Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Trump wants to show the world who is boss

Trump’s ambition for America is similar. He is touted as an anti-imperialist president, not interested in starting the wars that liberal internationalism dragged America into.

He is anti-globalisation. He wants to return to a world of relatively higher tariffs and bring manufacturing to America. He has none of the universalist pretensions of liberals, using human rights as a pretext, or thinking that a single neo-liberal order of free exchange and interdependence is desirable. He also realises the limits of American power. This might make for a different world with more room for manoeuvre: More uncertain but also transactional.

But this superficially appealing narrative underestimates the supremacism behind Trump’s world view. Trump’s diagnosis of why America got into wars or let Russia-Ukraine-type wars happen is because America did not act strongly enough. Liberal internationalism was the worst possible combination of expansive aims with power badly used. The premise of the “reluctance to war” ideology is overwhelming strength.

But this is premised on preserving unchallenged American supremacy. No one dare be disloyal or not submissive to it. The precondition for securing peace is the acknowledgement of unchallenged American power. American power may aspire to be non-imperial. But it still has to be the big boss. Liberal internationalism was imperial power without America exercising its full power to be big boss. Now it will be big boss without the imperial pretension. But this does not necessarily make for a more stable world.

For one thing, it induces everyone else to amass power as well, creating a potentially risky cycle of escalation. But being boss, making supremacy manifest, like being imperial, also require demonstrations of power. The power will have to be made visible, so this is not necessarily an eschewing of war. America just ordered airstrikes in Somalia. The real test will be Gaza, where the question is what follows the temporary ceasefire. America will remain aligned with Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel, perhaps even going as far as endorsing the cleansing of Gaza. The logic of supremacy will be as confrontational, perhaps even more, than previous imperial logic.

The second presumption is that what is loosely called the neo-liberal order constrained the rest of the world, particularly in its ideological propensity to impose relatively uniform rules. It curtailed independent space for different models of development. Activists railed against the WTO. Would not a more autarkic world create more opportunities for each country to chart its own industrial policy? But here again you see the duality of Trump: He wants onshoring for America, but he also wants to open the world for American products. The claim is that America has been taken advantage of; neoliberalism, like liberalism, was an example of America not exercising leverage. Now America will demand the strictest reciprocity.

It is a quest to open up the world, not through negotiated rules, but individual bilateral bargains. The advantage of such bargains is that in that negotiating context, America has more leverage. There are no possible coalitions arrayed against it. So, if you think the WTO was an exercise in American hegemony, bilateral negotiations will be harder for countries like India. Trump’s industrial policy is preventing India from having one, by preemptively asking for lower tariffs, promising to buy defence products from the US and so forth. Trump’s tariffs are not in the aid of a more diverse and equal world. They are in the aid of supremacy and will look for trade submission from others. This is why the world requires collective action on trade policy.

The third objection against the liberal order was its sanctimoniousness, its aspirations to regime change, its hypocritical use of human rights standards, its attempt to shape global civil society. But it would be a mistake to think that Trump’s jettisoning of those pretexts actually makes for a non-interventionist world. In some ways, Elon Musk’s daily comments on policies from South Africa to Germany are not isolated or idiosyncratic interventions. They are announcing that the world is on notice, each country’s policies are answerable to the US, on its own terms.

And finally, there is the incredible combination that Trump displays of American victimhood and innocence — the rest of the world has taken advantage of America. There is a genuine issue of drugs and fentanyl in the US. But the use of tariffs to get that problem addressed by Canada might seem strange. Weren’t tariffs supposed to be about industrial policy and reciprocity? Is Canada even that big a threat? America’s drug problem was as much a homegrown one, with the complicity of many respectable companies, and even the consulting establishment that used America’s hyper-capitalism and corruption to push its addictions. But fentanyl as a foreigners’ problem helps with both America’s innocence and victimhood.

So, this is not an era of transactionalism. It is the reinventing of American supremacy by weaponising the discontent with the current order. Its objective is not to cut deals but to show who the boss is. Trump’s hero William McKinley, believing himself to be someone who wanted to avoid war, ended up as both imperialist and racial Darwinist. Trump may not be a racial Darwinist, but for him international relations are not transactional. It will be a raw struggle for power. Whether his personal propensity to demand total loyalty and submission is compatible with building a great and effective nation remains an open question. But make no mistake. That is what he will demand for himself and for America.

The writer is contributing editor, The Indian Express