Trump's Likely Foreign Policy

In his second term, Donald Trump will be determined to pursue a foreign policy that more closely resembles how the U.S. engaged with the world for the first 170 years of the republic: pursuing abundance at home and selective engagement abroad.

True, U.S. power faces several structural challenges. Compared with the Cold War era, America’s industrial base is weaker, as evidenced by its current inability to build nuclear-powered attack submarines at a fast enough replacement rate, which will likely compromise Australia’s ability to acquire Virginia-class submarines in the 2030s.

There will be a reckoning in relation to U.S. public debt, which will rise to 122 percent of GDP by 2034 and already requires more to be spent on public debt interest than defence. Trump will need to better balance America’s commitments and its power if his foreign policy is to command domestic support.

By virtue of its power, the U.S. is able to shape world order to an extent no other actor is able to, China included. Trump is a power politician. He understands that foreign relationships and transactions are an unsentimental function of power relativities and not abstract global rules that seek to fetter the exercise of sovereign power by nation-states. (On this, his speeches to the UN General Assembly are worth re-reading.)

Trump will be prepared to continue to extend U.S. security to those who are prepared to do more to defend themselves, so long as doing so is also in the interest of the U.S.. Those who spend less on defence than the U.S. (at least 3 percent of GDP) will have to lift their spending or make commensurate in-kind contributions to their own security.

Australia is well placed to make or extend mutually beneficial deals with the second Trump administration, especially in relation to critical minerals, the production of nuclear-powered attack submarines at a faster rate, advanced military technology and further access to our geographically crucial facilities and infrastructure.

However, our weak levels of defence spending will become a point of contention if it is judged that we are not doing more to ensure the self-reliant defence of Australia.

We should not assume, however, that a return to this older style of U.S. foreign policy will result in a withdrawn and isolated U.S.. The world is today too interconnected and closer than was the case in the early 1940s, when isolationists held significant sway in U.S. politics. On the contrary, the U.S. is likely to remain very active in the world, but under different terms and in pursuit of more focused objectives. When it is in the U.S. national interest, Trump will take resolute action—as he did in his first term against Iran, including by way of imposing oppressive sanctions, withdrawing from the Obama-era nuclear deal and ordering the assassination of Qassem Soleimani.

As a disrupter, Trump may strike a grand bargain between the U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia and others, whereby Israel would be secure, Palestinians would be able to live in peace and Iran would be contained. That deal would be worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The U.S. will be a powerful actor under and after Trump. For it to be great again, there is one challenge it will have to meet. Trump will have to intensify efforts to ensure that China does not establish itself as the hegemon of Eurasia.

Were it to do so, across time it would gain dominance over the resources, markets and economic power of the world’s strategic heartland. This would undercut the strategic and commercial interests of the U.S..

A hegemonic China would grow in strength and eventually threaten the U.S. in its hemispheric citadel. It will be in the interests of the U.S. to prevail in this struggle for mastery in Eurasia.

Trump will prefer to do this by way of aggressive trade, investment, technology decoupling and strategic deterrence, avoiding a military clash if possible. Intrinsic to this approach will be the maintenance of forward-deployed U.S. forces in the western Pacific and the strengthening of the latticework of U.S.-centred regional security partnerships that has emerged across the past decade.

Still, he will need to be convinced to defend Taiwan. The arguments for doing so would have to be framed within this counter-hegemonic strategy. Taiwan will need to show it is willing to do much more to defend itself, including by way of an extensive rearmament program.

There is a prospect of a golden age of American power, where a self-interested U.S., working with equally self-interested allies and partners, and not embarrassed to wield that power, accomplishes a world-changing quadrella: to thwart China, flip Russia, contain Iran and isolate North Korea. If it can accomplish this sweep of the grand chessboard of Eurasia, the U.S. will be not just powerful but great again. Motivated by America-first instincts that are deeply rooted in U.S. strategic culture, Trump has the opportunity to bring about a transformation of the world order that would rival the earlier achievements of Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan at the bookends of the Cold War.

Michael Pezzullo is a former deputy secretary of defence and was secretary of home affairs until November 2023. This article was first published in The Australian.

This article appeared originally at The Strategist (ASPI).