Politics

/

ArcaMax

Andreas Kluth: Trump's 'new order' will be global anarchy

Andreas Kluth, Bloomberg Opinion on

Published in Op Eds

You know it’s going to get interesting when Elon Musk quotes from Virgil and the Great Seal of the United States. Novus Ordo Seclorum, the tech-titan-turned-MAGA-megaphone tweeted, or rather Xed, as he basked in Donald Trump’s victory with the president-elect himself. In English: “a new order of the ages.”

On the other side of the world in Russia, Alexander Dugin shared the sentiment. He’s a far-right philosopher associated with “eurasianism,” a narrative that glorifies anti-Western Russian neo-imperialism. “So we have won,” Dugin gloated on X; the world will never be the same again because the “globalists have lost their final combat.”

It’s tempting to dismiss Musk and Dugin as bookends of the hyperbole that’s taken over the planet since Trump staged his stunning comeback. So many pundits are exaggerating so many things right now that we should remember Ecclesiastes: There is nothing new under the sun. Maybe there won’t be a “new order.” Maybe the world will change less than it seems.

And yet a striking pattern suggests that Trump 2.0 does represent a historic turning point on the scale that Musk and Dugin imagine. From Europe to Asia and the Americas, people who over the years praised what’s been called the liberal, or “rules-based,” international order are in various stages of the Kübler-Ross grief cycle (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance). All those in thrall to the opposite vision, of “illiberal” strongman rule, are jubilant, from Viktor Orban in Hungary to Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel or Narendra Modi in India.

Other terms for that old, and now possibly moribund, order are the Pax Americana or — as Henry Luce, the founder of Time and other magazines, called it — the American Century. He wanted America to reject the isolationism that had kept it out of international affairs between the world wars and instead to become the world’s Good Samaritan — the hegemon of an open, stable and maximally free system of states.

If Musk is right that Trump will deliver a new order, and Dugin is right that the globalists have lost, then dusk now falls on that American Century. Here’s what that means.

The U.S. will walk away from the regime of relatively open and regulated trade that it built after World War II. With the sweeping tariffs that Trump promises, he will instead launch an era of beggar-thy-neighbor trade wars and economic nationalism reminiscent of the 1930s.

He’ll also, albeit gradually, render the charter of the United Nations as meaningless as the League of Nations became in the 1930s. That draft of a world constitution already looks tattered these days, as Russia and China (and the U.S., when it feels like it) keep flouting its ideals.

But Trump will go further, jettisoning principles such as the sovereignty and integrity of all countries, large and small; he’ll instead make deals with autocrats to carve up “spheres of influence” as the European empires did in the 19th century. For smaller countries this will spell disaster. And the first victim will probably be Ukraine.

Another casualty will be international law, as embodied in institutions from the U.N. (which many MAGA Republicans want to defund) to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Taking their place would be the law of the jungle, the notion that might makes right. Kant and Grotius are out, Thucydides and Hobbes are in.

As Trump corrodes multilateralism in general, he’ll also forsake other manifestations of international cooperation, notably America’s alliances. He may not pull out of NATO, but he will undermine its deterrent effect on adversaries by treating America’s commitment to mutual defense as a protection racket. He’ll take the same approach with treaty allies in Asia, where incumbent president Joe Biden has been so eager to build new “minilateral” webs of forward defense to contain China.

 

Nobody knows how the major powers and their Machiavellian leaders will react to this abdication of American hegemony. Will Russia’s Vladimir Putin be sated once he absorbs the four Ukrainian provinces he claims to have “annexed,” or will he go on to seize all of Ukraine, then march on to Moldova and other post-Soviet states? Will Xi Jinping offer Trump a deal to let China militarize the whole South China Sea, and later digest Taiwan at leisure? Trump is unlikely to lose sleep over these questions, because he’s thinking only one transaction at a time.

It’s just as uncertain how America’s friends, mainly middle powers and smaller nations, will fit between the new spheres of influence that Trump and the other strongmen draw up. Two of them, Germany and Japan, were America’s enemies in World War II, then became American proteges and paragons of the more irenic American Century, with Germany embedded into NATO and the European Union, and Japan more recently into U.S.-led groupings with South Korea, the Philippines and India.

Once Trump withdraws America’s aegis over these allies, what is to prevent old hostilities from resurfacing, from enmities between Germany and France or Germany and Poland to lingering resentments between the Japanese and Koreans? Why wouldn’t they all want to have their own nuclear arsenals?

