Heg is strong now. Prefer empirically backed models of testing.

Utilizing ideal points, we proposed cohesion, deviation, and adhesion measures to empirically explore security alliance cohesion, Member State deviations, and third state adhesions. Our findings suggest that security alliances such as NATO and the Warsaw Pact had higher cohesion than other UN members, that external threat increased security alliance cohesion, and that the United States turned out to be the most significant deviating member in NATO since 1980, while third countries such as Australia, South Korea, and Japan were more aligned with the NATO alliance whereas Israel was more aligned with the United States. By using our measures, one can study any alignment pattern among any state groups in the UN, even without a priori identifications of state groupings. Measures developed and tested in this study can provide researchers with strong diagnostic tools. The study contributes to the overall UNGA voting literature by providing statistical inferences about the validity of the data.

We believe that the approach and new measures presented here could be useful to investigate cohesion levels in other intergovernmental organizations such as the EU and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, as well as economic communities like BRICS, while pinpointing each state’s political distance vis-à-vis each other or to a defined group of states. Furthermore, using this approach and these new measures could help researchers to concentrate on specific questions (e.g., whether the foundation of BRICS really brought Member States together on the issues of high politics, or whether Brexit could have been predicted). In other words, while the approach offered here was utilized more for descriptive purposes, it presents a superior alternative to measure variance across time, increasing our predictive power for actual or potential dramatic policy shifts at Member State and at (any) group level by using the UNGA voting data.

As the Trump administration threatened to abandon NATO, and as Russia revives and China rises, “How long can NATO last in a post-US hegemonic, multipolar world?” became one of the most important questions in contemporary world politics. Contrary to Trump’s withdrawal rhetoric, we found that the height of the US ally deviation from NATO was during 2001–2008, coinciding with the presidential term of George W. Bush. In fact, our findings suggest that Trump’s NATO deviation scores came behind those of two Democrat presidents, Obama and Clinton, when they were put into an ordinal scale for heuristic purposes.

Throughout this article, we deliberately tried to avoid any discussion that might not be empirically verified, keeping the scope of the article rather descriptive. Still, we believe studying the past of the security alliances would give us considerable explanatory and even predictive power. We observed that threat perception, both for external and internal (i.e., intra-alliance) threats, played a significant role in political alignments for security alliances. The 9/11 attacks and activation of Article 5 of the Washington Treaty led to a turning point for the NATO allies, as free riding was replaced by joining costly global wars that were arguably triggered by US hegemony in the world. In the past, the United States provided deterrence against the Soviet Union as a public good for NATO members. Over the past two decades, however, an increasing number of NATO members have come to believe that they are being dragged into “American wars.” In this case, the problem would not be one of US abdication or abandonment but balancing the hegemon.59 NATO has survived US ally deviation for four decades. The height of US deviation was actually in the past, not in the present. While alliance cohesion was an important topic, especially after the end of the Cold War, discussions about NATO have happened largely at a theoretical level, revolving around realist, liberal and constructivist propositions about whether NATO would collapse or survive.60 The present research, in contrast, was conducted at an empirical level. By applying this approach to NATO, we were able to measure the flexibility of the arrangement and obtain evidence to show what was really happening with the United States and NATO, despite what might have been expected from the rhetoric of Trump. While our findings support some earlier proposals, such as the external threat hypothesis, they also contradict some others, including the literature on the decline of US hegemony and its policy implications. We therefore hope that the new approach developed here to measure foreign policy preferences by using a spatial model and UNGA voting data might reignite interest for more empirically driven future research on NATO and other alliances, as well as cohesion of states in other organizations, while also strengthening the overall validity and therefore confidence in using UNGA voting data with spatial models.61

Heg is good and sustainable – working international structures, U.S. security commitments, and democratic commonality

Kagan ’18 – Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute

[Friedman Senior Fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy, Foreign Policy Brookings Program, written several books regarding the international order and U.S. hegemony, contributing columnist to the Washington Post, 9-18-2018, “The Jungle Grows Back: American and Our Imperiled World,” accessed 3-2-2020]

Despite everything that has happened, if we reject the counsels of the new “realism” and resume our support for the liberal world order, it is still within our capacity to defend it and put off its collapse, perhaps for some time. Today the order remains intact, despite the hostility of the present administration and the weakness of the last. The international structures supporting it are durable. This is partly because they rest on geographical realities and a distribution of power that still favor the liberal order and still pose obstacles to those who would disrupt it. It is also because liberal values, though under assault, remain a force that binds the democratic nations of the world together. Authoritarianism also has its appeal and will always compete with liberalism, but the authoritarian governments do not feel the same sense of commonality as the monarchies and aristocracies of the early nineteenth century. The Chinese and Russians are not adversaries, but they are not allies either. They share little except their antipathy to liberalism. The democratic nations, however, are bound together by more than common adversaries, as the post–Cold War era has proved. America’s alliances in Europe and Asia have so far held, therefore, despite the weakening of America’s commitment under two administrations. There is still a liberal world order to be salvaged, if the American people decide it is worth salvaging.

