Donald Trump will upend 80 years of American foreign policy

Jan 16th 2025

Donald Trump will upend 80 years of American foreign policy — The Economist

Read time: 5 minutes

DONALD TRUMP’S critics have often accused him of buffoonery and isolationism. Yet even before taking office on January 20th he has shown how much those words fall short of what his second term is likely to bring. As the inauguration approaches, he has helped secure a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza. Busting taboos, he has bid for control over Greenland, with its minerals and strategic position in the Arctic. Mr Trump’s second term will not only be more disruptive than his first; it will also supplant a vision of foreign policy that has dominated America since the second world war.

For decades American leaders have argued that their power comes with the responsibility to be the indispensable defender of a world made more stable and benign by democracy, settled borders and universal values. Mr Trump will ditch the values and focus on amassing and exploiting power. His approach will be tested and defined in three conflicts: the Middle East, Ukraine and America’s cold war with China. Each shows how Mr Trump is impelled to break with recent decades: in his unorthodox methods, his accumulation and opportunistic use of influence, and his belief that power alone creates peace.

The Middle East illustrates his talent for unpredictability. The Israelis and Palestinians eventually agreed to a deal over Gaza because he created a deadline by threatening that “all hell would break loose” if they failed. He will need to keep pressing them if the deal is to progress to its later phases. Not since Richard Nixon has a president looked to behaving like a “madman” as a source of advantage.

Caprice is bolstered by pragmatism. Unlike most peacemakers, Mr Trump is blithely uninterested in the tortured history of the Middle East. The Abraham accords, signed in his first term, suggest that he will use the hostage release to promote a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which he sees as the route to prosperity—and a Nobel peace prize. Iran’s allies have been crushed in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. It may be ready to deal, too.

Yet the home of the three monotheistic religions will be a stern test of whether people really are willing to put aside their beliefs and their grievances for a shot at prosperity. Time and again, extremists on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides have vetoed peace plans by using violence to discredit the pragmatic centre. The Israeli right wants to annex Palestinian land. Iran is teetering between engagement with America and dashing for a nuclear bomb. What if the zealots and the mullahs get in Mr Trump’s way?

His answer will be to increase pressure using sanctions or the threat of force, or to walk away. That is also the choice he faces in Ukraine, where he has pledged to stop the fighting. Because he has more leverage over America’s allies than Vladimir Putin, the easier route is to walk away by ending support and so force concessions on the government in Kyiv—especially if, as his critics fear, he is flattered when Mr Putin deals with him as one alpha male to another. But that would undermine his other goals. Abandonment would court comparisons to Mr Biden and his hapless departure from Afghanistan. Mindful of comparisons with Taiwan, China might conclude he is a pushover. He may yet decide that being seen as ready to back Ukraine will strengthen his hand against Mr Putin.

An opportunistic use of power has some benefits. Mr Trump will continue to badger NATO members to spend more defending themselves against Russia, which is good. But it also has costs. NATO can probably survive Mr Trump’s threats to walk out, squabble over trade, support insurgent national conservative parties and bully Denmark over Greenland’s sovereignty. However, alliances thrive on trust. Putin-sympathising national conservatives will act as a poison. Allowing for its size, Denmark lost as many soldiers in Afghanistan as America did. Being arm-wrestled over Greenland is the sort of treatment that casts America as a threat, not a protector.

Despots will take comfort from a retreat from universal values. If Mr Trump asserts a sphere of American influence that embraces Canada, Greenland and Panama, they will claim it as an endorsement of their own principle that international relations have in reality always been a trial of strength—handy when Russia covets Georgia or China claims the South China Sea. If Mr Trump scorns institutions like the UN, which embody universal values, China and Russia will dominate them instead, and exploit them as conduits for their own interests.

The Trump camp argues that what counts is America’s strength, and that this will lead to peace with China. They warn of the need to prevent a third world war, observing that Xi Jinping wants to be capable of taking Taiwan by force by 2027. China is also rapidly building nuclear weapons and is systematically mastering strategic technologies. America, they say, needs to re-establish deterrence; and the panoply of “madman” diplomacy, pragmatism and the accumulation of economic and military strength is the way to do it.

Alas, when it comes to Taiwan, there is a contradiction. If the source of America’s strength is to be ruthlessly pragmatic about values, tough with allies and open to deals with opponents, then those are exactly the conditions for Mr Trump to trade Taiwan to China. Although the many China hawks in his administration would fight that, the very possibility points to a weakness at the heart of Mr Trump’s approach.

Pax Trumpiana

When the use of power is untethered by values, the result can be chaos on a global scale. If ultra-loyal, out-of-their-depth would-be disruptors like Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard are confirmed to head the Pentagon and intelligence, the chaos will spread on the inside, too. Mr Trump is ill-suited to separate his own interests from his country’s, especially if his and his associates’ money is at stake, as Elon Musk’s will be in China. By turning away from the values that made postwar America, Mr Trump will be surrendering the single greatest strength that his despotic opponents do not possess. ■