Trump's New International Order: From City on a Hill to Jungle Reality

Source: FT Chinese

Trump's trip to the Middle East was filled with the sound of doves and olive branches, which was in stark contrast to the drumbeat of the tariff war more than a month ago. In the Middle East, Trump praised the "glittering miracles" of the Middle Eastern countries as being created by the Middle Eastern people themselves, not by Western interventionists. On the contrary, the liberal and neo-conservative interventionist policies pursued by the United States for decades have suffered a disastrous defeat in the Middle East. Facing the future, "even if there are huge differences between us, I am willing to put aside past conflicts and work for a better and more stable world. I will always support peace and cooperation, forever. I believe that sitting in judgment is God's job, and my job is to defend the United States and promote stability, prosperity and peace."

Middle East Turn

With the unfolding of public discourse and secret negotiations, the outline of the new US Middle East policy has gradually become clear.

On the one hand, economic cooperation has become the cornerstone of building a new relationship between the United States and the Middle East. During the visit, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and other countries received the US president with the highest etiquette, with white robes and silver horses, super giant red carpets, and Ayala dances, promising trillion-level investments in the United States and signing specific procurement and cooperation agreements worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The accompanying corporate giants, such as Musk, Huang Renxun, OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Boeing, General Electric, Citi and other company executives, held extensive and in-depth negotiations with local governments to find points of convergence between the Middle Eastern countries and the United States in the fields of economy and investment.

For example, Tesla will build a super factory in Saudi Arabia to produce electric vehicles and energy storage equipment, Google plans to invest in Saudi Arabia's cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure to support Saudi Arabia's "Vision 2030" digital transformation, and OpenAI will cooperate with NEOM to develop an AI-driven urban management system. Boeing and General Electric of the United States have received huge contracts to purchase hundreds of Boeing 787 "Dreamliners" and Boeing 777X aircraft, and invited American companies to invest heavily in transforming the local oil extraction and refining industry. The scale of the arms sales agreement signed by Saudi Arabia also reached 142 billion US dollars, setting a record for arms sales agreements.

On the other hand, when dealing with regional disputes, we insist on peace talks as the main approach and put war or the threat of war in a more secondary position. On the thorny issue of relations between Israel and Arab countries, Trump has shown more understanding of the positions of Arab countries and promoted Saudi Arabia and other countries to normalize relations with Israel. The Trump administration adjusted its policy toward Syria, shifting from sanctions to giving opportunities, and announced the abandonment of sanctions after meeting with Syrian leaders. This gives the new Syrian government a more relaxed policy choice space, and it is not only the only realistic option of approaching Russia and Iran and being hostile to the West. Towards Iran, the Trump administration offered "big carrots and thick sticks", and launched active negotiations with Iran's abandonment of nuclear weapons as the only core demand, under the premise that Iran's influence in the Middle East has been greatly reduced and its national strength has been greatly reduced.

Behind the changes in the US Middle East policy lies a more ambitious strategic thinking. Although Trump did not elaborate on this, it is very obvious that all speeches and policy orientations show that Trump is trying to reverse the basic orientation of previous governments on the global security order. Such a turn is certainly not a whim. There has long been extensive reflection and thinking within the conservative thought circle. From the early Huntington, Patrick Buchanan to Mearsheimer and others in recent years, such a thought has never been cut off.

Theoretical Background

Over the past few decades, especially the 30 years after the end of the Cold War, liberalism and neoconservatism have dominated the US foreign policy strategy. From Clinton to Bush Jr. to Obama, the US has been consistent in its approach to the international security order. Whether it is progressivism (Democratic government) or neoconservatism (Bush Jr. government), its supporters believe in the end of history and believe that modern engineering transformation of other non-Western countries is not only possible but also necessary. They are not afraid to use force to achieve this. In just 20 years after the end of the Cold War, the United States participated in 7 wars, and the intensity of wars increased three times compared with before 1990.

Liberalism regards individual freedom as the highest value and vows to protect those whose rights have been seriously violated. This principle, applied to international relations, prompts liberals to act in an offensive strategy. If people whose rights are seriously harmed are in another country, it may prompt a liberal government to intervene in that country. It is no wonder that there are more wars in the world during the rule of progressive governments.

