In President Trump’s first term, his original America First agenda called for withdrawing the United States from its hegemonic role—no quagmire wars, no nation building, less spending on NATO—all in favor of rebuilding the United States. In the hands of a sane president, that approach might have been interesting, even constructive.
Instead, in Trump’s second term we got the Iran war, random tariffs, withdrawal from the World Health Organization, the termination of USAID, and a medley of personal grudges masquerading as foreign policy. However, there was one potentially constructive side effect. Trump’s antics have created a vacuum that allowed midsized powers—some savory, others not—to play larger roles on the global stage.
Three decades ago, Canada and Mexico became partners with the United States in a flawed (and later improved) compact called the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), pretty much dictated by Washington. Today, Canada and Mexico are global role models on how to keep American swagger at bay.
America’s European allies, mistrustful of Trump, are looking to their own security. Several European leaders have been willing to break with Trump on Iran. Instead of the U.S. and Europe jointly serving as constraints on a revanchist Russia, Europe is serving as a constraint on Trump. The big winner: Putin.
Under President Obama, the U.S. was working to contain Pakistan’s rise as a somewhat unstable nuclear power; and Saudi Arabia was seen as a troubling regional power morphing from a traditional kingdom into a modern dictatorship. Now, however, Pakistan has emerged as a major diplomatic player working to end the Iran war. The U.S., stripped by Trump of competent diplomats, is having to rely on Pakistan’s diplomacy.
Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is serving as a restraint on Trump’s military excesses. The Saudis will be key to any regional deal with Israel. How ironic that Trump’s America First program has advantaged Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, not to mention Iran and China.
There is a fearful symmetry between Trump and Putin, in the way that both are being humiliated by smaller nations. Putin could have had a deal with Ukraine almost anytime since he launched his enervating war in February 2022—some land for peace.
Trump could have left well enough alone with Iran and stuck with the nuclear constraints negotiated by Obama. Whatever deal eventually ends the Iran war will be worse than what we had before Trump began the war.
In both cases, Trump and Putin, what has stood in the way of a settlement are the fragile egos of the two men.
Meanwhile, the other global superpower, China, has avoided getting bogged down in quagmires like Ukraine and Iran. Instead, China has relied mostly on what used to describe a major aspect of American postwar diplomacy: the use of soft power.
While China has occasionally resorted to force, as in its de facto takeover of Hong Kong, for the most part China has expanded its global power by offering economic benefits such as the Belt and Road Initiative and soft loans by the China Development Bank. More and more national leaders, seeing America’s chaotic global withdrawal, have made bilateral deals with China, including long-standing U.S. allies such as Canada and Germany, as well as much of Latin America.
As our colleague Harold Meyerson writes, America’s long-standing allies increasingly view China as a more reliable partner than the U.S. In 2025 and early 2026, the leaders of Australia, France, New Zealand, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, the European Union, Finland, Ireland, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Uruguay, and Germany all traveled to China for top-level meetings.
Trump will be in China Thursday for a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. A side effect of the Iran mess is that Trump desperately needs some positive headlines. There is a real risk that he will take some kind of a deal in which China invests as much as a trillion dollars in U.S. industry in exchange for reduced national security controls on U.S. advanced technology. This would only increase China’s dominance.
After Trump finally goes, there will be an overdue debate about the international system and America’s global role in it. Theorists, such as Charles Kindleberger, have long maintained that a stable global economic and political system, otherwise anarchic, requires a hegemon. But even if a “normal” U.S. president succeeds Trump, other nations will wonder, with good reason, whether Washington can ever be trusted again.
Even the relatively benign, pre-Trump version of American postwar hegemony had major flaws, including the military debacles in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, neo-colonial policies in Africa, and several CIA-orchestrated coups including the 1953 ouster of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran, which began the long road to the ayatollahs. We supported democracy, except when we didn’t.
The rise of the middle powers could make for a more balanced global order—unless it is just a way station from U.S. hegemony to Chinese.
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