The Aspen Strategy Books series are a reflection of our annual discussions, and this publication is a direct result of our August 2017 meeting of experts and thought leaders in Aspen, Colorado. These papers provide insight into our discussions—the way the group wrestled with the diverse array of challenges. Each of us made a conscious effort to question our underlying assumptions and challenge each other to be open to the real changes that need to be made. As always, our goal in this process was to provide practical, honest, and constructive insight.

We hope this book provides some clarity on these issues along with possible paths forward.

In light of these emerging challenges, fostering such discussions is even more important. We are indebted to our partners, whose investment in ASG makes these meetings possible. We are grateful to Robert Abernethy, Robert and Renee Belfer, Howard Cox, Dick Elden, Gail Engelberg, Adam Metz, Francis Najafi, Lynda and Stewart Resnick, Robert Rosenkranz and Alexandra Munroe, Leah Zell, the John Anson Kittredge Educational Fund, the Markle Foundation, McKinsey & Company, the Pritzker Family Foundation, the Segal Family Foundation, and the Stanton Foundation. Without their support, this book would not have been possible.

In addition, we are grateful to the many people who labored over this text. These include the authors for contributing their ideas and putting pen to paper, Gayle Bennett for proofreading and editing every page of this publication, Steve Johnson for his creative talents on the cover, and Sogand Sepassi for designing the interior layout.

We are also indebted to our Brent Scowcroft Fellows, Anand Raghuraman, Ariel Fanger, and Kajsa Mayo, who spent many hours reviewing this manuscript to ensure its quality. They are all bound for distinguished careers in foreign affairs, and we look forward to reading their own papers someday.

We would be remiss not to thank our leadership. Joe Nye, one of the original founders of the group, continues to lead ASG as co-chair and exemplifies the bipartisan spirit of the group. This year, Condoleezza Rice assumed her role as ASG co-chair, following the inimitable Brent Scowcroft. She has already reminded us all why she was one of America’s finest secretaries of state.

Finally, as noted in our dedication, we must thank Walter Isaacson, who has led the Aspen Institute so ably these last fourteen years. He has provided the physical and intellectual space for this group to grow and flourish. As we inscribed with a haiku on the leadership award we gave him this year:

Though we will miss his wise counsel and leadership at the Institute, we know we can count on his example and presence as we move forward.

Within this framework, the Aspen Strategy Group discussed America’s national security architecture during our 2016 annual summer meeting in Aspen. As we looked back on 9/11, our prolonged involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, cyber issues, and threats posed by Russia and China, we hoped to modernize our decision-making calculus.

A year later, our conversation is different; while we still reflect on our foreign policies, the framework within which we have been operating for the past seven decades has been called into question. During the last twelve months, forces of nativism, populism, and isolationism have gained ground in various places around the globe. The new administration has questioned the benefits of certain international institutions and agreements. Russia has launched multiple covert actions aimed at destabilizing democracy. And China has continued to exert its growing economic power in East Asia, Central Asia, and Europe through the expansion of the One Belt, One Road initiative.

Our conversation this summer focused on re-examining our assumptions about the liberal world order and reflecting on the challenges outlined above. As uncertainty in many of these areas threatens the existing world order, our presenters discussed how to manage points of instability and where positive opportunities exist within them.

Our nonpartisan group is made up of current and former government officials, business leaders, and journalists who have spent their careers working on American foreign policy. While our members hold varying political beliefs and have different ideas for America’s trajectory, together we confronted a multitude of questions and put forward a number of practical ideas.

The discussions prompted a wide range of questions. Will the revised order be more diffuse and proliferated with less agreement on core principles? Will the idea of community or competition prevail in relationships between nations, and which idea will the United States prioritize? And finally, can and will Donald Trump lead this new order? It is still early days, and the answers to these questions remain unclear.

However, it was clear for many that we must modernize the current world order, and that the US, as the largest economic and military power, will continue to play a central role. Many believed that the concerns of ordinary Americans must be better taken into account in our trade policies. But many issues related to jobs and insecurity arise from technological change that is not related to trade. There was a general apprehension that technology, which has been a central aspect of the liberal world order for the past 70 years, may be now be undermining it. Many also agreed that we must not underestimate the importance of a well-resourced US government that can assemble teams of enormous depth to successfully deploy national security strategies.

