Why Donald Trump is a globalist
FOR A SELF-STYLED America Firster, President Donald Trump is strikingly keen on solving other countries’ problems. Even as Mr Trump began a business-focused tour of Arab states on May 13th, geopolitical disputes on several continents had a claim on his attention. In the few days before he flew to the Middle East, Mr Trump suggested that he is just the man to end conflicts in Ukraine and in Gaza, halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions and broker a solution to India and Pakistan’s decades-old contest over Kashmir. For good measure, he hailed a 90-day pause of the highest US-China tariffs as great for “unification and peace”. Alas, that promptly set nerves a-jangling in Taiwan, since “peaceful reunification” is China’s euphemism for conquering that democratic island.
On the face of it, this frenetic diplomacy might seem hard to square with Mr Trump’s long-standing disdain for interventionism, and for predecessors who sought to use American power for nation-building in far-off places. During his first presidency in 2019, Mr Trump told world leaders gathered for the UN General Assembly in New York that “the future does not belong to globalists“ but to “patriots” who pursue their national interests without shame and respect the differences that make each country unique.
In the second Trump era, ambitions to tackle global crises might seem to sit uncomfortably with the world-weary instincts of many in his inner circle. Old-school Reagan Republicans, committed to defending allies and deterring adversaries, have lost ground to “restrainers” who seek to avoid foreign entanglements. The restrainers include Vice-President J.D. Vance, whose initial public response when tensions between India and Pakistan turned violent was to declare the conflict “fundamentally none of our business”.
Mr Trump is appalled by lives lost in war, seeing many conflicts as simply incomprehensible. At times he seems moved by arguments as old as America itself, depicting the country as a new Eden providentially set on its own continent, far from Europe’s ancient hatreds and grudges. In February Mr Trump asserted that war in Ukraine matters more to Europe than to America, which has “a big, beautiful Ocean as separation”. He could have been quoting America Firsters of the 1930s, campaigning to keep out of a war with Germany.
Actually, Mr Trump’s dealmaking zeal has its own logic. He is not a traditional isolationist. In part, that is because since the 1930s mankind has invented weapons, notably nuclear ones, that threaten the whole planet. The Trump administration’s insouciance about India-Pakistan clashes crumbled at the first hints that each side might target or use their respective nuclear arsenals.
In part, Mr Trump is too proud of his dealmaking prowess to forswear chances to show it off. That surely explains his proposal to help India and Pakistan resolve disagreements over Kashmir, appalling Indian officials who seek no international mediation of that dispute. Nor is he a pacifist. Rather he is a leader who seeks to intimidate foes with bluster and shows of military might, or with targeted strikes that avoid the need for all-out war.
Most importantly, the president and his inner circle—especially his most-trusted diplomatic envoy, a New York property developer, Steve Witkoff—do subscribe to a global value system. That universal value is money. Mr Trump is a globalist of a particular kind. He has no illusions about the brotherhood of man. Instead, he trusts in the solidarity that binds powerful individuals in a position to enrich themselves and one another. Evidence abounds of his belief that this globalism of greed can resolve even tangled disputes, for a price. Time and again, Trumpian statecraft follows the same playbook, seemingly adapted from Mr Trump’s years as a builder of hotels and other shiny properties. First, Mr Trump stokes or allows tensions to reach a crisis point. Then he suggests compromises that offer doses of pain and of economic profit to each side. Praising his efforts to calm India and Pakistan, he boasted that he told the two governments: “If you don’t stop it, we’re not going to do any trade.” This is a brilliant innovation, he suggested: “People never really use trade the way I use it.”
A long interview that Mr Witkoff gave in March to Tucker Carlson, a conservative pundit, is called an authentic glimpse of Mr Trump’s worldview by a Washington insider. Asked about his diplomatic missions, Mr Witkoff offers an unvarying reply: peace would be profitable, and is thus “logical”. Hamas leaders are not “ideologically intractable”, he suggests, but want better lives for Gazan children. Iran once had a “wonderful economy” and could do so again. Russia could work with America on energy deals and on shared Arctic shipping lanes.
The survival instinct beats greed
Sceptics may counter that Trumpian globalism is shockingly incurious about ideological and sectarian enmities that underpin many disputes. Mr Trump struggles to understand those moved to sacrifice by great causes, calling American war dead “losers”. At times, Mr Trump looks frankly naive, as when he showed a film to the North Korean despot, Kim Jong Un, depicting beach resorts North Korea could build if it abandoned nuclear weapons. Mr Kim, a man who had his own uncle and (allegedly) his half-brother killed to preserve his grip on power, was not swayed.
Other governments, at least, understand Mr Trump. Arab rulers have offered Trump-family businesses property and cryptocurrency investments worth billions. Qatar wants to give a Boeing 747 to serve as Air Force One. The Democratic Republic of Congo has offered America mineral rights in exchange for security support, inspired by a deal imposed on Ukraine. Syria’s interim ruler suggests Damascus as the site for a new Trump Tower. For his pains, Mr Trump is said to covet a Nobel peace prize. For an America First president, that is a revealingly globalist bauble. ■