let's talk about how Donald Trump is reshaping global politics because if you're confused about what Trump's doing and what it all means you're not alone everyone's confused literally just look at how much has happened since he returned to the White House the US will take over the Gaza Strip the Panama Canal we have to have Greenland your country is in big trouble wait a minute no no you've done a lot of talking reciprocal tariffs on countries throughout the world so how can we make sense of all this and is Trump's foreign policy really as big a break with the past as some people are [Music] suggesting listen to this news anchor today Donald Trump irreparably destroyed the 80-year-old postw World War II international order that was a response to Trump's notorious argument with Ukraine's president on live TV in the Oval Office if you didn't have our military equipment you invited me for many people it's a moment that crystallized this idea that in his second term Donald Trump really is ripping up the rule book on how the US deals with its allies and the rest of the world but what does that actually mean what rule book are we talking about if there is that shift that visible shift that people are pointing to what has the shift been away from what was the old rules-based order what did that look like the rules-based international order was something that the United States promoted and has promoted since um the Second World War and it it was this sense that there um there is a common framework of law principles norms and rules in which uh countries should engage one another after the war world leaders from the winning countries set up a bunch of new international organizations like the United Nations let us not fail to grasp this supreme chance to establish a worldwide rule of reason they also set up economic institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank and laid the foundations for a system of more open global trade the aim of it all was to promote peace stability and prosperity and encourage cooperation between countries to prevent another world war so that's essentially what's meant by the rules-based international order but the US with all of its economic and military power has always been the dominant player and some argue one of the biggest beneficiaries being part of an international rules-based system is what made the United States the key economic power for the last you know decades and decades although Donald Trump definitely doesn't see it that way and we'll come back to that now you may have also seen that system being described as the liberal international order because of the political values like democracy and capitalism that the US and its allies promoted that was also magnified by the cold war when the world got carved up into two rival blocks the eastern block led by the communist Soviet Union and the western block led by the US whose president picked up the label of the leader leader of the free world the Cold War also led to the creation of NATO the Western Military Alliance the North Atlantic Treaty Organization nato a cooperative shield to ward off potential communist expansion after the Soviet Union collapsed in the early '90s and the Cold War ended there was a period when it looked like the US and its Western allies and the liberal values they said they stood for had won out check out this scene when the first McDonald's opened in Moscow mcdonald's embodies the economic ambitions of the new Russia and think of all the Hollywood movies from around that time where an American hero defeats a Russian bad guy we've been in this period of very pronounced US dominance um and it has certainly brought helped to bring prosperity in some places but we've also seen significant you know the war on terror in the Middle East right significant upheavalss i really do think you know rules-based order liberal order they're very Washington ccentric ways of saying you know the world that the US has built and over time the US's dominant role in that post-war global order has been questioned more and more especially as other big countries like China and India have grown in power and economic influence there have been a lot of calls to reform institutions like the UN to better reflect that new geopolitical landscape the rules-based international order was under significant strain before Donald Trump arrived on the scene suddenly with Trump's return to the White House uh what we've seen is that the biggest threat to global order actually comes from within the country that is the most powerful country in the world um which formerly was its champion a guardian and underwriter the one that you know actually foot the bill for a lot of things okay history lesson over let's get back to Trump if this so-called rules-based order was the old way of doing things what is it about Trump that's so different now well it's a whole mix of things it's his actual policies but also his style of doing politics he likes to keep us guessing he feels that it's in his interest for us not quite to know what his next move might be or what exactly is motivating him is there such a thing as a Trump doctrine coming up with a Trump doctrine is really hard because um uh the president is really situational and highly transactional he doesn't really do grand strategy but there are some key themes let's start with that idea of President Trump being transactional or you could call it Trump the dealmaker it's how he's always branded himself well that's business he even wrote a book about it back in the 80s based on his career in real estate but I really do think he sees you know the world in very similar terms to he sees his real estate industry and deals right that that you play hard ball you use whatever tools are available to you to get the best deal you can so for example if you look at the way Trump deals with NATO he sees things almost purely in financial terms the US contributes the most to NATO when you look at direct financial contributions and its own defense spending and Trump has made US support for NATO conditional on the other members paying more well I've said that to them i said "If you're not going to pay we're not going to defend." Now Trump sees that as good deal and he has actually pushed Europe into