Only One Priority Makes Sense for American Foreign Policy

The United States today faces greater danger than at any time for at least a generation, and quite possibly back to the Cuban missile crisis—if not before. We have become accustomed to judging such rhetoric as absurdly exaggerated. It was ridiculous to say this about the year 2005, as some did. But today it is actually true. It is not hyperbole to say that we now face what Winston Churchill called a world crisis. Indeed, President Trump is right to say that we risk being on the precipice of World War III.

The list why is, by now, distressingly familiar. A massive China preparing for large-scale confrontation with the United States. A revanchist Russia engaged in the largest war in Europe since the Second World War, one that does not currently appear on a trajectory to end. A North Korea with an increasingly belligerent government and the ability to strike the American homeland with nuclear weapons. An Iran that is supporting terrorist groups and the mass murder of Jews in Israel, on the verge of developing an atomic bomb. Terrorist groups. Mass unchecked migration across our border. The potential for smaller wars in South America, Central Asia, and beyond. And at home, fiscal crisis looming, deindustrialization, war weariness. The list goes on.

But it’s not enough to recognize how bad things have gotten. The next conservative administration is going to have to do something about it.

So how should Americans, and above all a conservative administration, face this extraordinarily dangerous time? I do not speak for anyone other than myself on this. My own strong conviction, though, is that a strategy founded in conservative realism, one that is characterized by strategic prioritization, is the best foreign policy—indeed, it is the only prudent one for Americans in this time. 

Why?

I think it will be abundantly clear to most readers why a strategy based on progressivism or left-liberal internationalism is not suited for our time. We can see today its perilous and poor results. Overextension without strength. Wildly ambitious goals. A gauzy conception of the “sacredness” of alliances without real strength or prudence to back it up, sacrificing Americans’ interests for good press. This policy finds us in deep rivalry in multiple directions, committed almost everywhere, but lacking the mobilization of national power or the clarity of purpose to align serious means to reasonable ends. In a word, a foreign policy of ambitious goals underwritten more by high rhetoric than real force and resolve. This foreign policy has left us teetering at the edge of a cliff, at risk of staggering into multiple wars but not prepared for any of them. We need a fundamental change before we fall off it. 

So what plausible strategic options do conservatives have for such change? I would identify three schools of thought, placed broadly along a spectrum. This spectrum is oriented on the key question of what one thinks America can and should do in the world.

At one extreme is primacism, the view that the United States can and should be the global hegemon, the world policeman. This view is highly popular among the old Republican establishment, but not among voters. Primacism is most closely identified with a hawkish liberalism. It is generally based on the idea that the United States cannot be safe unless all the rest of the world is liberal. At minimum—even without such an ideological dimension—it calls for dominance everywhere.

At the other extreme is genuine isolationism, which has rising purchase among voters but almost no support from the elite. Let me be clear about the use of the term isolationism, as there’s a lot of very unfair throwing around of the term isolationist to slander people who merely have a justified skepticism of military over-interventionism, a skepticism I very much share. I’m referring here to actual isolationism, the idea that the United States would be best off withdrawing from the world in security terms.  Such isolationism, which is actually quite rarely found in the public policy debate, is most closely identified with libertarianism. It is linked to the idea that if the government just backs off, then a self-generating stability will ensue.

In between these two is a strategy of prioritization.

A strategy of prioritization flows directly from what I would describe as conservative realism. The core of conservatism is making the best of the world as it is: that’s why prudence is a core conservative virtue. Realism, meanwhile, is about accurately seeing the world as it is. So, in a meaningful sense, a true conservative must be a good realist. 

If you’re a conservative realist, then you understand that some threats matter more than others, that power has limits, and that a proper foreign policy should focus our nation’s scarce resources on protecting the things that are most important for Americans. At the same time, you recognize that simply withdrawing to our hemisphere or homeland is also not a recipe for peace and prosperity. To the contrary, if you’re a conservative realist, you recognize that isolation will not be enough to safeguard our interests.

Such realism is especially crucial today because the consequences of getting things wrong now are far graver than they were a generation ago. In the 1990s, we could experiment—even if unwisely—with primacism because the consequences of making the wrong decisions were so low. We were by far the world’s strongest power, and most of the world’s other significant powers were either allies or pliant. That is obviously not the case today. The rivals we face are much stronger than they were 30 years ago, while our own economic, military, and strategic situation is much more constrained.

