Like many Americans, I marked the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks by remembering where I was on that terrible day. My memories are indelibly intertwined with Northern Ireland, where I had just arrived as a post-doctoral research fellow. My new boss insisted that I come to her house, where I watched news reports, called family and friends, and slept in a borrowed nightgown. It was the first of many kindnesses from people who knew firsthand the scourge of terrorism, as they had lived through decades of sectarian violence known as the “Troubles” that resulted in over 3,600 deaths.

Three days later, U.S. Consul General Barbara Stephenson spoke at a memorial service outside Belfast city hall. Flanked on stage by political and religious leaders from Protestant and Catholic communities, she said: “The best thing you can do to help us is find peace amongst yourselves.” Afterwards, a taxi driver took me on a tour of the city, where I saw burn marks on houses from petrol bombs, so-called “peace walls” separating communities, curbstones painted in the colors of the British flag, and murals celebrating freedom fighters around the world.

At that time, British and Irish officials were working to implement the Good Friday Agreement. The deal had been brokered three years earlier by George Mitchell, President Bill Clinton’s envoy for Northern Ireland, who brought together the Protestant and predominantly unionist community with the Catholic and largely nationalist one. A power-sharing executive gave both communities a voice in decisionmaking, the British government removed security checkpoints from the border, and paramilitary groups pledged to decommission their weapons. The European Union (EU) membership of Britain and Ireland enabled the removal of additional barriers.

Slow progress on decommissioning weapons hindered the agreement’s early years, with unionist leaders concerned about the arsenal of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) — a paramilitary organization opposed to British rule in Northern Ireland. On the morning of September 11, 2001, Richard Haass, President George W. Bush’s envoy for Northern Ireland, met in Dublin with Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Féin, a nationalist political party with links to the IRA. Haass was upset about the recent arrests in Colombia of three suspected IRA veterans who were accused of providing explosives training to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a leftist guerrilla organization seeking to topple the government in addition to trafficking cocaine into the United States. Haass reportedly questioned the IRA’s commitment to the peace process and warned that American engagement with Sinn Féin (including the provision of travel visas to the party’s leaders) could be jeopardized if FARC attacks conducted with IRA equipment harmed U.S. personnel.

Haass’ case was bolstered by the 9/11 attacks, which altered the Western world’s perception of terrorism and led many benefactors — including Irish-Americans who had long provided financial backing to Sinn Féin and Irish paramilitary groups — to rethink their support. The combination of American diplomacy and diaspora influence, in concert with ongoing efforts by the British and Irish governments, led to the IRA’s historic announcement on October 23, 2001 that it had begun decommissioning its weapons.

Although the power-sharing government proceeded in fits and starts, the peace process was finally on the right trajectory. Politicians began addressing mundane issues of governance rather than contentious issues of identity. Foreign direct investment increased, with nearly 900 international companies employing around 100,000 people. Belfast, which was named the best travel destination in 2018 by Lonely Planet, opened a museum about the locally-constructed Titanic, served as a filming location for “Game of Thrones,” and attracted trendy boutiques and cafes.

This positive momentum stalled in the wake of Brexit. In June 2016, the U.K. opted by a narrow margin in a June 2016 referendum to leave the EU; notably, 56% of voters in Northern Ireland preferred to remain in the EU. Although the region was rarely discussed during the campaign, disagreements between London and Brussels about the post-Brexit management of the Irish border plagued divorce negotiations. They also reopened old wounds in Northern Ireland, prompting debate about constitutional arrangements and hindering efforts to resuscitate the Northern Ireland Assembly, which collapsed after a breakdown in trust and left the region without a political voice for three years.

After extensive debates about a “backstop,” the two sides ultimately agreed on the “Northern Ireland Protocol” and concluded the deal. After the U.K. left the EU on January 31, the sides began negotiating their future relationship, including thorny trade relations. The talks, whose logistics were hampered by the coronavirus pandemic, faltered over competing visions of economic competition rules and the complexities of managing customs and tariffs on goods traveling between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This week, the British government introduced legislation threatening to undo key provisions of the protocol. Although the British government claims these changes will protect the Good Friday Agreement, the EU fears they will do the opposite.

