The Strategy and Pitfalls of Trump's New World Order

"Beneath President Donald Trump's mendacious contempt for Ukraine and its "dictator" and his cringing admiration for Russia and the "genius" in the Kremlin, there seems to be a kernel of strategic reasoning.

He isn't wrong that America has borne the burdens of global leadership for too long, that the "liberal order" we have led is giving way to a world in which the U.S. must pursue a narrower definition of the national interest, and that the age of spending hundreds of billions to defend parts of the world no longer essential to U.S. security, for nations that have the resources to defend themselves, is over.

All this strengthens the impression that Mr. Trump may be leading the U.S. toward a return of a great-power approach to global strategy. As he upends foreign policy, there has been much talk in diplomatic circles of a new "Yalta," the 1945 conference on the Black Sea where the leaders of the U.S., the U.K. and the Soviet Union struck a deal to carve up the planet.

Mr. Trump's apparent hunger for U.S. territorial expansion -- in Greenland, Panama, Gaza and maybe even Canada -- his ambitions to tie foreign policy to the exploitation of economic resources, his seeming acquiescence to Vladimir Putin's European ambitions and similar expressions of respect for China's Xi Jinping, suggest a hard-edged foreign-policy realism revolving around a new Big Three powers.

So set aside moral indignation about the president's tilt to Moscow and take at face value this potentially profound shift in foreign policy. Here are three potential implications:

First, territorial insecurity. In the Trumpian vision of a world in which great powers seize what they can, we can expect a much more fluid, muscular approach to international boundaries than the last half century's effort at a "rules-based" system.

Nowhere will that potential be viewed with greater concern than in Taiwan. Unlike Ukraine, the U.S. has already ceded -- by signing up to the one-China policy -- the principle behind Beijing's claim to the island, though we continue to say we will oppose its annexation by force.

There's an argument that Mr. Trump's approach to Russia represents a hardened approach to Taiwan, with influential strategic thinkers like Elbridge Colby, nominated to a senior Pentagon role, arguing that cutting Ukraine loose was necessary to enable Washington to focus on the China struggle.

But is this Mr. Trump's view? How essential does he think a free Taiwan is to American security? How realistic is the idea that Mr. Trump -- who values his record as a peacemaker -- would get us into World War III to defend Taiwan's de facto independence?

Despite tense economic relations, he has repeatedly shown a desire for warm relations with Mr. Xi. He has described the Chinese ruler as "a brilliant guy -- He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist." And Mr. Trump's language on Taiwan is hardly reassuring. He's been critical of the island's economy, semiconductor dominance and trade with the U.S. "Taiwan should pay us for defense," he told Bloomberg last year. "Taiwan doesn't give us anything."

It's possible that Mr. Trump still has a red line that marks his limitations on territorial realism and that it is drawn down the middle of the Taiwan Strait. But if I were President Lai Ching-te, I would be seeking urgent clarification about the local implications of the new world order.

Second, nuclear proliferation. The big difference between the great-power world of the past and that of today is the thermonuclear bomb. If small nations can no longer rely on powerful allies to protect them against predators, they have one last option -- the threat of nuclear annihilation for any country that tries to invade them.

Until recently unthinkable, in the past month nuclear proliferation has become probable in Europe. Friedrich Merz, who is set to become Germany's chancellor after Sunday's elections, last week floated the idea that his country could share British and French nuclear weapons. Debate is under way in Poland about obtaining nukes. The Poles remember well how in 1994 Ukraine gave up its own nuclear weapons, inherited from the Soviet Union, for a security guarantee by the U.S., U.K. and Russia.

In Asia, Japan has long been on the technological threshold of nuclear-weapon capability and will surely soon move over it. South Korea too, menaced as it is by its northern neighbor, would likely follow suit.

Third, geopolitical and economic realignments. If Europeans no longer view America as a dependable ally, they will seek alternatives. In the pre-World War I era of great European powers, countries pursued shifting allegiances; Britain could have signed up with Germany rather than France and Russia. We may now see that kind of hard, self-interested realism among powers replace attachment to sentimental ideals and values.

For all its frailties as a geopolitical force, Europe's economy is many times the size of Russia's and, combined with the U.K.'s, on a par with America's. It is already heavily dependent on China; and Europeans may now seek closer ties, with troubling implications for American interests.

Mr. Trump may well like his new world order. But it will come at a steep price." [1]

1.  Free Expression: The Strategy and Pitfalls of Trump's New World Order. Baker, Gerard.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 25 Feb 2025: A17.