- Since taking office in late January, the second Trump administration has moved to upend a decades-old domestic and international order. Crisis Group takes stock of what the White House has done and how its initiatives look from various parts of the world
The first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House will go down in history. Not since the Great Depression of the 1930s, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt summoned the U.S. Congress for a special 100-day session, has a new administration attacked its first three-plus months in office with such a ferocious commitment to rewiring the status quo.
But the similarities end there. While Roosevelt’s aim was to stabilise the United States in the wake of a financial catastrophe through institution building and legislative reform, the Trump administration is playing an entirely different game with different tools. Operating unilaterally through executive action, it seeks to upend a domestic and international political and legal order that it argues has served a narrow slice of the U.S. elite at the expense of the greater public. Proponents suggest it is a process of creative destruction.
Critics at home and abroad see only destruction: the chaotic annihilation of a system of laws, rules, safeguards and values that they believe has, for all its imperfections, served the ends of peace, prosperity and human flourishing. They regard Trump’s moves not as a reallocation of power to the U.S. citizenry but as a corrupt play to consolidate power in himself, his family and his cronies, as well as to exact revenge on his detractors.
Perhaps of greatest concern both to the domestic opposition and to traditional U.S. allies overseas – for which Trump generally has little affection – is the question of whether U.S. institutional safeguards meant to check executive power and sustain the possibility of political renewal will hold. They held during Trump’s first term, but it was a bumpy ride, and this time around his team is both savvier and more determined to make indelible change. The situation is also a bit different on the world stage, where despite Washington’s enormous power, other countries are already imposing meaningful costs on the administration as it rolls out its “America first” foreign policy.
Table of Contents
Trump at Home
If Roosevelt’s legacy – what is called the New Deal – was a matrix of laws and institutions that shaped the modern socio-political order in the U.S., the legacy toward which Trump has been driving is one that pushes past mere executive aggrandisement toward a system in which democratic choice might be preserved but that tilts inexorably toward the incumbent party. At one federal agency, U.S. officials were told that the administration’s tolerance for legal risk is “100 per cent” – suggesting that the rule of law will not be allowed to impede the president’s agenda. It was no idle comment, as the administration’s record to date has made clear.
Several of the administration’s moves are especially striking. The president and his team have empowered tech mogul Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (which, despite its name, is not an official federal agency) to brush past constitutional and statutory safeguards in gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They have relied on the Alien Enemies Act (a wartime statute enabling expedited deportation) to ship Venezuelan migrants to a notorious Salvadoran prison without due process – and thumbed their noses at judicial orders, including from the Supreme Court, to facilitate the return of one, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who they admit was deported in error. Trump has also claimed authority to revoke birthright citizenship and to detain and deport foreign students based on political expression – both widely understood to be constitutional violations. He has invoked emergency economic powers in order to launch a global trade war, in the absence of any credible emergency.
The administration is also rewriting the playbook for how the government can bend private institutions to its will.
The administration is also rewriting the playbook for how the government can bend private institutions to its will. Well-heeled law firms like Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps, facing the possible loss of access to federal agencies, have agreed to give tens of millions of dollars of free legal counsel for certain causes championed by the administration. Fending off administration threats to slash its funding, ostensibly because of insufficient attention to campus anti-Semitism, the venerable Columbia University agreed to put certain departments in “academic receivership”. (While the university continues to negotiate with the government, the funding cuts remain in place.) Media organisations have settled claims that lawyers thought winnable rather than tangle with the government. While several institutions are fighting the administration’s demands – Harvard University being perhaps the most prominent – the choice to do so has enormous financial implications that may be existential for some.
How this jockeying for power will end remains unclear. The steepness of the country’s authoritarian slide will depend on the untested strength of certain safeguards in this new climate and the resiliency of opposition in the face of heightened risk. Still unresolved are questions about how hard the Supreme Court will push back at Trump on a range of issues; whether the administration will defy the justices; whether the economic consequences of the trade war will loosen Trump’s hold on the Republican Party; whether the 2026 midterm elections will bring to power a Democratic majority in at least one house of Congress; and whether the country’s highly local elections system will foil any effort to improperly influence the 2028 presidential contest.
How this jockeying for power will end remains unclear. The steepness of the country’s authoritarian slide will depend on the untested strength of certain safeguards in this new climate and the resiliency of opposition in the face of heightened risk. Still unresolved are questions about how hard the Supreme Court will push back at Trump on a range of issues; whether the administration will defy the justices; whether the economic consequences of the trade war will loosen Trump’s hold on the Republican Party; whether the 2026 midterm elections will bring to power a Democratic majority in at least one house of Congress; and whether the country’s highly local elections system will foil any effort to improperly influence the 2028 presidential contest.
Boil it down, and the key question is whether the country can retain its capacity for political renewal. While there continues to be a huge amount of opposition activity, and polls show Trump rapidly losing popularity, other signs are worrying. Following Trump’s electoral loss in 2020, he mounted a concerted attempt to overturn the result and subvert the peaceful transfer of power. He paid no price for his transgressions. He has pardoned the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on 6 January 2021 and turned the criminal justice system against an official who undercut his narrative of a rigged election. What he might do to retain power for himself or an heir apparent is not yet clear. But the idea that he will behave according to the conventional rules and norms that govern U.S. elections seems fanciful.
Trump Abroad
Trump’s disdain for playing by the rules is also on display internationally, where domestic law places fewer constraints on what a U.S. president can do, but where there are other potentially more formidable checks on overreach – namely, other countries. It is not that the U.S. lacks friends: its traditional allies in Europe and around the Pacific rim have been an enormous asset to U.S. influence and power projection. But the new administration tends to see them as freeloading at best and hostile to its agenda at worst. There is a sense in which the latter is true: Washington’s closest friends are invested in the international system of laws, institutions and alliances that the U.S. helped build over the decades following World War II and which the Trump administration now sees as hindering the pursuit of its interests. Few will want any part of the administration’s efforts to dismantle that system.
That has not stopped the administration from trying. In a repudiation of international prohibitions against conquest and gunboat diplomacy, Trump articulated an expansionist agenda in his inaugural address. He has followed up with threats to take Greenland from NATO ally Denmark – potentially by force. He has also said the U.S. might reconquer the Panama Canal zone, absorb Canada as the 51st state and “take over” Gaza; in a similar vein, he has proposed to formally recognise Russia’s dominion over Crimea. The administration’s sweeping aid cuts, meanwhile, threaten longstanding multilateral efforts to contain poverty and immiseration and may kneecap UN humanitarian agencies. Money to help countries straining under the stresses of climate change has evaporated. While the U.S. has not, at least yet, moved to dismantle its decades-old alliances and security partnerships in Europe and Asia, its allies and partners are not blind to the warning signs: they are already considering how to make up for a potential U.S.-sized hole in their defence postures.
Then there are the tariffs. Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs announced on 2 April reflected a big bet that the U.S. could leverage its huge market to rejigger the global economic order.
