Category Archives: US Leadership

‘Killing the Golden Goose’ – Integration in the Global Economy

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Originally, I started this piece lamenting the ‘failed’ effort to bring China into the global economy following the failure by the CCP – the Party, and the Chinese government to continue early encouraging domestic economic reform efforts in the Chinese economy. That failure has given rise to very negative consequences for the global economy and the central economic players – the United States and the other North American economies, Europe and various players in the Indo-Pacific including Japan, South Korea and others.  I was preparing this week’s Post, reviewing in part a very good piece by Michael Froman, former USTR. And, in fact, I’ll get to that tale in just a moment. But it is impossible right now to overlook the destructiveness that President Trump is now bringing to the global economy, especially to America’s economic allies and partners with his thoughtless tariffs on steel and aluminum, now automobiles and very soon apparently reciprocal tariffs against seemingly all goods on what he, Trump, has come to call ‘Liberation Day’. Some liberation!

It is hard to look at Trump’s most recent tariff actions vis a vis cars and not reflect on the long – decades long effort – to integrate the three North American economies – Canada, US and Mexico – and despair over Trump’s sudden unprovoked effort to tear down the integrated economies of North America.   At least in Trump 1.0 he had the decency to renegotiate NAFTA and agree on USMCA terms of trade raising the percentage of North American content. But who cares about such negotiated free trade  agreements under Trump 2.0? As described by Damien Cave and Steven Erlanger in their NYTimes piece, these are Trump’s current tariff actions:  

“Many of the countries most affected by the new levies, such as South Korea, Japan, Germany, Mexico and Canada, are already reeling from the Trump team’s disregard for free trade deals already signed and his threats to long-established security relationships.” 

 

“Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada said on Wednesday that Trump’s move on tariffs was “a direct attack.” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said the result would be “bad for businesses” and “worse for consumers.” Robert Habeck, Germany’s acting economics minister, said, “It is now important for the E.U. to respond decisively to the tariffs — it must be clear that we will not back down in the face of the U.S.”” 

As these reporters pointed out, the Trump actions and allied responses could end in the following very negative way: 

“The tariffs, which threaten both American and foreign carmakers, increase the likelihood of a global trade war. A chain reaction of economic nationalism with tariffs and other measures — perhaps adding costs for finance and services — could suppress economic growth globally, spread inflation and add rancor to already testy negotiations with Washington about security.” 

Ugh, a global trade war. Just what the globe doesn’t need. But Trump policy marches on and there is the real prospect for cranking up the drama: 

“The Trump White House has sought to use every tool of American power, including its military support and consumer market, to extract what Mr. Trump sees as a better deal for Americans. But for countries that have spent decades trusting America and tying their economies and defense plans to Washington’s promises, this feels like a moment of reversal.”

 

“American influence, long built on pronouncements about values and the shared riches of free trade, has hardened into what many analysts describe as “all stick, no carrot.” In the Trump team’s thinking, critics argue, American gains require pain for others — friends included.” 

So that’s the immediate dismaying state of the global economy largely brought to you by Trump 2.0. But there is still reason to dwell a bit on the impact to the global economy of China’s dramatic global economic emergence. This dramatic and in part negative influence on the US, and Trump for sure, but others as well, has added to the downbeat actions from the US and others.  

We’ve never quite recovered from it – that is China’s incorporation into the global economy. Even today strong echoes of a now rather distant debate still can be heard. That debate was, and is, a hard discussion by both experts and former officials. That debate was, and is, over China’s incorporation into the global economy and the decision to provide China with membership in the WTO. I was reminded of this in a strong review piece of China’s integration into the global economy by Michael Froman. Froman is today President of the Council on Foreign Relations. He served, however, as U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) from 2013 to 2017 and before that he was Deputy National Security Adviser for International Economic Affairs from 2009 to 2013. In an article in Foreign Affairs entitled,  “China Has Already Remade the International System: How the World Adopted Beijing’s Economic Playbook” he reviews China’s integration and its consequences for the condition of the global economy. While there are outstanding questions on whether more should have been insisted on by WTO members especially in terms of reform of China’s economy before permitting its entry to the global economy, it is largely in the rearview mirror today. There was a long discussion and back and forth at the time of discussions for China’s accession to the WTO, especially between the  United States and China. Much of it concerned whether China was a market enough economy to enable it to integrate into the global economy and to gain membership to the WTO. As Froman notes: 

“Jiang [Zemin] and Zhu [Rongji] declared repeatedly that China would inevitably continue to open up. Many in the West went so far as to believe that this economic liberalization would lead to China’s political liberalization, that a capitalist society would become a more democratic one over time.” 

 

“That assumption proved false. China’s leaders never seriously contemplated political reform, but China’s economic advancement was impressive nonetheless. The country’s GDP grew from $347.77 billion in 1989 to $1.66 trillion by 2003 to $17.79 trillion in 2023, according to the World Bank. Hopes were high that integrating China into the rules-based trading system could lead to a more peaceful and more prosperous world.” 

 

“Then President Hu Jintao entered the picture, followed by President Xi Jinping. China’s economic trajectory turned out to be less linear and less inevitable than initially expected. Under Hu, China leaned more heavily into state intervention in the economy by aiming to create “national champions” in strategic sectors through massive subsidies. In other words, the government expanded its role rather than pursuing further market liberalization.” 

 

“In 2004, China made up nine percent of the world’s manufacturing value added, leapfrogging to a massive 29 percent in 2023, according to the World Bank.” 

I am particularly reminded of all of this because of a very small role I played in the lengthy effort to secure China’s accession to the WTO. I worked with a former trade official in trying to address various questions over China’s economy and its reform trajectory following the many Working Party meetings on China’s accession at the WTO in Geneva. It was a several years process. As a successful conclusion approached I remember, vividly, the comment by that official after all those many gatherings and discussions over several years  that it was a mistake to permit China’s accession at that time. That official had reached the conclusion that China was not ready for economic integration in the global trading system.

But China’s accession did occur. And it became clear that the market reform process in China had slowed and then died. And the US actions are now in part as a result. Again here is Michael Froman:   

“In 2009, the Obama administration led an effort to terminate the Doha Round—a multilateral trade negotiation under the WTO launched in 2001. It did so in large part because the resulting agreement would have enshrined China permanently as a “developing country” under WTO rules. This would have allowed China to enjoy “special and differential treatment,” which meant that China would have been able to avoid assuming the same level of obligations and disciplines—on market access, intellectual property rights protection, and other issues—as the United States and other industrial countries.”

 

“Similar concerns motivated the Obama administration to pursue the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a high-standard trade agreement negotiated among 12 countries around the Pacific Rim. This initiative was designed to give countries in the Asia-Pacific region an attractive alternative to the model China offered.” 

 

“By the time TPP negotiations were completed in 2015, however, trade agreements—even those designed to counterbalance China—had become politically toxic at home, and the United States ended up pulling out of the agreement.” 

As Froman then summarizes his trade role and his warnings to China: 

“From 2009 to 2017, I served first as deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs and then as U.S. trade representative. During that time, I consistently warned my Chinese counterparts that the benign international environment that had enabled China’s success would disappear unless Beijing modified its predatory economic policies. Instead, China largely maintained its course of action. If anything, it doubled down on its approach. When Xi came to power in 2012, he effectively ended the era of “reform and opening” that had already stalled under Hu, set China on a course to dominate critical technologies, increased production to the point of overcapacity, and committed to export-led growth.”

And he concludes: 

“Today, as the economist Brad Setser has noted, China’s export volume is growing at a rate three times as fast as global trade. In the automotive sector, it is on a trajectory to have the capacity to produce two-thirds of the world’s automotive demand. And its dominance extends beyond cars; China also produces more than half the global supply of steel, aluminum, and ships.”

 

“Eventually, even American businesses, which had always been the ballast in the bilateral relationship, soured on China as their intellectual property was stolen or forcibly licensed, their market access to China was severely restricted or delayed, and China’s subsidies and preferences for domestic firms ate into their opportunity. Without any semblance of reciprocity, the relationship deteriorated. Politicians of both parties and the American public hardened their stance on China. European and major emerging economies grew hostile to Beijing’s policies, as well. In short, the benign international environment disappeared.” 

So that then is in part how we got to the difficult situation we are now in in global trade and why Froman concludes that Trump global economic policymaking mirrors today China economic policy: “The United States and others are imitating China in large part because China succeeded in a way that was unexpected. Its success in electric vehicles and clean technology did not come from liberalizing economic policies but from state interventions in the market in the name of nationalist objectives. Whether or not the United States can compete with China on China’s playing field, it is important to recognize a fundamental truth: the United States is now operating largely in accordance with Beijing’s standards, with a new economic model characterized by protectionism, constraints on foreign investment, subsidies, and industrial policy—essentially nationalist state capitalism.” 

Where we are today is certainly not where advanced economies at least believed we should be. The Trump aping of state nationalist efforts through repeated rounds of tariffs and other protectionist measures has the feel and smell of defeat and bad, very bad Washington global economic policy making.  

Image Credit: it.china-office.gov.cn

This Post first appeared at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter. https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/killing-the-golden-goose-integration

Stopping the War; or Maybe Not Yet

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We’ve known for some time by examining history that it’s much easier to start a war than it is to stop one. And I suspect the Russia-Ukraine war will prove to be no different. A ceasefire may well be had but this will occur in spite of Trump’s loud insistence that a ceasefire be reached by both parties not because of it, and him. 

Let’s start though with the larger context – that is Trump as the initiator of the ceasefire efforts. I was interested in a sort of mea culpa moment expressed by colleague, Stephen Walt. Stephen is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University and is also a columnist at Foreign Policy (FP). In a recent piece in FP entitled, “What I Got Wrong About Trump’s Second Term”, he zeros in on the fact that it is Trump pushing the ceasefire effort. As he admits: 

“That said, there’s no question that I got some important things wrong.”

