RIP US-led international order, 1945-2025

It was fun while it lasted

Tomorrow will mark three years since Russia illegally and unjustly invaded Ukraine. Unfortunately, things are very bleak. Trump is doing exactly what he said he would do, throwing Ukraine under the bus. But it gets worse. He’s all but killing the international order that has prevailed since 1945. Whatever comes in its place, nobody knows now, but it won’t be good.

Just to remind readers before we proceed, I know very little about foreign policy. My area of expertise is US electoral politics and political parties. I still have opinions about other things, which I will share plenty of here, but I’m no authority. I think all writers owe their readers humility and should acknowledge when they’re way out of their league. This is one of those cases for me. With that out of the way, here we go.

Of all the reasons I didn’t want Trump back in office again, the events of the last two weeks are number one. In a span of just a few days, he has given Putin everything he could have asked for before any negotiations even begin. Comments from Trump, Vance and Pete Hegseth have made it clear that Russia will be allowed to keep every bit of Ukrainian territory it has taken, will be allowed back into the G7, will have sanctions on it lifted and Ukraine will not be allowed to join NATO. In return, Russia has been asked to give up nothing. I would say Trump is The Manchurian Candidate, but in that work of fiction the evil plot was a secret. In real life, it’s out in the open.

Trump is not just screwing over Ukraine. He is aligning the US with Russia against Ukraine and Europe. He has called Zelensky a dictator¹ and falsely blamed him for starting the war and is demanding Ukraine hand over up to half of its mineral resources as payment for the aid it has received. He also opposed labeling Russia as the aggressor in the war in a joint letter by members of the G7.

It’s tempting to call Trump an isolationist, but that’s not what he is. He’s worse. An isolationist wouldn’t support aiding Ukraine, but they wouldn’t be aligning the US with a murderous dictator. The better description of Trump’s foreign policy is gangsterism. He sees support for other countries as nothing more than a protection racket. Never mind that Ukraine has spent the last three years fighting a war for us and depleting an enemy of ours’ military. In Trump’s eyes, we provided protection so Ukraine better pay up or else.

Trump is weak, but that’s not why he’s giving away the store to Putin. Plenty have compared what he’s doing to Neville Chamberlain, but that’s unfair to Chamberlain. He didn’t think Hitler was good. Trump likes Putin and thinks he’s the good guy. A weak leader would mess things up, but wouldn’t be doing it because of admiration for dictators.

Some claim there is a strategy behind what he’s doing, even likening it to a reverse “Nixon goes to China.” Leaving aside whether that would work, that’s not what is going on. This is Trump we’re talking about. He has no plan for anything, doesn’t think more than five seconds ahead of time and has no grand vision of any sort.

What is going on is he likes dictators and wants to be one. He sees Putin and Xi doing whatever they want and wants to be like them. He sees bullying acts like Russia invading a weaker country as a positive. His affinity for authoritarian regimes goes back decades, including his praising China’s government for the massacring of protesters at Tiananmen Square. He doesn’t care about the US and never has. He wants what’s good for him and that’s it.

With Trump, Occam’s Razor works every time. He likes to be flattered and praised. He admires strongmen and believes cruelty is a virtue. He’s not playing three dimensional chess. He’s not even playing checkers. Let’s not make things complicated.

One of the worst events of the last two weeks was a speech given by Vance in Munich. He might as well have cursed out everyone there. In his speech, he took swipes at Europe, especially Germany, and said the biggest concern he had when looking at the continent was not China or Russia, but from within. He criticized agreements by mainstream parties there to not coalition with the far-right as being undemocratic.

This is the same Vance who denies Trump lost the 2020 election. Him lecturing anyone on the need to respect democracy is beyond laughable. If chutzpah was a food, he would be a blue whale.

The worst part of his trip to Munich, though, was not the speech, but who he met and didn’t meet with. He refused to meet with Germany’s leader, Olaf Scholtz, but he did meet with the leader of AfD. For those not familiar, AfD is the far-right party in Germany. By meeting with its leader, Vance all but endorsed it in the election that will be held today. It has also been endorsed by Elon Musk.