For decades, there was a bipartisan consensus in Washington about the importance of facilitating and preserving peace in Northern Ireland. The Trump administration has not made any public statements on the draft legislation, although officials are reportedly having quiet conversations. (Despite talking points that support the Good Friday Agreement, the administration’s credibility has been hindered by the president’s enthusiasm for Brexit at any cost.) In contrast, congressional Democrats have consistently expressed American support for the peace process throughout the Brexit process. In separate statements this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, and Foreign Affairs Chairman Elliot Engel warned that the proposed changes could hinder a future U.S.-U.K. trade deal. Similarly, Tony Blinken, a key advisor to Joe Biden, tweeted the candidate’s desire to see the Good Friday Agreement protected during the negotiations.

As Americans mark the 19th anniversary of September 11, it is worth remembering how that tragic day helped bolster the faltering peace process in Northern Ireland. As Irish and British leaders observed years later, the tragedy created a moment of opportunity by changing the political context and perceptions of terrorism, which led the IRA to decommission. As one local religious leader noted: “We here in Ireland are perhaps the only beneficiaries of 9/11.” That hard-earned peace should not be squandered, by Britain or the United States.

       

The poisoning of Alexei Navalny, a prominent critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin, has brought Russian relations with Western countries to a perilous impasse.

After doctors in Berlin identified the substance used as a military-grade nerve agent of the novichok group, German chancellor Angela Merkel issued a sharp condemnation: Mr. Navalny was “meant to be silenced,” she said, adding: “This raises very difficult questions that only the Russian government can answer, and must answer.”

German cabinet ministers raised the possibility of stopping the controversial gas pipeline project Nord Stream 2 — an idea Ms. Merkel now refuses to rule out. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov flatly rejected the notion. Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the Russian parliament, accused “foreign powers” of “creating tensions.” Kremlin-controlled media is churning out disinformation.

Now it is Berlin that will have to answer difficult questions. Can Germany find an appropriate next move that does not look like an embarrassing climb-down? Can it, since it now holds the EU’s rotating six-month presidency, broker a consensus on how to deal with Russia in a divided Europe? How to combine sanctions with a policy that does not punish civil society or close the door to pragmatic co-operation?

Finding a national consensus will be hard enough. Germany’s mainstream parties are torn over Russia. Some of the harshest critics are the conservative foreign policy committee chair (and would-be heir to Ms. Merkel) Norbert Röttgen; his competitor, the businessman Friedrich Merz; finance minister Olaf Scholz, a center-left Social Democrat; and the leadership of the Liberals and the Greens. Defenders include the conservative economy minister, Peter Altmaier; fellow-conservative state premier Armin Laschet (in the running to be chancellor); and the leaders of the Social Democratic party.

The left-wing Die Linke party and the hard-right Alternative for Germany are firmly united in their support for Moscow and its pipeline. Die Linke’s foreign policy speaker, Gregor Gysi, suggested the attack on Mr. Navalny might have been perpetrated by “an enemy” of Nord Stream 2. Alexander Gauland, the AfD’s legislative leader, rejected sanctions, as no German had been harmed.

Divisions are also evident at EU level. While Josep Borrell, the EU foreign minister, has condemned the use of novichok against Mr. Navalny, member states are not united. Poland and the Baltic nations are fiercely opposed to the Kremlin, while Hungary, Italy and France have cultivated warmer relations, argued for lifting of EU sanctions, or attempted a policy “reset.”

As a result it would be easy for the EU to backtrack. That would be a huge mistake. There can be little doubt that Mr. Navalny’s poisoning was undertaken with the knowledge or tacit permission of the Kremlin; a German weekly has reported that the type of novichok used is a new and particularly lethal version, leading investigators to conclude that the perpetrators were authorized by the Russian government.

