Free Press columnist
Nathan Gardels: Under the Trump administration’s radical sovereigntism, it appears America is joining the other axes of upheaval, China and Russia, in seeking to build its own sphere of influence, one that challenges the liberal world order founded by the U.S. after World War II.
How do you see this unfolding?
Niall Ferguson: Well, I don’t agree that the United States is somehow aligning itself in any way with the axis of whatever you want to call it, authoritarians, upheaval, or ill will.
What’s odd about the last four years before Trump is that the Biden-Harris administration came in and was welcomed by liberals around the world. “The adults were back in the room.” American foreign policy was going to respect alliances again, and it all went disastrously wrong. The allies have been sorely disappointed. The net result of the Biden administration’s foreign policy was that an axis formed that didn’t exist in 2020, an axis that brought together Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. And unlike the axis of evil of 2002 around the Iraq War, it actually exists. It’s not just an idea for a speech. These powers cooperate together, economically and militarily.
What went wrong? The answer is a disastrous failure of deterrence that really began in Afghanistan in 2021, got a lot worse in February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, and got even worse in 2023 when Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad attacked Israel. So I think one has to understand the reelection of Donald Trump as partly a public reaction against a very unsuccessful Democratic administration, a little bit like what happened in 1980 when Americans voted for Ronald Reagan and repudiated Jimmy Carter during the Iran hostage crisis.
I don’t think Donald Trump’s reelection is a big win for China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Quite the opposite. I think it’s bad news for them.
Let’s just break it down briefly. Many people wrongly thought that it would be beneficial to Vladimir Putin if Donald Trump were reelected. I don’t think this war is going to be ended on Putin’s terms, if it’s going to be ended. Secondly, maximum pressure is now back on Iran. That’s important. Thirdly, tariffs have been increased on China, so the pressure is on China. Little Rocket Man in North Korea is still waiting to get whatever is coming to him, but I don’t think it’s going to be a love letter from the Trump administration.
In short, for the axis of ill will, it’s bad news that Trump is back.
NG: I didn’t mean it in that sense. I meant upheaval in the sense of the liberal international order of free trade and trusted alliances across a unified West. America is moving toward a way of governing itself that is unencumbered by a rules-based system in global affairs that takes into account the interests of others. Trumpist America is leveraging its mercantile might to get its way.
NF: I am always reminded when people talk about the liberal international order of what Voltaire said about the Holy Roman Empire: It was neither holy nor Roman, nor an empire. And the same is true of the liberal international order. It was never very liberal, very international, or very orderly. It’s actually an illusion that such a thing ever existed after 1945.
