Richard Haass has been at the forefront of US foreign affairs for more than 30 years. He was a close adviser to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and served in key positions coordinating the Northern Ireland peace process and US policy in Afghanistan. He speaks to the IBA’s US Correspondent, Michael Goldhaber, about the fault lines in international relations and America’s role in the world order.

Michael Goldhaber: In assessing global affairs today, you’ve quoted the poet WB Yeats when he described the state of the world after the First World War. Yeats wrote: ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.’ Is that a model for our times?

Richard Haass: It was written a hundred years ago, but I think it’s a pretty good model for our times. In the recent elections for the European Parliament, traditional parties associated with the centre, which had dominated European politics for a long time, were weakened, and smaller parties more to the left or the right did better. In the US, in the Democratic Party, you see strong voices on the political left. We’ll see how that plays out. And the Republican Party now essentially moves away from the centre on any number of issues. Even though a plurality of Americans show up as independents, the truth is it’s harder and harder to secure a governing centre. What we see is a much more polarised, divided electorate. We see that manifested in Congress. What we’ve essentially seen is a hollowing out of the centre. There’s all sorts of reasons to account for it – from social media, to narrowcasting rather than broadcasting on platforms like cable television, to how we raise money, to the weakening of political parties.

MG: You’ve observed that the real danger may arrive when we see a coalition between right-wing cultural populism and left-wing economic populism, the way perhaps we’re now seeing in Italy. That could be a very potent combination.

RH: We’re seeing it in Italy, and that’s not an attractive model. I think the problems it will cause for Italy and Europe could be considerable. One could imagine a version of it in France if at some point the yellow vests movement and the former National Front find a way to work together. It’s hard to say exactly who’s who nowadays. And in the US, we’re seeing elements of left and right agree on certain issues. On trade, for example, it’s hard to see differences between the Trump administration and some of the people running for the Democratic nomination. We have to be wary that this kind of anti-establishment mood could invite some strange bedfellows. They may not always agree on what it is they’re for, but they could agree on what it is they’re against. The problem with the politics of agreeing on what you’re against is you tend to disrupt before you come to an agreement on what to replace it with.

MG: You’ve been saying since the last years of the Obama administration that the liberal postwar order is in decline. What do you base your view on?

RH: There are lots of reasons to be concerned by the trend lines in international relations. One is the revival of great power. Competition frictions are potentially worse. US–Chinese and US–Russian relations are far rougher than they were just a few years ago. What Russia did in Ukraine, with the re-emergence of the acquisition of territory by force, is a violation of what many consider to be the most basic law or norm of international relations. There’s also Russian interference in American and European elections. The US is introducing all sorts of tariffs, which is a real threat to the global trading order. And America has now come out of any number of international agreements. Multilateralism is under pressure. Alliance relationships are under pressure. Institutions created after the Second World War are now a bit long in the tooth, and in many cases haven’t kept up with new power balances or new technologies. I could go on.

MG: You alluded to Russia conquering Crimea. Is the US position on these sorts of issues, like Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, sending a signal that UN Security Council resolutions aren’t worth the paper they’re written on?

RH: There’s been some good news on trade. A few months ago, global trade volume was still up. And even though the US declined to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the other 11 countries went ahead and did it. But what we’re seeing now is a much greater use of tariffs to accomplish all sorts of ends, some of which are trade-related, some of which aren’t. Some of these practices are wildly inconsistent with our trade obligations. So I’m more worried than I was because we’re beginning to set in motion steps that others now are emulating to some extent. Even though the world trade order is holding up – it’s robust and does reflect collective self-interest – some recent developments give pause for thought.

MG: Is President Trump as anti-democratic as some of his critics say?

RH: He’s certainly anti-institution and doesn’t seem to have much time for multilateralism. He’s said things that I believe are inappropriate for the president of a democracy to say, in terms of his attacks on the independence of the judiciary and his comments about the media, calling them enemies of the people. He’s also been willing to overlook all sorts of transgressions by others in relation to human rights and democracy around the world.

RH: The President feels very strongly that the costs of American foreign policy over the decades are not justified and are much greater than the alleged benefits. I disagree about that, but so be it. In terms of trade, he feels the US has been taken advantage of regularly. On balance, I believe trading arrangements are not just of economic, but of strategic, interest. The US, our trading partners and allies have all benefitted. The fact that they’ve benefitted for the most part has not come at our expense. He and I have discussed both of these subjects. All I can say is he feels passionately about it: there’s no political opportunism on these issues. I want to mention something on lack of conviction. A lot of people who ought to be standing up for traditional norms and policies are not. I see it in Congress. There are people who claim to be conservatives who aren’t acting as conservatives. They seem to be putting politics ahead of principle. There are green shoots [suggesting] a degree of pushback against some of the administration’s policies, but so far they’re the exceptions that prove the rule.

MG: How do you think the US courts are performing to check executive power and protect democracy?

MG: And do you foresee the US Supreme Court soon being asked to mediate the clash between the executive branch and the legislative branch – and the executive encroaching on legislative power?

RH: If history is any guide, they’re going to be extremely careful to avoid that. My sense is, in many cases, they’re going to say this is a political matter, not a legal matter. Those who are hoping or expecting the courts to be the arbiter, to resolve a lot of the frictions in our democracy right now, are likely to be disappointed. Either because of the political views of certain people sitting in the courts, or their views on where they ought not to go, the courts are going to push it back to the politicians and say, ‘you were elected, you solve it’.