The attack comes amid historic protests in Belarus, and just two weeks before regional elections in Russia, an important mood test in a restive, anxious country.

Germany should now take the lead and pronounce that enough is enough. The Kremlin’s cynical message is directed not just at its domestic critics, but also at Western governments. It says: We can act with impunity anywhere and you can’t stop us. Its purpose is to humiliate, enervate and paralyze its rivals — both painfully and publicly. Europe’s sovereignty and self-respect require a crisp, hard answer.

Sanctions — if they are to be targeted at those responsible for the crime rather than a blanket punishment of civilians — demand a complex and lengthy identification of the perpetrators and their chain of command. Pending that, Germany should immediately offer asylum to Mr. Navalny and suspend Nord Stream 2 (reserving the option of cancelling the project altogether).

Meanwhile, the EU should pursue illicit financial flows and corruption, and help renovate the Ukrainian transit pipeline. In the short term, there are many other suppliers of liquid natural gas than Russia; in the long term, the EU needs to move decisively to green fuels. It must modernize energy infrastructure and supply security across Europe, allowing no national exemptions from EU energy regulations. It should also offer refuge to those persecuted by Russia and study visas to the young.

That, rather than offers of dialogue, is the language the Kremlin understands.

       

As protests continue in Belarus over the disputed re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko, Steve Pifer explains how the government’s response to COVID-19 and a blatantly stolen election prompted the wide-spread demonstrations. He also warns how Russia’s current support for Lukashenko could backfire by pushing Belarusian public opinion away from Russia and toward the West.

Related material: 

• Is Putin about to make a costly mistake in Belarus?

Listen to Brookings podcasts here, on Apple or on Google podcasts, send email feedback to bcp@brookings.edu, and follow us at @policypodcasts on Twitter.

Thanks to audio producer Gaston Reboredo, Chris McKenna, Fred Dews, Marie Wilken, and Camilo Ramirez for their support.

The Current is part of the Brookings Podcast Network.

       

Students across the United States are heading back to class — in utterly unconventional times, of course, with many attending virtually and under unusual schedules. But the more things change, the more they stay the same: Many will be assigned certain classics in their international relations, history, political science, and/or regional studies courses. Recognizing that newer books and journal articles with fresh takes on the classic subjects don’t always make the syllabus, scholars and staff from Brookings Foreign Policy offer must-reads for students looking to supplement their coursework.

Richard Bush recommends:

Fear: Trump in the White House

For a riveting account of how foreign policy was really made in the Trump administration, I recommend Bob Woodward’s 2019 book “Fear.” It describes a series of encounters that President Trump had with his economic advisers on the one hand, and his national security team on the other, through spring 2018. Each group accepted the basic parameters of post-World War II U.S. foreign policy. Each tried in every way they could to explain this to Trump, only to learn — over and over again — that he had rigid, non-mainstream views on trade and defense that smart practitioners were unable to budge.

James Goldgeier recommends:

Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War

I highly recommend Lindsey O’Rourke’s “Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War,” published by Cornell University Press in 2018. O’Rourke conducted significant archival research and created an original dataset of U.S.-backed covert and overt regime change attempts during the Cold War. She discovered that there were 10 times as many covert efforts as overt action, and only one in eight U.S. covert operations supported replacing an authoritarian regime with a democratic government. A critical insight from the book is that policymakers rarely got what they wanted through efforts at regime change, which had profoundly negative effects on the populations and their attitudes toward the United States. The book is a model for students thinking about their own research projects. O’Rourke is clear about the policy problem; she articulates alternative hypotheses; and she tests her theory using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods.

Jesse Kornbluth recommends:

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Global Politics

All too often, natural geographical features are absent in geopolitical debates and analysis. In the 2015 book “Prisoners of Geography,” intrepid journalist Tim Marshall uses 10 up-to-date maps to examine the physical features of Russia, China, the United States, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Japan and Korea, and the Arctic to analyze the unique geopolitical challenges facing these countries and regions. Marshall’s book — simultaneously an atlas and analysis — provides a basis for a deeper understanding of global entanglements, why world leaders make the big decisions they do, and how a rapidly-changing physical planet will reshape the global geopolitical landscape as well.

