Observed through a liberalist/idealist lens, U.S. President Donald Trump’s actions make not much sense, in fact they appear illegal, immoral, inhuman and in the end, unnecessarily risky.
What experts – and politicians, average people – using that lens fail to notice is that ‘liberalism’ is just one of the many possible tools to explain the workings of the world and the relationships between countries. Exactly as students of international relations learn early on as they venture on to memorize a plethora of theories from Morgenthau to Keohane and Nye.
As Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth put it last December, the Trump administration marked a new era of ‘hard-nosed realism’.
Not because this administration is rotten to its core – but because it realized that the liberal theory no longer worked to explain (and to govern) world affairs. But classical realism and its many sub-branches do.
The U.S. could stick to the liberalist approach, could try to protect legitimate American interest with an ever-growing network of agreements, multinational organizations and ‘sticks and carrots’ approach.
In this new era of great power competition, defined by the conflict between the U.S. and China, and to a lesser extent, Russia; politics is governed by the laws of human nature and national interest is defined in terms of power. There’s no place for abstract moral principles – at least not in direct application. They must be filtered through the practical circumstances.
Observed through a ‘realist’ lens, the latest actions of the Trump administration – Venezuela and Iran – make perfect sense.
The U.S.’s paradigm shift might seem shocking, but it’s merely a reaction to the harsh reality, in which Washington’s main adversaries only half-heartedly follow the liberal playbook.
They cherry-pick the rules, principles and institutions they observe and quietly ignoring the rest.
Or manipulate the liberal world order to meet their needs – while, at the same moment, quietly but ruthlessly applying realist principles when it comes to securing their power. China had no moral reservations to make deals with shady rulers-slash-dictators when it came to securing mines in Africa, whereas the EU, and to an extent Washington, too, tied such deals to ‘democratic reforms’ or to ‘observing the rule of law’.
The new American National Security Strategy only reflects on this reality.
As Ryan C. Berg, the director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies said, ‘some of the rules, some of the unthinkables, some of the things that we wouldn’t have previously imagined being part of the operation are now on the table as options’:
Venezuela and Iran are both the same sides of the coin of the policy some mock as the ‘realists’ grand experiment’: President Trump intervened where it hurts Russia and China, without engaging in direct confrontation with any of them. A show of force from Washington, mirroring the Russian and Chinese thinking about spheres of influence – and aimed at weakening the BRICS, forcing China and Russia to rethink their own approaches.
His demands towards the EU and the NATO are rooted in the same system of beliefs: Europe needs to stand on its own feet and cannot rely on the U.S. for protection or support. Especially not if it’s not ready to take on a greater share of the burden.
The American 180-turn seems sudden or even rash, but has been in motion for some time, even if most politicians fought tooth and nail to maintain the illusion of continuity.
The Trump administration ended the political theatre and finally put the U.S. on an equal footing with its main adversaries: now everybody is playing on the same field with the same set of rules.
