Stress Test: Can a Troubled Order Survive a Disruptive Leader? PDF

J ANUARY/ FEBRUARY 2025 VOLUME 104 NUMBER 1 St res sTe st CanaTr ouble dOr...

J ANUARY/ FEBRUARY 2025 VOLUME 104 NUMBER 1 St res sTe st CanaTr ouble dOr de r Sur viv eaDi srupt iveLea der ? MARGARET MACMI LLI AN Copy rig ht©2 024bytheCounc ilo nFore ignRela tio ns, Inc.Al lri ght sre se rve d.Tor equ estp ermi ss io ntod ist ri but eorr epr intt his ar ti cl e,pl eas evi sitFor ei g nAffai rs.c om/ Permis si ons.  WI LL T RUMP CHANGE T H E WORLD? Stress Test Can a Troubled Order Survive a Disruptive Leader? Margaret M ac Millan H istorians are skittish about catastrophic events, ensuring what is predicting the future, and supposed to be benevolent and stable not only because there are rule for centuries. But these assump- too many variables and possibilities. tions are shattered by the appearance of It is also not always easy to grasp the the Mule, a mutant with extraordinary significance of events when you are in powers and millions of devoted follow- the middle of them. When the Ber- ers, who threatens to overturn the order lin Wall came down in 1989, people and bring back unpredictability. grasped at once that a new era had Is Trump the Mule of our times? started. But few Europeans foresaw He, too, likes to see himself as the that the assassination of Austrian destroyer of conventions and rules Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sara- and the breaker of institutions. And jevo in June 1914 would precipitate he, too, rose to power on the back of a terrifying, continent-spanning war a personal mass following, raising the in which more than 16 million people question of whether he has the poten- would be killed, and even tech experts tial to change the course of events did not understand the significance of and create a different United States the iPhone when Apple’s CEO, Steve in a different world. The presiden- Jobs, unveiled it in 2007. tial contest went off calmly, much to Since Donald Trump’s victory in the the relief of many, but if Trump and U.S. presidential election last Novem- his supporters mean what they say, ber, it has been hard not to think of Republican control of the presidency Isaac Asimov’s classic science fiction and Congress, along with a pliant trilogy, The Foundation, published Supreme Court, will bring major just at the end of World War II. In changes to the way the United States it, humanity’s future has been largely is governed—including to the rule of tamed by a brilliant mathematician law. The president-elect has threat- who uses statistical laws to control ened to do away with independent human behavior and protect against government agencies he doesn’t like, MARGARET M AC MILLAN is Professor Emeritus of International History at Oxford University and the author of War: How Conflict Shaped Us and The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914. 8 foreign affairs PHOTO SOURCE: GET TY IAMGES Illustrations by Tyler Comrie 9  Will Trump Change the World? turn others into his own fiefdoms, the international order, can withstand politicize the military, and bypass the stress. In the face of the Great Congress with term appointments if Depression, the democratic systems of it refuses to approve his nominations. the United Kingdom and the United He has criticized American allies States proved resilient, but those of publicly and, worse, to their adver- Germany and Japan collapsed, and saries. And he sees no value or benefit the world descended into the worst to the United States in international military conflict of the modern era. In law, rules, or institutions such as the the United States today, the roots of United Nations, the World Trade its democracy run deep, and the dis- Organization, or the World Health persal of power between the federal Organization, and he denigrates even government and the states limits what bedrock U.S. alliances such as NATO. any one administration can do. Asimov was a scientist, but he was But the experience of the past is a dealing with one of the central ques- reminder that the strength of institu- tions about individuals’ capacity to tions can be very hard to assess before change the course of history—spe- they are directly challenged. That cifically those who have the power and holds true for the international order, the drive to shatter an existing order. as well. Although today’s order appears And he was also raising a related to be stronger and more resilient than question: Was the old order doomed its 1930s counterpart, in recent years, anyway, and if so, are such individ- norms that were long considered invi- uals merely agents of the external olable have been flouted. As of now, forces that shaped them? The answer it is unclear whether Trump will be may lie somewhere in the middle. It able to achieve his often stated goal of is unlikely that the young Napoleon massive change to usher in a new age Bonaparte, from a modest back- or will find himself constrained—by ground, would have been able to rise existing laws and structures of gov- to power without the upheavals of the ernment, by the political opposition at French Revolution of 1789. Russian home, or by others abroad. What ulti- President Vladimir Putin might not mately happens is likely to depend as have been able to seize the levers of much on the balance of forces around power