Fasten seat belts. United States foreign policy is about to take a 180-degree turn starting this Monday. Gone will be the careful cultivation of alliances practiced by his predecessor, Joe Biden, and the internationalism of the last eighty years. With the second arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, the “America first” is imposed, disruption, the conviction that strength equals power, relations with partners based on transaction, and a peculiar combination of protectionism and imperialist proposals.
Donald Trump 2.0 will be much freer in his new term than in his first. So he surrounded himself with a team of experienced advisors who tried to limit his most disruptive instincts. In Congress he was not only opposed by Democrats, but also by the more traditionalist Republican wing. Now, he has surrounded himself with a team of faithful who are not going to question him. On Capitol Hill, classic Republicans are the exception, not the norm.
Much of what is coming was already present in his first term. Admiration for authoritarian leaders. The conviction that tariffs on foreign products and trade wars are a magic wand with which to stimulate national industry: flirts with the idea of a generalized tariff of 10%, and 60% for China. Tensions with allies and demands for greater investment by NATO members in Defense: two weeks ago it was 5% of GDP. These are approaches that this time no longer catch the partner countries off guard: unlike Trump’s first term, they have been preparing for the Republican’s return for a year.
Other proposals are new, or have a different tone this time. In 2019 he already proposed buying Greenland from Denmark. Then it sounded like mere bravado. Now he does not rule out using force for an annexation of the gigantic Arctic island that he considers beneficial for national security. Nor to regain control of the Panama Canal, another of his obsessions during the months of presidential transition. He also flirted with the incorporation of Canada as a State of the United States, and with changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of the United States.”
As can be deduced from these statements and other similar ones, the American continent is going to be a key area for your Administration. He wants to focus on closing the border with Mexico to illegal immigration; on security and trade issues with Canada and Mexico; His proposals as number one and two in the State Department, Marco Rubio and Chris Landau, have extensive experience in the region. He has also appointed a special envoy for Latin America, Mauricio Claver-Carone.
But other matters will immediately demand your attention. Following the ceasefire agreement in Gaza, the delicate phase of its implementation now begins. Trump will want to follow developments closely. His Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, played a role in the negotiations to close the deal between Israel and Hamas, and he claimed the laurels on his social networks.
“Opportunities are opening up now in the Middle East that did not exist ninety days ago,” said Marco Rubio, at his confirmation hearing in the Senate last week. Added to the truce are the ceasefire in Lebanon, the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and Iran in more weakened positions. The Trump Administration may want to take advantage of the new landscape to expand the Abraham Accords signed in Trump’s first term, and incorporate the jewel in the crown: normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The new American president will also have to decide the future of the nearly 2,000 American soldiers in Syria, given the risk of the return of ISIS after the fall of Assad.
Probably nowhere will the first days of the new presidency be followed as closely as in Ukraine. Trump promised in his campaign to end the war in 24 hours by forcing kyiv and Moscow to negotiate. Now the Republican recognizes that it will take at least six months. Rubio has pointed out that the two enemies, Ukraine and Russia, will have to make concessions: neither kyiv can completely expel an enemy that occupies 20% of its territory nor can Moscow aspire to conquer the entire neighboring country.
The relationship with China
But except for the surprise factor, it will be the relationship with China that will emerge as its great international challenge. Rubio has described the Asian giant as “the most powerful and dangerous adversary that the United States has ever faced,” a country that competes with the leading power in science, technology, military development, in world markets, and that dominates some of the main global supply chains. “When the history book of the 21st century is written, the bulk of that volume will not only be about China, but about the relationship between China and the United States, and what direction it took,” the senator declared at his hearing. confirmation.
Rubio expressed the new Administration’s support for Taiwan, the island with a democratic regime and aligned with the United States that China considers part of its territory and that it does not renounce unifying by force. But it is not clear whether, in the event of an attack from Beijing, Trump would choose to defend it.
In a sign of the importance of the bilateral relationship between the two giants, systemic rivals that exchange $500 billion a year in their trade relationship, Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone last Friday, in a conversation that It included among its topics the short video platform TikTok, fentanyl trafficking, commercial ties, Ukraine and Taiwan, among other issues. The American leader had previously invited the Chinese to his inauguration. In a gesture of deference, Beijing will send its vice president, Han Zheng, to the ceremony.
Both leaders described their conversation with good words and declared themselves willing to maintain a fluid relationship in the Trump 2.0 era. The American “firmly believes that we can avoid conflict with the Chinese Communist Party because they need our markets. And we are going to … use that pressure capacity in a way that aligns with our national security,” declared the National Security Advisor of the new White House, Mike Waltz, at an event at the United States Institute for Peace last week.
Waltz also highlighted the need to respond to China’s growing influence in Latin America. And he highlighted the importance of the United States strengthening its alliances in the Asia-Pacific, strengthening Taiwan’s deterrence capacity against China and reducing its dependence on Beijing for materials such as critical minerals. “We cannot depend on our greatest adversary for essential supplies,” he declared.
Although what Waltz’s, or Rubio’s, real capacity to influence will be in the foreign policy of the Trump universe is something that remains to be seen. The candidate for Secretary of State does not belong to the president’s inner circle, where some continue to view him with distrust since the primaries that both competed in 2016.
Rubio and Waltz will also have to share their sphere of work with a plethora of regional envoys—friends or advisors of the president—appointed by Trump. From Witkoff in the Middle East to former ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, now envoy to various areas of the world, passing through Claver-Carone or the representative for Ukraine, General Keith Kellogg.
That is, when it is not Trump himself who acts on his own on impulse, or when the matter seems too important to him. Rubio “will often find out about changes in official policy through the president’s messages on social networks,” the president emeritus of the think tank Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas.
