The US is leaving the world behind faster than feared

By Andreas Kluth

In coming to grips with the second term of President Donald Trump, many of us made the mistake of assuming — hoping? — that he was just “trash-talking” the world, like a boxer needling his opponents in the ring. That he didn’t really mean the outrageous things he said.

Of course Trump would never annex Canada or Greenland — would he? Surely he wouldn’t blame Ukraine for being invaded and take Russia’s side at the United Nations — would he? And while he might brandish tariffs rhetorically, he wouldn’t declare economic war on the world — would he? More generally, once out of campaign mode, he won’t really abdicate America’s postwar role as leader and stabilizer of the international system. He’d never turn the US from a benevolent into a negligent, much less a malevolent, actor in the world. Or would he?

Yes he would, and yes, as president he’s in full swing of doing all of these things and more. Barely 100 days into his second term, his MAGA fans can no longer gaslight his detractors into thinking that they’re taking Trump too literally or failing to savor the oratorical beauty of his “weaves.” Nor can his critics seek comfort in dismissing him as a trash-talker. Instead, concrete bureaucratic and administrative activity is accumulating and forming a pattern. And just as pessimists feared, the journey is heading toward isolationism, imperialism, caprice and entropy.

Start with the boring but fundamental infrastructure of American diplomacy, located in the State Department and its sundry extensions. According to an internal memo, the Trump administration plans to halve Foggy Bottom’s budget in the coming fiscal year. This means that the US will close or shrink many of its foreign missions. Another memo describes plans to get rid of 10 embassies and 17 consulates and to reduce staff at others. Six of the embassies reportedly to be shuttered are in Africa, just as China and Russia are redoubling their efforts to woo those countries, and the Global South generally, out of the Western camp in geopolitics and into their own.

America’s “voice” in all these places has also fallen silent on the airwaves, now that Trump has gutted the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia. Since he demolished the United States Agency for International Development, American care packages no longer reach earthquake victims in Myanmar, or almost anywhere.

Another consequence of the budget cuts is that funds for humanitarian assistance, global health projects and international organizations would be slashed. Almost no money would go to the United Nations, NATO and some 20 other institutions. Funding for international peacekeeping missions would be eliminated entirely.

Just as peacekeeping is out, so is, say, the fight against pandemics. In keeping with his disdain for the UN, Trump has already announced America’s exit from the World Health Organization. That left the 193 other members, without the US, to negotiate a long-sought treaty that would prevent or control new outbreaks of disease and share drugs and vaccines more effectively and equitably than last time, during Covid. Presumably, the US won’t be a party to any of this. Climate change? Don’t ask.

Nor is Trump ditching only America’s instruments of “soft power.” For 76 years, no institution and projection of US might has been “harder” than the American-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Its credibility, underwritten by American troops, tanks and nukes in Europe, has prevented World War III by deterring the Soviets and, so far, the Russians. But Trump has turned it into a protection racket, suggesting that he wouldn’t come to the defense of allies who spend less than 2 per cent of GDP — or 5 per cent, or whatever number he picks next — on their armies.

He’s now thinking about forfeiting the American prerogative to staff the NATO position of Supreme Allied Commander Europe, once General Christopher Cavoli, the incumbent, ends his term this summer. SACEUR is the military leader who would direct the armies of all allies in the event of war against an aggressor, and who would transmit to the American president requests to deploy US nukes stationed in Europe. The first in that role was Dwight Eisenhower, and since Ike the idea that it could ever go to anybody but an American has been almost unimaginable.

A European or Canadian SACEUR would raise legal questions about the commander’s authority to issue orders to US troops. Symbolically, vacating the role would also amount to distancing America from the alliance. The Europeans would see the move as another American step out of NATO altogether. The Kremlin would interpret it as an increase of ambiguity and a decrease of credibility and thus deterrence.

The pattern here is that Trump fails to understand and appreciate not only diplomacy as such but also every principle that has governed US foreign policy since World War II, under Republicans and Democrats alike. America was the seminal force in founding and building the UN, NATO, the World Trade Organization (it still exists in name, apparently) and the other institutions that were meant to keep the peace, raise prosperity and maintain a modicum of order. The US did this because it saw the benefits to the world — and saw itself as part of that world. Trump sees neither.

And so world order collapses, first gradually, then suddenly. The Pax Americana, the world in which countries large and small could at least hope to thrive under the magnanimous gaze of a benevolent superpower and hegemon: All that is basically gone.

Trump in his first 100 days has steered American statecraft on a different trajectory, one of negligence in international affairs, verging on malpractice. If he invades Canada, Greenland or any place — or abandons Ukraine — that could even turn into outright malevolence. Goodbye American Century; hello dystopia.