Then there are the tariffs. Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs announced on 2 April reflected a big bet that the U.S. could leverage its huge market to rejigger the global economic order. To what precise end is still not clear. The poorly articulated objectives seemed to include creating space to negotiate political and economic deals that rectify trade imbalances and bring jobs to U.S. shores; binning the old values-based partnerships and alliances that in Trump’s view have shackled U.S. potential; softening up China for a possible grand bargain in which (critics fear) Trump might make concessions on Asian security in return for concessions on trade; and creating a new hyper-transactional order that Trump believes will be conducive to U.S. interests.
None of it seems to be working out. Perhaps the biggest headache for the administration is that, in China, it has chosen an adversary that has the motive, resources and political discipline to stare down its U.S. counterpart. Plus, China’s enormous holdings of U.S. debt, and its control of exports needed for strategic industries, allow it to inflict considerable discomfort on the U.S. How long the administration can stand the pain it brings upon itself as it pursues its global trade war is unclear. On 9 April, with global stock and bond markets cratering, and under increasing political pressure, Trump announced a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs for most countries (though keeping in place a 10 per cent base tariff rate and a 25 per cent blanket tariff rate on steel and aluminum exports) – though he pointedly excepted China. On 29 April, he provided some easing relevant to U.S. auto manufacturers, and further climbdowns seem like they will be difficult, if politically dicey, to avoid. Even then, it is hard to imagine that Washington’s reputation as a responsible steward of the global economy will emerge untainted.
Are there diplomatic advantages to Trump’s iconoclasm? Possibly. The administration’s unorthodoxy, its readiness to talk directly to U.S. adversaries, its purported disinclination to pour U.S. lives and treasure into military adventurism and its desire to extract the country from strategic quagmires may create openings. The administration has entered nuclear talks with Iran in the hope of achieving a deal that eluded that of Trump’s predecessor, President Joe Biden. Perhaps most consequentially, it has interposed itself as a mediator between Ukraine and its European backers, on one hand, and Russia on the other. While for some it is jarring to see the U.S. in this role (as opposed to siding with its traditional allies against Russian aggression), and the proposal put forward for a ceasefire is flawed, the administration’s diplomacy does appear to have generated momentum for talks that all interested parties should seize.
But while these gambits have an upside, they could too easily come to nothing, not least because of the administration’s own foibles. It is not clear who can negotiate on the president’s behalf. The ranking officials on the president’s national security team – Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz – do not always appear to have his full confidence. While envoy Steve Witkoff does, he is stretched thin with briefs in Israel-Palestine, Ukraine and Iran. Negotiating teams may struggle to do their work professionally given Trump’s impatience for quick results to complex crises. Unresolved divisions inside the administration between traditional U.S. primacists (like Waltz and Rubio) and those who prefer a much more limited role for the U.S. internationally (like Vice President JD Vance and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard) could make for chaotic policymaking and factional squabbles. A penchant for brinksmanship – as in the tariff debacle – stands to chip away at Washington’s already declining credibility.
More broadly, there is a vision problem. The administration seems to have a clear view of what it would like to replace: the current architecture of alliances and rules that it sees as outmoded. By all appearances it also has instincts, if not precise clarity, about what it would like to replace this system with: a more transactional one where the U.S. is freer to throw its weight around. But it shows little evidence of having a workable theory of how to get from point A to point B. While traditional adversaries like Moscow and Beijing may applaud Washington distancing itself from its traditional allies and its destruction of “soft power” instruments like USAID, neither seems inclined to get much closer to the U.S. – and that was true even before Trump levied enormous tariffs on China. Nor does the Trump administration seem fully prepared for how its allies and partners will respond to its aggressive unilateralism, with Canada’s election offering a portrait of how opposition to Trump might galvanise political currents elsewhere.
A further question is whether the administration is fully ready for the consequences of upending the core tenets of post-World War II international order. A world in which stronger states feel fewer restraints on invading weaker neighbours and changing borders by force is recipe for global bedlam. It is all too plausible that states might begin to nuclearise, either because they can no longer rely on the U.S. security umbrella or because they actively fear a marauding U.S. might pose an existential threat. This possibility is hard to square with the ambitions of an administration that seems understandably squeamish about proliferation.
The old order was changing before Trump came in, and it is changing faster now. The strength of U.S. security guarantees comes less from their being an ironclad promise than from the belief that Washington would defend its allies if necessary – a belief that Trump’s statements erode, even if (so far) he has not pulled out of alliances. The foundational norms of the old order, those meant to prevent war and mitigate the suffering of those caught up in it, were too often honoured in the breach but are almost daily shaken by Trump’s words, if not his deeds. They are in danger of being tossed wholly overboard. If there is a possible upside, it is that the teetering of markets, the threat of nuclearisation and a dawning awareness that the world’s nations are more difficult to manipulate than domestic political elements could still have a tempering effect on the new administration’s appetite for further destruction of an order that does not yet have a viable replacement.
After 100 turbulent days, that scenario may be the most plausible one for those who wish to remain optimistic. The following round-the-world breakdown takes a closer look at peace and security challenges and opportunities in this Age of Trump.
Africa: Malign Neglect
Project 2025, the unofficial conservative policy plan for a second Trump administration, contained an Africa section that was notably short, signalling that the administration would show scant interest in the continent. From the perspective of many African leaders – who have had their fill of Democratic administrations offering (in their view) hypocritical lectures on human rights and governance – a period of relatively benign neglect might have been welcome. They were in for something of a shock.
Traumatic Transition
The relaxed attitudes in Africa toward Trump’s return to the White House were based on experiences during his first term in office, when he exercised an interest-driven transactionalism that some welcomed. Few anticipated that the do-over would bring a much more ideological approach, overturning decades of bipartisan support for humanitarian and development assistance on the continent. In hindsight, the Project 2025 paper hinted at what might be coming: it called for a shift away “from stand-alone development humanitarian aid and toward fostering free-market systems”, arguing that the old assistance model had failed. But few if any foresaw the brutal way in which the recommendation would be followed. The Trump administration brought a giant axe rather than a scalpel to the task of reform.
In abruptly dismantling USAID, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has wrecked the main soft-power tool the U.S. had used in Africa since the early 1960s.
In abruptly dismantling USAID, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has wrecked the main soft-power tool the U.S. had used in Africa since the early 1960s, when John F. Kennedy was president. The consequences, especially for many in countries wracked by conflict, are hard to overstate. In Sudan, where a vicious civil war has spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, kitchens feeding the hungry saw their funding vanish overnight. Dozens of children have reportedly died of starvation in the weeks since the funding cuts were instituted.
There were other losses, too. In countries large and small, USAID had bankrolled many vital programs, keeping thousands in school in northern Nigeria and supporting food security in Ethiopia. Many displaced in the Sahel and Central Africa were receiving sustenance from the agency. Though exemptions were eventually issued for life-saving assistance in several countries, including Somalia and Ethiopia, the future of this aid is uncertain. Congress is gearing up to rescind billions of dollars of funding for programs previously underwritten by USAID, and measures to downsize the State Department, under which much of USAID’s previous work will now fall, are under way.
