Wednesday, November 6, 2024

EURONEWS - By Lauren Chadwick Published on 06/11/2024 - 14:30 GMT+1 - Five key takeaways as Donald Trump wins the White House

 EURONEWS 

News -  World -  USA

Five key takeaways as Donald Trump wins the White House


Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump points to the crowd at an election night watch party on November 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Copyright Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo

By Lauren Chadwick

Published on 06/11/2024 - 14:30 GMT+1


Donald Trump is set to be elected president of the US; here are some of the key takeaways from the election.


Donald Trump has been elected the 47th president of the US after securing the key battleground states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.


Polls had shown the former president and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in a historically tight race for weeks, with Trump securing the victory on Wednesday.


While there are still outstanding states that have yet to be called, here are some of the takeaways from the tumultuous election.


1. Trump overperformed in key battleground state Pennsylvania


Trump overperformed in key swing states, flipping Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.


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Pennsylvania was considered a must-win for the Harris campaign but was always expected to be a close race. The current president, Joe Biden, won the state by just 81,000 votes in 2020.


The state had previously gone for Democrats between 1992 and 2012.


Related

'We made history': Trump claims election victory as swing states turn red

In rural Republican-leaning counties, Trump overperformed in the state and looked likely to flip Erie County in the north-eastern part of the state, a county Biden won with a slim margin in 2020.



Harris appeared to underperform in left-leaning cities such as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh compared to Biden’s 2020 election.


2. Demographic shift in favour of Trump influences election result


According to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters, Black and Latino voters appeared less likely to support Harris than they were to support Biden in the 2020 election.


Trump notably won Miami-Dade County in Florida, where around 68% of voters are Latino. The county was previously a Democratic stronghold.


The AP VoteCast survey also found that Trump performed better among young voters than he did in the 2020 election.


“It used to be conventional wisdom that greater ethnic and racial variance … naturally advantaged Democrats, and you can kind of see how that would happen as a legacy from the 1960s when the Democrats supported civil rights,” James McCann, a political science professor at Purdue University in the US, told Euronews ahead of the vote.


“At least since Nixon, the Republicans have tried to tack towards dominant white majorities and so on and being opposed to civil rights … but what we see now is that those old divides, there might be some change,” he said, adding that polling showed Trump performing better compared to predecessors among Black male voters.


3. Republicans take the Senate, but control of the House is still up in the air


Republicans won control of the Senate by flipping three seats in Montana, West Virginia, and Ohio.


In West Virginia, a state that typically votes Republican, voters were filling the seat of Joe Manchin, a former Democrat who later became an independent.


The state’s Republican governor Jim Justice won the seat in favour of Republicans.


Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, also lost his seat to Republican Bernie Moreno, who arrived in the US at the age of five from Colombia and previously owned a group of car dealerships.


In the Mountain state of Montana, Republican Tim Sheehy beat the incumbent Democratic Senator Jon Tester.


It is not yet known who will win the House of Representatives, where Democrats only needed a few seats to flip the chamber. Republicans won control of the House in 2022.


If Democrats can win the House, it will be a similar situation to the current Congress where there is split control or divided government. While not unusual in US politics, it means lawmakers may need to compromise more often on legislation.


4. Trump’s win could reverberate for European defence and trade


Analysts told Euronews ahead of the election that Trump’s “America first” agenda could impact defence, security, and trade with European countries.


Trump said at a rally in February that he would not protect members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) if members did not increase their defence spending. “You gotta pay your bills,” he said.


As Trump won the election, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte was quick to comment, stating he had congratulated the former president.


“His leadership will again be key to keeping our Alliance strong. I look forward to working with him again to advance peace through strength through NATO,” Rutte said.


Related

European leaders congratulate Trump as Harris comeback looks unlikely

Another concern is whether or not Trump will continue to support Ukraine.


Asked whether the EU was ready to boost aid to Ukraine in response to Trump’s win, a European Commission spokesperson warned not to jump ahead.


Eric Mamer, the chief Commission spokesperson, added that “there are strong Commission positions on peace in Ukraine and therefore we are going to continue implementing our policies, our priorities when it comes to Ukraine”.


5. European right-wing hails Trump win as ‘a wake-up call’


Right-wing and far-right politicians across Europe welcomed Trump’s win, with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán the first to congratulate the incoming president, calling it a “much-needed victory”.


Trump has previously praised Orbán as “a strong leader” and “fantastic”, and has signaled an openness to working with other right-wing leaders, such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, who said Trump’s win would strengthen ties between the countries.


“Patriots are winning elections all over the world,” Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders said in a social media post, saying that people want “freedom and their own nation first, their own people first and most of all no more illegal immigration”.


Jordan Bardella, an MEP and leader of France’s National Rally party called the win a “wake-up call”.


“This is an opportunity to rethink our relationship with power and strategic autonomy. Since Donald Trump encourages us to defend ourselves, let's take him at his word,” he said.


Additional sources • AP









POLITICO German government coalition collapses as Scholz sacks Finance Minister Lindner - November 6, 2024 9:01 pm CET By Hans von der Burchard

 POLITICO

German government coalition collapses as Scholz sacks Finance Minister Lindner

Christian Lindner’s liberals are making demands for economic reforms that are hard for other coalition members to accept.

GERMANY-POLITICS-COALITION

Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced he would fire his Finance Minister Christian Lindner over persistent disagreements about economic reforms. | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images

November 6, 2024 9:01 pm CET

By Hans von der Burchard


BERLIN — Germany’s three-party ruling coalition collapsed on Wednesday evening after Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced he would fire his Finance Minister Christian Lindner over persistent disagreements about economic reforms.

Crisis talks in the coalition of Scholz’s Social Democratic Party, the Greens and Lindner’s Free Democratic Party had come to a head after the FDP issued a paper with demands for liberal economic reforms that were difficult for the other two parties to accept.

During a dramatic meeting of leaders from the three parties on Wednesday evening in the chancellery, Lindner told Scholz he saw no way of continuing the coalition and urged him to pave the way for snap elections.

This resulted in Scholz announcing he would sack him, two people with knowledge of the discussions told POLITICO.

Although Scholz could potentially seek to continue ruling in a minority government, he has no majority to pass a budget, increasing the likelihood of a vote of no confidence and snap elections — potentially in early March.

This story is being updated.












Hürriyet - 6 Kasım 2024 Donald Trump'ın ABD'de yeniden başkan seçilmesi sonrası Ankara'dan ilk yorum... Dicle Canova perde arkasını anlattı Güncelleme Tarihi: Kasım 06, 2024 17:55

 Hürriyet - 6 Kasım 2024 

Donald Trump'ın ABD'de yeniden başkan seçilmesi sonrası Ankara'dan ilk yorum... Dicle Canova perde arkasını anlattı

Güncelleme Tarihi: Kasım 06, 2024 17:55

Oluşturulma Tarihi: Kasım 06, 2024 16:304dk okuma


ABD'de sandığa giden milyonlarca seçmen, Demokrat Kamala Harris ile Cumhuriyetçi Donald Trump arasında tercihini yaptı. Kesin olmayan sonuçlara göre Trump 279, Harris 224 delege kazandı. Cumhurbaşkanı Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, tebrik mesajında Donald Trump için ‘dostum’ ifadesini kullandı. Ankara, Trump'ın yeniden başkan seçilmesine ne diyor? Detayları CNN TÜRK Ankara Temsilcisi Dicle Canova anlattı.

