As the world knows by now, President Donald Trump is thin-skinned and obsesses over peripheral matters.
There is method in his madness, however. Together with his alter ego and chief strategist Steve Bannon, Trump has conceived a new world order that is deeply at odds with the prevailing American global system.
Since 1945, America’s political leadership has developed an international, liberal global order with the United States at its centre. The system privileged the American dollar and American corporations, bolstering the “free world” with the might of the U.S. military. The goal was to keep America at the core and to push the Soviet Union to the periphery.
In the post Soviet era, the American response to Russia has continued to be to keep its own alliance system intact and to sustain the liberal international order.
That is until now. Trump and Bannon have an alternative system in mind. Trump never comes out and presents the complete alternative so that it can be grasped systematically. But he has been very open about the pieces of the puzzle. To understand the whole, we have to fit the following pieces together.
- The United States has been overly generous with other countries, Trump has said many times, and this has undermined America’s economic strength, productive capacity and ability to create and sustain jobs at home.
- Before and since his inauguration, Trump has made it clear that he admires Russian President Vladimir Putin, that he will pursue closer relations with Moscow, and that he would not be averse to dismantling sanctions against Russia.
- Trump’s statements in support of the United Kingdom’s decision to secede from the European Union constitute a third piece of the puzzle. The president has said that it would not surprise him if other EU countries followed Britain’s example. In a further reversal of previous U.S. administrations, Trump has denigrated NATO as a critical pillar in the defence policy of the United States.
Friendly to Russia and negative toward the EU and NATO — these are critical pieces of the Trump puzzle.
America’s liberal internationalism established an economic order in which most countries, including the U.S., had to play by a common set of rules most of the time. But the world-view of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon holds that this system has proven far too costly for America.
An entente with Russia would permit the world’s two leading nuclear powers to seek naked dominance in their respective spheres. Russia would be allowed a freer hand in its “near abroad” with dire potential consequences for Ukraine and other eastern European countries bordering on Russia.
In its own much larger sphere, the United States would be free to pursue its economic, political and military goals without much regard for the interests of so-called allied powers. The guise of defending the “free world” against Russia would be set aside along with the rules based trading system of the WTO and regional trading blocs. Trump has already ditched the Trans Pacific Partnership.
Trump and Bannon prefer a more openly brutal system of bilateral relations between the U.S. and other countries. Canadians take note. Within NAFTA, Mexico is the chief target now. Canada could be later. Bilateralism would allow the U.S. to exert maximum pressure on trading partners, one by one.
Such a global arrangement would not be the first time in history that major powers have made common cause in pursuit of their own interests. In the late 19th century German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck fostered, for a time, an entente among Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia.
Trump and Bannon aim at a fundamental reordering of the world. Whether they want to include China in what would become a League of the Three Empires is not yet clear.
Initially Trump hinted at stirring up trouble with China over the status of Taiwan. However, in a recent telephone conversation with Xi Jinping, described as “extremely cordial,” Trump told the Chinese President he intended to honour the One China Policy.
Rome wasn’t built in a day. The Trump-Bannon New World Order cannot be constructed in a day. It will be fiercely resisted along the way. Those who are resisting it will be enormously better prepared if they understand the Trump-Bannon conception as a whole and are not merely distracted by its bits and pieces.
James Laxer is a professor of political science at York University. He is the author of The Perils of Empire.
James Laxer is a professor of political science at York University. He is the author of The Perils of Empire.
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