To hear him tell it, Donald Trump has little use for the intangible components of American power. He sees America’s commitments and relationships abroad as zero-sum games.
Trade is a contest in which one party loses out over the other, not a mutually-beneficial association based on comparative advantage. Likewise, America’s successes abroad can be measured in physical assets – oil, natural resources, territory gained, etc.
And yet, the president predicates his arguments in favour of this peculiar outlook toward international relations on the intangibles of which he is supposedly so contemptuous. “America is not respected around the world anymore,” goes the common Trumpian refrain. To the extent that respect can be restored, it will be through displays of muscularity on the world stage.
The US president and his movement should understand that politics happens in other countries, too. Abstract but measurable phenomena like respect and prestige matter to every other society and their respective leaders. The new American administration is keen to throw its weight around in ways that represent a welcome departure from the Biden administration’s paralysing insecurity, but it should also be careful to avoid needlessly antagonising its partners. So far, some of the Trump administration’s efforts to correct for the Biden team’s mistakes have overshot that mark.
During a roundtable discussion on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference last week, Singapore defence minister Ng Eng Hen crystallised the pro-Western world’s sense that America’s “image” abroad had “changed from liberator to great disruptor to a landlord seeking rent”. The Singaporean government’s longstanding tradition of issuing pointed criticisms of its American partners notwithstanding, this description of the administration’s approach to negotiating with its allies probably rings true in many foreign capitals.
The New York Times reported on Feb 15 that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky had rejected a Trump administration proposal to relinquish control of half of the country’s mineral resources in exchange for continued US support for Kyiv’s defence against Russia’s war of territorial expansion. The overture likely runs counter to US interests in a number of ways, most of which would not register to those who base their assessment of effective statecraft on its tangible return on investment.
For one, the proposal puts meat on the otherwise bare bones of Moscow’s claim that Western support for Ukraine’s defence is a colonialist project. Second, it reflects a lack of understanding on the Trump team’s part about what the US was defending in the first place with its halting provisions for Ukraine’s defence under Biden.
Imposing an unjust peace on Ukraine would imperil the stability of its pro-Western government, foreclosing on retribution against the Russian forces who have committed acts of mass murder, rape, ethnic cleansing, child abductions, and countless other war crimes. A thoughtless ceasefire would also lend legitimacy to another “frozen conflict” in Moscow’s so-called “near abroad,” which Russia will thaw at a time of its choosing.
Furthermore, a weak peace deal that renders Ukraine a client of the West will not be durable, even assuming the Western security guarantees that underwrite the ceasefire represent a credible deterrent against Russian aggression. The signal that would send to the land-hungry apparatchiks in Beijing would be one the West may soon deeply regret.
Most disconcertingly, the Trump administration’s efforts to crowd Europe out of peace talks risk fracturing the Nato alliance. Maintaining cohesion among the alliance’s 32 member states is as challenging as deterring its external enemies. If Nato’s members on its eastern frontier believe that London, Paris, Berlin, and Washington are no longer seeing to their security interests, those countries could take matters into their own hands. That sort of freelancing would introduce unforeseeable variables into an already unstable equation, raising the prospect of a conflagration that draws the Atlantic alliance into an accidental confrontation with its old enemy.
So far, the Trump administration has had harsher words for its European allies than its enemies in the Kremlin. “The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia. It’s not China,” vice-president JD Vance said in his address to Europe from the Munich conference’s stage last week. Rather, what keeps Vance up at night is “the threat from within” that is undermining Europe’s commitment to liberal values.
The speech inflamed European passions, which was likely Vance’s intent. Contrary to the Continent’s garment-rending, the United States has plenty of standing to criticise Europe for its failures to protect property rights and free expression, to say nothing of aspiring EU member states in its own backyard. If, however, the US wants to see a more liberal social compact among its allies, paring back Washington’s cultural, economic, and political influence over the development of those societies is an odd way to go about it.
Likewise, scaring Europe into taking more responsibility for its own security by threatening to abandon it to an expansionist Russia is a great way to get Europe to invest more in defence, but at the risk of undermining American pre-eminence on the Continent.
Nor is the Trump administration’s transnationalism limited to Europe, as Ng’s comments suggest. Prior to his brief ascension to the Trump administration’s Doge team, Vivek Ramaswamy said that America’s posture toward China should be clear: “Do not mess with Taiwan” – at least, not “before 2028.” That was the year Ramaswamy calculated that the US would achieve “semiconductor independence,” at which point it could afford to have “significantly lower commitments to a situation in which you’re sorting out a nationalistic dispute dating back to 1949”.
Ramaswamy was speaking out of turn, but he was clearly channelling Trump’s instincts. “Taiwan should pay us for defence,” the president later said on the campaign trail. “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company.”
Of course, Taiwan does provide for its own defence. Indeed, Taipei is presently exploring an additional $10 billion request for US arms explicitly to ingratiate itself with the American president. Trump should not need that kind of inducement to foresee that a war for control of the Taiwan Strait would be disastrous not just to America’s material fortunes but the “respect” it earns from the rest of the world by virtue of both its might and its example.
The president and his movement appear to derive some psychological gratification from gratuitously needling America’s friends. The taunting has not worn well with its counterparts across the democratic world.
Those who are driven to distraction by Trump’s antagonism should try to maintain perspective: the US-led post-Cold War global order will not be undone by presidential teasing or transnationalism. Nor is the United States “just another country,” as some fatalists now maintain. America’s partners abroad will continue to ally with it to balance against the bullies in their neighbourhoods.
And yet, when it demands more of its allies, the US should be careful that it doesn’t diminish its standing or faith in its willingness to meet its commitments. America’s allies experience domestic political pressures, too, and antagonism is a two-way street.
Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review
To hear him tell it, Donald Trump has little use for the intangible components of American power. He sees America’s commitments and relationships abroad as zero-sum games.
Trade is a contest in which one party loses out over the other, not a mutually-beneficial association based on comparative advantage. Likewise, America’s successes abroad can be measured in physical assets – oil, natural resources, territory gained, etc.
And yet, the president predicates his arguments in favour of this peculiar outlook toward international relations on the intangibles of which he is supposedly so contemptuous. “America is not respected around the world anymore,” goes the common Trumpian refrain. To the extent that respect can be restored, it will be through displays of muscularity on the world stage.
The US president and his movement should understand that politics happens in other countries, too. Abstract but measurable phenomena like respect and prestige matter to every other society and their respective leaders. The new American administration is keen to throw its weight around in ways that represent a welcome departure from the Biden administration’s paralysing insecurity, but it should also be careful to avoid needlessly antagonising its partners. So far, some of the Trump administration’s efforts to correct for the Biden team’s mistakes have overshot that mark.
During a roundtable discussion on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference last week, Singapore defence minister Ng Eng Hen crystallised the pro-Western world’s sense that America’s “image” abroad had “changed from liberator to great disruptor to a landlord seeking rent”. The Singaporean government’s longstanding tradition of issuing pointed criticisms of its American partners notwithstanding, this description of the administration’s approach to negotiating with its allies probably rings true in many foreign capitals.
The New York Times reported on Feb 15 that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky had rejected a Trump administration proposal to relinquish control of half of the country’s mineral resources in exchange for continued US support for Kyiv’s defence against Russia’s war of territorial expansion. The overture likely runs counter to US interests in a number of ways, most of which would not register to those who base their assessment of effective statecraft on its tangible return on investment.
For one, the proposal puts meat on the otherwise bare bones of Moscow’s claim that Western support for Ukraine’s defence is a colonialist project. Second, it reflects a lack of understanding on the Trump team’s part about what the US was defending in the first place with its halting provisions for Ukraine’s defence under Biden.
Imposing an unjust peace on Ukraine would imperil the stability of its pro-Western government, foreclosing on retribution against the Russian forces who have committed acts of mass murder, rape, ethnic cleansing, child abductions, and countless other war crimes. A thoughtless ceasefire would also lend legitimacy to another “frozen conflict” in Moscow’s so-called “near abroad,” which Russia will thaw at a time of its choosing.
Furthermore, a weak peace deal that renders Ukraine a client of the West will not be durable, even assuming the Western security guarantees that underwrite the ceasefire represent a credible deterrent against Russian aggression. The signal that would send to the land-hungry apparatchiks in Beijing would be one the West may soon deeply regret.
Most disconcertingly, the Trump administration’s efforts to crowd Europe out of peace talks risk fracturing the Nato alliance. Maintaining cohesion among the alliance’s 32 member states is as challenging as deterring its external enemies. If Nato’s members on its eastern frontier believe that London, Paris, Berlin, and Washington are no longer seeing to their security interests, those countries could take matters into their own hands. That sort of freelancing would introduce unforeseeable variables into an already unstable equation, raising the prospect of a conflagration that draws the Atlantic alliance into an accidental confrontation with its old enemy.
So far, the Trump administration has had harsher words for its European allies than its enemies in the Kremlin. “The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia. It’s not China,” vice-president JD Vance said in his address to Europe from the Munich conference’s stage last week. Rather, what keeps Vance up at night is “the threat from within” that is undermining Europe’s commitment to liberal values.
The speech inflamed European passions, which was likely Vance’s intent. Contrary to the Continent’s garment-rending, the United States has plenty of standing to criticise Europe for its failures to protect property rights and free expression, to say nothing of aspiring EU member states in its own backyard. If, however, the US wants to see a more liberal social compact among its allies, paring back Washington’s cultural, economic, and political influence over the development of those societies is an odd way to go about it.
Likewise, scaring Europe into taking more responsibility for its own security by threatening to abandon it to an expansionist Russia is a great way to get Europe to invest more in defence, but at the risk of undermining American pre-eminence on the Continent.
Nor is the Trump administration’s transnationalism limited to Europe, as Ng’s comments suggest. Prior to his brief ascension to the Trump administration’s Doge team, Vivek Ramaswamy said that America’s posture toward China should be clear: “Do not mess with Taiwan” – at least, not “before 2028.” That was the year Ramaswamy calculated that the US would achieve “semiconductor independence,” at which point it could afford to have “significantly lower commitments to a situation in which you’re sorting out a nationalistic dispute dating back to 1949”.
Ramaswamy was speaking out of turn, but he was clearly channelling Trump’s instincts. “Taiwan should pay us for defence,” the president later said on the campaign trail. “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company.”
Of course, Taiwan does provide for its own defence. Indeed, Taipei is presently exploring an additional $10 billion request for US arms explicitly to ingratiate itself with the American president. Trump should not need that kind of inducement to foresee that a war for control of the Taiwan Strait would be disastrous not just to America’s material fortunes but the “respect” it earns from the rest of the world by virtue of both its might and its example.
The president and his movement appear to derive some psychological gratification from gratuitously needling America’s friends. The taunting has not worn well with its counterparts across the democratic world.
Those who are driven to distraction by Trump’s antagonism should try to maintain perspective: the US-led post-Cold War global order will not be undone by presidential teasing or transnationalism. Nor is the United States “just another country,” as some fatalists now maintain. America’s partners abroad will continue to ally with it to balance against the bullies in their neighbourhoods.
And yet, when it demands more of its allies, the US should be careful that it doesn’t diminish its standing or faith in its willingness to meet its commitments. America’s allies experience domestic political pressures, too, and antagonism is a two-way street.
Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review