What IR Theory Predicts About Trump 2.0
An academic assessment of the U.S. president’s foreign-policy revolution.
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I swear: My plan was to write about something other than U.S. President Donald Trump this week, but the torrent of bad policies emanating from the White House is impossible to ignore. I’m supposed to write about things that are important, and the foreign policy of the world’s most powerful country is surely one of them, especially when it makes a sudden and far-reaching lurch into the bizarre. So I hope you’ll forgive me if I remain focused on the foreign-policy revolution the Trump administration is attempting to implement.
The key issue is the impact that Trump’s imposition of tariffs, his withdrawal from the World Health Organization, and his other recent initiatives are going to have on American lives. And part of the answer to that question depends on how the rest of the world reacts to Trump’s heavy-handed attempts to browbeat and bully them—starting with some of our closest allies. I wrote about this issue a few weeks ago, but today I want to explore the broader conceptual and theoretical issues that underpin it.
As I see it, what we have here is a clash of rival theories about how the world works. The first is my old friend balance-of-power/threat theory; the second is the theory of collective goods. Both perspectives tell you important things about how the world works; the question is which one provides the clearest insights into what is likely to happen now.
Let’s start with balance-of-threat theory. Its logic is straightforward: In a world with no central authority, all states tend to worry if one state becomes too strong, because they can’t be sure how it might use the power at its disposal. The result is a strong tendency for weaker states to join forces to keep stronger powers in check, and to defeat them if they try to conquer or dominate weaker powers. The tendency to balance increases if a strong power is located close by; if it has a powerful military that appears to be designed primarily to conquer others; or if it seems to have especially malign intentions, which is why I have long argued that states balance against threats and not just power alone.
Among other things, this theory helps explain a striking and enduring anomaly in world politics. The United States has been the world’s strongest economic and military power since World War II, yet most of the world’s major and medium powers preferred to align with it rather than balance against it. They were not jumping on the U.S. bandwagon (i.e., aligning with Washington in order to appease it); they were balancing with the United States against countries (e.g., the Soviet Union) that were right next door to them and that appeared to have dangerous ambitions. One result: America’s Cold War alliance system was always richer, militarily stronger, and more influential than the various partners aligned with Moscow.
Despite its vast power, the United States has never faced an equally powerful balancing coalition. This was partly due to its geographic distance from the other key centers of world power, but also because many key states—including immediate neighbors such as Canada—did not see it as especially threatening. This situation persisted even during the unipolar era, when the United States stood alone at the pinnacle of world power and one might have expected other states to do more to check its influence. There were some modest efforts at “soft balancing,” but mostly among a set of relatively weak actors like the “Axis of Resistance” in the Middle East. Although U.S. allies often questioned U.S. judgment and worried that U.S. policies might harm them inadvertently (the invasion of Iraq in 2003 confirmed that such fears were correct), on balance they still saw the United States as a useful partner and not as a serious danger. U.S. primacy was also tolerable because both Democratic and Republican administrations exercised their considerable influence through multilateral institutions like NATO and generally treated allied leaders with respect, even when they were pressuring those same leaders to do what Washington wanted.
America’s geographic location is unchanged, of course, and is still an enormous asset. But the Trump administration’s bellicose approach to traditionally pro-American countries such as Canada or Denmark is unprecedented. Not only do U.S. partners have to worry that the United States is no longer trustworthy (because Trump thinks rules are meaningless and has no qualms about promising to do something on Tuesday and taking it back on Friday), but they also have to worry that the United States is actively malevolent. When the president threatens to retake the Panama Canal or conquer Greenland or make Canada the 51st state—no matter what existing treaties require or what Panama, Denmark, or the Greenlanders have to say about it—all countries must worry that they might be next.
As balance-of-threat theory predicts, some leaders in these countries are already advocating concerted efforts to resist Trump’s dangerous agenda. Last week, former Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland (who hopes to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party) called for a summit meeting of Mexico, Panama, Canada, and the European Union to develop joint responses to Trump’s tariffs and sovereignty threats. When Canadian hockey fans boo the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner”—as they did this weekend—you know something is seriously amiss. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, the Palestinian Authority, and the Arab League issued a joint statement flatly rejecting Trump’s proposal to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. Such efforts are bound to increase if Trump continues down his current path, and some countries are going to look for help from Beijing, if only to gain more leverage against Washington.
This is a sea change in U.S. foreign policy, and it will inevitably narrow the perceived differences between the United States and its principal great-power rivals. America’s Asian partners have been eager to cooperate with Washington (and adjust some of their policies to keep U.S. leaders happy) because they are worried about the regional balance of power and wanted the United States to help maintain it. If the United States starts acting like Russia and China, however, and if it keeps threatening new trade wars, the advantages of being closely tied to Washington will diminish. States accustomed to following the U.S. lead will hedge and explore other strategies to protect themselves from U.S. whims.
In short, one of the more enduring and powerful theories of world politics suggests that Trump’s radical approach to foreign policy is going to backfire. He may win a few concessions in the short term, but the long-term results will be greater global resistance and new opportunities for America’s rivals.
Here’s where the theory of collective goods kicks in, however, and it points in the other direction. Taming American power requires coordinated action and a willingness to bear the costs of opposition. Getting other states to line up against Trump will take time, and some governments will be tempted to free-ride and hope that somebody else does the heavy lifting. Under these conditions, the United States can play divide-and-conquer and try to peel some states away by offering individual concessions. The difficulty of organizing a balancing coalition should not be underestimated—especially for countries whose political systems are themselves under strain—and that’s undoubtedly what Trump is counting on.
Nobody doubts that the United States has a mailed fist, but we are about to discover what happens when the velvet glove is removed. As realists have warned for decades, and as a parade of past aggressors reminds us, states that use big-stick diplomacy to browbeat and punish others eventually overcome any initial reluctance to balance and the obstacles to collective action and end up with fewer friends, more enemies, and far less influence. I wouldn’t have thought it possible for the United States to permanently alienate its closest neighbors and many long-standing partners, but that is precisely where we are now headed.
Stephen M. Walt is a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University. Bluesky: @stephenwalt.bsky.social X: @stephenwalt