That the Trump hurricane is taking the international order by storm is now manifestly clear. It is also revealing that much of the shock therapyis by thoughtful design and at least for now, the therapy does seem to be producing desired results.
Understanding the context of the therapy may be useful. The policy wonks in the MAGA camp (Project 2025, the America First Policy Institute, et al) have been alluding to the imperatives of a structural and cultural reset for a while – only the rest of the world was not quite listening. The primary motivation for the re-ordering of the world order is the grim realisation that American power is no longer what it was; it simply does not have the bandwidth to support its global commitments. Trump’s advisors perhaps recognise the wisdom in philosopher and historian Adam Ferguson’s axiom, ‘that any great power that spends more on [its] debt servicing than [it spends] on defence risks ceasing to be a great power’. America’s debt servicing today is $1 trillion, as compared to its $920 billion defence budget.
Method to the seeming madness
That would explain the logic of DOGE, the cut-backs on USAID and other attendant measures to reduce waste and fraud. The massive deficits in trade too, in the view of the MAGA Camp, are leading to export of American wealth to other parts of the globe, and the collapse of domestic American prowess in manufacturing. The factories and jobs have to be brought back to USA. Hence, the trade wars.
The $920 billion American military enterprise (750 bases in 80 countries, boosted by 11 aircraft carriers) which undergirds American power across the globe, is plagued by excess and has degenerated into an opera of failing deterrence.
So, in order to pare its commitments with declining power, not only do global conflicts have to be wound down, but defence burdens also have to be shared and redistributed. The Big Game, the MAGA camp argues, is China; in order to deal with it in a laser-focused manner, they need to wind down distractions in Europe & West Asia, return lethality and meritocracy to the military and bring the moribund American military-industrial complex (MIC) back to life. While the Americans do not have seven days of precision munitions & missiles for a fight in Taiwan, the Chinese can manufacture 7,000 cruise missiles in a week. Interestingly, in 2004, Chinese manufacturing capacities (in value-added terms) were half of those of the Americans. By 2022, the tables had turned, and Chinese manufacturing capacities had become twice those of the US. Not surprisingly, the Chinese MIC today, on American admission, is five to six times more scalable and efficient than that of the US.