They will also have to decide that they are prepared to pay the costs, and those costs have not changed. It took great and consistent exertions of American power and influence to create and sustain this world order. It will take no less to continue upholding it into the future. Americans over the past two decades have become convinced that the United States is doing too much when actually it has been doing too little.

Much of what needs to be done to shore up the order requires only diplomatic and economic measures. The United States needs to return to the deep engagement with Europe that characterized the relationship from the postwar years to the early post–Cold War years. Americans must understand that a healthy liberal Europe is the anchor of the order from which they benefit. Therefore such matters as the negotiation of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, the Eurozone crisis, the cyber threats from Russia, and European energy supplies must be addressed not just as European problems but as transatlantic problems that affect the United States, too. The United States also needs to work with European governments to address the democratic backsliding in Europe. Nations that entered the EU and NATO after the Cold War had to meet high standards of democratic governance in order to gain membership. If some have ceased to meet those standards, they need to be suspended from membership or denied some of the benefits of membership. Hungary and Turkey cannot expect to enjoy the benefits of NATO, and, in Hungary’s case, EU membership, so long as they celebrate their “illiberalism” and reject the basic premises of the liberal world order. Finally, the United States needs to return to the liberal compact when it comes to trade and international institutions. It was a serious blow to the liberal order when the United States walked away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership—and a great boon to China. The order will suffer further if American trade policies seek “wins” over close allies like Canada and Germany. Americans need to understand that the free trade regime undergirds the order from which they benefit as much or more than anyone. It is not a “win” if that regime collapses into the protectionism that characterized the decades before World War II. Then there is the question of maintaining America’s military predominance in the international system. For all the talk of “soft” power and “smart” power, it is ultimately the American security guarantee, the ability to deploy hard power to deter and defeat potential aggressors, that provides the essential foundation without which the liberal world order could never survive. Members of Congress from both parties have underfunded the military since the beginning of the post–Cold War era, but especially over the last decade. Defense secretaries from both parties have raised alarms about the increasing inability of the armed forces to perform their missions of deterrence around the world. And the dangers of war have only grown in recent years, not diminished. Americans need to remember that deterring a war is much less expensive than fighting one.

Heg is sustainable and doesn’t cause overstretch, free-riding, or counterbalancing. That answers all their turns case args

Carla Norloff 18, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, PhD in International Relations from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Hegemony and inequality: Trump and the liberal playbook, January 2018, International Affairs, Volume 94, Issue 1,

LIO = Liberal International Order

The second relevant theoretical approach is grounded in Waltzian realism. According to this approach, states should pursue their national interest defined narrowly, responding to threats that affect them directly. The doctrine of restraint, also called selective engagement, sees the maintenance of long-term hegemony as exceedingly costly and futile, breeding resentment and requiring rivals to be defeated and outcompeted in a continuous effort to thwart attempts at balancing. Balancing occurs when states seek to reduce the military power of exceptionally dominant states. The tendency for states to balance power is a hard systemic law, which no state can escape, and which guarantees that a unipolar distribution of power will eventually become bipolar or multipolar. Academic advocates of selective engagement approve of Trump's call for a more restrained foreign policy while distancing themselves from his other ideas.44 They believe America's postwar grand strategy spills too much blood and treasure and carries high opportunity costs,45 and that the United States should instead pursue a strategy of offshore balancing, refocusing policies around a narrow definition of the national interest limited to preserving regional hegemony in the western hemisphere and preventing the rise of regional hegemons.46 They consider US security interests to be at stake in three areas—Europe, east Asia and the Persian Gulf—with only east Asia requiring significant onshore engagement.47 Broadly agreeing with Trump, they say allies have to learn how to fend for themselves, and that the US should introduce uncertainty about forthcoming military support.48 In order to improve the plight of fellow Americans, the United States should reorientate public policy around domestic goals, giving up some international goals. For proponents of these arguments, America's international commitments clash with its domestic commitments.