CNN TÜRK Ankara Temsilcisi Dicle Canova detayları şu ifadelerle aktardı;

Cumhurbaşkanı Recep Tayyip Erdoğan tebrik mesajında ‘Dostum Trump’ hitabını kullandı. Bu dikkat çekiciydi. Açıkcası Türkiye, Biden yönetimi ile bu sıcaklığı yakalayamamıştı. İletişim ve diyalog kanallarının işletilmesi bakımından Trump ile önceki dönemde liderden lidere diplomasi yürütülebilmişti. Biden ve Başkan Yardımcısı Harris ile bu sağlanamadı.

Ancak Ankara meseleyi genel olarak Trump ve Harris ile ilgili "İki ülkenin çıkarları örtüşmediğinde hangisi daha iyi partner olur?" sorusu üzerinden değerlendirdi. Şimdi strateji Trump'ın kazanması ile ona göre şekillenecek. Netice itibariyle her ülke kendi milli menfaatleri doğrultusunda politika üretir.

Günün sonunda Trump ve Harris için de yüksek Amerikan çıkarları önceliklidir. Tıpkı Türkiye için kendi milli menfaatleri öncelikli olduğu gibi... Burada Türkiye açısından kritik noktalarda takınacakları tutum ve yöntem önemli.


DIŞİŞLERİ BAKANI HAKAN FİDAN'DAN İLK YORUM


Dışişleri Bakanı Hakan Fidan "Seçim sonucu dış politikamızda ciddi bir değişikliğe yol açmayacak" mesajını verdi. Ankara kendi pozisyonunu koruyacak. Hassasiyetleri belli, ABD ile ilişkilerde iki kritik başlık var.


1- TERÖRLE MÜCADELE-PYD-YPG'YE VERİLEN DESTEK FETÖ'NÜN HİMAYESİ


2- PATRİOTLARIN SATIŞININ GERÇEKLEŞMEMESİ ÜZERİNE S-400 ALIMI SONRASI GÜNDEME GELEN CAATSA YAPTIRIMLARI-NATO MÜTTEFİKLİK RUHUNA AYKIRI KISITLAMALAR/F35 PROGRAMINDAN TÜRKİYE'NİN ÇIKARILMASI


Bu iki başlıkta baktığımız zaman Trump döneminde;

*ABD’nin terör örgüyü PKK/YPG'ye desteği sürdü.

*Suriye'deki ABD askerlerini çekme eğilimi oldu ama Pentagon ve CENTCOM'un baskısı ile süreç zamana yayıldı.

*Trump, Suriye'de, Türkiye'nin Barış Pınarı Harekatı’na yeşil ışık yaktı ama sonra Barış Pınarı Harekatı dolayısıyla Milli Savunma Bakanlığı, Enerji ve Tabii Kaynaklar Bakanlığı, Milli Savunma Bakanı Hulusi Akar, Enerji ve Tabii Kaynaklar Bakanı Fatih Dönmez ve İçişleri Bakanı Süleyman Soylu'ya yaptırım uyguladı.

Türkiye sınırına yakın bölgelerde konuşlu Amerikan askerlerinin çoğu Barış Pınarı Harekatı sırasında çekildi. Ancak ABD, Suriye’den tamamen çıkmadı ve terör örgütüyle ilişkilerini kesmedi. Türkiye'ye geçici bir avantaj sağlasa da çekildiği yerlere Rusya yerleşti.

Şimdi Başkanlığının yeni döneminde Suriye ve Irak'ta Türkiye'nin beklentilerine dönük olumlu yaklaşımlar sergileyebilir.

Fidan, "Seçimden sonra ABD Suriye'den ve Irak'tan çekilmeyi masaya yatırabilir" dedi. ABD birlikleri orada bulundukları sürece saldırıya açık vaziyetteler diğer yandan DEAŞ ile mücadele koalisyonunun da varlığı artık tartışılıyor. Fidan, “Afrika’ya kaydırılmak isteniyor” mesajlarını verdi.


Donald Trump başkanlığını ilan etti: Savaşı bitireceğim


Bu iki başlıkta "ABD, NATO müttefiki Türkiye ile konuşarak hareket edecektir" beklentisi var. Nitekim bir süredir zaten bu konular ele alınıyor. Asıl mesele YPG yani SDG ne olacak? Ankara sınırın 30 km derinliğine çekilmelerini ve silahsızlandırılmalarını talep ediyordu. ABD’nin tutumuna bağlı sınırın 50-100 km aşağısına indirilmeleri ve Türkiye’ye karşı kullanılmamaları sağlanırsa bu da bir kapı aralar.

Donald Trumpın ABDde yeniden başkan seçilmesi sonrası Ankaradan ilk yorum... Dicle Canova perde arkasını anlattı

Türkiye F-35 savaş uçağı programından uygulandı, yaptırımları uygulandı. Yeni döneminde Trump Türkiye için ayrılan F-35'leri verebiliriz der mi? Buna bir formül bulunur mu? Bazı beklentiler var. Türkiye'ye ayrılan ilk etapta 6 uçak vardı. En azından parası ödenen uçakların Türkiye'ye teslimi söz konusu olabilir mi? Trump daha güçlü Senato ve Temsilciler Meclisi'nde de çoğunluğu var.

Ama şunu da unutmamak lazım. Daha önce Trump döneminde art arda Türkiye’ye yaptırımlar uygulanmıştı. 4 yıllık görev sürecinde ikisi Brunson davası, ikisi S-400 alımı, biri de YPG/PKK'ya yönelik operasyonlar olmak üzere "Türkiye’ye 5 kez yaptırım uygulamış ABD başkanı” olarak tarihe geçti. Bu anlamda da Ankara temkinli bir pozisyonda olacaktır.

En kritik başlık ise İsrail politikası olarak niteleniyor. Trump’ın daha önceki başkanlık döneminde İsrail politikası Türkiye ile gerilime yol açtı. ABD Kudüs’ü İsrail’in başkenti olarak tanıdı, büyükelçiliğini oraya taşıdı. Yeni dönemde de en büyük risk İsrail konusu diye bakılıyor. Bu başlıkta Trump nasıl bir politika izleyecek önemli olacak. Netanyahu'nun saldırgan tutumunu sürdürmesinin, ABD seçim sonuçlarına kadar geri adım atmaması, Trump beklentisi ile yorumları vardı. Şimdi mesele Trump'ın Netanyahu'yu daha da teşvik edici bir pozisyon alıp almayacağı.

Donald Trumpın ABDde yeniden başkan seçilmesi sonrası Ankaradan ilk yorum... Dicle Canova perde arkasını anlattı

Rusya-Ukrayna savaşın konusunda ise Trump döneminde anlaşma masasına daha yaklaşılabileceği yorumları var. Orada her iki taraf ile konuşabilen tek ülke olan Türkiye'nin pozisyonu ve ağırlığı artacaktır.

