By Amitav Acharya, a professor at American University, Washington, DC for PS of June 15, 2025
Some might hope that Donald Trump’s alienation of US allies can be reversed under the next administration. Yet regardless of how his trade wars, territorial claims, and coercive tactics play out, the damage to the West as an idea and organizing principle of world order has already been done.
Soon after taking office in his first term, Donald Trump declared that, “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.” But the past few months have shown that the biggest threat to the Western-led world order is Trump himself.
This development marks a fundamental shift. For decades, the main perceived threats to the West came from Russia and China. By contrast, in less than half a year Trump has inflicted a greater and more decisive blow than either country could.
Among his most damaging moves so far has been the full-scale assault on the institutions and alliances that embody the West as an idea. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump threatened to let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO members who don’t meet the alliance’s defense-spending targets, and this attitude now defines the US approach to Europe. Then, at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, Vice President J.D. Vance accused Europeans of betraying their values and repressing “free speech,” by which he meant right-wing positions against immigration and cultural diversity. And over the following months, the Trump administration excluded Europe from negotiations over Ukraine’s future.
Nor has the new administration confined itself to heaping scorn on continental Europeans. Trump has also taunted Canada with the idea that it should become America’s 51st state, threatened to seize Greenland from Denmark, proposed restoring US control of the Panama Canal, and announced punitive tariffs on Japan, South Korea, Australia, the United Kingdom, and every other long-standing ally.
As Trump undermines Western unity, Europe has responded by increasing defense spending and offering more assistance to Ukraine. But some Eastern European countries, namely Hungary, may try to frustrate Europe’s quest for strategic autonomy, while pursuing separate security arrangements with the United States or even Russia. Moreover, Trump and Vance’s attacks on European liberalism have emboldened far-right parties that will further divide the West internally.
The crisis in transatlantic relations will reverberate around the world, weakening the West as a global force. Even if Europe’s pursuit of strategic autonomy does not go very far, building a substantially enhanced military capacity will stretch its resources and diminish its role as the world’s largest source of international humanitarian aid. Combined with Trump’s own massive cuts to US foreign aid, the West’s status as a leader in development and humanitarian assistance – a major source of its global influence – will be compromised.
In pursuing his agenda, Trump has adopted a divide-and-rule strategy – a classic instrument of Western imperialism. Using both economic and military coercion, he can separate those willing to make a deal with him (like India) from those who are less willing (like China). And in cultivating right-wing populists from El Salvador to Italy, he can sharpen a global ideological divide as well.
Yet Trump is also empowering hitherto challengers to the West. His disruptive behavior has deflected attention from China’s own controversial policies, such as its Belt and Road Initiative, whose opaque financing agreements with developing countries make the US demand for Ukraine’s critical minerals look tame. Trump’s rationale for wanting Greenland – that it is a large, strategically located territory with natural resources – sounds a lot like China’s motivation for asserting territorial claims in the South China Sea.
Trump is also letting Russia off the hook for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, thus helping the Kremlin to strengthen its global position. He has rejected Ukraine’s request for NATO membership and even wants to invite Russia back to the G7 (it was ousted following its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014). He also is open to easing sanctions on Russia as part of a deal that would allow it to keep territory it seized from Ukraine. Such an outcome would legitimize Russian President Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical ambitions and strike a fatal blow to the European security order.
Some might hope that Trump’s alienation of US allies can be reversed under the next administration. Don’t bet on it. Regardless of how Trump’s tariff war plays out, the damage to the idea of the West has already been done. As European Commission President Ursula von der Leyenput it, “the West as we knew it no longer exists.” The Liberal Party’s astonishing comeback in Canada shows the depth of that country’s revulsion vis-à-vis the US. Relationships that were shredded overnight will take years to rebuild.
Might Trump still strengthen the US, even as he weakens the West? Don’t bet on that, either. Not only have America’s friends and allies lost faith in it as a reliable security or trading partner; they will constantly wonder what other resources and concessions the US might try to squeeze out of them. Such concerns will weaken the alliance system that has always given the West a decisive edge over Russia and China.
Though countries such as Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, India, and Singapore are not going to cut security ties with the US, they and others will be tempted to reduce their dependence on America and improve ties with others. Trump’s foreign policy will almost certainly lead to more hedging or non-alignment. The European Union, for example, will seek to expand its partnerships with non-Western emerging powers such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Turkey.
At the same time, Trump’s policies could strengthen the momentum behind groupings like the BRICS, which recently added five new members, bringing the total to ten. They also will enhance the appeal of arrangements that include China but not the US. For example, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, an Asia-Pacific free-trade agreement that includes US partners and allies such as Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, could become a significant global player, as is also true of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which brings together China, India, Britain, Germany, and Italy.
Such extra-American cooperation, already seen in the Law of the Sea, the International Criminal Court, and the Paris climate agreement, will gain even more traction in a Trumpian world. The new US administration is rapidly undercutting not only Western dominance, but also America’s own global influence. Trump is sure to encourage different combinations of rising powers, middle powers, regional influencers, and other arrangements across the “West-Rest” divide. And this new framework – what I call a global multiplex – will hasten the arrival of both a post-American and a post-Western world.
Posted by gandatmadi46@yahoo.com