How far out there is AfD? For a look at its greatest hits, see this piece here. Its leaders have minimized the Holocaust, favor leaving the EU, oppose NATO, support Putin against Ukraine, favor closer economic ties to Russia and are rabidly anti-US. In the European Parliament, far-right parties have formed their own coalition but kicked out AfD because it was too extreme. That is who the VP and the richest man in the world think should be running Germany.

Don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone

I mentioned in my post last week that people who have never lived in a world without vaccines have no idea what it’s like to suffer from all kinds of diseases and are going to have to learn the hard way. The same is true for the international order that has been dominant since 1945. Very few people today were alive before then and even fewer have any memory of it. For almost all of us, that is the only world we have known. It’s easy to think it’s terrible and should be burned down when you don’t know how dire things were before and how much worse the alternative can be.

It's not perfect, but the international order since 1945 has done way more good than bad. Democratic capitalism has proven to be a much better model for achieving peace and prosperity than fascism, communism and all other alternatives. Like vaccines, the international order is a victim of its own success. It has no political or economic equals because it has beaten all of them. But it doesn’t mean everything is perfect and that’s the problem.

The international order has seen living standards rise across the world, but sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. Expectations are much higher the more prosperous a place gets and when things are only decent, but not great, it can seem bad. I think that belief is a big part of what’s behind the retrenchment in globalization in the US and Europe and probably elsewhere, too.

The world has undoubtedly changed a lot over the decades. The Cold War ended long ago and the world that came after it is very different. The period from the 1990s until the late 2000s was unusual in that Russia was down and China had not yet risen. It was never going to last. China was always going to rise and be a big challenge to any US-led international order. Russia was always going to try to reassert itself, especially once Putin took over.

In the case of Ukraine, there would need to be some kind of resolution regardless of who got elected president in the US. It’s not unreasonable to believe ideas like Russia keeping some Ukrainian territory and Ukraine not joining NATO would have been part of the give and take. But you don’t come out in advance and say what you’re going to give up before you start talking to the other side.

Another thing you don’t do is only negotiate with Russia. Over the week, Marco Rubio met with his Russian counterpart face-to-face, the first such meeting between the US and Russia since it invaded Ukraine. Europe was excluded and so was Ukraine. Trump has said he wants to only talk with Russia going forward. In other words, he’s giving Europe and Ukraine the finger while embracing Russia with open arms.

It’s fair to argue that European countries need to step up and spend more on their militaries. They’re going to start doing that now because they don’t have a choice. For the US, China is the biggest challenge by far. Russia is a distant second and is ultimately more of Europe’s responsibility than the US’. But that doesn’t require the US to abandon Europe and certainly not to align with Russia. The status quo had problems, but what Trump is doing is galaxies worse.

Europe, if you’re listening, I’m sorry, but you’re on your own and you really need to get your shit together on the economic front. Just about every country there has seen sluggish growth for years, including Germany, which had been doing well for a long time. Which steps should be taken to boost growth is way beyond my expertise, but anyone in a position of authority there would probably be wise to listen to what Mario Draghi has to say.

A world where the US acts like a gangster is not a good place. Nuclear proliferation, which has long been something the US has rightfully tried to prevent, is going to increase. Since countries like Poland, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan can’t rely on the US to push back against China and Russia, they’re going to have to figure out how best to defend themselves. Acquiring nuclear weapons is the ultimate deterrent.

Trump isn’t just any gangster. He’s thoroughly corrupt and a nihilist. His worldview, to the extent you can call it that, is entirely transactional and zero sum. Combine corruption with a transactional worldview and it’s easy to see how China, Russia and other dictatorships will deal with him. Simply put, they can offer him bribes to get whatever it is they want. No country can outbid China so Taiwan is likely as screwed as Ukraine.

