What, exactly, does President-elect Donald J. Trump believe? From 1987 until 1999 he was a Republican; that year, he changed to the nearly defunct Reform Party, an obscure New York City legacy party. He then became a Democrat from 2001 until 2008, when he switched back to the Republicans again.
Meanwhile, simply in the past week, he’s walked back from several campaign pledges, including his promise to deport many millions of immigrants and wholly repeal the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare as it’s so often known.
And yet it matters much less than the 24/7 news cycle implies. President-elect Trump is not the be all, end all of the United States of America. He, as Obama before him and Bush before him, must play by the rules.
Why Mr. Trump cannot undo America’s superpower status.
This I have seen floating on various Facebook comments, so often upvoted to sky-high levels. Forget, of course, that Facebook is increasingly a source for misinformation: let’s take a look at the claim itself.
For President-elect Trump to undo America’s superpower status, he would have to lose not several hard-to-lose pillars that hold up U.S. power. Moreover, he’d have to allow a near-peer to replace the U.S. in a significant way in Europe or Asia. This is a tall ask for a man who may only have until 2018 until Congress switches back to the Democrats.
American power is upheld by three pillars: geography, demography, and influence. Geographically, the U.S. enjoys access to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the most valuable oceans on Earth, while its latitude gives its farms a strong growing season. Its size bestows upon it a huge resource base, while its river systems make trade cheaper and its agriculture more fertile. Additionally, it has only two land neighbors it must defend from at any given time.
Its near-peers – China and Russia primarily – have some, but not all, of those advantages. Neither power has good access to the Atlantic; Russia’s river system isn’t as good as America’s; both must defend from no less than 14 land neighbors at any given time.
Unless Mr. Trump somehow undermines American geography by losing large chunks of America to rebellion, this advantage will be there in 2020 or 2024, meaning a successor can recover from Trumpian mistakes. There is no reason to believe that Calexit, or any sudden secessionist movement, will go anywhere; besides, the last time someone tried, the Federal government butchered them.
Demographically, the U.S. has a huge and still young population. It doesn’t have Russia’s post-Soviet demographic slide, nor China’s greying burden. Short of plague or nuclear war, that advantage too will be intact by the end of a presumable second Trump term.
Finally, Mr. Trump would also have to provoke a collapse of American influence worldwide. This would require repeated and pointed mistakes that would collapse NATO, the American Pacific alliance network, U.S. ties to the Persian Gulf Arabs, U.S. ties to Israel, and America’s influence in Latin America.
The way to think about geopolitical power is best illustrated by the diagram below.
Yet the toll on influence is worth considering.
President-elect Trump’s choices will absolutely profoundly affect that outermost layer. American presidents have long had a great deal of leeway over American foreign power: they have squandered, or shored up, U.S. geopolitical influence as readily as the moon waxes and wanes. America has long been able to afford this: it’s geographic and demographic strengths allow mistakes others cannot afford.
Mr. Trump has been terribly unclear about everything foreign policy-wise minus trade deals. Yet that is telling: Mr. Trump is clearly committed to American protectionism and America First economics.
That is an assault on American worldwide economic influence, at least as it stands now. Since 1991, the United States has allowed a handful of its elites to establish powerful trade deals worldwide, slowing bringing powerful nation-states into U.S.-style capitalism. Sold as a way to “raise all boats,” this system has instead concentrated wealth into ever-less-efficient echelons of the elite. Any politician who attacked it was bound to eventually attract a following.
This happened first with Brexit, with Nigel Farage telling Britons that cutting Britain off from Europe would restore the wealth balance of yesteryear. It was essentially the same message of the Trump campaign: end free trade, and make America great again.
So if the United States does decide to shut down trade deals, it will mean other nation-states will take their cue to do so as well. This means the United States will essentially be giving up conquered territory so it can withdraw, consolidate, and conquer the same territory anew. Having convinced much of the world to adopt globalization, it may waste a great deal of influence and energy trying to reverse its own success.
And as for America’s allies? Trump could give them a hard shove towards rearmament.