Our margin for error, then, is much narrower. If we pursue a mistaken policy now, one that does not match the world we find ourselves in and the resources and resolve we have available with reasonable and realistic goals, we risk not only the frustration and failure of the last generation’s Middle East wars—as real and painful as those failures were—but World War III. And we might lose it. Therefore, we must not err. 

So, let’s evaluate these three broad options and see which is most prudent in these conditions. 

While I certainly sympathize with the arguments for greater restraint in light of our foreign policy experience over the last 30 years, I think the world today makes clear that a strategy of isolationism is highly ill-advised. Certainly, an overactive and hyper-ambitious foreign policy is deeply unwise. But conservatism also recognizes that simply withdrawing does not yield a good outcome.

In the international arena, simply withdrawing from the world, especially Asia, would yield the field to other states—most of all China—that would put that power to their own purposes, often at odds with ours. Both human nature and geopolitical structure mean that leaving the world to countries like China would not leave us in a good position. Quite the contrary. For instance, no rightly ambitious American reindustrialization program is feasible if China dominates Asia, the world’s largest market area, and thus the global economy. So I think we can dispense with isolationism as a plausible option.

More significant in the public debate, however, is a strategy of primacism. In fact, many on the Right advocate for this strategy, and they remain powerful. But I think that the reality of our situation makes clear that primacism is not an advisable approach. In fact, I would even put it this way: I don’t think a strategy of primacism is possible, let alone wise. 

Why is this? Abroad, we are no longer so dominant in the international sphere. This is not to lash ourselves on the back, but the truth is that China, above all, is a far larger industrial power than we are. We are roughly 20 to 25% of global GDP, but China is about the same, with output far more concentrated in industrial goods. At the same time, global wealth and power are shifting from our established allies in places like Europe and Northeast Asia toward South and Southeast Asia, among other regions. We simply don’t have the power to impose our will on everybody else. Indeed, we could not successfully do so even in the so-called unipolar moment. What possible basis do we have to think we could do so now? The deepening rivalry with China, the persistence of the war in Ukraine, and the opposition of other smaller powers like Iran, North Korea, and even the Houthis shows how disconnected from reality a strategy of primacism actually is. 

Looking at home, we can see further reasons why primacism does not make sense. We are already at historic levels of debt and deficit spending. Thus there are significant constraints on how much more we could spend on our military without either cutting entitlements or sharply raising taxes, neither of which is appealing to Americans or appears to be seriously on the political agenda. At the same time, our military readiness is at historic lows, and our defense-industrial base has been thoroughly hollowed out by a generation of deindustrialization. Even the huge amount of money being injected on behalf of Ukraine over the last two years has not even come close to closing the gap between what we can produce, and what our military is being expected to perform. Meanwhile, the American people are justly war-weary after the hyper-ambitious military interventions and nation-building campaigns that primacists themselves advocated for. 

There is thus a yawning gap between the extraordinarily expansive ends that primacism promises on the one hand and the reality of what our economy, people, and military can and are likely willing to do in the face of capable and resilient rivals. Don’t take it from me. The Defense Department under both the Trump and Biden administrations have made clear that we do not have a military equipped to take on more than one major war at a time, let alone the three or four that primacists often want us to fight.

So pursuing primacism is not a realistic option for a conservative administration at this point. Are we going to dramatically raise taxes or cut entitlements? What is the political strategy for that and would it even desirable? Are the American people keen to support multiple new military interventions? Could our military and defense-industrial base even support such a strategy? Skepticism is very much in order on all of these questions. Even if we did get those huge infusions of money, it is not clear they would fix many of our military and industrial problems. At best they would take years to pan out. In the meantime, the key questions a conservative administration would face are here now: a Chinese attack on Taiwan, an expansion of war in Ukraine, an Iranian nuclear bomb, a North Korean attack south, etc. These are right now challenges, not for the 2040s.

Thus if a conservative administration tried to pursue a strategy of primacism today it could very well actually end up with the worst possible outcome. Primacism’s grandiose objectives and aggressive rhetoric would further inflame our already highly dangerous rivalries, but without actually developing the military and resource capacity or the political support to effectively confront those threats. In other words, a huge amount of barking but little biting.

