Is Trump’s Presidency the End of American Leadership?

In his first term, Donald Trump coined the slogan “America First” and “Make America Great Again.” This slogan maintained its appeal during the election campaign that ultimately culminated in Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris. During Trump’s first term (2016-2020), this slogan was linked to radical implementations, resulting in significant upheaval within the largest institution in the history of foreign policy-making.

Before Trump’s victory in the recent election, scholar David E. Sanger wrote a lengthy article in The New York Times discussing the implications of “America First” in Trump’s second term.

The reality is that Trump adopted a foreign policy encapsulated by “America First.” According to Sanger, this represented a breakdown in American policymaking, and he suggests strongly that Trump’s second term will signify a return to an “era of decrees” concerning foreign policy, detached from any political process, at a time of maximum international peril.

Much of what Trump communicated during his re-election campaign indicates that in his second term he plans to continue with more of the same, viewing unpredictability as his signature weapon. He seems to take pleasure in this, telling the Wall Street Journal editorial board in October that he wouldn’t need to threaten China with U.S. military force over Taiwan because President Xi Jinping “respects me and knows I’m crazy,” using a profanity for emphasis before the word “crazy.”

Regardless of the opinions of American political analysts, including Sanger, Trump’s second victory proved that his first was not merely a glitch in America’s post-World War II approach to the world. Harris’s defeat means that the Joe Biden era marked the definitive end of a period in which the U.S. was a reliable guarantor of Western security. As investigative journalist Bob Woodward reveals in his recent book, The War, Biden is credited with preventing Barack Obama’s “mistake” of inaction in response to Russia’s occupation of Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014 from becoming a guiding policy, leading to a faltering of Russia’s military plans.

The election outcome demonstrated that Trump is not simply the whim of an angry and marginalized American voter, but rather a social structure that has been developing for decades, culminating in his current manifestation, and which is likely to find other representations in the future. Since most global events are shaped by U.S. foreign policy trajectories, a strong internal conflict is intensifying within the U.S. between isolationism and “coming home,” as well as between building alliances and globalization. Perhaps the most challenging task Trump will face during his upcoming four years is dealing with Biden’s foreign policy legacy. Disentangling Biden’s commitments and engagements in Ukraine and the Middle East could occupy Trump’s entire term without being fully resolved, thus representing a potential source of “chaos” in U.S. foreign policy, which Sanger referred to as the “era of decrees,” and what we might also call “improvised initiatives.”

No doubt, Republicans now highlight that the United States was not involved in two foreign wars during Trump’s administration, and tensions with China were not as severe as they are today. However, during Trump’s presidency, his aides often found themselves at the beginning of the weekend, fully aware that their boss, wandering through the White House, might tweet changes in policy after a phone call with a significant donor or a foreign leader advocating for their position, bypassing the State Department or national security officials.

Trump decided over the weekend to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria after a phone call with Erdoğan. When he realized he had been misled by the Turkish President, he partially reversed his decision.

Sanger adds: “Thus, Trump decided over the weekend to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria after a phone call with Erdoğan that surprised his aides. When Trump realized he had been misled by the Turkish president, who aimed to target the Kurds in his military operation, he partially reversed his decision and tweeted that ‘if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unparalleled wisdom, consider to be crossing the line, I will completely destroy and obliterate Turkey’s economy.’”

After Trump’s victory, Sanger stated more explicitly that Trump’s win represents the end of the post-World War II era of American leadership.

For the past four years, Biden asserted that Trump’s first term was merely a blip in American history. The election, however, proved that President-elect Trump was no outsider to American politics.

“It’s only been four months since President Biden invited America’s NATO allies to Washington to celebrate the 75th anniversary of their alliance, a symbol of an era of American global leadership that was once hailed as the cornerstone of democracy and the best way to maintain peace among great powers,” Sanger notes.

Trump has not concealed his desire to preside over the dismantling of this global order. In his first term, he was uncertain about how to achieve this, and his initiatives faced resistance from an entrenched establishment. Now, he has made it clear that he possesses the knowledge, motivation, and strategy to pursue this goal.

If Trump follows through on his campaign promises, the era of free trade will largely give way to tariffs—“the most beautiful word” in the English language, as he puts it—without acknowledging that this approach contributed to the Great Depression.

Sanger points to a conditional equation: the viability of the “America First” slogan largely depends on how Trump combines his isolationist rhetoric with his instinctive desire to be the central player of his era.

Hal Brands, a Cold War historian at Johns Hopkins University, states: “During his first term, Trump often spoke as if he wanted to end the tradition of American leadership. He frequently acted as if he were recalibrating it. What concerns many U.S. allies is the fear that a second term will present a purer version of America First, along with all the destabilizing consequences it could entail.”

The fundamental difference that Trump embodies is this: Presidents from Harry Truman to Biden have viewed Washington’s allies as an extension of strength and a complement to the United States. In contrast, Trump sees these alliances as a burden. He often expresses confusion over why the U.S. defends countries with which it has trade deficits. During his first term, he dismissed the idea that Europe served as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and later Russia. He also questioned the notion that Japan was America’s aircraft carrier in the Pacific or that South Korea was essential for containing North Korea.

In an article in Foreign Affairs, academic Peter Pfeiffer, who served on the National Security Council during the Bush administration, writes that “the core of Trump’s foreign policy approach remains unchanged. However, the context in which he will attempt to implement his unique form of deal-making has changed dramatically: the world is a much more dangerous place today than it was during his first term.” He observes that Trump’s campaign was filled with “magical realism: fanciful boasts and superficial prescriptions that do not reflect any real understanding of the threats the United States faces.”

Shane Goldmacher and Lisa Lehrer write in The New York Times that Trump’s victory heralds an era of uncertainty for the American nation. In his victory speech in Florida, Trump proclaimed himself the leader of “the greatest political movement ever.”

Trump promised to disengage the country from conflicts abroad, marking a shift towards isolationism that has found a new audience as the war in Europe between Russia and Ukraine has been raging for nearly three years and the Middle East is on the brink of a wider conflagration.