Hello Reader,
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​There will be no newsletter Tuesday as I’m taking my daughter camping this week. Dispatches will resume Thursday, July 31^st.
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​"If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans."
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​Otto von Bismarck's 1888 prophecy proved tragically prescient. Twenty-six years later, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo triggered the very catastrophe he predicted.
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The "Iron Chancellor" had spent decades orchestrating a masterful ballet of alliances, threats, and calculated conflicts, believing he had perfected the art of balance of power politics. European diplomats celebrated this system as the pinnacle of strategic wisdom. Nations formed alliances, then abandoned them when convenient. They carved up territories, established spheres of influence, and treated weaker states as pawns in their grand game.
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This was realpolitik at its purest—a world where power, not principle, determined outcomes.
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Yet Bismarck's system ultimately failed in spectacular fashion. His intricate network of treaties couldn't survive his departure. Within a generation, Europe had sorted into rigid alliance blocs. When crisis came in 1914, the system didn't prevent catastrophe—it amplified it, turning a regional conflict into the most devastating war the world had ever seen.
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Today, we're witnessing America's withdrawal from European commitments—a gift to Russia's sphere of influence ambitions. Trump's oscillating support for Ukraine exemplifies this retreat: suspending then resuming aid based on political convenience rather than strategic principle. His commitment to Taiwan has been at best tepid as he demands it pay for America’s protection. This represents a fundamental reorientation toward pre-Wilsonian thinking where spheres of influence and transactional relationships, not shared principles, determine outcomes.

Wilson's Revolutionary Alternative

From the ashes of World War I, Woodrow Wilson proposed something radical: international order based on collective security, self-determination, and democratic values.
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Wilson's vision had flaws. Democratic transitions proved more complex than he anticipated, and the League of Nations failed to prevent another world war. And he was focused solely on white Europeans.
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Yet Wilson's core insight—that stable order required more than power balancing—has guided American foreign policy for over a century. Even during the Cold War, America maintained commitment to democratic values alongside pragmatic power calculations, though these sometimes meant supporting dictators when it served strategic interests.

The Case for Democratic Idealism

Since World War II, American foreign policy has balanced idealism with realism. Ronald Reagan exemplified this blend—a hardliner who framed the struggle against communism in Wilsonian terms while simultaneously supporting dictators when it served Cold War objectives.
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America committed grievous sins fighting Communism, but also helped defeat the 20th century's greatest threat to global freedom.
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For those who question whether America should still promote democratic ideals, consider this: fully established democracies have never been at war in the modern era. Not once. This remarkable pattern suggests that promoting democracy, despite its costs and contradictions, serves America's long-term security interests.

The Neocon Overreach

To understand today's retreat, we must acknowledge where idealism went wrong. Under George W. Bush, neoconservatives took Wilson's vision to violent extremes. The Iraq War—sold as democratic transformation through force—became a costly disaster that discredited democracy promotion worldwide, creating space for today's isolationist backlash.
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Yet we must distinguish between Wilsonian principles and their neoconservative distortion. The error wasn't promoting democracy but believing it could be imposed through force alone.
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Trump's shift goes beyond correcting George W’s overreach. Trump treats alliance commitments as protection rackets, pursues territorial ambitions from Greenland to Panama, and emphasizes transactional relationships over shared principles. His approach embodies balance of power logic: international stability comes from equilibrium among competing powers, not shared values.

Realpolitik Gone Awry

The Trump-Vance approach represents fundamental return to pre-Wilsonian thinking. This creates a more unpredictable international environment where alliances become temporary conveniences, smaller nations become bargaining chips, and great powers constantly test boundaries.
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The balance of power system didn't bring Europe stability—it brought centuries of recurring wars culminating in global catastrophe. When security depends primarily on raw power rather than shared principles, arms races accelerate, tensions escalate, and miscalculation becomes more likely.
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At July's NATO summit, European leaders privately questioned American reliability—the same dynamic that led nervous 19th-century powers to hedge their bets with competing arrangements.

The Wrong German

I do believe Trump genuinely desires peace— Iran strikes aside, he's positioned himself as a dealmaker seeking to negotiate ceasefires rather than start new military interventions.
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Trump isn't Hitler, as hyperbolic critics claim. But he could be something equally dangerous—a leader who adopts Bismarck's discredited system—without the skills to manage it.
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