Robb: The beginning of the end of U.S. leadership of the free world

Robert Robb

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The usual congratulatory messages are flowing in to Donald Trump from foreign leaders. However, there is a strong possibility that historians will regard Trump’s election to a second term as the beginning of the end of U.S. leadership of the free world.

Trump has contradictory instincts about international affairs.

On the one hand, he wants to be, and be regarded as, a global colossus, able to settle the Russia-Ukraine war with a couple of telephone calls and deter China from invading Taiwan with the threat of tariffs.

On the other hand, Trump also has strong isolationist instincts. There are three pillars of isolationism, and Trump drifts toward all three: restrictive immigration policies, protectionism in trade and non-interventionism in foreign policy.

To the extent the geopolitical conflict of our time is a competition between democratic capitalism and authoritarianism, and I think it largely is, the combination of Trump’s instincts doesn’t add up to being a reliable ally and leader for the democratic capitalist side.

In his first term, Trump constantly complained about the cost of the U.S. military footprint around the world. His incessant refrain was that U.S. allies needed to pay. European countries needed to pay more for NATO. South Korea and Japan need to pick up a larger share of the cost of stationing U.S. troops in their country.

Other U.S. presidents had made similar points, at least with respect to NATO. But the way Trump treats the issue raises doubts about his willingness to fulfill U.S. security obligations even if there were a more favorable division of the costs.

In the campaign, Trump explicitly said that he wouldn’t fulfill the American NATO treaty obligation if Russia invaded a country that wasn’t meeting the NATO target of spending at least 2% of GDP on defense.

While burden sharing is an appropriate topic for discussion and negotiation, the U.S. military isn’t a mercenary force available for hire. Our troops should be deployed where we perceive we have strategic and security interests at risk. There’s ample reason to doubt that Trump sees U.S. strategic and security interests as fully bound up with the prosperity and security of other democratic capitalist countries as a bipartisan consensus has held in the post-World War II era.

Trump and his supporters seem to think that having a strong, tough personality in the president is an effective deterrent against expansionary authoritarianism in its own right. The notion that Putin and Xi will faint before Trump’s bluster is almost comical, if it wasn’t at least partially believed by Trump himself. These are authoritarians running police states. They will act according to cold calculations about what Trump would actually be willing to do, mostly independent of his bluster.

Trump and his supporters assert that there is value in his erraticism in the conduct of foreign policy. With respect to adversaries, there’s a measure of truth in that. With respect to allies, there is not.

Simply put, an America willing, twice, to elect a president not committed to being the backbone of security and economic alliances among democratic capitalist countries necessitates a recalibration by those other countries.

There are two theoretical courses of action. Either develop their own security capability to compensate for the uncertainty of the U.S. role. Or seek accommodation with the regional authoritarian hegemons, Russia and China. I suspect we will see a combination of both.

French President Emmanuel Macron has long advocated for Europe to develop a credible military capability independent of NATO and the U.S.

European leaders are already discussing ways to keep Ukraine in the fight if Trump cuts it off.

As a countervailing indication, prior to the Ukrainian invasion, Germany was quite content to become even more dependent on Russia for its natural gas.

Europe has the resources — in money and population — to develop a robust security capability independent of the U.S. What it lacks is a governance structure capable of willing it into existence.

The ability to replace the U.S. security capabilities in the Indo-Pacific is even more constrained. The large democratic capitalist countries — Japan, South Korea, Australia, and India — aren’t as closely knit together, geographically or culturally, as the democratic capitalist countries in Europe. A governance structure for them to coordinate isn’t even a faint prospect. And most of them have large trade relations with China they will be reluctant to put at risk.

The countries on the front lines of the geopolitical competition between authoritarianism and democratic capitalism — Taiwan and the former Soviet satellites — need to develop what has been called a porcupine strategy — make themselves as indigestible, militarily and civically, as possible.

I know this sounds sharply critical of Trump. And in large measure, it is. But this would not be a movement in geopolitics that I would wholly oppose or condemn.

I have long argued that the U.S. bears international responsibilities and burdens disproportionate to our true national and strategic interests. A recalibration and rebalancing is overdue.

Given the geopolitical competition between authoritarianism and democratic capitalism, it would be infinitely better if this were done gradually as part of a shared strategy brought about through deft diplomacy — not as a reaction to erratic and unreliable U.S. leadership. If done as part of a shared strategy, the ratio of developing security capabilities independent of the U.S. and accommodating authoritarian regional hegemons would be better.

During the Cold War, Irving Kristol frequently made the point that success wouldn’t come from the United States being more committed to Europe’s security than the Europeans. That remains true for the threats posed today by Russia and China, in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

The election of Trump a second time is a sort of shock therapy for our democratic capitalist allies. Sometimes, good things can come from shock therapy. 

Editor's note: Robert Robb writes about politics and public policy on Substack. Reach him at robtrobb@gmail.com. Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at AzOpinions@iniusa.org.