The World Order That Donald Trump Revealed
To Donald Trump’s critics, four years of posturing has left him exposed for all the world to see. The president hasn’t made America great again, they argue; he has made it weaker than it’s ever been: disrespected, ridiculed, and now even pitied, as it struggles to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic. He has failed to rebalance relations with China, failed to deal with North Korea, failed to end the endless wars in the Middle East, failed to cow Iran, failed to stop European free-riding, and even failed to improve relations with Russia. And that’s before one considers his record of undercutting or destroying international treaties on climate change, trade, and nuclear weapons.
To Trump’s supporters, this is manifestly unfair. The president has, for them, finally reversed Barack Obama’s weakness: He has reinforced red lines, put America first, ripped up bad deals, corralled allies to pay more for their own defense, led the global change in attitude against China, defeated the Islamic State, and kept the United States out of any new wars. Add to that deals in the Middle East to normalize ties with Israel and the new line of communication with Pyongyang, and the world, they say, is now a safer place, and one that is better for American workers. If he has ruffled feathers and offended people along the way, so be it.
Both of these theories miss the real significance of Trump’s presidency. After decades of international adventures that have left the U.S. overstretched, overwhelmed, and overburdened, it was Trump who blurted out the uncomfortable truth: American foreign policy was failing, and had been for decades.
Through a combination of hubris, ignorance, instinct, and ego, he pointed at the reality and demanded to know why it was being allowed to continue. Why was America still fighting wars in the Middle East and elsewhere? Why wasn’t it partnering with Russia against Islamist jihadists? Why was China allowed to abuse the rules of the game? Why were American workers losing their jobs to poorer countries? And why were so-called allies in Europe allowed to place high tariffs on American produce while American workers paid for their defense? Were these countries even allies at all?
One doesn’t have to like Trump or believe he has been a successful president to acknowledge that each of his challenges contains a grain of truth: American leaders were naive to allow China such an easy pass into the World Trade Organization; NAFTA did help hollow out American manufacturing; Europe was allowed to free-ride on American largesse; and the U.S. has become too tied up in military commitments. More than that, though, he was correct on the most fundamental point of all: the direct link between America’s economic strength at home and its power and stature abroad.
When Trump’s, was atop best-seller charts in the late 1980s, second on the list was a scholarly work called , by the Yale professor Paul Kennedy. That book warned that the U.S. could not sustain a policy of global supremacy indefinitely while its relative wealth continued to fall. The U.S. had risen to dominance in the aftermath of Europe’s implosion after World War II, but, Kennedy argued, this was an abnormality.