Donald Trump ulusal çıkarları ön planda tutan şahin ve öngörülemez hızlı kararlar alabilen bir siyasetçi. Senato ve Temsilciler Meclisi’ndeki ağırlığı göz önüne bulunduğunda özgün politikaları hayata geçirebilir.

Ancak burada Amerikan müesses nizamının rolü de önemli olacak. Bu kez ABD derin devletinin elinde onu yönetecek kozlar olduğu, dolayısıyla daha yönetilebilir bir Trump’tan söz edilebileceğini düşünenler de var.

Donald Trumpın ABDde yeniden başkan seçilmesi sonrası Ankaradan ilk yorum... Dicle Canova perde arkasını anlattı

Türkiye için kendi milli menfaatleri doğrultusunda kendi dış politikasını sürdüreceğini söylemek mümkün. O noktada kritik meselelerin siyaseten diplomatik yollarla çözülmesi için Ankara ABD ile diyaloğa hazır.























Foreign Affairs : The Return of Peace Through Strength Making the Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy By Robert C. O’Brien July/August 2024 Published on June 18, 2024

 


  • ROBERT C. O’BRIEN served as U.S. National Security Adviser from 2019 to 2021.

Si vis pacem, para bellum is a Latin phrase that emerged in the fourth century that means “If you want peace, prepare for war.” The concept’s origin dates back even further, to the second-century Roman emperor Hadrian, to whom is attributed the axiom, “Peace through strength—or, failing that, peace through threat.”

U.S. President George Washington understood this well. “If we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for war,” he told Congress in 1793. The idea was echoed in President Theodore Roosevelt’s famous dictum: “Speak softly, and carry a big stick.” And as a candidate for president, Ronald Reagan borrowed directly from Hadrian when he promised to achieve “peace through strength”—and later delivered on that promise.

In 2017, President Donald Trump brought this ethos back to the White House after the Obama era, during which the United States had a president who felt it necessary to apologize for the alleged sins of American foreign policy and sapped the strength of the U.S. military. That ended when Trump took office. As he proclaimed to the UN General Assembly in September 2020, the United States was “fulfilling its destiny as peacemaker, but it is peace through strength.”

And Trump was a peacemaker—a fact obscured by false portrayals of him but perfectly clear when one looks at the record. Just in the final 16 months of his administration, the United States facilitated the Abraham Accords, bringing peace to Israel and three of its neighbors in the Middle East plus Sudan; Serbia and Kosovo agreed to U.S.-brokered economic normalization; Washington successfully pushed Egypt and key Gulf states to settle their rift with Qatar and end their blockade of the emirate; and the United States entered into an agreement with the Taliban that prevented any American combat deaths in Afghanistan for nearly the entire final year of the Trump administration.

Trump was determined to avoid new wars and endless counterinsurgency operations, and his presidency was the first since that of Jimmy Carter in which the United States did not enter a new war or expand an existing conflict. Trump also ended one war with a rare U.S. victory, wiping out the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) as an organized military force and eliminating its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

But unlike during Carter’s term, under Trump, U.S. adversaries did not exploit Americans’ preference for peace. In the Trump years, Russia did not press further forward after its 2014 invasion of Ukraine, Iran did not dare to directly attack Israel, and North Korea stopped testing nuclear weapons after a combination of diplomatic outreach and a U.S. military show of force. And although China maintained an aggressive posture during Trump’s time in office, its leadership surely noted Trump’s determination to enforce redlines when, for example, he ordered a limited but effective air attack on Syria in 2017, after Bashar al-Assad’s regime used chemical weapons against its own people.

Trump has never aspired to promulgate a “Trump Doctrine” for the benefit of the Washington foreign policy establishment. He adheres not to dogma but to his own instincts and to traditional American principles that run deeper than the globalist orthodoxies of recent decades. “America first is not America alone” is a mantra often repeated by Trump administration officials, and for good reason: Trump recognizes that a successful foreign policy requires joining forces with friendly governments and people elsewhere. The fact that Trump took a new look at which countries and groups were most pertinent does not make him purely transactional or an isolationist hostile to alliances, as his critics claim. NATO and U.S. cooperation with Japan, Israel, and the Arab Gulf states were all militarily strengthened when Trump was president.

Trump’s foreign policy and trade policy can be accurately understood as a reaction to the shortcomings of neoliberal internationalism, or globalism, as practiced from the early 1990s until 2017. Like many American voters, Trump grasped that “free trade” has been nothing of the sort in practice and in many instances involved foreign governments using high tariffs, barriers to trade, and the theft of intellectual property to harm U.S. economic and security interests. And despite hefty military spending, Washington’s national security apparatus enjoyed few victories after the 1991 Gulf War while suffering a number of notable failures in places such as Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

Trump thinks highly of his predecessor Andrew Jackson and Jackson’s approach to foreign policy: be focused and forceful when compelled to action but wary of overreach. A second Trump term would see the return of realism with a Jacksonian flavor. Washington’s friends would be more secure and more self-reliant, and its foes would once again fear American power. The United States would be strong, and there would be peace.

WHAT HAPPENED?

In the early 1990s, the world seemed to be on the cusp of a second “American century.” The Iron Curtain had fallen, and the countries of Eastern Europe had cashiered communism and abandoned the Warsaw Pact, lining up to join Western Europe and the rest of the free world. The Soviet Union passed into history in 1991. Holdouts to the tide of freedom, such as China, seemed set to liberalize, at least economically, and posed no imminent threat to the United States. The Gulf War vindicated the previous decade’s U.S. military buildup and helped confirm that the world had just one superpower.

Contrast that situation to today. China has become a formidable military and economic adversary. It routinely threatens democratic Taiwan. Its coast guard and de facto maritime militia are in a prolonged state of low-intensity conflict with the Philippines, a treaty ally of the United States, which could spark a wider war in the South China Sea. Beijing is now Washington’s foremost foe in cyberspace, regularly attacking U.S. business and government networks. China’s unfair trade and business practices have harmed the American economy and made the United States dependent on China for manufactured goods and even some essential pharmaceuticals. And although China’s model has nothing like the ideological appeal to Third World revolutionaries and Western radicals that Soviet communism held in the mid-twentieth century, China’s political leadership under Xi Jinping nonetheless has had enough confidence to reverse economic reforms, crush freedom in Hong Kong, and pick fights with Washington and many of its partners. Xi is China’s most dangerous leader since the murderous Mao Zedong. And China has yet to be held to account for the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in Wuhan.

China now has a committed and useful junior partner in Moscow, as well. In 2018, a year after leaving office as vice president, Joe Biden co-authored an article in these pages titled “How to Stand Up to the Kremlin.” But Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 demonstrated that Moscow was hardly deterred by his tough talk. The war has also exposed the shameful truth that NATO’s European members are unprepared for a new combat environment that combines innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence with low-tech but lethal drones and century-old artillery.

Joining China and Russia in an emerging axis of anti-American autocracies is Iran. Like the regimes in Beijing and Moscow, the theocracy in Tehran has grown bolder. With seeming impunity, its leaders frequently threaten the United States and its allies. Iran has now amassed enough enriched uranium to build a basic nuclear weapon in less than two weeks, if it chose to do so, according to the most authoritative estimates. Iran’s proxies, including Hamas, kidnap and kill Americans. And in April, for the first time, Iran attacked Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East, Israel, directly from Iranian territory, firing hundreds of drones and missiles.