 

“I underestimated Trump’s hostility to our principal democratic allies. It was obvious that he thought our NATO partners were overly reliant on U.S. protection (a view shared by all recent U.S. presidents), but it’s now clear that he’s actively and deeply hostile to the democratic principles that these states embody and is openly encouraging illiberal forces within them. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the administration’s embrace of the European far right is an attempt to promote a form of regime change throughout Europe—in effect, to MAGA-fy it—and to destroy the European Union as a meaningful political institution. I was aware of Trump’s affinity for illiberal leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and I knew people like Steve Bannon were trying to build a transnational coalition of far-right movements, but I didn’t take those forces seriously enough. … although there was every reason to think that Trump would push for a peace deal and eventually reduce U.S. support for Ukraine, I did not expect him to embrace Russian President Vladimir Putin’s position with such enthusiasm, accuse Ukraine of starting the war, or openly attack Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in public. There may, in fact, be some strategic rationale for what Trump is doing—i.e., he may genuinely believe that the only way to stop the war and eventually drive a wedge between Russia and China is to give Putin everything he wants—but that doesn’t mean this approach will work as intended. It also ignores the long-term impact that this behavior will have on the United States’ standing and image. … Moreover, Trump isn’t breaking these rules because the United States is facing a grave national emergency (which would make it easier for other states to give Washington a temporary pass); he’s trying to blow up the whole order because he thinks the United States will be better off in a world where autocracy is ascendant and leaders do whatever they want. I freely admit that transforming the United States from a defender of international order to a malevolent rogue state was not on my bingo card.”

Well, indeed we were witness to Trump, along with his Vice Presidential puppet, J.D. Vance throwing Ukraine, or at least Volodymyr Zelenskyy ‘under the bus’. Now Zelenskyy  may not have handled that strangely open White House meeting with Trump and Vance quite as adroitly as he might have but he did come back with Ukraine accepting Trump’s ceasefire agreement. As Alexandra Sharp pointed out earlier in the week in a FP World Brief: 

“The United States agreed to immediately lift its pause on all military aid and intelligence-sharing to Kyiv on Tuesday following talks with senior Ukrainian officials in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In turn, Ukraine expressed willingness to enact a 30-day cease-fire with Russia and enter immediate negotiations to establish an “enduring and sustainable” end to the conflict—so long as Moscow agrees to do the same.” 

And as she pointed out, Zelenskyy wisely praised Trump’s efforts: 

“Zelensky praised Tuesday’s talks and expressed gratitude for the Trump administration, highlighting the ways that the United States’ plan addressed Kyiv’s initial suggestions. Trump also celebrated the Jeddah meeting, saying, “Hopefully President Putin will agree to that also and we can get this show on the road.” The Kremlin has not yet responded to the cease-fire proposal. But Trump said that he expects to speak with Putin this week, adding, “It takes two to tango.”” 

Now it seems that Putin has seen fit to walk a kinda tightrope on the US ceasefire proposal. An outright rejection would for sure lead Trump to in some manner condemn Putin, probably enhance sanctions on Russia,  and likely ‘throw a bone to Ukraine’ including presumably enhanced military support to pressure a change from Putin. So rather than face any of that immediately we have Putin expressing a kinda tepid yes in a recent press conference but adding a significant number of questions and qualifications. 

As the Italian think tank, ISPI pointed out in an insightful piece titled, ‘Putin and the ‘No’ to the Truce’: 

“Putin is not saying ‘no’ to Washington and Kiev’s ceasefire proposal, but he is not saying yes either. And he is laying out his own conditions , saying he needs “further clarification.” The Russian president, 48 hours into his wait since announcing his proposal for a month-long interim truce two days ago in Jeddah , said any ceasefire must lead to “a final solution” to the conflict that addresses its “root causes.”  “The idea itself is good and we support it unconditionally,” he said, “but there are issues that we need to discuss, and I think we need to discuss them with our American colleagues and partners,” adding that otherwise Ukrainian forces “will be given the opportunity to withdraw, regroup and rearm,” just as the Russian army advances into the Kursk region , the Russian salient captured by Kiev’s troops.”

 

“The preconditions set by Putin for a ceasefire essentially coincide with Moscow’s war objectives: recognition of Moscow’s annexation of four partially occupied southeastern regions ( Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk ) and the Crimean peninsula; Kiev’s commitment to never join NATO; and the organization of new elections that will lead to the replacement of President Volodymyr Zelensky. Russia is also pushing for a NATO retreat, whose expansion to the east, according to the Kremlin’s narrative, would have ‘forced’ Moscow to order the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In fact – according to several observers – Putin’s interlocutory response is due to two needs: on the one hand, he does not want to be accused of obstructing the agreement to which Trump has formally adhered, on the other, he knows that at this moment the war is turning in his favor and he does not intend to give up without obtaining something in return .” 

Now it is the case that Zelenskyy has doubts about the ceasefire effort. First he is dealing with Russia but more pertinently Zelenskyy remains insistent that any agreement that follows the short ceasefire must provide security guarantees for Ukraine. But for the moment the focus is on Russia. And as Mary Ilyushina and Sammy Westfall of the Washington Post noted:

“Putin said Thursday he supports in principle the idea of a 30-day ceasefire — proposed by the United States and to which Ukraine has agreed — but noted that its implementation raises many questions, particularly regarding verification across a long front line. Such a tactic could allow Russia to engage in protracted negotiations without immediately rejecting an offer.” 

 

“Putin also said the 30-day reprieve could be used by Ukraine to regroup and rearm, hinting that he would seek to impose his own conditions on the framework of the pause, such as a halt to Western weapons supplies or a ban on mobilization.” 

Meanwhile, the G7 foreign ministers gathered in Canada and pressed Russia to accept the current ceasefire proposal. In the Statement issued at the end of the meeting the foreign ministers declared:  

“G7 members reaffirmed their unwavering support for Ukraine in defending its territorial integrity and right to exist, and its freedom, sovereignty and independence.

 

They welcomed ongoing efforts to achieve a ceasefire, and in particular the meeting on March 11 between the U.S. and Ukraine in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. G7 members applauded Ukraine’s commitment to an immediate ceasefire, which is an essential step towards a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in line with the Charter of the United Nations.

 

G7 members called for Russia to reciprocate by agreeing to a ceasefire on equal terms and implementing it fully. They discussed imposing further costs on Russia in case such a ceasefire is not agreed, including through further sanctions, caps on oil prices, as well as additional support for Ukraine, and other means. This includes the use of extraordinary revenues stemming from immobilized Russian Sovereign Assets. G7 members underlined the importance of confidence-building measures under a ceasefire including the release of prisoners of war and detainees—both military and civilian—and the return of Ukrainian children.” 

In addition, UK Prime Minister Starmer added further pressure. As described in the NYTimes:

“On Saturday [March 15th], Mr. Starmer convened a video conference with 30 leaders, from Europe, NATO, Canada, Ukraine, Australia and New Zealand, to muster support for his coalition, which Britain is spearheading with France. He said military officials would meet again on Thursday to begin an “operational phase,” though he did not give details about the mission of the force, nor did he announce that any other countries had committed troops to it.

 

“I’ve indicated a willingness for the United Kingdom to play a leading role in this,” Mr. Starmer said at a news conference after the meeting. “If necessary, that would be troops on the ground and planes in the sky.”

And, finally, another piece of the European effort to support Ukraine appears to be falling in place. There now appears to be agreement on a new German government led by Friedrich Merz. As described in the NYTimes: 

“Friedrich Merz, the likely next chancellor of Germany, announced on Friday that he had secured the votes to allow for extensive new government spending, including for defense, clearing the way for a stunning turnabout in German strategic and fiscal policy before he even takes office.” 

 

“The measures would lift Germany’s hallowed limits on government borrowing as they apply to military spending. It would exempt all spending on defense above 1 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product from those limits, and it would define “defense” broadly to include intelligence spending, information security and more.

Effectively, that would allow Germany to spend as much as it can feasibly borrow to rebuild its military.” 

The ‘yes but no’ by Putin may not have long to live. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio made it clear following the foreign ministers meeting, as described in the FT that the administration would soon examine the state of the ceasefire proposal and the positions of the two parties:

“Rubio, who has previously indicated Kyiv would have to make territorial concessions, on Friday signalled Moscow would also have to do so. “I’ve never heard President Trump say that Russia has a right to take all of Ukraine and do whatever they want there,” he said. He added Trump’s national security team will convene this weekend after the president’s envoy Steve Witkoff returns from Moscow to examine the Russian position.”

Ending wars is not easy. And the end is not yet in sight, seemingly. Still, pressure appears to remain on. 

This Post first appeared on my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter: https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/stopping-the-war-or-maybe-not-yet

Image Credit: BBC

 

 

 

Europe into the Breach

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It wasn’t long ago that demands for a more ‘strategic autonomy’ approach for Europe seemed to slip away with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As Steven Erlanger of the NYTimes wrote of Europe’s response to Russian aggression at the time:

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the greatest challenge to European security since the end of the Cold War, but the Europeans have missed the opportunity to step up their own defense, diplomats and experts say. Instead, the war has reinforced Europe’s military dependence on the United States.”

Not only was there dependence on the US on the Ukrainian battlefield, the first in Europe since World War Two, but there was a growing acceptance of Biden administration efforts to strengthen alliances and partnerships:

“Washington, they note, has led the response to the war, marshaled allies, organized military aid to Ukraine and contributed by far the largest amount of military equipment and intelligence to Ukraine. It has decided at each step what kind of weapons Kyiv will receive and what it will not.”

 

“But the goal of President Emmanuel Macron of France for “strategic autonomy” — for the European Union to become a military power that could act independently of the United States, if complementary to it — has proved hollow.”

As identified by my colleague, Charles Kupchan, a former Obama official and currently a senior fellow at CFR and a professor of international affairs at Georgetown:

“There is very little appetite for autonomy if that means distance from the United States,” he said, “because the war has underscored the importance of the American military presence in Europe and the guarantee it extended to European allies since World War II.”

