In his first month in office, President Donald Trump has upended the nation’s nearly century-old approach to global affairs.
The speed and energy with which the president has moved to remake Washington’s role in the world has been most visible in his approach to the war between Russia and Ukraine. He has embraced Russia’s strength and blasted the smaller country, falsely accusing President Volodymyr Zelensky of starting a conflict that began with a Russian invasion. He has insulted U.S. allies in Europe, who for decades have relied on the United States to check Russian power.
The result, diplomats and analysts say, has been to cede influence to Moscow. But that might just be the beginning. At worst, Trump’s strategy could embolden other global powers, notably China, to adopt more bellicose policies toward their neighbors, they say — the opposite of what some of his allies say needs to be the focus of U.S. foreign policy.
Trump has gone further than he did in his first term to redefine whom the United States embraces and whom it combats, surprising fellow world leaders who thought they knew Trump’s playbook and had been working to please him. Instead, the president is spurning a post-World War II international system built to block global aggressors, embracing far older ideas of allowing military powers to build regional spheres of influence and exert dominion over their neighbors. He appears to be turning back the clock to a time in world history when countries with the biggest militaries constructed empires, demanded tribute from weaker nations and expanded their territories through coercion, analysts say.
“This is classic geopolitics, actually: influence on the areas that are closest to you geographically,” said Rosa Balfour, the director of the Brussels office of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank. “If you pair that up with this conversation with Putin, then you see the potential emergence of a worldview where the world is carved up by different powers. This fits in very well with a Russian view of things.”
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