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Before he has taken a single executive decision, countries around the world are positioning themselves for his impact
“A revisionist state has arrived on the scene to contest the liberal international order, and it is not Russia or China, it is the United States. It is Trump in the Oval Office, the beating heart of the free world. The incoming administration contests every element of the liberal international order – trade, alliances, migration, multilateralism, democratic solidarity and human rights.
“The narrative now at home and abroad is that the US is not what we thought it was. Trump was not an aberration, not a bug, but a feature of American politics and of America’s story.”
This stark assessment of the impact of Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January, by the Princeton University professor of politics John Ikenberry, leads him to a question: “Will the new global order be determined less by the US and more by its legacy partners? Will they seek an alternative framework globally and regionally, or will they make bets to ride this out, and do the transactional politics that Trump is going to request?”
Already, from Ankara to Brussels to Tehran and Moscow, the whole world seems catalysed and in motion as countries seek answers to versions of that question. Without Trump taking a single executive decision, they are positioning, responding and adjusting to the long shadow he represents. Even Trump himself seems a little unnerved at what his return is unleashing. “The world seems to be going a little crazy now,” he recently admitted in Paris.
Amid the craziness, three distinct forms of response to Trump are starting to emerge.
An “ideologically aligned” group is emboldened, including populists in Europe, Latin America and Israel who believe their often Russia-friendly brand of nationalism will benefit from being in the slipstream of America First. The breakup of the European Union, an Argentina-style chainsaw taken to regulation, a new security architecture with Russia, regime change in Tehran: all become possibilities.
A second group, led by China, foresees a diplomatic shake-up in which America becomes an agent of instability, leading to some kind of globalised realignment. For Beijing – facing the threat of 50% tariffs – the silver lining is that Trump’s willingness to treat friends as foes may create a leadership vacuum that China, as the so-called advocate of “the global majority”, can exploit.
It is one version of the “alternative framework” of which Ikenberry speaks. Trump seems aware of that risk and is already threatening to impose 100% tariffs on the Brics countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates – if they try to replace the US dollar with another currency.
The third, more phlegmatic, group is made up of America’s “legacy partners” in Europe and the G7 group of liberal democracies. They still hope that with the right mix of argument, flattery and self-abnegation they can make a rational case that appeals to Trump’s self-interest.
Leaders of these nominal allies, however much they revile Trump’s methods, look at American power and feel they have no choice but to interact with him. “We have to dance with whoever is on the dancefloor,” Mark Rutte, the new Nato chief, said in February. The battle then becomes one for Trump’s brain, and to persuade him that America’s interests do not stop at its borders. But if this strategy does not work, insurance is being taken out by strengthening alternative frameworks. Polling published this month by the European Council on Foreign Relations, for instance, showed that right across Europe voters prefer more Europe to more Trump.
That need not be surprising. Trump, it should be recalled, describes the EU as a “not-so-mini-China”. His threat to impose tariffs has already stimulated an internal debate in Europe on how to respond. The president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, has been accused of running up the white flag by saying Europe should try to ward off tariffs by buying US arms and liquefied natural gas.
The former WTO director general Pascal Lamy described her strategy to “calm this barking dog” as “absolutely wrong”. He said: “You never negotiate with the US, whatever the president, from a position of weakness. We must be strong by showing the importance of our market to US exporters.”
But even he admits this will be testing since different countries have different levels of dependence on the US. “Our strength is the size of our market and our unity. Our weakness is our lack of geostrategic consistency and our disunity.”
Trump’s true existential threat to Europe lies in Ukraine. Without having revealed a detailed peace plan, Trump seems to want to threaten both sides – Vladimir Putin with rearmament in Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy with withdrawal of support – to force an end to the war.
Asked recently if he was concerned about Trump’s intentions, the outgoing head of the EU’s foreign service, Josep Borrell, said: “How could I not be worried? Certainly I am. This is the big elephant in the room; this is the question. What will Europeans do if the new American administration is no longer supporting Ukraine? This is the question the Ukrainians were asking me when I was visiting Kyiv. It came from the last soldier to the president of Ukraine. I don’t think anyone knows the answer.”
