Trump’s Campaign Is Already Shaping Global Affairs

The shadow of the future hangs heavy: What people do today is influenced by the bets they make about what tomorrow may hold. The same is true for global affairs. Foreign policy officials make judgments that involve the highest stakes in an atmosphere of extreme uncertainty. And because the US is so influential, countries almost everywhere must base their policies in part on educated guesses about its future reliability and power.

So it’s only natural that something as potentially disruptive as a second Donald Trump presidency is entering their calculus. Trump may be in prison come January 2025, or he may be in the Oval Office — rarely has more uncertainty attended the fate, personal and political, of a major candidate. Yet the mere possibility of Trump’s return is already shaping international affairs.

Over the past year, I’ve had discussions about the future of US foreign policy with officials and analysts from multiple continents. From the halls of the Kremlin to the tense waters of the Western Pacific, the possibility of a Trump resurrection is affecting global strategy and diplomacy in ways that present opportunities — but many more challenges — for those conducting US policy in the here and now.

Trump’s foreign policy was a bewildering medley of tradition and revolution.

Candidate Trump ran for the presidency on a platform as radical as that of any major contender in modern history. He didn’t just threaten to “cancel” the Paris climate accords and the Iran nuclear deal. He didn’t simply deprecate democratic values while offering admiring compliments to anti-American tyrants.

The core issue was that Trump openly mused about abandoning US allies, ripping up trade deals, and tearing down the international system the US had spent decades constructing. Even the language Trump used was taken from another era: “America First” was the movement that preached isolation as the world burned in 1940-41.

By this standard, Trump’s presidency was remarkably normal. The US withdrew from no alliances; it cut no grand bargains with rivals. If anything, America took sharper positions toward China and Russia, while strengthening the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s presence in Eastern Europe and investing in bodies, such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, meant to secure the Indo-Pacific — initiatives Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, has adopted as his own.

The Trump administration typically opted to renegotiate, rather than terminate, trade deals; it intensified the campaign against the Islamic State while pursuing closer ties with traditional US partners in the Persian Gulf.

These policies could have been the handiwork of any Republican president. Even where Trump did pull back more dramatically, such as withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and trying to do likewise from Afghanistan, he was mostly in step with US politics and public opinion. In these respects, America First was part of the national mood, which is why Biden has sometimes found himself emulating Trump’s economic protectionism and his military retrenchment from the Middle East.

Yet in other ways, it definitely wasn’t business as usual during the Trump years. No prior president had so eagerly unwound the most painstakingly negotiated multilateral agreements reached by his predecessor — the Paris accords, the Iran nuclear deal and TPP. No prior president had so gleefully practiced economic confrontation with America’s friends as well as its enemies. No prior president had so assiduously praised the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, while brawling repeatedly with democratic allies. No prior president had so outrageously undermined US policy for dirt on his chief political rival.

No prior president had tried to terminate US military interventions with a tweet; no prior president had governed with such incompetence and chaos. And never before had the threat of more radical departures been so omnipresent: Trump’s advisers had to dissuade, or simply bamboozle, the chief executive when he sought to quit NATO, the North American Free Trade Agreement and other trade and security pacts.

Trump clearly preferred the angry, atavistic unilateralism he had campaigned on rather than the more measured American internationalism his administration often delivered. And the general rule was that the more the president participated in any issue, the Trumpier the policy got. As one high-ranking US official told me, things were normal during the Trump years — until the president got involved.

The reason the policies were more orthodox than the president had much to do with the inertia created by decades of American globalism. Trump may have hated NATO, but the patterns of institutionalized cooperation the alliance fosters help keep transatlantic relations on course.

It also had to do with personnel and politics. Trump’s Republican allies on Capitol Hill were mostly committed internationalists, willing to defy him on issues — whether Russian sanctions or troop withdrawals from South Korea — where he might have taken US policy off the rails.

