Here’s a multiple choice question for Canadians, Mexicans, Colombians, Taiwanese, Japanese, South Koreans, Filipinos, Ukrainians, Danes, European Union countries, Egyptians and Jordanians:
When you look at U.S. President Donald Trump’s frenzied, retribution-motivated wrecking-ball purges of America’s federal government and democracy’s guardrails, when you’re listening to his imperialistic tantrums on Greenland, the Panama Canal, the Gazan Riviera and others, do you:
A) Conclude that the United States is no longer a dependable ally.
B) Realize that the United States is no longer a model democracy and no longer has any pretense of being “the leader of the free world.”
C) Gather that the United States no longer cares about alliances and its allies.
D) Think that it would be wise to hedge your national strategy and be willing to get closer to China.
E) Consider that perhaps your country should develop a military nuclear capability, just as an insurance policy.
F) All of the above.
If you haven’t already chosen answer “F,” don’t worry — you will in a few months.
The post-1945 world order, aka the American order or Pax Americana, is coming apart at the seams. Trump has begun to shake its foundations and question its very utility. Historically, he may not be the core cause of this, but he is most certainly a catalyst and accelerant who is intent on making it happen.
In the 80 years since World War II, and in the 33 years that have elapsed since the disintegration of the Soviet Union and its spheres of influence, the world order the Americans forged and managed was not seriously challenged or tested.
For most of the past 33 years, the world was unipolar. The ascent of China and the wealth it accumulated led some to think that structural bipolarity is back. That is misleading, although China does present the United States and the world system with a challenge. The Americans and Chinese are economically interdependent. In 1992, the volume of trade between the United States and the Soviet Union was $500 million. By comparison, Sino-American trade in 2023 was around $690 billion.
Second, there are no clearly demarcated lines showing spheres of influence between the United States and China. The Chinese are demanding that there should be. If the Panama Canal is a backyard issue for Washington, then Taiwan is a backyard issue for Beijing, goes the logic. Trump may agree with that, but the consequences may be grievous.
Dismiss Trump’s bluster and one-line foreign policy statements all you want. But it becomes important when “the foreign policy of the world’s most powerful country … makes a sudden and far-reaching lurch into the bizarre,” as Stephen M. Walt wrote in Foreign Policy last week.
This isn’t about a competing superpower or recalibrating regional alliances. It is about allies. In the three weeks since he has been back in the White House, Trump has tariffed America’s closest geographical allies, Mexico and Canada. He is pledging to impose tariffs on the EU as early as this week. He threatened Denmark — a founding member of the NATO military alliance — over Greenland, which he wants to “acquire.”
He threatened Colombia over immigration. He is threatening Panama over control of the Panama Canal. And he has unilaterally informed Egypt and Jordan that they will have to take in the 2 million Palestinians he wants to evacuate or expel from Gaza, which the U.S. “will own.”
What do all these abovementioned countries have in common? They have been and still are allies of the United States. In other words, Trump likes Vladimir Putin’s Russia and dislikes NATO. He loves Kim Jong Un of North Korea but despises Justin Trudeau of Canada.
This has consequences. Countries now have to assume that the United States is “actively malevolent,” as Walt calls it — and that could lead to extreme uncertainty.
In the worst-case scenario, this could result in an unfathomable development: U.S. allies could be the ones forming a balancing counter-coalition. Canada, Mexico, Panama, the EU and some Mideast states may now consider hedging their national strategies and alliances with the United States. Furthermore, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan would have to fundamentally revisit basic assumptions regarding the world order.
In Asia, if Trump persists in his transactional and hostile attitude to alliances, the differences between him and Chinese President Xi Jinping will be blurred. These countries do not just follow America’s foreign policy spasms, but are closely observing what Trump is doing domestically. Their inevitable conclusion may be that the era of looking up to American democracy as a model and something to emulate is over.
Walt applies international relations theory to explain where the United States may inexorably be headed if Trump continues with his policy of deriding alliances, questioning international institutions and abdicating the basic tenets of America’s foreign policy since 1945. The most applicable theory is that of “balance of power/threat.”
Since 1945, the United States has become the most potent and predominant economic, military and political power. Despite the division of the world into American and Soviet spheres of influence, the U.S. was unequivocally the dominant superpower. Historically, when a hegemonic power emerges, small- and medium-size countries form short- or long-term coalitions to balance that superpower.
Yet countries did not perceive the United States as a threat, but rather a benevolent guarantor of their security and democracy, and of a “rules-based” world. This became national strategy for most countries when the post-1945 bipolar structure of the international system made the Soviet Union the formidable threat that needed balancing, and countries aligned themselves with the Americans.
Despite its vast power and ability to project it, the United States did not face a balancing coalition even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. There were hostile ad-hoc coalitions, such as the various versions of the “axis of evil” or the current “axis of resistance” consisting of Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea and non-state terror organizations such as Al-Qaida or the Islamic State.
However, other than criticizing U.S. policies in various regions or questioning America’s judgment and understanding of specific conflicts, there was no challenge to its supremacy.
Since 1945, during both Democratic and Republican administrations, the United States exercised power through alliances, multilateral diplomacy and consultation mechanisms, institutionalized intelligence cooperation and the application of “soft diplomacy.”
As Trump is crudely departing from these principles and policies, U.S. allies will be compelled to reexamine their options and adjust their grand strategic posture accordingly.
Organizing and managing a balancing coalition requires not just a decision but resources and, most importantly, resolute leadership and a political center of gravity. It is unclear that such leadership exists at this point — certainly not in Europe — or that the common denominators shared by Mexico, Denmark and the Philippines are strong enough to forge a durable coalition.
Still, Trump does what Trump does best: inserting discord and a potent element of uncertainty and anxiety that did not exist in the last 80 years. This will create a chaotic, unstable, dangerous, each-to-his-own international system.
It’s not that the system and America’s place in it do not require modifications. They do. It’s not that Trump’s doubts about America’s continued and expensive role as the world’s CEO are baseless. They are not.
Equally, China’s demands that the international system and the world order reflect more fairly and accurately its power are warranted, as are questions about the composition of the UN Security Council.
Trump is not really addressing these issues with a coherent plan, though. No matter how much his visceral animosity toward the world order might be justified, he is upending it unilaterally. He is employing brute economic intimidation like a bully taking lunch money from kids in the playground, displaying quasi-imperialistic muscle flexing without offering an alternative structure other than transactional trade balances.
First published in Haaretz, 09.02.2025