Pursuing this policy in a future conservative administration could lead to unnecessary conflicts, overstretching us, and ultimately sending us to defeat in wars we did not need to fight. In other words: disaster, loss, and humiliation.

Certainly, conservatives should want our government to be strong and resolute where necessary, but it is not conservative to put ourselves in a position where we fight wars we are not positioned to win—especially unnecessary ones. Getting ourselves into World War III—and losing it—is not a sensible strategy.

So what is?

I believe the only sensible policy for a conservative administration is a kind of via media between these two extremes, one rooted in conservative realism. This approach would allow us to prioritize the threats we face, offering a rational, moderate conception of the goals we should pursue in the world based on realistically available means to pursue them. It would neither overshoot the mark like primacism nor undershoot it like isolationism.

Such an approach would begin with and stay closely rooted in the core goals that any sensible conservative foreign policy must tend to: the security, freedoms, and prosperity of the American people. These goals are neither overly ambitious nor too pinched. Americans have a right to have their interests be put first and foremost by their government—any conservative administration should be proud to put Americans’ interests first.

But these goals are also moderate and reasonable. They do not demand the subservience or domination of others. This is important because it distinguishes a rational and attainable policy from the overweening ambitions of those who would seek to control, liberalize, or pacify the whole world. Such overambition now is likely to backfire dramatically and fail even at meeting the most important goals.

So what is necessary to protect those core American interests? Well, not all of the threats that I mentioned earlier are equally grave in the peril they pose to Americans’ interests. They are of differing levels of severity. Since no country can realistically hope to invade and subordinate America, the most significant risk is that American life would fall under the control and dominance of a foreign power. The only way that could happen is if another great power gains so much strength that it could overawe us.

A clear look at the world today shows that there is only one possible candidate that could gain so much power as to dominate America: China, through hegemony in Asia. This is not to say that others aren’t dangerous. They are. Russia is not going to disappear and poses a threat to NATO Europe, especially Eastern and Northern NATO. Iran is aggressive and dangerous in the Middle East, posing a threat to our ally Israel and the Gulf States. North Korea poses a serious menace to South Korea and Japan. But none of these countries can pretend to dominate an area of the world that would allow them to impose their will on us. Russia, for instance, is a fraction of the GDP of China and Europe is roughly half the GDP of Asia. Iran and North Korea are far smaller than even Russia.

China, by contrast, is a behemoth. It is the strongest state we have faced as a nation relative to ourselves since the 19th century. It dwarfs in this sense the Soviet Union, the Axis powers, and the World War I central powers. Asia, meantime, is the center of the world economy. If China could dominate Asia, it would have a controlling influence on most of global GDP. And Beijing has a rational incentive to strive for such dominance, because it could reorient the world economy around itself, much to its advantage. Unsurprisingly, then, Beijing is building an increasingly formidable military to pursue just such a goal. If successful in dominating Asia, China would have enormous leverage to dominate the rest of the world and ultimately American national life, fundamentally undermining those core American goods. How could we be prosperous, free, and autonomous if China controlled our economy? By deduction, then, the most important political interest for the United States is to prevent China from dominating Asia.

I want to stress something important: this is a limited and rational goal. This is not the view of some who argue that we can only be safe if we turn China into a democracy, dismember it, or force it to concede to our own hegemony. Pursuing these goals is not necessary for Americas’ core goods, and risks turning an already incredibly dangerous rivalry into a cataclysmic one. The goal I am proposing here, by contrast, is the limited and reasonable goal of a balance of power. This is enough. We don’t need to dominate China. But we do need to make sure China cannot dominate us.

This is especially important because it is very clear that China is preparing for war with us over Taiwan, and the result of Beijing’s victory in such a conflict could well be its dominance of Asia or at least substantial progress in that direction. There are very sound reasons to think that China might move to precipitate such a conflict in the coming presidential term. Nobody knows what Beijing will do. But they are manifestly preparing. We too must be prepared. Nothing that could happen abroad is more plausibly and gravely threatening to Americans than this. The best thing would be to deter it, but the only thing worse than it happening would be defeat. 