Trump complained: “We are in for $350bn. Europe is in for $150bn. That needs to be equalised. The war with Russia is important for everyone, but it’s more important for Europe than us. We have a little thing called an ocean between us.”
Faced by the risk Trump will agree a deal with Putin over his head, Zelenskyy at the end of November took pre-emptive action. He proposed a ceasefire in which Ukraine would solely rely on diplomacy – not armed conflict – to regain the territory lost to Russia in the east since 2014, but in return the remaining part of Ukraine would be offered Nato membership, and not just the “well-lit bridge” to membership at some point in the future.
But Rutte has already rejected his plan, arguing that none of the key players, including Russia or the US, would accept Ukrainian membership of Nato now. Nato membership includes the key commitment that an attack on one member is an attack on all.
That leaves Europe facing some fateful decisions and not much time in which to take them.
Norbert Röttgen, the German CDU foreign affairs specialist, said: “Europe squandered the time it should have spent investing more heavily into the relationship [with the US] – including by building up its own defences … European leaders cannot simply shift the blame for their predicament to Washington.”
Borrell insists he did try to make Europe learn to speak “the language of power”, and so be capable of acting more independently from the US. This required not just an increase in European defence spending, but a change in mindset that he admits has only just started. He recalls when he was asked how Europe would respond to the Russian attack on Ukraine in 2022, he instructed his officials to work up an option, and they came up with a plan to spend €50m (£41m). “I said “Are you crazy? Put three 0s behind that. We are talking about a real war with bombs falling inside a European city.’”
The use of the European peace facility – an EU military aid fund – to help Ukraine, which was advocated by Borrell, was a significant step. Overall progress towards creating a European defence capability has been glacial, however. He blames a lack of political will, symbolised by the opposition within the EU to ending the national veto in all foreign policy decisions. Borrell explained: “We live in an ecosystem where you cannot speak, you cannot open your mouth if there is no unity. How many times did I have to say ‘there is no European position on this’? Everyone wants to keep their right to a veto, that is the reality.”
Borrell also found Europe’s industrial defence base hollowed out. “I have been begging for arms. It took three months just to ask for 1m rounds of ammunition. Russia is shooting 800,000 in a month.” Since the Ukraine war started, he said, nearly 45% of all the equipment provided by EU nations came from outside the bloc.
So a European plan to protect Ukraine is still needed, but Trump is having a galvanising impact.
A statement issued earlier this month by foreign ministers from Germany, France, Poland, Italy and the UK after a meeting in Berlin contained a warning to Trump not to strike a deal with Putin behind Europe’s back: “There can be no negotiations about peace in Ukraine without Ukrainians and without Europeans by their side.”
The question is, given the shortfalls described by Borrell: can Europe realistically fill the gap if Trump ends US support? The plan is a European coalition of the willing, cooperating outside EU structures, providing security guarantees to Ukraine by stationing peacekeeping troops inside Ukraine along an as yet unnegotiated demarcation line. Unconfirmed leaks suggest the package includes as many as 40,000 troops, and a novel means to fund boosts to defence spending. The plan based on the model of postwar North and South Korea is so sensitive that no one yet wishes to discuss it in public.
The key drivers are Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, in an alliance with the probable next German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron. The coalition needs to be credible enough both to convince Putin total victory is unachievable and to persuade Trump that Europe is reforming, and deserves American backing.
But just as Trump’s victory has forced the principals in Europe to rethink their war, Middle Eastern leaders wonder how their region’s proliferating and interconnected conflicts will be affected by Trump. Will he vacate the area, leaving the chaos to deepen, and allow other actors such as Turkey to regain their dominance and influence?
Even Trump’s closest allies seem divided on how he will react. Some US diplomats brief: “Trump is not going to be like Bush or Obama. Sure, he’ll take calls from Gulf leaders, but he is going to respond: ‘That’s your problem.’”