But as they say: ‘that was then, and this is now’. Built on Trump’s early efforts to end the war, browbeating, it would seem, Ukraine to accept a cession of fighting, Europe is back. And it starts with Germany and its likely new Chancellor, Friedrich Merz. As identified by Anne-Sylvaine Chassany and Laura Pitel in Berlin for the FT:

“Chancellor-to-be Friedrich Merz has agreed a deal with his likely coalition partner to inject hundreds of billions in extra funding into Germany’s military and infrastructure, in a “fiscal sea change” designed to revive and re-arm Europe’s largest economy.”

 

“A provision would exempt defence spending above 1 per cent of GDP from the “debt brake” that caps government borrowing, allowing Germany to raise an unlimited amount of debt to fund its armed forces and to provide military assistance to Ukraine.”

 

“The future [German] coalition partners will introduce another constitutional amendment to set up a €500bn fund for infrastructure, which would run over 10 years. They are also planning to loosen debt rules for states.”

The German effort by this likely new government underlines the growing sense of emergency in Europe as Trump threatens to not defend NATO members who fail to adequately spend on in their own defense:

“Germany’s massive fiscal stimulus has also underlined the sense of urgency in Europe, spurred by US President Donald Trump’s threat to unwind the US guarantees that have long underpinned the continent’s security. “This is a fiscal sea change for Germany,” said Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg. “Merz and his coalition-to-be are rising to the occasion.”

The fiscal actions announced are all the more startling given the CDUs earlier opposition to reforming the debt brake:

“Merz’s conservative CDU/CSU had opposed reforms to the debt brake before the February 23 election. However, hours after coming first in the nationwide vote, the staunch transatlanticist declared that Europe needed to achieve “independence” from Washington given that Trump appeared “largely indifferent” to Europe’s fate.”

This defense response doesn’t stop with just Germany in Europe, however. The EU appears also to be stepping up as well. As noted at the Italian research institute ISPI, the EU is stepping up as well:

“Yesterday, for the first time, the approval by the European Council of aplan to increase the defense and security of member states represented a – European – response to the change in the international order underway. The heads of state and government of the 27 have approved the 800 billion euro plan for rearmament illustrated by the President of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen. The agreement provides greater flexibility for member states on defense spending and debt and a 150 billion fund, in addition to opening the possibility of evaluating additional financing options. But above all, it indicates the urgency, matured in recent weeks, to change pace and contribute to the defense of Kiev and the continent, with or without US support.”

The shock of the ‘Trump abandonment’ of Europe is evident. Here is a view expressed by Francoise Hollande in the most recent Economist issue. Hollande served as President of France from 2012 to 2017:

“We need to be clear: while the American people may still be our friends, the Trump administration is no longer our ally. This is grave. It marks a fundamental break with the historic relationship between Europe and America and the link established after the second world war with the creation of the Atlantic alliance. It is unfortunately, however, indisputable. It is no longer merely a question of declarations designed to dumbfound, but of actions that mark much more than a disengagement: a strategic about-turn combined with an ideological confrontation. The signs of this reversal have been accumulating in recent weeks. The bewildering and degrading scenes in the Oval Office were the illuminating culmination.”

 

“In addition to this reversal of responsibility for the outbreak of war in Ukraine, with Volodymyr Zelensky portrayed as a dictator and Vladimir Putin as a leader respectable enough to be a regular interlocutor, there has been an unrestrained attack on the principles on which the Western alliance was previously founded.”

In the end, Hollande sets out what he sees as the necessary European response:

“So we have to admit that our alliance with America is broken for the foreseeable future, and draw all the consequences. I can think of at least three.”

 

“The first is that we must continue to intensify our aid to Ukraine. This means seriously increasing the French contribution, which is currently particularly low compared with that of Germany or Britain.”

 

“The second is the need to prioritise providing Ukraine with security guarantees. It is too early to define the form these will take or to talk about the presence of soldiers on the ground. But it is clear that if Europe wants to protect its current borders, it must shoulder its share of responsibility for the security of its closest neighbour, especially if America abdicates this responsibility.”

 

“The third consequence is the urgency of accelerating European defence spending and beefing up European capabilities.”

And the European response to Trump’s aggressive actions in Ukraine extend beyond the 27, or at least the 26 as Hungary has refused to sign on the EU action, to now include the UK, Norway and possibly Turkey. So from Jeanna Smialek from the NYTimes Brussels office in an article entitled, “Europe Races to Craft a Trump-Era Plan for Ukraine and Defense”:

“Much of Europe is now making a show of standing by Ukraine: Britain and France have indicated a willingness to send troops as a peacekeeping force if a deal is reached, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain has called for support from a “coalition of the willing.””

 

“Ms. von der Leyen’s plan to “rearm” Europe includes the €150 billion loan program and would also make E.U. budget rules more flexible to enable countries to invest more without breaching tough deficit limits.”

And this coalescing in Europe extends possibly to the French nuclear deterrent:

“France is willing to discuss extending the protection afforded by its nuclear arsenal to its European allies, President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday, as the continent scrambles to fend off heightened Russian aggression and diminishing American support.”

 

““I have decided to open the strategic debate on protection through deterrence for our allies on the European continent,” Mr. Macron added.”

But the Trump bullying of Ukraine seemingly has had, it seems, some political results as well, at least for the moment. Ukraine has indicated that it will in the coming weeks join negotiations to end the conflict. As identified in the FT, 

“Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the talks as he wrapped up a summit on Thursday with EU leaders, who rallied round the Ukrainian president and pledged to increase their own defence capabilities.”

 

“The war must be stopped as soon as possible, and Ukraine is ready to work 24/7 together with partners in America and Europe for peace,” Zelenskyy said in a post on Telegram after the Brussels summit. “Next week, on Monday, I am scheduled to visit Saudi Arabia to meet with the Crown Prince [Mohammed bin Salman]. After that, my team will remain in Saudi Arabia to work with American partners. Ukraine is most interested in peace.””

And, it would appear that the US-Ukraine mineral deal is back:

“Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said the meeting with Ukraine would seek to agree [to] a framework for “a peace agreement and an initial ceasefire”.”

 

“The talks will be focused on the minerals deal that the US has struck with Ukraine as well as a possible ceasefire.”

It has been an exhausting, rather dismaying several weeks of Trump destructiveness. A dramatic turn in strategic partnerships has occurred, and there are now significant questions over the stability of the global order as Martin Wolf writes in the FT: 

“These are merely two sets of decisions in the whirlwind that has accompanied the second Trump presidency. But for the outside world, they are of huge significance. They represent the end of liberal, predictable and rules-governed trading relationships with the world’s most powerful country and also the one that created the system itself. They also represent the abandonment by the US of core alliances and commitments in favour of a closer relationship with an erstwhile enemy. Trump clearly thinks Russia more important than Europe.”

As Wolf points out, it is more than possible that the EU and the UK can replace the US militarily but that can’t occur in the short term:

“The EU plus UK has a combined population 3.6 times Russia’s and a GDP, at purchasing power, 4.7 times larger. The problem, then, is not a lack of human or economic resources: if (a big if) Europe could co-operate effectively it could balance Russia militarily in the long run. But the difficulty is in the medium run, since Europe is unable to make some crucial military equipment, on which it and Ukraine depend. Would the US refuse to supply such weapons if Europeans bought them? Such a refusal to supply would be a moment of truth.”

This Post first appeared at Alan’s Newsletter: https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/europe-into-the-breach

Image Credit: France 24

 

The Crooked G20/G7 path for the United States

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Well yes a bit late. And a bit shorter. Indeed I am anticipating rather shorter Posts, and possibly later than usual for the next couple of Posts as I am attending the Annual International Studies Association (ISA) meetings – the 66th – in Chicago. Lots of folks and many good panels and sessions on international politics international security and global governance.

Now, I was tempted to reflect on the ‘shit show’ that went down between President Zelenskyy and President Trump and Vice President Vance. But I think I’ll hold off. There will be lots of immediate reaction, and indeed there has been, and I am interested in seeing ‘how the dust settles’ on this grim encounter  before trying to assess the consequences for US-Ukraine, US, Ukraine-Europe, and US-Russia relations.

Instead, I just want to underline the continuing disinterest-distaste the Trump administration appears to be paying to the South Africa Presidency of the G20. It began publicly, as noted in my previous post, with the decision by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to absent himself  from the first Foreign Ministers meeting under the South Africa presidency. As reported by Rob Rose and Sam Fleming of the FT, this was followed by the decision by Scott Bessent, the Secretary of the Treasury not to attend the first G20 Finance gathering. As they wrote:

“US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week he would remain in Washington — a move that followed secretary of state Marco Rubio’s decision to not “waste taxpayer money or coddle anti-Americanism” by attending a G20 meeting of foreign ministers in South Africa last week.”

What then followed to was a determination by several other finance ministers to follow suit:

“Among the countries that are not expected to send their finance ministers to Cape Town are India, China, Brazil and Mexico, according to people familiar with the organisation of the meetings.”

As it turned out Japan’s finance minister also decided not to attend as well.

Rob Rose then followed up in a subsequent FT  piece that then described additionally that the finance ministers who did attend in Cape Town were  unable to issue a joint finance statement in part due to Trump’s decision to impose 25 percent tariffs on Europe:

“Trump said this week that he planned to impose 25 per cent tariffs on goods from the EU, saying the bloc’s goal was to “screw the United States”.”

 

“G20 finance ministers have been unable to agree a joint communique of their gathering in Cape Town, intensifying questions over the relevance of this body in an era of waning US support for multilateral forums.”

 

“A European official who attended the G20 meetings told the Financial Times that “harsh words” had been exchanged between European finance ministers and US officials in light of Trump’s threats.

 

““In many ways, the US was alone,” he said. “Its trade position was on everyone’s lips, with many of the discussions being about US tariffs and what is at stake for multilateralism. In general, the European countries are aligned that this protectionism is bad for the world.””

 

“In the chair’s summary of the talks, released at the summit’s close, the G20 said the discussions “reiterated the commitment to resisting protectionism”, and a commitment to a “multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization at its core”.”