These steps will cause inevitable harm to U.S. prestige. There is no doubt that the aid system needed reform, as several African leaders have been quick to point out. But the sudden, seemingly cavalier manner of USAID’s shuttering scarcely resembled the actions of a responsible major power. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz remarked: “What kind of country does this?”
More damage may be in store on the economic front. The extent depends in part on where Trump’s tariff policies come to rest following the 90-day pause now in effect. No African country so far has been invited to negotiate down the steep tariffs he announced on 2 April and, if rolled out on schedule, the import taxes could cost thousands of jobs, and, according to an assessment by the international Monetary Fund, lead to a significant decline in economic growth on the continent. Few, moreover, expect the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which provides duty-free access for African goods to the U.S. market, to be renewed when it expires at the end of September. The program, which has drawn bipartisan Congressional support since it was introduced in 2000, accounts for tens of thousands of jobs, particularly in the textile and apparel sector.
Elsewhere in Africa Policy
The Trump administration also stunned many by taking early aim at the South African government. For all its domestic governance failings, South Africa’s African National Congress has a storied history that most on the continent greatly admire. It is seen as the symbol of what many view as the heroic collective struggle to end apartheid. Yet the Trump administration could hardly have done more to show its disdain for Pretoria. Possibly influenced by white South African donors and advisers around him, Trump has propounded a false claim that white South African farmers face “genocide”. On 7 February, he signed an executive order halting foreign assistance to South Africa and announced that his administration would pursue resettling Afrikaners in the U.S.
These moves have not gone down well with many on the continent, where they are perceived as racially driven and as blowback for South Africa’s case against Israel’s government at the International Court of Justice.
As for other areas of Africa policy, the administration’s attention has generally been scattered or non-existent, not least because key positions, such as that of assistant secretary of state for Africa, are not yet filled. In the absence of new policy direction, there has been a significant degree of continuity with Biden-era policies. The Trump administration has continued bombing Islamist militants in Somalia, though whether to stay the course there is the subject of some internal debate. In Sudan, the U.S. again shows little interest in mediation, though the fear some had that Trump would either back or offer a blank cheque to one side in the brutal war has not been borne out. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where Rwanda is backing the M23 rebels against the government, the administration has been a bit more proactive. Though it has left most of the hard work of easing Congolese-Rwandan tensions to Qatar, which secured a truce between Kinshasa and the M23 on 23 April, the U.S. brought together the Rwandan and Congolese foreign ministers on 26 April, extracting from both a commitment to work toward peace.
The administration’s words and actions outside Africa also cast a shadow over the continent.
The administration’s words and actions outside Africa also cast a shadow over the continent. The abrogation of norms – including threats to change borders by force – could be seen as a green light for others to take liberties. Though the war in the eastern DRC predates Trump, several analysts assess that Rwanda and its M23 allies have pressed their campaign in Congolese territory far harder than they would have in a world that continued to place greater stock in constraints on the use of force, even if those were often ignored in practice. Others elsewhere will doubtless have taken note.
Toward a Harsh New Reality
Does the foregoing mean that African elites see the Trump transition in the same tectonic terms as their European or Asian counterparts? Not necessarily. Despite anxiety about many of Trump’s actions, African leaders are watching his presidency on something of a split screen – they are worried about what may be coming, but they do not yet view his administration through an existential lens. There is precious little nostalgia for the pre-Trump era on the continent. In recent years, the West’s reputation has taken a battering, amid perceptions of double standards and a revolt against what some see as sanctimonious moralising by Western officials. Nor did a string of recent Democratic administrations distinguish themselves on the peacemaking front: in the past two decades, the U.S. led a disastrous intervention in Libya, unleashing a wave of violence in the Sahel. In Ethiopia and Sudan, massive conflicts have spiralled out of control, with little effective engagement by Washington. Talking to opinion leaders in Nairobi, Abuja and Dakar, the sense is almost one of relief at their distance from the political tumult that seems to be consuming trans-Atlantic relations; few sound the notes of emergency audible among those watching the Trump administration from Washington or Brussels.
These African leaders may, however, be labouring under something of an illusion. Though Africa may not be at the centre of the action, the upending of a global order that has endured for decades leaves the continent vulnerable to a reprise of the malign big-power competition that brought it significant death and destruction during the Cold War. In that period, Africa responded by cultivating unity and taking a collective approach to limit the carnage. Statesmen such as Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah championed a stronger Organisation of African Unity (the precursor to the African Union, or AU), speaking with a unified voice on the global stage and taking a proactive stance in forging peace deals. The moment may have come for today’s leaders to take up this task anew – particularly in light of the aggressive forays by “middle powers” that are now fanning the flames of conflict in a range of countries, with Sudan the most prominent example. The AU needs a reboot, as Crisis Group has previously argued, and that task is more urgent now. If the organisation could help negotiate collectively for a deal on tariffs, for example, considering the looming expiration of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, that would bring considerable benefits. It also needs to prime itself to be more active on the peacemaking front.
At home, the virtual termination of USAID programming offers both the need and opportunity for a rethink on how to make African economies more competitive, less dependent and more equitable, given that many countries have considerable resources flowing primarily to the elite. The long-touted idea of boosting intra-African trade has acquired greater urgency. None of the above means that the Trump administration’s sudden withdrawal of assistance was justified: making the cuts without prior notice displayed a callous bent that many around the world are struggling to adjust to. Still, it is the harsh new reality African leaders must contend with. Waking up to a world in which they will have far less external support, they will have to show greater responsibility for their citizens and use domestic resources more prudently.
Asia: Strategic Pandemonium
It was always clear that the second Trump administration’s policy toward Asia would be based first and foremost on the White House’s approach to China – and that this stance would emerge after a tug of war involving various groupings among Trump’s senior advisers, as well as the president himself. But the chaos that has unfolded would have been difficult for even Trump’s staunchest critics to anticipate.
Different Camps, Different Approaches
The administration’s China camps have very different perspectives. The administration’s upper echelons include traditional national security hawks like Secretary of State Rubio, who see competition with China as existential, ideological and global. By contrast, Vice President Vance recommends a U.S. foreign policy with more narrowly defined objectives – chief among them deterring a Chinese attack on Taiwan. The president’s inner circle also features strong proponents of tariffs – including counselor Peter Navarro – and opponents of those measures – including the multi-billionaire businessman Musk. Sitting above it all is Trump himself, but he, too, seems pulled in different directions by his own contradictory impulses – wanting both to seize the economic upper hand with Beijing, by launching an ill-considered trade war, and to collaborate with it in fashioning a new political and economic order that would have Washington and Beijing as a de facto “G2” at the centre.
These different perspectives could be yoked together in the service of a common strategy. But thus far they have not been.
