-Analysis-
BUENOS AIRES — A series of political decisions and events in recent years have been modifying the strategic balances that affect the distribution of global power. In the West, both Brexit (voted in 2016 and finalized in 2020) and the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president (2017) weakened the strategic bloc.
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In Europe, the French-German couple has been insufficient and NATO has lost credibility since Trump began to question its utility and say European partners did not contribute enough. The Trump’s policy followed a Republican tradition of isolationism, but also, in European eyes, an erratic foreign policy that included Trump’s ambivalent ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, acute hostility toward Iran and the Afghanistan withdrawal agreement.
Global shifts
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was a decisive factor in hastening this global shift. Russia and China declared their “unlimited” friendship that year during Putin’s visit to China, which has failed to condemn the invasion and parroted the Russian line in calling it a “special operation.”
This strategic partnership is further cemented by the personal ties between the leaders of Russia and China, itself the clearest evidence, as both states like to stress, of the shifts taking place in international relations.
The 2024 U.S. presidential campaign is also accelerating changes.
More recent events with a transformative role include the European Parliament elections, which weakened French President Emmanuel Macron, one of Ukraine’s chief backers in the EU. The new European Parliament is more conservative and perhaps less inclined to keep helping Ukraine.
That will fuel the stalemate on the front and may come to shape the war’s outcome and the fate of millions of people, particularly Ukrainians. A June poll by the Razumkov Center indicated that 44% of Ukrainians believe the time had come to talk peace with Russia, with 35% opposed to this and 21% were undecided. The figures may explain why Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has recently become more amenable to initiating talks with Russia without preconditions.
Trump’s calculations?
The 2024 U.S. presidential campaign is also accelerating changes. Trump opposes open-ended backing for Ukraine while only a small minority of Republicans voted for President Joe Biden’s last aid package.
Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, has openly questioned the need to help Ukraine. And as the campaign continues, foreign policy commitments are likely to be curtailed, or take a back seat.
One former Defense official of the Trump administration, Elbridge Colby, recently told French daily Le Monde that his country might not even be able to defend Taiwan, which faces the threat of a Chinese invasion. The United States, he observed, may prove unable to break a naval blockade of the island, as it did in the mid-20th century with the Soviet blockade of Berlin.
Trump has a peculiar, transactional perspective.
Trump has gone further, telling Bloomberg Businessweek magazine in mid-July that Taiwan, the world’s leading microchips manufacturer, should be paying the United States for its defense, as it would an insurance firm. Such comments are fueling speculations worldwide on whether the United States would maintain its defensive commitments and alliances if Trump were to return to the White House.
It has to do with his peculiar, transactional perspective. As president, Trump effectively threatened to withdraw U.S. defensive support for two crucial allies, Japan and South Korea, unless they increased purchases of U.S. military hardware.
Taiwan does of course give back to the United States, buying American products, investing in its own defense, and selling the United States semiconductors that allow U.S. firms such as Nvidia to take a lead in the AI sector. The fact is, however, that China’s fleet now outnumbers U.S. forces in the Taiwan Strait. And the risks of a confrontation over Taiwan have increased.
Has Trump properly assessed the implications of the post-Western world that he helped build?