The angry Trump words and actions have undermined already two very important ministerial gatherings and may well lead other US ministers to cancel their attendance as well. Such actions and words could sidetrack many G20 meetings and actions. And It is still unclear whether Trump will attend the Leaders’ Summit in November. While there is a significant downside to US absence, on the other hand Trump’s decision to attend also raises questions. If he chooses to attend then the question arises what that may be like. How destructive might he choose to be. GIven the meeting with  Trump and Zelenskyy just last week that could be a terror incident as well.

All that is nerve-racking enough. But we still need to see whether the US is willing to take hosting of the G20 for 2026. With South Africa, as I pointed out in a previous Substack Post, completing its G20 hosting by the end of the year, the G20 cycle restarts with the United States presumably taking the hosting for the year, having taken the first G20 Leaders’ Summit during the George W. Bush’s presidnecy in 2008. Would it be better for the G20 to turn down such hosting in the face of Trump’s current antagonism. How that could occur I’m not at all sure. Finally, this leaves one final question: will Trump play destroyer with his presence at the G7 which this year has Canada – the presumptive 51st state according to Trump, hosting the G7 this current year.

Image Credit: NBC News

This Post originally appearde at my Substack, Alan’s Post.

https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/the-crooked-g20g7-path-for-the-united

 

 

The Trump Battering of the Order

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As much destruction, it seems, as this second Trump administration can engineer! And fast! One can’t avoid ‘reeling’ from the current Trump administration actions and plans. And yet we are only 30 days into the second Trump administration. It is truly amazing! 

The real dilemma for me – and for many others –  is the inability to determine whether there is method in Trump’s foreign policy actions; or, whether it is just madness that leads to few good outcomes. Read through  all the experts and you come away completely confused . Some do see method, maybe somewhat accidentally, perhaps, but nevertheless some positive direction – whether with respect to:  trade, Ukraine, Gaza, relations with the allies, especially Europe and Japan, or adversaries – be it Russia or China. But it is very hard to uncover any consistency of approach and any likelihood of valuable or even redeemable outcomes. 

Let’s take Tom Friedman. In a NYTimes piece entitled: “Why Trump’s Bullying Is Going to Backfire” he writes: 

And if all of this is just Trump bluffing to get other countries to give us the same access that we give them, I am OK with it. But Trump has never been clear: Some days he says his tariffs are to raise revenue, other days to force everyone to invest in America, other days to keep out fentanyl.

 

As the Beatles sang, I’d love to see the plan. As in: Here’s how we think the global economy operates today. Therefore, to strengthen America, here is where we think we need to cut spending, impose tariffs and invest — and that is why we are doing X, Y and Z.

 

That would be real leadership. Instead, Trump is threatening to impose tariffs on rivals and allies alike, without any satisfactory explanation of why one is being tariffed and the other not, and regardless of how such tariffs might hurt U.S. industry and consumers. It’s a total mess. As the Ford Motor chief executive Jim Farley courageously (compared to other chief executives) pointed out, “Let’s be real honest: Long term, a 25 percent tariff across the Mexico and Canada borders would blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we’ve never seen.”

 

So, either Trump wants to blow that hole, or he’s bluffing, or he is clueless. If it is the latter, Trump is going to get a crash course in the hard realities of the global economy as it really is — not how he imagines it.

And quite rightly Friedman points out that today’s global trade complex is nothing like the past where the conception was: one manufactured and exported  X while importing from another, Y. As Friedman describes what he nd others see as the world of global trade today: 

My favorite tutor in these matters is the Oxford University economist Eric Beinhocker, who got my attention when we were talking the other day with the following simple statement: “No country in the world alone can make an iPhone.”

 

Think about that sentence for a moment: There is no single country or company on earth that has all the knowledge or parts or manufacturing prowess or raw materials that go into that device in your pocket called an iPhone. Apple says it assembles its iPhone and computers and watches with the help of “thousands of businesses and millions of people in more than 50 countries and regions” who contribute “their skills, talents and efforts to help build, deliver, repair and recycle our products.

We are talking about a massive network ecosystem that is needed to make that phone so cool, so smart and so cheap.” 

The big difference between the era we are in now, as opposed to the one Trump thinks he’s living in, is that today it’s no longer “the economy, stupid.” That was the Bill Clinton era. Today, “it’s the ecosystems, stupid.”

Or turn to regional conflicts, Ukraine for instance. Here is the reaction to recent statements and Trump actions as described by Nicholas Kristof. In a piece titled, “With Trump’s Prostration to Putin, Expect a More Dangerous World”from the NYTimes on February 19th Kristof writes: 

I’m not sure most Americans appreciate the monumental damage President Trump is doing to the post-World War II order that is the wellspring of American global leadership and affluence.

 

He’s shattering it. He’s making the world more dangerous. He’s siding with an alleged war criminal, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and poisoning relations with longtime U.S. allies. The trans-Atlantic alliance is unraveling. 

 

When I was a young reporter, we referred to countries like Poland and Romania as Soviet satellites; now Trump is doing Putin’s bidding and seems determined to put the United States in the Russian orbit. 

 

The Trump administration has lately sided with Moscow on one issue after another: Ukraine must cede territory, can’t join NATO and should hold new elections just as Russia insists. (Meanwhile, there’s no call for Russia to hold elections.) Trump even suggested that Russia should be readmitted to the Group of 7.

 

In a falsehood-filled rant on Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump went further. He denounced Ukraine’s elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a “dictator” who had squandered money and had “better move fast or he is not going to have a country left.” Trump’s post had the tone of statements from the Kremlin.

Now Dan Drezner in a piece from WPR suggests that Trump’s approach to allies in Europe may possibly incorporate a strategic logic: 

Even Trump’s second-term threats directed at longstanding allies can be seen as an example of what Ketian Zhang has labeled “coerce to deter”: In bullying smaller states, Trump is trying to signal what the U.S. could do to great powers if provoked. I have previously expressed deep skepticism about whether this will work during Trump’s second term—but the possibility cannot be ruled out.

This optimistic view, if you want to call it that, was employed by Trump in the first term. As Dan argues: 

Let’s start with the most optimistic scenario for the second Trump White House: that his application of the so-called madman theory works. According to this logic, which Rosanne McManus has critically examined, Trump’s norm-breaking and bullying tactics inject unpredictability into any kind of crisis-escalation calculus, ostensibly deterring other actors from challenging the United States.

However that is only one possible view as Dan suggests. Less optimistically Dan also suggests: 

The other scenarios paint a bleaker picture for the United States. The second possibility is that the Trump administration’s weakening of the U.S. national security state will be interpreted as an invitation for more aggressive Russian and Chinese expansionism. 

And there is even one further possibility as pointed to by Dan: 

There is one final possibility, and it is the most disconcerting outcome for the U.S.: that neither Russia nor China decide to take any provocative action while Trump is president. This is not because he represents a formidable deterrent, but rather the opposite. In this scenario, Trump so weakens the United States’ standing in the world and is so keen to appease autocrats like Putin and Xi that their best option is let him do whatever he wants.

The motivation and consequences of Trump’s actions leave us bewildered. It is at the moment not possible to draw firm conclusions on the Trump approach or the outcomes from administration actions. But most analysts are greatly worried. One other area of concern draws immediate attention. That is Trump’s attachment to, and US policy toward, international institutions and the current global order. My good colleague, Patrick Stewart from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) has raised some real concerns in a recent CEIP Commentary titled, “The Death of the World America Made: Donald Trump’s war on multilateralism is misguided and dangerous”. He writes: 

On February 4, 2025, President Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order with the potential to upend decades of American global engagement. The directive mandates a comprehensive review within 180 days of all current multilateral organizations of which the United States is a member and all international treaties to which it is party. The explicit purpose of this exercise is to determine whether such support should be withdrawn. … 

 

Of far greater import is the order’s decree that the secretary of state shall review “all international organizations” of which the United States is a member and “all conventions and treaties” to which it is party, to determine whether these “are contrary to the interests of the United States and whether [they] can be reformed.” The secretary will then recommend to the president “whether the United States should withdraw” from those commitments. In principle, the directive could lead to a U.S. abrogation of thousands of treaties and a departure from hundreds of multilateral organizations.

 

It is even plausible that the Trump administration will conclude that an “America First” foreign policy requires pulling the United States out of the UN—and kicking the UN out of the United States. Both are long-standing objectives of conservative nationalists who contend, speciously, that the UN threatens American sovereignty.

Now there seems to be a debate among experts as to whether the Trump administration can actually do so; nevertheless as Stewart suggests: 

As Trump’s first weeks in office have shown, this White House doesn’t do ambiguity—and there are many ways to wreck institutions without formally leaving them.

For my part I am equally worried about Trump’s actions with the Informals – the G7 and especially the G20. Particularly with regard to the latter, the hosting schedule for the G20 ends its first cycle with Brazil this year holding the Presidency and then the G20 returns to the beginning of the cycle with the United States scheduled to host in 2026. The G20 is critical in part because it draws together the significant advanced countries, like the US, Germany, France, Japan and now increasingly influential countries from the Global South such as China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and others. Already the Trump administration, because of its apparent dislike for South Africa’s ‘domestic policies and its theme focus for this year’s G20 Summit  – Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability – has led Secretary of State Marco Rubio cancelling his appearance at the first Foreign Ministers gathering in South Africa as apparently has Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary for the first Finance Ministers gathering. As Rubio suggested in his cancelling his attendance, as reported in the Hill: 

I will NOT attend the G20 summit in Johannesburg,” Rubio wrote in a Wednesday post on the social platform X. “South Africa is doing very bad things. Expropriating private property. Using G20 to promote ‘solidarity, equality, & sustainability.’ In other words: DEI and climate change.

 

Rubio added that his job is to “advance America’s national interests, not waste taxpayer money or coddle anti-Americanism.

Now the G20 has not operated very effectively as  a so-called Steering Committee but it has displayed value as a Crisis Committee. Without it, I don’t know but I worry.  