The Pax Americana was ever imperfect and to many people in the world, from Vietnam to Iraq, smacked of hypocrisy. But it was as close as the world has come to order. Not all at once, but over time, that order will devolve to entropy as the international system reverts to its natural state, which is anarchy. Humanity’s common problems, such as climate change, will remain insoluble. The worst risks, such as nuclear war, become more likely.

Yet more hyperbole? I hope I’ll be proven wrong. But if the Musks and Dugins of the world are celebrating the return of Trump and the end of the American Century, the rest of us are right to worry.

_____

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US diplomacy, national security and geopolitics. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist.

_____


©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com/opinion. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

Comments

blog comments powered by Disqus

 

Related Channels

ACLU

ACLU

By The ACLU
Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman

By Amy Goodman
Armstrong Williams

Armstrong Williams

By Armstrong Williams
Austin Bay

Austin Bay

By Austin Bay
Ben Shapiro

Ben Shapiro

By Ben Shapiro
Betsy McCaughey

Betsy McCaughey

By Betsy McCaughey
Bill Press

Bill Press

By Bill Press
Bonnie Jean Feldkamp

Bonnie Jean Feldkamp

By Bonnie Jean Feldkamp
Cal Thomas

Cal Thomas

By Cal Thomas
Christine Flowers

Christine Flowers

By Christine Flowers
Clarence Page

Clarence Page

By Clarence Page
Danny Tyree

Danny Tyree

By Danny Tyree
David Harsanyi

David Harsanyi

By David Harsanyi
Debra Saunders

Debra Saunders

By Debra Saunders
Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager

By Dennis Prager
Dick Polman

Dick Polman

By Dick Polman
Erick Erickson

Erick Erickson

By Erick Erickson
Froma Harrop

Froma Harrop

By Froma Harrop
Jacob Sullum

Jacob Sullum

By Jacob Sullum
Jamie Stiehm

Jamie Stiehm

By Jamie Stiehm
Jeff Robbins

Jeff Robbins

By Jeff Robbins
Jessica Johnson

Jessica Johnson

By Jessica Johnson
Jim Hightower

Jim Hightower

By Jim Hightower
Joe Conason

Joe Conason

By Joe Conason
Joe Guzzardi

Joe Guzzardi

By Joe Guzzardi
John Micek

John Micek

By John Micek
John Stossel

John Stossel

By John Stossel
Josh Hammer

Josh Hammer

By Josh Hammer
Judge Andrew Napolitano

Judge Andrew Napolitano

By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano
Laura Hollis

Laura Hollis

By Laura Hollis
Marc Munroe Dion

Marc Munroe Dion

By Marc Munroe Dion
Michael Barone

Michael Barone

By Michael Barone
Michael Reagan

Michael Reagan

By Michael Reagan
Mona Charen

Mona Charen

By Mona Charen
Oliver North and David L. Goetsch

Oliver North and David L. Goetsch

By Oliver North and David L. Goetsch
R. Emmett Tyrrell

R. Emmett Tyrrell

By R. Emmett Tyrrell
Rachel Marsden

Rachel Marsden

By Rachel Marsden
Rich Lowry

Rich Lowry

By Rich Lowry
Robert B. Reich

Robert B. Reich

By Robert B. Reich
Ruben Navarrett Jr

Ruben Navarrett Jr

By Ruben Navarrett Jr.
Ruth Marcus

Ruth Marcus

By Ruth Marcus
S.E. Cupp

S.E. Cupp

By S.E. Cupp
Salena Zito

Salena Zito

By Salena Zito
Star Parker

Star Parker

By Star Parker
Stephen Moore

Stephen Moore

By Stephen Moore
Susan Estrich

Susan Estrich

By Susan Estrich
Ted Rall

Ted Rall

By Ted Rall
Terence P. Jeffrey

Terence P. Jeffrey

By Terence P. Jeffrey
Tim Graham

Tim Graham

By Tim Graham
Tom Purcell

Tom Purcell

By Tom Purcell
Veronique de Rugy

Veronique de Rugy

By Veronique de Rugy
Victor Joecks

Victor Joecks

By Victor Joecks
Wayne Allyn Root

Wayne Allyn Root

By Wayne Allyn Root

Comics

Kevin Siers Joel Pett Monte Wolverton Pat Byrnes Lisa Benson Michael Ramirez