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Stephen Wertheim Profile picture
Stephen Wertheim
@stephenwertheim
America in the world, past, present, and future. Senior Fellow, @CarnegieEndow. Visiting Lecturer, @PrincetonSPIA. Historian and author of @TomoTheWorld.
Apr 15 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
The main challenge for U.S. foreign policy today isn't Trump, and it isn't Biden. It is that the longstanding pursuit of global military dominance has run headlong into the problems of overcommitment, overstretch, and domestic discontent. The United States is overcommitted because over eight decades, and especially after the Cold War, it has issued defense guarantees to dozens of countries, not of all which are truly essential to the security, prosperity, and freedom of the American people and the American polity.
Mar 6 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
Years in the making, my history of how the concepts of internationalism and isolationism came to be used in American politics, centering on the 1930s and 1940s, is finally out — just as commentators keep nonsensically warning that “isolationism” is somehow on the march. Despite the ubiquity of the terms internationalism and isolationism in politics and scholarship alike, no one had comprehensively investigated how these categories came into being, and to what effect.
Jun 18, 2023 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
For decades, U.S. officials have widely recognized that enlarging NATO, especially to Ukraine, ran at least some risk of putting the United States on a collision course with Russia. Below are some quotations that I didn't have room to include in my piece. nytimes.com/2023/06/16/opi… This should go without saying, but I share these quotations not to excuse Russia's inexcusable, aggressive invasion of Ukraine, or to treat NATO enlargement as the sole or main cause of anything, but to promote the clear-eyed understanding needed to make decisions going forward.
Jun 17, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
The argument of my piece is precisely that Russian imperialism was a major reason why Moscow opposed NATO expansion. Russian imperialism and NATO enlargement were mutually reinforcing factors — not the either/or that so many commentators today claim. Thus I disagree with some former policymakers like Michael McFaul who claim that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has "nothing to do" with NATO. It's not either/or. Enlarging NATO threatened Moscow's claim to an imperial sphere of influence in Ukraine and beyond.
Oct 17, 2022 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Every so often, it becomes fashionable for foreign policy experts to talk up the importance of getting America's own house in order. "We need to break down the silos between foreign policy and domestic policy," they say, no doubt sincerely. But then reality sets in. As individuals who define themselves as foreign policy experts and work in institutions of foreign policy experts, they are not trained, socialized, or incentivized to act other than as foreign policy experts.
Aug 23, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
To Europeans now awake to the danger of Russian aggression, it may seem tempting to double-down on American leadership. From where I sit in Washington, they would be making a mistake to do so. A thread: Despite the West’s strong support for Ukraine, robust trends are pushing the United States to reduce its commitment to European security just as Europe's security needs are on the rise. These factors do not depend on the possible return of Donald Trump to the White House.
Jul 10, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Biden: “Next week, I will be the first president to visit the Middle East since 9/11 without U.S. troops engaged in a combat mission there.” Hard to see how this is not misleading, unless he is removing U.S. troops from Iraq, Syria, and Yemen within days. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/…
Jan 23, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
It's worth listening to what @RoKhanna actually said. He didn't say Russia would respect agreements out of moral principle; no one thinks that. This is about power. Russia might follow an agreement that serves its interests, because it sees that otherwise it would be worse off. @RoKhanna President Biden got it right when he said that negotiating with Russia "is not about trust; this is about self-interest and verification of self-interest." Later: "It's just pure business." whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…
Dec 11, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I agree that the Russian government's stance toward NATO has contained some variations over the past three decades. But the record still seems consistent with what I wrote: "Other states do not share American policymakers' benign view of their own intentions." For example, if Russian leaders perceived NATO as potentially threatening, it would make sense for them to see if they could join NATO and turn it into an alliance that would not be aimed at Russia because Russia would be a member.
Oct 17, 2021 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
In the fall of 1990, @TheNatlInterest ran a symposium asking what the central purpose of U.S. foreign policy should be after end of the Cold War. In "A Normal Country in a Normal Time," Jeane Kirkpatrick, Reagan's UN ambassador, wrote the following: @TheNatlInterest "We have virtually no experience in protecting and serving our interests in a multipolar world in which diverse nations and groups of nations engage in an endless competition for marginal advantages. This is precisely the kind of world now taking shape."
Jun 20, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Readers should read both pieces to decide for themselves. I just hope @ianbremmer will expand on his closing remark that "right now" is not the time for the United States to begin to reduce its military role in Europe. If not now, when? Under what plausible future circumstances does he think U.S. forces should ever pull back? Or should the United States make itself the dominant military power in Europe in perpetuity?
Oct 2, 2020 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
As America's political divisions grow only more intense, it can seem tempting to rally around U.S. global leadership — or armed dominance — as one of few areas of unity we have left.

That temptation should be resisted. It is one reason our civic life has broken down. America's militarized foreign policy has fueled its divisions at home. Not only have weapons of war poured into police departments and onto U.S. streets, but U.S. leaders have constantly presented much of humanity as mortal enemies who must be feared and vanquished.
Sep 30, 2020 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
CNN right now: the candidates will attempt to create a contrast between them CNN continues: this time Donald Trump is currently the president, whereas four years ago he was not
Sep 2, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I think I can sum it up my idea for a think tank in one word: nothing. Other think tanks will do something. Mine will do nothing. Donors will say, "What's your think tank about?" I'll say, "Nothing."
Aug 24, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
If the Trump campaign wants to "Teach American Exceptionalism," it might start by teaching the president: foreignaffairs.com/articles/unite… The irony is that Trump forged a fresh and resonant message by rejecting exceptionalism in 2016. In place of confident exceptionalism, Trump offered insecure nationalism, casting the United States as a global victim.
Jun 27, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
About time. I would add that Wilson’s racism infused his vision of nationalism and internationalism. princeton.edu/news/2020/06/2… Among others, see @JeanneMorefiel1’s Covenants Without Swords: press.princeton.edu/books/hardcove…
Jun 25, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Much to say about H.R. McMaster's reply to me and others in @ForeignAffairs, but one thing is that McMaster wholly invents the notion that I claimed that a restrained United States could cause "the cessation of Iran's proxy wars." Image My essay never mentions Iranian proxy wars. Here is what it says about Iran: foreignaffairs.com/articles/afgha… Image
Jun 3, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Militarism, the pioneering historian Alfred Vagts wrote in 1937, promotes values “associated with armies and wars and yet transcending true military purposes.” To announce a lust for oil, to chest-thump about torture, to envisage military parades down Pennsylvania Avenue — these do not achieve strategic objectives so much as exalt brute force. “I’m the most militaristic person there is,” Trump said in the primaries.
May 24, 2020 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
My thanks to Thomas Wright for the debate about how progressives should deal with China. A few replies: 1. Wright's main point is that the accommodating, soft-power-loving EU has failed to change Chinese economic practices.
Mar 7, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Perhaps the Biden campaign ought to tell the voters whether it intends to welcome Iraq War-cheering neocons into the White House as part of its “restoration” after Trump. washingtonpost.com/opinions/ameri… Does Biden really believe that George W. Bush conducted a responsible, constructive, rule-abiding foreign policy? Biden's words here imply that he does. foreignaffairs.com/articles/unite… Image
Jan 7, 2020 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Trump's "avowed isolationism," @nytimes? Trump has never described himself that way. He has called himself "militaristic," and he is a nativist. His actions would be less surprising today if the media had been conceptually clearer years ago. No excuse now. nytimes.com/2020/01/06/us/… Image @nytimes From three years ago: washingtonpost.com/posteverything…