All of America’s key allies, including France and Britain, are comparatively disarmed – none of them are capable of the great power projection of yesteryear. That suits long-term American interests fine: the fewer armies and navies on the map, the better. Both NATO and America’s Asian allies believe the U.S., with its massive navy and awesome military technology, will ride to the rescue, and therefore don’t need to pay as much for their own defense.
So if Trump is serious in his desire to force American allies to pay more for defense, he will instead begin a slow road towards a multipolar world that does few any good. America’s allies largely behave well because they leave the warmongering to the United States; consider that Japan and North Korea despise one another but have never come close to war, or that Greece and Turkey have scores to settle, and domestic audiences to distract, yet dare not shoot one another.
It is less likely that old imperial powers like Britain and France, who disarmed voluntarily, will suddenly return to empire, but rather that forcibly disarmed foes will begin to behave independently and unpredictably. These are numerous: Japan, Poland, Turkey, and even potentially Germany all lost big in the 20th century, and all were once great powers. Japan has squabbles with China and both Koreas; Turkey desires to crush Kurdistan before it even happens, and has disputes with Greece; Poland fears a return of Russian power, and means to resist it; and Germany’s Nazi guilt is both literally and figuratively dying out, replaced by the xenophobia and nationalism gripping other European nation-states.
Should any of these powers believe the United States will no longer police the world, they will have incentive to rearm and to act in their own interests. They will forge alliances outside of the U.S.; a Polish coalition of eastern Europe could replace NATO, Japanese nationalism could push American influence from both the Koreas and the Sea of Japan, Turkish armies could reshape both Syria and Iraq to Ankara’s, and not Washington’s, liking. And if America begins to fight trade wars, there is no reason to believe Germany, if American influence is too weak in Berlin, won’t fight back.
The problem with all that? It’s slow, and the presidency has limits.
Recall that Barack Obama campaigned in 2008 on “getting us out of Iraq”, yet has been forced to redeploy troops to Iraq in the face of the Islamic State threat. IS did not happen because Obama withdrew; it conquered because Obama withdrew, since it faced no credible enemy in the Iraqi army. To lose Iraq to the Islamic State was unacceptable and forced Obama’s hand.
That’s because within the ranks of the elite, as well as with voters in general, a realization took hold that Iraq was worth deploying power for. This was fast because the conquests of the Islamic State were fast, but had IS slowly crept up and taken Mosul over years, rather than months, the results would have been the same. There are geopolitical redlines that, if crossed, will activate both elites and citizens to respond.
Trump has already walked back from some his more extreme proposals: this is the nature of the presidency, limited even as president-elect by the Constitution, Congress, and the institutions that make up its government. This is not to say that the Trump presidency will suddenly be a good thing, only that if it makes too many mistakes, elites will take advantage of its weaknesses to replace it with a more effective president in 2020.
Onward to the 2020s.
If Trump slowly erodes American global influence to no great disaster, and wins a second term, it could set the stage for the normalization of withdrawal. A president might only win in 2024 on the basis of keeping the Trump world order, with the implication to withdraw further.
That does not, however, threaten America’s geography or demography, nor does it suddenly fix the disadvantages Russia and China have. A president in 2024, elected on the platform of restoring America’s world position, would still have a superpower to do so. They might have to work hard to regain lost ground, but few other nation-states in history have ever been as able to wax and wane like the United States.
The long-term threats to America’s superpower status are more distant: someone finding a way to trade via outer space would negate America’s advantages on the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, while over time America’s demographic advantage might go the way of Western Europe and grey to the point of weakness. Secessionist movements, especially along the border with Mexico, could crop up later in the century; so too could regionalists, who may over time come to despise other parts of the country as the North and South once did. But that is a long way off, and beyond Trump’s power to accomplish in just a short 4-8 year presidency.
Whatever Trump brings, it will not be the fall of America. That is a bigger project than any one president.
Rogue Geopolitics 
Boy – your analysis sounds an awful lot like Peter Zeihan’s in “The Accidental Superpower”.
Of course – reasonably intelligent folks looking at the same data are likely to come to similar, if not identical, conclusions. America will survive.