Others such as Mike Waltz, the president-elect’s choice for national security adviser, say Trump is ready to make “big transformative deals”. Waltz is already claiming credit for the Lebanon ceasefire agreed before the inauguration. “Everyone’s coming to the table because of President Trump,” he claimed.
Yet Trump’s previous Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt at the recent Doha forum for political dialogue said Trump saw no need to solve the Palestinian issue. “Many of you think the Palestinian issue is the be-all and end-all. Not true. What the Trump administration did, and I think they will try to do again, is to decouple the Palestinian issue from everything else.” He said that after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel “the Palestinian issue is so complicated and deeply entrenched, it is going to be hard to fix now”.
But that means the biggest deal – the one between Saudi Arabia and Israel – looks impossible for the moment. The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has described what Israel has done in Gaza as a “genocide”, and his diplomats have said normalisation with Israel and an expansion of the Abraham accords – bilateral agreements signed by Israel, the UAE and Bahrain during Trump’s first term – is “off the table without a clear pathway to a Palestinian state”.
Moreover, just like Europe, the Gulf states are looking to reduce their reliance on the US.
Fawaz Gerges, a professor of the Middle East at the London School of Economics, pointed out: “Saudi Arabia, one of the most important Middle Eastern powers dependent on the US, is positioning itself for the Trump administration by diversifying its foreign policy, deepening its relations with China and normalising with Iran.”
He argued: “The Biden administration has insulted and humiliated its own Arab allies, all of which have been begging him to use leverage with the Israeli prime minister.”
The US, he contended, by “turning Israel into a military fortress, has prevented Israel from coming to terms with its neighbours. The US has not been a true friend of Israel since it has not sought to answer the question of: how do you anchor and integrate Israel into the social fabric in the region?”
A self-confident Israel sees no need to answer such questions. The “military fortress”, after its display of dominance in 2024, regards 2025 as the year to complete the remaking of the Middle East that it has begun in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.
Within a week of the US election, the extremist Israeli cabinet member Bezalel Smotrich proclaimed that Trump’s return meant that “2025 will, with God’s help, be the year of [Israeli] sovereignty in Judea and Samaria” – the Israeli name for the West Bank. Annexation, an issue hotly contested within the first Trump administration, is back on the agenda, a prospect that terrifies the Gulf states.
More importantly, the stars may finally have aligned for Netanyahu to attack Iran’s nuclear sites, his objective for more than a decade. Anti-Tehran hawks will run Washington, Iranian air defences are weakened due to Israel’s previous attack in 26 October, the “axis of resistance” is in even worse disrepair, Syria no longer exists as a military force, and Netanyahu claims after three conversations since the election he and Trump “see eye to eye on the Iranian threat in all its components, and the danger posed by it”.
But Trump may not give Netanyahu the blank cheque he wants. He has sold himself to the American people as a leader that carries a big stick, but does not start wars. Iran’s leadership, despite the internal divisions, has also been sending signals to prove that it wants to get back to the negotiating table with the US and have sanctions lifted.
On the campaign trail Trump revealed that he had been prepared to make a deal with Iran “within one week after the election” if he had won in 2020. “It would have been a great deal for them. The only thing they cannot have is nuclear weapons.”
Trump may also not behave as many predict with China, focusing on the trade surplus, as opposed to an existential ideological war with the Chinese Communist party that does not animate him. China’s president, Xi Jinping, has already been manoeuvring in Europe, in the global south and with business opinion to portray himself as a free trading stable partner committed to green energy.
The contrast between the idiosyncratic decision-making in the White House and the predictability of China’s modus operandi is also being promoted globally. This narrative may conceal more than it reveals, but it finds a ready reception in bodies such as the UN.
It is also in stark contrast to the bleak description of Trump’s vision set out by the incoming vice-president, JD Vance: “People are genuinely afraid that if they don’t listen to him, bad things can happen, and there are consequences for disregarding him.”
‘Bad things can happen’: how will the world adjust to the Trump presidency?