had the nascent political sys- him as on his own use of power. tem of post-Soviet Russia been more established. Like Chinese President DELUSIONS OF RUPTURE Xi Jinping, he has built a highly per- Scholars have long been divided on sonal rule, reshaping his powerful the question of whether leaders shape country around himself and bringing or are shaped by larger forces. Polit- about major shifts in the global order. ical scientists are generally wary of As observers try to gauge what the studying individual actors, preferring second Trump presidency will mean to focus on what can be counted and for the United States and the world, aggregated. Their literature on leaders a more important question may be and leadership is sparse—surprisingly how well American democracy, and so perhaps, given how much attention 10 foreign affairs  Will Trump Change the World? and public debate there is over the empire and made Russia respected motivations and probable actions of and feared by its neighbors. those in power today. Historians, by That conviction—that they have contrast, have found it easier to write been chosen, whether by destiny, fate, about key figures, as, for example, Ian or the gods—has motivated and sus- Kershaw did in his masterful biography tained political leaders, great thinkers, of Adolf Hitler and Stephen Kotkin generals, and revolutionaries, but it has in his of Joseph Stalin. Yet historians often made them unwilling or unable are constantly aware of the challenge to take advice or admit they are wrong. of finding the right balance between And this has sometimes led to mad individuals and the social and polit- policies that have resulted in disaster ical forces around them. Of course, for their peoples. Hitler destroyed all leaders are products of their times, Germany in his quest for Aryan dom- whether in their ideas and values or inance, and Mao Zedong killed tens of in their assumptions about how the millions of his own people in pursuit world works. Yet those who possess of his utopian fantasies. exceptional power—whether political, Subtract certain people from the ideological, or financial—can use it violent history of the twentieth cen- to take their societies and sometimes tury, and it is not possible to fully larger parts of humanity down one explain what happened. If Hitler had road rather than another. been killed in the trenches in World The experiences leaders bring with War I, it is unlikely that another Ger- them will affect the ways in which man nationalist, with the same combi- they look at the world and the deci- nation of ideology and a conviction that sions they make. Putin was humiliated he was right, would have had a similar at the end of the Cold War when, as impact. If Winston Churchill had been a young intelligence officer in East killed when a car knocked him down in Germany, he went from being a rep- New York City in 1931, it is doubtful resentative of the Soviet empire to that anyone else who might have been someone who barely had enough to in power in London in 1940 would have live on. He witnessed firsthand the had the determination to fight on after collapse of the Soviet Union, as its the fall of France; certainly, it is hard to subject states such as Ukraine seized imagine Neville Chamberlain, who was the opportunity for independence— succeeded by Churchill as prime minis- traumatic events that doubtless fed ter in May of that year, or Chamberlain’s his obsession with gaining back what otherwise likely successor, Lord Hali- he sees as lost Russian territory and fax, doing so. Whereas Stalin and Mao making Russia great again. Personality were indifferent to the hideous losses counts, too. With Putin, one cannot they inflicted on their peoples in their ignore his determination and ruthless- attempts to change the very nature of ness and his belief that he is a direct their societies, their colleagues, who heir to past Russian and Soviet lead- were also ideologues, nevertheless ers such as Peter the Great and Sta- had qualms about the costs. As Kot- lin, who built and maintained a huge kin observed of the collective farms in january / february 2025 11  Will Trump Change the World? the Soviet Union, “If Stalin had died, growing and visible corruption within the likelihood of forced wholesale col- its hierarchy. When Martin Luther lectivization—the only kind—would wrote his famous theses in 1517 to have been near zero.” condemn the Church’s lucrative prac- In the case of Trump, he has announced tice of selling indulgences, he set in plans to deport 11 million unautho- motion the movement that, over the rized immigrants, emasculate the civil next few decades, transformed the service, and impose sky-high tariffs political structures of Europe. while alienating or abandoning Amer- The leaders of the French Revolu- ican allies. But it is unclear how much tion faced a failing regime that was of what he has promised he will actu- burdened by debt and increasingly ally carry out. Are his threats more unpopular—and not just with those provocations and taunts to his ene- who suffered from its inequalities but mies than parts of a coherent vision also among the aristocrats who had to create a transformed United States benefited from it. In a similar way, in a world divided into transactional even most of those who worked for power blocks? If many of those close the Soviet