up, we see the process of sort of starting to remove some US assets from Europe. Once that process is actually rolling, my sense is that it will probably continue. So for me that's definitely a path where we could get, I think some of this moving fairly quickly. I think the Taiwan question remains one that has to be dealt with urgently. I don't think it's necessarily going to be easy, but I'm also concerned that that is sort of the biggest flash point where the US could potentially get into conflict. So that's the other area where I would like to see a focus on very quickly from the administration. And then finally we haven't talked about it at all, but I'm kind of interested that this administration is talking about hemispheric defence. Now Latin America gets really short shrift in this book, as in many grand strategy books, it's our backyard, we tend not to pay attention to it. But actually genuinely, I do think that's somewhere where the US for relatively low cost and even effort, could lean in in terms of political and economic ties. Now this administration has built those with a few places, but I do think, you know, building better connections with our neighbors is very low hanging fruit that any administration could actually build on. That would again help us to move towards a more realist strategy.
- [35:11]
A
We should wrap it up there. Emma's book, First Among US Foreign Policy in a Multipolar World can be purchased through the link on the New Books Network webpage. If you're interested in more. Emma has one other book, Oil the State and the Foreign Policies of Petro States. She also writes a regular column for Foreign Policy Magazine. Emma, thanks for joining me.
- [35:30]
B
Thanks so much for having me.