The Postliberal Superpower |
In a world of intensifying great-power competition and geopolitical uncertainty, it is tempting to interpret the Trump administration’s recent foreign policy moves through the familiar lens of realpolitik. The administration itself invites this reading. U.S. President Donald Trump’s revival of the nineteenth-century Monroe Doctrine suggests a foreign policy rooted in the balance of power. So, too, do his recent strikes on Iran. The 2026 National Defense Strategy claims to support “hardnosed realism” while castigating previous administrations for clinging to “cloud-castle abstractions like the rules-based international order.” The rejection of international norms in favor of power politics appears, at first glance, fully consistent with a realist worldview.
The Trump administration has indeed dispensed with established rules of the international order. U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth dismissed “tepid legality” while ordering strikes on alleged drug-running vessels in the Caribbean, which many experts regarded as violations of international law. Trump sent invitations for his newly created Board of Peace to autocrats such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. And most important, the Trump administration has dismantled the country’s normative toolkit, shuttering institutions that promoted international norms and democratic values such as USAID, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the State Department’s Global Engagement Center while sharply reducing funding for the National Endowment for Democracy, Voice of America, and Radio Free Europe.
Administration officials justify these moves as cost-cutting measures, arguing that these institutions are ineffective at promoting U.S. strategic interests. Yet framing these policies as realpolitik obscures the true driver of the Trump administration’s foreign policy: the embrace of an illiberal, or what some analysts are calling a postliberal, ideology at home. Those fixated on explaining the Trump administration’s policies with realism miss a central and indeed growing feature of today’s geopolitics—the projection of domestic governance struggles into the international arena. In the United States and elsewhere, the boundary between domestic politics and geopolitics is eroding. Domestic political fights and partisan ideology are shaping states’ foreign policy choices, such as their preferred partnerships, and states are even inserting themselves into national political contests—for example, openly backing preferred political candidates, as U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio did on a recent visit to Hungary.
If the Trump administration were pursuing a realist approach, it would be balancing power against its chief rivals, Russia and China. But the United States is instead moderating its posture toward its great-power adversaries while directing its most aggressive policies at democratic allies, often in ways meant to appeal to Trump’s domestic political base. For close allies such as Canada and the United Kingdom, this has come as a profound shock, and in Canada’s case is already leading to hedging against Washington through attempts to shore up relations with Beijing. This result is precisely the opposite of what the United States would seek under a realist agenda. Other Trump administration policies are even harder to reconcile with conventional realist logic. The National Security Strategy’s call for “cultivating resistance” to mainstream European parties by supporting far-right opposition movements, the controversial $20 billion bailout of Argentina, and the tariff war being waged against key partners such as Brazil, India, and South Africa, which could otherwise serve as pivotal swing states against Russia and China, all reflect partisan political imperatives rather than strategic balancing against great-power rivals. The administration’s realist rhetoric is therefore more justification than motivation. In truth, U.S. foreign policy is increasingly diverging from liberal democratic allies such as Denmark or Canada and converging with the foreign policies of illiberal democracies like Hungary and Slovakia.
FINDING NEW FRIEND GROUPS
The Trump administration’s new foreign policy orientation is often cast as a product of a distinctively U.S. political phenomenon, spurred by the rise of the “Make America Great Again” movement. Some see in this movement a resurgent isolationism, while others see a primarily nationalist push. But while U.S. foreign policy decisions are uniquely consequential because of the country’s superpower status, the foreign policy realignment evident today is not at all unique to the United States or the MAGA movement.
When authoritarian states democratize, they often reorient their foreign policies toward other democracies and away from former autocratic patrons. Armenia, Moldova, and Ukraine, for example, moved decisively out of Russia’s orbit and pursued closer ties with Western democracies once more liberal leaders were elected in the wake of popular pro-democracy movements within the last decade. The international balance of power in all three cases changed little, yet domestic political shifts in these countries reordered foreign policy priorities, steering them away from Russian-led institutions such as the Eurasian Union and the Commonwealth of Independent States and toward deeper cooperation with the European Union and the United States.