A Failure to Cohere
At first, it appeared that Trump’s vision of a de facto G2 might drive his administration’s policy. Shortly before retaking office, he invited his counterpart, Xi Jinping, to attend his inauguration (Vice President Han Zheng went in Xi’s place) and declared that the U.S. and China could “together solve all of the problems of the world”. As recently as March, the two leaders were reportedly considering a “birthday summit” in June (Trump was born on 14 June and Xi the next day). Some observers worried then (and fret still) that Trump might use this leader-level diplomacy to trade away Taiwan’s security for a new economic relationship with China – a “grand bargain” that could tempt China to attack the island. But a series of presidential tête-à-têtes could also have produced favourable outcomes, whether stronger crisis management channels or a new senior-level dialogue that might have slowed the competitive spiral propelling Asia’s growing militarisation.
While Trump contemplated a conversation with Xi and even a visit to Beijing early in his second term, his deputies conducted standard deterrence activities. Rubio kicked off his tenure by hosting his counterparts in the Quad – a minilateral grouping of the Indo-Pacific’s key democracies: Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. – on 21 January. The following month, he exempted $336 million in military assistance for the Philippines and $870 million for Taiwan from a 90-day aid freeze that Trump had announced on his first day back in office. In February, meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth welcomed Richard Marles, Australia’s deputy prime minister and defence minister, who delivered a $500 million payment toward fulfilling the AUKUS nuclear submarine agreement among the U.S., the UK and Australia. In late March, Hegseth announced that the U.S. and Japan would accelerate efforts to establish a joint military command. Around the same time, the Washington Post reported that he had authored an interim planning document calling China the Pentagon’s “sole pacing threat” and declaring that “denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan … is [its] sole pacing scenario”.
This pairing of diplomacy and deterrence might have had more strategic potential had Trump’s own pronouncements not undercut his aides’ efforts to project resolve.
This pairing of diplomacy and deterrence might have had more strategic potential had Trump’s own pronouncements not undercut his aides’ efforts to project resolve. Trump questioned what the U.S. gets out of its relationships with Japan and South Korea, its two core Asian allies. On the region’s most sensitive fault line, Taiwan, he struck a cavalier tone, musing that while a Chinese invasion would be “a catastrophic event”, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s commitment to invest an additional $100 billion in the U.S. would blunt the impact of that disaster on the U.S. economy. Washington’s Asian friends are doubtless also watching with concern as he undertakes to wrest Greenland away from Denmark and to make Canada the 51st U.S. state.
But the biggest blow to a coherent strategy came with Trump’s announcement of the 2 April “liberation day” tariffs, which could hardly have been less helpful to the administration’s own peace and security objectives in the region. To allies and partners, the tariffs risked signalling that Trump is loyal to little beyond his own balance sheet. To developing countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh, where manufacturing is a major source of employment, the tariffs posed the threat of economic collapse and supplied a reason to draw closer to Beijing. To China, meanwhile, they provided two opportunities: first, to present itself as a more reliable steward of the global economy than the U.S., and secondly, to raise its stature by going toe to toe with a rival whose economy is $11 trillion larger. An easing of tensions between the world’s two leading powers – a prospect that seemed plausible 100 days ago – seemed to be slipping out of reach.
Whither the Trade War?
That said, no one really seems to know what the future will hold for Trump’s trade war. Understanding U.S. pain points, China has retaliated against U.S. tariffs by cancelling all orders of Boeing aircraft and purchases of U.S. liquefied natural gas and halting shipments of critical minerals and magnets that power numerous high-tech industries. By 22 April, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was telling financial cognoscenti that the economic standoff with China had become “unsustainable”, hinting that the U.S. and China might reach a limited near-term truce (as of 29 April, the average U.S. tariff rate on Chinese exports and the average Chinese tariff rate on U.S. exports respectively stood at 124.1 per cent and 147.6 per cent).
The problem is that neither Trump nor Xi seems prepared to blink.
The problem is that neither Trump nor Xi seems prepared to blink. Trump may have more room to pivot should he choose to do so – his base is deeply loyal and accustomed to his turning on a dime when politically expedient – but he clearly wants to be seen as cutting a deal from a position of strength. That is going to be a tall order. China’s leadership appears to believe that Trump has overplayed his hand; it has openly contradicted Trump’s assertions that negotiations are under way, and it shows no inclination to be seen as caving. Finding an off-ramp that allows both sides to save face will require skilful diplomacy. Yet comments like Vance’s remark that the U.S. “borrows money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture” can only set back that effort.
For now, the fallout from “liberation day” seems poised to put the U.S. on the back foot vis-à-vis China in every predictable way. Beijing has labelled the tariff hikes as “American bullying” and is using them to advance its bilateral relations with countries also targeted by Trump’s trade war. President Xi’s first foreign trip after “liberation day” was to Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia, where he worked to strengthen trade and economic relations with these neighbours and negotiate market access with the Association of South East Asian Nations regional bloc. China is also actively seeking improved relations with European countries, most of which have also been hit by the tariffs and jolted by Trump’s confrontational attitude toward long-time U.S. friends.
One U.S. relationship that seems fairly unperturbed is that with India: Trump enjoys good personal chemistry with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was one of the first heads of state to visit him after his inauguration, and both Vice President Vance, whose wife is of Indian origin, and Director of National Intelligence Gabbard, who is a practicing Hindu, have already paid official visits to New Delhi.
But countries that rely on the U.S. to defend them, including Japan and South Korea, have growing reason to wonder whether it will do so and how to compensate if it will not. While neither Tokyo nor Seoul seems ready to take the most consequential step – moving toward nuclearisation – both governments are struggling with a loss of confidence in U.S. deterrence. Chinese claims in the South China Sea will continue to pose continuing strategic, operational and diplomatic challenges. As a number of Asian democracies head toward the polls over the course of 2025, for the first time, the issue of U.S. unpredictability is a bigger election issue than the known threat from China. Rebuilding trust will be a challenge, especially if Trump’s heart is not in it, but a failure to try – first by ending the trade war and then by arriving at and deploying a consistent U.S. strategy for Asia – will cost the U.S. in influence and the region in stability.
Europe: Mid-Pivot Mediation
Donald Trump has never hidden his frustration with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or his European backers. Thus, when Trump said on the campaign trail that he would broker a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv in a single day, Ukrainians could only wonder what that would mean for their future. Given the importance of U.S. material and intelligence support for Ukraine’s fight, would he use his leverage to force a deal that would spell the end of its sovereignty? Not quite, but the Trump administration has moved the U.S. into a role that would have been unfathomable to any other modern U.S. president – sitting between Moscow, on one side, and Kyiv and its European backers, on the other. As the administration steps away from European allies, it remains to be seen whether Trump’s parting gift will be a settlement of the war in Ukraine.
A Hundred Jarring Days
The shift to this in-between place has been terrifying not just to Kyiv, but also to European governments that have worked with Washington to arm and aid Ukraine, believing that the weaker the war leaves Russia, the easier it will be to deter Russian aggression in the future. Regardless of when and how the war may end, most European states anticipate that they will need to continue fending off Moscow. Land grabs may not be the most likely scenario, but Russia certainly has the tools and tradecraft to attack European economies and political systems. To be sure, there was some writing on the wall, and European officials expected U.S. support for both warfighting in Ukraine and their own security needs to decrease, especially with Trump coming back to office. But they were nonetheless unprepared for just how jarring Trump’s first 100 days would be.
