SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
For many Americans, it's been a shock to watch President Trump act so aggressively toward other countries in his second term - seizing Venezuela's leader and claiming to control the country, threatening to take Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, launching military strikes on Nigeria, Syria and Yemen and threatening Colombia, Cuba, Iran and Mexico. Is this kind of aggression a return to a historic norm? We're going to put that question to Peter Krause. He's an associate professor of political science at Boston College and a research affiliate with the MIT Security Studies Program. Peter Krause, thanks for coming on.
PETER KRAUSE: Thanks so much for having me, Sacha.
PFEIFFER: We are about 80 years past World War II, and since then, many countries have put a priority on trying to prevent war at that scale from happening again, instead resorting to diplomacy, sanctions, rather than violence. How noteworthy is that achievement in world history, that stretch of 80 years without world war, essentially?
KRAUSE: I mean, I think it's incredibly noteworthy. If you look at the history of conflict, you have great powers, which are the strongest countries in the international system - strong economically, strong militarily. You know, it's not just World War I and World War II. We can go back to, you know, the great wars of religion or other conflicts in Europe or East Asia or the Middle East throughout history. So to have nearly a century of not having major direct great power war is quite an achievement. Now, of course, we had the Cold War with indirect proxy conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. But in the scheme of things, it's been a pretty stable period, at least in terms of great power conflict.
PFEIFFER: So to what degree do you think that that long stretch of relative peace has lulled the world or much of the world into a sense of complacency and made us forget that for much of history, disputes between the largest world powers were solved by war and aggression?
KRAUSE: I mean, I think there's maybe some sense of that, but also, I mean, we live in the nuclear era where we have nuclear weapons. And people who are listeners maybe remember hiding under their desks, doing nuclear drills or post-9/11 worrying about terrorist attacks. So even though we haven't seen great power war, there certainly has been conflict or the threat of it in a variety of forms that, in some ways, could be more deadly than anything that we've seen before. So maybe there's some sense of this time is different because of the rise of international law and the U.N. and NATO and alliances and things that have created greater sense of security. But I think for most people, the sense of conflict is unfortunately still on many people's minds, whether it's in the United States or abroad.
PFEIFFER: You mentioned NATO. Can you talk about how that is a factor and what has created this long stretch of relative peace, and then what it is that seems to be threatening that peace?
KRAUSE: So many people see NATO as the most successful military alliance in modern history in the sense that you had the combination of a number of different countries in Europe and the United States combining together against kind of this broader Soviet threat, but also trying to make it so competition among different countries in Europe - say the Germans or others - was not going to spark another massive conflict on the continent. So quite a success there. I think the challenge now is that the kind of liberal order that was built alongside NATO - especially post-Cold War, which was built on free trade, spreading democracy, strengthening international institutions like NATO or the U.N. - is under threat, not just by countries like Russia or China who maybe want a different international order, but somewhat ironically, by the current administration that doesn't necessarily see those parts of the liberal international order as serving U.S. interests.
PFEIFFER: And when you look at the behavior of the United States in recent weeks and months and the behavior of other major countries - Russia, for example - do you see us shifting back toward that might-makes-right worldview?
KRAUSE: Well, I guess the biggest thing that I see is that Russia - and to some extent, China as well - have been pushing against kind of this liberal international order that the United States helped to set up post-World War II and especially post the end of the Cold War. What's somewhat unique is that we currently have a leadership in the United States that sees aspects of that order as also problematic, saying whether it's free trade, whether it's international institutions, whether it's democracy promotion, those are things that allow other countries to free ride off of America's efforts and make it so America is less safe or less prosperous.
PFEIFFER: Many times on our air this past week, we've heard President Trump's policy adviser Stephen Miller saying, in his words, the real world is governed by strength, is governed by force, is governed by power. He also said these are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time. A return to that worldview. What are the implications of that for the U.S. and the rest of the world?
KRAUSE: Well, look, the United States is still the most powerful country in the world in terms of its military strength and its economic might. The challenge to what Miller is saying there is that the United States' security and reputation in the world has not just been based on its relative strength. It's also been based on its soft power, the idea that people around the world look at U.S. democracy, they look at the, you know, universities we have that draw in students from around the world, they look at Hollywood, they look at American culture and they say, I like things about America and American culture, and so I'm attracted to them. And so I think when you see the world just through the lens of coercion and force, you're missing many other parts of why countries act the way they do and ultimately how you get things done that helps support the security and prosperity of your own country.
PFEIFFER: As other countries watch the U.S. become more aggressive, what's your view of whether that's likely to create a copycat or domino effect in those other countries?
KRAUSE: Well, look, the way that the Trump administration is pursuing its foreign policy, there's elements of kind of this spheres-of-influence approach, whereby with the deal with Ukraine and Russia the Trump administration is pushing, it's kind of granting Russia parts of Ukraine and having Ukraine kind of face up to that. Certainly, the Trump administration has pushed back strongly on the idea of Taiwan being invaded or taken over by China. But ultimately, you know, who knows? In the broad sense, if the Trump administration is saying, hey, Venezuela's in our - is our neighborhood. This is like a return to the Monroe Doctrine from, you know, over 150 years ago.
There could be some element of not necessarily everyone's copycatting, but the idea of what is permissible now, and what will the U.S., the strongest power in the world, allow to happen? And maybe one of the things the U.S. will allow to happen is, hey, guess what? The strongest power in its neighborhood gets to call the tune in terms of trade agreements, in terms of security arrangements. And if you're a smaller, weaker country in that area, you kind of have to deal with that. And the U.S. is not going to come and rescue every single small country that wants to face up and doesn't like the deal they're getting from kind of their regional great power. To be fair, that's something that happened for a long time, and we may be returning to that.
PFEIFFER: That's political scientist Peter Krause of Boston College. Peter, thank you for the historical perspective.
KRAUSE: Thanks so much for having me, Sacha.
PFEIFFER: For more on NPR's coverage on the changing world order, go to npr.org and put world reordering in the search field.
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