Taiwan, if you’re listening, you should consider giving him 100% ownership of TSMC. Maybe open a bunch of Trump hotels in Taipei. It won’t match China giving him 100% ownership of Alibaba and opening Trump hotels in every city there, but it’s the only chance you have. Otherwise, you better figure out how to acquire some nukes.

The F Team

You might think Trump won’t roll over for China because he has some China hawks working for him. Don’t get your hopes up. It doesn’t matter what some people working for him think.² It matters who has his attention and who is actually calling the shots. Trump matters the most, but, after him it’s Musk, at least until they have their breakup.

Of all the problems I have with Musk, my biggest one has always been his deep connections to China. That’s where he makes and sells a ton of his cars. It’s telling that he rails against governments in the US, Europe and elsewhere, but never says anything critical about China. Like anyone who does business there, they have him and he’s compromised.

It’s worth noting that not only does Musk do tons of business in China, but the treatment Tesla received from the government there was highly unusual and should raise some eyebrows. Normally, when a foreign company begins to operate in China, it’s required to form a partnership with a Chinese company, ostensibly so the latter can learn from it. Tesla was exempt from having to do that and I don’t think it was just a clerical error. As long as Musk has Trump’s ear, there is no chance in hell of any tough on China actions being taken.

Long before Musk became his BFF, Trump has had an affinity for Xi. He’s currently discussing pushing for a new trade deal that entails selling China more soybeans in return for the US basically abandoning any effort to counter China’s industrial policy. Domestically, Trump has been undermining the implementation of the CHIPS Act, which is key to boosting the domestic semiconductor industry. If he was trying to give China an advantage on the technology front I don’t know what else he would do.

China hawks may exist in the Trump administration and in Congress, but they’re not going to matter much. Russia hawks still technically exist, but they’re on the endangered species list. The pro-Russia side of the Republican Party has definitively won and there’s no reason to think the pro-China side won’t win. Trump rules the national party from top to bottom and almost everyone goes where he goes. If he sells out to China like he has to Russia, don’t expect much pushback from congressional Republicans.³

There is a concerted effort by MAGA-aligned people in the White House to marginalize those they think are close to the old Republican foreign policy guard. The latter includes people like Rubio, who traditionally was hawkish on China and Russia. Of all the cabinet officials most likely to exit first, he’s high on my list. It’s too early for him to start going through the five stages of grief, but eventually he’s going to realize the joke is on him. He has no authority and nobody thinks his words carry any weight.

When looking at the foreign policy part of Trump’s cabinet, it’s hard to conclude anything other than we’re in deep shit. Rubio is the most reasonable of them and the most impotent. Hegseth is an entertainer who cares only about fighting culture war battles. His comments about Ukraine not joining NATO or getting back any territory it’s lost were, in the words of the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, a rookie mistake. That’s right and it’s a big problem. A Secretary of Defense shouldn’t be making rookie mistakes! It’s almost as if putting Biff Tannen in charge of the Pentagon was a bad idea.

The week before last, the Senate did what may be the most reckless thing it has ever done. By a vote of 52-48, Tulsi Gabbard was confirmed to oversee all of our intelligence agencies. We literally have a Putin propagandist and conspiracy theorist in charge of our secrets. I have to say I really don’t like this reboot of The Americans.

Allied countries are either not going to share intelligence with us or will cut back on it. Of all the nominees Trump put forth, if I could only have chosen one to not be confirmed it would have been her. The only possible saving grace we have is she has so little intelligence experience and is insane so maybe, just maybe the people working there can somehow get around or distract her and keep working with allied countries. Wishful thinking, I’m sure, but that’s all we’ve got.

On Thursday, the Senate did what may be the second most reckless thing it has ever done. By a 51-49 vote, Kash Patel was confirmed to be the FBI Director. His sole credential is being a MAGA true believer. To get an idea of how bad having him in that role is, see here and here. No joke, he’s quite possibly the worst person on earth for that job. Naturally, he’s a perfect fit for Trump.