Who knows if Trump will show up to the G20 Leaders Summit. And who knows what he will do if in fact he does show up to the Leaders’ Summit on November 22-23rd. Moreover, will the United States take on the hosting for 2026, especially if it has failed to participate in most gatherings. There is much to worry about. But we will follow it closely. 

This Post first appeared asa Substack Post at Alan’s Newsletter: https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/157647801/share-center

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The Many Possible Shapes for the Global Order: A Quick Look Back & Forward

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The Trump attack on interdependence – particularly economic – has felt foolish and destructive but without question – relentless. What appeared to be a stalling out with Biden’s ill-disguised protectionism, has now turned into repeated blows against an open trading system and a collaborative global order. 

MInouche Shafik, former president of Columbia University and the London School of Economics, and a member of the House of Lords referenced a well-known transformation in  a recent piece in PS: 

““The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” This famous quote, often attributed to Antonio Gramsci, feels particularly pertinent today, as the international order that has defined the past century undergoes a profound shift.” 

What is passing away? And what is emerging? Joe Nye, the very well known International relations maven has examined exactly that in another  recent piece in PS.  As he describes Trump policy actions: 

“Globalization refers simply to interdependence at intercontinental distances. Trade among European countries reflects regional interdependence, whereas European trade with the US or China reflects globalization. By threatening China with tariffs, US President Donald Trump is trying to reduce the economic aspect of our global interdependence, which he blames for the loss of domestic industries and jobs.” 

Can globalization be reversed? Nye argues it certainly has in the past. As he describes: 

“But can economic globalization be reversed? It has happened before. The nineteenth century was marked by a rapid increase in both trade and migration, but it came to a screeching halt with the outbreak of World War I. Trade as a share of total world product did not recover to its 1914 levels until nearly 1970.” 

It is striking how long it took for global economic interdependence to recover to levels that matched the late nineteenth century. But what is also interesting is how not long ago in fact there was much attention focused on an enhanced global order. Take a look at this piece published in 2001. This Introduction was written by one of the book’s principal contributors, and a close colleague, Arthur Stein. Arthur, today, is a Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at UCLA. Arthur has been a significant international relations force at UCLA for years now. He prepared the Introduction for the 2001 volume titled, “The New Great Power Coalition”. As an aside I played a minor role in the volume with a chapter on China’s entry into the WTO.  Now, back to Arthur’s examination. There is no missing the cautious but still optimistic tone that Arthur conveys for this era following the real tensions of the Cold War and the emergence of US leadership. As he writes: 

“In short, we believe that in this era following a global conflict, the prospects for global cooperation conflicts lie in the relations between the Great Powers. Constructing a Great Power concert would make possible the establishment of a cooperative world order and truly global international organizations.” …

 

“In more general terms, however, we conclude that the movement from unilateral to multilateral incentives, norms, and structures appears to be useful in enlisting members in an  encompassing coalition. The world is now in the process of creating new high-prestige and selective clubs in the fields of economics, politics, and even the military. Once enough of these clubs in the fields overlap (regionally and functionally), they will form a linked structure that could combine into an encompassing coalition, with the latter representing the sustaining cooperation developed in separate regions and issue areas.”

Returning to Minouche Shafik this is what she sees as the new global order, one that others, as well, have suggested is emerging: 

“The world today is very different. It is a multipolar world, with China, Russia, India, Turkey, Brazil, South Africa, and the Gulf states challenging the old order, alongside other emerging powers demanding a greater voice in shaping the rules of the international system. Meanwhile, belief in “universal values” and the idea of an “international community” has waned, as many point to the hypocrisy of rich countries hoarding vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic and the response to the Ukraine war compared to the failures to act in response to humanitarian crises in Gaza, Sudan, and many other places.” 

 

“We may be heading to a zero-order world in which rules are replaced by power – a very difficult environment for smaller countries. Or it may be a world of large regional blocs, with the United States dominating its hemisphere, China prevailing over East Asia, and Russia reasserting control over the countries of the former Soviet Union. Ideally, we can find our way to a new rules-based order that more accurately reflects our multipolar world.”

Regional blocs may be in order. Or, possibly the reassertion of a form of geopolitical and ideological blocs. That seems to be what is described by colleague, G. John Ikenberry. In an article in International Affairs, penned at the beginning of last year, entitled, “Three Worlds: the West, East and South and the competition to shape global order”, John writes this about the emerging global order:

“Today, among the many impacts of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the most consequential may be that it marks the moment—the tipping-point—when history reversed course, pushing the world back in the direction of geopolitical and ideological groupings.” 

 

“Today, we might call these three groupings the global West, the global East, and the global South. One is led by the United States and Europe, the second by China and Russia, and the third by an amorphous grouping of non-western developing states, led by India, Brazil and others. Each ‘world’ offers grand narratives of what is at stake in the Ukraine conflict and how it fits into the larger problems and prospects for twenty-first century world order.” 

 

“Each offers ideas and programmes for the reorganization and reform of global rules and institutions. Each has its own constructed history, its own list of grievances and accomplishments. Each has its leaders, projects and ideological visions.” 

 

“These Three Worlds are not blocs, nor even coherent negotiating groups. They might best be seen as informal, constructed and evolving global factions, and not as fixed or formal political entities.”

 

“The Three Worlds are not best defined as poles so much as loose coalitions seeking to shape global rules and institutions. States in these three ‘worlds’ occupy different locations in the global system, creating shared interests and affinities that, taken together, shape patterns of interstate behaviour. The Three Worlds are defined in important respects by diplomacy— that is, by speeches, summit meetings and UN gatherings in which leaders advance their visions of world order. Each grouping has a loose political identity and a range of more-or-less consistent convictions about what constitutes a desirable and legitimate international order.”

I think it is difficult to know where we are at this moment, and more so where we are going. It is evident, however, that the world we have experienced over the last decades is being hammered out of existence especially by Trump 2.0. As David Wallace-Wells describes it in a NYTimes Opinion article, written just the other day: 

“But each declaration of imperial desire is that mercurial kind of Trumpist speech act, in which a given utterance can be both meaningless and full of portent at the same time, self-disavowing even as it also demonstrates the president’s world-shaping power.” 

 

“And whatever comes of Trump’s retrograde dreams of manifest destiny, the implicit challenge to the legacy geopolitical order is just as striking: If we want these things and these places, who is going to stop us?” … 

 

“What comes next? New paradigms rarely arise fully formed. But if we spent the last four years watching Joe Biden’s ineffectual attempt to revive some rickety version of the moralistic postwar order, it is supremely clear what Donald Trump would like to replace that pretense with: the principle that global chaos opens up opportunity for great powers long hemmed in by convention and deference.” 

 

“The MAGA riposte is, Let’s not be naïve and let’s not be suckers: We are all wolves on the world stage, and the game begins when we show our teeth.”

It would be valuable if new rules, principles, and norms emerged but at the moment what we can see is the dramatic impact of power on interstate relations. For the moment we are less driven by the emergence of order but by its opposite.  But we will come back here at Alan’s Newsletter to examine  – likely repeatedly – the shape of the global order as I think there may be surprises, possibly many surprises we have not anticipated given the immediate and dramatic attention to Trump.

The Post originally appeared as a Substack Post at Alan’s Newsletter

https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/the-many-possible-shapes-for-the

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All Purpose Tools – with Destruction in Mind

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It was hard to swallow the various initiatives and proposals that flooded from the White House and indeed Trump’s lips this week. Where does one start – with Gaza and the crazy Trump ‘wacko’ notion of the ‘Riviera of the  Mediterranean’? Or, do we look at a somewhat lower decibel view – the threats and or actions by Trump when it comes to tariffs. Tariffs, these things you remember up until Trump as a policy instrument that  used to be about trade policy. Well, not any more according to Trump. 

It was dismaying and equally disheartening to listen to the various efforts by his advisors past and present to normalize the actions along with Republicans in Congress while the loyal opposition, the  Democrats, seem ‘rooted in their seats’ with what appears to be only minor ‘huffing and puffing’ against the many mania actions by the President. 

What seems most startling is his recent flood of actions – Executive Orders and Memos – take us back to Trump 1.0 – but worse. The Trump Gaza proposal seems to be – without question – the winner of the week though. As Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman of the NYTimes, point out:

While his announcement looked formal and thought-out — he read the plan from a sheet of paper — his administration had not done even the most basic planning to examine the feasibility of the idea, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions, who were not authorized to speak publicly. 

 

Inside the U.S. government, there had been no meetings with the State Department or Pentagon, as would normally occur for any serious foreign policy proposal, let alone one of such magnitude. There had been no working groups. The Defense Department had produced no estimates of the troop numbers required, or cost estimates, or even an outline of how it might work.

 

There was little beyond an idea inside the president’s head.

And as David Leonhardt, also of the NYTimes, noted: 

For all the early energy of his presidency — the flurry of executive orders, confirmations and firings — Trump has looked less disciplined this week than he did in the initial days after returning to office. The last few days have instead conjured the chaos of his first term, when his grand pronouncements often failed to change government policy. 

Back to the Gaza proposal, for  a moment.  It is worth noting Aaron David Miller’s view as set out recently in his FP in a piece titled, “Trump Makes Population Transfer an American Policy”. Miller has had a long connection with  the region. He was a former U.S. State Department Middle East analyst and importantly a negotiator in Republican and Democratic administrations there. As he wrote: 

From my 27 years of working in the official U.S. Arab-Israeli diplomacy business, I can say President Donald Trump’s Gaza gambit goes above and beyond the craziest and most destructive proposal any administration has ever made (and there have been some strange ones). In one fell swoop, standing next to an Israeli leader who looked like the cat that just swallowed a dozen canaries, the president let loose on a scheme that is not just impractical but dangerous.

 

Trump has now harnessed U.S. prestige and credibility to propose an idea that will be perceived as forced transfer or worse; validated the all-too-dangerous fantasies of the Israel right; undermined key U.S. partners Egypt and Jordan; made his own goal of Israeli-Saudi normalization that much harder; and for good measure sent an unmistakable signal to authoritarians everywhere that they have the right to assert control over other people’s territory. 