The picture closer to home is hardly any better. In Mexico, drug cartels form a parallel government in some areas and traffic people and illegal drugs into the United States. Venezuela is a belligerent basket case. And the Biden administration’s inability to secure the southern U.S. border is perhaps its biggest and most embarrassing failure.

CLARITY ON CHINA

This morass of American weakness and failure cries out for a Trumpian restoration of peace through strength. Nowhere is that need more urgent than in the contest with China.

From the beginning of his presidential term, Biden has sent mixed messages about the threat posed by Beijing. Although Biden has retained tariffs and export controls enacted by Trump, he has also sent cabinet-level officials on a series of visits to Beijing, where they have delivered firm warnings about trade and security but also extended an olive branch, promising to restore some forms of the cooperation with China that existed before the Trump administration. This is a policy of pageantry over substance. Meetings and summits are activities, not achievements.

Meanwhile, Beijing pays close attention to what the president and his top advisers say in public. Biden has referred to China’s economy as a “ticking time bomb” but also stated plainly, “I don’t want to contain China” and “We’re not looking to hurt China—sincerely. We’re all better off if China does well.” To believe such pablum is to believe that China is not truly an adversary.

The Chinese Communist Party seeks to expand its power and security by supplanting the United States as the global leader in technological development and innovation in critical areas such as electric vehicles, solar power, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. To do so, Beijing relies on enormous subsidies, intellectual property theft, and unfair trade practices. In the automotive industry, for example, Beijing has backed national champions such as BYD, which it has showered with subsidies and encouraged to dump millions of cheap electric vehicles into markets in the United States and allied countries, with the goal of bankrupting automakers from Seoul to Tokyo to Detroit to Bavaria.

To maintain its competitive edge in the face of this onslaught, the United States must remain the best place in the world to invest, innovate, and do business. But the increasing authority of the U.S. regulatory state, including overaggressive antitrust enforcement, threatens to destroy the American system of free enterprise. Even as Chinese companies receive unfair support from Beijing to put American companies out of business, the governments of the United States and its European allies are making it harder for those same American companies to compete. This is a recipe for national decline; Western governments should abandon these unnecessary regulations.

As China seeks to undermine American economic and military strength, Washington should return the favor—just as it did during the Cold War, when it worked to weaken the Soviet economy. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said that a “full economic separation [from China] is neither practical nor desirable” and that the United States “reject[s] the idea that we should decouple our economy from China.” But Washington should, in fact, seek to decouple its economy from China’s. Without describing it as such, Trump began a de facto policy of decoupling by enacting higher tariffs on about half of Chinese exports to America, leaving Beijing the option to resume normal trade if it changed its conduct—an opportunity it did not take. Now is the time to press even further, with a 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods, as Trump has advocated, and tougher export controls on any technology that might be of use to China.

Of course, Washington should keep open lines of communication with Beijing, but the United States should focus its Pacific diplomacy on allies such as Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea, traditional partners such as Singapore, and emerging ones such as Indonesia and Vietnam. Critics suggest that Trump’s calls for U.S. allies in Asia to contribute more to their own defense might worry them. On the contrary: my discussions with officials in the region have revealed that they would welcome more of Trump’s plain talk about the need for alliances to be two-way relationships and that they believe his approach would enhance security.

Joint military exercises with such countries are essential. Trump disinvited China from the annual Rim of the Pacific war games in 2018: a good defensive team does not invite its most likely opponent to witness planning and practice. (China, naturally, sent spy ships to observe.) Congress indicated in 2022 that the United States should invite Taiwan to join the exercises. But Biden has refused to do so—a mistake that must be remedied.

Taiwan spends around $19 billion annually on its defense, which amounts to just under three percent of its annual economic output. Although that is better than most U.S. allies and partners, it is still too little. Other countries in this increasingly dangerous region also need to spend more. And Taiwan’s shortcoming is not solely its own fault: past U.S. administrations have sent mixed signals about Washington’s willingness to supply Taiwan with arms and help defend it. The next administration should make clear that along with a continued U.S. commitment comes an expectation that Taiwan spend more on defense and take other steps, as well, such as expanding military conscription.

Meanwhile, Congress should help build up the armed forces of Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam by extending to them the kinds of grants, loans, and weapons transfers that the United States has long offered Israel. The Philippines, in particular, needs rapid support in its standoff with Chinese forces in the South China Sea. The navy should undertake a crash program to refurbish decommissioned ships and then donate them to the Philippines, including frigates and amphibious assault ships sitting in reserve in Philadelphia and Hawaii.

The navy should also move one of its aircraft carriers from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and the Pentagon should consider deploying the entire Marine Corps to the Pacific, relieving it in particular of missions in the Middle East and North Africa. U.S. bases in the Pacific often lack adequate missile defenses and fighter jet protection—a scandalous deficiency that the Defense Department should fix by quickly shifting resources from elsewhere.

THE RETURN OF MAXIMUM PRESSURE

Another region where the Biden administration has demonstrated little strength and thus brought little peace is the Middle East. Biden entered office determined to ostracize Saudi Arabia for human rights violations—but also to resume the Obama-era policy of negotiating with Iran, a far worse violator of human rights. This approach alienated Saudi Arabia, an important partner and energy exporter, and did nothing to tame Iran, which has become demonstrably more violent in the past four years. Allies in the Middle East and beyond saw these actions as evidence of American weakness and unreliability and have pursued foreign policies more independent of Washington. Iran itself has felt free to attack Israel, U.S. forces, and American partners through proxies and directly.

In contrast, the Trump administration carried out a campaign of maximum pressure on Iran, including by insisting that European countries comply with U.S. and UN sanctions on the Islamic Republic. This show of resolve rallied important U.S. partners such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and paved the way for the Abraham Accords. When U.S. allies see renewed American determination to contain the Islamist regime in Tehran, they will join with Washington and help bring peace to a region that is crucial to energy markets and global capital markets.

Unfortunately, the opposite has occurred during the Biden administration, which has failed to enforce existing sanctions on Iranian oil exports. In recent months, those exports reached a six-year high, exceeding 1.5 million barrels per day. The easing of sanctions enforcement has been a bonanza for Iran’s government and its military, netting them tens of billions of dollars a year. Restoring the Trump crackdown will curtail Iran’s ability to fund terrorist proxy forces in the Middle East and beyond.

Biden’s problems began in the Middle East when he tried to reenter the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal that Trump pulled out of in 2018, having recognized it as a failure. Far from eliminating or even freezing Iran’s nuclear program, the deal had sanctified it, allowing Iran to retain centrifuges that it has used to amass nearly enough uranium for a bomb. A return to Trump’s policy of maximum pressure would include the full enforcement of U.S. sanctions on Iran’s energy sector, applying them not only to Iran but also to governments and organizations that buy Iranian oil and gas. Maximum pressure would also mean deploying more maritime and aviation assets to the Middle East, making it clear not only to Tehran but also to American allies that the U.S. military’s focus in the region was on deterring Iran, finally moving past the counterinsurgency orientation of the past two decades.

