The Trump Put in International Relations
My latest for Foreign Affairs.
The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World is a wee bit busy today, what with the day job starting up in earnest again. Fortunately, Past Dan prepared for this moment by writing “Bracing for Trump 2.0”1 for Foreign Affairs. The first three paragraphs:
or most countries, the Biden administration’s foreign policy represents a return to normality after the chaos of the Trump years. Long-standing allies and partners have seen their relationships strengthened. Autocrats no longer deal with a U.S. president who wants to emulate them. Great-power rivals face a United States that is dedicated to outcompeting them. For many observers, it is hard not to conclude that under President Joe Biden, the United States has returned to the postwar tradition of liberal internationalism. In this view, the Trump administration was an ephemeral blip rather than an inflection point. Equilibrium has been restored.
Beneath the superficial calm, however, many global actors are anxious about the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Despite four criminal indictments, Donald Trump is the runaway frontrunner to win the GOP nomination for president. Assuming he does, current polling shows a neck-and-neck race between Trump and Biden in the general election. It would be reckless for other world leaders to dismiss the possibility of a second Trump term beginning on January 20, 2025. Indeed, the person who knows this best is Biden himself. In his first joint address to Congress, Biden said that in conversations with world leaders, he has “made it known that America is back,” and their responses have tended to be a variation of “But for how long?”
To understand international relations for the next 15 months, observers will need to factor in how the possibility of a second Trump term affects U.S. influence in the world. U.S. allies and adversaries alike are already taking it into account. Foreign leaders recognize that a second term for Trump would be even more extreme and chaotic than his first term. The prospect that he could return to the White House will encourage hedging in the United States’ allies—and stiffen the resolve of its adversaries. Russian and Chinese officials, for instance, have told analysts that they hope Trump is reelected. For Russia, Trump’s return to power would mean less Western support for Ukraine; for China, it would mean the fraying of U.S. alliances with countries such as Japan and South Korea that help constrain Beijing. The Biden administration’s best foreign policy move over the next year will not be a diplomatic or military initiative—it will be to demonstrate that Trump is unlikely to win in November 2024.
Please do read the whole thing. In some ways, it’s the natural successor article to my 2021 Washington Post column, “What would Trump’s second-term foreign policy look like?” If anything, the past two years reinforce the arguments I made back in 2021. In other words, Past Dan has had a pretty good week!
That link should allow you to get past the FA paywall.
It was Trumps foreign policy agenda (or lack thereof) in 2016 that caused me to abandon ship that year. I still have yet to climb fully back on-board. The monstrosity that is his personality coupled with inability to comprehend the slightest nuances of international relations really did send me "into the mountains to get weird and disappear"