Clearly, it is ‘stomach churning’ to many that have been involved in the long unsuccessful effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and more recently to end the Gaza war. Arab partners have uniformly rejected the Trump proposal for Gaza and Israeli support at least to the extent of organizing the Israeli military to aid voluntary evacuation as pointed out by Alexandra Sharp at FP: 

Such suggestions have sparked a flurry of behind-the-scenes diplomacy to stop the joint Israel-U.S. proposal. Both Jordan and Egypt have refused to accept displaced Gaza residents, with Jordanian King Abdullah II rejecting any efforts to annex the territory and Cairo stating that the plan “constitutes a blatant and flagrant violation of international law, international humanitarian law, and infringes on the most basic rights of the Palestinian people.” Egyptian officials told Time magazine that such a plan could undermine the country’s peace treaty with Israel and harm the region’s stability.

 

Saudi Arabia also strongly rejected the proposal and vowed not to sign a normalization deal with Israel—a foreign-policy priority for the Trump administration—without the creation of a Palestinian state that includes Gaza.

In the face of the Gaza proposal, Trump’s recent tariff actions against Canada, Mexico and China, seem positively tame. Still, though, it was rather crazy stuff threatening 25 percent across the board tariffs on Canada and Mexico only to hold off for 30 days after discussions with Mexican and Canadian leaders and then applying 10 percent across the board tariffs against China. The ultimate outcomes remain unknown though it is startling that Trump’s actions to delay action comes after accepting, at least in the Canadian case, proposals that had been offered significantly earlier. And not unlike the Gaza proposal, it is hard to discern either the methods or the ultimate goal of Trump’s proposals and demands. Is there a method or a clear goal?   The question that faces allies and foes alike is: is there a method to the madness? Not surprisingly experts and opinion writers have in the past, and in the early days of this  second Trump Administration are trying to assess what objectives and outcomes is Trump attempting to achieve? And what diplomatic means is Trump employing to achieve those objectives. 

On the latter Aaron Blake has suggested that there are four possible explanations for this current Trump 2.0 approach. In a piece in the Washington Post (Wapo)  titled, “4 explanations for Trump’s shocking Gaza proposal”, Blake gives us the following possible explanations for the outburst from Trump on Gaza at the press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu. He suggests:

  1. It is a distraction – “And there’s no question that Trump, more than ever, is “flooding the zone” with bold (and often legally dubious) actions that challenge everyone to keep up.” 

  2. It is a negotiating ploy “This could be Trump threatening the unthinkable to force Middle Eastern countries to pursue a more sustainable peace. It would basically be: If you guys can’t figure it out, we’re coming in.” 

  3. He’s leaning into the madman theory even more – ““The idea is basically to make other countries believe you’re completely unpredictable and capable of anything, to keep them in line.”

  4. His sudden imperialist streak is very real – ““It’s possible all of this imperialistic talk is bluster. But it’s also possible that Trump feels freed up in his second term, after years of leveraging “America First” for political gain, to change it up and make the expansion of the United States (in areas he actually cares about) a key plank of his legacy.”

All have some validity. It is evident that the approaches vary from slightly ‘off kilter’ – the madman theory, to a strategic gambit – a negotiating ploy.   I don’t think it is possible to draw strong conclusions at this early Trump 2.0 stage. What we do know however, that particularly with respect to the Gaza proposal, he is on his own untethered to his advisers and key cabinet members. And in the case of the ‘Gaza bomb’ it had one added dramatic effect – it left Netanyahu completely off the hook from any sharp questioning from global media over immediate Gaza actions on the ceasefire, and beyond, the role of the Palestinian Authority, and the future of a “two state solution”. It was a significant timely encounter completely avoided.

With respect to Trump’s goals, assuming there are such animals, it is hard to ignore the fact that his actions seem intended to dismantle the order that the US built; to see the United States as demanding fealty to a leading power and the shape of relations the US is striving to build under Trump 2.0. Decades of building integrated markets in North America, and likely  beyond, are now threatened by Trump’s bellicose actions. Yet according to Bob Davis in FP in a piece titled, “Trump Has the Whole Global Trade System in His Sights”, this is Trump’s goal: 

But he has a bigger goal in mind for his second term with plans he is still cooking up. Trump seeks to remake global trade based on what he calls “reciprocity”—treating other countries, supposedly, in the same fashion as they treat the United States. China is not the target this time—or at least not the only one. He has his sights set on any country with which the U.S. has a large, persistent trade deficit, which in his mind means it is treating the U.S. “terribly.” Success would mean sharply reducing the trade deficit, no matter which country he hits or what other geopolitical goals it impedes.

Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t have this goal in mind. He is swinging tariffs as an ‘all purpose tool’ with destruction in mind. We will be watching. 

Image Credit: France 24

This Post first appeared at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter – https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/156695312/share-center

 

 

The Difficult Course of US-China Relations

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Many anticipated, and or feared, the flood of Executive Orders from the second Trump White House these past weeks. The barrage of Executive Orders follows a playbook conceived from a longtime Trump supporter Steve Bannon.  Bannon referred to it as ‘flood the zone’. Bannon served as the White House’s chief strategist for the first seven months of U.S. president Donald Trump’s first administration, before Trump discharged him. He remains a strong supporter of Trump actions. As Luke Braodwater of the NYTimes describes this Bannon approach:

… Bannon boasted of the ability to overwhelm Democrats and any media opposition through a determined effort to “flood the zone” with initiatives.

 

On Tuesday, just when Democrats thought they might come up for air, news broke that Mr. Trump had ordered a freeze on trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans, prompting a new round of outrage.

 

It is a little unclear how adept the Democrats are in parrying the ‘flood the zone’ approach but there does seem to be some awareness of the tactic: 

“It’s a little bit like drinking from a fire hose,” Representative Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said of the pace of Mr. Trump’s moves. But he said that speed is likely to cause sloppiness and mistakes.”

 

They’re going to stumble,” Mr. Connolly said. “They’re going to screw up, and we’re going to pounce when they do. In their haste to remake the federal government, they’re going to make big, big mistakes.”

 

And the evidence of at least Trump ‘screw ups’ emerged rapidly. The particular initiative that generated a significant amount of chaos was the issuance of the freeze on government spending. In fact the freeze memo was quickly withdrawn though not before a federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked a pause on federal funding while the Trump administration declared it would conduct an across-the-board review. Even more chaotically the new press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, a quite blustery press secretary it seems I might add, insisted, however, that the spending freeze in the Order wasn’t being rescinded despite the memo that appeared to rescinded the freeze. Dan Drezner at his Substack,  Drezner’s World, captured the craziness that has transpired recently with this flurry of executive orders, the freeze memo in particular: 

Here’s the thing, though: to paraphrase Mario Cuomo, you can campaign seriously but you have to govern literally. And the first week of Trump 2.0 highlights the problems when an entire administration fails to make this particular pivot. 

 

Needless to say, almost everything after “The American people elected Donald J. Trump to be President of the United States” is either factually or legally incorrect. Taken literally, it is a tsunami of bullshit.

 

Dan summed up this rather chaotic week for the Trump administration this  way: 

The White House and its co-partisans  tried to backfill and claim that everyone overreacted and should have understood what the president really, truly meant. But that dog won’t hunt. As the Manhattan Institute’s Brian Riedl — a pretty conservative dude — concluded, “the blame here lies entirely with the White House for releasing a terribly-written memo that did not include most of the guardrails they are now rushing to add as part of their next-day damage control. Perhaps the White House should try to get it right the first time.

 

If the Trump administration isn’t careful, they are going to blow their political inheritance and destroy the confidence of the American people. If they persist with “seriously but not literally” as a mode of governance, things will get real ugly real fast.

Now the chaos that broke out after the freeze memo kinda interfered with my effort to assess where Trump 2.0 was going with respect to US relations with China beginning with the Trump threat to impose 10 percent tariffs on China on account of fentanyl. Where is Trump 2.0 with respect to US-China relations? Well, interestingly Trump has not  played up the US-China relationship yet, though the imposition of tariffs on China might well signal a change. And while Trump has threatened tariffs we need to see if, and or when they happen, and the bluster against China that will accompany the tariff announcement. 

Meanwhile, Ryan Hass of Brookings has written a very interesting piece – “Can Trump seize the moment on China?” targeting the US-China relationship. He points to the very ‘heart’ of the competitiveness between the two leading powers:

This comprehensive approach [from China] to nurturing national economic competitiveness has generated eye-popping levels of industrial output. China is on pace to produce nearly 45% of global industrial output by 2030, according to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. Outside of America’s industrial dominance in the wake of World War II, it is hard to find modern historical analogs to the levels of global concentration of output that are now occurring in China. 

Ryan identifies from this massive industrial output advantage for China three risks. First there is the national security risk:

China’s factories and shipyards are on track to have production capacity for military equipment at a scale the United States and its partners could struggle to match. Already, according to Michael Beckley, China is embarking on the largest peacetime military buildup since World War II, producing ships, planes, and missiles five to six times as fast as the United States

Then, there is the risk to US social cohesion:

If America’s economy becomes too dramatically overweighted toward finance, technology, and services, it will leave a large portion of the population behind, resulting in a hollowed-out middle class and a yawning gap between winners and losers in the 21st-century American economy. Such a scenario would fracture the polity and create the seeds of social disorder.

Third, and relatedly, the overconcentration of industrial output in China would undermine America’s allies in Europe and Asia:

America’s long-term strategic interests would be ill-served if vehicle factories shutter across Europe and if Japan’s and South Korea’s industrial sectors are decimated by Chinese competitors. A core challenge for the Trump administration will be rebalancing global economic activity to ensure sustainable opportunities for growth in industrial output outside China.