The FBI doesn’t do a lot of foreign policy work, but it does some. Mostly, it involves working with its foreign counterparts in investigations of crimes overseas. It also gathers and shares intelligence. As with having a Putin apologist as the DNI, allied countries are going to be much more hesitant to share intelligence with the FBI going forward if they share it at all.

This was entirely predictable

As unhappy as I am about the events of the last two weeks, I’m not surprised by any of it and nobody should be. Trump is who he is and no one can claim to have been misled. It’s as clear as can be that he hates Ukraine and has for a long time. His love for dictators is no secret and neither is his corruption. Did I mention he tried to overturn an election? All that information was available for those who chose to open their eyes, but not enough people did and so here we are.

There were people, namely Trump’s more sophisticated supporters, who insisted he wasn’t going to abandon Ukraine. Trump, they said, cares about the West and won’t kowtow to dictators. Trump is a defender of free speech and believes in democracy, they said. He’s strong and smart and will deter Putin and Xi from acting on their military ambitions.

In light of Trump’s giving Putin everything he wants before any negotiations even begin, at least one of his more sophisticated supporters is reconsidering his support for him. Here is some of what he wrote on X, “I had underestimated the speed with which the United States under @realDonaldTrump would embark on a policy of unalloyed appeasement of both Russia and China. The events of the past week have bitterly disappointed those who thought they had conveyed to the new administration the seriousness of the threat posed to the West by the Axis of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.” The reaction from some has been to praise him for acknowledging he was wrong, but I’m not going to do that. Maybe I’ll feel differently at some point, but I think all of his more sophisticated supporters with buyer’s remorse deserve nothing but scorn.

All the evidence in the world pointed to the opposite of him being a defender of the West and an opponent of Putin and Xi. Anyone with functioning eyes could have seen how obvious that was. That was especially the case with Ukraine.

In the case of the person I linked to, he’s no idiot. His name is Niall Ferguson. He’s a well-regarded historian and is as intellectually capable as anyone. He’s not a crank or a MAGA true believer. He knew how bad Trump was. Here is what he wrote on January 6, 2021.

By the second half of last year, he was singing a very different tune. Trump was a good guy after all. He wasn’t a threat to democracy, it was the left, the left, the left. January 6 was no big deal, everyone does it. What explains the shift? I don’t know him and can’t read anyone’s mind so I can’t say for sure, but, as someone who has read plenty of things by him, I have a strong hunch.

As much as I have always disliked wokeness, I have never considered it to be the biggest problem there is, not by a long shot. More importantly, I have never allowed it to eat my brain and make me into a fanatic. The Fergusons of the world did just that. Long story short, he became so consumed by his hatred of the left in general and wokeness in particular that it melted his brain and he threw his lot in with Trump.

Because he’s not a MAGA true believer, he knew what he was doing was wrong. How did he support Trump and still live with himself? He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t see what was right in front of him and lied to himself over and over again.

Now he’s shocked, just shocked that Trump is doing exactly what he said he would do. That’s what happens when you let people you dislike eat your brain. You let that hatred drive everything you do and wind up throwing your lot in with bad people. Predictably, in Ferguson’s case, it has ended very poorly. Let that be a cautionary tale.

He doesn’t deserve any credit for acknowledging he was wrong. He wasn’t wrong about something reasonable people could disagree on. He was wrong about something anyone with eyes could see. That he’s beginning to open his eyes after it’s too late is nothing to applaud him for. That goes for all of Trump’s more sophisticated supporters. Most of them will wind up becoming MAGA true believers if they aren’t already, but those who recant should not be forgiven for a long time and maybe not ever.

1. Trump doesn’t actually believe he’s a dictator. If he did he would be praising him.

2. Many were hopeful when he picked Mike Waltz to be his national security adviser. He was known for being hawkish on Russia. Here he is claiming both sides are the aggressors in the war. Whatever his own views are, he works for Trump and is going to parrot his lines. The same will happen with the China hawks.

3. For someone who hates dogs, Trump sure has a lot of them.