Tim Marshall on how Trump’s renewed presidency accelerates the shift away from liberal internationalism
New eras rarely begin on a single date – an easily understandable, neat demarcation between the old order and the new. Usually, we move from one era into another over a series of events, years and ways of thinking. It’s no longer the post-Cold War era in which, after 1991, the USA was the only superpower. Then, untrammelled by meaningful opposition, it could oversee the global structures it had built after the Second World War, advance free trade and promote universal values.
No single event ruptured the old order – that faded as China rose, Russia reconstituted itself and, in a multipolar world, states could play the big powers off against each other. Simultaneously, globalisation was lifting many boats but sinking others (US steel companies for example) and mass migration was changing politics in the countries to which people were moving.
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The 2016 election of Donald Trump as US president was a sign that the era of liberal internationalism was ending. His replacement by Joe Biden in 2020 was only a speed bump in the direction of travel. In his second presidency, Trump has shifted into 2.0 gear and accelerated.
After the Second World War, the USA practised ‘strategic restraint’. Instead of returning to the isolationist principles it had pursued for 170 years, it used its power to build alliances and a stable international order. It was argued that having American troops in a ‘forward posture’ around the world made the USA safer, especially in the containment of Russia, to ensure that no- one power could dominate and so threaten America.
This was a version of ‘America First’ but within a ‘first among equals’ relationship based on consensus and shared values among democracies. Allies knew they weren’t really equals, but they were treated with respect and friendship. Simultaneously, Washington advanced the idea that American ideas about democracy, the rule of law and human rights were universal values and should be promoted globally. This conflation of US state policy with all of humanity wasn’t always practised during these decades, but conceptually it ran through foreign policy thinking.
It can be argued that, despite numerous localised wars, ‘strategic restraint’ helped to create what is sometimes called the ‘Long Peace’ – the eight decades in which the world’s major powers haven’t been engaged in a direct war with each other. The abandonment of restraint by the second Trump administration doesn’t necessarily mean we’re heading towards a major conflict, but it’s a sign that we’re in the new era.
Trump 2.0 rejects the post-Second World War policies. The new thinking believes America doesn’t need other countries to be successful for it to be successful, and
that a strong military and high tariffs will ensure prosperity. Regional security must be paid for via increased spending by regional countries, especially in Europe, as the USA focuses on the Pacific and China. MAGA supporters argue that if Russia can’t even take Kyiv, why are 350 million Americans subsidising 500 million Europeans to defend themselves against 140 million Russians?
The hierarchy of countries that were favoured as value-sharing friends is being dismantled. The administration argues that trade liberalisation has weakened America’s economy and, therefore, has introduced tariffs. In pursuit of economic deals, it no longer tells authoritarian countries that human rights should be practised. It has also abandoned efforts to combat climate change.
Apart from that last point, this thinking is both new and also a partial return to previous eras. George Washington set the tone in 1769 when he warned against the USA having permanent alliances and asked, ‘Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground?’
Trump’s seeming embrace of the idea of ‘spheres of influence’, in which what the USA, Russia or China do regionally is their business, has also been seen before. President Madison’s declaration of war on Britain in 1812 was partially on the grounds of interference in Washington’s backyard, while the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 was explicit in telling Europe to keep out of the Americas – ‘It is impossible that the allied powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent without endangering our peace and happiness.’
So, there are echoes of previous times, but things will be different as the centre of the globe’s gravity shifts to the Indo-Pacific, medium powers wax and wane, climate change alters geography and technology advances. Trump is a symptom as well as a cause of whatever this era will be called. He’s only part of it – the Don of a new age.
I’m reading Luck of the Devil: The Story of Operation Valkyrie by Ian Kershaw. And I’m watching Once Upon a Time in Space on BBC iPlayer.