Rebalancing is the key. But there also is the rub. It is very hard to see how with the current leadership of China, namely Xi Jinping, such a rebalancing is possible. The difficulties are underscored in an article by Zongyuan Zoe Liu in FA. This is an article published back in August entitled: “China’s Real Economic Crisis: Why Beijing Won’t Give Up on a Failing Model”. Zongyuan Zoe is currently the Maurice R. Greenberg Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. In the piece he wrote:

Despite vehement denials by Beijing, Chinese industrial policy has for decades led to recurring cycles of overcapacity.

 

Partly, this stems from a long tradition of economic planning that has given enormous emphasis to industrial production and infrastructure development while virtually ignoring household consumption. This oversight does not stem from ignorance or miscalculation; rather, it reflects the Chinese Communist Party’s long-standing economic vision.

 

As the party sees it, consumption is an individualistic distraction that threatens to divert resources away from China’s core economic strength: its industrial base.” According to party orthodoxy, China’s economic advantage derives from its low consumption and high savings rates, which generate capital that the state-controlled banking system can funnel into industrial enterprises.

And he then concludes: 

For the West, China’s overcapacity problem presents a long-term challenge that can’t be solved simply by erecting new trade barriers. For one thing, even if the United States and Europe were able to significantly limit the amount of Chinese goods reaching Western markets, it would not unravel the structural inefficiencies that have accumulated in China over decades of privileging industrial investment and production goals.

Overlay this industrial focus by China with an intense competitive urges by members of the Trump team, starting with Marco Rubio, if not Donald Trump himself. Here is Rubio in his confirmation opening remarks speaking about China: 

We welcomed the Chinese Communist Party into this global order. And they took advantage of all its benefits. But they ignored all its obligations and responsibilities. Instead, they have lied, cheated, hacked, and stolen their way to global superpower status, at our expense.

Hardly an attitude likely to generate serious considered negotiations between the US and China. And, then finally, add the necessary US approach to negotiations as seen and set out by Ryan Hass: 

Trump’s team holds a variety of viewpoints on how to maximize America’s leverage, or even on what objectives America should pursue in its competition with China. Left unaddressed, this variance in views risks leading to policy incoherence. To overcome this risk, Trump will need to set a firm direction, identify specific objectives, and put his advisors on notice that they will pay a cost for actions that undermine his goals. 

Look Trump’s transactional urges may surprise us all with movement on the US-China negotiating front but there is little, no, no way that Trump will undertake a more than reasonable approach as urged by Ryan. In fact Ryan describes what is likely to be the more telling direction and its consequences: 

Absent firm and decisive policy direction from the top, there is a risk of policy chaos, with different factions canceling each other out and little progress being achieved to address American concerns about Chinese behavior. In such a circumstance, the U.S.-China relationship likely would grow more fractious. If Beijing abandons the hope of resolving U.S.-China differences through diplomacy, it likely will double down on efforts to hedge risk, including by deepening its relationships with countries who share antagonisms against the United States. 

Based on what we have seen to date, I think we should ‘hunker down’ and anticipate a ‘risk of policy chaos’. More to come.

Image Credit: AP

The Trump Weakening of America and Multilateralism

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Well, I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised. But  since I’ve never spent time listening to Trump speeches – I thought I would listen to Trump’s Second Inaugural . As David Bernstein et al. at the Substack, “Good Politics/Bad Politics” called it: “An Ugly Speech”. And it was. On reflection, and notwithstanding his early invocation of, ““The golden age of America begins right now,” in fact it was really a version two of “American Carnage”. As David Bernstein and colleagues declared: 

“Normal inaugural addresses are inclusive. Trump? There was little or nothing in this speech for anyone but his strongest supporters. The framing of it was, as is always the case with Trump, outright insulting to everyone else: The nation has been absolutely horrible for the last four years, in his telling, with not even a hint that its leaders have been trying to do their best even if they differ on what to do.” 

 

“This ugly speech will be forgotten rapidly. But if there was anything there to even give him a bit of a honeymoon approval bump, I sure didn’t see it.”

 

“Trump’s inauguration speech was very much directed toward such supporters. Despite claims that unity would be a major theme, the speech was a typical Trump litany of gripes about the left, praises for his unique ability to fix things, and recitation of plans that can at best be called controversial.”

In the NYTimes, “Morning Briefing” Emmett Lidner declared just after the speech: 

“The golden age of America begins right now,” Trump declared in his Inaugural Address delivered at the Capitol, shortly after he took the oath of office. Much as he did eight years ago, Trump painted a grim portrait of a country on its knees that only he could revive.” 

And Paolo Magri of the Italian think tank ISPI put it this way: 

“Eight years after his first inaugural address, the one about “American carnage,” Trump returned with the promise of a new “golden age” for the United States. But much of that vengeful rhetoric was still there, in tones steeped in rancor and an almost messianic inspiration for his extraordinary political comeback. “I was saved by God to make America great again,” the tycoon said in reference to the attempted assassination he was the victim of last summer. In a speech full of imperialistic overtones, Trump then announced that he would restore America’s highest peak, Mount Denali, to its former name, Mount McKinley, in honor of the Republican president assassinated in 1901. He also reiterated his intention to “pursue our manifest destiny to the stars,” promising to plant the American flag on Mars, rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” and reclaim the Panama Canal.” 

Finally, David French, among a number of other opinion writers, commenting on the Inauguration’s best and worst moments in the NYT said this about the Trump speech: 

 “The title of Trump’s speech should have been “American Carnage 2: Ultimate Carnage.” If possible, Trump’s second inaugural speech was darker than his first. Rather than seek to unite Americans, he painted the darkest possible picture of the state of the nation and the character of his opponents. And he set himself up as a kind of messiah figure, the man saved by God for the sake of national greatness. If you want to lay the groundwork for authoritarianism, that’s exactly how to do it.”

It was disheartening. Now I didn’t expect a wholesale conversion for the returning President but one could have hoped for some greater perspective with Trump 2.0. But no, I don’t think so. So, we are likely to see all his grievances and resentments dominating this President’s domestic and foreign policy. 

Now I was interested in various reactions to Trump’s reactions to American foreign policy both his ongoing remarks through the election campaign and then with his full-throated approach to US foreign policy on Inauguration Day. One person of interest to me was Ben Rhodes and his views. Rhodes is a political commentator, and a former Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting under President Barack Obama. With Jake Sullivan, he is the co-chair of National Security Action, a political NGO. In FA Rhodes at the end of 2024, in a piece entitled, “Democrats Need a Foreign Policy That Can Work—and Win: How to Harness Populist Energy and Build a Better International Order” displayed a strong critique of Trump :

“While Trump casts himself as a radical disrupter, he is a familiar figure in today’s world: a far-right nationalist at a time when that brand of politics is ascendant, a strongman in a world full of them.” 

 

“Since his ascent in 2016, Trump has successfully tapped into a populist fatigue with American national security policies. He has consistently railed against forever wars, free trade, free-riding allies,an unaccountable “deep state,” and the harm that globalization has done to the working class. The irony is that, for a long time, the policies that produced these outcomes were more popular among Republicans than Democrats.”

 

“By fully embracing the mantle of hawkish defenders of the status quo, Democrats allowed themselves to be held responsible for the failures of the post-9/11 era.”

 

“At the same time, however, many Americans have come to see U.S. national security policy writ large as an instrument of a broader system that has not served their interests and is unresponsive to their concerns.”

I think it is fair to say that Trump has tapped in to that distaste for current US foreign policy and many Americans have glommed on to Trump’s strongman approach.  Now having said that Rhodes sharply critiques Trump policy directions making clear the hollowness of Trump’s strongman approaches: 

To be clear, the remedies that Trump is preparing to impose are not correctives to the grievances he has identified. An overuse of tariffs—combined with more sanctions and further decoupling of supply chains—would only exacerbate inflation while amplifying the geopolitical influence of China. A shift of that kind would also reduce the cost to China of a potential blockade or invasion of Taiwan. Mass deportations will tear at the social cohesion of American communities, drive up prices, and undermine the strength and vitality that the U.S. has traditionally drawn from immigrants. Tax cuts, deregulation, and a federal embrace of cryptocurrencies will fuel inequality and encourage oligarchy. The abandonment of action on climate change could have catastrophic consequences as the planet careens past a tipping point. U.S. alignment with the Israeli far right could lead to the annexation of parts of Gaza and the West Bank, with devastating consequences for Palestinians and perhaps the stability of neighboring states. The abandonment of Ukraine would lead to an end to that war on terms favorable to Russia while eroding U.S. influence in Europe. The dismantling of American national security agencies through unqualified appointments and purges of the civil and foreign service will concentrate power in the White House while undermining the long-term capacity of the government to protect the safety and interests of the American people. And these are just the things Trump has said he will do: if his COVID-19 pandemic response is any indication, there is little reason to trust that he will competently manage the inevitable crises to come. This is a harrowing thought in a world of great-power conflict.

But it is interesting to contemplate the consequences of Trump foreign policy. And of course there is no consensus here, I suppose not surprisingly. For instance, there was the recent FA piece by Richard Fontaine titled: “The Trump-Biden-Trump Foreign Policy: American Strategy’s Strange Continuity”. Fontaine, interestingly, is currently CEO of the Center for a New American Security but earlier in his career, he was a foreign policy adviser to U.S. Senator John McCain. Now interestingly Fontaine suggests a rather muted policy by Trump with continuity between the two administrations – Biden-Trump: 

“The two administrations [Trump, Biden] could hardly have been more different in style and rhetoric. In the underlying substance of their policies, however, there was more continuity than the casual observer might have appreciated.”

 

“Many such areas of constancy will almost certainly remain in the next Trump presidency. The incoming administration’s approach to Israel, for instance, will likely be broadly similar, combining military support with protection both from Iranian missiles and diplomatic attacks at the United Nations and elsewhere. Policy toward Saudi Arabia will be comparable now that Biden has embraced the government in Riyadh and seeks regional normalization. Under Trump, Washington is poised to continue to see China as its foremost global challenger and endeavor to build domestic sources of strength. Even as the new administration rails against U.S. allies on issues such as defense spending and trade, it is likely to seek tighter partnerships abroad, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, to better compete with Beijing.” 

