0:07 Madi Minges: From the School of International Service at American University in Washington, this is Big World, where we talk about something in the world that truly matters.

0:15 Jordan Tama: The erosion of U.S. soft power also makes it harder for the U.S. to get other countries to cooperate with us on issues that are important to us. For some countries, China now looks like a more attractive partner than the U.S. does and the loss of U.S. soft power will make it harder for the U.S. to compete with China for influence in a lot of the developing world.

0:35 Madi Minges: I'm Madi Minges and that was SIS professor Jordan Tama. Jordan is an expert in U.S. foreign policy and national security whose research examines polarization, bipartisanship, and presidential congressional relations. In recognition of America's 250th anniversary, he joins us to discuss the arc of U.S. foreign policy from the Declaration of Independence to today.

0:58 Madi Minges: Jordan Tama, thank you so much for joining Big World and welcome to the show.

1:03 Jordan Tama: Thanks so much for having me on.

1:05 Madi Minges: So we're going to spend some time today reflecting and talking about the 250th anniversary of America, and I figured a good way to start would be at the beginning. So can you talk about when the founders declared independence in 1776, what kind of role in the world did they imagine for this new country?

1:29 Jordan Tama: The founders had a quite ambitious vision for America's role in the world. They thought of the United States as an exceptional nation and they thought the U.S. commitment to liberty in particular would make the United States a beacon to the world. They also thought the United States was going to become very powerful, but they realized that it would take a while before America could really flex its muscles on the international stage. And George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other founders spoke about this pretty directly. Washington said that the United States would one day be as strong as a giant and he also believed that Providence and America's democratic character would make it successful. Jefferson said America was a chosen country and he said America would establish what he called an "empire of liberty" across the continent. But since America was still pretty weak compared to established European powers, the founders adopted a strategy of staying out of international conflicts while the country grew stronger.

2:34 Jordan Tama: They emphasized the importance of maintaining America's independence and freedom of action and building up the country's strength through free trade with other countries and westward expansion. They thought that this would allow the U.S. to come to rival and then surpass the strength of the then dominant European powers. And the idea of staying out of trouble while the U.S. built up its strength was best encapsulated by George Washington's farewell address in which he said the U.S. should avoid permanent alliances with any foreign countries. And Jefferson, a few years after that, when he became president, reinforced that idea calling for no entangling alliances with other countries. And that's a term that many presidents referred to subsequently. In the meantime, during America's early years, the U.S. began steadily expanding its territory westward, taking over lands that had been populated only by Native Americans and this added to America's growing wealth and sense of national power.

3:36 Madi Minges: Jordan, we obviously do not have enough time in this episode to analyze or examine the full extent of U.S. history when it comes to foreign policy, but I would love if you could talk about, in broad strokes, since the founding of the U.S., how have the goals of U.S. foreign policy changed?

3:57 Jordan Tama: Well, the goals have remained constant in certain ways and changed in others. So the goal of America being a powerful country is still there. That was part of Washington's vision. The goal of solidifying democracy and spreading democratic principles has been a feature of U.S. foreign policy through much of U.S. history, although the U.S. has pursued that inconsistently. At times, the U.S. has supported authoritarian governments during the Cold War, for instance, supported some authoritarian governments that were facing opposition movements that were left-leaning communist aligned and that was not consistent with democratic principles. But overall, the U.S. has for much of its history been a voice in support of democratic principles and the founders would've recognized that and appreciated that.

4:56 Jordan Tama: I think what has changed most dramatically in terms of goals of U.S. foreign policy is the adoption over the course of the past 80 years or so of a global mission of protecting security far beyond our borders of playing a role in addressing security challenges across the world, being something of an international police force, again, very inconsistently. But that's something that was not part of U.S. foreign policy in the early days. And I think the main theme of U.S. foreign policy through much of the past 80 years since World War II has been the projection of both hard power and soft power overseas. That's been the prevailing orientation of U.S. foreign policy for the past many decades, at least until the Trump presidency, during which we've seen a dismissal of soft power and reliance only on hard power.

5:53 Madi Minges: Yeah. Certainly want to revisit that idea of hard and soft power a bit later in this episode. But Jordan, I want to switch gears here and kind of talk about another facet of your expertise in this area. We're living through this period right now of intense political polarization here in the U.S.. I'm curious if you could talk about how that is impacting our foreign policy, how we're being viewed abroad at this time and how does that affect where we stand on the world stage?