Because Trump was such a foreign affairs neophyte, he surrounded himself with aides — Secretary of State James Mattis and National Security Advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, among others — who disagreed with him on policy matters and, in some cases, detested him personally. Some of those advisers headed complex, unwieldy bureaucracies that Trump found difficult to move. In other words, the Trump revolution was moderated by powerful constraints, which might not be there in the future.

There’s little chance Trump, so vexed by his advisers during his first term, would appoint anyone but committed loyalists during a second. He has already announced plans to purge and politicize the civil service. Trump would also have greater, though certainly not total, control of a Republican Party that has been remade in his political image over the past eight years. Not least, a Trump with more experience might not be so tempered by inertia this time around: Top aides such as Bolton believe he might have withdrawn from NATO had he won a second term in 2020.

Of course, we can only speculate about what Trump might do about NATO or any other issue if he returns to power. Would he cut off aid to Ukraine in a bid to end that war “in 24 hours?” Would he again trade geopolitical benefits for political favors? Would he withdraw from the World Trade Organization and ditch Biden’s climate-change agenda?

Those are questions that countries around the world are asking themselves. Much rides on the choices of a superpower. So the prospect of Trump 2.0 is already having global effects.

Exhibit A is the most consequential issue the world faces: The war in Ukraine.

Putin has gotten himself into a truly terrible position: A war that was supposed to end with a glorious thunder run into Kyiv is devouring his army and destabilizing his regime. But Putin keeps fighting for several reasons — because of his obsession with Ukraine and renewing the Russian empire; because he calculates Kyiv will run out of men and materiel over time; and because he believes the Western coalition will crack after November 2024.

Trump has bragged that Putin never invaded Ukraine on his watch. Yet Putin may now see Trump as his path to salvation.

Trump has said that Russia will eventually “take over all of Ukraine.” He laments that America is “giving away so much equipment.” The scenario that gives Putin hope, high-ranking US officials have hinted in public — and stated explicitly in private — is one in which Trump is reelected and then pressures Kyiv to settle while winding down America’s life-giving aid. This is more or less what Trump has said he would do, and what Putin’s top European ally, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, has predicted.

The reality might not be so simple. Senate Republicans strongly support Ukraine, even if Republican voters are conflicted. British officials are confident that the UK and other European countries would keep backing Kyiv even if the US dropped out.

But perception can make its own reality, and the chance of a Trump restoration is helping protract a devastating war by giving Putin confidence that his persistence may pay off in the end. Which is also why Ukraine feels such pressure to succeed in its current offensive: This is its best chance to retake territory and make the case for further aid before the politics of the war potentially shift in 2024.

The possibility of Trump’s return is also creating opportunities for China. No one should expect Trump to drastically mellow US policy: His trade platform for 2024 promises to “tax China to build up America.” Chinese analysts certainly aren’t holding their breath for a return to “rationality” in Washington.

But everyone should expect Trump to neglect the careful coalition-building that has characterized US policy under Biden — an approach, one Chinese hawk comments, that has caused more “difficulties” and “pressure” than “Trump’s unilateral strategy” did. In particular, a second Trump presidency would likely create new wedges between Washington and Europe, the group of democratic allies the former president so enjoyed tormenting. That fact is not lost on Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Since ending its Covid-zero policy and muting its wolf-warrior diplomats, China has welcomed President Emmanuel Macron of France, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other European leaders to Beijing. The goal is to sustain and strengthen Europe’s trade and tech ties to China, reducing the chances European countries will align fully with Washington against Beijing.

Xi has many reasons to pursue this policy: Geopolitics dictate trying to distance America from its allies. But quasi-official mouthpieces are relishing the polarization and division another Trump presidency would bring. And with 56% of Europeans saying a future Trump administration would damage the transatlantic relationship, this strategy makes all the more sense if Beijing believes the US will start sabotaging its own alliances again.

What about the Persian Gulf? Here, Biden has no shortage of troubles as he tries to navigate relations with autocratic allies, namely Saudi Arabia, while reviving some détente with America’s adversary, Iran. Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s government in Saudi Arabia is in no hurry to placate the US on human rights, oil prices or other issues, in part because it may fare better if Trump — who took a “see no evil” approach to the kingdom’s political excesses and regional destabilization — comes back.