Michael O’Hanlon recommends:

Becoming Kim Jong Un: A former CIA officer’s insights into North Korea’s enigmatic young dictator

This book, published in 2020, is awesome. It is one of the five best-written and most lively tomes I’ve ever enjoyed out of Brookings, in a quarter-century of working here and 35 years of reading the Institution’s work. Jung Pak was the CIA’s top Kim Jong Un watcher for eight years, until we persuaded her to join us as a senior fellow in 2017, and she slaved over this book during her first 2+ years in the Foreign Policy program. I might not have initially realized how much I’d enjoy reading about a young-ish, unusually-kempt, brutal dictator with a weird hairdo. But Jung weaves into the story a lot of things, including explanations of how the CIA studies difficult targets, how Kim was raised and chosen for leadership, what inspirations he learned watching his father but also understanding — more importantly, perhaps — the legacy of his grandfather. You read here about “Pyonghattan,” Kim’s goals for economic reform and modernization of his country’s capital city; about “pruning the family tree,” including Kim’s assassinations of his uncle and half-brother, as well as the parts of the family tree Kim likes better, such as his stylish sister; and about the life-long “education of Kim Jong Un,” namely what lessons Kim has learned dealing with the outside world. Jung explores how we in the United States have the power to shape this nuclear-armed dictator’s future lessons and incentives — after having come perilously close to going to war in 2017. For so many reasons, this book is great.

Bruce Riedel recommends:

The Spymasters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future

The Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) commands America’s foremost security service, responsible for collecting and analyzing all source intelligence for the president. Now we have a brilliant new book that provides portraits of the DCIs of the last half-century. Chris Whipple’s 2020 book, “The Spymasters,” provides gripping biographies of every director since Richard Helms in the 1970s. Controversy surrounds every one of them. “The Spymasters” gives credit and fault where each is due. The author of a previous insightful book on White House chiefs of staff, Whipple interviewed almost all the living former DCIs and dozens of other experts and observers (myself included). He provides interesting new accounts of CIA covert operations like the death of Hezbolla terrorist Imad Mughniyah in 2008. If you are a student interested in American foreign policy or considering a career in the Central Intelligence Agency — or simply interested in the men, and now one woman, who run the CIA — this is the book for you.

Ted Reinert recommends:

Rigged: America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference

David Shimer’s 2020 book “Rigged” gives a detailed account of Russia’s catastrophically successful covert interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the U.S. response before, during, and after Election Day. What’s more, he first provides the historical context of Russian and U.S. covert electoral interference across the globe — from Cold War operations in Italy, Chile, West Germany, and the U.S. itself to the more asymmetric era of recent decades in which Washington’s cost-benefit analysis and democracy promotion toolkit evolved and Moscow weaponized the evolving online environment. The book features cases like Russia’s 1996 election, Serbia, Iraq, Ukraine, the Brexit referendum, and Montenegro. Shimer synthesizes a wide breadth of research and interviews with a very impressive roster of covert interference practitioners and other high-level former policymakers, and has produced a gripping narrative with sharp analysis and timely, useful conclusions.

Natan Sachs recommends:

Building social cohesion between Christians and Muslims through soccer in post-ISIS Iraq

A brand-new study in the journal Science by a graduate student caught my eye both for what it says both about peacebuilding in war-torn settings and about the design of social science research. Salma Mousa randomly assigned youth soccer players, Christian and Muslim in post-ISIS Iraq, to either mixed or single-religion teams. She then measured the effects of the on behavior within the soccer setting but also outside of it. Experiments like these — which come with their own ethical and methodological difficulties, to be sure — provide concrete and replicable data about what actually works in peacebuilding, something many people opine about without much data. Players on mixed teams indeed showed more affinity to players from other religions. But mixed-team players were no more likely to overcome faith boundaries outside of their sports league a couple of months later. It’s frustrating, but familiarity does not necessarily breed universal affinity. It hints at what I think is a general, if unfortunate, fact: People can have “some of their best friends” from another faction, and still be caught in a group dynamic that fuels conflict.

