Whatever we might make of the consequences, that phrase turned out to be an apt summary of his first term in office. Will it hold true for his second term as well?
Broadly, yes. His utterances and appointments suggest a reinvigorated confrontation of China, a new outreach toward Russia, leaving Western Europe in consternation and placing India in a fairly good position.
However, whether or not Trump’s geopolitical orientation makes America great again from a domestic perspective, its international standing will likely continue to decline.
Double standards are stock-in-trade in realpolitik, but most people find it hard to accept two contradictory principles simultaneously.
For countries that do not have a direct stake in the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts, the Joe Biden administration’s positions on these two wars exposed the hollowness of the US claim that it seeks a rules-based international order.
The recent surge in interest in Brics, perhaps the most illogical international grouping ever created, demonstrates many countries’ desire for non-American, non-Western options.
It will be extremely hard for the US to regain the moral high ground and epistemological dominance that it enjoyed for decades and that reduced the costs of its diplomacy. Trump will probably not even try.
The US will have to deal with friction in its international dealings. This means more resistance, more heat and more wear and tear. Lubrication can help but can’t avoid friction completely.
Back to the question of how a second Trump administration will deal with China. It is reasonable to expect that the US will play hardball on trade. Similarly, members of his foreign policy team say they want to deter China—especially from invading Taiwan—using military strength.
This will be the baseline of Washington’s approach, but there are reasons to expect that its actual positions will diverge from it.
That’s because even in an administration personally dominated by Trump, foreign policy is an outcome of complex interactions among various actors, interests and circumstances.
Now he has declared himself strongly in favour of tariffs and will be inclined to pursue the trade war with China he initiated during his previous term. There are notable economic hawks in his team.
But there is also Elon Musk, who might not see economic ties the same way as Washington’s trade warriors. Wall Street is not a great fan of this trade war either. Finally, Beijing in 2024 is far more prepared for a geo-economic confrontation with Washington than it was five years ago.
Trump’s other policies might limit the extent to which the US wins international support. He has threatened Western Europe with a trifecta: reneging on climate deals, walking away from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) and warming up to Russia.
A standoff with Mexico is on the cards over immigration. Brazil under Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has made liberal democracy and environmental protection important priorities. Trump doesn’t seem to care much about either.
Japan and South Korea will be concerned if Washington tries to accommodate North Korea. South East Asian countries see tariffs as a serious threat to their prosperity. Malaysia and Indonesia already see the US as complicit in the Israeli military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon.
Arab leaders, once favourably inclined towards the US-promoted Abraham Accords, can’t move on that front until the Palestinian issue is settled. Right-wing Israeli leaders and their counterparts in Washington have their own ideas on what that settlement would look like.
This means countries around the world are looking for self-sufficiency, new alignment options or better ties with China. Quite frequently, all of these. Only the biggest economies have the luxury of pursuing self-sufficiency, although none can achieve it.
Most countries have to decide between entering plurilateral arrangements that balance US and China, or jumping onto Beijing’s bandwagon. For many countries in Eastern Europe, Africa, South America, South East Asia and the Pacific, China will look a lot more attractive, not least because America’s shine is dimming fast.
The Economist notes that America’s Trump turn is not new, but “a return to an old idea of America. Before the fight against fascism convinced [Franklin D. Roosevelt] that it was in his country’s interest to help bring order and prosperity to the world, the country was hostile towards immigration, scornful of trade and sceptical of foreign entanglements. In the 1920s and 1930s that led to dark times. It could do so again.”
India, as external affairs minister S. Jaishankar put it, is not nervous about the US under Trump. We start with reasonably good stores of diplomatic and political capital between the Narendra Modi and Trump governments.
This should allow us to withstand the ordinary pulls and pushes of world affairs. The risk, though, is that these pulls and pushes may become extraordinary.
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