JANIS VAN DER WESTHUIZEN: What is Donald Trump’s grand strategy?

Given the seismic shift in world affairs in the past month since Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president, many would not believe that between the end of World War 2 and the late 1960s the US had been instrumental in promoting substantial economic growth in the developing world by allowing the Global South to leverage its own knowledge, skills and strategies to industrialise.

In fact, between 1945 and 1980 annual average GDP growth across the developing world was 5%-6%. Besides underwriting the Marshall Plan in Europe, the US realised that a flourishing global economy reinforced its own hegemony. Tying it all together were the institutions, rules and global reach of a liberal international order, through which the US enjoyed “extraordinary privilege”, as French finance minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing called it, in reference to the dollar being the international reserve currency.

By 1990, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, we had entered the “unipolar moment”, with the US enjoying unprecedented and unparalleled power to shape and reshape the world, both economically and politically. However, with hindsight that unipolarity probably came to an end with the global financial crisis in 2007-08.

While still clearly hegemonic, the “rise of the rest” — as Alice Amsden described the emergence of non-Western industrialised powers — meant it became far more complicated for the US to shape the orbiting trajectory of the Group of 20 (G20), rather than only the Group of Seven (G7). With globalisation seen by some to be the cause of growing inequality within the US, it is not surprising that Trumpists saw the US as imprisoned by the very international order it crafted after 1945.

Besides the obvious nationalist imperatives driving Agenda 2025 and the transnational activist networks connecting Trumpism to Bolsonaristas in Brazil, the AfD in Germany and AfriForum and Solidarity in SA, is there a grand strategy behind it all? Trump’s surprise 90-minute phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin without prior consultation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky or the EU might suggest that from the point of view of the Oval Office, small and medium-sized powers don’t really matter in international relations.

If anything, these powers’ interest in multilateralism, international law and consensus seeking simply obstruct what the great powers need to do to maintain order in the international system, which is best left to the great powers, and with it their associated spheres of influence. If sacrificing a small or medium-sized power is required to do a deal for peace, it is a price worth paying.

If the Europeans can look after themselves militarily and a deal has been done on Ukraine, the US can prioritise its own wealth and security in a kind of “fortress” mode (possibly with Canada and Greenland serving as a kind of “near abroad” or security buffer).

Expending as little US economic and political capital as possible to support global public goods (such as mitigating climate change), the fortress strategy sees the US also withdrawing from its security commitments in Asia, leaving Taiwan to a similar fate as Ukraine, consistent with the sphere of influence logic. Like the Europeans, the Japanese, South Koreans and Australians need to look after themselves.

Two other factors may make the idea of spheres of influence appealing to Putin, Trump and China’s Xi Jinping: it would be seen as a kind of diplomatic “concert between strongmen”, with obvious domestic political payoffs. Paradoxically, a narrative of humiliation — captured by the slogan Make American Great Again — is also espoused by both Putin (the restoration of the Russian Empire) and Xi (undoing the humiliation of the Opium Wars).

A second and less extreme isolationist approach may also transpire. In this scenario, the US’s withdrawal from Europe simply reflects the changing prioritisation of the US’s strategic interests towards the Pacific Rim. By consolidating Washington’s energies towards its Asian allies, the US is readying for the Great Standoff with China. That SA has so dramatically come to bear the brunt of Washington’s opprobrium most likely also speaks to the Trump administration’s analysis that Pretoria has irredeemably crossed over to “the dark side” (read: China).

The ANC’s dogged insistence that Taiwan move its liaison office from Pretoria, a rather spurious matter considering the many more pressing geopolitical and domestic imperatives, must have played perfectly into the hands of diehard Trumpists to convince those on Capitol Hill who still wanted to give SA the benefit of the doubt not to do so. 

Another grand strategy may be that the US remains dedicated to its security commitments, but at a price. Like the proposed minerals deal for Ukraine, the US may demand lowered or even tariff-free access for its goods and services to the EU in exchange for Washington remaining within Nato or for Taiwan to do a similar deal to make the US the pre-eminent chipmaker. Yet all these deals require that others trust the US, which implies a considerable degree of predictability, a policy-making virtue that seems to be in short supply.

In addition, making “deal making” an organising principle of international relations is — as The Economist noted last week — overwhelmingly complex: “Saudi Arabia wants a defence deal to deter Iran, which America may grant if it recognises Israel. But that requires Israel and the Palestinians to endorse a two-state future, which Mr Trump rejected … Russia wants oil sanctions lifted, but that could cut Saudi Arabia’s income and increase India’s bills.”

Moreover, as Washington turns against established rules and practices in international relations in favour of “deals”, other countries are most likely to follow suit, creating more uncertainty in the international system, which would also cause more uncertainty for the US.

• Van der Westhuizen teaches in the department of political science at Stellenbosch University. He writes in his personal capacity.