An Interview with Sumantra Maitra
Contributed by Richard Y. Rodgers
Sumantra Maitra is the Director of Research and Outreach at the American Ideas Institute, a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America, and a senior editor at The American Conservative. He is also a senior contributor to The Federalist, and an elected Associate Fellow at the Royal Historical Society, London. Maitra coined the doctrine of “Dormant NATO”, chaired the National Conservative Conference foreign policy panel in London in 2023, and is a frequent contributor to Fox and Friends as a foreign policy analyst.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
SALIENT: NATO has expanded significantly since the Cold War, and there are debates about whether it has overextended itself. Do you think NATO enlargement has made Europe more secure or more unstable?
MAITRA: I think it has made Europe less secure. It has extended American interest and capabilities to the point where it shouldn't be. The idea that Europe would be peaceful and whole on its own is ahistorical. One of the things Europe did well in the past was maintaining a balance of power, but because we have tried to institutionalize peace on the continent through the European Union and NATO, there is now a disjointed set of interests among various regions and countries. As a result, the U.S. has to be there to promote hegemonic peace, which is obviously unsustainable in the long run. Western Europeans will not spend more on defense as long as the U.S. is present. I don't think it's in the U.S. interest to go along with every single aspiration of Eastern European nations.
NATO as an alliance is fine, as long as it remains detached and the U.S. plays the role of an offshore balancer. The U.S. should not provide extended deterrence in Europe.
SALIENT: Should the U.S. continue to be the primary security guarantor of Europe, or should European nations take more responsibility for their own defense?
MAITRA: If the U.S. continues to be the primary security guarantor of Europe, the better question is: what kind of security guarantee are we envisioning? The U.S. will remain the preeminent power of the Western Hemisphere. It will be aligned with most European states in a treaty alliance because the NATO Treaty cannot be abrogated without the Senate. That being said, can the U.S. cut down on its troop presence in Europe? Absolutely. That is a presidential prerogative. The president can bypass Congress and reduce troop levels. We've done it before. There is already a precedent for this.
For the foreseeable future, the U.S. will remain associated with the European continent. It will act as an offshore balancer and as a provider of security of last resort. However, America's core interest is to ensure that Europe remains disunited. A united Europe under a single flag, hegemony, or army could be antagonistic to American interests. As long as Europe remains divided—whether through external deterrence or internal limitations on the European Union's ambitions—the U.S. can tolerate its current level of involvement.
SALIENT: European conservatism tends to be more nationalist and less tied to classical liberalism than its American counterpart. Should the U.S. right take cues from European political movements?
MAITRA: The American conservative movement can never be a European-style conservative movement because Europe has a very different history. European conservatism is rooted in throne-and-altar traditions. In some cases, this later evolved into blood-and-soil nationalism. All of these are fundamentally different from how America was built as a nation.
America has always been more cosmopolitan and inclusive in its national identity. One of the first acts of religion and education in the American colonies was the Old Deluder Satan Act in Massachusetts in the 17th century. It was opposed not just by random individuals but by other Christian denominations.
The moment you try to impose a European-style blood-and-soil conservatism in America, or establish a single national church, or enthrone a single ruler, things get complicated because of the country's scale and diversity. However, like every nation-state, America does need a binding factor. There must be a unifying message. American conservatives—whether populist, neoconservative, or traditionalists—need a common cause that ties the country together.
A society cannot be purely individualistic. Classical liberalism, taken to its logical extreme, reduces individuals to atomized beings, which is unsustainable. However, should that binding factor be ethnicity, race, or religion? That’s complicated because there is no single unifying factor across all these categories. What is possible, though, is a form of civic nationalism. The United States can be a nation-state in its own right, where everyone who lives in the country is loyal to the U.S. and its interests, not to any foreign land.
One final point on this, because it’s important: every movement that becomes too extreme ends up losing influence. This applies to ISIS, conservatism, liberalism—any ideology. The moment a movement becomes too puritanical, it alienates people and loses support. The “New Right" in America should avoid this trap. It should not become overly puritanical about any single identity factor—whether racial, ethnic, or religious. Instead, it needs a unifying message that brings more people together under a common creed.
SALIENT: Greenland has become an area of increasing strategic interest due to its location and resources. How should the U.S. approach Greenland from a national security perspective? Should the U.S. pursue stronger economic and diplomatic ties with Greenland, or even revisit the idea of purchasing it from Denmark?
