RUTHFULLY YOURS

For students of U.S. foreign policy, this poses a question independent of Mr. Trump’s personality and political style: Is the gap between America’s post-World War II global strategy and the beliefs of the president’s base too wide to be bridged? Or is there a way to envision a global strategy for the U.S. that American populism can support?

Historically, the answer to the latter question has been yes. Jacksonians can be part of a stable political coalition that backs a global U.S. strategy. That was the normal condition during the Cold War, when Jacksonians were as loyal to Ronald Reagan as they are today to Mr. Trump. Though rarely enthusiastic about the United Nations, foreign aid or humanitarian interventions abroad, Jacksonians saw the Soviet Union and its communist ideology as a mortal threat to American freedom. Facing that danger, they were ready to do their part against the U.S.S.R.

After the Cold War, Jacksonians and U.S. strategy began to drift apart. Under Republican and Democratic presidents from George H.W. Bush through Barack Obama, American foreign policy became more ambitious. The goal was no longer to defeat the Soviet threat but to create a “new world order” by promoting democracy and liberal capitalism around the world. As awareness of climate change spread, the new world order acquired another task: to shift the global economy toward carbon neutrality.

It wasn’t much noticed in the heady atmosphere of the “unipolar” 1990s, but Jacksonian populists never signed up for the new world order. The foreign-policy establishment expanded U.S. goals and responsibilities at a time when much of Reagan’s old base wanted a less active, less visionary foreign policy.

The gap was temporarily patched after 9/11. Seeing their country attacked, Jacksonians—as they have done since the American Revolution—rallied to the nation’s defense and were prepared to support the “global war on terror” at whatever cost. Over time, however, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan appeared to turn into nation-building and democracy-promotion efforts rather than the defense of the homeland. And as more years passed with only limited and local jihadist attacks on Americans at home, Jacksonians began to lose their confidence in U.S. strategy once again. When Mr. Obama focused on issues like enhancing global governance, fighting climate change, and reaching out to Cuba and Iran, disillusionment curdled into alienation.

The question is whether this is irrecoverable. Here, I am an optimist. In part this is because Xi Jinping has done so much to bring Americans together against China. Thanks to Mr. Xi’s policy choices, the establishment is less naive about Beijing’s intentions, and populists are less dismissive of global threats. It is remarkable how much China convergence has taken place even in the Trump years. In either a second Trump term or a Biden presidency, Beijing will likely keep pushing Americans toward some kind of grudging foreign-policy cooperation across party lines.

To make U.S. global strategy great again, both the foreign-policy establishment and the populist insurgents will have to work harder. Americans were deeply divided at the start of the Cold War, when then-Rep. Richard Nixon was investigating Alger Hiss and Jim Crow still reigned across the South. They found a way to come together for the greater good; we can do the same today.

Foreign policy in a democracy will always be contentious, but there are ways of advancing a global strategy that Jacksonians can support. Take foreign aid. Jacksonians resist giveaways. But stimulating America’s post-Covid economy by subsidizing foreigners’ purchase of U.S. food, medical devices, big-ticket infrastructure projects like nuclear power plants, and other goods would be a different matter. Contesting Chinese ambitions is another argument for foreign assistance and diplomatic activism that Jacksonians respect.

On trade, “reciprocity” is a goal that Jacksonians historically support. Embraced by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of State Cordell Hull, reciprocity entails equalizing tariffs and barriers. Many postwar trade deals allow developing and even European countries to maintain higher trade barriers than the U.S. does. Seeking to eliminate those differentials and make trade more reciprocal would ease the passage of new trade agreements through Congress.

On global engagement, Jacksonians are very threat-sensitive. The appearance of ISIS in the Middle East quickly generated Jacksonian support for military action. On global governance, Jacksonians hate and often resist grand global bureaucracies but don’t mind working with like-minded countries on solving problems.

Great U.S. statesmen like the two Roosevelts, Harry S. Truman and Reagan combined a grasp of America’s global interests with an intuitive understanding of Jacksonians—and of other U.S. subcultures as well. They saw where the country needed to go, they knew where Americans wanted to go, and they knew how to persuade, inspire and explain.

Leaders like that can still bring the country together today. Let us hope that they quickly appear.