Under such an offensive strategy, the space and opportunity for resolving disputes through diplomatic means are compressed. After all, diplomacy means bargaining and mutual concessions between countries that are in conflict on important issues. But liberalism simplifies it into a moral issue of justice and evil. In Trump's original words, "In recent years, too many American presidents have been troubled by the idea that our job is to examine the souls of foreign leaders and use American policies to bring justice to their sins."

As a result, in some countries, governments that fit the country's ecological environment and have stable ruling capabilities are overthrown by Western interventionists, but they are unable to establish a government that conforms to the Western liberal progressive model, which in turn triggers regional civil unrest or counterattacks; in other countries, Western governments and liberal-dominated international organizations (such as the World Bank, IMF, and the United Nations Development Program) force local governments to accept Western liberal social and economic transformation projects. These policy recommendations and related aid and loan funds are often wasted on local corrupt officials and failed huge projects, which in turn slow down the development of the local economy. Examples of the former include Afghanistan, Syria, and other countries that have not only failed to bring peace and prosperity after the West's increased intervention, but have instead fallen into long-term wars. Examples of the latter are numerous in books about Western aid such as "The White Man's Burden: Why Western Aid Always Has Little Effect".

The reason why social transformation projects are often accompanied by huge disasters usually includes two key elements. According to James Scott's analysis in "The State's Perspective: How Projects to Improve the Human Condition Fail", the first element is an authoritarian government that is willing and able to fully use its coercive power to implement highly modern engineering designs; the second element is a weak civil society that lacks the ability to resist these plans. In other words, the premise for the success of Western interventionists is exactly what they are desperately trying to destroy, which is destined to make it difficult for Western interventionist policies to achieve the success they expect.

At the same time, they understand the world from a liberal perspective rather than a realistic approach, which has aroused hostility from major powers such as Russia and China.

Mearsheimer pointed out in "The Great Illusion: Liberal Dreams and International Reality" that "liberal hegemony policies" are not only wrong in the post-Cold War world, but also wrong during the Cold War. In fact, from Eastern Europe to China, the struggle with Moscow has quickly emerged. At that time, if the United States had been more open to seeking friendly relations with communist countries and adopted a realistic approach to pursuing American interests in such relations, the results would have been better than the frequent use of military force.

For major powers that have assumed the responsibility for the international security order, they must and should treat international relations with a realistic attitude. At this time, the best strategy for major powers to interact with small countries is to avoid getting involved in their domestic politics and not to invade and occupy them unless absolutely necessary. In other words, sincerely respect national sovereignty, "people of all countries have the right to choose the path that suits them best", and even if such a path is wrong (in the eyes of liberals), the United States should not play the role of God's whip.

New Order

At present, facing the rise of China, the world situation is evolving into a bipolar structure of one strong and one large. This change is conducive to prompting the US government to abandon the liberal security concept and adopt a realistic security concept. The Trump administration responded by no longer focusing on multilateral security agreements, but using bilateral policy tools based on American interests. In Europe, it forced European countries to take on their own defense and security needs; at home, it built a stronger military force; globally, it avoided easily waging war against small countries and dealt with all types of rulers in order to reach a deal (exchange or compromise) that was beneficial to the United States, rather than dividing the world by ideology.

This principle cannot be called isolationism, but rather restrained realism. This is exactly the same as the restrained realism under the British Empire in the 19th century. At that time, Britain had little interest in overthrowing traditional rulers in a certain place, but it would exert influence. When these rulers strongly challenged Britain's core interests, Britain would not hesitate to strike and punish them, but rarely sought to overthrow the rulers.

In other words, this way of thinking believes that the changes of a country are gradual evolution. Each country has its own life and path. The stability and evolution of its political power structure are limited by its specific domestic situation and political mobilization pattern. We should adopt a Darwinian wait-and-see attitude towards this pattern, waiting for the power of evolution and time to gradually improve it and maintain peace and stability. In this process, if a country's regime can learn to get along with the outside world, it will inevitably promote the modernization and liberalization of its internal governance structure.

Such a gradual progressive agenda is far better than the social engineering stance of liberalism. Of course, Trump's new order is not a simple imitation and return to the British Empire's global order, but has the characteristics of a new era. With such a national security order as an assumption, the policy shift in three hot spots around the world becomes understandable. In this regard, I made a brief analysis in the article "Like or hate, Trumpism is there" three months ago, and now I can expand it a little.

