From Atlanticism to Pacificism

Since the founding of our country, Atlanticists have dominated our foreign/defense policy community. At that time, most of our citizens were transplanted Europeans, and our initial immigrant population came largely from Europe. Our early wars were fought against a European power—Great Britain—and our allies in those wars were other European powers. The nation’s trade and economic relations were largely European. During the Civil War, our diplomacy was aimed at preventing European powers from recognizing the Confederacy as a separate country. It is true that in the second half of the 19th century, our foreign/defense outlook included pursuing interests in Asia and the Pacific, but Europe remained the focus of our foreign/defense policymakers.

In the 20th century, our Atlanticist outlook continued. Our troops fought on the Western European front near the end of the First World War and intervened briefly in northwest Russia. In the Second World War, even though we were attacked in the Pacific by Japan, our wartime strategy was Europe first. The most influential of our military commanders in World War II fought in the European theater. The wartime conferences between the U.S., Britain, and the Soviet Union were dominated by European issues. The architects of our early Cold War foreign/defense policies were largely Atlanticists, like Harry Truman, George Marshall, George Kennan, and Dean Acheson. Even though we fought two large and costly land wars in east Asia, Atlanticists continued to shape our foreign/defense policy priorities.

When the Cold War ended and with it the Soviet threat to dominate Western Europe, the NATO alliance—whose very existence was a response to the Soviet threat—looked for ways to survive and found them in peacekeeping missions, conflicts in the Middle East and the Balkans, and most especially in geographically expanding into Eastern Europe. The Atlanticists that still dominated U.S. foreign policy, as Jonathan Haslam noted in Hubris, sought to maintain and expand America’s role in Europe even as the Soviet/Russian geopolitical threat receded.

After the Cold War, unlike in the past when the United States adhered to George Washington’s counsel in his Farewell Address to avoid permanent alliances and rely on temporary alliances when circumstances warranted, America in the 1990s and thereafter effectively made NATO a permanent alliance led by American policymakers. This break with the past suited the Atlanticists who needed to remain relevant in the councils of the Washington foreign policy establishment, but it did not account for the changing geopolitical circumstances of the post-Cold War world.

Those changing geopolitical circumstances included the rise of China as an economic and military global power, India’s increased military and economic power, the reduced geopolitical relevance of the Middle East to American security, Russia’s reduced geopolitical footprint, and Europe’s collective ability to defend its member states against future Russian aggression, except in the nuclear realm. Belatedly, some in Washington recognized that the U.S. needed to “pivot” to the Indo-Pacific, though the Atlanticists made sure that the “pivot” was more rhetorical than actual. It took the first Trump administration, with the influence of advisers that Josh Rogin called the China super hawks—Elbridge Colby, Robert Lighthizer, Peter Navarro, Mike Pompeo, and Steve Bannon—to begin to shift Washington’s focus to the Indo-Pacific.

The Atlanticists, however, fought back, especially in Ukraine. As early as 2008, the Atlanticists of the George W. Bush administration had publicly urged NATO to admit Georgia and Ukraine to the alliance. During the Obama administration, the Atlanticists helped to facilitate a “color” revolution in Ukraine which toppled a pro-Russian Ukrainian government and replaced it with a pro-American Ukrainian government. Russia’s reaction to these developments and to NATO enlargement in general was predictable—indeed it was predicted by numerous foreign policy and Russia experts like George Kennan, Richard Pipes, Jack Matlock, Jr., Edward Luttwak, Paul Nitze, and many others.

But the Atlanticists triumphed, and U.S. money and weapons flowed to Europe, even as China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), its naval build-up, and its nuclear weapons build-up signaled that China was now our most important geopolitical adversary. Thanks to the Atlanticists, not only did limited resources flow to Ukraine, but the demonization of Russia—as a version of a new evil empire and an alleged colluder with Donald Trump in stealing the 2016 election—left the Trump administration with little leeway to encourage a Sino-Russian rift that was very much in America’s geopolitical interest. The Atlanticists effectively undermined attempts to strengthen the geopolitical pluralism of Eurasia, instead driving Russia further into the arms of China.

The Atlanticists, who continued their dominance in the Biden administration, have been playing the same game during the early months of the second Trump administration. They have succeeded in getting NATO and the U.S. further embroiled in the Ukraine War by providing long-range weapons to Ukrainian forces that have been used to strike key Russian targets at bases deep inside Russia. They unsuccessfully opposed the nomination of Elbridge Colby to a key Pentagon post due to his prioritizing the Indo-Pacific in U.S. defense policy. They repeatedly have misused the Munich analogy to promote greater U.S. involvement in the war. And they have continued to promote the idea of Ukraine’s eventual admission to NATO.

How ironic: the same Atlanticists whose policies provoked Russia to wage an aggressive war in Ukraine justify NATO’s continued existence and enlargement, and America’s role leading the alliance, by pointing to Russia’s aggressive war in Ukraine. They have forestalled a true pivot to the Indo-Pacific just when it is sorely needed to meet the existential threat posed by China.

The real pivot to the Indo-Pacific will not come until the Atlanticists are replaced by the Pacificists. Personnel is policy in the councils of the Washington foreign policy establishment. During World War II and the early years of the Cold War, an intellectual and bureaucratic battle was fought between what were then called the “Europe-firsters” and the “Asia-firsters,” and the Europe-firsters won. Arguably, Europe-first was the correct strategy during World War II and the Cold War since Nazi Germany and later the Soviet Union posed the greatest threats to America’s national security. But even then, there were important voices, like Sen. Robert Taft, former President Herbert Hoover, William Bullitt, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who urged the United States to pivot to the Pacific. They foresaw, in MacArthur’s words, that America’s destiny lay in the Pacific and Asia.

The Asia-firsters of the 1950s were way ahead of their time; their time is now. A Pacificist defense policy would prioritize naval, air, and space power throughout the Indo-Pacific and facilitate the formation and strengthening of alliances in the region to contain Chinese power. A Pacificist defense policy would mean that Japan is a more important ally than the United Kingdom;

India is more important than Germany or France; Australia, the Philippines, South Korea and Vietnam—yes, Vietnam—are more important than our other NATO allies.

The Atlanticists will undoubtedly cry foul about such a shift in policy, invoke their Munich analogies, continue to demonize Russia, and portray Ukrainian President Zelensky as a modern-day Churchill. President Trump and his top defense officials appears to understand that Europe and the Middle East are not as important as they used to be; that China and the Indo-Pacific are the real defense centers of gravity; that a real pivot to the Indo-Pacific means focusing our limited resources there; and that alliances are not meant to be eternal and should only be continued when it serves the vital national security interests of the United States. That is what “America First” is all about.

Source: https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/08/09/from_atlanticism_to_pacifism_1127897.html