Luke Ford

Two academics write this op/ed in the New York Times against Trump’s foreign policy:

To resist neo-royalism the first step is to “name the reality,” as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned at Davos. He noted that those who “compete with each other to be the most accommodating. This is not sovereignty. It’s the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.”

Mr. Carney is right. A neoroyalist world is not inevitable. Countries — including America’s closest partners — now need to offer a coherent alternative, mobilizing their own sizable collective resources to counter Mr. Trump and support a system based on fair rules and predictable diplomacy.

A potential deal between the European Union and the countries of the South American trade bloc Mercosur would be a good start, creating one of the largest free trade zones in the world and a bulwark against U.S. economic bullying. The European Union should continue to accelerate trade integration in Asia and Africa, offering a clear alternative to a system based on tithing and threats. And European nations must be willing to make a coordinated financial injection into their defense industries and reduce dependence on the United States.

Domestically, businesspeople must understand that the short-term payoff of patronage is less valuable than the long-term value of the stable rule of law. Major U.S. oil companies are not diving headfirst back into Venezuelan oil. Capital does not want to end up in the same position as an oligarch in Mr. Putin’s Russia, constantly fearing arbitrary punishment and open windows.

A neoroyalist world is not good for the United States, and it is not good for humanity. Its primary goal is extraction for the few rather than safety or prosperity for the many.

Stacie Goddard is a professor of political science at Wellesley College and the author of “When Right Makes Might: Rising Powers and World Order.” Abraham L. Newman is a professor of international affairs at Georgetown and an author, with Henry Farrell, of “Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy.”

Gemini says: Alliance Theory suggests that Goddard and Newman are not just analyzing a shift in foreign policy; they are actively performing coalition maintenance for the displaced professional-managerial class (PMC). Their op-ed serves as a “call to arms” for an alliance of credentialed elites—academics, career bureaucrats, and mainstream media (MSM) allies—to defend their institutional territory against a rival “neoroyalist” coalition.

1. The Op-Ed as an Alliance Hub

Mainstream media outlets like the New York Times do not just report on foreign policy; they function as alliance hubs. They provide the shared vocabulary—in this case, “neoroyalism” and “extraction”—that allows disparate members of the PMC to coordinate their resistance.

Status Preservation: The authors signal to fellow experts that their social closure is under threat. In a world of “royal whims,” the PhD and the diplomat lose their monopoly on truth and strategy.

Signaling Reliability: By publishing in the Times, the authors establish themselves as reliable members of the “rules-based” alliance. They are not merely seeking abstract correctness; they are reinforcing the friendship-enemy distinction between the “credentialed expert” and the “unqualified courtier.”

2. Managerial Moralism and Selective Skepticism

Alliance Theory predicts that disagreements will be framed as moral failures to simplify coalition enforcement.

Categorical Language: The authors describe Trump’s policy as “irrational” and “dangerous.” This shifts the debate from a policy tradeoff (e.g., “Is this deal good for America?”) to a moral imperative (e.g., “We must stop this extraction”).

The Sourcing Filter: Note the authors’ selective skepticism. They treat claims by in-group institutions—like Wellesley, Georgetown, and the “rules-based” bureaucracy—as presumptively credible. Conversely, they treat the actions of the “court clique” (e.g., Steve Witkoff or Elon Musk) as inherently suspicious, even when they involve similar material interests as previous administrations.

3. Narrative Compression and the “Disguised” Past

The authors use narrative compression to collapse complex history into a simple story of “rules vs. chaos.”

Sanitizing the Old Guard: To keep the PMC alliance “clean,” the authors ignore the “awful” outcomes of the previous era, such as the invasion of Iraq. Under Alliance Theory, mentioning these failures would fracture the coalition by reminding members of its internal rot.

Accountability Asymmetry: When the old bureaucracy failed in Afghanistan, it was treated as a “policy error.” When the new “clique” acts in Venezuela, it is framed as “systemic rot” and “neoroyalism.”

4. The Exit of Nuance

Alliance Theory explains why the op-ed lacks intellectual breadth regarding the potential benefits of transactional realism. Because populism represents an existential threat to the PMC, the authors move from persuasion to containment.

Nuance as a Liability: Admitting that a “royal” transaction might occasionally yield a national benefit would legitimize the “out-group.” For an alliance member, such ambiguity is a liability that risks a “reputational downgrade.”

The authors are behaving exactly as humans in high-status institutions do: they are defending their guild’s moral capital and power. They are not “lying”; they are being disciplined alliance actors.

When you look at this through the lens of status closure, the authors are fighting for the survival of their own guild. By framing the current administration as a return to the 16th century, Goddard and Newman use their “moral capital” to designate the new elite as illegitimate.