For Trump and his inner circle, the war in Ukraine is a foolish adventure.
For Trump and his inner circle, the war in Ukraine is a foolish adventure. Trump has repeatedly, and erroneously, stated that Zelenskyy started the war. He also blames President Barack Obama for insufficiently arming Ukraine following Russia’s 2014 invasion; President Biden for supposedly being too weak to deter Russia’s massive escalation in 2022; and the European allies, who have continued to support Ukraine, for prolonging the conflict past the time when it should have stopped.
Trump’s advisers are unconvinced that Moscow poses a particular threat to European security – or, if it does, that Europe is particularly important to the U.S. They appear to view Ukraine as a basket case of a country that will be an even bigger mess after the war ends. Nor does the Trump team seem to believe that Washington’s past strategy of trying to demonise Russia as an aggressive, revisionist power has met with much success. Instead, at least some argue, it has motivated Russian President Vladimir Putin to assert himself with increasing boldness, while much of the world (including elements of Trumpworld) shrugs at his transgressions. Things might go better, the argument goes, if the U.S. treated Putin with greater respect, brought him back into the mainstream of global politics and looked to collaborate with him on commercial opportunities.
This empathy for Moscow is paired with disdain for long-time U.S. partners in Europe. By all appearances, Trump and his inner circle see NATO allies as parasitic and the EU and its members as a threat to U.S. prosperity. The scorn they heap on European elites that staff those institutions mirrors their trolling of the U.S. progressive elite they campaigned against in 2024. Vice President Vance and presidential adviser Musk have endorsed far-right parties working to unseat incumbents in Europe. Vance used his platform at the 2025 Munich Security Conference to berate allied European governments, accusing them of interfering with democratic elections and hemming in free speech – inverting charges that are frequently, and credibly, lobbed at the Trump administration. Participants in the “Signalgate” group chat described them as “free-loading” and “PATHETIC”. Trump’s insistence that Denmark hand over Greenland to the U.S. has shown contempt for both a NATO ally and bedrock norms of international law; comments about annexing Canada, also a NATO ally, have rattled nerves even more
An Opening for Peace?
While these dynamics lent themselves to the understandable worry that the Trump administration would seize the moment to throw Ukraine under the bus, reality has been considerably more complicated. In its discussions with Moscow, the U.S. has given away much more than Kyiv or its European backers would prefer – particularly at this stage of negotiations. But it has also apparently elicited some important flexibility from Russia.
On 17 April, U.S. envoy Witkoff presented to Ukraine, France, the UK and other European states proposed terms for a ceasefire deal that it appeared to have previously agreed to with Moscow, although as the days went on, Russian comments raised doubts that it had. Reportedly, the terms included undefined but “robust” security guarantees for Ukraine from willing European and other states. Moscow, meanwhile, would gain U.S. recognition of its territorial claims – “de jure” in the case of Crimea and “de facto” in the case of other territory Russia controls; comprehensive sanctions relief; an end to Ukrainian pursuit of NATO (but not EU) membership; and a commitment that Ukraine would be reconstructed and compensated financially. The proposed deal also envisioned land swaps, U.S. control of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and U.S. economic cooperation with both Ukraine and Russia.
[Witkoff’s] proposal does not come close to laying out an actual resolution for the conflict.
The proposal does not come close to laying out an actual resolution for the conflict. It leaves undefined most of the thorny issues, including the size and capacity of Ukraine’s military, the form (promises? deployed troops?) of the security guarantees in question, the sanctions to be lifted, the source of compensation and reconstruction funding, and the meaning of “de facto” recognition. Presumably, all these matters are to be negotiated in further talks. Some of the terms (particularly the notion that the U.S. legitimate Russia’s conquest of Crimea) would set terrible precedents contravening international law and resonating all too much with the administration’s own expansionist rhetoric. Any of the unresolved questions the proposal brushes away could well become a deal killer.
But for all the questions, gaps and problems that were reported, the proposal was and likely still is, at bottom, good news. To the extent the Trump team was indeed able to gain Russian agreement to a cessation of hostilities along present lines of contact (something the Kremlin had previously said was anathema), then Moscow was showing itself to be more malleable than previously expected and suggesting that this White House indeed has the capacity to obtain results.
Whether this opening can become something more, however, is not at all clear. While some Russian officials raised questions about Moscow’s degree of commitment to the deal proposed by Washington, Putin has now offered negotiations with Kyiv without preconditions – an indication that Moscow, for now at least, is willing to take part in continued exchanges. (Russia has now also suggested a three-day truce, to run from 8-10 May, coinciding with World War II commemoration events in Moscow. This offer follows a Kremlin-announced Easter truce that Russian forces themselves violated.) Ukraine and its European backers also signalled their readiness to talk. Zelenskyy reiterated his willingness to embrace a full ceasefire and then commence talks, while Kyiv and its European friends responded to the U.S. offer with a counter-offer, which, among other things, would commit the U.S. to a collective security guarantee for Ukraine, permit Ukraine’s backers to deploy troops in the country, condition U.S. sanctions easing on attainment of peace and renounce restrictions on the Ukrainian armed forces.
The next step to getting peace in Ukraine, then, is to keep negotiations going. U.S. officials have spoken of walking away if a deal is not reached rapidly, but with Trump expressing frustration with Putin (and threatening to ratchet up sanctions on Russia) after a meeting with Zelenskyy on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral, it may be that the U.S. is at least open to a continued mediation role. Russia has continued its bombardment of Ukraine in spite of increasingly pointed requests from Trump to desist, but it may still think that the Trump administration’s relative friendliness now gives it an opportunity for a better deal than it might get at a later date, regardless of who is sitting in the White House. If such reasoning accounts for its seeming willingness to deal, then the chances for an imperfect but credible peace are much higher if Washington stays involved. This is true notwithstanding the risk that Russia will try to pocket favourable terms that have been proffered without making its own concessions (something the U.S. will have to resist if it wants an actual deal) and profound anxiety on the part of critics that Trump is on his way to throwing the game to Putin.
But even if the U.S. picks up its toys and goes home, Kyiv and its European backers should do what they can to make use of the diplomatic channel that has been opened. The Kremlin would probably not be talking to the U.S. in this manner unless it saw some economic and social benefits to an end to full-scale war. While there is no reason for Kyiv to accept the U.S.-proposed deal in its present form, it should take Putin up on his offer for bilateral talks without preconditions, whether the U.S. backs away or not. Kyiv should come into these talks just as it has gone into talks with the U.S. – with its European friends, though not in the room, at its back, having together defined positions, red lines, sticks and carrots.
Beyond Ukraine
In the meantime, whatever comes next in Ukraine, its Euro-Atlantic partners must also define their path forward in the face of White House talk about starkly reducing the U.S. force presence in Europe and down-shifting its participation in NATO – and questions about what that development would mean for U.S nuclear deterrence. For now, U.S. plans do not seem fully formed, the NATO alliance remains in place, U.S. troops remain in Europe and Russia continues to take the mutual defence pact at the core of the alliance seriously, as evidenced by its persistent desire to ensure that Ukraine remains outside NATO’s borders. But while NATO governments understandably want to keep the door open for continued U.S. engagement and support, it should be abundantly clear after 100 days that they should not count on Washington to come through.