6:32 Jordan Tama: Domestic political polarization is harming U.S. foreign policy and our standing in the world tremendously, and I would say it's even the greatest threat facing the United States today. It's made our foreign policy less consistent and less effective. And this is true of both at the presidential level and in Congress. So at the presidential level, polarization has generated large swings in foreign policy from on president to the next. So if you think of the transitions from Barack Obama to Donald Trump to Joe Biden, then back to Donald Trump, U.S. foreign policy has changed dramatically in short periods of time, swinging between more internationalist and nationalist polls. And this has made our foreign policy less effective because a lot of policies need time in order to be successful and without some degree of continuity and presidential policy, foreign policy initiatives just aren't sustainable.

7:29 Jordan Tama: Also, the dramatic swings in U.S. policy weaken our country's reputation and make other countries see us as an unreliable partner. And this has been a big consequence of President Trump's withdrawal from many international agreements that were negotiated by his predecessors. So for example, Trump withdrew from a major agreement that President Obama negotiated with Iran in which Iran agreed to restrictions on its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of various sanctions. Trump withdrew from this agreement during his first term, even though Iran was in compliance with it, and this withdrawal sent a message to Iran and other countries that U.S. commitments can be fleeting and therefore it might not be worthwhile to enter into difficult negotiations with the United States or make concessions to the United States. Trump also has floated the idea of pulling out of NATO and this sends a signal to our European allies that they might not be able to rely on U.S. support during a crisis.

8:29 Jordan Tama: Also, polarization reduces congressional effectiveness in foreign policy. In our system of government, you really need bipartisan support in order to enact any legislation and polarization makes it harder to muster bipartisan majorities. This makes it less likely that Congress can carry out its constitutional responsibilities in foreign policy by passing legislation in areas that it has responsibility for.

8:58 Jordan Tama: And then lastly, polarization is harmful in a way that might be a little less obvious, but also can be quite important. It incentivizes other countries to interfere in U.S. elections. When the gaps between the two parties are larger, this means that other countries have more at stake in who wins a U.S. election and this may make them more tempted to interfere to try to change the outcome of U.S. elections. And in recent years, we've seen more foreign interference in U.S. elections including from Russia, China, and Iran. And if polarization remains high, this kind of foreign interference in our elections will probably become more routine.

9:41 Madi Minges: Wow. Yeah. Wow. That's really an interesting point that you bring up. And I mean, there's so many follow-up questions I could ask based on some of the consequences that you just laid out. But I want to go back to something that you mentioned. You talked about the need for Congress to have some level of bipartisanship to enact legislation. So even in this time where we've been, the divides between the two parties are pretty wide. Can you talk about where we've seen bipartisanship on foreign policy under the second Trump administration? Does that still exist?

10:18 Jordan Tama: It does still exist, although there's not as much of it as there used to be. One important example is U.S. policy toward China. Democrats and Republicans largely agree that the U.S. should take steps to counter the rise of China and compete with China both economically and in the security domain. And Congress has passed a series of laws in recent years that generally are designed to strengthen the U.S. position vis-a-vis China with large bipartisan majorities backing those bills. But in most areas when bipartisanship occurs today, it doesn't involve total unity in Washington. In other words, it's pretty rare these days to have all Democrats and all Republicans on the same page on an issue. More often when we do see bipartisanship today, it involves some Democrats and some Republicans cooperating, but without all members of the two parties necessarily being on the same page.

11:17 Jordan Tama: So one example of this would be foreign policy toward Europe. Here you have some Democrats and some Republicans cooperating with each other, but you also have some significant division within the Republican Party. In particular, President Trump has been highly critical of European allies and has sought to distance the U.S. from NATO and Ukraine. Some Republicans in Congress have shared his position on these issues, but other Republicans have joined with Democrats in pushing for continued strong U.S. support for NATO and continued U.S. aid to Ukraine. Similarly, some Republicans have joined with Democrats in opposing Trump's heavy use of tariffs and his use of military force against Iran, but Trump's stronghold over the Republican Party has led most Republican elected officials to refrain from publicly opposing him on these issues. And this will only change if Trump becomes unpopular enough that more Republican politicians stand to gain politically from distancing themselves from him.