Amanda Sloat recommends:

The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for its Renewal

Although “The Back Channel,” published in 2020, is not an academic book, it can provide an important real-world supplement to the research-oriented texts on this list. Bill Burns, a career diplomat for 33 years, gives readers a front-row look at the highs and lows of American diplomacy across the last five presidents. At a time when the State Department’s work has been denigrated, this book provides valuable insights into its inner workings and makes a compelling argument about its necessity.

       

Last week, more than 70 Republican foreign-policy officials, including two from the Trump administration, signed a letter endorsing Joe Biden for president. Dozens more Republican foreign-policy experts signed earlier letters condemning Donald Trump. Many of these officials hope that, if Trump loses, as current polls suggest, Republican foreign policy will revert to where it was before he was elected. That seems unlikely. As the Republican National Convention has vividly illustrated, the GOP has morphed into the Party of Trump, and Republican foreign policy will likely have to reckon with Trumpism for years to come.

Eric Edelman, who served as an undersecretary of defense in the George W. Bush administration and who signed the letter endorsing Biden, told me that if Trump is reelected, Trumpism will be impossible to dislodge. If Trump loses, the country’s foreign policy will be more open to debate, but the chances of a restoration are still low. “The traditional Republican internationalists will hope for a Dallas-style twist, with Bobby showing up in the shower after a bad dream,” Edelman said, referencing the 1980s show that revealed that a whole season of plot had been a dream. “But it will honestly be very hard to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. The 2024 hopefuls will likely say the message was right, but the messenger was flawed.”

Trump has upended decades of Republican foreign policy. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush put freedom and democracy at the heart of their worldview. They supported United States alliances and embraced free trade. Trump sees U.S. allies as free riders who take advantage of Americans. He is a protectionist who loves tariffs. He is naturally drawn to authoritarian strongmen. And he sees U.S. foreign policy as purely transactional, with no larger purpose of building a better world.

Trump did not just challenge Republican orthodoxy. He also blew up its establishment. Now, if he loses, his supporters will likely blame the Never Trumpers, now including former National Security Adviser John Bolton, for the president’s defeat and for everything a Biden administration subsequently does. With many of these officials pushed aside, new foreign-policy voices in the GOP are poised to fill the vacuum.

To understand where Republican foreign policy is headed, I recently had several conversations with Elbridge Colby and Wess Mitchell, who both served in the Trump administration (in the Defense and State Departments, respectively) and who have set up the Marathon Initiative, a new think tank focused on great-power competition, a concept they were closely associated with when they worked in government.

The history of U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the GOP, is characterized by the rise and fall of ideas — whether neoconservatism or realism in its Kissingerian and Scowcroftian guises. So a few people armed with a new idea can be highly effective, and Colby and Mitchell are widely regarded as two of the most influential geopolitical thinkers of the next generation of Republican foreign-policy experts.

They believe Republicans need a new worldview that incorporates significant elements of the Trump administration’s strategy. Mitchell told me:

The country is at a moment of self-correction. America’s external and internal environments have dramatically changed. We got used to three decades with no peer competitor and unlimited resources. These conditions are now gone. You can’t have a $24 trillion debt and competition on all fronts and expect to continue business as usual. Far-reaching departures from our traditional foreign policy are now required. Otherwise, changes will be forced upon us later, with more pain than if we are proactive.

Colby and Mitchell believe the “unipolar moment,” where the United States is essentially unrivaled militarily, is over. The world is now bipolar, dominated by the dueling superpowers of China and the U.S., and features multipolarity in certain areas, such as nuclear weapons and the global economy. The end of unipolarity means that the U.S. must come to grips with new limits on its action. Washington must now make tough choices.

They believe the top priority for Republicans should be China’s rise. Deterring Russia and protecting NATO and the transatlantic alliance come second. Upholding the regional order in the Middle East is a distant third.