MAITRA: Greenland is of extreme strategic importance to the United States. Whether that importance justifies conquest or annexation is another question. Personally, I don’t think we need to annex Greenland to get what we want.
There are other options. We could establish a Compact of Free Association (COFA), similar to what we have with the Virgin Islands or the Marshall Islands. Greenland could become a U.S. territory like Puerto Rico, or we could create a special tripartite treaty with Denmark and Greenland. That agreement could grant us expanded basing, mining, and military rights, as well as settlement rights.
Basing and mining rights are easy for the U.S. to secure. If we demand them, Denmark would likely agree. The key issue is settlement—whether Americans can move to Greenland to live and work. That is something we could negotiate through treaty agreements rather than outright annexation. But is Greenland important to U.S. interests? Absolutely. It is far more strategically significant than Ukraine or the Middle East.
SALIENT: The post-Cold War liberal international order seems to be weakening. Is this an inevitable decline, or could it be salvaged?
MAITRA: I think hegemony is unsustainable in the long run. You cannot be a global hegemon. As Kenneth Waltz once said, if you want to have a global government, you're going to have a global civil war. That is pretty much what happened. The U.S. tried to be a global hegemon and had to do policing work in every part of the world. That led to a relative decline in power.
I don’t think that’s smart or sustainable because of structural realities. Empires and hegemons rise and fall. The question is what happens and how you marshal the relative power you have. The U.S. will still be the preponderant power for the foreseeable future. Economically, aside from China, there is no rival. The U.S. also has more allies than any other power.
We are entering a new age of technological revolution, and winning that competition—whether in AI, hypersonics, or drones—will be key. But I think the smart strategy is not to pursue global hegemony again. That is a structural problem for the U.S. Rival powers will grow if you overextend. Empires don’t always fall because of war; they collapse due to insolvency and overextension. The U.S. should avoid imperial overstretch and consolidate what it has.
SALIENT: Is the U.S. prepared for a world in which it is no longer the undisputed hegemon?
MAITRA: The last 30 years have been unipolar, but even before that, there was competition—bipolarity with the Soviet Union or China, and multipolarity at other points. The U.S. has historically operated in either a bipolar or multipolar system. Returning to that is muscle memory. It shouldn’t be that difficult, though there will be growing pains.
Two generations of bureaucrats, academics, and policymakers have grown up under unipolarity. That’s all they know. Their peers in universities speak the same language. Shifting from that and creating a new elite more comfortable with multipolarity is the key challenge. There are good signs for the future.
Students, for example, are a product of a different world. You weren’t there in 1993 or even 2001. You already understand that the world has changed, and it’s easier for you to adapt than for someone who is 65 and sees the last 30 years as the model for governance and American hegemony. The new generations are smarter, more prudent, and their experience of the world is different. All you have to do is look back at history and see how the U.S. operated in previous eras. It’s just muscle memory.
SALIENT: What is the future of conservatism?
MAITRA: I think the question is, what are you planning to conserve? The future of reaction is very prominent. We are living through a reactionary era, which is different from conservatism. Conservatism, in a Burkeian way, is about keeping what we have and maintaining the status quo. But that isn’t going to happen because the status quo is not salvageable.
If conservatives today say we need to maintain what has existed for the last 25 years, they will fail. The future of reaction, on the other hand, is strong. As I mentioned before, if it is a unifying message—one that brings people together with an optimistic vision—then it has potential. A friend of mine once described President Trump’s foreign policy as a mix of the “Monroe Doctrine and Mars.” If that’s what happens, that’s great. Focus on your own hemisphere. Focus on your own people. Lead in the technological revolution. Colonize Mars. These are optimistic messages that can unite the country, create jobs, and lead to a bright future.
But if it becomes a matter of internecine rivalries, it will fail—just like Marxism did. Marxism had a single ethos, but it splintered into factions, each side believing the other wasn’t pure enough. They lost. The same thing will happen to conservatism if it becomes too puritanical.
This is the job of the elite. The Ivy League, like the British Russell Group universities, produces leaders. There will always be an elite in the world. Populism doesn’t mean everyone is equal. Some will lead, and others will follow. That will never change. The question is whether those who lead will do so optimistically, working toward a bright future, or whether they will divide their own followers. That is the key issue.