12:18 Madi Minges: Jordan, I want to switch gears again and I want to revisit this brief mention earlier in the episode. You had talked about this retreat of soft power. For decades now, U.S. foreign policy has used soft power in many forms. When I think of it, some examples that come to mind for me include international broadcasting, international health services, cultural exchange in the arts. And those are just a few examples, but it really does seem like soft powers taking a backseat with this second Trump administration with the shuttering of U.S.AID and the U.S. departure from several international organizations, the World Health Organization, UNHCR, just to name a few examples. Can you talk about what is lost when the U.S. only focuses on hard power?

13:11 Jordan Tama: A lot is lost when we only focus on hard power and there really has been a dramatic change under this administration. From Harry Truman to Joe Biden, every U.S. president since World War II understood that American influence in the world was fueled by both hard power and soft power. And the U.S. projected soft power over the past 80 years effectively by doing a number of things, developing the world's leading universities, welcoming international students to those universities, welcoming many millions of other immigrants and refugees into our country, providing other countries with needed economic and humanitarian aid, and building international institutions that could serve as forums for people from different countries to come together to try to address the world's most important shared challenges. All of these were components of American soft power and the Trump administration has reversed all of these policies, making the U.S. unwelcoming to people from other countries and sharply curtailing America's engagement with international institutions and efforts to address humanitarian needs and other global challenges.

14:22 Jordan Tama: And these shifts have eroded America's reputation and also resulted in lost lives. The Center for Global Development, which is a highly regarded think tank, has estimated that between 500,000 and one million lives were lost in 2025, the first year of the second Trump administration due to the Trump administration's cuts in U.S. humanitarian and health aid. And the erosion of U.S. soft power also makes it harder for the U.S. to get other countries to cooperate with us on issues that are important to us. And it incentivizes other countries to look elsewhere for support. For some countries, China now looks like a more attractive partner than the U.S. does and the loss of U.S. soft power will make it harder for the U.S. to compete with China for influence in a lot of the developing world.

15:08 Jordan Tama: And also soft power is important because the world can only solve most of its important challenges through cooperation. Hard power can't limit climate change or protect us from climate change. It can't reduce poverty. It can't help manage the rise of AI and we need to cooperate with other countries in order to address these kinds of challenges.

15:31 Madi Minges: Throughout this episode, I feel like we've spent some time talking about these departures from the status quo under the Trump administration. I think everything you just said about soft power is an example of that, but we've also seen the war with Iran, tariffs on our key allies, the unilateral capture of President Maduro, all of these examples. But I'm curious, if you were to step back, can you talk about what feels genuinely unprecedented about this moment and what actually fits into the longer pattern of American foreign policy?

16:10 Jordan Tama: There is a lot about this moment that's unprecedented, but there are a few things that especially stand out to me. I think what most stands out to me in terms of U.S. foreign policy is President Trump's complete departure from the idea that democracy is a more desirable form of government than autocracy or authoritarianism and that democracy both in the U.S. and in other countries makes us more secure and more prosperous. So not all previous presidents apply democratic principles consistently. As I mentioned earlier, during the Cold War, U.S. presidents sometimes propped up authoritarian governments in an effort to prevent them from being overthrown by pro-communist movements. But Trump is the first U.S. president in the modern era who believes that authoritarianism is preferable to democracy. He continually showers praise on authoritarian leaders of other countries and he regularly denigrates democratically elected leaders of longstanding U.S. allies. And this is really striking and a remarkable shift from prior U.S. presidents.

17:18 Jordan Tama: Also, he departs sharply from his predecessors in his efforts to gain control of the economic resources of other countries. He is a mercantilist and an imperialist in the style of 19th century European colonial powers, wanting to seize control of other lands and commodities like oil and critical minerals, for instance, wanting to annex Greenland, taking control over Venezuela's oil revenue. This behavior isn't totally unprecedented in U.S. foreign policy, but the U.S. has not engaged in this kind of imperialism since the early 20th century. One other aspect of the Trump presidency that I think is particularly striking is the extent to which he's attempted to break institutional guardrails on presidential power. Even though the Constitution clearly gives Congress the authority to establish government agencies and determine government spending, he's dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development and refused to spend billions of dollars in foreign aid that were appropriated by Congress. And the courts and Congress have so far not done nearly enough to block these kinds of unconstitutional actions.

