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The US won’t play its post-World War II role. What happens next will depend on others’ responses
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In his two months in office, US President Donald Trump has given a new meaning to the term ‘disruption.’ Before he took his second presidential avatar, the term was discussed mostly in hypothetical terms in seminar rooms and conference circuits. But eight weeks plus of Trump 2.0 have made disruption the operational reality for the global order. There may be no strategic coherence in Trump’s daily pronouncements as he moves from one issue to the next and from one geography to another. But that does not preclude new constraints from reshaping the global reality for others.
Trump seems to have put his reputation on the line to address a festering sore at the heart of Europe's security architecture.
The Russia-Ukraine war is moving towards another stage, with ceasefire talks speeding ahead in Saudi Arabia. The two sides have agreed “to ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes in the Black Sea” as well as “to develop measures for implementing... the agreement to ban strikes against energy facilities of Russia and Ukraine.” This in itself is a major achievement for Trump, as it is easy to start wars but incredibly difficult to end them. For the past three years, the message from Washington was in favour of escalation. Now Trump seems to have put his reputation on the line to address a festering sore at the heart of Europe's security architecture. By shocking primarily Ukraine and Europe, the Trump administration has been able to move the United States away from its open-ended commitment to war that the previous Joe Biden administration had put in place. The end-game of a Ukrainian victory over a much more powerful Russian military industrial complex was a chimera that Trump’s predecessor was peddling without in any way ensuring the provision of massive resources needed to achieve that outcome.
Ukraine, for all the challenges it faces, has managed to retain most of its territory and has been able to give Russia a bloody nose, but President Volodymyr Zelensky’s claim of a total victory over Russia was never a serious possibility. By not acknowledging this and by not forcing Europe to take greater responsibility, Biden made it politically impossible to sustain the war effort. And eventually, it is Trump who is now having to reconfigure the Ukraine-Russia entanglement.
Russia, with its battlefield advantages growing, is still to fully reconcile to the demands of a ceasefire and is linking it to the rollback of sanctions on Russian banks, insurers, companies, ports and ships, thereby allowing it to export more agricultural goods and fertilizers. But clearly, a war that was open-ended till two months ago is finally moving to some sort of a denouement.
This is related to the second big shift that Trump has been able to unleash in Europe. He has been able to convince European leaders that the post-1945 terms of the trans-Atlantic partnership will have to be renegotiated. For all the talk about a crisis in Europe-US ties, even the Russian invasion of Ukraine was not a big enough shock for Europeans to start rethinking their security priorities. Trump’s open disdain for Europe and his Ukraine policy seem to be doing the trick. For the first time, European leaders seem serious about reorienting their defence policies and thinking about their own responsibility in managing their threat perceptions without drawing the US into the picture. What Germany is saying is the real deal. Olaf Scholz, its now-outgoing chancellor, had talked of a “zeitenwende”—or ‘turning point’—after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Presumptive Chancellor Friedrich Merz is pushing hard for greater investment in the nation’s military, with some estimates suggesting that Germany is likely to spend more than $650 billion over the next decade on defence. This will have a transformative effect on the European defence landscape, and the long-term consequences of a strategically-reawakened Germany for Europe and rest of the world would be something to watch out for.
The economic basis of American power is depleting and unless Washington recalibrates its approach, it won’t be able to retain its pre-eminent position in the global order.
Trump may not be saying it, but some of his advisors are—that the US of today is not the United States of the 1990s. The unipolar moment at the end of the Cold War has long been over and the US cannot take on multiple adversaries at the same time. The economic basis of American power is depleting and unless Washington recalibrates its approach, it won’t be able to retain its pre-eminent position in the global order.
Elbridge Colby, Trump’s nominee for under secretary of defence for policy and the Pentagon’s chief strategist, has been categorical that while China is “the biggest, most powerful rival [the US has] faced in probably 150 years,” a mismatch has emerged between America’s global commitments and its current military capabilities. By arguing that Taiwan should be raising its defence budget to 10% of GDP, he is also alerting other US partners in the Indo-Pacific that greater security burden-sharing will be the new reality in this region too.
Trump is rolling the dice in ways that most nations in the world, including India, seem unprepared for. But they also don’t have the luxury of ignoring policy shifts in Washington.
Today, we may be at the cusp of a new world order. Its exact contours, however, will depend on how others respond to Trump’s world-view.
This commentary originally appeared in Mint.
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Professor Harsh V. Pant is Vice President – Studies and Foreign Policy at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. He is a Professor of International Relations ...
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