Trump: What Can We Expect?

It is not hard to predict that Trump’s second term in office will not be the same as his first term. He has acquired a lot of experience—not only as President, but also as an underdog opposition politician. Nothing suggests, however, that he will be more moderate, more balanced and more accommodating. In fact, the opposite is likely—he will seek revenge for what he believes to be unfair mainstream media treatment, illegal prosecution and numerous personal betrayals of his former friends and associates. Besides, this is going to be his last term in office. He does not have to think about re-election, rather he should focus on his future legacy. His first nominations to the very top positions in the new Administration are a clear signal that he intends to be more, not less radical in many of his future undertakings.

In any case, the next four years are likely to be a difficult period for the US foreign policy. Among many other things that the President elect does not seem to care about is the deepening political split within the US society. Almost 70 million US voters who supported Kamala Harris on November 5 are not going to join the MAGA coalition tomorrow; they will not forget and they will not forgive Trump’s spectacular comeback.

They will also seek revenge and retribution. And Trump is unlikely to cover an extra mile to engage this unfriendly and skeptical constituency. If the United States stays disunited, it is hard to expect from it a consistent or even a completely rational foreign policy.

We know pretty well that the US foreign policy has always been and will continue to be bipartisan; Republicans and Democrats usually have many more disagreements on domestic than on international matters. It is also evident that a very important role in the US foreign policy making belongs to the so called Deep State—a powerful stratum of senior non-elected bureaucrats occupying the corner-offices in most important federal departments and agencies.

Moreover, the US political system is based on checks and balances; therefore, some decisions taken in the White House or in the Foggy Bottom can be revised, modified or even directly challenged on the Capitol Hill. Finally, nobody can disregard a powerful political, financial and bureaucratic inertia that prevents any abrupt changes in the US foreign policy.

And yet, all this conventional wisdom notwithstanding, millions of people around the world were breathlessly following the dramatic events of the 2024 US Presidential election campaign. Such attention cannot be explained by pure curiosity though, of course, curiosity is embedded in the human nature.

Dmitry Moiseev, Pavel Skakun, Maxim Sigachev, Sergei Arteyev:
The U.S. Election and the Post-Westphalian World

The outcome of the US November election will undoubtedly have a profound impact on how America positions itself in the modern international system for at least the next four years and arguably for much longer.

The US foreign policy shifts will, in their turn, inevitably affect, albeit in uneven and sometimes even not yet predictable ways, all the nations on our planet. Personality differences between still acting President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump could hardly be any sharper. Biden spent most of his adult life as a professional politician who matured during the Cold War and is used to look for diverse foreign challenges and outside threats rising around the United States.

Trump made his professional career in the New York real estate business where they look for development opportunities, contracts and, above all, for profits.

Biden never suffered major political defeats that would put his smooth and exceptionally successful career track under question (except for two failed attempts to get the Democratic party nomination as candidate for Presidential elections in 1988 and in 2008).

Trump went through a couple of bankruptcies, multiple prosecutions, countless media scandals, and in January of 2021 was almost written off as an influential public figure. His latest political comeback was truly spectacular and full of drama; nothing like that ever happened in America since Grover Cleveland back in 1893. During his four years in the Oval office, Biden meticulously pursued the policy of orthodox Neo-liberalism inherited from the glorious days of Barak Obama (2009–2017) and Bill Clinton (1993–2001).

The contemporary focus of the Neo-liberal agenda is a restoration or even a resurrection of the unipolar international order with the unquestionable US leadership in the center, as this order existed in 1990s. This Neo-liberal orthodoxy is based on a solid, but arguably already archaic and not particularly compelling ideological foundation that defines the international system through the lens of a continuous struggle of “liberal democracies” against “illiberal autocracies”.

Donald Trump is definitely not a Neo-liberal. Moreover, he hardly looks like a classical liberal either. The 47th President of the United States does not seem to care about democracies and autocracies or even about stability or instability of the international system at large. Regional or global instability are not his major concern provided the United States is not directly involved in managing this instability.

Trump is in no way a warmonger, but nether he is a committed fighter for universal peace. Furthermore, an abstract US global leadership does not matter that much to him. In his view, foreign policy is an investment, not an inherent responsibility of a great power.

Like any investment, foreign policy should bring fast and lofty returns to the investor, i. e. to the United States of America. Trump stated more than once his clear intention to cut “deals” with American partners and American adversaries alike in order to promote immediate and very specific—mostly economic—US interests in the world. If a “deal” fails, there is always another one looming on the horizon.

Democrats under Biden were desperately trying to slow down unavoidable changes in the international system and, under favorable circumstances, even to reverse them. Trump appears to be ready to embrace changes, if he succeeds in channeling them in the direction advantageous to the United States. He will start no wars, but he will raise trade tariffs. He is ready to reach out to US competitors and even to US foes, but he is reluctant to support most of international organizations, including those founded and nourished for many decades by the United States. He does not want to see Americans dying in distant corners of the world, but he does not value arms control that, in his view, can set unnecessary constraints on the US defense posture.

This critical mindset distinction between the two leaders defines their diverging approaches to many international trends and dimensions of the international system. For instance, if Biden remains a dedicated champion of globalization, Trump has nothing against joining a diverse crowd of anti-globalists and may even try to lead it.

If Biden considers promoting US values and norms abroad to be a top priority of the American foreign policy, Trump does not care that much about values in general and he sees no need to water down the US exceptionalism by trying to Americanize the rest of the globe in particular. In his mindset, the United States has no duty to lead the world on the pro bono basis—there are too many burning problems at home that demand his urgent attention.

If Biden never missed a chance to underscore his commitment to multilateralism (though one could question his definition of the term), Trump, on the contrary, explicitly prefers bilateral international formats and, if needed, will not be shy to go for unilateral actions. If Biden heavily relied on this highly professional foreign policy team delegating a lot of powers and authority to his entrusted associates, Trump is very skeptical of the Deep State and is more likely to rely on highly personal top-level diplomacy.

Fyodor Lukyanov:
This time Trump really means business

If Biden preferred to deal with like-minded leaders like president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen or Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, Trump seems to feel more comfortable in the company of strong personalist charismatics like Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán or Argentinian president Javier Milei. If Biden has been mostly risk-averse, Trump is going to be risk-taking. The former tried to outmaneuver his opponents, the latter will try to bully them.

It is not hard to predict that Trump’s second term in office will not be the same as his first term. He has acquired a lot of experience—not only as President, but also as an underdog opposition politician. Nothing suggests, however, that he will be more moderate, more balanced and more accommodating. In fact, the opposite is likely—he will seek revenge for what he believes to be unfair mainstream media treatment, illegal prosecution and numerous personal betrayals of his former friends and associates. Besides, this is going to be his last term in office. He does not have to think about re-election, rather he should focus on his future legacy. His first nominations to the very top positions in the new Administration are a clear signal that he intends to be more, not less radical in many of his future undertakings.

In any case, the next four years are likely to be a difficult period for the US foreign policy. Among many other things that the President elect does not seem to care about is the deepening political split within the US society. Almost 70 million US voters who supported Kamala Harris on November 5 are not going to join the MAGA coalition tomorrow; they will not forget and they will not forgive Trump’s spectacular comeback.

They will also seek revenge and retribution. And Trump is unlikely to cover an extra mile to engage this unfriendly and skeptical constituency. If the United States stays disunited, it is hard to expect from it a consistent or even a completely rational foreign policy.

“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand” (Gospel of Mark: Chapter 3: Verse 25).

Which suggests that a bumpy road lies ahead not only for the disunited Americans, but for the rest of us as well.

First published in the Synergia Foundation Insights.