18:28 Madi Minges: And I know that you've written extensively about the relationship between Congress and the presidency when it comes to foreign policy decisions. So from the early years to today, how has that balance of power shifted?

18:45 Jordan Tama: Well, the founders envisioned Congress playing a major role in foreign policy. In fact, the U.S. Constitution gives more foreign policy powers to Congress than to the president, which can be surprising to many people today because the president is clearly the most important actor on foreign policy. But under the Constitution, Congress has the power to declare war, the power of the purse, control over spending, power to regulate international commerce or trade, power to regulate immigration, and the power to confirm or reject international treaties and executive branch appointments. The Constitution only gives the president a few powers in foreign policy, power to be commander-in-chief and to negotiate treaties and nominate executive branch appointments or appointees, rather. And because of this, one leading political scientist, Edward Corwin has said, I think quite aptly, that the Constitution's an invitation to Congress and the president to struggle over control of foreign policy.

19:43 Jordan Tama: And over time, presidents have usually won this struggle. So even though the Constitution gives more powers to Congress than to the president, the balance of power between the branches has shifted quite markedly toward the president over time. So for instance, in military affairs, presidents have taken the U.S. into many conflicts without congressional authorization. In diplomacy, presidents have entered into a lot of international agreements without submitting them to the Senate for advice and consent, but Congress still matters in foreign policy. When members of Congress raise questions about military intervention, this can help educate the public about the risks and downsides of those operations and put pressure on the president to change course. Congress also regularly plays an important role by providing funding for aid to other countries that are in need of security or humanitarian assistance. Congress has also helped enforce international norms, including in recent years by mandating sanctions on other countries that have engaged in egregious behavior.

20:48 Jordan Tama: For instance, sanctioning China for human rights violations or sanctioning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. So we don't have a situation where Congress is irrelevant, but overall the balance of power has shifted much more to the president than the founders envisioned.

21:05 Madi Minges: I think it's interesting to think about the vision that the founders had that you touched on about them kind of becoming this world power. I know we obviously can't get inside their minds at this point, but what do you think the founders, what would they think of the U.S. today given the vision that they had over two centuries ago?

21:29 Jordan Tama: Well, I think in some ways America today reflects their vision. America did become a very powerful country and I think they'd be surprised by the scale of America's power going well beyond even the North American continent. I think they would also appreciate the fact that through much of U.S. history, the United States was a voice democratic principles, which they considered important, although today that's not the case during the Trump administration. I think they would note that the United States over time, once it became more powerful, began intervening more beyond our shores. This really didn't happen until the late 1800s. Once the United States had become as powerful as any of the European powers, it started to develop a large Navy, began to intervene militarily overseas. Yet it's interesting that even as the United States began intervening overseas in the late 19th century and early 20th century, the U.S. still stayed out of what Jefferson called entangling alliances.

22:41 Jordan Tama: In fact, the United States did not enter into an alliance with another country from the Revolutionary period when it had an alliance with France all the way until after World War II. The United States had no formal alliances with other countries until it entered into alliances with European countries in the form of NATO and then countries in the Asia-Pacific region, Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines after World War II. And so that 150-year period of not having entangling alliances, the founders would've, I think, welcomed that and perhaps would've been surprised by the extent to which the United States did enter into alliances after that.

23:24 Jordan Tama: Another important part of U.S. foreign policy that developed over the past 80 years, particularly after World War II, was the creation of a lot of international institutions. This would've been entirely unfamiliar to the founders. They didn't think about international institutions at all. There were no international institutions at the beginning of the United States, but then after World War II, the United States led the effort to create many important global institutions, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and generally advanced the idea that countries need to cooperate with each other in order to address global problems. And in that way, U.S. foreign policy became far more connected to the rest of the world than it was in America's early days.

24:06 Madi Minges: Amazing. Jordan Tama, thank you so much for joining Big World to talk about the history of U.S. foreign policy and this current moment that we're living in. It's been a pleasure to speak with you.

24:19 Jordan Tama: Thanks so much, Madi. It was really a pleasure to speak with you as well.

24:24 Madi Minges: Big World is a production of the School of International Service at American University. This episode was produced by Morgan Morgan Desfosses. Our podcast is available on our website, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you listen. If you liked this episode, please leave us a rating or review. Our theme music is, It Was Just Cold by Andrew Codeman. Until next time.