¶ Three flawed assumptions¶ Three features of the LIO emerge as problematic from these two perspectives. First, other countries free-ride on US political and economic leadership. Second, there are fundamental trade-offs between America's military and economic capability: US security commitments are responsible for US economic decline. Third, there are fundamental trade-offs between America's international and domestic posture. On the basis of this analysis, to promote America's national interest, the grand strategy supporting the LIO should be replaced with strategic restraint; the US should stop bearing a disproportionate share of the costs associated with solving global problems and let others take care of themselves, restricting US involvement to protecting vital security interests, defending the homeland and preventing the emergence of a regional hegemon.¶ However, the three assumptions underlying this analysis, and criticisms of the LIO, mischaracterize America's liberal dilemma. The first questionable assumption is that international cooperation resembles a public goods problem whereby the US, as the largest state, bears disproportionate costs while free-riding allies reap disproportionate benefits. Second, the negative repercussions of US security commitments for US economic strength are rarely balanced against the full benefits of US security commitments to the United States itself. Third, the assumption that there is an international–domestic trade-off and that whatever resources have been ‘squandered’ on international engagement can readily be diverted to the pursuit of productive, welfare-enhancing, domestic goals grossly understates both US benefits from the LIO and the risks attached to dismantling ‘selected’ parts of the LIO.49¶ When international cooperation is cast as a public goods dilemma, it is easy to come to the conclusion that the hegemon is in a disadvantageous position. But the public goods analogy does not adequately capture the essence of international cooperation, because few issues are characterized by the properties that define public goods—non-rivalry and non-exclusion.50 Rather, the hegemon provides a mix of public and private goods, or imperfect public goods.51 Despite these recognized flaws, and much scholarship to the contrary, the public goods version of HST remains influential.¶ Rejecting the ‘exploited hegemon’ version of HST, several scholars point to the ways in which the hegemon is positionally primed to benefit disproportionately from underwriting the LIO.52 They argue that public goods provision offers more opportunities than constraints, and, while they recognize that free-riding is a possible threat to the hegemon's long-term rule,53 they emphasize the ways in which the hegemon can use its dominance to internalize positive externalities and externalize negative externalities.54 As long as the hegemon is not providing pure public goods, the distribution of gains will not necessarily favour other states. And as long as the distribution of gains does not favour other states, providing an open economy does not necessarily compromise the hegemon's security interests or its position of dominance.55¶ The founders of HST, Robert Gilpin and Stephen Krasner, believed that hegemonic orders were particularly robust during the hegemon's ascendancy, and therefore worried greatly about the future of US hegemony and the LIO as the US underwent relative decline in the 1970s and 1980s.¶ Contemporary scholars, on the other hand, emphasize the cyclical property of postwar hegemony, seeing the United States as capable of reversing phases of decline by using different levers of power to avoid absolute decline.56 They see different forms of power interacting favourably for the hegemon, with financial dominance reinforcing commercial dominance, commercial dominance facilitating financial dominance, and security dominance boosting both commercial and financial dominance.57¶ Since the 1980s, IR scholars have tended to view the United States as militarily strong yet economically weak, a development hastened with the rise of China and other emerging economies in the third millennium.58 But even today, after many rounds of decline (and ascent), the United States has no peer competitor either militarily or economically. Commercially robust but financially vulnerable, China ranks as the world's third largest military power after Russia and the United States. While Russia's military continues to be the US military's principal rival, it is not as potent as it was under the Soviet Union. And while Russia's economy is not as debilitated as it was under the Soviet Union, it continues to be frail. Japan and Germany, two of America's principal allies, are economically strong, but militarily weak.¶ As figures 1 and 2 reveal, the United States has sustained its economic lead throughout the postwar era, boasting the world's first economy with an unrivalled capacity for economic output, an impressive commercial record and an unsurpassed financial position. US economic performance is grossly underrated. First, as shown in figure 1, which displays US GDP, trade and company size, US GDP is still roughly a quarter of global GDP (just below the dotted 25 per cent line). Declinists take the considerable fall in America's postwar share of global GDP as a sign of weakness. But it is unrealistic to think that the United States would continue to command a third of global GDP as it did immediately after the Second World War—particularly since much of the observed decline was the result of deliberate efforts by the United States to bolster its allies in western Europe and east Asia through the Marshall Plan and other initiatives.59 What is rather remarkable is that, even with the rise of non-allies such as China, America's share of world GDP has stabilized around a quarter and continues to be nearly twice as large as China's share. Second, as also shown in figure 1, US