So, what then? The governments that remain committed to the alliance will need to find the money and weapons to continue to arm Ukraine whatever the U.S. decides to do. They will need to continue backing Kyiv in negotiations with both the U.S. and Russia, however those develop, leveraging the power both of European sanctions and prospects for troop deployments. They will also need new strategies and plans for deterrence that do not rely on U.S. aid, commitments or enablers, such as transport, logistics and intelligence.
Adapting to Europe’s new reality does not mean replacing U.S. forces soldier for soldier or destroyer for destroyer. Rather, discussions under way in and between trans-Atlantic capitals and at the EU and NATO are focused on approaches that leverage, augment and effectively coordinate regional states’ considerable assets in a manner that reflects the countries involved, their budgets and their risk tolerance. The idea of coalitions of the willing, like-minded countries that unite to take action, whether to develop plans for a possible troop deployment to Ukraine (an unlikely but not entirely impossible prospect) or for defence purchases – all outside the formal structures of NATO and the EU – is usefully taking hold. Countries that are in NATO but not the EU, including the UK, Türkiye, Norway and Canada, are playing key roles, and countries traditionally outside the trans-Atlantic security zone, such as South Korea, are also engaged. But with budgets tight and elections looming in several key states, the nations of the region and their partners face a challenging set of tasks as they seek ways to invest in their joint security future without undermining their immediate needs.
Latin America: Not Quite Back to the Future
One hundred days into the second Trump administration, Latin America has assumed exceptional prominence in U.S. foreign policy. Specialists on the region, notably Secretary of State Rubio, have been appointed to high diplomatic posts. The administration has lavished attention and favours on friendly leaders in Argentina and El Salvador. For countries seen as non-compliant with the strictures of “America first”, such as Colombia and Mexico, the White House has rapidly ramped up pressure. While few would have underestimated Washington’s toolkit for extracting cooperation from a region that is profoundly (but not exclusively) dependent on Washington for its financial health, trade and military resources, the stark asymmetries in power that Trump has exploited are spurring disquiet and a search for ways to counterbalance their coercive use.
A High-Profile Region
Latin America’s high profile can be attributed partly to the region’s real or alleged responsibility for the domestic issues that preoccupy Trump’s political and social base. Held to be a source of some the main threats to U.S. security and wellbeing, above all undocumented migration, the transnational spread of criminal cartels and the export of fentanyl, cocaine and other drugs, several Latin America states are at the top of the list for Washington’s plans for mass deportation and a militarised approach to organised crime. Some have seized the opportunity: El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele burnished his standing with the White House by offering the huge prison complex he built to house suspected gang members for use as a holding pen for deportees, largely Venezuelans. Mexico, on the other hand, became an early target for U.S. tariff hikes, aimed both at shielding U.S. manufacturing from the huge trade surplus Mexico has built up in recent years and at pressing for closer alignment with White House border and security policies.
Latin America’s importance to the administration, however, has also taken on different and unexpected hues in the wake of Trump’s threats to forcibly re-establish U.S. control of the Panama Canal, as well as his talk of absorbing Canada and conquering Greenland. Whether expressing expansionist ambitions along these lines is a performative act or a genuine prospect is hard to know. The same is true of the sabre rattling at Mexico-based cartels. Opinions in the White House appear divided as to whether cooperation on migration and security with Mexico is more important than turning it into the non-consenting battleground for the next iteration of the U.S. war on terror – this one aimed at drug lords and their empires.
Undergirding these questions is uncertainty about just how ambitious the White House wants to be in seeking to reshape the hemispheric order. Some read into the administration’s actions a desire to pull the region into a sphere of influence in which the U.S. would have enormous and nearly exclusive political, military and economic sway. A ready-made framework for U.S. hemispheric dominion can be found in the Monroe Doctrine, which for more than 200 years has held that no power from outside the region should meddle in its political affairs. (Later additions to the doctrine enshrined the U.S. right to intervene directly in other American nations.)
A Return to the Monroe Doctrine?
Yet restoring this 19th-century scheme may not be realistic. Though never wholly abandoned, observance of the doctrine has relaxed significantly since the Cold War. China has become a leading trade partner of many South American states, while authoritarian states such as Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela have displayed capacity for survival though resolutely opposed to U.S. influence. This subsidence in U.S. sway might be chalked up to growing respect for sovereign equality and global trade; these pillars of the post-World War II order got stronger after the Cold War ended and have somewhat reduced Washington’s reach across the hemisphere. Trump may hope to topple those pillars – his “liberation day” tariffs suggest as much – but the formidable backlash to his trade war tactics also suggests that he may have trouble doing so.
Nor does Trump have to create a full-blown sphere of influence to get much of what he wants. Broadly speaking, his administration’s pressure has been met with compliance. A brief spat with Colombia in January over President Gustavo Petro’s refusal to accept U.S. military flights carrying deportees ended with a rapid climbdown by Bogotá following Trump’s invocation of dire economic threats. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, while mounting a principled defence of national sovereignty, has acceded to a host of U.S. demands on border security and extraditions of high-level criminals. Panama, last invaded by the U.S. in 1989, has sought ways to placate the White House, promising to curb Chinese economic influence and reimburse the U.S. for the canal tolls paid by its vessels. Unmoved by the offer, Trump has insisted that all U.S. ships pass free through the strait. As the April summit of Latin America and Caribbean leaders showed, the region is divided and unable to respond to the battery of U.S. demands and impositions with one voice.
Not only that: the April re-election of Daniel Noboa in Ecuador, who stressed his proximity to the White House, could well mark the onset of a wave of victories by right-leaning, pro-Trump candidates promising variable mixtures of tough security policies, leaner states, conservative cultural values and a fluid channel of communication with Washington. Already the hard right seems well positioned to win in Chile, a result that might be followed by electoral success in 2026 in Colombia, Peru and Brazil. El Salvador’s Bukele and Argentina’s Javier Milei, meanwhile, remain keenly aware of the legitimation they have received from Trump, who has blessed and exploited the former’s hardline security policies and expressed approval of the latter’s radical paring-down of the state and monetary reforms. Whether as assistants, apostles, sources of inspiration or circuits of mutual learning, Bukele and Milei seem keen to cleave ever more closely to the White House.
Serious Caveats
Yet there are serious caveats for the Trump administration as it pursues its goals, whether through political and ideological affinities or force-fed cooperation. With occasional tactical exceptions, such as U.S. backing for Argentina’s credit extension from the International Monetary Fund, or Washington’s readiness to forgo or postpone high tariffs on Latin American states, it is far from clear what, if anything, the U.S. is ready to offer the region in terms of broad economic aid, public investment or support for needs that are not immediately material to the White House’s denizens. With few resources to offer and a narrow vision as to how the region’s problems could be addressed, the toughest dilemmas in Latin America and the Caribbean that a series of administrations in Washington have battled with – instability and violence in Haiti, or state-led repression in Venezuela – could just as well confound Trump, while some of his top officials would prefer to avoid commitments that do not bring instant rewards for migration control.
