Pax Americana Is Over!

"The release of Trump's new U.S. national security strategy trashes long-standing policies, leaving nations scrambling to grasp the implications."

In case you didn’t notice, President Trump has fundamentally disrupted the global geopolitical order. Globalisation, traditional alliances, and polite diplomacy have been swept aside. 

Since WWII, there has been a steady overlap in U.S. foreign policy from President Truman to President Biden, regardless of which party was in power. The common thread has been a rules-based world order, with the U.S. and its allies, to a lesser extent, acting as enforcers.

In his first term, President Trump supported this approach, although signs indicated that the thread was beginning to unravel. Now, it is broken. 

The release of his new national security strategy (NSS) trashes long-standing policies, causing nations to scramble to understand the implications. These changes are neither small nor incremental; they are seismic.

By law, each president must produce an NSS, although most resemble wish lists. Usually, such strategies are based on assessments that identify risks, threats, and opportunities. However, this NSS is full of aspirational statements, often lacking clear methods for achieving them or a comprehensive analysis of the current environment.

In this new NSS, Trump asserts that only the nation-state matters and that genuine power derives from economic and military strength—with the United States in the lead. It’s a blunt statement that the U.S. doesn’t have friends; it only has interests. 

While the NSS aligns with Trump’s public statements in recent years, this formalisation lends new momentum to his worldview—an approach that has surprised many countries, especially in Europe.

European nations are now singled out in the NSS, while traditional adversaries such as Russia receive only a brief mention.

Significantly, the so-called ‘special relationship’ between the UK and the US is absent from the NSS, confirming a long-held suspicion that it is more important for Britain than for Trump’s America. All Sir Kier’s grovelling to Trump has come to nothing.

European commentators and politicians have reacted with alarm, describing the strategy as ‘astonishing,’ ‘deeply disturbing,’ ‘alarming,’ and ‘staggering.’ Yet Trump has signalled his intentions for years. So why the surprise? Conversely, Russian officials welcomed the new strategy, claiming it aligns with their understanding of global affairs.

Essentially, Trump claims that the United States must remain the world’s strongest economy and most powerful military. The US will work with other nations only when it serves its core interests, and will take all necessary measures to defend them.

This is not a quid pro quo arrangement. However, implicit within the NSS is that the U.S. will act solely in its own interests, primarily limiting its direct influence to its immediate neighbours and leaving China and Russia to manage their respective spheres.

In many respects, this signifies a return to the realpolitik that once governed Europe before the Treaty of Westphalia. This pivotal moment introduced diplomacy and laid the groundwork for the modern international system.

For example, the very existence of NATO may now be in doubt. Similarly, intelligence sharing among Western allied nations is becoming increasingly uncertain. In fact, the UK and Dutch governments are already restricting their intelligence cooperation with the U.S. due to concerns over military actions, particularly alleged extrajudicial killings.

Additionally, European-supplied intelligence has appeared on social media chats among U.S. officials. Meanwhile, Denmark has moved to declare the U.S. a security risk, a remarkable stance for a NATO founding member.

Trump has clearly expressed that Latin America is within the US’s sphere of influence, and others should stay clear. This is the Monroe Doctrine on steroids. 

Notably, the NSS mentions events in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East only briefly. It also pays little attention to the perceived threats from Russia and China, a feature of the previous policy stance. Instead, the strategy mainly criticises European nations for failing to defend their borders, culture, and civilisations.

Trump has gone as far as to support political parties in Europe that share his worldview. He’s warned against ‘civilisational erasure’ in Europe and aims to ‘cultivate resistance’ to governments he believes are out of line with his ideals. We are familiar with that approach in Hong Kong. Throughout 2019 and much of 2020, Hong Kong saw the US funding ‘resistance’ that led to months of firebombs and rioting. 

In an interview with Politico that accompanies the release of the NSS, Trump is uncompromising in his attacks on European nations. "Europe’s leaders are not doing a good job … some are stupid," and "Many European countries will not be viable soon." "Most European nations are decaying, they are weak, they don’t know what to do." He asserts, "Europe is getting destroyed." And on it goes.

But what did the Europeans expect? They have remained silent while the US has interfered with governments across the globe for decades. The US has a history of toppling unwelcome leaders, installing puppet regimes, and funding revolutions. Now those tactics are reaching Europe, with Trump eager to install favourable leaders.

Will US cavalry charge across the Atlantic if Putin kicks off against NATO? That’s the question Europeans are asking. German Chancellor Frindrich Mertz has already answered it. “Pax Americana is over.”

Meanwhile, they’ll scramble to invest huge sums in upgrading their military forces, including recruiting personnel. In the UK, that might prove tricky because most frontline fighters come from white working-class communities who have been vilified and ignored for decades. Why should they step up and fight for a country that scorned them?

In all of this, the primary beneficiaries are Russia and China. Trump’s vision of the new world order essentially regards China as the dominant power in Asia, while maintaining the status quo on Taiwan and freedom of passage. Similarly, his approach to the war in Ukraine has consistently shown he tends to support Putin's position.

However, there are contradictions in the NSS. Trump asserts he will utilise the U.S.’s unmatched ‘soft power’ to influence events. Nonetheless, it is already evident that other nations no longer trust the U.S. because of Trump’s uncompromising stance. This attitude will undermine any ‘soft power’.

Furthermore, the policy assumes that other countries have no choice but to comply with U.S. demands. This is mistaken. Nations are already looking for new alliances.

Trump claims to be the ‘President of Peace’, which is an assertion we should commend. Although his statements should be taken with a pinch of salt. Has he truly brought long-term resolution to eight wars? For starters, the conflict on the Thai-Cambodian border has reignited. Additionally, he has failed to make progress on the Ukraine conflict.

With a touch of schadenfreude, Hong Kongers are watching these events. Europe is now on the receiving end of American hubris that has caused so much damage elsewhere. 

Henry Kissinger’s statement, “It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal," has never been truer. Of course, in context, Kissinger was asserting that the U.S. needed to support its allies to maintain international credibility, particularly to prevent the perception that aligning with the U.S. carried ‘fatal’ consequences.

Critics frequently use this shortened, popular version of the quote to suggest that the U.S. exploits, abuses, and then discards its allies for its own gain. 

That iteration of the Kissinger quote is now coming to pass.