regime had stopped believ- to him have their way, it will be the ing in Marxism by the 1980s. Predict- latter. What is clear is that his attack ing the timing of the end, however, on the status quo resonates with a was another matter. large number of Americans and his In the United States, Trump’s appeal many supporters elsewhere. Whether suggests that this is not just politics as or not Trump intends it, his legacy usual but a result of a widespread disil- may well be a lasting change in the lusionment with existing institutions. way the world works. Under President Joe Biden, the econ- omy was doing well, unemployment TRUST BUST was down, and the government was To accept that certain kinds of leaders making progress on controlling the can divert the course of history does southern border, but the perceptions not mean that they do so on their of many voters were different. More own; they ride the changing currents important, in much of the country, the in societies. Great political and social federal government was seen as inef- changes often come as institutions are fective and corrupt, or even tyranni- losing authority because people sim- cal. Democracies depend on trust, and ply stop believing in their legitimacy. that was eroding. Trump was adept at At the start of the sixteenth century, giving voice to Americans’ concerns for example, the Catholic Church was and resentments. a rich and powerful institution that Building on discontent in troubled seemed set to dominate Christian- times to gain power takes a certain ity for centuries to come. In practice, sort of genius and a willingness to however, it was losing its monopoly ignore conventional wisdom and cus- on learning, thanks to the printing toms. As the founder of the Soviet press and the spread of literacy, along Union, Vladimir Lenin was lucky in with its moral authority, as a result of his times, but he also made his own 12 foreign affairs  Will Trump Change the World? luck. With his simple but brilliant economy and boldly pushing its inter- slogan of “Peace, Bread, Land” and ests internationally, was viewed with his single-minded fixation on gain- envy by many. Even leading West- ing power, his Bolshevik Party was ern democracies produced their own able to win support in key areas of fascists and would-be autocrats, such the country. In November 1917, it as Sir Oswald Mosley in Britain or seized power, with long-lasting con- Huey Long or Father Coughlin in sequences for what became the Soviet the United States. Union and for the world. Hitler man- A pressing question today is whether aged to persuade enough influential Trump will observe certain boundar- Germans—including businesspeople, ies at home and abroad or, confident top generals, and those close to the in his own power, disregard them. As German president and war hero Paul wartime prime minister, Churchill von Hindenburg—that he should be had exceptional powers, but he always made chancellor in January 1933. A respected Parliament. As soon as the month later, after the Reichstag fire, war ended in Europe, he agreed to Hitler was given emergency powers. dissolve the House of Commons so He rapidly finished off what was left that a general election could be held. of the Weimar Republic and, as did After years of the Supreme Court rul- Napoleon, Lenin, and Lenin’s succes- ing against his New Deal legislation, sor, Stalin, created a new regime with U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt new institutions, new values, and new contemplated a measure to enlarge winners and losers. the court with his own supporters, Such forceful agents of change are but when there was an outcry against often welcomed. In Germany in the what was seen as an unconstitutional early 1930s, many people were tired act, he backed off. He did not attempt of violence, uncertainty, and a failing to challenge the democratic system economy and hoped that a strong again. Still, other leaders, in their leader would heed their concerns pursuit of power and glory, have paid and come up with new and effec- little attention to the costs of their tive solutions to bring better and chosen paths or the wishes of their calmer days. Western countries such people. Russians are paying a heavy as France, the United Kingdom, and price for Putin’s ill-judged decision the United States, which might oth- to invade Ukraine, with casualties erwise have supported the democratic now estimated to number more than forces in Germany or tried to contain 700,000, but so far he shows little sign the Nazis once they were in power, of changing course. were struggling with the impact of the Great Depression on their own ALL IS PERMITTED societies and fearful of the spread of How Trump chooses to deal with communism and the rise of Japanese unwritten rules and unspoken assump- militarism. As with Benito Mussolini’s tions may be crucial in determining fascist regime in Italy, the new Nazi the future of the international order. government, reviving the German In 1804, Napoleon ignored accepted 14 foreign affairs  Will Trump Change the World? norms when he had a leading Roy- Much of that order disappeared with alist, the Duc d’Enghien, kidnapped the end of the Cold War, but parts of it from the German state of Baden have lived on, from institutions such as and executed in France after a hasty the United Nations to the treaties