Progress toward greater peace and security will also be difficult if – as seems likely – security cooperation with Washington is governed by a firm unilateral instinct.
Progress toward greater peace and security will also be difficult if – as seems likely – security cooperation with Washington is governed by a firm unilateral instinct, as well as a focus on the use of armed force. The designation of eight criminal groups, six of them Mexican, as foreign terrorist organisations could pave the way for U.S. military intervention if the Trump administration judges the results of security cooperation to be disappointing. But for countries such as Mexico and Colombia, both of whose governments are seeking to build more durable, effective law enforcement approaches than those applied during the often counterproductive “war on drugs”, reversion to military force from a U.S. slant promises few long-term gains. It is also likely to thwart each country’s ability to learn from its own experience to protect citizens better from violence.
Without doubt, the new administration’s strategy of browbeating Latin American states to extract their acquiescence has so far achieved its narrow goals, while shunting other challenges to the side. But taking the next step of revitalising a Monroe-inspired sphere of influence would seem far more difficult so long as the U.S. is unwilling to invest substantial resources in the endeavour. Although the region is likely to shift to the right, its economies remain attached to multiple different trade and business partners. Weaker states may well adapt to the new diplomatic playbook by hedging, learning to please Washington without retreating from their other key alliances: Trumpian favourite Bukele, after all, is one of China’s closest partners in Central America. Brazil’s government, for its part, has made clear that it now looks to BRICS, the bloc of developing countries that includes China, India and Russia, as the bulwark of the multilateral order. It is hosting the bloc’s next summit in July. Latin America’s governments and peoples, meanwhile, continue to exhibit stark political differences, and demands for sovereign independence will remain, as they have always been, fierce and prone to mobilise public wrath when they are disrespected.
Latin America’s weaknesses are manifest. At the moment, however, many of its leaders may elect to play a double game: doing what they must to mollify Washington’s priority demands, while seeking a safe haven by cultivating discreetly or overtly ties around the world rather than fortifying the line to the White House.
MENA: Looking for a Signal in the Noise
Some of the confusion stems from Trump’s trademark short attention span and shambolic management style. The biggest case in point is Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed well over 2,000 Palestinians since it was renewed on 18 March and more than 50,000 since it began (the figures do not distinguish between civilians and militants), following Hamas’s lethal attacks in Israel on 7 October 2023. The Biden administration largely gave Israel carte blanche for its retaliatory onslaught, long after it was clear that Israel could not achieve its stated war aim of destroying Hamas without devastating Gaza as well. After Biden’s seeming fecklessness, Witkoff’s widely reported rebuke of Netanyahu when he tried to stall the January ceasefire was an encouraging sign. Another was the administration’s decision to enter direct negotiations with Hamas over releasing hostages, a step the Biden team never appeared to contemplate.
But by March the picture had changed dramatically. Netanyahu visited the White House in February, emerging buoyed by Trump’s outrageous speculation about removing Palestinians from Gaza while the U.S. develops a “Riviera in the Middle East”. The Israeli premier heard this remark as an endorsement of his own plans to induce the Palestinians’ forced migration (characterised euphemistically as “voluntary emigration”) from the strip. Less than a month later, Israel reneged on its ceasefire commitments and restarted its bombardment of Gaza. Thus, not only has Trump seemed to condone ethnic cleansing, but he has also made the January ceasefire effort seem insincere – a gimmick to keep scenes of bloodshed from tainting his inauguration ceremony. The reversal has also heightened tensions with long-time U.S. ally Egypt, which still fears that Gaza’s Palestinians would end up there, if they were uprooted, and regards that scenario as anathema.
The administration’s Gaza diplomacy has highlighted Trump’s heavy reliance on Witkoff. The latter may be capable of driving a hard bargain, as with Netanyahu in January, but as noted the president expects him to shoulder not only the Gaza negotiations but also U.S. efforts to mediate an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine and deal with Iran.
Ideological Battles
Nor does either Trump or Witkoff appear to have a handle on the ideological battles raging within the administration about Middle East policy. Broadly speaking, these pit adherents of a traditional U.S. approach to the region against critics of it. In recent history, the Middle East has received disproportionate attention in U.S. foreign policy thinking, due to its strategic location, its hydrocarbon riches (on which the global economy still relies) and the domestic political importance of ties with Israel. During the Cold War, it was a key arena for competition with the Soviet Union and, in more recent decades, it has been the locus of Islamist militant threats to the U.S. and U.S. interests. Few U.S. strategists like this state of affairs, however. Since at least the Obama administration, they have been pining for a “pivot to Asia”, so as to leave the Middle East’s intractable conflicts behind and concentrate on what they see as the contest with China for 21st-century world primacy. Yet the Middle East has stubbornly remained central to U.S. foreign policy, a fact that has been on vivid display in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks.
The costs of that outsized role have produced many sceptics in Washington, some of whom are represented in the Trump administration. Early personnel decisions, particularly at the Pentagon, suggested that the sceptics would have an important voice in policymaking. The short-lived outreach to Hamas and the willingness to talk to Iran – both of which challenged conservative orthodoxy and opened cracks of daylight between the U.S. and Israel – were hints of their alternate approach in action. Their objections to establishment logic are rooted in a narrower understanding of vital U.S. interests and how to secure them, which critics have described as neo-isolationist. They surfaced in the inadvertently disclosed Signal chat about striking Yemen’s Houthis to deter them from attacking merchant vessels in the Red Sea headed for the Suez Canal. Of the planned operation, Vice President Vance said: “3 per cent of U.S. trade runs through the Suez. 40 per cent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary”.
Decisions about Yemen also demonstrate how difficult it will be for sceptics to shift U.S. thinking about the region.
But the traditionalists still carry a lot of weight. That Trump’s next major foreign visit will be to Saudi Arabia – an absolute monarchy and the region’s ultimate status quo power – further belies the notion of a major reorientation. Decisions about Yemen also demonstrate how difficult it will be for sceptics to shift U.S. thinking about the region. Vance’s doubts in the Signal chat not only failed to win the day, but also brought him grief from Republican hawks who accused him of substituting his judgment for Trump’s. The U.S. has subsequently escalated its bombing of Yemen, though most analysts believe the raids unlikely to deter the Houthis or degrade their capacity to attack Red Sea shipping.
The traditionalist faction in the Trump administration also seems to reign supreme on Syria, where reluctance to engage with the country’s new leaders in light of their jihadist past has produced a wait-and-see approach that could doom construction of a viable order after the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Thus far, the U.S. does not appear to be giving serious consideration to lifting sanctions on Syria, which severely constrict its trade. The U.S. has at least offered a list of conditions for additional partial sanctions relief, but simply extending existing exemptions and offering limited additional carveouts will have limited impact. If it does not change course, the administration could help trigger a relapse into conflict that could endanger the country’s minorities, boost Islamist militancy anew and set off more uncontrolled migration out of Syria.
