The end of Pax Americana

Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is CEO of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and host of the weekly podcast “World Review with Ivo Daalder.” He writes POLITICO’s Across the Pond column.

In the end, it wasn’t even close.

Donald Trump became the first U.S. president since Grover Cleveland in 1893 to be reelected after losing a previous reelection. And he’s only the second Republican to win the popular vote in 36 years.

Trump won in a landslide. He helped Republicans take control of the Senate and may well help them keep the House — ensuring single-party control across all three branches of government. He can rightly claim a mandate to implement all the policies he touted.

“I will govern by a simple motto,” he declared in his victory speech. “Promises made, promises kept.”

And he made many promises.

Trump will be “dictator” on Day 1. He’ll deport 15 million or more illegal immigrants. He’ll deploy the military against his critics. He’ll go after the media and the Justice Department, impose a loyalty test on civil servants and end federal prosecutions of his past conduct.

All the while, he’ll be shielded by a Supreme Court that’s already decided a president cannot be criminally prosecuted for his “official acts.”

It’s doubtful that most Americans actually voted for these promises. Rather, what drove a majority to vote for a man who has lied about losing an election, encouraged sedition and been convicted on 34 felony counts was the same anti-incumbent mood that felled many governments across the world this year. From Britain to South Africa, India to France, voters have punished their leaders at the polls.

And now, this anti-incumbent wave has crested in the U.S., fed — above all — by inflation and uncontrolled immigration.

More than half of today’s U.S. population was born after the last major bout of inflation in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Until now, they’d never experienced spikes in prices for housing, groceries and more. Add to that a general sense that immigration has grown out of control, and many of them just voted to throw the bums out.

They don’t necessarily like Trump or even agree with his policies, but they want change.

However, elections have consequences. And Trump’s return to power will have major repercussions for the U.S. and the world at large. I’ve long worried about the impact his reelection would have on American democracy, and nothing about this result gives me any comfort. I, for one, believe Trump intends to keep his promises — all of them.

I also worry about what this means for the rest of the world. In his first term, Trump made clear he doesn’t buy into Washington’s global leadership role as his predecessors have done. He doesn’t believe in leading — he believes in winning.

Yet, since 1945, the world as we know it has largely been built on the idea of America leading — a Pax Americana that sought to deter enemies and reassure friends; build prosperity by opening markets and encouraging the free movement of goods, capital, people and ideas; and uphold the defense of liberty, democracy and rule of law. It was this global leadership that produced NATO and other alliances, helped rebuild post-war Europe and Asia, and opened trade with the General Agreements of Tariffs and Trade and the World Trade Organization.

America’s enemies long resisted this singular global role — but the Soviet Union succumbed to its internal contradictions, and China eventually realized it had to integrate into the global economy in order to lift its citizens out of poverty. Even so, Moscow and Beijing have long chafed at Washington’s leadership, and for the past decade, they’ve sought to counter and undermine it.

They may now get their wish.

Trump isn’t interested in sustaining the Pax Americana in the ways his 14 predecessors were. He has long seen alliances as protection rackets, where a partnership’s value to the U.S. is how much it gets paid rather than the peace and security it provides. He doesn’t believe in trade or open markets, instead he favors imposing crushing tariffs on U.S. imports — up to levels last seen in the 1930s — even if all economists believe it will bring economic disaster.

And far from showing an interest in defending democracy and rule of law, he deeply admires and looks for common cause with the strongmen who oppose both.

The end of the Pax Americana will have profound consequences: For one, the transformation of Europe’s security environment will now be complete. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine already demonstrated the folly of relying on cheap Russian gas to power economies. China’s turn to increased economic self-sufficiency raised serious questions about relying on exports to its growing market for growth. And now, as the U.S. turns away from alliances, the Continent will be forced to become serious about its own defense.

Whether they do so will be up to them, of course, but Washington is unlikely to be of much help.

Meanwhile, in Asia, countries living in the shadow of a more assertive and ambitious China will have to decide whether they’ll find new ways to balance Beijing’s growing power or align more closely with it. And many nations in the global south will enjoy more freedom of maneuver in the short term — though they may also come to find a sudden increase in China’s and Russia’s demands on them.

The Pax America will officially end on Jan. 20, 2025, when the U.S. inaugurates Donald J. Trump as its 47th president. The country and world will be very different because of it.