Will Trump’s actions have enough firepower to bulldoze a new hierarchy in the American polity and the world order at large?
Published Date – 1 April 2025, 08:37 PM
By Monish Tourangbam
America’s unipolar moment was long gone, with analysts singing swansong of its unchallenged power and trumpeting the rise of the rest. That the United States was still the largest economy in the world, with an unparalleled military power was undeniable, but it was also becoming increasingly clear that such an enormous power was being wielded amid a number of rising powers.
One country in particular, China, had come threateningly close to becoming a peer competitor in the international system, and more starkly in the Indo-Pacific region. So, the geopolitical script that the world had gotten used to was that of major stakeholders of the international system reorienting their national security and foreign policy strategies to navigate the growing US-China power rivalry to protect and promote their own interests.
Inside the US, there seemed to be bipartisan support for China as the long-term challenger, and Russia as the shorter-term menace, more particularly in the European security order. So, did the advent of Trump 2.0 completely disrupt this understanding?
Day before Trump 2.0
The US national security, defence and military strategies were quite clear that America’s strategic competition with China was perhaps the defining feature of new geopolitics. The US had acknowledged that China was the only country, with both the capability and the intention to challenge US primacy in the international system. President Trump in his first term had started a tariff war with China, and his successor President Joe Biden had largely continued the same. That the United States was entering a new era of great power rivalry with China across multiple domains was soon becoming a foregone conclusion in the American beltway.
Confrontations in geopolitical hotspots like the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea were becoming sharper, even as global challenges like climate change called for cooperation among major stakeholders of the world economy. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), between India, the US, Japan and Australia, which Trump 1.0 helped revive in 2017, was growing more comprehensive drawing the ire of the Chinese establishment. The US under the Biden presidency and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies in Europe were largely joined at the hip in steadfastly supporting Ukraine’s war efforts against Russia.
That Trump’s second coming to the White House was a route to disruptions in how Washington would handle domestic politics and foreign engagements was well-known, but what is surprising is the speed at which he has gone about dismantling social contract
Scenarios of the US imposing tariffs on its closest security partners like the UK, Canada and the European Union (EU) were unimaginable before the advent of Trump’s second administration. Now, world leaders, irrespective of allies, adversaries and strategic partners, virtually check Trump’s tariff thermometer before taking their morning coffee or tea.
The atmosphere in the US Congress, as American senators grilled Trump’s national security team over an inadvertent leakage of a Signal chat group discussing real-time war plans of US military strikes on Houthi targets, was a grim reminder of the heightened angst and anger among American lawmakers, particularly in the political opposition.
The excesses of American presidencies in its foreign policy and national security actions have periodically reverberated beyond and within American borders, most particularly in times when American lives are at stake in foreign wars. America’s civil society has often risen to protests against long wars in foreign soils, as in the tumultuous years of the Vietnam war, the disastrous war in Iraq or the one in Afghanistan from which the US withdrew hastily after more than two decades.
Does US Need an Emperor?
That American citizens voted Donald Trump back to the White House with a decisive mandate winning both the Electoral College and the popular votes is undeniable. That Trump garnered growing support not just from his hardcore ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) loyalists but also from a wide spectrum of voters, cutting across ethnic, racial, religious and economic lines, is also undeniable. That Trump and his election strategists were able to cater to a wide section of American voters, who felt they were ‘not better off’ during the four years of Biden and believed that they could do much better under Trump’s ‘America First’ and MAGA calls, too is undeniable.
That the United States of America, after more than two centuries of its foundation, needs fixing is also a fundamental logic of nation-building, and building a nation, anyway, is a constant work in progress. From its rise as a global power in the early 20th century, through the two World Wars, into the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, to the rise of America’s unipolar moment and the emerging multipolar world, US’ power was beginning to be challenged unlike any time before.
While the US remained the primary global power, in absolute terms, it was declining relatively to the rise of China and other new power poles. Responding to such a structural shift in global power alignments, Washington seemed to be adapting to new geopolitical, geo-economic and technological realities that it was not used to, something much more complex and nuanced compared to the Cold War notion of strict alliances.
Speed of Destruction
The outgoing foreign policy and national security team of the Biden administration seemed ready to recalibrate America’s sense of allies and partnerships to such realities. That Trump’s second coming to the White House was a route to disruptions in how Washington would handle domestic politics and America’s foreign engagements was well-known, but what has surprised is the speed at which he and his ‘team of loyalists’ have gone about dismantling the US government’s social contract with its own people.
The aggression and unilateralism that Trump 2.0 has shown in its approach to duelling with the legislature and the judiciary, on matters ranging from immigration, education, bureaucracy and national security to foreign aid, have scripted a new era of retribution in American politics. The speed at which Trump has withdrawn the US from some of the most consequential mechanisms of multilateralism in a multipolar world has left world leaders hustling in the dark to find appropriate national and regional responses.
Major initiatives of his predecessor have been virtually thrown under the bus, completely disrupting the way ‘changes and continuities’ are often analysed in US foreign policy. Moreover, while allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific sit up and take note of the growing rifts between the US and its European allies, they need to brace for the coming turbulence of Washington’s new terms of engagements with Beijing and Moscow.
So, will Trumpism succumb to the checks and balances of the US political system, and the balance of power in the international system? On the contrary, will Trump’s unilateral actions both inside and outside America have enough tempo and firepower to bulldoze a new hierarchy in the American polity and the world order at large? Well, to repeat a cliché: only time and providence will tell.
(The author is Director at the Kalinga Institute of Indo-Pacific Studies [KIIPS] and Associate Editor at India Quarterly)