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Things became momentarily calmer at the close of the annual World Economic Forum meeting at Davos than they were at its beginning. Donald Trump clawed back his threats to take Greenland from Denmark by force, and reached some sort of “deal” with Mark Rutte, the Secretary General of NATO, on Arctic security.
Trump’s climbdown—his “Trump always chickens out” moment—was driven by several factors. Probably the most important was the decline in the U.S. stock and bond markets in reaction to his Greenland threats. But the Europeans also played things reasonably well. The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, and the foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, asserted that the issue of sovereignty over Greenland was non-negotiable, and did not seek to meet with Trump. Had such a meeting taken place, it would have given the impression that sovereignty was up for grabs, pending an agreement on price. Denmark also received strong support from its other European allies.
The other event at Davos was Trump’s effort to convene a “Board of Peace” that grew out of the UN-backed committee to deal with the future of Gaza. The charter of this organization is laughable: Trump has made himself the chairman of the Board indefinitely, with the sole power to accept or reject new members. His term in this position will last beyond his presidency, and permanent membership in the organization can be bought for a $1 billion contribution. Countries signing up at Davos included the Persian Gulf states and other Arab countries, a handful of Central Asian states, Bulgaria, Hungary, Pakistan, Paraguay, and Argentina. All of these countries had some previous relationship with Trump or want something from him; aside from Bulgaria, not a single European or East Asian democracy was willing to join (Hungary of course does not qualify as a democracy).
Trump caused a major crisis in the NATO alliance over Greenland, and resolved that crisis by backing down. Foreign ministries around the world were sent into a tizzy, but then, in the end, were told, “never mind.”
This does not mean that everyone can now rest easy. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was right when he asserted that there has been a “rupture” and not simply a transition in the international order. Henceforth, no American ally can count on U.S. support, and middle powers will have to act on their own and cooperate to make up for this loss.
Moreover, every country in the world will now have to deal with a burden of uncertainty as to how the United States will act in the future. Its foreign policy will not be driven by any fixed set of ideas or institutional arrangements, but rather by the erratic thoughts of a single aging and mentally unstable individual.
In watching Trump over the past year, I’ve come to realize that the usual tools international observers bring to foreign policy analysis—political science, economics, sociology, and the like—are not nearly as important as psychology, both individual and social. The evolution of Trump’s policies can only be understood in relation to his own mind and motivations.
Trump was elected as an isolationist. He campaigned from the start as a critic of America’s “forever wars,” nation-building, and entangling alliances. This all changed last summer. As the conflict between Israel and Iran deepened, he clearly hoped to stay out of it. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cleared the way for intervention by knocking out Iran’s air defenses, so that the United States could safely bomb the Fordow nuclear enrichment plant in a one-and-done attack. Trump suddenly realized that he had a potent military instrument at his disposal, and that he had gotten plaudits for using it.
Constitutionally, he had clear authority as commander-in-chief to use force without the sorts of legal constraints that restricted his ability to use the military against domestic protesters. This realization paved the way for military action against Venezuela. The snatching of Nicolás Maduro and his wife in early January once again demonstrated to him the efficacy of his military instrument, and it was against this background that he started to talk once again about acquiring Greenland.
I would liken Donald Trump to a ten-year-old boy who has discovered a flame thrower in his parents’ backyard, and has come to realize that he can burn up anything he wants with it. He’s now actively looking for other things he can set on fire.
There is one big problem with this psychological evolution. Trump has consistently overestimated the power of the United States relative to other countries. This was evident in his trade war with China. At one point after “Liberation Day” last year, he threatened 145 percent tariffs on the country. China was ready, and responded with a ban on exports of rare earth compounds and metals. This was something that Trump had obviously not reckoned with in advance, and he was immediately forced to back down as everyone from Detroit automakers to defense contractors told him that the ban would absolutely cripple the American economy and American national security.
Trump has so far been able to use his military instrument against weak international players, like a crippled Iran or a crumbling Venezuela. He’s also been lucky: In the Caracas raid, a big Chinook helicopter was hit and narrowly escaped destruction. Had it gone down, Trump would have looked more like Jimmy Carter in 1979. His overestimation of American power may continue as he tries to run Venezuela by remote control and extract oil from it. What is not clear is how he would use the military against a big player like China.
In judging Trump’s overall behavior, one thing is clear: he is not an institutionalist. Rather, he is a destroyer of institutions who wants to replace them with his own preferences, which inevitably benefit him personally. An institution is a rule or structure that is not dependent on a single individual, one that survives the departure of the institution’s creator. For all of the noise surrounding Trump’s daily activities, he has left virtually no institutional legacy. The Republican-controlled Congress has passed very little legislation, and spending levels are much the same as they were under Biden. (The one exception to this may be ICE, which will need to be reformed or dismantled by a subsequent administration.) His economic policy, beginning with tariffs, is a mass of idiosyncratic one-off decisions that produce no guidance for the future. Trump has intervened to take equity in certain companies, to block disfavored mergers, or to seek price caps for pharmaceuticals or credit card interest. He and members of his administration have also taken advantage of his discretionary powers to enrich themselves in countless ways.
Trump’s enduring legacy is not an institutional structure, but rather a highly toxic culture that has been adopted by many of the president’s followers and will live on after he is gone. Threats against Greenland, NATO, and individual European countries mean that no ally will be able to trust commitments made by the United States again. Discourse by government officials has been degraded. Cabinet officers and press secretaries know that they don’t have to respond to questions they don’t like because they can simply insult the questioner. And companies will understand that they need to seek individual favors rather than general policies governing entire sectors.
In the wake of Davos, Europeans need to move in the opposite direction. They need to strengthen the European Union if it is to be taken seriously by the United States, China, Russia, or any other power. This will require two things. In the economic sphere, the EU needs to move to a true single market so that European firms can scale up and be competitive with those from the United States and China. And in the political sphere, the EU needs to move toward qualified majority voting, so that decisions cannot be vetoed by a single small player like Hungary or Slovakia. Only with this kind of centralization can the EU exert influence commensurate with its size and overall economic heft.
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University. His latest book is Liberalism and Its Discontents. He is also the author of the “Frankly Fukuyama” column, carried forward from American Purpose, at Persuasion.
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