A series of bruising American interventions, courtesy of the Trump-Vance White House, have shaken an already fragile world order. America has found ways to anger and alienate nearly every one of its long standing allies, from a Canadian tariff war, to suspending foreign aid, to hostile posturing in Europe, to a quixotic bid to snap up Greenland. The combination of antagonistic rhetoric and policy, aimed at erstwhile friends, and apparent openness to make deals with strategic rivals has caused understandable outrage and concern. All this has caused people to question whether America is withdrawing from the world stage, and plunging the world into a new, more vicious and lawless international game of great power politics.
So should we fear the worst? Yes and no. America’s recent actions are both more and less consequential than they appear.
There are clear and basic limits to what even a US president can do
Trump’s administration is testing the limits of its power, but it is not acting especially rationally, nor are its actions as consequential as they may appear. Trump’s pressuring of Ukraine may have strengthened Putin’s hand, but it has also prompted a massive drive towards European rearmament. Withdrawing USAID may cause human suffering, but it is not about to tip over the world order in the next few years. As radical as the words and deeds of this administration may be overseas, they are ultimately performed for a domestic audience.Trump is, in fact, a far weaker figure than he seems. If his tariff policies cause an economic downturn, he may quickly lose the support of his party in congress. Ultimately, Trump has an expiration date — he is serving his last term, and even if he could or would try and push the limits of the US constitution, he will be a man in his 80s by the next election. The next generation of Republicans, even if they end up remaining a populist movement, will not necessarily continue with the current politicians, and they may of course be out of power for some time
There are clear and basic limits to what even a US president can do, constrained by the American constitution, a powerful foreign policy establishment, and the straitjacket that is America’s long term strategic logic. Fears that one man, or even one political movement are going to drag the whole world into chaos are probably excessive — especially when that movement is often incoherent and ineffectual.
But fears of disorder are not necessarily unfounded — they may just be focused on the wrong thing. Trump is assumed, by centrist critics, to be an interruption of an otherwise sensible and friendly American role in the liberal world order. But as I have written before, America’s role in the post-Cold War world is far from obviously benign, stabilising or rational. Yet Trump is himself a reaction to George W. Bush, a Republican president who tore up that liberal rulebook utterly. He ignored international institutions, pushed NATO eastwards, authorised torture, assassination and mass surveillance, and unleashed catastrophic conflicts across the Middle East. For a younger generation of conservatives, ruthless national self-interest felt a necessary antidote to the horrors of neoconservative humanitarian crusading.
America has a long term pattern of acting against the interests of Britain, and its European allies
European leaders have been far harder on Trump than they were on Bush — indeed, much of Europe’s elite, including Britain’s own Tony Blair, cheered him on. Yet from the migrant crisis to the Ukraine conflict, the consequences of an interventionist America have been far more severe for Europe, thus far, than those of America First. As I’ve also previously written, America has a long term pattern of acting against the interests of Britain, and its European allies. Trump has merely given an explicit voice to what America has long thought and done, stripping the velvet glove off of the iron fist of US foreign policy. In an elite world increasingly governed by performance and propaganda, Trump is uniquely offensive, often more for what he uncomfortably reveals rather than what he actually (and ineptly) does.
Without the cohering logic of the Cold War, America’s strategic aims have become more free floating, its military and economic power more opportunistic, its relationship with its allies more transactional. These are not inventions of Trump, or even the US right. Clinton and Biden casually undermined Britain in Northern Ireland, and every American president has used the battering ram of American hegemony to force open markets and societies to American capitalism. Silicon Valley has its left and right, but its interests are consistent, and consistently upheld by whoever happens to be in the White House.
Trump has done Britain and Europe a favour. He has forced us to attempt to stand on our own two feet, and confront the fact that the USA is not the Gandalf flying on the back of a bald eagle, on his way to save the West, but is instead — like Saruman in his multicoloured cloak — an ever shifting, mercurial and self-serving power. America has never been a trustworthy ally, and is only going to get less so, regardless of Trump.
