US President Donald Trump might now be doing to the US and the West far more than what the former Soviet Union ever dreamt of doing during the Cold War that dominated global politics from the end of World War II until the early 1990s.
Populist slogans like “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) and “America First” are starting to lose steam among the many Americans negatively affected by Trump administration policies. Some economists and political analysts have harshly criticised the administration’s trade policies. Even Trump ally the billionaire Elon Musk has talked publicly about the negative effects of tariffs on US trade.
But what Trump is doing, whether intentionally or unintentionally, goes far beyond just trade and economics. He and his team are not only targeting the “establishment” in the US, but they are also destroying the post-Cold War order without advancing a plausible alternative. His actions are thus rather similar to those carried out during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. US policymakers from that period, together with then UK prime minister Tony Blair, now admit that while they still think they were right to invade Iraq, they had no clear or effective plans about what to do next.
The most serious element in Trump administration policies is that it is pulling back the US leadership role in the West, thus threatening its international hegemony. Many external forces during previous decades have not been able to achieve what Trump and his team have fulfilled in a few months when it comes to undermining American leadership.
Some might think that the far-right and extremist trends that are rising in Europe and other sections of the West are extensions of Washington’s plans. However, in fact Trump’s rhetoric about Europe is creating unprecedented currents in Europe that could change the face of the trans-Atlantic relationships for years to come.
Many Western European tourists have apparently cancelled their Easter vacations in the US, not only due to newly introduced measures vetting visitors to American soil, but also as a result of comments made by Trump administration figures that visiting America is a “privilege” that is not freely granted and is something that needs to be paid for. Many people are increasingly boycotting anything American, from alcoholic drinks to cars.
Such developments in themselves are unlikely to be serious, unlike the growing understanding among Western elites that the Atlantic Charter signed by then UK prime minister Winston Churchill and US president Franklin Roosevelt in 1941 is over. As veteran commentator Martin Wolf put it in a recent article in the UK Financial Times, “the US is now the enemy of the West.”
The former Biden administration sought to “reclaim America’s role in the world” by reviving its leadership role in a “strong Western alliance.” The war in Ukraine and the administration’s policy of standing up to Russia was the route towards that. The Trump administration is now reneging on the war in Ukraine, and the Europeans are feeling increasingly abandoned.
The UK is still living in the illusion of a “special relationship” between Washington and London. This is a manifestation of Britain’s weakened state and the larger US retreat. The rest of Europe and the West in general is realising that US leadership is waning. In an opinion piece for the UK Economist magazine, for example, former prime minister of Denmark and Secretary-General of NATO Anders Fogh Rasmussen concluded that “the security architecture that Europe has relied on for generations is gone and is not coming back. Amid a new global conflict of ideals, we no longer know where America stands.”
There is no doubt that the earlier position of the US in the world drew huge support from its Western allies. Since the end of Cold War, some in America even thought that such arrangements represented “the end of history” and had become permanent. However, the current administration sees such alliances as a “burden” that it does not wish to shoulder, perhaps assuming that American power is so entrenched in global affairs that it can be maintained by inertia.
Many commentators suppose that as long as there is no viable alternative to the US position as the world’s only superpower it will stay in that position. But history is neither linear nor static; it is a complex process that involves different peoples and powers interacting with one another. The traditional notion that the US is not led by individuals as much as by institutions that set out its broader strategic interests is no longer valid. Not only has the US been taken over by individuals like Trump and his associates, but the institutions that used to define US power have been deteriorating since the 1980s.
Such deterioration of the so-called establishment is not confined to the US but has been observed all over the globe in different degrees. This could be part of the process of change in the so-called international order. However, the transition is not a clean one, and the role of the leading powers in it is chaotic in nature.
This does not necessarily mean that states such as China supported by the BRICS group of countries or other global players will become the next leaders of a new world order. The future is unclear, and the gap left by the US could be filled by a conglomerate of nations rather than a sole agent. The curve of civilisation could be plunging downwards, and the bottom of it might not yet be clear.
The writer is a London-based seasoned journalist.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 8 May, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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