In sociology, this is a classic move to protect a professional domain. The authors belong to the professional-managerial class (PMC), a group that derives its power not from land or capital, but from the control of specialized knowledge and the “rules” of the game.

For decades, the foreign policy establishment operated like a high-status guild. To enter, you needed specific credentials from elite universities and a mastery of “rules-based” jargon. This created a form of status closure: only those with the right “cultural capital” could participate in shaping global order.

Credentialed Authority: The authors represent the “experts” whose influence vanishes in a neoroyalist system. If international relations become personal transactions between a “king” and his “court,” the PhDs and career diplomats who manage complex treaties become irrelevant.

The Loss of Institutional Rents: In the old system, the professional class collected “rents” on their expertise. They were the essential intermediaries. In the new system, they are bypassed by real estate magnates and family members. This isn’t just a policy disagreement; it is a direct threat to their professional livelihoods.

The authors use “neoroyalism” as a pejorative to claim that the new elite lacks the moral standing to lead. By contrast, they position the previous “rules-based order” as a project for the “common good.”

Virtue Hoarding: This rhetoric can be seen as “virtue hoarding.” By labeling the new system as purely “extractive,” they imply that their own system was purely “principled.” This allows them to maintain their status as the moral arbiters of international behavior.

Disguising Elite Self-Interest: Critics argue that the “rules” the authors want to preserve were always designed to favor the very class the authors belong to. The “Liberal International Order” provided stable employment and global prestige for Western academics and bureaucrats, even as it was often ignored when it conflicted with actual U.S. power.

The article functions as a coordination signal for their “tribe.” It provides a narrative that allows the displaced elite to feel morally superior while they lose actual power. By calling for a “bulwark” and naming the “reality,” they are attempting to rally other members of the global professional class—such as those at Davos or in the European bureaucracy—to stick together and wait out the “usurpers.”

In short, the authors are not just analyzing a shift in policy; they are trying to protect the “social closure” of their profession. They want to ensure that the world remains a place where people like them—credentialed, articulate, and “rule-abiding”—remain the dominant players.

Do the authors of the NYT op/ed reckon with how awful for America the blob has been (invading and occupying Afghanistan, Iraq)? No.

Goddard and Newman avoid a direct reckoning with the failures of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Their focus is almost entirely on the transition from a “rules-based order” to what they call “neoroyalism.” In this way, they treat the pre-2016 era as a period of “staid bureaucracies” and predictable diplomacy, which critics argue is a form of historical amnesia.

The authors use rhetoric to disguise the awful aspects of the former dominant players’ actions. This silence serves several functions for the professional managerial class they represent:

The “Aberration” Defense: By framing the current “extraction” as a radical departure from the past, they implicitly frame the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan as well-intentioned policy errors or “aberrations” within a generally functional system. They focus on the process of how decisions are made (court clique vs. bureaucracy) rather than the outcomes of those decisions (peace vs. war).

Selective Nostalgia: The authors characterize the previous order as being “governed by rules” and “international law.” To mention that the United States frequently bypassed international law to invade sovereign nations would undermine their core argument that the “rules” were the defining feature of the old system.

Virtue Signaling to the Guild: The intended audience for this op-ed—the global elite at Davos or in academic circles—shares a collective interest in rehabilitating the image of the “liberal order.” Reckoning with the human and financial costs of the “forever wars” would require acknowledging that the “expert-led” system they champion was responsible for those catastrophes.

From the perspective of Alliance Theory, the authors’ incentive is to preserve the “moral capital” of their class. If they admitted that the “rules-based” bureaucrats were just as capable of extraction and violence as the “neoroyalist” court, they would lose their primary argument for why their class should be restored to power.

Alliance Theory suggests that individuals and groups form partnerships not out of a shared sense of morality, but to increase their power and protect their position against rivals. When applied to Goddard and Newman, this theory indicates their incentives are deeply tied to the survival of the professional managerial class. They represent a specific alliance of academic, bureaucratic, and diplomatic elites whose status depends on a system of rules they are uniquely qualified to navigate.

In this framework, the authors are not neutral observers. They are active participants in a struggle for social closure. By labeling the current administration as neoroyalist, they attempt to delegitimize a rival elite—the court clique—that seeks to bypass the traditional credentials and expertise the authors value. Their rhetoric serves to defend the institutional territory of the foreign policy establishment.

Status Preservation: The rules-based order provides a high degree of status to professors at elite universities and career diplomats. A shift toward personal transactions and royal whims renders their specialized knowledge of international law and protocol obsolete.