The reverse is equally true. When democratic countries elect illiberal leaders who proceed to hollow out democratic institutions, they tend to seek accommodation with authoritarian powers and distance themselves from democratic allies. Georgia, Hungary, and Slovakia illustrate this trajectory, even if they vary in the scope of their democratic backsliding. After illiberal leaders took office in these countries, they moved quickly to weaken checks and balances by exerting pressure on independent media, civil society organizations, and universities while scapegoating immigrants, LGBTQ communities, and political liberals for societal ills. As democratic institutions came under pressure, Georgia, Hungary, and Slovakia increasingly clashed with the EU and NATO over their commitment to democratic principles and fundamental freedoms. At the same time, all three governments pursued closer ties with Russia and China, embracing some key elements of Beijing’s and Moscow’s foreign policies such as opposition to Western sanctions, copying repressive legislation targeting civil society organizations, and welcoming Russian and Chinese investments.
The United States today is exhibiting some of the same tendencies. Like its nonliberal counterparts in Europe, Washington has begun picking fights with NATO and EU countries, including castigating European governments for allegedly failing to protect free speech and warning that “activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies” threaten “civilizational erasure.” Apparently projecting the United States’ own domestic political battles onto Europe, the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy denounces “migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and the loss of national identities and self-confidence.”
Georgian, Hungarian, and Slovakian leaders routinely deploy nearly identical arguments when deflecting EU criticism of their democratic backsliding. Threats to traditional civilization and values and the erosion of sovereignty are the references that form the core of their political discourse. Their policy responses are also remarkably similar to those in the United States. The Trump administration’s efforts to defund institutions promoting liberal democracy abroad, such as the National Endowment for Democracy and Voice of America, are mirrored by the Hungarian government’s eviction of the liberal-leaning Central European University, the Georgian government’s political pressure on the similarly liberal Ilia State University, and the Slovak government’s dissolution of the national public broadcaster RTVS. Once again, the boundaries between domestic politics and foreign policy are blurred as postliberal governments seek to neutralize institutions that run counter to their governing ideologies.
DE-ESCALATION STATION
Given the parallel rise of Trump’s postliberal administration, it is hardly surprising that the United States has also begun to echo the foreign policies of these countries, seeking closer ties with Russia and China while distancing itself from democratic allies. When it comes to Russia—arguably the world’s most destructive power and a state that has spent decades trying to divide NATO and weaken the United States—the Trump administration has pursued a policy of attempted rapprochement. Senior U.S. envoys such as Steve Witkoff, alongside Trump himself, have praised Putin on several occasions and invested considerable political capital in trying to end the war in Ukraine on terms favorable to Moscow.
After Trump’s highly publicized red carpet reception for Putin in Anchorage last August, U.S. diplomats moved swiftly to craft a peace framework that would concede Ukrainian territory to Russia. This would have effectively reversed the first Trump administration’s 2018 “Crimea Declaration,” which pledged never to recognize Russia’s illegal territorial seizures. Witkoff’s attempts to justify this shift echoed Kremlin propaganda, claiming Russia’s staged referendums in occupied Ukrainian territories demonstrated that “the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule.” Witkoff’s initial peace proposal, although later revised, was so tilted toward Moscow that Republican Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska publicly called for his firing, warning on social media that “Witkoff fully favors the Russians.”
The Trump administration’s broader policy toward Russia reinforces the impression that Washington is making decisions based on motivations other than realpolitik. In February 2025, the United States stunned its allies by voting against a UN General Assembly resolution sponsored by the Europeans that called for the withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine, aligning instead with Russia and pariah states such as Belarus, North Korea, and Sudan. A few months later, as Trump imposed his “Liberation Day” tariffs on most U.S. trading partners around the world, Washington conspicuously exempted Russia. And despite a sharp escalation in Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities throughout 2025, the Trump administration has stood by its decision to terminate all direct military assistance to Kyiv, permitting only indirect sales of equipment by U.S. defense contractors on a much smaller scale.