commercial capability aggregated into its combined share of world exports and imports—trade—is slightly higher than China's. But exports and imports are not the best way to measure commercial prowess, because the contemporary web of production globalizes manufacturing. Owing to global supply chains, imported final goods include intermediate inputs and technology produced and developed in the United States that do not show up as exports but nonetheless provide American jobs and income. And when exporting final goods, US firms depend on low trade barriers to import low-cost intermediate inputs. The United States' ability to spread production worldwide has been accompanied by long-term rising trends in numbers of foreign affiliates, value added and net income, generating significant profits for the United States.60 As shown in figure 1, the aggregate value of US companies far exceeds that of any other country.¶ Figure 1:¶ Great Power production and commercial capability, 2016¶ View largeDownload slide¶ Great Power production and commercial capability, 2016¶ Figure 2:¶ Great Power financial and military capability, 2016¶ View largeDownload slide¶ Great Power financial and military capability, 2016¶ Third, few assessments compare the relative financial capabilities of Great Powers. Studies often favour narrow definitions of financial power over broader assessments. Some focus on the relative size of US financial markets, some on financial networks, some on reserve currency issuance, but few provide an aggregate picture.61 These incomplete portrayals lead to gross underestimation of US financial power.62 As shown in figure 2, US financial markets account for slightly more than a quarter of the global total, and US reserve currency provision far surpasses that of any other state or states, and that of the eurozone.¶ Fourth, as also demonstrated in figure 2, the United States is the world's most formidable military power, its capabilities far exceeding those of any other nation. Taking into account front-line capabilities on the ground, on the sea and in the air, as well as the capacity for reconnaissance, strategic transport and communication to project power, the United States has no rival.63¶ The United States' multidimensional power base clearly puts it in a class above rival powers. Yet its privileged position in the international system is even greater than what these snapshot barometers indicate, because significant synergies exist between the various dimensions.64¶ US security dominance supports US commercial and monetary dominance, and its commercial and monetary dominance are mutually supportive. First, by providing security guarantees, stabilizing hot-spots and securing sea lanes, the United States ensures that international trade and finance can occur without disruption. This is of great value to the United States itself because, as the world's single largest economy, it has a high stake in guaranteeing stable economic relations. Second, propping up the financial realm, America's vast security network provides incentives for allies to continue supporting the dollar's role as the number one global currency.65 Third, the dollar's global role gives the United States the capacity to borrow at exceptionally low rates, providing it with extraordinary macroeconomic flexibility to ease balance of payments adjustments, particularly trade adjustments.66 Fourth, America's commercial position bolsters the dollar's global role by facilitating trade adjustment as governments, particularly in emerging markets, continue to finance US deficits by holding dollar assets in the hope of gaining continued access to US markets.67¶ ‘America first’ promises to touch all of these areas, overhauling longstanding US policies in the security, commercial and monetary spheres. But its real menace lies in its potential for sparking drastic changes by overturning policies in just one sphere. If the United States ceases to defend allies, and reduces its commitment to secure the international environment, cross-border trade and investment will operate in a more uncertain setting. While it is impossible to predict which policy is most likely to unleash an unfavourable chain of events, a hypothetical example can be used to illustrate the presumptive cascade. If we assume the United States follows through with significant commercial retreat, then we should expect monetary consequences. With the United States ceasing to account for a significant portion of international trade, official and private investors will increasingly hold alternative currencies for reserves and payment. If the diversification out of dollars is substantial, the dollar could gradually lose its centrality in the monetary order, complicating the adjustment of US trade imbalances. Balance of payments difficulties could very well ricochet back in the monetary sphere, with a crisis of confidence over trade imbalances triggering a run on the dollar. With the dollar under pressure, its international role for governments and private actors could come into question. If the dollar is no longer widely used for reserves and payments, US financial markets will lose importance relative to other financial markets. A diminished role for US financial markets implies lower demand for US assets, raising US borrowing costs. And the loss of US borrowing privileges will have security ramifications, since financing US military power will become more expensive.68 With these developments, America's slippage in the ranks of Great Powers will be assured.