The Saudis “have chosen Trump over Biden, and they’re sticking to their bet,” former CIA official Bruce Riedel has said. One reason the Iranians, for their part, have been slow to return to any nuclear deal with Washington is that their experience with Trump showed that future presidents can simply tear up any executive agreement their predecessors ink.

The shadow of a Trumpian future thus informs the calculations of America’s friends as well as its foes. Yet the effects aren’t all terrible for the US.

In Europe, Trump-phobia does limit the willingness to follow the US into a sharper posture vis-à-vis China, because the continent can’t afford to find itself facing high tensions with both Trump’s Washington and Xi’s Beijing. The experience with Trump has certainly motivated Macron to keep pushing “strategic autonomy,” not that many countries want a European project led by Paris.

Yet fear of what may come also seems to be encouraging the European Union to work more closely with the Biden administration on climate issues, technological cooperation and Ukraine, in recognition that there isn’t infinite time to lock in transatlantic gains. Uncertainty does sometimes yield diplomatic leverage.

In East Asia, too, the US may be benefitting from uncertainty. Just look at what is happening in Japan.

Tokyo is conducting a halfway-revolution in foreign and defense policy. In the past year, it has sealed plans to vastly increase military spending so it can purchase fifth-generation fighter jets and “counterstrike” missiles that bring China and North Korea within range. Tokyo has signed a mini-alliance of sorts with Australia; it is expanding engagement across Southeast Asia. Japan was once content to free-ride on American protection. But as China pushes for regional and global hegemony, Tokyo is making itself a more potent player in the Western Pacific and beyond.

Japanese officials say these reforms will make their country a better ally to the US — and bilateral cooperation is flourishing. But they also admit, in private, that Japan is shortening the runway to a more independent foreign policy should the US lapse back into America First unilateralism. As columnist Hiro Akita puts it, Japan prefers a “Plan A+” in which the US and its allies do more together. Yet Tokyo also needs a “Plan B” in case it must look after itself.

It’s a mistake to make everything about Trump, of course. The specter of change after the next election always hangs over US diplomacy. The possibility of Trump’s return is hardly the only thing shaping policies around the world. It’s also silly to pretend that Trump is the sole source of tension with US allies: Many European countries dislike Biden’s tech and green energy subsidies, which seem like Democratic echoes of Trump’s agenda.

Yet Trump is still one of a kind. Yes, a President Ron DeSantis might cause problems for Ukraine. A second-term President Biden might not do much to restart the global trade agenda. But no other candidate has the combination of illiberalism, unilateralism and incompetence that marked Trump’s first term — and might prove still more disruptive in the second.

A concern I have heard many times is that the world is more dangerous than a half-decade ago, amid a hot war in Ukraine, a cold war between America and China, a slow-motion nuclear crisis with Iran, and other problems. The margin for erratic or gratuitously abrasive behavior by a global superpower is smaller than when Trump first held office, which makes the expected implications of a return more pronounced.

The responses we have seen to those expectations aren’t uniformly damaging, from Washington’s perspective. If the possibility of a Trump return hastens Japan’s transition from a consumer to a provider of security in the Indo-Pacific, what’s not to like? In an odd way, the ideal equilibrium might be one in which Trump or someone like him never retakes the White House, but the chance of that happening still spurs greater activism among countries committed to the present international order.

But in the end, Trump’s shadow is largely shaping the world in less favorable ways. It encourages Putin to hang tough in a terrible war. It adds to Beijing’s hopes of splitting America from its European friends. It deprives the US government of leverage in dealing with friends and foes in the Middle East.

It would be unfair to blame Trump for all of these strategic problems. It’s not unfair to say that he contributes to them. Whether or not he wins the presidency again, the Age of Trump isn’t over. The challenge his return could pose for US policy is already here.