The Trump administration’s realist rhetoric is more justification than motivation.
A roughly similar pattern has emerged in U.S.-Chinese relations. As the Trump administration has pursued a trade agreement with Beijing and emphasized bilateral stability, it has also muted its earlier confrontational rhetoric. Although some administration officials—including Mike Waltz, the first national security adviser in Trump’s second term who is currently serving as U.S. ambassador to the UN—initially argued that the United States should aggressively challenge Beijing’s efforts to establish dominance in the Asia-Pacific, recent commentary from the administration has been far more subdued. The National Defense Strategy, for instance, emphasizes the pursuit of a “decent peace” in the region that retreats from the more combative language that the first Trump administration employed when trying to build a coalition against the adoption of Chinese technologies in the West.
This shift has been reinforced by U.S. policy choices across the broader Asia-Pacific. According to The New York Times, the Trump administration urged Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te to avoid visiting the United States during overseas travel last year so as not to provoke Beijing, and delayed a multibillion dollar sale of weapons to Taiwan to avoid upsetting Chinese leader Xi Jinping ahead of a planned trip to China in April. And after Japanese Prime Mister Sanae Takaichi declared that Chinese military action against Taiwan would threaten Japan’s interests, The Wall Street Journal reported that Washington pressed Takaichi to temper her public warnings to manage the hostile reaction her comments earned from Chinese officials. In the technology sphere, Washington relaxed export controls in December to allow the U.S. technology company Nvidia to sell advanced H200 semiconductors to Chinese customers, marking a significant reversal of earlier restrictions put in place by the Biden administration.
Taken together, these moves point to a broader strategic recalibration by the United States. In both Europe and Asia, the Trump administration has subordinated long-term great-power competition and alliance leadership to short-term deal-making. Accommodation has supplanted competition as the organizing principle toward America’s authoritarian rivals. This is not realism but transactionalism born of a very different political orientation from any previous administration, Republican or Democrat.
The Trump administration’s prioritization of the Western Hemisphere in its foreign policy is the clearest indication that geopolitics is being driven less by strategic necessity than by domestic political imperatives. The former Trump official A. Wess Mitchell has argued that the sudden pivot to the Western Hemisphere “does not in itself necessarily constitute a diversion from China,” portraying it instead as an effort to consolidate power and build capabilities ahead of a future confrontation with Beijing. Yet the current administration’s actions belie this claim. Its 2025 base defense budget was smaller in real terms than the Biden administration’s, and it chose to redeploy major assets, including a carrier strike group, to support operations in the Caribbean. These choices suggest not the careful husbanding of resources for great-power competition but rather the pursuit of the administration’s own postliberal ambitions. Nor has U.S. public opinion demanded a renewed hemispheric focus. According to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, only 11 percent of Americans view Latin America as a priority for promoting U.S. economic growth, and only five percent view it as a priority for U.S. military security.
If the Trump administration’s goal was to strengthen Washington’s geopolitical position in the region, it has so far made little headway. Its policies have severely strained relations with key partners, including Brazil, Canada, Colombia, and Mexico. Under pressure from U.S. tariffs, each has sought to expand trade with China, further diluting American influence. Molding Latin America into a region of greater U.S. influence will require investing considerable time and diplomatic capital, neither of which aligns with Mitchell’s “consolidation” hypothesis that claims the current era of geopolitical retrenchment demands a mustering of resources for future competition with China. Even the administration’s signature achievement in the region—the removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro—carries significant risks. Washington’s partnership with the far-left Chavista regime invites renewed instability that could draw the United States into an open-ended nation-building project south of its border.