¶ The real liberal dilemma¶ President Trump misidentifies the nature of the redistribution problem confronting America, misinterpreting unequal internal redistribution as unequal external redistribution. The liberal dilemma is not that the LIO distributes gains unfavourably to the United States, but that not everyone in the United States wins because US domestic policies have not kept pace with global economic integration. Economic globalization can deepen domestic inequality. Import competition causes some sectors to shrink, and workers employed in contracting sectors may not be fully absorbed in expanding sectors. Neo-classical trade theory predicts that economic activity will increase in the sector using the country's abundant factor since its reward will increase relative to that of the scarce factor.69 In the case of an advanced capital-abundant country such as the United States, this means that the reward to capital will increase relative to labour. Financial globalization has even more acute effects on the distribution of income, further raising the reward to capital relative to labour.70 However, since suspending international economic exchange reduces national welfare gains, countries are better off expanding the pie, and compensating losers with the higher gains available from economic globalization. The United States needs to bring back ‘embedded liberalism’ to redistribute benefits from openness through greater safeguards and labour adjustment programmes, including trade adjustment, so that the LIO can begin to work for all Americans.71¶ Dissatisfaction with the international distribution of income is, however, insufficient to explain the backlash against globalization. President Trump correctly identified the liberal dilemma inside the United States as the clash between liberal ideals and the preservation of a racial hierarchy which put ‘white America first’—a contradiction which has resulted in a racial and educational divide at the ballot box.72 To fully understand waning American support for the LIO, one must look to the unravelling of America's liberal identity as a principal cause of the less secure domestic foundations of the LIO. Some elements of America's liberal identity, such as ‘political democracy, constitutional government, individual rights [and] private property based economic systems’, remain intact. However, other elements, such as ‘toleration of diversity in non-civic areas of ethnicity and religion’ are in jeopardy.73 In fomenting an ‘us and them’ division between Americans and foreigners alleged to be exploiting the United States, and by stoking an internal division between Americans of different ethnicities and faiths, Trump unveiled an international and domestic hierarchy that some thought no longer existed. How did these factors intermingle with income inequality in the 2016 US elections?¶ The extent of inequality in the United States¶ Income inequality in the United States has increased since the late 1960s. By 2015, the top 5 per cent earned 28 times as much, and the top 20 per cent 16 times as much, as the lowest 20 per cent of Americans. This share has risen over time irrespective of the incumbent president's party affiliation, as shown in figure 3, which traces this development back to the late 1970s. Below I use mean income data from the US Census Bureau to discern the effect of income inequality on different ethnic groups. Ideally, this analysis would be performed using median income data, but this is not consistently available across all measures of interest.74¶ Figure 3:¶ Income inequality between the top and bottom income earners in the United States, 1978–2016¶ View largeDownload slide¶ Income inequality between the top and bottom income earners in the United States, 1978–2016¶ Concerns about income may have loomed large in the 2016 presidential elections. It could be, for instance, that by 2016 income inequality in the United States had reached a tipping point, a level that Americans were no longer prepared to tolerate. The only vote margin—that is, the difference in percentage of votes between Republicans and Democrats—that was consistently and substantially different from those in the 2008 and 2012 elections was the margin for those earning less than US$50,000 a year. Although this group—arguably the most affected by the widening income gap—still supported the Democratic candidate overall (though to a lesser extent than in the two previous elections), the margin between the Democratic and Republican votes narrowed to 12 points from 22 points in 2008 and 2012. The margins for higher-income groups were not as wide, nor were they significantly different from the levels recorded in the 2008 and 2012 elections. In an anti-establishment election, factors other than income, such as Clinton's ‘elitism’, might have been a liability. But the unfavourable opinion of Clinton (81 per cent) was less strong among those who voted for Trump than disapproval of former President Obama (89 per cent).75 It is, however, possible that dissatisfaction with Clinton was greater within the group earning under US$50,000.¶ While income did matter in the 2016 election, it was not, on its own, the most important predictor of the outcome. As shown in figures 4 and 5, income did play a role, but primarily as it intersected with other factors, particularly education and colour.76 In the following paragraphs I consider the income growth of non-college-educated whites relative to college-educated whites; and the absolute income (including income growth) of non-college-educated whites relative to the overall non-college-educated population.