A stronger policy to counter Iran would also lead to a more productive approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is once again roiling the region. For decades, the conventional wisdom held that resolving that dispute was the key to improving security in the Middle East. But the conflict has become more of a symptom than a cause of tumult in the region, the true source of which is Iran’s revolutionary, theocratic regime. Tehran provides critical funding, arms, intelligence, and strategic guidance to an array of groups that threaten Israel’s security—not just Hamas, which sparked the current war in Gaza with its barbaric October 7 attack on Israel, but also the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah and the Houthi militia in Yemen. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be solved until Iran is contained—and until Palestinian extremists stop trying to eliminate the Jewish state.

In the meantime, the United States should continue to back Israel as it seeks to eliminate Hamas in Gaza. The long-term governance and status of the territory are not for Washington to dictate; the United States should support Israel, Egypt, and U.S. allies in the Gulf as they grapple with that problem. But Washington should not pressure Israel to return to negotiations over a long-term solution to the broader conflict with the Palestinians. The focus of U.S. policy in the Middle East should remain the malevolent actor that is ultimately most responsible for the turmoil and killing: the Iranian regime.

FROM KABUL TO KYIV

Biden also drastically weakened American statecraft through his catastrophic mismanagement of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Trump administration negotiated the deal that brought an end to U.S. involvement in the war, but Trump would never have allowed for such a chaotic and embarrassing retreatOne can draw a direct line from the fecklessness of the pullout in the summer of 2021 to the decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to attack Ukraine six months later. After Russia brushed off Biden’s warnings about the consequences of invading Ukraine and attacked anyway, Biden offered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky the means to leave Kyiv, which would have repeated Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s ignominious flight from Kabul the summer before. Fortunately, Zelensky declined the offer.

The Biden administration has since provided significant military aid to Ukraine but has often dragged its feet in sending Kyiv the kinds of weapons it needs to succeed. The $61 billion Congress recently appropriated for Ukraine—on top of the $113 billion already approved—is probably sufficient to prevent Ukraine from losing, but not enough to enable it to win. Meanwhile, Biden does not seem to have a plan to end the war.

Trump, for his part, has made clear that he would like to see a negotiated settlement to the war that ends the killing and preserves the security of Ukraine. Trump’s approach would be to continue to provide lethal aid to Ukraine, financed by European countries, while keeping the door open to diplomacy with Russia—and keeping Moscow off balance with a degree of unpredictability. He would also push NATO to rotate ground and air forces to Poland to augment its capabilities closer to Russia’s border and to make unmistakably clear that the alliance will defend all its territory from foreign aggression.

Washington should make sure that its European allies understand that the continued American defense of Europe is contingent on Europe doing its part—including in Ukraine. If Europe wants to show that it is serious about defending Ukraine, it should admit the country to the European Union immediately, waiving the usual bureaucratic accession protocol. Such a move would send a strong message to Putin that the West will not cede Ukraine to Moscow. It would also give hope to the Ukrainian people that better days lie ahead.

A MILITARY IN DECLINE

As China has risen, the Middle East has burned, and Russia has rampaged in Ukraine, the U.S. military has resumed a gradual decline that began during the Obama administration before pausing during Trump’s time in office. Last year, only the Marine Corps and the Space Force met their recruiting goals. The army fell an astounding 10,000 recruits short of its modest goal of adding 65,000 soldiers to maintain its current size. The deficiency is not just a personnel problem; it speaks to a lack of confidence that young Americans and their families have in the purpose and mission of the military.

Meanwhile, the military increasingly lacks the tools it needs to defend the United States and its interests. The navy now has fewer than 300 ships, compared with 592 at the end of the Reagan administration. That is not enough to maintain conventional deterrence through naval presence in the 18 maritime regions of the world that U.S. combatant commanders have identified as strategically important. Congress and the executive branch should recommit to the goal of having a 355-ship navy by 2032, which Trump set in 2017. This modestly larger navy must include more stealthy Virginia-class attack submarines. Also crucial are more Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, which form one part of the so-called nuclear triad—the equipment and systems that allow Washington to deploy nuclear weapons from the air, land, and sea.

Other parts of the triad need improvement, as well. For example, Congress must appropriate funds for all 100 planned units of the B-21 stealth bomber that is under development, to replace the aging B-2 bomber. In fact, some analysts have argued that the air force needs no fewer than 256 of these penetrating strike bombers to carry out a sustainable campaign against a peer competitor. To avoid the procurement problems experienced with the B-2, which left the air force with a fleet of just 21 aircraft instead of the 132 originally planned, both the air force and the appropriate congressional committees must work to ensure a stable production process.

The triad has become more important in recent years as China and Russia have modernized their nuclear arsenals. China has doubled the size of its arsenal since 2020: a massive, unexplained, and unwarranted expansion. The United States has to maintain technical and numerical superiority to the combined Chinese and Russian nuclear stockpiles. To do so, Washington must test new nuclear weapons for reliability and safety in the real world for the first time since 1992—not just by using computer models. If China and Russia continue to refuse to engage in good-faith arms control talks, the United States should also resume production of uranium-235 and plutonium-239, the primary fissile isotopes of nuclear weapons.

The U.S. conventional arsenal also needs to be transformed. The Trump administration revived the development of hypersonic missiles, funding for which President Barack Obama drastically reduced in 2011, leaving China and Russia far ahead of the United States in acquiring these important new weapons that travel at more than five times the speed of sound and can maneuver within the earth’s atmosphere. A second Trump term would see massive investments in this critical technology.

Restoring the military will take the energetic involvement of the president and congressional leadership because civilian and uniformed personnel are incapable of fixing the Pentagon themselves. (Trump often pushed for innovation in the face of bureaucratic inertia fostered by senior-level civilian officials at the Defense Department.) But fundamental change must account for the reality of limited budgets. Thanks to unsustainable levels of borrowing, the federal budget will have to decline, and large increases to defense expenditures are unlikely regardless of which party controls the White House and Congress. Spending smarter will have to substitute for spending more in a contemporary strategy of peace through strength.

Fixing the military requires major reforms to the armed forces’ acquisition processes, both for itself and for allied militaries. In recent decades, important projects such as the Zumwalt destroyer, the Littoral Combat Ship, the F-35 fighter, and the KC-46 tanker aircraft arrived years late and vastly over budget. In the 1950s, in contrast, Lockheed delivered the first U-2 spy aircraft less than a year and a half after getting the contract—and completed it under budget. Such an accomplishment would be inconceivable today because of status quo attitudes in most of the services, congressional dysfunction that makes budgeting and planning difficult, and a lack of vision on the part of the secretaries of the armed forces.

Another fundamental problem with military procurement is the Pentagon’s irrational system of developing requirements for new weapons. Requirements are easy to add and hard to remove. The result is highly sophisticated weapons, but ones that are expensive and take years to field. For example, in the early and mid-1990s, when the navy was designing its current class of aircraft carriers, it added a requirement for an electromagnetic aircraft launch system—a technology that did not exist at the time. The decision, which Trump criticized in 2017, added significant costs and delays. The senior civilian leadership in the Pentagon must reform the process by establishing a new rule that any significant alteration in design that may add cost or time to the development of essential systems must be authorized by them and them alone.

