FA: Trump and the end of American Exceptionalism

Pic.: The Foreign Affairs

Trump’s reelection will redefine U.S. Power.

Trump’s foreign policy worldview has been clear ever since he entered political life. He believes that the U.S.-created liberal international order has, over time, stacked the deck against the United States. To change that imbalance, Trump wants to restrict inward economic flows such as imports and immigrants (although he likes inward foreign direct investment). He wants allies to shoulder more of the burden for their own defense. And he believes that he can cut deals with Russia’s Vladimir Putin or North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, that will reduce tensions in global trouble spots and allow the United States to focus inward, writes ‘The Foreign Affairs’.

Equally  clear are Trump’s preferred means of getting what he wants in world politics. The former and future president is a strong believer in using coercion, such as economic sanctions, to pressure other actors. He also subscribes to the “madman theory,” in which he will threaten massive tariff increases or “fire and fury” against other countries in the firm belief that such threats will compel them into offering greater concessions than they otherwise would. At the same time, however, Trump also practices a transactional view of foreign policy, demonstrating a willingness during his first term to link disparate issues to secure economic concessions.

Trump 2.0 will bury the power of American exceptionalism.

That should not be an issue for Trump’s second term. Over the past eight years, he has collected enough acolytes to staff his foreign policy and national security team with like-minded officials. He is far less likely to meet resistance from his own political appointees. Other checks on Trump’s policy will also be far weaker. The legislative and judicial branches of government are now more MAGA-friendly than they were in 2017. Trump has indicated numerous times that he intends to purge the military and bureaucracy of professionals who oppose his policies, and he will likely use Schedule F — a measure to reclassify civil service positions as political slots — to force them out. For the next few years, the United States will speak with one voice on foreign policy, and that voice will be Trump’s.

Although Trump’s ability to command the foreign policy machinery will be enhanced, his ability to improve the United States’ place in the world is another matter. The most prominent U.S. entanglements are in Ukraine and Gaza. During the 2024 campaign, Trump criticized Biden for the chaotic 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, asserting that “the humiliation in Afghanistan set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world.” A similar outcome in Ukraine would create similar political problems for Trump. In Gaza, Trump has urged Benjamin Netanyahu to “finish the job” and destroy Hamas. Netanyahu’s lack of strategic vision to accomplish this task, however, suggests that Israel will be prosecuting an ongoing war that has alienated many potential U.S. partners in the world. The reality is that Trump will find it more difficult to withdraw the United States from these conflicts than he claimed on the campaign trail.

Furthermore, the global rules of the game have changed since 2017, when existing U.S. initiatives, coalitions, and institutions still had a lot of juice. In the interim, other great powers have become more active in creating and bolstering their own structures independent of the United States. These range from the BRICS+ to OPEC+ to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. More informally, one can see a “coalition of the sanctioned,” in which China, North Korea, and Iran are happy to help Russia disrupt global order. Trump may very well want to join some of these groupings rather than create compelling substitutes for them. His stated efforts to divide these groupings will likely fail. Autocrats might distrust each other, but they will distrust Donald Trump more.

The most important difference between Trump 2.0 and Trump 1.0, however, is also the simplest: Donald Trump is now a known commodity on the global stage. As the Columbia professor Elizabeth Saunders recently observed, “In the 2016 election, Trump’s foreign policy was somewhat mysterious... In 2024, however, Trump’s actions are far easier to predict. The candidate who wanted to be the ‘madman’ and loved the idea of keeping other countries guessing has become a politician with a pretty predictable agenda.” Leaders such as Xi, Putin, Kim, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and even French President Emmanuel Macron have seen Trump’s schtick before.

Both great powers and smaller states know by now that the best way to deal with Trump is to shower him with pomp and circumstance, abstain from fact-checking him in public, make flashy but token concessions, and remain secure that by and large their core interests will be preserved. Trump’s negotiating style yielded minimal concrete gains in his first term; it will yield less than that in his second term.

The other trend that Trump 2.0 will accelerate is the end of American exceptionalism. From Harry Truman to Joe Biden, U.S. presidents have embraced the notion that American values and ideals play an important role in U.S. foreign policy. This claim has been contested at various times, but promoting democracy and advancing human rights has been identified as in the national interest for quite some time.

Trump 2.0 will bury it.

When the rest of the world looks at Trump, they will no longer see an aberrant exception to American exceptionalism; they will see what America stands for in the twenty-first century.

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