¶ Figure 4:¶ Income growth among US citizens with education below college degree level, 1998–2016¶ View largeDownload slide¶ Income growth among US citizens with education below college degree level, 1998–2016¶ Figure 5:¶ Income growth among US citizens with education above college degree level, 1998–2016¶ View largeDownload slide¶ Income growth among US citizens with education above college degree level, 1998–2016¶ In 2016, white voters without a college degree voted for Trump (66 per cent) with much higher percentages than in 2012 (61 per cent) and 2008 (58 per cent), and with much higher margins (see figure 4). But white voters without a college degree (both those with and those without a high school diploma) supported Trump despite experiencing greater income growth during the full span of Obama's presidency than any other white group defined by educational level. Their income expansion was also stronger than any other education group during Obama's second term (2012–2016). However, during Obama's first term (2008–2012), their income did not grow as fast as that of white Americans with advanced degrees, although they did better than those with an associate (i.e. two-year college) degree or bachelor's degree. Despite stronger income development than college-educated income earners, whites without a college degree voted for Trump with a 37-point margin, whereas whites with a college degree favoured Trump with only a 3-point margin. Although these numbers suggest that something other than income explains Trump's victory, it could still be that the higher margins for white voters without college degrees reflect discontent with low real incomes.¶ If low real incomes explain Trump's support among white voters without college degrees, we should find general support for Trump among voters with low real incomes. However, since 1998 the mean income of whites without college degrees has always been higher than the mean income of all those without college degrees. If their income remained higher, was their income growth slower? During the full length of Obama's presidency, and during his first term, whites without a college degree experienced higher growth than all income earners without a college degree. Only during Obama's second term did the mean income of whites without a college degree underperform the income of all earners without a college degree. The growth differential between the two groups during this period,77 however, is quite small, for both those with and those without a high school diploma: the mean income of workers without a high school diploma increased by 13.41 per cent, compared to 12.99 per cent growth for whites without a high school diploma. The mean income of all workers with a high school diploma increased by 5.73 per cent; of whites with a high-school diploma, by 5.60 per cent. It is noteworthy that during Obama's second term the overall mean income of all earners with a college degree increased less than for whites with a college degree. The biggest difference was for whites with an advanced degree, who earned US$1,394 a year less than the mean income of all recipients of advanced degrees. Yet despite slower income growth, white college graduates were disinclined to vote Republican in the 2016 elections (see figure 5).¶ If dissatisfaction with income played a role in explaining why white voters without a college degree endorsed Trump, the only evidence for it is the relatively lower income growth of white earners without college degrees compared to all earners without college degrees between 2012 and 2015. Disaggregating the income differential for non-college-educated whites, those without a high-school diploma experienced 0.43 per cent lower income growth, and those with a diploma 0.13 per cent lower income growth, than all non-college-educated earners within the corresponding educational group. It is highly unlikely that these small percentage differences explain why whites without a college degree favoured Trump with a 37-point margin whereas all earners without a college degree favoured Trump with only a 7-point margin.¶ If income mattered only in conjunction with education and colour in the 2016 elections, income might have been more decisive in distressed regions. One of the biggest surprises in the 2016 presidential election was how the Democrats lost the ‘blue wall’ states in the ‘Rust Belt’—Pennsylvania in the north-east; Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio in the mid-west. The Democrats also lost Florida in the south, a traditionally Republican state, which Obama won in 2008 and 2012.¶ Declining employment and income are said to have contributed to support for Trump in conventionally Democratic states. But there are several problems with this explanation. While the decline in the mid-west is real, it has been in the making for a very long time. During the Obama years, specifically between 2008 and 2016, income in the mid-west rose more sharply than in all other regions. During Obama's second term, both white and overall income growth was stronger in the mid-west than in any other region. Yet the Republican vote exceeded the Democratic vote in the mid-west by the second-highest margin of any region (see figure 6). Moreover, during the same period, income growth for whites was higher than for all ethnic groups combined; and yet whites in the mid-west voted Republican by a margin of 20 points, compared to a margin of 5 points for the region overall. However, during Obama's second term, white income growth in the mid-west was lower than in all other regions except for the west. Overall income growth was worse in the mid-west than in all other regions. Yet the white margin in favour of Trump was stronger in the mid-west (20 points) than in the west (5 points), and the overall margin in favour of Trump in the mid-west (5 points) was considerably lower than for whites in the mid-west (20 points).