that court-martial. Much of Europe was govern everything from civil aviation to shocked, but the deed helped con- international trade. Crucially, a post- solidate Napoleon’s control over 1945 unspoken agreement that the sei- France. Under Lenin, the new Soviet zure of territory by force anywhere in Union promoted world revolution the world was not the basis for sover- and rejected normal diplomacy. Hit- eignty lasted until the early twenty-first ler famously denounced Germany’s century. But that understanding has endorsement of the Treaty of Versailles now been breached, with the seizure at the end of World War I, and one by by Russia of parts of Ukraine and the one broke what he called its “chains”— recognition by the U.S. government of for example, by remilitarizing the Israel’s claims to sovereignty over the Rhineland and unveiling a German Golan Heights taken from Syria. As air force. That he got away with these in domestic politics, leaders who break moves encouraged others, including the rules and pay no price for doing so Japan’s military leaders, who continued can cause others to attempt the same. their unprovoked aggression in China, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s illiberal and Mussolini, who seized Ethiopia. democracy in Hungary has inspired The international order today appears many Trump supporters in the United stronger and more resilient. After States, including the political strategist World War II, the victorious allies set Steve Bannon and the tech entrepre- up new institutions—including the neur Elon Musk. Putin’s unprovoked United Nations and the international attacks on a sovereign neighbor have monetary system created at Bretton provided a precedent—especially if Woods—to prevent what the U N they succeed in winning him terri- Charter called the “scourge of war” and tory—for other leaders such as Xi, who address the forces, such as poverty, that has long expressed the goal of bring- make nations resort to armed conflict. ing Taiwan back under China’s rule. Although the Cold War prevented the Norms that have held for decades can full establishment of the new order, sometimes, in this way, crumble. over time the two competing alliances Americans are said to be tired of of NATO and the Warsaw Pact found being the world’s policeman, and who ways to deal with each other and avoid can blame them. But the prospect of an all-out nuclear war. They signed formal isolationist policy under Trump, even treaties to limit arms, for example, and the possibility of a U.S. withdrawal worked out informal rules and agree- from NATO and the further weaken- ments to minimize the risk of misun- ing of the Western alliance, confronta- derstandings that could lead to war. tion with China, and a tariff war with And in spite of the rhetoric, neither much of the world, is unlikely to make side tried to roll back the forces of the the United States, or other countries, other on the ground. safer. Moreover, the continued rise of january / february 2025 15  Will Trump Change the World? right-wing nationalist movements in a long-range intercontinental ballis- Europe may well lead to the further tic missile and drew closer to Putin, erosion of support for an international internationalizing the conflict in order that the United States has often Ukraine by providing Russia with benefited from. North Korean troops. For his part, It is also unclear whether the world Putin has announced a lower thresh- knows how to deal with a leader who old for using nuclear weapons and has is likely to prove still more erratic and used a new kind of hypersonic mis- more inclined to ignore the rules than sile against Kyiv. As Trump assumes he was in his first term. In interna- office, it is difficult to guess whether tional relations, the danger that mis- his actions will lower the international takes and misunderstandings can lead temperature or raise it. In Asimov’s to confrontations, as they did in 1914, trilogy, the Mule is eventually brought is always present, but today that risk under control, stripped of his powers, appears to be growing. Even as the and sent back to his own minor planet U.S. election was unfolding, North with the galactic order restored. But Korean leader Kim Jong Un tested that is science fiction. Trump’s Antiliberal Order How America First Undercuts America’s Advantage Alexander Cooley and Daniel Nexon D uring his campaign for pres- they want.” His high-profile nominees ident, Donald Trump prom- and appointments have elevated MAGA ised to deliver a nationalist loyalists who have long inveighed “America first ” foreign policy. He against “globalism” and the “liberal boasted about how, in his first term, international order”; his administra- he had threatened to abandon NATO tion will be staffed by a large number allies and claimed that in his second, of contributors to the Heritage Foun- if European NATO members failed to dation’s policy wish list, Project 2025, increase their defense spending, he which calls for the United States to would let the Russians “do whatever exit the International Monetary Fund ALEXANDER COOLEY is Claire Tow Professor of Political Science and Vice Provost for Research and Academic Centers at Barnard College. DANIEL NEXON is a Professor in the Department of Government and the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. 16 foreign affairs