In truth, the administration’s hemispheric focus is best understood as an extension of its domestic agenda. Its deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and National Guard troops to U.S. cities has been justified in part by claims that the country has been overrun by Latin American drug cartels. One of the administration’s first executive orders, issued in January 2025, designated cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and asserted that they had “engaged in a campaign of violence and terror throughout the Western Hemisphere.” In his March 2025 address to Congress, Trump reinforced this narrative, declaring that “the cartels are waging war in America and it’s time for America to wage war on the cartels.” Although drug trafficking has undeniably damaged public health and domestic security in the United States, the Trump administration’s ends appear misaligned with its ways and means. U.S. strikes on small vessels that it claimed were smuggling drugs from Venezuela targeted relatively minor actors, when the principal sources of fentanyl and its precursors are China and Mexico, and global cocaine production remains centered in Colombia. Similarly, Trump’s claims of an operational narcotrafficking alliance between Maduro and Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles as part of the rationale for U.S. military action in Venezuela sit rather oddly alongside the administration’s decision to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of facilitating the shipment of hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States.
But despite the Trump administration’s efforts to double down in its own backyard, even this new focus on the Western Hemisphere is not immune from the president’s own domestic motivations. Trump’s regime change war against Iran flies in the face of his “America first” agenda and the National Security Strategy’s explicit deprioritization of the Middle East. Like the successful operation to remove Maduro, the strikes to decapitate the Iranian regime and take out its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei must be seen through the lens of U.S. domestic politics. Sagging approval ratings and domestic scandals often invite quick foreign wars. The elimination of Khamenei gives the administration an instant political victory and refocuses media attention away from domestic concerns. Even though senior Trump administration officials such as Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby have argued that the United States “cannot afford to be enmeshed in another Middle Eastern war,” domestic political calculations are again overriding conceptual strategic thinking.
The Trump administration’s efforts to acquire Greenland likewise lacked a coherent rationale unless viewed through the lens of domestic U.S. politics. Officials portrayed the initiative as necessary to ward off Russian and Chinese control over the Arctic yet never fully explained why an expanded U.S. military presence, which Danish and Greenlandic authorities were willing to accept, was not sufficient on its own. As with Maduro’s removal in Venezuela, the pursuit of a legacy political accomplishment for Trump offers a more convincing explanation for U.S. actions than any carefully calibrated realist strategy for great-power competition. It also exposes the Trump administration’s disregard for international law and its readiness to throw allies and partners under the bus when expedient for the United States. By initially refusing to rule out the use of military force in Greenland, the United States openly challenged core principles of the UN Charter, including the prohibition on threats of force, the inviolability of borders, and respect for territorial integrity. Had such transgressions been directed at a hostile adversary, allied reactions might have been supportive or ambivalent. Instead, those transgressions were aimed at Denmark—a founding member of NATO and one of Washington’s most reliable partners for decades—making their implications all the more alarming for America’s closest allies.
The resulting shock waves extended well beyond Greenland. Despite the Trump administration having inherited robust alliances in both Europe and the Indo-Pacific, its postliberal foreign policy has managed to alienate many of its steadfast partners in remarkably short order. Pew Research Center polling shows that large majorities in allied countries now express little or no trust in Trump to “do the right thing regarding world affairs.”
A foreign policy approach that bashes allies for “civilizational erasure” and treats alliances as encumbrances is unlikely to prevail in great-power competition over time. The twenty-first century is already being defined by the global competition between liberal democracies that emphasize individual freedoms and illiberal autocracies that emphasize collective goods. In this global contest, the United States cannot succeed economically, diplomatically, or militarily without cooperating with its closest allies. For decades, U.S. alliances have been rooted in a shared devotion to the principles of liberal democracy, and American strength has been determined by how closely it hews to these ideals at home and abroad. A postliberal foreign policy risks squandering this source of enduring strength and leaving the United States weaker as a consequence.
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