The Credentialed Alliance: The authors act as spokespeople for an alliance of experts. By framing the current situation as a return to the 16th century, they signal to other global players—like the European Union or business leaders—that they should remain loyal to the old guard of technocrats rather than the new patronage network.

Signaling to the Tribe: The article serves as a coordination signal. It provides a shared vocabulary (neoroyalism, extraction, court clique) that helps the displaced elite maintain cohesion while they are out of power.

Alliance Theory would conclude that the authors’ primary incentive is to restore a system where their own social and professional capital is the dominant currency. They characterize the new system as a threat to humanity because it is, quite literally, a threat to their specific way of life and influence.

When the authors suggest that foreign leaders or businesspeople are naive, they are engaging in a high-stakes competition for legitimacy. By your reading, the “naivety” they identify in others is actually a failure to adhere to the professional class’s preferred reality.

If the world accepts that foreign policy is now a series of personal transactions between a sovereign and his court, the moral and intellectual authority of the academic and bureaucratic guilds evaporates. Their specialized knowledge of treaties, international law, and diplomatic norms becomes a legacy technology, much like the skills of a calligrapher in the age of the printing press.

This struggle for status and power manifests in several ways:

The Protection of Intangible Assets: For professors and high-level bureaucrats, “moral capital” is a primary asset. It allows them to gatekeep who is considered a “serious person” in global affairs. By labeling the new system neoroyalist, they attempt to devalue the “court clique’s” social standing and render their power morally bankrupt.

Closure against “Amateurs”: The authors express a visceral distaste for the fact that real estate magnates and family members now lead Ukraine peace negotiations. This is a classic guild reaction to outsiders who lack the proper credentials but have managed to seize the levers of influence.

The Rhetoric of “Common Good”: By framing the preservation of their class’s influence as a struggle for “humanity” and a “rules-based normal,” they disguise their own group’s self-interest. It is a more effective strategy to say the world is at risk than to say your specific job and social prestige are at risk.

Ultimately, the article is an attempt to reassert the dominance of a professional class that feels the floor dropping out from under it. They are calling for an alliance of the credentialed—urging European leaders and global CEOs to reject the “king” and return to the experts.

Goddard and Newman explicitly argue that their neoroyalist theory is a tool to unmask how private interests are now disguised as national policy. However, critics the authors may be practicing their own form of rhetorical disguise by romanticizing the “Liberal International Order” (LIO) that preceded the current moment.

The authors contend that the current administration has replaced a rational-legal bureaucracy with a “court clique.” They argue that the shift is not just stylistic but structural:

From Public Goods to Private Rents: In their academic work, they explain that while the previous order at least theoretically provided “public goods” (like freedom of navigation or stable currency), the neoroyalist order provides “private goods” to loyalists.

The Tithing System: They describe modern trade policy as a protection racket. For example, they frame Nvidia’s agreement to share 15 percent of revenue with the government in exchange for market access not as a strategic victory, but as a “tithe” to the sovereign’s clique.

Extraction over Strategy: They argue that moves like the Venezuela intervention are less about regional stability and more about redirecting oil wealth to specific campaign donors and family-linked firms.

The authors’ own rhetoric relies on a “misty-eyed” view of the past, ignoring how the “rules-based order” served the self-interest of a different set of dominant players:

Elite Self-Preservation: Critics argue that the “rules” of the previous order were never neutral; they were written by and for Western powers to maintain their own dominance. By mourning the “death of diplomacy,” the authors may simply be defending the professional class of academics, bureaucrats, and “legacy” billionaires whose status depended on the old system.

Disguised Hegemony: Russian and Chinese officials have long argued—and some Western realists agree—that the “rules-based order” was always a cloak for American imperialism. From this perspective, Trump is merely making “naked” the power dynamics that were previously hidden behind the high-minded rhetoric of human rights and international law.

The “Mafia” Comparison: While the authors compare the current system to a protection racket, critics point out that the LIO also operated as a “unipolar” system where the U.S. frequently ignored rules (such as in Iraq or Vietnam) when they became inconvenient. The only difference, critics say, is that the old elite was better at using “virtue signaling” to hide their tracks.

In summary, while Goddard and Newman use the neoroyalist lens to expose the self-interest of the current inner circle, they are blind to—or actively disguising—the self-interest of the previous dominant establishment they represent.

The professional-managerial class (PMC) is not just witnessing a shift in power; they are experiencing an institutional eviction. When you apply Alliance Theory to groups like the American Bar Association (ABA) or the American Medical Association (AMA), their current rhetoric reveals a disciplined effort to reclaim the “expert-led” ground they have lost to the new “neoroyalist” coalition.