The book features essays based on our summer discussions, which covered securing the US trade position in Asia, the assault on truth and the free press, cyber’s impact on national security, China’s place in the world order, and the crisis in the transatlantic alliance, and the threat of a revisionist Russia. We concluded the workshop by discussing the aspects of the liberal world order that must be changed to account for these rapidly developing national security challenges.

As a convening body, we continue to believe that face-to-face dialogue is a necessary means to developing successful foreign policy. As a nonpartisan organization, we believe that our group’s value is the ability of its members to come together to express their views, to learn from one another, and ultimately to begin a national conversation among students, young leaders, and policy makers on the challenges ahead. We hope this book provides a starting point for such a conversation.

In this book, we aim to conduct an intensive, frank and serious examination of the health of the liberal order, the many challenges to its future and, in particular, the changes the US must make to preserve its indispensable global leadership role. While our main focus is on how to preserve a liberal, democratic world with the US at its center, we also look to identify what needs to be renovated, up-dated and changed altogether so that it may endure far into the future.

This book has been written in the spirit of non-partisanship that has been the Aspen Strategy Group’s tradition for over three decades. All of us know all too well that this is a particularly divisive and bitter time in American politics. We also know America has been at its best when we pull together across party lines to agree on common prescriptions to fix what is ailing our foreign and defense policies. This was one of the great achievements of the Truman, Vandenburg, Marshall and Eisenhower generation when it created the American-led global order following the Second World War.

The crisis in the liberal order is dominating discussions among government officials and academic experts around the world and in our own country.

Professors Hal Brands and Charles Edel pose a question that offers a good framework for this publication:

These are key questions for all of us seeking to understand the future of American foreign policy under the leadership of President Donald Trump.

There is no question that the US faces a multiplicity of challenges today from a resurgent Russia in Europe and the Middle East and a more assertive China in the South and East China Seas. There are dangers to the future of democracy, particularly in Europe and even the US itself, from right-wing populism. Many are concerned that technological change is acting as a leveling force to reduce and limit the power of nations like the US and to empower renegade regimes like North Korea as well as terrorist groups. Commentators like David Brooks fear even the values of the Enlightenment are under assault in the US and other democratic countries.

The Trump Administration’s America First policy, of course, is at the very center of this international debate. President Trump and his leadership team came to Washington with new and often radically different ideas about American leadership in the world.

The President’s persistent criticism of NATO and the EU during the campaign and early in this administration has led to concern that he views the European allies, particularly Germany, more as economic competitors than strategic partners. Those who champion free trade worry the Administration is abandoning a decades-long strategy that has produced historic global growth and expanded US influence on every continent. The President’s immigration and refugee restrictions have forced Europe to assume a much greater burden when there are more refugees and internally displaced people in the world today than at any time since the summer of 1945. US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change agreement and the possibility of leaving the Iran nuclear agreement worry American allies and many in our own country who understand the perils of America withdrawing from its global leadership role.

For many of Trump’s critics, the greatest worry is that America will cease to be the linchpin of a vast international system as it has been for the past seventy years—the Alliance leader, coalition builder, trade hub and open defender of democracy and human rights.

The Trump Administration rejects this criticism and argues that President Trump’s policies will strengthen America rather than weaken it by restoring lost American influence and power in the world. They maintain that “America First does not mean America alone.” Many Trump supporters echo Gary Cohn and General H.R. McMaster, who argued in a May 2017 Wall Street Journal op-ed that “the world is not a ‘global community” but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage”. This evolution of an inward-looking nationalist and self-centered America has only deepened the debate about America’s long stewardship of the liberal order.

With political battle lines thus drawn, critics and defenders of the Trump administration are contesting a fierce debate in America about the future of American foreign policy.

The Aspen Strategy Group examines in this book the state of the international liberal order with all of these questions in mind. The issues explored in this book include: the internal dynamics of the Trump presidency, and its effect on the US relationship with its allies; the ever-increasing pace of technological innovation (both in the consumer and military spaces) and its effect on governance, privacy, and security; shifting domestic politics between the liberal world order’s historical champions (the US, UK, and other allies); and authoritarian states such as China and Russia that repudiate the essential values of the liberal order—democracy, civil freedoms, human rights, and the rule of law.

I concluded from our discussions that the world still needs the strong, active and purposeful leadership of the US. The liberal order is not coming to an end, but it needs to evolve with changing times. And, while it is experiencing a great internal debate about the wisdom of President Trump’s foreign policy, the US is likely to remain the most powerful force for good for decades to come. We at the Aspen Strategy Group hope this book will help to shed light on this vital issue.