The Brief: The U.S. Has a Reliability Problem
Hi friends,
Over the weekend, The Washington Post published an article on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent diplomatic trips, including to Kyrgyzstan, Egypt, India and the United States. One of the most critical takeaways from the piece is its framing: it focuses in part on the ways China is seeking to position itself as a reliable partner in ways the U.S. currently is not.
As Joshua Yang writes, a key part of President Xi Jinping’s agenda is “[a] pitch for China as a stable partner, especially for developing countries, during a period of what Beijing has portrayed as U.S.-driven geopolitical uncertainty.”
I wanted to share that article with you today (here is a gift link, for those who would like to read the Post article in its entirety) and also walk through the reasons why “reliability” is such a key part of diplomacy, the ways the U.S. is lacking that stability right now, and what I think this means for the future of U.S. foreign policy. So without further ado:
Why is reliability important to diplomacy?
One of the frequent criticisms of international law is that it has no teeth—that much of it, in other words, is unenforceable, and relies entirely on the good will of states to comply with it. That criticism isn’t completely wrong. While some treaties have binding arbitration or dispute resolution clauses that provide parties with recourse if their terms are violated, many—maybe even most—do not, and that doesn’t even take into account non-binding arrangements or other forms of collaboration between countries that don’t rise to the level of an international agreement. But even non-binding documents can be highly negotiated, the result of sustained bargaining on what commitments to capture in writing, and what deliverables will come out of a partnership between two or more states, and the capital for them is often the same: a statement by one partner of what it intends to do, and a reliance by another partner or group of partners on that promise in exchange for carrying out their own commitments in return.
If you’ll let me say the obvious part out loud, here, the entire system only works with a partner you can trust to comply. If a state’s commitment might change not even just from administration to administration but from month to month, or week to week, depending on the whims of an executive, your incentives to bargain with that state have dropped significantly. It’s not (or not usually) that diplomacy will stop altogether—you might still be committed to the trappings, such as state dinners and cultural exchanges and a willingness to trade support for resolutions in the General Assembly—but that the truly big-ticket items, the ones that require trust, are not going to be on the table anymore. You might still be willing to sign a joint statement commemorating the anniversary of the NATO alliance. You might not be willing to sign an agreement on intelligence sharing.
What makes the U.S. an unreliable partner right now?
Is it it unprofessional to start this section with “lol”? Possibly! But lol. 🫠
In other words, the list is long, friends.
It includes the eagerness of the U.S. to withdraw from international agreements and organizations simply because a prior administration entered into them, as with the JCPOA.
It includes the disregard of this administration for long-established alliances, such as NATO, and its threat to invade territory belonging to those allies.
It includes the use of exorbitant tariffs against neighbors and long-time trading partners, even at the risk of significant economic damage to the U.S. and its former friends, simply to make a political point that is neither coherent nor consistent.
And it includes the willingness of the U.S. to enter into conflicts that have consequences for the rest of the globe, without any plan for resolving those conflicts, or even any sense of humility.
Those decisions may get a lot of media attention. They may be brash, and they may rile up a base that has no real basis for understanding its own financial hardship, except to believe the people who tell them it’s someone else’s fault. But those decisions are not, in fact, diplomacy. Those decisions are self-immolation disguised as foreign policy, and all of us are the poorer for it.
Is the damage reversible?
This is the several billion dollar question: if things in the U.S. turn around one day, and we have an administration truly capable of engaging on the international stage as a partner and leader again, will that be enough?
Personally, I’m concerned that it won’t be. To give just one example, the whole world suffered through the whiplash related to the Paris Agreement, where the U.S. withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2019 (under the first Trump administration), rejoined the Agreement in 2021 (under the Biden administration), and withdrew again in 2025 (under the second Trump administration). The U.S. has shown that willingness to live by a prior administration’s international commitments for the sake of the global order is a thing of the past, no matter how much chaos results. Not only that, but the utter failure of the other branches of the U.S. government—such as Congress, which has not been willing or able to respond to things such the Executive Branch’s refusal to spend appropriated foreign aid funds—to provide any meaningful checks and balances means that there is no real chance for continuity to be maintained through other means, either.
So, to answer a question with a question (and my apologies to my fellow lawyers who are now having flashbacks to the Socratic method in law school), I think what we should all be asking is this: what would it take to reverse that damage? How can we show that the U.S. is a reliable partner in the future? And what safeguards can we build into our system so that our allies and partners can trust the commitments that the U.S. makes from year to year?
I don’t have answers to those questions today, but if we all start thinking about them, deeply and together, I have hope that we can start figuring it out.
Also on my radar
- The U.S. has resumed military strikes against Iran. Last Tuesday, it targeted Southern Iran, including a communications complex in Kukestak. However, one bomb hit a home instead, killing and injuring civilians attending a wedding celebration. On Saturday, the U.S. announced that it had struck three Iranian oil tankers near Kharg Island, after Iran reportedly launched missiles at two Navy warships;
- Last week, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution in support of the Equal Earth cartographic projection, a map that “more accurately represents the sizes of all continents, particularly Africa,” and encouraged Member States to use it instead of outdated cartographic representations, such as the Mercator Projection. The U.S. was the only country to vote against the resolution;
- A drone attack, apparently carried out by the ELN, struck a military compound on Colombia on Friday, killing at least three soldiers. Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella stated that “[f]or every police officer or soldier murdered, we will bring the full weight and legitimate force of the state down upon the criminals;”
- A U.S. envoy including Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Kyiv, Ukraine on Sunday, following meetings in Russia. They are once again attempting to restart talks to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Finally, one admin note I’m very excited about: you can now gift subscriptions to The Connection, if that is something you would like to do! If there is someone in your life you think would enjoy our work, you can gift subscriptions of one, three, or six months to them through this portal.
Thank you as always for being part of this community, and I’ll see you back here soon.
Alexis
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