A Cloudy Forecast
Things do not have to go this way. The U.S. could engage Syria’s new authorities and de-escalate with the Houthis. Though Trump seems to have forgotten about Gaza, even as aid organisations run out of supplies and Palestinians near starvation amid Israel’s blockade, the White House could decide to push for a lasting ceasefire in the strip, which would have salutary knock-on effects on several other regional files.
But forecasts are a fool’s errand, not least because the president himself is so unpredictable. He may stand by Witkoff, come what may, or he may toss him aside, as he has done with so many loyalists before. He may send policy down unexpected paths with unfiltered directives, such as with his demand that U.S. ships have free use of the Suez Canal. Regional actors also have a vote: if Israel keeps squeezing Gaza unchecked or, worse, tries to force Palestinians to leave the territory for Egypt, the administration is likely to find itself preoccupied with Middle East affairs whether it wants to be or not. In the meantime, there may simply be no signal to discern amid the noise.
Trump has one trait – a preference for transactionalism over warfighting – that could be good news for the Middle East. His desire for a deal with Iran creates an opportunity for diplomacy that deserves support. Success in talks with Tehran would avert a potentially ruinous war and could boost diplomatic efforts elsewhere. But challenges to reaching a new agreement, particularly one that Trump can portray as better than the deal he scrapped during his first term, are formidable. As the president himself has said, failure would likely raise the risks of armed conflict, with Israel in particular eager to see bombs drop on Iranian nuclear sites.
In the Middle East, the Trump administration’s disdain for how things have always been done could do good but, as things stand, the region also appears to be the place where Trump runs the highest risk of getting sucked into the foreign adventurism he has disavowed.
The Multilateral System: Less with Less
The Trump administration has done much to weaken the multilateral system in its first 100 days – but it has also highlighted how weak that system was in the first place. Since January, the administration has slashed funding for UN humanitarian agencies. It has disdained UN Charter principles by articulating a nakedly expansionist agenda – threatening aggression against Greenland and Panama, as well as musing about designs on Canada and Gaza. U.S. officials have also denounced a series of more recently enshrined principles – including sustainable development and gender equality – that most UN members hold dear. Yet if this U.S. rejection of the post-1945 international order has been striking, the failure of other nations to rush to that order’s defence – including financially – is equally remarkable.
Different from 2017
It was different in 2017. When the first Trump administration tried to make swipes at international cooperation, such as by renouncing the Paris climate agreement, other countries rose to protect it with initiatives such as the Franco-German-led Alliance for Multilateralism. Events also conspired to highlight the UN’s usefulness: the Security Council became the locus of U.S. efforts to manage a nuclear crisis with North Korea. It helped that Trump’s choice for UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, was welcomed by other delegations as a traditional Republican – someone who was hawkish and hyper-protective of Israel but looking to work within rather than dismantle the system.
Not so today. The system has no clear champion. European powers have made it clear that, preoccupied with their own defence as Trump retrenches from Europe, they have little cash to spare for UN operations. China has telegraphed that it will not bail out multilateral bodies deserted by Washington. In New York, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has bowed to pressure from the organisation’s donors to face financial reality. UN officials say he hopes to remove “bloat” from the organisation as part of a rapidly cobbled together, but potentially radical, reform project called UN80, eight decades after the founding San Francisco Conference.
Non-U.S. diplomats in New York and Geneva insist that they will fight for international law and cooperation as best they can, but it is not clear how far they can go. After the U.S. quit talks on a pandemic accord in January, other UN members approved the deal, which should help them react to future plagues in a more joined-up way. But many diplomats admit that their political masters back home are wary of taking positions at the UN that would risk bilateral relationships with Washington. The lack of a strong international response to the administration’s behaviour is also, in part, a reflection of many states’ pre-existing frustrations with the multilateral system. UN members have been exasperated with the Security Council’s failure to resolve the wars in Ukraine and Gaza – the latter a source of deep resentment toward the Biden administration – while questioning the UN’s relevance to international economic development.
A Haphazard Approach
The Trump administration’s own approach to the Security Council has been haphazard. In February, it shocked its European allies by collaborating with Russia on a Council resolution calling for peace in Ukraine which made no reference to Kyiv’s sovereignty. U.S. and Russian diplomats have also coordinated closely to guide Council debates on Syria, previously a persistent source of dissension between them. But the administration has paid only sporadic attention to most other items on the Council agenda. It has pressed hard for the body to condemn violence in South Sudan, for example, but let discussions of the breakdown of order in Haiti drift. Council members are braced for further rows with the U.S. over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though they have so far avoided tabling any resolution on Gaza that would outrage Washington.
The administration has also undercut the UN’s pretensions to a role in international development. While the organisation’s operational contribution to development has long been in decline, it has remained a platform for rich and poor states to hash out common visions of aid, including the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Biden administration negotiated a series of agreements at the UN that acknowledged the economic concerns of developing countries – notably unsustainable debt loads – and the need to reform the international financial system to address them. It was never clear that Washington would fulfill such pledges. The Trump administration has rendered this question moot, declaring that the U.S. is no longer committed to the SDGs and launching a raft of tariffs that are likely to hit poor and heavily indebted countries hard. International officials are at least mildly relieved that the U.S. remains engaged with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. But it is clear that the White House will not address the fallout of tariffs through multilateral frameworks, instead, as President Trump prefers, pressing countries to work out bilateral trade deals.
Toward Less with Less
Though the administration’s cuts to humanitarian aid directly affect fewer countries than its economic policies, they threaten to hollow out one part of the UN system that many diplomats felt was irreplaceable. In a period of mounting conflicts and climate change-related shocks, UN agencies like the World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees have offered a safety net for many vulnerable populations. As of 2024, the U.S. was covering almost half the costs of many major humanitarian efforts. The Trump administration has rejected this logic, and its flurry of budget reductions mean that aid agencies will have to rein in their operations significantly – as the WFP underlined in late April when it announced it would cut a quarter to almost a third of its staff. Aid experts acknowledge that the UN has some bureaucratic fat to trim, but these reductions erode the UN’s last remaining claims to global relevance.
The result, as international officials admit, will be a smaller multilateral system that does “less with less” in many important fields. In the short term, this problem is an operational and financial one. UN departments and agencies need to work out how to streamline their operations as responsibly as possible. But in the longer term, the problem is a political one as well. If a growing number of states simply do not believe that multilateral forums can help meet their security, economic or humanitarian needs, they will either disengage from international institutions or use them merely as platforms for voicing grievances. Some diplomats speculate that the Trump administration, which is undertaking a comprehensive review of its multilateral commitments, could eventually pull the U.S. out of the UN altogether. But the evidence of its first 100 days in office suggests that many other states – Western and non-Western alike – are less dramatically tiptoeing away from a UN system that they increasingly find neither useful nor trustworthy.
@International Crisis Group (ICG)