First, the Middle East. Most Middle Eastern countries have established a stable political order and have made great progress on the road of economic modernization. If the United States abandons its interventionist stance of state constructionism and seeks peaceful coexistence among countries, the conflicts between the Middle Eastern countries and the United States will be significantly reduced. After years of war, Arab countries and Israel have reached a de facto consensus on coexistence, and the national strength and regional role of Russia, Iran and Syria have also been reduced, which provides favorable conditions for the implementation of the United States' new Middle East policy. If the Gaza issue can be properly resolved in the future, the decades of war in the Middle East is expected to be substantially improved.

The second is Europe. The test faced in Europe is that the new policy pursued by Trump is in considerable contradiction and distance with the liberal governments of European countries. It is extremely difficult to persuade countries or reform the European Union. In this case, Trump did not spend more time and effort to seek to make up for the differences, but tended to be more cold to multilateral security agreements, winning space for the United States to do its own thing.

On the one hand, the United States hopes that European countries will take on the responsibility of self-defense and reduce the burden on the United States; on the other hand, they treat the mediation of the Russian-Ukrainian war with a different mindset from that of European countries.

Regarding the Russian-Ukrainian war, Mearsheimer condemned the West's policy of NATO's eastward expansion. In short, NATO should not expand eastward, and Russia should notstart a war. Russia "should not"start a war is discussed from a moral perspective, while NATO "should not" expand eastward is discussed from the perspective of instrumental rationality. Trump does not agree with NATO's eastward expansion, believing that this move will force Russia into an enemy position, is unnecessary, and needs to be corrected. Previous liberals believed that eastward expansion was not hostile to Russia, but Russia's specific political and historical conditions led Russia to disagree with this. From the perspective of instrumental rationality, how Russia thinks has a greater impact on the actual effect of policy than how liberals think.

For Trump, properly mediating the Russian-Ukrainian war and transforming Russia from an enemy to a role that is not necessarily friendly but at least not an enemy country is of great significance to the global security order.

The opposite idea is favored by Western liberals, that is, to go all out to help Ukraine and force Russia to accept peace conditions that are beneficial to Ukraine and Europe. However, the strategic and tactical costs of this path are huge.

From a tactical perspective, if NATO is unwilling to personally face Russia, a nuclear power, then it will be very difficult to rely solely on military aid to Ukraine to force Russia to accept the conditions. This will not only lead to hundreds of thousands of casualties among soldiers and civilians, but will also cause the United States and Europe to invest too much limited resources in this area, and logically implies a "grand design" to reshape Russian politics. From a strategic perspective, pushing Russia to an irreconcilable enemy is not conducive to the global security order, nor is it conducive to the strategic need of the United States to confront the only challenger.

If this option is abandoned, then the options for achieving peace between Russia and Ukraine are limited. Ukraine may face the loss of national interests in exchange for precious peace to build its broken country and let time stand on its side. The pursuit of Russia is not to completely defeat it, but to create conditions for it to transform from an enemy to a non-enemy country, while allowing it to re-enter the international order. Under this roadmap, to mediate the war, words (such as publicly making tough remarks that the media will applaud) are not important, but it is important to put pressure on both the left and the right to create a situation for peace talks. The Trump administration's insistence on not publicly condemning President Putin should be seen as a coordinated measure to implement this plan.

At present, peace between Russia and Ukraine has not been achieved, but after a lapse of three years, the two sides sat down at the negotiation table for the first time, and the Ukrainian-American mining agreement has been reached. On May 19, Trump had a telephone call with the presidents of Russia and Ukraine to persuade them to make peace. It should be said that the current situation is closer to peace rather than farther away, which is completely different from the situation three months ago.

Third, it is the most important Pacific region. Here, the United States must concentrate almost all its resources to meet the real challenge, that is, to face the only major power in the world that has the strength to challenge the status of the United States. In this case, it has become inevitable to increase the defense budget, strengthen military construction, pursue a cliff-like lead in military technology, and reshape the global economic and trade order (see the article in this column in early April "Free trade is dead, and reciprocal trade will rise").

