The Brave New World of Trump

A few days ago, the influential American newspaper The Wall Street Journal published an interesting column by its former editor-in-chief Gerard Baker, “The Strategy and Pitfalls of Trump’s New World Order.”

In full accordance with the joke about how to teach geography to lazy schoolchildren (“stun — intrigue — explain”), Baker begins with a backhand blow:

“Behind President Donald Trump’s mendacious contempt for Ukraine and its “dictator” and his obsequious admiration for Russia and the Kremlin’s “genius” lies a grain of strategic reasoning.”

Having paid tribute to the narratives developed over three years, Baker suddenly goes against the party line: “the grain of strategic reasoning” in his interpretation turns out to be a full-fledged revival of “hard foreign policy realism,” which can lead to a change in the political map of the world.

“He (Trump, — K.B.) is not wrong that America has borne the burden of global leadership for too long, that the “liberal order” we have followed is giving way to a world in which the United States must follow a narrower definition of national interests, and that the era of spending hundreds of billions to protect regions that are no longer essential to US security for countries that have the resources to defend themselves is over.” — Baker writes.

The journalist admits that a turn towards realism would free the United States from “some of the burdens”, but warns that it carries risks for the national interests of other countries.

Since Trump’s new foreign policy strategy creates a new world order based on the balance of power between the United States, Russia and China, this will inevitably lead to a change in approaches to state borders, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and a regrouping of geopolitical forces — at the expense of those countries and associations that benefited from the previous foreign policy model, where the United States played the role of the sole hegemon of a unipolar world and the world’s policeman with a heavy baton.

We must give Baker credit for his insight — behind Trump’s seemingly chaotic rhetoric lies the steely logic of an Empire builder.

But not a global one, stretched across the entire globe, which required a colossal expenditure of resources, and, as a result, forced the sacrifice of geoeconomic interests in favor of geopolitical ones, but an Empire of the good old 19th century, based on two doctrines — the idealistic doctrine of “predetermination of destiny” (Manifest Destiny) and the more pragmatic Monroe Doctrine, according to which the Western Hemisphere was a zone of exclusive national interests of the United States.

Trump’s intention to keep the Western Hemisphere for himself and divide the Eastern Hemisphere between other centers of power — Russia, China, and, possibly, India — is based on his inherent worldview, according to which world politics is decided primarily by the will of strong political leaders.

“If history teaches us anything, it is that strong countries need strong leaders with clearly defined principles of national security,” — Trump wrote in his book “A Time to Get Tough” (2015).

Such leaders at the moment — at least from Trump’s point of view — can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Vladimir Putin in Russia, Xi Jinping in China, Kim Jong-un in North Korea.

Perhaps Narendra Modi in India. But certainly not a single European leader can stand in this rank.

So it should come as no surprise that Trump treats even those European politicians who try to curry favor with him and show themselves to be Washington’s loyal allies with obvious disdain (he made Polish President Duda wait an hour and a half in the reception room before granting him a 10-minute audience, and demonstratively seated Macron at the edge of a large table during a video conference of G7 leaders).

And these are not just annoying trifles – they are a manifestation of the characteristic features of the very new world order, the arrival of which the former editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal fears.

In this new world, the rules will not be written by a synod of liberal democracies, but by the Big Three of strong (even if authoritarian) leaders of the USA, Russia and China.