The tragedy is that our citizenry have no real appreciation of our status in the world. We’re likely to go through four to eight years of domestic strife and economic dislocation for no good reason. We have nothing to gain by withdrawing from the world. But by fully engaging with the world we can – potentially – gain the whole enchilada.
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I think this analysis is a bit on the optimistic side about a few things, and possibly in error about others.
First off, identity politics. It’s not quite the same deal, but there’s that old, old saying: “Republicans fall in line, Democrats fall in love.” I was afraid of it the whole damn election with the Bernie Bros running around, and that certainly played a big part. So the “cult of personality” factor isn’t something I’d classify as being the same as “identity politics.” Cult of Personality is FDR getting elected so many times. Identity Politics is the Republicans picking Michael Steele to head the RNC right after Obama was elected, because they just assumed black was fashionable after the 2008 election. And part of the negatives of politics is that someone who happened to run as a woman is now being painted as “I should be president just because I’m a woman. Just ignore the part where I’m more qualified for the role than anyone run by the opposing party in the last 40 years.”
As far as anyone who would refuse to vote for the reasonable party because it takes them for granted… well, they kinda deserve what they get after that kind of thinking.
I’d love it if I had two sane parties to pick from, especially if the U.S. actually got a liberal party, but the choice is between a moderate party and a crazy party (my apologies to crazy people, but there’s not a better term for something so divorced from reality and so consistently wrong). I’d love it if Democrats catered more to atheists… but that’s no excuse for helping give power to the Religious Right, for instance.
As far as the influence thing, his policies aren’t that muddy. I know people are trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I wouldn’t. He’s already an apologist to Russia’s particular version of expanding their influence on the world, which is likely to include messing around in Eastern Europe and the Middle East now (an opinion I’ve stated since before this Turkey incident, though that was after this post above). As far as Eastern Europe goes, Trump’s already told NATO to go fuck themselves (possibly literally, knowing him), and he’s made it clear he doesn’t care about being a superpower in Asia. Kind of a bad sign when an American president endorses North Korea getting nukes.
But North Korea doesn’t need to have them. They have a huge, if ill-equipped, army within marching distance of their main enemy: South Korea. And their minder, China, is about to enter a pretty tense standoff with Russia due to the Middle East thing.
All it would take for the next World War to break out is a border incident grown out of proportion between an expansionist Russia and an increasingly agitated China.
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Thanks for the input! I just had a pointless Disqus back and forth with a troglodyte so this is quite refreshing. Let me respond in points.
Point 1 about identity politics: I totally agree.
Point 2 about Trump policies: When I wrote the piece, we had a genuine cloud of how serious he was. They keep saying “Take him seriously but not literally,” and that just confuses the matter more. Having switched parties, positions, etc., so many times, Trump’s mercurial quality makes it hard to judge what he means to do.
Point 3: I suspect Trump will be subsumed under some Cheney-like advisor, and it seems like they’re all anti-China, anti-Iran, and perhaps open to Russia as an alliance against both. I think that’s all a bad idea: Iran has moderate who need encouraging, not thwarting, while Putin will use America and turn on the U.S. the moment he sees advantage, so it doesn’t serve us to make an alliance with him.
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Been there as far as Disqus. Not even a good system, let alone that fun when you get caught up with someone who doesn’t listen.
I suppose it is somewhat difficult to know at this point how serious he is. Like the Hillary thing, which I don’t take as having been a very serious thing for him. His stance on Mexico is a whole ‘nother ball game, and this protective tariff he’s wanting to implement is the kind of thing I’ve been trying to point out to people would actually work out worse for the U.S. I’m fond of history, and can’t help but remember the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, though its effects were difficult to measure in a vacuum since it was implemented during the Great Depression. Best case scenario, it didn’t help at all.
I think his unpredictability is also a factor as far as whether or not someone else will take over. I can see it happening, since he doesn’t show much temperment for actually running things and could very well tell Pence to handle stuff while he goes and does rallies. On the other hand, Trump’s very easy to provoke and hard to control when he sets his mind to something. The guy’s a president-elect who had to have his twitter privileges taken away because he was late-night tweeting for people to go watch a sex tape of a woman he used to call fat.
Under any other administration, that’d be hyperbole.
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