U.S. leaders consistently lack strategic empathy, failing to consider how their actions are perceived by other nations. This longstanding blindness has fueled past conflicts and now risks sparking new crises with Russia and China.
Trump's foreign policy
One chronic failure that members of America’s foreign policy elite continue to display is their stubborn refusal or inability to see U.S. actions from the point of view of a potential competitor or opponent. Instead, Washington’s functionaries act not only as though U.S. motives are invariably pure, but that the purity is so obvious no reasonable person, including the leaders of a foreign country, could possibly reach a different conclusion. Such arrogance is not a new deficiency; it has poisoned U.S. relations with multiple countries for decades. Continuation of that misguided approach, though, could now result in calamity. It especially threatens to create an armed crisis with Russia, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), or both countries simultaneously.
The absence of U.S. strategic empathy has created or exacerbated numerous international crises before. When U.S. and allied troops intervened in Korea’s civil war in 1950, for example, Western military and political leaders seemed oblivious to how the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which had taken power just the previous year, might react. That unrealistic posture culminated in an armed conflict between PRC forces and the U.S.-led military coalition operating in Korea.
Even a modicum of strategic awareness and empathy on Washington’s part might have prevented that tragedy. Following Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s attack that outflanked North Korean troops at Incheon on Korea’s west coast, allied forces routed their adversaries and advanced steadily toward the Yalu River and the Korean-PRC border. When Chinese troops intervened in October 1950, Western combat units were only a few kilometers from entering PRC territory. What country would not consider such a military encroachment a national security threat? Moreover, Beijing had sent diplomatic signals through third parties warning Washington against continuing the advance. Yet MacArthur and his superiors in the Truman administration remained utterly tone deaf to the warnings coming from the PRC. A longer war, thousands of additional fatalities, and risky nuclear brinksmanship by U.S. leaders was the outcome.
Tone deaf behavior on the part of U.S. leaders today is evident in Washington’s dealings with countries as diverse as Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea. Tensions with Tehran since President Donald Trump took office for his second term already escalated to the point of U.S. airstrikes using B-2 strategic bombers against Iranian nuclear sites. The situation with Venezuela seems at least as bad, with U.S. officials dropping hints about waging a regime change war against leftist leader Nicolas Maduro. Relations with Pyongyang are not as volatile, but North Korea leaders show no interest in a one-sided summit focused on Washington’s longstanding demand that the DPRK relinquish the nuclear weapons and sophisticated ballistic missiles that it has already built. In all three cases, U.S. leaders show a total inability or unwillingness to see issues from the other party’s point of view.
The current lack of U.S. strategic empathy (or apparently even strategic awareness) is most evident and dangerous in the belligerent posture that Washington and its NATO partners have adopted toward Russia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. That development is doubly tragic, because it was so unnecessary. Moscow’s acceptance not only of Germany’s reunification, but a united Germany’s membership in NATO signaled the potential for an entirely new era in East-West relations. The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact military alliance confirmed the Kremlin’s new, much less aggressive political and security orientation. Instead of post-cold war rapprochement, however, the West’s relationship with Moscow has deteriorated to the point that NATO is waging an outright proxy war using Ukraine as the tip of the spear against Russia.
Even a minimal ability to see NATO’s inexorable expansion eastward from Russia’s perspective would have warned U.S. policymakers that the Russian people, as well as leaders in the Kremlin, would regard that strategy as extremely provocative and threatening. Washington’s push to make Ukraine an Alliance military asset and ultimately a member greatly escalated Russia’s worries, and Moscow ultimately struck back.
U.S. leaders seemed to have learned nothing from the fiasco they created regarding Washington’s relations with Russia. Indeed, they are exhibiting some of the same arrogance toward the PRC on important strategic issues. Worse, that is not a problem that has suddenly emerged because of Donald Trump’s return to the White House—although he has made matters worse with his fondness for punitive economic tariffs. With respect to conventional security issues, the suspicions and hostility directed toward the PRC is a bipartisan phenomenon that has become increasingly apparent for nearly two decades.
The issue of Taiwan’s political status is the centerpiece of Washington’s lack of empathy or even understanding regarding the PRC’s position. Successive U.S. administrations officially respect a “one China” policy, but U.S. actions indicate a rather different orientation. During both Trump’s first term and Joe Biden’s administration, U.S. arms sales to Taipei and overall U.S. strategic cooperation with the Taipei government increased markedly. Indeed, Biden committed major verbal gaffes on at least two occasions indicating that the United States has a binding commitment to defend Taiwan from coercion. Pressure to embrace enhanced bilateral political and even military cooperation with Taipei is both strong and thoroughly bipartisan in the U.S. Congress.
Although the issue of Taiwan’s political status is the single most important example of a lack of U.S. strategic empathy for China’s views, it is definitely not the only one. For example, Washington has strongly backed the Philippines in its various territorial disputes with the PRC in the South China Sea. U.S. leaders continue to fully embrace Tokyo’s disputed claim to the island chain known as the Diaoyu in China and the Senkakus in Japan. That issue is not a trivial matter. The waters near those uninhabited islands are widely believed to contain abundant mineral riches. Even more important, though, they occupy a strategic location that could serve as a staging area for Japanese and U.S. forward deployments of naval military assets or as a buffer for China’s security. A succession of U.S. administrations has not shown the slightest willingness to consider Beijing’s point of view.
That attitude on the part of U.S. leaders is worrisome. Americans should not want a repetition of the kind of deterioration in bilateral relations that has occurred with respect to Russia. Indeed, given the extent of China’s economic and military rise, it is even more imperative to avoid such a breakdown in relations with Beijing. The members of America’s foreign policy need a crash course in strategic empathy, or at least strategic awareness.