The United States should take inspiration from procurement systems in allies such as Australia, where a lean bureaucracy has developed the Ghost Bat unmanned aerial combat vehicle and the Ghost Shark unmanned underwater vehicle at low cost and without the massive delays that hold back U.S. procurement. Nimble newer defense suppliers such as Anduril and Palantir—companies rooted in the innovative tech sector—could also help the Pentagon develop procurement processes better suited to the twenty-first century.

KNOW YOUR ENEMY—AND YOUR FRIENDS

A more efficient military alone, however, will not be enough to thwart and deter the new Beijing-Moscow-Tehran axis. Doing so will also require strong alliances among the free countries of the world. Building alliances will be just as important in a second Trump term as it was in the first one. Although critics often depicted Trump as hostile to traditional alliances, in reality, he enhanced most of them. Trump never canceled or postponed a single deployment to NATO. His pressure on NATO governments to spend more on defense made the alliance stronger.

Biden administration officials like to pay lip service to the importance of alliances, and Biden says that he believes the United States is engaged in a contest pitting allied democracies against rival autocracies. But the administration undermines its own putative mission when it questions the democratic bona fides of conservative elected leaders in countries allied with the United States, including the former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Polish President Andrzej Duda. In fact, these leaders are responsive to the desires of their people and seek to defend democracy, but through policies different from those espoused by the kind of people who like to hobnob in Davos. The Biden administration, however, seems less interested in fostering good relations with real-world democratic allies than in defending fictional abstractions such as “the rules-based international order.” Such rhetoric reflects a globalist, liberal elitism that masquerades as support for democratic ideals.

Criticism of those democratic leaders is all the more galling when compared with how little attention Biden officials pay to dissidents in authoritarian states. The president and his top aides seldom follow the approach of former presidents who spotlighted detained dissidents to illustrate authoritarian abuses and highlight the superiority of the free world’s model of inalienable individual rights and the rule of law. Carter personally wrote to the Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov. Reagan met with the Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky in the Oval Office and met with others in the U.S. embassy in Moscow. In contrast, Biden has rarely spoken publicly about individual dissidents—people such as Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong publisher and democracy advocate whom Chinese officials have imprisoned on sham charges. Although the State Department has issued protestations about China’s treatment of its citizens, they have come against a backdrop of high-level, unconditional engagement with China that features no serious human rights component.

Trump, for his part, preferred to focus more on Americans unjustly detained abroad than on dissidents, in an effort to build relationships with foreign leaders and give dictators such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un a chance to come in from the cold. But he did pay attention to opposition forces in authoritarian states that are U.S. rivals. In January 2020, after I publicly expressed hope that the people of Iran would someday be able to choose their own leaders, Trump followed up on social media: “Don’t kill your protestors,” he admonished the theocrats in Tehran. A second Trump term would see stepped-up presidential-level attention to dissidents and political forces that can challenge U.S. adversaries. This effort would build on past actions, such as when Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and other senior officials met with activists seeking freedom in China and when Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger addressed the Chinese people in Mandarin from the White House and gave voice to many of their concerns about the repressive rule of the Chinese Communist Party.

Some might say that it is hypocritical for the United States to condemn some repressive governments, such as those in China and Iran, while partnering with others, such as Arab nondemocracies. But it is important to consider countries’ capacities to change. Most Arab monarchies today are more open and liberal than they were ten or 20 years ago—partly because of engagement with the United States. The same cannot be said of the Chinese or Iranian governments, which have become more repressive and aggressive toward their neighbors.

The United States is not perfect, and its security does not require every nation on earth to resemble it politically. Throughout much of U.S. history, most Americans believed it was sufficient to stand as a model to others rather than to attempt to impose a political system on others. But Americans should not underestimate what their country has achieved or downplay the success of the American experiment in lifting people at home and abroad out of repression, poverty, and insecurity.

Can an American revival occur today in a divided nation, when polls indicate that a vast majority of citizens believe their country is on the wrong track? As Reagan’s election in 1980 demonstrated, the United States can always turn things around. In November, the American people will have the opportunity to return to office a president who restored peace through strength—and who can do it again. If they do, the country has the resources, the ingenuity, and the courage to rebuild its national power, securing its freedom and once again becoming the last best hope for humankind

Foreign Affairs : An “America First” World What Trump’s Return Might Mean for Global Order By Hal Brands May 27, 2024

 



What would become of the world if the United States became a normal great power? This isn’t to ask what would happen if the United States retreated into outright isolationism. It’s simply to ask what would happen if the country behaved in the same narrowly self-interested, frequently exploitive way as many great powers throughout history—if it rejected the idea that it has a special responsibility to shape a liberal order that benefits the wider world. That would be an epic departure from 80 years of American strategy. But it’s not an outlandish prospect anymore.

In 2016, Donald Trump won the presidency on an “America first” platform. He sought a United States that would be mighty but aloof, one that would maximize its advantages while minimizing its entanglements. Indeed, the defining feature of Trump’s worldview is his belief that the United States has no obligation to pursue anything larger than its own self-interest, narrowly construed. Today, Trump is again vying for the presidency, as his legion of foreign policy followers within the Republican Party grows. Meanwhile, fatigue with key aspects of American globalism has become a bipartisan affair. Sooner or later, under Trump or another president, the world could face a superpower that consistently puts “America first.”

That version of the United States wouldn’t be a global dropout. On some issues, it might be more aggressive than before. But it would also be far less concerned with defending global norms, providing public goods, and protecting distant allies. Its foreign policy would become less principled, more zero-sum. Most broadly, this version of the United States would wield outsized power absent any outsized ethos of responsibility—so it would decline to bear unequal burdens in pursuit of the real but diffuse benefits the liberal order provides.

The results would not be pretty. A more normal U.S. foreign policy would produce a world that would also be more normal—that is, more vicious and chaotic. An “America first” world could be fatal for Ukraine and other states vulnerable to autocratic aggression. It would release the disorder U.S. hegemony has long contained.

Yet the United States itself might not do so badly—at least for a while—in a world where raw power matters more because the liberal order has been gutted. And even if things really fell apart, Americans would be the last ones to notice. “America first” is so seductive because it reflects a basic truth. The United States would ultimately suffer in a more anarchic world—but between now and then, everyone else would pay the greater price.

A DIFFERENT SORT OF SUPERPOWER

All countries pursue their interests, but not all countries define those interests the same way. The concept of national interest traditionally emphasized the protection of one’s territory, population, wealth, and influence. Since World War II, however, most American leaders and elites have rejected the notion that it should be a normal country acting in normal way. After all, the war had demonstrated how the normal rhythms of international affairs could plunge humanity, and even a distant United States, into horror. It had thereby discredited the original “America First” movement, made up of opponents of U.S. intervention in World War II—and made clear that the world’s mightiest country must radically enlarge its view of what its interests entailed.

The resulting project was unprecedented in scope. It involved forging alliances that circled the globe and protected countries thousands of miles away, rebuilding devastated countries and creating a thriving free world economy, and cultivating democracy in distant lands. Not least, it meant abjuring the policies of conquest and naked exploitation that other great powers had so commonly pursued, and instead defending norms—nonaggression, self-determination, freedom of the commons—that would offer humanity a more peaceful and cooperative path. The United States was now assuming “the responsibility which God Almighty intended,” President Harry Truman declared in 1949, “for the welfare of the world in generations to come.”