So how do we avoid that? A strategy of conservative realism would call for not only a balance of manifest strength in Asia, but also openness to a modus vivendi with China. We must be laser-focused on the rightful conservative goal here: to preserve peace if at all possible, but a decent peace, one that ensures Americans are safe, free, and prosperous, and thus by necessity prevents China from dominating Asia. 

Pursuing this aim must involve two pillars. First is the manifest military strength and resolve to use it, showing Beijing that it will not succeed in using its increasingly formidable military force to dominate Asia. This is not about soft power or photo-ops with allied leaders. This is about refocusing and husbanding our scarce military and industrial power to show Beijing that it will not gain from attacking—that the United States and, critically, our allies and partners in the region, whose fates are even more threatened by China’s ambitions, can and will be able to deny its aggressive moves against us. Meeting this standard will require a sharp change in our global strategy, not only from the current administration’s unfocused and gauzy approach, but also from the globe-spanning primacism that denies that we must focus our scarce resources and political will at all.

A second pillar is also critical. We must make clear to Beijing that our strategy does not necessitate its strangulation or humiliation, that we are not seeking to occupy China or change its regime. We do not need to dominate China—rather we must be sure it cannot dominate us. We are seeking a balance of power, one in which China is not humiliated, but in which it must respect and cannot jeopardize our interests, including our core interest in reindustrializing and strengthening our economy.

Making this policy work vis-a-vis China will not be easy. It will require fundamental reprioritization not only of our military forces but of our political and diplomatic capital, truly putting this most significant foreign security challenge—along with defending the homeland—at the forefront of our security policy.

But this does not require abandoning secondary and tertiary priorities. A strategy of prioritization does not simply throw those secondary interests to the wolves. Rather, it looks for other practical ways to address them. Fundamentally, even as we can remain engaged in a more limited way in secondary theaters as we refocus on China and our homeland, this approach counsels getting our allies to do more to help address shared interests. Primacism by definition seeks American hegemony, enabling free-riding by and even the enfeebling of our wealthy allies; weak allies are a feature, not a bug, of primacism, because the point is to try (futilely) to make America dominant everywhere. Isolationism, meantime, expects too much of allies who are in key cases like Asia too weak to stand up alone to a superpower like China.

Conservative realism is very different. Conservative realists seek a strong, vigorous, and as necessary assertive America. But, unlike primacists, they also welcome empowered and vigorous allies. Conservativism is all about a state recognizing its own proper limits and thus other entities’ legitimate spheres for their own power and responsibility: in the domestic sphere, the principle of subsidiarity; in the international sphere, a spirit of genuine partnership with other independent, vigorous states.

This approach creates an important role for diplomacy. Military force is of course the critical underlying source of our defense, but we cannot and should not seek to impose our will everywhere. Rather, a conservative government can and should look for ways to induce others to work with us, not simply dictate and browbeat.

This overall approach gives a clear agenda for the next conservative administration in America. Grounded in both conservatism and realism, it is a foreign policy that would focus on the greatest challenges abroad to Americans, especially China’s ability to dominate Asia.

But it would do so in a way that grapples with rather than ignores the reality that there are reasonable limits to what Americans are prepared to fight about, spend, and sacrifice. It would honor and husband that willpower, rather than profligately waste it, as has too often been the case over the last generation. It would also enable and empower other states to work more effectively and capably with us. We should seek partners, not dependencies, and work with them where their interests are focused and with respect for their autonomy and own traditions, not trying to impose our will—let alone a particular progressive model—on them. The result would be a coalition of empowered states, together and more equitably promoting a world consistent with both their and our own interests.

In the face of this exceptionally dangerous situation, conservatives and realists should all understand that a decent peace can only be preserved through strength—there is deep truth to peace through strength. As Clausewitz said, the best strategy is to be very strong. But strength alone is not enough, and indeed we must recognize we cannot simply overpower our rivals, especially China. If we want peace—as we most certainly should—we must also be prepared to focus our own ambitions and demands. Fortunately, a foreign policy of conservative realism, of prioritization and balance of power, allows for this. It means building our strength and our coalition but also proportioning our goals, clearly aligning the measures we take to those reasonable goals, and—without giving in on our own legitimate interests—finding where we might come to a modus vivendi with rivals. This offers the best way for avoiding the scourge of great power war while protecting America.

Adapted from Elbridge Colby’s remarks at the 2024 National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C.