Although all Republicans are unified on the need to counter China’s power, Colby and Mitchell see the struggle less ideologically than many of their compatriots, and more in line with Trump’s personal view. The China challenge, Colby told me, has more to do with rising Chinese power than with the Chinese Communist Party. The risk to the American people is that China “could dominate the world’s wealthiest region and shape the global economy and global order in ways that are detrimental to the United States. The CCP makes it worse, but if China were a democracy, we would still need to worry about such a powerful country.”

For this reason, they think the United States should be wary of waging a long-term ideological competition that pits democracy against authoritarianism. “I’m in a hard-line place now,” Colby told me, “because we have neglected China for a very long time. But the goal of that hard line is to get to a place of strength where détente becomes possible. When we get to a stable equilibrium, we should be prepared to engage with China regardless of its system.” They are concerned about the clash-of-systems narrative for other reasons too. Universalism results in overextension. They worry that the democracy agenda has gotten out of control, that the U.S. invests resources in thorny challenges that are detached from the national strategy. And then on other occasions, Washington falls out with strategically important allies and partners — such as Hungary, India, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia — because the countries do not liberalize domestically.

Little daylight exists between Marathon and Bush Republicans on Russia and Europe. Unlike Trump, Colby and Mitchell are strong supporters of NATO and see Russia as a dangerous actor in the region. Mitchell did tell me that he is wary of European efforts to create a third pole between the United States and China, a strategy that some European policymakers are considering in response to Trump’s nationalism and China’s aggression.

They break from traditional Republican orthodoxy on the Middle East and are more in line with Trump’s personal views. Colby and Mitchell do not see Iran as a threat equal to China or even Russia. If the U.S. is serious about China, it cannot place Iran at the center of its national-security policy, as some in the Trump administration have done. Colby, for instance, was publicly vocal in calling for the Trump administration not to strike Iran after Iranian drones attacked a Saudi oil facility in June 2019, because it would have “wrested” America’s “military focus” away from Asia. They believe that the United States must remain active in the Middle East but with reduced ambition, relying more on allies and partners to do the work in the region. On Afghanistan, Colby told me, “Trump is right to reduce the presence in Afghanistan to as low a level as possible.”

In terms of the economy, Colby and Mitchell are avowed capitalists, but they see unfettered globalization as a strategic vulnerability and think that partial decoupling from China is merited. They believe the global economy must also serve the interests of the middle class, rather than primarily facilitating the free flow of capital, goods, and services. This idea may seem rare among Republicans, but it reflects a growing body of opinion within the party that a shift of this kind may allow them to siphon off some of the progressive Democratic voters who support candidates such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

Marathon is a small think tank, but is important because it represents one of the most serious attempts to date to reconcile Trumpism with elements of traditional Republican foreign policy. Nadia Schadlow, who served on the Trump National Security Council and authored the National Security Strategy, has also written about the future of foreign policy in the party. In an article for Foreign Affairs titled “The End of American Illusion,” she wrote:

Trump has been a disrupter, and his policies, informed by his heterodox perspective, have set in motion a series of long-overdue corrections. Many of these necessary adjustments have been misrepresented or misunderstood in today’s vitriolic, partisan debates. But the changes Trump has initiated will help ensure that the international order remains favorable to U.S. interests and values and to those of other free and open societies.

Schadlow ignores Trump’s personal hostility to alliances and democracy promotion and focuses on the great-power-competition concept that she and others in his administration championed.

Ironically, these efforts to define Trumpism are only likely to succeed if Trump loses. If he is reelected, he alone will decide, and the MAGA faction — ultra-loyalist operatives such as the former Trump Cabinet member Richard Grenell and cable-news commentators such as Douglas Macgregor — will be in the ascendant.

If he is reelected, he alone will decide, and the MAGA faction…will be in the ascendant.

