The Trump administration is responding to these seismic changes in the international order. Trump is the first occupant of the Oval Office to truly appreciate the imminent danger posed by the Chinese Communist Party.
Yes, the Trump regime is responding to “seismic changes” in the world many of which are its own making. It is also doing so primarily by bullying its closest friends and allies through means of economic sanctions disguised as punitive tariffs and threats to their economic well being.
No Trump is not the first US President to recognize the threat posed by the growing influence of China. I would say G W Bush recognized the hegemonic aspirations of China but was too preoccupied with the his multi theatre war against Islamicist terrorism and the US occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.
When Trump first took office in 2017, he could have continued the status quo, hoping against hope that China would finally liberalize….
By the time Trump came down the escalator in 2015, Western governments had come to the painful realization that open market capitalism does not automatically give rise to liberal democracy. Tiananmen Square was their first hint then a dozen or so years later the methodical resurgence of authoritarian and revanchist government in Putin’s Russia destroyed all illusions of liberalization.
…and that America’s partners would, without pressure, increase their defense spending.
A hope expressed by every US president from Carter onwards including Clinton and Obama. Trump’s verbose pressure in his first term did little other than alienate NATO allies with the exception of Poland and Romania who were rearming and modernizing the military in any event in direct response to Russian revanchism in Eastern Europe and Caucasus. Nothing to do with Trump’s admonitions. Likewise, the USA’s NATO allies today are rearming not in response to Trump’s threats, but rather to Putin’s imperialist ambitions in Ukraine and beyond. While gratitude to the Kremlin is not at all in order in spurring this defence spending forward, nor is any gratitude due to Trump personally. To the collective USA yes, but Trump and his haphazard and reactive foreign policy, no.
Other truths remain. Industrial power, not “international law,” wins wars. And military strength, not speeches at international forums, offers the best means of deterrence.
A “new era” has indeed dawned in global politics. But it isn’t because of Trump rejecting some mythical “rules-based international order.”
Winning wars on the battlefield is one aspect. But the strategic goal is to win the peace following the conflict. The rules based order that arose following WWII accomplished just that. In Europe Stalin won the war - the USSR was indisputably the most powerful continental power that remained standing having gained new territory and an almost total hegemony over Central Europe. Stalin however lost the peace that ensued throughout the years of the Cold War. By 1989 the USSR’s wartime legacy literally fell with the Berlin Wall and two years later the Soviet Union was dissolved into independent sovereign states with varying degrees of ethnicity and national identity.
The US and its western allies on the other hand, won the peace and set out to build a world order based on rules of law and multilateral diplomacy. Not perfect by any means, but a far sight better than the hegemonic militarism in which might makes right that preceded it.
Instead, his administration recognized that what was broken needed fixing, and that this required a break with the past.
The Trump solution has not been a break with past. Quite the opposite in fact. More like an embrace of a past reactionary nihilism that aims to degrade longstanding institutions of governance and convention both domestically and globally.
