BY RAMESH THAKUR<\/div>\n
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\u3000CANBERRA \u2013 There is considerable skepticism about U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s commitment to uphold the post-1945 liberal international order crafted under American leadership and underwritten by U.S. military power, economic heft and geopolitical clout. Trump\u2019s pre-election statements on trade, immigration, alliances and nuclear policy in particular seemed to question these four critical pillars of established U.S. policy.<\/p>\n
\u3000While some lament \u201cThe End of the Anglo-American Order,\u201d others are trying to discern the outlines of Trump\u2019s new world order. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, jointly responsible for the peaceful end of the Cold War, thinks \u201cthe world is preparing for war.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u3000Clearly, history likes irony: The president with the least previous foreign policy interest and experience could end up having the biggest impact on global affairs in a century.<\/p>\n
\u3000Trump\u2019s election proved that a self-confident person can take on and win, despite near-unanimous opposition from the city-based mainstream media, by connecting directly with the voters in the hinterlands: a lesson that all Western politicians terrified of the 24-hour news cycle should heed. Trump took to heart and exploited the public\u2019s 90 percent contempt for Congress and 85 percent distrust of the national press.<\/p>\n
\u3000One way or another, the world order \u2014 especially its post-1945 normative, security, trade and immigration architectures \u2014 is at an inflection point. Although early indications suggest that relations with Russia could normalize, the risk of falling victim to the Thucydides Trap, whereby most power transitions end in war, could increase as China and the United States elbow each other to assert primacy in the crowded Asia-Pacific region.<\/p>\n
\u3000China will step into the leadership vacuum as the stabilizing power in the Asia-Pacific region and \u2014 in another historical irony \u2014 as the custodian of the global commons in efforts to check the pace and impacts of climate change. Yet a question remains. International systems are more stable when the dominant power underwrites global public goods that many others access as free riders. In supporting the post-1945 order, the U.S. government functioned as the de facto world government in writing and policing global rules.<\/p>\n
\u3000Will China follow Britain and America in accepting this burden and can the U.S. acquiesce to playing second fiddle?<\/p>\n
\u3000Reversing more than seven decades of American policy, Trump has indicated fierce opposition to free trade agreements: Apparently only he can be trusted to negotiate deals that protect American interests. Soon after being sworn in, Trump issued an executive order pulling America out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.<\/p>\n
\u3000Free trade agreements have in fact turned out to be investor-friendly and worker-hostile deals that enrich a shrinking economic elite, with a sideways flow of benefits to political and bureaucratic elites, while leaving wages stagnant and shredding jobs. These include the North American Free Trade Agreement, which aimed to create an integrated market linking production and consumption in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. This explains the paradox of manufacturing output doubling over the past dozen years even while manufacturing jobs dwindled.<\/p>\n
\u3000Trump heavily criticized both NAFTA and the TPP during the campaign, but because both have in fact been enormously beneficial to the U.S. \u2014 automation leading to increased machine-driven productive efficiency has shed more jobs than globalization \u2014 many assumed Trump would backtrack from campaign promises once he became president. Instead he has given every indication of intending to keep all his promises \u2014 a character trait so radical in contemporary politicians that it has shaken the entire Western world.<\/p>\n
\u3000Trump has queried the costs and benefits of two decades of U.S. military interventions after the Cold War. NATO\u2019s support in most has been less than decisive while it has become the institutional vehicle for multiplying U.S. liabilities in countries of no vital interest to America. Trump claims foreign industry has been subsidized by the American taxpayer \u201cat the expense of American industry\u201d and argues that the U.S. has \u201csubsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military.\u201d Trump\u2019s dismissal of NATO as \u201cobsolete\u201d and the promise to put \u201cAmerica First\u201d and force allies to pay for their own defense needs, translates in practice into a policy of disengagement and isolationism: Fortress America.<\/p>\n
\u3000Trump has reversed decades of U.S. support for an ever closer European Union, to predict and welcome its breakup instead as the death of an economic competitor to the U.S. He is openly hostile to the U.N. system and has threatened to cut funding to international organizations by up to 40 percent.<\/p>\n
\u3000Trump\u2019s order to suspend and then severely reduce immigration and refugee intakes is a repudiation of international conventions and arrangements governing the movement of peoples in favor of unilateral policies \u2014 and equally a repudiation of the history of how America was built (he need only look at his current wife). Concepts like human rights, protection of civilians and climate change are alien to Trump\u2019s vocabulary. With no moral compass to guide it the U.S. cannot provide global moral leadership.<\/p>\n
\u3000The tough rhetoric against the Iran nuclear deal and the tweeted promise to \u201cgreatly strengthen and expand (U.S.) nuclear capability\u201d imply a rejection of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as the globally legitimate framework for regulating nuclear policy. Trump might prove receptive to the recommendation from a blue ribbon Pentagon panel to expand U.S. nuclear options by developing an arsenal capable of \u201climited\u201d nuclear wars, which further undermine the NPT. But this would jeopardize the entire basis of the existing global nuclear order, from safety and security to nonproliferation and disarmament, for which the NPT is the normative anchor.<\/p>\n
\u3000Without the NPT, for example, Iran as a sovereign nation would have the same right to develop and test nuclear weapons and missiles as the U.S. Nor is increased bellicosity toward Beijing the most effective strategy for gaining Chinese cooperation to curtail North Korea\u2019s nuclear program. There is also a total mismatch between Beijing\u2019s minutely scripted utterances on any subject and Trump\u2019s fondness for firing off tweets on impulse.<\/p>\n
\u3000Globalization rests on and deepens interdependence of security and prosperity. The U.S. has historically led efforts to manage the process through global governance institutions. Trump\u2019s approach to foreign security and economic policies is transactional and zero-sum. The administration seems determined to keep even career diplomats at a distance, dismissing many with a curtness that slights their decades of professional service to America in favor of a \u201cknow nothing approach\u201d to foreign policy.<\/p>\n
\u3000It is one thing to set out deliberately to try and bend the arc of history to one\u2019s preferred direction. It is another not to know one\u2019s history such that the world is compelled to relearn the worst lessons at great cost in general human misery.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
Ramesh Thakur is a professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(Source:
http:\/\/www.japantimes.co.jp\/opinion\/2017\/02\/23\/commentary\/world-commentary\/trumps-assault-liberal-international-order\/<\/a>)<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u3000Thakur points out the risk of falling victim to the Thucydides Trap, while Hasegawa warns the continued defiance of Kantian imperative and freedom will lead to armed conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal2017"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14913"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14921,"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14913\/revisions\/14921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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