The Legal Establishment: Defending the Monopoly

The ABA is currently engaged in a high-stakes struggle to maintain its role as the primary gatekeeper of the legal profession. As state-level rivals and the executive branch challenge their authority, the ABA has pivoted to a defense of the “Rule of Law” as a proprietary brand.

Institutional Warfare: The Texas and Florida Supreme Courts have recently moved to strip the ABA of its accreditation monopoly, citing the organization’s political stances and DEI mandates. In response, the ABA has created a new “independent” Accreditation Council. This is a classic “Alliance Theory” move: reorganizing the internal structure to shield the guild’s most valuable asset—gatekeeping—from direct political fire.

The Litigious Alliance: The ABA has filed lawsuits against executive orders that it labels as “law firm intimidation.” By framing these orders as threats to the First Amendment, they attempt to rally the broader legal alliance (Big Law, law schools, and career DOJ lawyers) around a shared existential threat.

Credentialed Gatekeeping: Attorney General Pam Bondi recently eliminated the ABA’s role in vetting judicial nominees, labeling the process “partisan.” The ABA’s counter-move is to frame this as an “attack on the independence of the judiciary,” signaling to their alliance that only their credentialed vetting constitutes a “fair” process.

The Medical Establishment: Scope Creep and Process

The AMA and major medical journals are using “patient safety” as a rhetorical shield to defend their status against both the new administration and rival professional groups.

The “Scope Creep” Defense: The AMA’s top priority for 2026 is fighting “scope creep”—the push for nurse practitioners and pharmacists to expand their practice. By framing this as a threat to “physician-led, team-based care,” they are using moral capital to protect the high-status closure of the medical doctorate.

Navigating “MAHA”: The medical establishment is carefully managing its relationship with the new Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) framework. While groups like the American Heart Association (AHA) “welcome” new dietary guidelines, they simultaneously voice concern over recommendations that conflict with their established scientific authority (such as red meat and sodium limits). This allows them to remain “at the table” while signaling to their professional peers that they remain the ultimate arbiters of truth.

Procedural Resilience: Like the legal guild, associations are shifting toward “operationalizing AI” and “data-driven personalization.” They are embedding their expertise into technical tools and certification pathways that are harder for “amateur” political appointees to dismantle.

The PMC Playbook for 2026

Across these sectors, the “expert” alliance follows a predictable pattern of behavior:

Friend-Enemy Sorting: Anyone who challenges the guild’s credentialed authority is labeled “chaotic” or “unlawful.” Anyone who defends it is a champion of “democracy” and “professional independence.”

Status Closure via Complexity: By creating increasingly complex “governance frameworks” and “resilience toolkits,” these groups ensure that the “neoroyalist” court cannot function without hiring a credentialed expert to navigate the very systems the experts built.

Selective Accountability: The failures of the previous “expert-led” era (like the opioid crisis or legal justifications for “forever wars”) are treated as past aberrations. Current shifts are framed as systemic threats to humanity.

Ultimately, these groups are behaving like any other human coalition under stress. They are protecting their “rents”—the income and status they derive from being the mandatory intermediaries of modern life.

Elite universities are currently restructuring their internal systems and financial models to preserve their autonomy. This shift is a direct response to what they characterize as executive overreach and political intrusion. Using the “Alliance Theory” lens, these institutions are not just protecting education; they are building a “fortress of expertise” to ensure the professional-managerial class (PMC) retains control over the production of knowledge.

The Institutional Neutrality Pivot

Elite universities are increasingly adopting policies of institutional neutrality. While this is often presented as a commitment to free speech, it serves a strategic purpose in alliance maintenance. By refraining from institutional statements on contentious global events, university leaders aim to:

Reduce Surface Area for Attack: Neutrality removes a primary target used by the executive branch to justify funding cuts or tax hikes.

Deflect External Oversight: It allows administrations to argue that they are “apolitical” facilitators of debate, making it harder for government committees to demand ideological restructuring or the removal of specific faculty.

Financial Insulation and “Endowment Defense”

With billions of dollars in endowments under threat from proposed tax increases of up to 21 percent, elite schools are moving from a growth mindset to a defensive posture.

Lobbying as Alliance Work: Ivy League and other top-tier schools have doubled their spending on lobbying. This isn’t just about taxes; it is about reinforcing relationships with the legislative branch to counter the executive.

Redefining “Restricted Funds”: Universities are emphasizing that the majority of their endowment distributions are legally tied to specific donor intents, such as student aid or medical research. By framing these funds as legally untouchable, they create a “protection racket” against government attempts to seize or redistribute that wealth for federal projects.