¶ Figure 6:¶ Income growth by region and race, 1998–2015¶ View largeDownload slide¶ Income growth by region and race, 1998–2015¶ Given the higher proportion of whites in the mid-west (76 per cent) than nationally (61 per cent), and the higher number of voters in the region aged over 25 years without a college degree (71 per cent) than nationally (55 per cent),78 it is likely that factors of education, colour and income combine to explain the level of support for Trump in 2016.¶ In the 2016 election, racial polarization, as measured by the difference between white and non-white preferences for Trump, was highest in the south, second to highest in the mid-west and north-east, and lowest in the west. These cleavages were most apparent in the south and mid-west. White voters were aligned with Trump in the south (67 per cent) and the mid-west (57 per cent), non-white voters with Clinton in the south (77 per cent) and mid-west (75 per cent).¶ Racially differentiated voting patterns do not necessarily mean that voting is racially motivated. It could be that whites are generally more cons ervative on a range of issues and that their views were therefore better aligned with the policies espoused by the Republican than the Democratic candidate. Yet that would not explain why so many white college-educated voters fled the Republican presidential nominee in 2016 (see figure 5). Rather, there exists some evidence that racist attitudes encouraged a portion of the white electorate to align with Trump. For example, 80 per cent of white evangelical Christians supported Trump.79 Their vote is important because although they account for a lower share of the population today (17 per cent) than in 2008 (21 per cent), they still account for 26 per cent of the vote because a lot of them turn out to vote.80 Their high proportion of the vote suggests that racism might have been a relevant issue. In the months before the elections, a non-partisan study by the American Values Atlas revealed that white evangelicals were less likely to perceive discrimination against blacks, with only 36 per cent saying blacks were discriminated against ‘a lot’, compared to the national average of 57 per cent.81¶ Trump and the liberal playbook¶ In 2016, socio-cultural fissures within the United States played a critical role in the election of the presidential candidate most disparaging of the LIO. Trump's call to put America ‘first’ internationally, and white Christians ‘first’ domestically, resonated with non-college-educated white voters who saw their historic privileges fading. Not all grievances were racially motivated; certainly, some poorer non-college-educated whites compared their present situation unfavourably with the rosier circumstances of their families' past.82¶ The relationship between education and race was first noted over seven decades ago. Gunnar Myrdal's 1944 book An American dilemma was famously cited in the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), and helped desegregate education in the United States by demonstrating that education could not be separate but equal for blacks.83 Myrdal went further, calling for an ‘educational offensive against racial intolerance’ and the forging of an ‘American creed’, a civic culture with equal rights for all Americans, to overcome the contradiction between American liberal ideals and the reality of racial discrimination.84¶ Since then, great progress has been made. Blacks, and other minorities, in the United States are equal before the law and have equal political rights, and greater social and economic opportunities, than before. Education has no doubt played a significant role in reducing explicit racist behaviour or individual racism, that is, ‘overt acts by individuals, which cause death, injury or the violent destruction of property’.85 But discrimination is a problem beyond what most people would recognize as specific instances of racist behaviour. Institutional racism is a ‘less overt, far more subtle, less identifiable’ form of racism, which ‘originates in the operation of established and respected forces in society’.86 The concept of white privilege is the flip side of institutional racism and refers to the unearned benefits enjoyed as a result of being white.87 The concept is not intended to mean that every white person is ‘privileged’ or that no other form of privilege exists. It is intended to expose the existence of an implicit racial hierarchy in society and the political, economic and legal inequality which it reproduces.88 Attempts to attenuate white privilege are met with suspicion and opposition by those who benefit from it. For example, today a majority of white Americans (55 per cent) believe they are discriminated against, and nearly half of them (26 per cent) attribute this to US ‘laws and government policies’.89 Whites who believe they face institutional racism are unlikely to see a difference between policies designed to reduce unmerited privileges and policies that reduce merited privileges. They are also unlikely to appreciate how restrictive the scope for affirmative action is. For example, in the case of university admissions policies, quotas have been unconstitutional since the 1978 Supreme Court decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. Many states even forbid the use of race in admissions procedures. Where states do permit the use of race, it may be used only as one criterion in promoting diversity, and only if all other methods fail, as laid down in the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Fisher v. University of Texas.