This language of “responsibility” was revealing. American policymakers never doubted that their country would benefit from living in a healthier world. But creating that world required Washington to calculate issues of self-interest in a remarkably capacious way. No prior definition of national interest had required the world’s most secure, invulnerable country to risk nuclear war over territories on distant continents, or to rebuild former enemies as industrial dynamos and economic competitors. And no prior definition of national interest required making dramatically unequal contributions to the common security so one’s allies could deliberately underspend on their own defense.

“I see the advantages to the Western world,” President John Kennedy griped, in the early 1960s, of one such arrangement—Washington’s role in stabilizing and lubricating the international economy. “But what is the national, narrow advantage” for the United States? U.S. policy only made sense if one believed that the pursuit of national, narrow advantage had previously consigned the world to carnage—so Washington must create a larger international climate that benefited Americans by benefiting like-minded peoples around the globe. “The pattern of leadership,” Secretary of State Dean Acheson had explained in 1952, “is a pattern of responsibility.” Americans must “take no narrow view of our interests but . . . conceive of them in a broad and understanding way.”

RISE AND SHINE

One doesn’t have to think that everything has been wonderful since 1945 to recognize that history changed fundamentally once this “pattern of responsibility” began to animate American statecraft. Growth exploded and living standards soared—first in the West, and then globally—in the climate of security and economic cooperation that U.S. leadership fostered. War persisted, but great-power war and outright territorial conquest became artifacts of an earlier, darker age. Democracy flourished in the West and radiated outward. The U.S. security blanket smothered the embers that had recently set western Europe and East Asia alight, allowing one-time enemies to reconcile and turning those regions into relative oases of prosperity and peace. Humanity never had it so good, and the United States stood at the center of a liberal order that gradually expanded to cover much of the globe.

Yet Americans were never entirely sold on the idea that they should maintain this order indefinitely. As the Cold War began, the U.S. diplomat George Kennan doubted that Americans were up to the task of global leadership. As that conflict ended, with a stunning Western victory, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick wrote that the United States could now become “a normal country in a normal time.”

Kirkpatrick was right that there was no precedent in the first 150 years of American history for the commitments the country had undertaken since 1945. These abnormal commitments had emerged from profoundly abnormal circumstances. American leaders had believed that they must pursue an audaciously global foreign policy because a world left to its own devices had just suffered two cataclysmic crackups in a generation—and the onset of the Cold War threatened a third. They could do so because World War II left the United States with roughly as much economic and military heft as all the other powers combined. This combination of strength and fear transformed U.S. policy. But nowhere is it written that Washington must forever persist in this project as the conditions that produced it fade into the past. And today, there are indications Washington won’t keep doing it indefinitely.

The last three U.S. presidents have all aspired to escape the Middle East. As military threats multiply, the Pentagon is struggling to uphold stability in all three key theaters of Eurasia at once. Protectionism is surging; both major parties disdain the major trade deals Washington once used to drive the global economy forward. In late 2023 and early 2024, it took an agonizing six months of delay for Congress to approve life-giving aid for Ukraine. And nowhere is this new mood more palpable than in Trump’s vision of “America first.”

That phrase has obvious echoes of the 1930s, which is why Trump is often called an isolationist. But he isn’t one, and neither were the original “isolationists.” The America Firsters of the 1930s favored U.S. dominance of the Western Hemisphere and supported a strong defense in a dangerous world. What they opposed was the idea that Washington should be responsible for upholding a larger global order, or that it should pick fights with countries that—whatever their crimes—weren’t directly menacing the United States itself.

The crucial link between Trump and this earlier America First movement is that he wants to take the country back to a more conventional view of its interests abroad. Trump has questioned why the United States should risk sparking World War III for the sake of defending small states in Europe or Asia. He has been skeptical of supporting Ukraine against Russia and defending Taiwan from a Chinese assault. (Contrary to what some analysts argue, there isn’t an Indo-Pacific exception in Trump’s version of “America first.”) Trump bemoans the costs and belittles the benefits of U.S. alliances; he bristles at the asymmetries of a global economy Washington has long overseen. He evinces little interest in supporting democracy or protecting important if intangible norms such as nonaggression.

To be sure, under Trump, the United States was hardly a passive superpower. As his trade war with China, ratcheting up of tensions with Iran and North Korea, and economic dustups with U.S. allies between demonstrated, Trump does believe Washington should throw its weight around when its interests are at stake. He just doesn’t believe those interests include the liberal order U.S. power has long sustained.

AMERICA UNBOUND

“America first” never got a full test during Trump’s presidency, thanks to the obstruction of more mainstream advisers, the opposition of Republican internationalists in Congress, and the indiscipline of Trump himself. Yet the first two factors could be less salient if Trump retakes the White House, given his growing ideological sway in the GOP and the care he will take to surround himself with acolytes this time around. And regardless of whether Trump wins in November, his ideas are increasingly central to the U.S. debate. So it’s worth imagining the contours and consequences of an “America first” agenda, consistently applied.

One element of this strategy would be a deglobalized defense. The United States might maintain unmatched military strength. It might invest more heavily in missile defense, cyber-capabilities, and other tools to protect the homeland. It might hit back hard when adversaries attacked its citizens or challenged its sovereignty. Yet Washington wouldn’t keep defending distant states whose survival wasn’t obviously critical to American security or keep providing public goods that were mostly consumed by others. Why should the United States risk war with Russia over Ukraine and the Baltic states, or with China over semi-submerged rocks in the South China Sea? Why must the Pentagon protect Chinese trade with Europe from Houthi attacks? A normal country wouldn’t.

A more normal United States would also be a more reticent ally. Great powers haven’t always viewed alliances as sacred; the history of alliance politics is full of disappointments and double-crosses. At the very least, then, Washington would treat its alliances less as strategic blood oaths than as bargains perpetually ripe for renegotiation. In exchange for continued protection, it might demand much higher defense spending from the Europeans or oil production from the Saudis. Or maybe Washington would simply quit its alliances, leaving Eurasia to the Eurasians—and counting on the United States’s geographic isolation, ability to control its maritime approaches, and nuclear arsenal to keep aggressors away.

Continentalism might thus displace globalism. Even a more restrained United States would strive to dominate the Western Hemisphere. This would become more important as Washington gave up the ability to manage Eurasia’s security affairs. So “America first” would feature a reenergized Monroe Doctrine: U.S. retrenchment from Old World outposts would presage intensified and perhaps heavier-handed efforts to safeguard American influence in the New World, and to prevent rivals from gaining a foothold there.

Economically, an “America first” strategy would feature protectionism and predation. The United States would remain engaged in the global economy. But it would seek to dramatically rebalance the burdens and benefits of that involvement. There would be no more tolerating asymmetric discrimination by trade partners, even democratic allies. Washington would, rather, wield its unmatched power to wring greater benefits out of key relationships. Just as Trump pummeled China and the European Union with tariffs, the United States would get more coercive with allies and adversaries alike. The United States could afford to pull its punches when it accounted for half of global production, the thinking goes, but a more economically competitive world would require a bare-knuckle response.