Restructuring the Faculty Guild

The relationship between faculty and administration is being rewritten to protect the “core alliance” from political shifts.

The “Extraordinary Circumstances” Waiver: Institutions like the University of Washington and others are implementing automatic “tenure clock” extensions. These waivers are framed as responses to “extraordinary circumstances” caused by federal policy changes, effectively giving the guild more time to secure its members’ status while the political environment is volatile.

Teaching-Only Pathways: To counter legislative demands for “Americanism” and “Western Civilization” curricula, some boards are being pressured to create “teaching-only” tenure tracks. From an Alliance Theory perspective, this is a form of damage control. By creating a separate, state-monitored track for politically sensitive subjects, the university can keep its high-status research guilds insulated and autonomous.

The “Compact” and Legal Counter-Alliances

A group of nine major university leaders is reportedly negotiating a “Compact” for higher education. This effort seeks to create a new “social contract” that would codify institutional independence into law.

Preemptive Self-Regulation: By proposing their own standards for admissions and faculty hiring, these schools are attempting to “fail forward.” They are offering a slightly modified version of their own rules to prevent the executive branch from imposing much harsher ones.

Legal Defense Funds: Organizations like the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and university-specific legal networks have expanded “Faculty Legal Defense Funds.” These serve as a “first responder” system for faculty facing sanctions, ensuring that the guild has the legal firepower to fight the administration in court.

Universities are behaving as disciplined coalition actors. They are using their “moral capital” as the “defenders of truth” to justify the complex maneuvers required to keep their status, access, and financial power out of the hands of the “neoroyalist” court.

The pivot to “institutional neutrality” has not gone unnoticed by the federal government. In the eyes of the current administration, these pivots are not viewed as principled stances but as defensive maneuvers—legal and rhetorical cloaks used to hide a university’s true ideological and financial allegiances.

As a result, federal agencies are bypasssing the universities’ claims of neutrality by implementing aggressive transparency mandates. This is an attempt to strip away the institutional veil and force the “fortress of expertise” to reveal its internal mechanics to the “sovereign” and the public.

The Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS)

The Department of Education has effectively weaponized the annual reporting process (IPEDS) to peer inside the admissions black box. The new ACTS survey is a direct response to universities that claimed they were “neutral” while potentially using hidden proxies for race-based admissions.

Seven Years of Granular Data: Universities are no longer allowed to report just summary statistics. They must now provide anonymized, individual-level data for every applicant over a seven-year period, including race, sex, family income, and GPA quintiles.

Audit-Ready Reporting: This isn’t just a survey; it is a ledger. By requiring this level of detail, the government is creating a dataset that can be used for False Claims Act (FCA) investigations if a university’s actual patterns diverge from its “merit-based” public claims.

The Section 117 Foreign Funding Portal

The administration has also identified “neutrality” as a potential cover for foreign influence. On January 2, 2026, the Department of Education launched a new, state-of-the-art Section 117 reporting portal to end what they call the “secrecy surrounding foreign funds.”

Real-Time Visibility: The portal replaces a neglected Biden-era system and requires twice-yearly disclosures of gifts and contracts from foreign sources totaling $250,000 or more.

Public Inspection: For the first time, these disclosures are designed for “public inspection” through executive summary visualizations. This is a deliberate attempt to use transparency as a tool for “public shaming,” allowing citizens to see which “neutral” institutions are funded by rival foreign coalitions.

Research Security and National Security Vetting

Agencies like the NIH and NSF are shifting their focus from “scientific collaboration” to “research security.”

Annual Foreign Support Disclosures: Institutions must now annually disclose foreign support of $50,000 or more from “countries of concern.”

Visa and Attitude Vetting: New executive orders direct agencies to ensure that international students and researchers do not bear “hostile attitudes” toward U.S. principles. By turning researchers into subjects of ideological vetting, the government is directly challenging the university’s claim that its “intellectual marketplace” is independent of national loyalty.

The Administrative “List of Shame”

Finally, federal agencies are moving toward a model of reputational enforcement.

Transparency as Punishment: The administration has signaled the release of “lists of shame” identifying universities that have been the subject of administrative complaints regarding antisemitism or illegal DEI practices.

Materiality of Compliance: By making “compliance with civil rights laws” a material condition of federal grants, the government ensures that a university’s “neutrality” can be legally challenged as a form of fraudulent misrepresentation if it is found to be covering for discriminatory activities.

In the 2026 landscape, the “neutral” university is being treated as a suspected actor in a rival coalition. The government’s response is to demand total data transparency—tearing down the walls of the guild to see exactly who is paying for the research and who is being allowed through the gates.