The good news is that, in accordance with the spirit of Trump's Middle East speech, there is ample room for peaceful coexistence between the United States and the Eastern powers, that is, following the commitments of successive US governments, respecting China's sovereignty, respecting the path chosen by the Chinese people, and opposing war. This is closer to China's position rather than pushing it away.

Question

The return to realist international politics is not new in American history. However, with the changing times, Trump's turn is bound to face huge challenges. From theory to reality, the risks of this turn are huge.

Traditional American diplomatic thought and practice are greatly influenced by the concept of "city on the hill". The pious pursuit of the "city on the hill" leads to isolationism, ignoring the bad things of old Europe and just doing a good job in the United States; it leads to the Bush-style "evil empire" theory, vowing to bring the gospel of freedom to this chaotic world. Whether it succeeds or fails, the belief of the city on the hill is an important part of the United States's majestic national strength.

The neoconservatives 20 years ago inherited the conservative tradition in domestic policies, but took over the mantle of liberalism in international affairs. This is no wonder. Many neoconservatives are just liberals who have been beaten by social reality, and Fukuyama was once a neoconservative. As a faction with a strong intellectual flavor, they smoothly connected to the liberal way of thinking in foreign relations. The Iraq War and the Afghanistan War launched by the Bush administration are in line with the taste of liberalism.

And Trump's new international order is a direct negation of neoconservatism and liberalism. This new policy is no longer enthusiastic about transforming other countries, echoing the demands of isolationism, but it is not retreating to the country and living behind closed doors. It still has the demand to manage the global security order, but it is based on a realistic attitude. Such a change has no precedent and will naturally face many challenges.

Specifically, in addition to how to deal with realistic challenges such as the Middle East, Russia and Ukraine, and the Pacific, there are two major problems in terms of concept.

First, the Trump administration's bilateralism has suspended the multilateral international security mechanism of the past 70 years, which has dissatisfied traditional allies such as Europe and has been criticized for undermining the trust of allies in the United States. The loss of this soft power may fundamentally undermine the United States' ability to manage the global security order. The Trump administration is somewhat unconvinced by this. The so-called soft power should not be measured by the voice of the media. Vice President Vance's speech in Munich disregarded diplomatic etiquette and bluntly criticized European governments for going astray on the cultural path. This shows that the Trump administration has neither hope nor importance in winning the trust and support of traditional European allies. In fact, in the past 20 years, with the decline of Europe's industrial and military capabilities, European countries have not contributed much to US-led global actions.

On the other hand, after years of futile efforts, Europe did ask the United States to compromise in two important aspects under pressure from the Trump administration: reducing dependence on Russian energy and promising to increase defense spending to 5% of GDP. In the future, whether the United States can implement its predetermined agenda on its own without the trust of some of its allies will be a major test. In other words, is it feasible to abandon the multilateral security order and embrace the differential security order?

Secondly, when the United States no longer views the issue of global security order based on liberal ideas, has the rules-based security order that so many people have fought for over the past century been betrayed? Trump's refusal to condemn the blatant invaders, his handshakes with rulers of countries that are obviously not democratically elected, and his claims to Panama, Greenland and other places have all increased people's suspicion. The problem is that the moral denial of the nature of the international jungle by liberals does not help to correct this situation. In the past few decades, the preference for gestures rather than actual actions has happened to be the subjective reason for many tragedies, or tragedies caused by well-intentioned fools. Trump's new order abandons interference in the internal affairs of various countries, but will make demands on the external behavior of various countries, such as mediating the Congo War, mediating the Russia-Ukraine War, and forcing the Houthi armed forces to stop attacking merchant ships. It is not a completely isolationist orientation.

In the final analysis, for conservatives of the Trumpist faction, history has not ended, and liberals cannot perform "surgery" and transformation on countries around the world according to their own values, but need to respect the reality that countries are ecosystems of natural deduction and continuous game. Such a world is of course immoral. The fundamental reason is that the politics of various countries have not yet been established on a moral basis, not how politicians speak on the podium. The world under the new order will still be full of injustice, violence and war, but considering the tragic failure of liberal interventionism in the past few decades, it is difficult for us to say that such a policy framework will lead to more injustice, violence and war.