Trump’s Strategic Choice: Prioritization or Retrenchment
“We are in the position of Imperial Rome when the Barbarians were thundering at the frontiers. The ominous word has gone forth. We have called home the legions.” —The Standard, 1912
Just over a century ago, the United Kingdom fundamentally reoriented its defense strategy in just a matter of years. Today, the United States is considering defense reforms that could be just as momentous. In a matter of months, US President Donald Trump has sought to make the most fundamental change in American strategic thinking in at least a century.
Since the end of World War II, the United States has embraced what scholar John Ikenberry termed “strategic restraint.” The logic dictated that by constraining its power in the short term, the United States could establish rules, norms, and institutions that would lock in its power in the long term. In the aftermath of two world wars, Americans were willing to accept this trade-off in pursuit of a more stable order that could avoid another deadly world war.
In many ways, this moment feels unprecedented. But the United States is not the first great power to recognize that its power has peaked and consider retrenchment.
Today, however, Trump and his top advisers are rethinking this arrangement. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated in his confirmation hearing, “The postwar global order is not just obsolete. It is now a weapon being used against us.” President Trump and his administration’s officials regularly assert that strategic restraint paid few dividends, allowing other countries to free ride on US security guarantees while taking advantage of the United States economically.
In many ways, this moment feels unprecedented. But the United States is not the first great power to recognize that its power has peaked and consider retrenchment. History is strewn with great powers that have been forced to rethink their strategies when their publics or leaders assessed that the costs of supporting a global presence were no longer worth the benefits.
My new book—Tides of Fortune: The Rise and Decline of Great Militaries—examines how other great powers have responded to power shifts and tracks the rise and decline of Germany, America, Britain, France, Japan, and Russia. Among these, one case is particularly instructive for the United States today: Great Britain in the early 20th century. Many strategists believe that the United Kingdom successfully managed adverse power shifts better than most others, so an examination of British strategy is warranted.
British power and perceptions shifted rapidly in the early 1900s. Although the United Kingdom remained the world’s most dominant power, others were catching up quickly. The United Kingdom and Ireland saw only 1.6–1.8 percent average yearly growth in manufacturing from 1881 to 1913. Meanwhile, manufacturing growth rose to 4.2–5.2 percent in the United States, 4.0–5.1 percent in Germany, 4.8–6.6 percent in Russia, and 2.5–3.5 percent in France. German growth was particularly concerning due to its increasingly confrontational foreign policy under Kaiser Wilhelm II.
As the 20th century dawned, many British leaders woke up to the German threat. Winston Churchill recalled, “Genuine alarm was excited throughout the country by what was for the first time widely recognized as a German menace.” Officials in London began to realize that Germany posed so serious a challenge to the home islands that they could no longer maintain all of Britain’s existing commitments around the world. Chancellor of the Exchequer Austen Chamberlain warned that “however reluctant we may be to face the fact, the time has come when we must frankly admit that the financial resources of the United Kingdom are inadequate to do all that we should desire in the matter of Imperial defence.”
Throughout the 19th century, British strategy aimed to surpass the combined capabilities of any two potential challengers. For many years, the top concerns were an alliance between Russia and France and an increasingly powerful United States. But geopolitical changes triggered a refocusing on Germany’s rise. As Kori Schake notes, “Clear-eyed assessments of its own strategic position led Britain to enact policies that catapulted the United States into the first rank of great powers.” Secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defense Charles Ottley warned that “the resources of this Country simply cannot compete with the resources of such a power as the American plus Germany. . . . We must renounce (as unattainable) the Two Power Standard vis-à-vis the USA.” From then on, Germany would be the one and only focus.
Leading Britain’s refocus on Germany was famed strategist Jackie Fisher, who took over in 1904 as first sea lord. He acknowledged that Britain could not carry out a competition with Germany if its forces remained scattered across the world. Admiral Fisher warned, “We are weak everywhere and strong nowhere! We have dissipated our naval forces all over globe.” In 1906, he told King Edward VII, “Our only probable enemy is Germany. Germany keeps her whole Fleet always concentrated within a few hours of England. We must therefore keep a Fleet twice as powerful concentrated within a few hours of Germany.”