Not least, the United States would pull back from the liberal aspects of the liberal order. If Trump’s first term is any guide, the United States would invest less in promoting democracy and human rights in faraway, seemingly inhospitable places. It would become more likely to cut explicitly transactional deals with undemocratic regimes. Under a second Trump administration, the United States might even become a model for illiberal behavior, as aspiring strongmen overseas imitated the tactics of the aspiring strongman in the White House. Washington could also deemphasize international law and international organizations, in hopes of loosening the constraints—legal or institutional—the liberal order sometimes placed on American power.

What would all this mean for U.S. relations with rival powers? An “America first” strategy might entail persistent friction with China, especially over trade. Where autocratic aggression impinged directly on U.S. security and prosperity—Iranian attacks that killed American citizens or a Chinese bid that choked off the flow of advanced semiconductors from Taiwan—the tensions could be sharp indeed. Yet a U.S. policy that downgraded liberal values would be reassuring to illiberal leaders, and Washington would be less inclined to confront Beijing, Moscow, or Tehran over violations of international norms or the coercion of small states thousands of miles from American shores. A certain accommodation of autocrats would fit naturally within this foreign policy. Any remaining conflict would be more a matter of traditional great-power rivalry—large, ambitious states clashing for wealth and influence—than something flowing from the American defense of an endangered liberal order.

In fact, the United States would still be a very great power in this scenario. Even if Washington focused only on maintaining primacy in the Western Hemisphere, it would have a sphere of influence larger than any other. In some areas, the United States would seek unilateral advantage less abashedly than before. A less exceptional United States might be less present and more predatory—a combination that could remake the wider world.

POWER WITHOUT PURPOSE?

Critics of “America first” have warned that it would be devastating to global stability, and they’re probably right. The history of world politics before 1945 doesn’t give much hope that things will somehow sort themselves out. American leadership caged the demons—the programs of global expansion, the fratricidal fights within vital regions, the mutually immiserating protectionism, the threat of autocratic ascendancy—that tormented the world before.

Today, the United States is less powerful, relative to its competitors, than it was in 1945 or 1991. But American power still underpins what order the world enjoys. Just ask Ukraine, which would have been crushed by Russia without the arms, intelligence, and money Washington provided. Or ask the European countries clinging to NATO for protection against the Russian threat. In Asia, there is no coalition that can check Chinese power without U.S. participation. In the Middle East, recent events serve as a reminder that only the United States has the ability to defend vital sea-lanes and coordinate a regional defense against Iranian attacks.

This won’t change any time soon. Advocates of restraint may hope that American retrenchment will compel like-minded countries to step forward. But today—as Russia and China churn out arms and too many European and Asian democracies struggle to field minimally capable militaries—it seems a safer bet that the vacuum created by American retrenchment would be filled by the world’s most aggressive states.

In all likelihood, “America first” would be a disaster for frontline states—beginning but not ending with Ukraine—which would lose the support of the superpower that has bolstered them against aggressors next door. It would invite surging instability in global hotspots such as eastern Europe or the South China Sea, where autocratic powers confront weaker rivals. Norms that many people take for granted—the ability of commerce to traverse the seas unhindered, or the idea that conquest is inadmissible—could erode with shocking speed. Countries that have been able to cooperate under American protection might start eyeing one another more suspiciously once again. As disorder deepens, countries throughout Eurasia might arm themselves to the teeth, including with nuclear weapons, to ensure their survival. Or perhaps predation would simply run rampant as American retrenchment reduced the price on malign behavior.

Meanwhile, the global travails of democracy would worsen, particularly where fragile democracies coped with pressure exerted by powerful autocracies nearby. Mercantilism and protectionism might surge as the United States quit defending a positive-sum global economy—or even the relatively cooperative free-world economy the Biden administration has emphasized. States might scramble to lock up resources and markets if they no longer counted on the United States to sustain an open economic and maritime order. It took extraordinary U.S. commitment to turn the state of nature into Pax Americana. The return trip won’t be pleasant.

A WORLD OF REGRET

For the United States itself, though, it might not be so bad. The great irony of post-1945 foreign policy is that the country that created the liberal order is the country that least needs it. After all, the United States remains the world’s strongest actor. It has unrivaled geographic blessings and economic advantages. In a world rendered more anarchic by its policy choices, Washington might do okay, for a time.

The erosion of security around the Eurasian periphery would undo decades of geopolitical progress, but it wouldn’t immediately endanger the physical safety of the United States. In the 1930s, most Americans didn’t want to die for Danzig; in the 2020s, how many would really mind if Narva fell? Likewise, the return of territorial conquest would be tragic for smaller, vulnerable states, but it wouldn’t immediately inconvenience a superpower with nuclear weapons and oceanic moats.

The United States could also ride out the fragmentation of the international economy far better than most countries. Its unmatched power would give it tremendous leverage if commerce turned cutthroat—and its enormous resource endowments, vast internal market, and relatively modest trade dependence would leave it comparatively well suited for a protectionist world.

The United States wouldn’t exactly thrive in this scenario: turbulence that disrupted Middle Eastern oil flows or semiconductor shipments from Taiwan, could create global economic havoc that would not leave Americans unscathed. But perversely, such chaos might still benefit the United States in relative terms, because other countries would fare so much worse.

Countries in Europe and East Asia would find themselves compelled to make huge new investments in defense, while also contending with resurgent rivalries that might tear their regions apart. The collapse of security in the sea-lanes of the Middle East would primarily affect the European and Asian countries that depended on those trade routes most. Even Washington’s chief rival, China, would suffer tremendous damage if the liberal order collapsed, because—Chinese President Xi Jinping’s drive for self-reliance notwithstanding—it relied so heavily on foreign inputs and export markets.

Eventually, of course, the United States would pay a higher price. If China were someday able to dominate East Asia after American retrenchment, it might gain the power to coerce the United States economically and diplomatically, even if it could never invade militarily. The proliferation of Chinese influence in regions around the world could gradually give Beijing powerful geopolitical and geoeconomic advantages, rendering the United States insecure even within its hemispheric fortress. In the meantime, the international economic friction created by protectionism and chaos would drag down American growth, which could exacerbate social and political conflicts at home. And if democracy receded overseas and powerful autocracies advanced, autocratic voices within the United States might be empowered—as indeed happened in the 1930s.

In the ugliest scenario—but one that historians would immediately recognize—the United States would ultimately decide that the collapse of global order did require it to reengage, but from a significantly worse position, once matters within Eurasia had spun out of control. Yet it might take quite a while for this to happen. When the United States pulled back after World War I, it took a generation for the world to unravel so completely that Washington felt compelled to reengage. Until disaster struck, and the balance of power collapsed in Europe and Asia simultaneously, cascading disorder convinced most Americans to stay out of global affairs, rather than get back in. The same characteristics that insulate the United States from the deterioration of world order in the near term mean that Washington can wait a long time until that deterioration becomes intolerable.

The allure, and the tragedy, of “America first” is that a superpower’s good fortune will shield it—temporarily—from the consequences of its own bad decision-making. In time, the United States, too, would rue the rise of an “America first” world—but only after so many other countries had come to rue it first.