 "End of ‘liberal consensus’: How Donald Trump is a global disruptor")
President Donald Trump’s swearing-in speech caused ripples in America and around the world alike. The speech was an opening salvo against illegal immigrants, the presumed radical and corrupt establishment, and the long-cherished, though socially corrosive in his eyes, left-liberal values of the US.
The speech was a kind of declaration of a coup against the liberal values of the country when he said that he was going to stop what has become to be known as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts and further said, “This week, I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private light. We will forge a society that is colour-blind and merit-based”. In a way, a stage is set for a ‘tranny of merit’.
A country plagued with grotesque income inequality and rampant social discrimination in the face of an upsurge of white supremacy attacks on the policy of positive discrimination, a fruit of a decades-long social struggle on the part of marginalised groups, is a recipe for impending societal unrest.
Invoking God time and again in his speech, he appeared to decode the inscrutable Wisdom of Providence, assuming for himself the role of a new messiah to restore the lost glory of the US with the Make America Great Again (MAGA) slogan. By striking the emotional chord of long-held American belief of an exceptional nation, he claimed the start of the ‘American golden age’ under his leadership and charted out a list of elusive promises. He said, “From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. We will be the envy of every nation, and we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer.”
In a nutshell, Trump’s second term heralds a new era in American politics that is full of hubris, populist sloganeering, and devoid of trappings of liberal democratic values.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsUsually, leaders who are filtered through the political process are relatively more predictable and non-disruptive. Leaders like Trump, who entered from a non-political background, bring with them uncertainties and a proclivity to defy established notions of the country’s political culture. Such leadership defies conventional wisdom and is prone to disruptive innovation. Such an approach is a two-edged sword, either producing surprising results or unleashing disastrous consequences. Being the President of the most powerful country, this approach has a bearing on the function of global politics and established global order.
A Blow to the Liberal World Order
Trump’s foreign policy approach and priorities enunciated during his campaign and in the inaugural speech of his second term threw challenges for the liberal international order. The so-called liberal came into being in the aftermath of World War II. The United States and its European partner came up with a new international order, based upon open trade, cooperative security, multilateralism, and democratic values. Global multilateral institutions were established to facilitate cooperation and promote shared norms to bind Western societies together. US primacy in NATO helped it rise as a global hegemon, and US-led globalisation ushered in a truly global economic system based on free and rule-based trade. This economic system created a network of supply chains and made countries interdependent on each other for production.
NATO has been a strong pillar of US global hegemony since 1991. Trump’s exhortation to his allies’ partners to raise contributions to the security alliance up to 5 per cent of their and calling out them piggybackers caused discomfort in Europe. In the face of rising security apprehension of Russia among European allies owing to the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, European countries are in a fix and struggling to come up with a viable strategy to deal with Trump’s second term.
In his first term, the Trump administration had already weakened American alliances; it has yet to destroy them. But his recent outlandish claim over Greenland and the latest executive order calling for renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America and changing the name of Denali back to Mount McKinley further made a dent in the alliance system nurtured over the decades.
The US leadership position in the liberal international order also comes from the production of global collective goods. That role, however, requires a broad definition of national interest rather than a narrow definition of America first. According to John Ikenberry, “The United States provided global services—such as security protection and support of the open market—which made other states willing to work with rather than resist American preeminence.”.
On the global commons issue, Trump passed executive orders to withdraw US participation in the Paris Climate Accords and World Health Organisation. He is already up for increasing the production of hydrocarbons in his second term to make the US a major exporter of hydrocarbons. All these decisions go against her role as a supplier of global commons.
Elon Musk, a member of Trump’s team, of late emerged as a Disruptor-in-Chief and is in mission mode to dismantle governments that he considers ideological opponents. He has poked his nose in Canada and Britain and has thrown his weight behind AfD, a right-wing party in Germany, and is accused of promoting social conservatism with the help of his powerful ‘X’ social media platform. So far, he has the full backing of Trump. This approach of meddling in allies’ domestic politics to promote reactionary forces doesn’t bode well for the West as a bloc.
In a similar way, Trump’s mercantilist approach to international trade, where any trade deficit, whether with allies or adversaries, is theft of America’s resources and liable to imposition of tariffs, goes against the liberal idea of international trade. Trade in his worldview is a zero-sum game, and there is no place for absolute gains. Such a worldview goes against the very tenets of the interdependent global liberal world order. A matrix of a state’s power comprises three aspects: coercion, payment, and attraction. In Trump’s presidency, attraction (soft power), a quintessential component of America’s power, will take a back seat.
How far and to what extent he can convert his slogans into reality only time will tell. The one thing is clear: the world has to be ready to face a mercantilist America. The world is going to be more uncertain, and narrow American national interest will take precedence over broad-based interest. The so-called liberal international order will face its greatest legitimacy crisis, and global commons will be the ultimate tragedy of Trump’s second term. Last but not least, unpredictability and disruption of global norms would be the hallmarks of Trump’s second term.
Amitabh Singh teaches at the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Ankur is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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