Inferiority Complex as Foreign Policy

Wherever people interact there is politics, from friends and families, to community organizations and businesses, to municipal, national, regional and international affairs. And politics always overlaps, one area of political interaction effects other areas. It's part of what makes politics so difficult to understand and predict. It's literally like trying to understand 20-dimensional chess. Most political analysts have their analytical hands full just studying one level of the chessboard. But an accurate description would have to include the interaction of multiple levels because a move at one level impacts the game at other levels. Even talking about the highest level of politics, national leaders, to understand what’s going on you need some view of the lowest level, interpersonal politics. For trump, personal animus and petty vengefulness plays an outsized role in his decision making, and a major reason why he is so unfit for his job. His personal agenda, flaws and vulnerabilities are central to understanding every action affecting millions of people.  

Let's step back and consider two levels of political interaction: national and international. Sometimes they are at odds and sometimes they are more in sync. Under responsive governance, the policies and activities of foreign policy support and reinforce domestic policy. It's one way that we know government is functional. American foreign policy since World War 2 has been phenomenally successful in this respect. It’s a reason America has become the most powerful and prosperous country the world has ever known. And with the ascendancy of America, virtually every region of the world has benefitted. Today, there are fewer people living in poverty than ever, people live longer and healthier, and they are more educated, all largely due to American efforts and investment. This is not an expression of the goodness of American hearts. It comes from American leadership recognizing that the best way to achieve American prosperity at home is to pursue a secure global marketplace. They understood, until trump, that the zero-sum politics of conquest and subjugation, which is how it worked for most of human history, was outmoded and ineffective, not to mention cruel and inhumane.  

American hegemony and efforts to establish open markets and international integration meant that competition would be chiefly economic instead of military. In one of the great ironies of the past half century, America has been so successful at promoting its interests, that in doing so, it has managed to create its principal economic rival, China. For its part, China has transformed from an economic and political backwater into a powerhouse and in the process demonstrated how an authoritarian government can be domestically restrictive while pursuing liberal trade policies that generates wealth for its citizen. Interestingly, the flight of Chinese wealth out of China to the west indicates that once they've achieved a certain level of prosperity, Chinese citizens don't trust their government to allow them to keep it. It’s a truism that economic prosperity fosters political demand for rights. Absent that, people seek alternatives. In fairness to the Chinese, even in the west, wealth moves offshore to avoid taxation. 

What does the current US approach to foreign policy tell us about how functional the government is? At least what we can discern as ‘foreign policy’ from looking at recent actions, namely, the widespread imposition of import tariffs, the manic push to end the war in Ukraine at all costs, the green light given to Israel to do whatever it wants in Gaza, and the decision to threaten most traditional strategic alliances. Some have called it protectionist or isolationist, and others have called it predatory. No matter how you label it, one thing that it most certainly is, is idiosyncratic and incoherent. If it's a reflection of anything, it's certainly not policy or ideology. It can only be understood in terms of the psychology of one person. When trump says 'the world has taken advantage of us' it's hard to see how he is expressing anything other than his personal feelings when you consider that the US is unquestionably the most powerful and prosperous country that has ever existed in human history. How did it get that way if it was being taken advantage of all this time? There is no conceivable reason America should not believe in itself and its ability to compete and succeed, and yet this inferiority complex masquerading as a foreign policy seems to be its guiding principle under trump.

The greatest tragedy is that this foreign policy shaped by the whims and idiosyncrasies of one person, will come at the expense mainly of American citizens. It's a case of foreign policy and domestic policy, which is coherent insofar as it is determined by ideology (read: Project 2025), being out of sync. It's also a return to a zero-sum, conquest/subjugation view of politics, which makes the whole world a riskier, more dangerous place.