 

“Trump will usher in departures, sometimes dramatic ones, in American foreign policy. But those changes will compose just a fraction of the total. The stability of U.S. interests and values, the role of Congress, and the realities of today’s world will demand a significant measure of constancy. Although it is bent on reversing Biden’s approach, the incoming team may itself be surprised to find out how much the two administrations share.” 

Now you’ll not be surprised that this view of similarity between the two administrations is not universally held. I was intrigued by my colleague Dan Drezner’s piece in WPR, where, apparently, Dan is now providing a monthly opinion piece. I was alerted to it by Dan at his Substack, Drezner’s World, rather chillingly titled, “A Great Power War is Coming: The implicit assumption behind a lot of recent rhetoric.” Dan was particularly sparked by Trump’s territorial threats – to the Panama Canal, Greenland and Canada. He reacted in the article this way:

“I have a very depressing answer: “Fear of a Great Power War Could Be Making One More Likely.” 

As he says the following is his thesis paragraph: 

“What is going on? There are some disturbing parallels between how great powers are behaving today and how they started behaving in the late 1930s. In both eras, the proliferation of economic sanctions and embargoes caused great powers to fear that they would be cut off from critical resources. Their reaction to that threat, in turn, helped to escalate great power conflict. The question today is whether history will repeat itself, or only rhyme.” 

He then provides the following conclusion: 

“For decades, the principal sources of great power peace have been clear: U.S. hegemony, commercial interdependence and nuclear deterrence. But really, there was a fourth pillar as well: whether elites in these countries were seriously contemplating the mechanics of a sustained great power war. For much of the post-Cold War era, that was inconceivable.”

 

“In 2025, U.S. hegemony looks wobbly, and great powers are falling all over themselves to reject interdependence unless it favors them asymmetrically. Increasingly, elites in the U.S. and China seem to be conceiving of how a war between the two countries would play out. Which means we may be about to test whether the last pillar of great power peace—the logic of mutually assured destruction—remains compelling or not.” 

Now I must say my initial reaction was – really! It is possible of course,  but I suspect not all that likely. My reaction to the proposition offered by Dan is in part driven by my caution when being offered historical analogies. They are superficially attractive, and frequently employed but such comparisons should be treated with strong caution. If you’re going to use an historical analogy you examine the similarities, of course, but you need to also look at the dissimilarities before declaring it an appropriate lesson. Few authors ever do; it takes a fair bit of work and rather deep historical knowledge. And I’m afraid it was done in this case, though practically few authors or experts do. Still in the end mark me skeptical. 

So we enter the age of ‘Trump 2.0’. Fasten your safety belts. It is going to be a bumpy ride, for sure.

Image Credit: NY Times

Struggling with Global Leadership

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So, with the last several Posts here at Alan’s Newsletter, I have been transitioning – altering my mindset, and bidding farewell to the Biden administration and contemplating the reality of the return of Donald Trump as US President with a new administration. There are certainly strong signs that this time around, as opposed to 2017, that the Trump administration is intent on ‘hitting the ground running’. As The Economist noted, for Trump there is nothing more critical than immigration and the removal of illegals:

Mr Trump has long been exercised about immigration. He made building a wall along America’s border with Mexico a central theme of his election campaign in 2016. He duly issued a flurry of executive orders on immigration within weeks of taking office in 2017, including a ban on visas for applicants from various largely Muslim countries and instructions to federal agencies to expedite the construction of the border wall and to detain more illegal immigrants. … Stephen Miller, his deputy chief of staff, is an America First, anti-immigration hawk who has been fighting against bipartisan immigration reform in Congress since 2013. “As God is my witness,” he declared last year, “you are going to see millions of people rapidly removed from this country who have no right to be here.

The question is where does Trump and his team take the US? On immigration? On US-China relations? On relations with allies and the multilateral relations and organizations that the US has built over the past several decades? What approach is Trump going to take in rolling out ‘America First’? Now, there is lots of speculation but with so much being described really knowing is nearly impossible. But that being said, one clear direction is described by Fareed Zakaria. Like many, Fareed has to absorb the recent inducements and/or threats by Trump with respect to Greenland and Canada and the Panama Canal. As a result Fareed suggests:

Having campaigned on a policy of ending wars, making peace, putting America first and disentangling the country from the world, President-elect Donald Trump this week decided to revive 19th-century imperialism. In a single news conference, he pondered making Canada a state and acquiring Greenland and the Panama Canal by economic coercion — and declined to rule out using military force in the latter two cases.

Fareed, in his weekly Washington Post opinion piece titled, “Trump revives 19th-century imperialism. Make Russia great again!”, suggests these territorial aggrandizement initiatives simply put the US today in the same league as Russia and China:

In the news conference, Trump proposed getting rid of the “artificially drawn line” between Canada and the United States. Of course, that is precisely what President Vladimir Putin says about the line between Russia and Ukraine. Or President Xi Jinping about the division between China and Taiwan. This is a world that makes Russia and China great again.

It is tough to really understand the future US foreign policy with Trump at the helm. Now I may be reaching way too far but I was intrigued by the republishing, recently by Foreign Affairs, of a piece by Richard Haass now President emeritus of CFR and Charles Kupchan a Senior Fellow and Director of European Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Charlie is also Professor of International Affairs at the School of Foreign Service and Government Department at Georgetown University. The article is entitled, “The New Concert of Powers: How to Prevent Catastrophe and Promote Stability in a Multipolar World”. The piece was originally published in 2021.

For Haass and Kupchan the future of the global order is multipolarity as they describe it in the FA article. As they suggest:

Moreover, even if Western democracies overcome polarization, beat back illiberalism, and pull off an economic rebound, they will not forestall the arrival of a world that is both multipolar and ideologically diverse.

And as they argue the best means, maybe the only structure for the global order to achieve some stability in such a coming multipolar environment is a gathering of major powers:

The best vehicle for promoting stability in the twenty-first century is a global concert of major powers. As the history of the nineteenth-century Concert of Europe demonstrated—its members were the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria—a steering group of leading countries can curb the geopolitical and ideological competition that usually accompanies multipolarity.

 

This recent uptake in concert operation and interest in the same includes a major piece by my colleague, Andrew Fenton Cooper, from Waterloo University. You might want to take a look at his recent publication from Oxford Press titled: The Concertation Impulse in World Politics”. But turning back to Haass and Kupchan this is their description and understanding of such a concert:

 

Concerts have two characteristics that make them well suited to the emerging global landscape: political inclusivity and procedural informality. A concert’s inclusivity means that it puts at the table the geopolitically influential and powerful states that need to be there, regardless of their regime type. In so doing, it largely separates ideological differences over domestic governance from matters of international cooperation.

Concerts have two characteristics that make them well suited to the emerging global landscape: political inclusivity and procedural informality. A concert’s inclusivity means that it puts at the table the geopolitically influential and powerful states that need to be there, regardless of their regime type. In so doing, it largely separates ideological differences over domestic governance from matters of international cooperation.

A global concert would be a consultative, not a decision-making, body. It would address emerging crises yet ensure that urgent issues would not crowd out important ones, and it would deliberate on reforms to existing norms and institutions.

 

This steering group would help fashion new rules of the road and build support for collective initiatives but leave operational matters, such as deploying peacekeeping missions, delivering pandemic relief, and concluding new climate deals, to the UN and other existing bodies. The concert would thus tee up decisions that could then be taken and implemented elsewhere. It would sit atop and backstop, not supplant, the current international architecture by maintaining a dialogue that does not now exist.

This new global concert proposal, according to Haass and Kupchan, would have the following membership:

A global concert would have six members: China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, and the United States.

The concert’s members would collectively represent roughly 70 percent of both global GDP and global military spending.

The analysis seems to be moving full speed forward until:

This proposal presumes that none of the concert’s members would be a revisionist power bent on aggression and conquest.

Ah, and there is the dilemma – the ‘fly in the ointment’. The reality is that two great powers are evidently revisionist – that is Russia and China, and now under Trump the same may well be said for the upcoming Trump administration.

But as Nathan Gardels, the editor-in-chief of Noema Magazine and also the co-founder of, and a senior adviser to the Berggruen Institute, just recently wrote in Noema:

A revisionist state seeks to change the rules and norms of the extant world order. In recent years, we have become used to castigating China and Russia as the chief renegades in this endeavor. Now, as Princeton political scientist John Ikenberry pithily notes, another “revisionist state has arrived on the scene to contest the liberal international order … it is the United States. It’s Trump in the Oval Office, the beating heart of the free world.”

So, are we at a brick wall when it comes to promoting stability and dampening geopolitical tensions? Well, like many of my international relations colleagues I have spent time examining the contours and the operation of the classic global concert – the Concert of Europe. For Haass and Kupchan this is the model for a contemporary concert designed to diminish tensions and mitigate conflict. But the Concert is 200 years ago and it is not at all clear that a modern day instrument could operate in any way similar to this much earlier European instrument. And I would think we have already a ready-made instrument of concert-like characteristics – the G20. This involves a membership wider than that suggested by these authors. The G20 today includes: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Türkiye, United Kingdom and United States and two regional bodies today: the European Union and the African Union. It seems to me this Informal has a much better representation from the Global South and the collective could turn its attention to critical global security issues as well as global economic issues if the motivation were there.

But concerts may not be, or may not be the only mechanism to generate potentially greater stability in a world of increasing disorder. Rather, plurilateral structures – smaller groupings that include major and Middle Powers, especially from the Global South targeting growing challenges to global stability – plurilateral collaborations that could target climate change and the green transition, debt distress and relief, regional conflicts and more. Let’s tackle real threatening problems starting with these plurilateral collaboratives and build our way to a global concert in time. Let’s start here with this smaller step, and who knows, in time it might also provide for a larger grouping, even a ‘global concert’ with possibly better leadership than we seem to have right now.

This first appeared as a Substack Post at Alan’s Newsletter – https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/publish/post/155031165

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