spending much more on defense but many analysts also see risks with Trump's transactional approach he is focusing on what the United States pays for things but not what it gets out of things uh and I think that's a tremendous mistake and that all plays into another big theme with Trump the whole America first thing america first america first putting America first i put America first they're pursuing what they believe to be American interests now we could have a debate about whether those are too narrowly construed or whether they're getting that right but I think that really is the animating feature of his foreign policy one major way Trump's America first agenda is playing out is with international trade he thinks the US has suffered under the post-war global trade rules while other countries have benefited foreign leaders have stolen our jobs foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories and foreign scavengers have torn apart our once beautiful American dream his solution tariffs which are essentially import taxes on goods made abroad to encourage companies to bring factories and jobs back to the US tariffs on basically the entire world the biggest upheaval to international trade since World War II and sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something trump's tariff announcement sent global stock markets tumbling and then Donald Trump backs down he's suspending tariffs on most nations for the next 90 days except China and Wall Street is soaring on the news but with Trump's series of reversals and U-turns since taking office in January critics say that distrust and uncertainty remain hanging over the American economy and the rest of the world he's not intentionally trying to uh emiserate um uh the nation he thinks that if the trade deficit is reduced that means that Americans will be producing more here at home and he thinks that that will enrich the United States he's wrong about all that but he does believe it there are convictions that President Trump has had that we can trace back to the 1980s especially on the issues related to trade and commerce where there's a sense that the US doesn't come out ahead and needs to change what it's doing but Trump's America first approach goes well beyond trade he's essentially abandoned the idea of the US being the global cop defending so-called Western values of democracy human rights and rule of law one of his first moves in office was to pause almost all foreign aid which he said was not aligned with American interests and think about Trump's views on Ukraine he's questioned what the US gets from supporting Ukraine because it's far away saying "This war is far more important to Europe than it is to us we have a big beautiful ocean as separation." That's a real contrast to how under President Biden providing support to Ukraine after Russia's full-scale invasion was kind of a given it's squared with that old world order if the United States walks away it will put Ukraine at risk europe is at risk the free world will be at risk embolding others to do what they wish to do us harm the US has gone from that to this with us you start having cars right now you don't you're playing cards you're playing cards you're gambling with the lives of millions of people you're gambling with World War II for the Trump administration Ukraine is something of a secondary concern uh it doesn't fall among the primary issues that really matter for the American national interest and so there's a less warm relationship with President Zilinski there's more of a willingness to do business with Russia and see if something can be uh worked out the United States is really abdicating any sense of leadership you don't you never hear the word leadership uh from um this president um the United States is no longer really speaking for the West so that's definitely a big symbolic change whether it makes such a big difference in practice is more of a debate one could cynically argue that uh the United States is simply removing the facade that deep down the system has always worked like this but we are finally doing away with the hypocrisy we are no longer using the old cliches about the United States being the leader of the free world and promoting freedom and democracy and protecting the underdog another big theme with Trump is how so much of his foreign policy comes down to power politics i.e using all aspects of US power to get his own way on the international stage again you could easily argue that US foreign policy has always been about this but Trump does seem to be taking it to a new level previously at least you had some liberal internationalists who were perhaps hypocritical but who were at least trying to maintain a semblance of normality in this international relations he's into power politics the politics of might makes right it's things like threatening tariffs on your biggest trading partners to get them to take action on other issues that have nothing to do with trade that's what he did with Canada and Mexico or telling Ukraine that it won't get the same level of US support unless it gives the US access to valuable minerals instead of persuading other countries it's coercing other countries i think President Trump has a view of the world um as rather anarchctic uh where big powers collide uh where power itself is one of the key ingredients uh and the key forces in the world donald Trump likes what I call bullying bilateralism whether it's a NATO or it's the G7 or dealing with the EU he doesn't like getting involved with a whole bunch of other countries he likes to to in a sense pick them off one by one because he knows that US leverage can be applied now of course there's debate about how much Trump really has ripped up the world order or about how orderly that system ever was but Trump has shaken up the US's global relationships especially with its long-standing Western allies and they're scrambling to figure out how to adjust to a world where they can't rely on the US in the same way anymore star Here is all about explaining the news check out our recent episode about growing tensions in the Arctic and how Trump's aim to get Greenland fits into all that also follow me on Instagram so you can stay up to date with all the stories we're working on [Music]