The British began to acknowledge that their forces were overextended. Additionally, much of Britain’s defense spending was directed toward the army, while the navy had languished. Fisher argued that additional funds should come from the army: “If we are not safe from invasion then make us so. Spend money on submarines, destroyers, etc., but don’t waste money on an armed mob.” His requests paid dividends. In one case, Churchill recounts, “The Admiralty had demanded six ships: the economists offered four: and we finally compromised on eight.”
At the same time, scholar Nicholas Lambert recounts how British leaders “instructed the armed forces to lower their strategic horizon. The Board of Admiralty at once complied by jettisoning commitments in the less vital regions of the globe and concentrating the fleet at home.” The Admiralty worried about three naval threats: “1. Minelaying in the approaches to our harbours. 2. Torpedo attacks on our shipping, either at anchor or at sea. 3. The escape of commerce destroyers from German ports to prey on our trade.” To confront these challenges, the British navy returned nearly all of its capital ships to home waters. From 1897 to 1912, the number of British capital ships outside the Home Fleet fell from 24 to 2 while the number of capital ships in the Home Fleet rose from 11 to 33.
British leaders took significant risk in East Asia and the Americas by ceding greater authority to Japan and the United States. This global drawback permitted the navy to focus more on protecting the British Isles. By 1912, The Standard announced, “Because of that formidable and threatening [German] Armada across the North Sea, we have almost abandoned the waters of the Outer Oceans. We are in the position of Imperial Rome when the Barbarians were thundering at the frontiers. The ominous word has gone forth. We have called home the legions.”
The question is not whether the United States can go it alone, but whether it should.
Is the United States doing something similar today?
For years, experts have been pushing American leaders to scale back their ambitions and retrench. Is Trump following the British lead and jump-starting a strategic rethink of US strategy?
The answer to this question depends in part on how one thinks about British strategy. For the British, calling home the legions to the North Sea did two things at once. First, it prioritized by meeting the German threat where it was emerging. Second, it retrenched by returning British forces to the home isles. In other words, Britain could prioritize Germany and retrench at the same time due to the geographic proximity of Britain to Germany.
Unfortunately, the United States cannot do both missions at once. Washington’s top challenge is China, which lies thousands of miles across the Pacific. So when US leaders speak of prioritizing China, they imply shifting more of the US military to East Asia. Yet when US leaders talk about retrenching, the resulting “Americas First” strategy would bring American forces back home to the United States. This would leave China in a stronger position across Asia, undermining the US position there and putting allies and partners across the globe at great risk.
This is now the central tension for the Trump administration’s foreign policy. The Trump team can either prioritize China or retrench to the Americas. Withdrawing some forces from Europe and the Middle East is consistent with both strategies. But where those forces go afterward is another question. Secretary of State Rubio and National Security Adviser Michael Waltz seem to support prioritization of China and a larger presence in East Asia. But President Trump and many of his closest MAGA advisers appear to favor retrenchment and an Americas First approach.
This choice between prioritization and retrenchment could reshape American foreign policy for generations. The prior US strategy of strategic restraint amounted to a choice to accept short-term costs in pursuit of long-term benefits. Retrenching to the Americas would reverse this logic, essentially accepting short-term economic benefits in exchange for long-term costs—primarily the loss of influence and control in key regions of the world. The question is not whether the United States can go it alone, but whether it should. Wholesale retrenchment belies a deep, and unwarranted, pessimism about the future of American power compared to a weak Russia and a deeply troubled China. It would seem a far cry from the Trump administration’s promised renewal of the American Dream.
The irony of this approach is that when President Trump talks about making American great again, he often lauds the United States of the late 19th century. Trump’s oft-touted presidential role models—William McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt—ushered in America’s shift from a regional to a global power. Now Trump himself might do the opposite, effectively calling home the legions. This might save some money for the United States in the short term, but it will have tremendous costs in the long term. Making America great again is a worthy goal, but it is a goal poorly served by a wholesale retrenchment. As Churchill accurately observed, “The price of greatness is responsibility.” American leaders would be wise to heed his advice.