By Andreas Kluth
The lists are "an invitation to discussion," says James Lindsay of the Council on Foreign Relations. Thus, he compiled two lists, one with the 10 best decisions in American foreign policy in the last 250 years and another, with the 10 worst. Those present – Donald Trump's second presidency – were deliberately excluded. And yet, how could any discussion of these lists ignore what Trump is doing to the world and America's role in it?
The lists are based on surveys conducted in 2023, during the previous government. Initially, an advisory committee of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), a recognized body in the industry, compiled a master list of 120 important foreign policy decisions made between the American Revolution and the first Trump administration. SHAFR historians were then asked to rank the 10 best and 10 worst.
Many historians, amateurs or professionals, tend to feel more comfortable as they travel back in time. (I, for example, received life lessons in ancient Carthage and Rome.) So it's no surprise that America's oldest alliance – with France, dating back to 1778 – ranks third on the list of the 10 most important decisions (without it, the U.S. probably wouldn't have survived for long). Or that the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the forced eviction of the Cherokees in 1838 rank third and sixth among the worst decisions. (These are considered "foreign" policy, because indigenous tribes were sovereign nations.)
Even these distant events can teach us something today – that alliances matter, for example, or that near-genocidal conquest is never a good idea, whether in the American West or in Ukraine. But the debates that Lindsay wants to start naturally become more relevant when the events in question concern more recent history – when America was no longer a periphery of the New World, but the leading power of the entire world.
In my view, one pattern stands out: America made its best decisions whenever it used its enormous power to build and maintain an international system that worked for all countries, even small ones, based on laws, rules, and standards, and with the assumption that world peace, prosperity, and freedom are common public goods, which are best achieved by a joint (i.e. multilateral) effort.
The U.S. has made its worst decisions every time it has turned its back on this philosophy, sabotaged multilateral organizations, or acted illegally within the very international system it had created.
The second best decision America ever made, for example, was the creation of the United Nations in 1945. Of course, America did not do it alone, but it had a leading role, after years of effort by President Franklin D. Bush. Roosevelt and others (including his widow, Eleanor) after his death. Their vision was to correct the legacy of the League of Nations, which was created after World War I but could not prevent World War II. The new UN was to be a forum for the world with a special responsibility for the great powers, including America, to guarantee principles such as national sovereignty for all and the peaceful resolution of conflicts.
In contrast, the fifth worst decision was the rejection of the Treaty of Versailles by the US Congress in 1919 and again in 1920. This treaty not only ended World War I, but also created the unfortunate League of Nations. It was President Woodrow Wilson's idea, but it was doomed to gradual obscurity without American support. We will never know how history would have turned out if the US had not withdrawn – if the American leadership in this multilateral organization had managed to stop totalitarianism much earlier.
The pattern continues with the seventh-best decision, the creation of the Bretton Woods System in 1944. It is named after the location in New Hampshire where it was designed and came to regulate global transactions, currencies and commerce, much like the UN tried to regulate global security, human rights and other issues. Its institutions survive, to varying degrees, to this day: the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which in 1995 became the World Trade Organization.
Like the UN, Bretton Woods aimed to correct the failures of the interwar period, and in particular the path to economic war, with policies such as the Smooth-Hawley Tariff Act (which was not included in the list of the 10 worst decisions).
Other landmark decisions for American leadership and engagement – the period also known as the Pax Americana – include the creation of NATO in 1949 (the sixth best decision) and the 1948 Marshall Plan, which ranks first. The program, named after Secretary of State George Marshall, was one of the largest foreign aid programs in history, as the U.S. gave the equivalent of the current $180 billion to 16 war-torn Western European countries in need of help to repel communism at home and the Soviets in the east. Together, NATO and the Marshall Plan represent a remarkable strategic foresight, but also the good that can come when America shows both its strength and its generosity.
The list of worst decisions tells the story of the misuse of American power. The first is the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Not only was it based on false assumptions (that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction), but, unlike the Korean War or the 1990 Gulf War, for example, it did not even have the approval of the UN Security Council (whose resolution did not allow the use of force). Instead, the U.S. proceeded with an "alliance of the willing," with consequences that historians consider catastrophic.
Other bad decisions show how closed-minded America occasionally is. In eighth place on the list are the restrictions on Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, due to nativism and prejudice, which condemned tens of thousands of people to death. In seventh place is the withdrawal in 2017 from the Paris Agreement, a UN agreement to limit global warming. This is the only decision of the first Trump administration to be included in the lists.
In retrospect, this decision was just a sample of what was to come in his second term, which in my view, could well be an addition to the list of worst decisions. Trump continues to show his contempt for NATO (remember, the sixth best decision in 250 years of history), even threatening one of its members, Denmark, with an occupation of Greenlandic territory.
He also despises, boycotts, sabotages and undermines the UN system (the second best decision of all time), withdrawing (again) his country from the Paris Agreement and more than 60 other UN bodies. Now he is even trying to establish a "Peace Council" that seems to be designed to replace the UN, with the peculiarity that it will not only be chaired by him (as long as he lives, apparently), but will be entirely structured around his person, his power and his whims.
Policies that combine American generosity and long-term strategy, such as the Marshall Plan (number one), seem unthinkable in this new America. Under Trump's leadership, the U.S. has instead limited aid to Ukraine and aid in general. The competent body, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has effectively been abolished.
Bretton Woods' legacy is almost dead, as Trump wages a trade war on both America's partners and adversaries. The Monroe Doctrine (the eighth best policy in history) has been transformed under Trump into a violent "Donroe Doctrine," projecting aggression just for the sake of showing power across the Western Hemisphere.
If we look at Lindsay's lists as a whole, what they seem to be saying is that America was at its best when it was open to the world and cooperating with it, and at its worst when it closed its borders or became hostile. She made history when she defined her own interests in a "bright" way, as a strong member of an international community, as a country that will prosper when the whole world is safer, freer, healthier, richer and more organized. It made negative history when it pursued its interests in a narrow-minded way, with practices that sow international strife, chaos or misery.
We should draw up these lists more often and then have the necessary discussions. I think the next right moment will be in three years.
Attribution – Editing: Lydia Roubopoulou