A number of Republicans still make the argument that Trumpism itself must be discarded altogether. Kori Schake is the director of foreign- and defense-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and previously served in the George W. Bush administration. She signed the letter against Trump and has endorsed Biden, but has not given up on the Republican Party. Classic liberal internationalism — support for alliances, freedom, democracy, and an open global economy — remains conservatives’ best option, she told me. Nothing else would have delivered the successes of the past half century. The party must learn the right lessons from the Bush years and from the mistake of the Iraq War. It must demilitarize U.S. foreign policy, avoid foolish interventions, and strengthen diplomacy, but it should not shrink its ambition. By helping others with their problems, she said, the United States can persuade others to help us with our challenges. Having a universal vision is a strategic asset. Marathon, Schake said, is “trying to move the needle away from its natural resting place.”

Internationalists such as Schake have an uphill fight in the GOP. Most Republican members of Congress are likely to try to preserve Trumpism. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, for instance, has been very active in arguing for many of the policies the Marathon Initiative stands for—on China, Iran (where he opposed strikes in June 2019), and globalized finance (where he is critical of its effects on the middle class). Only a few politicians—led by Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming—are likely to speak out against Trumpism if the president loses. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah could play a role in restoring the old GOP strategy, but some political operatives speculate that he could be offered a senior role in a Biden administration. Even if that proves to be untrue, his impeachment vote, to remove Trump from office, could result in his exile if Biden wins.

For a significant number of the Republican Party’s Reagan-Bush foreign-policy establishment, Trump represents the greatest internal threat to the republic since the Civil War and a profound danger to U.S. interests internationally. They want to see Trump and Trumpism repudiated, not embraced and redefined.

The other force within the party is the neo-isolationists. They are sick and tired of U.S. involvement in the Middle East and have little interest in America’s alliances with Europe. They are mainly worried about the economic challenge from China. They’d pull up the drawbridge, build the wall, and live in the fortress. This faction has traditionally been led by a Paul — first Ron and then his son Rand — but others have joined the fray, including Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida. Several Republicans have told me that it is impossible to understate the appeal that this view has in the grassroots factions of the party, even though most elected officials are uncomfortable with it.

If the Reagan-Bush Republicans are finished, and the fight is about what Trumpism means, the struggle could redefine the foreign-policy debate between Democrats and Republicans as well.

A key lesson that Democrats have taken from the past four years is that democracy is in crisis at home and abroad, so a Biden administration must move to the forefront of defending it. This viewpoint certainly includes competing with China and Russia, but it also means strengthening democracy domestically and overseas; standing up to authoritarian strongmen in Hungary, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, all of whom have worked more closely with China as they have become more repressive; and reforming the global economy so it works for the middle and working class (a point on which some Trump supporters agree). Democrats also believe that nesting competition with China inside an affirmative agenda for democracies and free societies is a way of naturally limiting it and addressing other issues that the public cares about, including climate change and public health.

The post-Trump Republicans, including Colby and Mitchell, reject the idea that democracy is in crisis. They are generally comfortable with the nationalist and populist turns in the world, whether in the United States or Europe. They believe that putting pressure on the U.S. or its allies to reform will simply weaken them and highlight the west’s divisions. The party will use values and ideology instrumentally to put pressure on China, but these factors will not guide the party’s foreign policy toward other nations or the international order more generally.

Not believing in — and not tending to — the crisis of democracy is a strategic liability for the U.S. and an asset for our rivals.

In trying to claim and redefine Trump’s mantle, these Republicans will encounter substantive challenges, including criticism from the president’s ultra-loyalists. Also, Americans and citizens of other democracies may want to deal with the China challenge, but not at the expense of working on other problems. A nearly singular focus on great-power competition may seem detached from everyday lives.

Finally, not believing in — and not tending to — the crisis of democracy is a strategic liability for the U.S. and an asset for our rivals. The weakening of democracy provides China, Russia, and other authoritarian states with an opening to interfere in free societies, a reality that Australia and the European Union are grappling with now. This threat should be America’s focus after Russia’s attack on the 2016 election. However, the U.S. can’t fully tackle that problem until it fixes the fraying of democracy at home.