¶ The political scientist and public intellectual Walter Russell Mead has explained the 2016 election outcome as a ‘Jacksonian revolt’ in which many ‘white Americans find themselves in a society that talks constantly about the importance of identity, that values ethnic authenticity, that offers economic benefits and social advantages based on identity—for everybody but them’.90 Another political scientist, Mark Lilla, proposes an end to identity politics as a way to secure broader support for liberal policies.91 I agree with Mead that identity politics cannot be unilateral, and I agree with Lilla that the American habit of categorizing individuals according to essentialist criteria is contrary to liberal principles. But I am not sure either of them would agree that there has been an essentialist identity politics in the United States, going back at least to the eighteenth century, constructed around the primacy of a white American identity of European Christian descent. Reactions against this unspoken identity politics lay beneath claims of institutional racism long before Trump gave voice to a ‘white America first’ policy at home.¶ College-educated white Americans are more likely to recognize the advantages attached to being white (47 per cent) than white Americans without college degrees (17 per cent).92 A possible reason for this is that higher education fosters liberal attitudes, and provides exposure to different ethnic groups, limiting blatant forms of racism.93 But even though college-educated whites are less inclined to vote for their privilege, and more prepared to see their privilege, there is plenty of room in the liberal playbook for race-based discrimination. There's a playbook in force that liberals are supposed to follow. The playbook prescribes responses to different forms of racism, and these responses tend to be outraged responses. When no colleague or friend is threatened by charges of racism, the playbook works. But the playbook can also be a trap leading to bad decisions because discriminatory practices often implicate someone's colleague, friend, family or wider community. The trap is especially pernicious in higher education, where people tend to overestimate their liberal inclinations, and where opportunities, support and intellectual attribution are largely network-based.94 It is therefore unsurprising that a higher percentage of college-educated blacks (55 per cent) say they have been disadvantaged by their race than non-college-educated blacks (29 per cent). An even higher percentage of all blacks (81 per cent) who at some point attended college say they were treated differently because of their race: perhaps an overlooked factor in the reasons why blacks are less likely to finish college.95¶ In addition to the different experiences and beliefs about race to which education gives rise, a partisan divide exists, with Republicans (43 per cent) more likely than Democrats (27 per cent) to say whites, rather than blacks, experience a lot of discrimination.96 Only 37 per cent of Republicans (against 76 per cent of Democrats) say racism is a problem.97 Attitudes towards blacks also extend to other groups. From the 2016 exit polls, we know that Trump voters were more likely to support a wall along the Mexican border (85 per cent) than Clinton voters (10 per cent), to support deportation of illegal immigrants (83 per cent vs 14 per cent) and view immigration as the most pressing problem for the country (64 per cent vs 33 per cent).98¶ Overall, the evidence presented in this article suggests not only that education and race were strong predictors of the 2016 presidential vote, but that racism was a contributing factor.¶ Summary and conclusion¶ Trump did not create angst about America's dominant position in the world, or about white America's dominant position vis-à-vis other ethnic groups, but he tapped into these two currents more unabashedly than any other presidential candidate in postwar history. This article deconstructs ‘America first’ into two components, an international component and a domestic component, which share common symptoms (lost greatness) and common remedies (redistribution).¶ In the first two sections of this article, I discussed the international component, and how ‘America first’ threatens to undermine the LIO. I showed how ‘America first’ reflects concerns about American decline and American overextension in three areas: the security, trade and monetary spheres. A common theme in this narrative is how the United States is being exploited by other countries, and how disengaging from the LIO presents a better path forward. In the security area, the world should no longer count on the US to act as global policeman or to tolerate unfair burden-sharing within security alliances. In trade, the US will no longer stand by as other countries free-ride on America's openness. In the monetary realm, the dollar's global role is not as good as gold. While Trump's views on the LIO are quite idiosyncratic, and have yet to be fully implemented, declinists and proponents of retrenchment share certain aspects of this outlook.¶ In opposition to this perspective, I have provided broad-based metrics demonstrating that the United States remains by a long way the leading state in the world today, and argued that it would be a lot worse off under alternatives to the LIO than it has been in the postwar era and is today. A counterfactual setting, where the United States does not provide international security, would be a more uncertain and more economically fragile one, with more limited commerce and investment. A United States of America in which the commercial and financial playing field, including the dollar's role, no longer spans the globe, but is domestically confined, will reduce US prosperity and geopolitical reach. Yet there is a growing sense, correctly identified by President Trump, that America's global engagement is not benefiting all Americans.