November 18, 2024 ☼ The Intersection ☼ geopolitics ☼ foreign policy
China will look a lot more attractive, not least because America's shine is dimming fast.
This is from The Intersection column that appears every other Monday in Mint.
After Donald Trump first became president of the United States in 2016, it soon became clear — as was put to me by a seasoned, two-drinks down diplomat — that “he hates China and likes Russia, bad for Europe and good for India”. Whatever we might make of the consequences, that phrase turned out to be an apt summary of his first term in office. Will it hold true for his second term as well?
Broadly yes. His utterances and appointments suggest a reinvigorated confrontation of China, a new outreach toward Russia, leaving Western Europe in consternation and placing India in a fairly good position. However, whether or not Trump’s geopolitical orientation makes America great again from a domestic perspective, it’s international standing is likely to continue to decline.
Double standards are stock in trade in realpolitik, but most people find it hard to accept two contradictory principles simultaneously. For countries that do not have a direct interest in the conflicts, the Biden administration’s positions on Ukraine and Gaza exposed the arbitrariness and hollowness of the United States’ claims to be seeking a rules-based international order. The recent surge in interest in BRICS, perhaps the most illogical international grouping ever created, demonstrates many countries’ desire for non-American, non-Western options. It will be extremely hard for the United States to regain the moral high ground and epistemological dominance that it enjoyed for decades and that reduced the costs of its diplomacy. Trump will not even try. The United States will have to deal with friction in its international dealings. This means more resistance, more heat and more wear and tear. Lubrication can help but cannot avoid friction completely.
Back to the question of how the second Trump administration with deal with China, it is reasonable to expect that it will play hardball on trade. Similarly, members of his foreign policy team say they want to deter China — especially from invading Taiwan — using military strength. This will be the baseline of Washington’s approach, but there are reasons to expect that actual positions will diverge from it.
That’s because even in an administration personally dominated by Trump, foreign policy is an outcome of the complex interactions among various actors, interests and circumstances. Now he has declared himself strongly in favour of tariffs and will be inclined to pursue the trade war with China he initiated during his previous term. There are notable economic hawks in his team. But there is also Elon Musk, who might not see economic ties in the same way as Washington’s trade warriors. Wall Street is not a great fan of the trade war either. Finally, Beijing in 2024 is far more prepared for a geoeconomic confrontation with Washington that it was five years ago.
The Economist has a good roundup of how Trump’s protectionist policies could hurt many countries around the world.
Trump’s other policies might limit the extent to which the United States wins international support. He has threatened Western Europe with a trifecta: reneging on climate deals, walking away from NATO and warming up to Russia. A standoff with Mexico is on the cards over immigration. Brazil under Lula has made liberal democracy and environmental protection important priorities. Trump doesn’t care much about either. Japan and South Korea will be concerned if Washington tries to accommodate North Korea. South East Asian countries see tariffs as serious threats to their prosperity. Malaysia and Indonesia already see the United States as complicit in the Israeli military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon. Arab leaders, once favourably inclined towards the US-promoted Abraham Accords, cannot move on that front until the Palestinian issue is settled. Rightwing Israeli leaders and their counterparts in Washington have their own ideas on what that settlement would look like.
This means countries around the world are looking for self-sufficiency, new alignment options or, well, towards China. Quite frequently, all of the above. Only the biggest economies have the luxury of pursuing self-sufficiency although none can achieve it. Most countries have to decide between entering plurilateral arrangements that balance US and China, or jumping onto Beijing’s bandwagon. For many countries in Eastern Europe, Africa, South America, South East Asia and the Pacific, China will look a lot more attractive, not least because America’s shine is dimming fast.
The Economist reminds us that America’s Trump turn is not new, but “a return to an old idea of America. Before the fight against fascism convinced FDR that it was in his country’s interest to help bring order and prosperity to the world, the country was hostile towards immigration, scornful of trade and sceptical of foreign entanglements. In the 1920s and 1930s that led to dark times. It could do so again.”
India, as the external affairs minister put it, is not nervous about the United States under Trump. We start with reasonably good stores of diplomatic and political capital between the Modi and Trump governments. This should allow us to withstand ordinary pushes and pulls of world affairs. The risk though is that the pulls and pushes can quickly become extraordinary.
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