From Steward to Saboteur: The Disintegration of the American-Centric Global Order

As the tectonic plates of geopolitics shift, so does the global order. The world, since 1947, has been accustomed to the US playing the part of an international messiah with the onset of the ‘Truman Doctrine’.

Illustration by The Geostrata

This perception solidified as the ‘Marshall Plan’ established the country at the least as a messiah to economically shattered Europe, while the foundation of NATO in 1949 to “defend” the distressed from an ever-expanding Soviet Union set the thought in stone.

When President Donald Trump assumed office for a second term, whatever was left of the tinted glass after Trump 1.0 shattered as well. President Trump’s political philosophies are centred on the principle of prioritising the US over its diplomatic alliances.

However, ‘America First’ ideologies are now being reinforced, not by directly placing domestic interests over international assistance and global dependence on the States, but by virtue of demolishing those interests by way of withdrawals from multilateral organisations, treaties and alliances along with continual threats in this regard. While the President has pursued a more chaotic path as his approach, the eventual objective remains bereft of chaotic motives. 

With the Trump administration pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council, announcing its intent to withdraw from the World Health Organization, and renouncing its legal commitments as laid down by the 1951 Refugee Convention, the US essentially declares to the world that it is not liable for their woes, however drastic they may be.

The US relinquishes the responsibility to protect, engage in diplomatic dialogues and safeguard the interests of its allies not merely leaving afflicted nations to their own devices but stepping off its previously enjoyed pedestal. The US has been, for time immemorial, of international importance. Now, it is an international threat.

T.R.U.M.P- THE RUFFLED UPENDINGS OF MULTILATERAL POLITICS

President Donald Trump, in spite of appearing to hold a stance in favour of international chaos and havoc, is what can be referred to as a ‘political realist’. Conscious of the overbearing importance of power in political ecosystems, he has constantly made the world aware of its debt to him, both immaterial and monetary in nature.

As Oval Office Exchange witnessed President Zelensky being informed that he was “not being grateful”, the NSA chat leaks bore mention of Europe and Egypt’s indebtedness to the US and an anticipated remuneration if a plan of action was pursued in that regard. President Trump makes it abundantly clear that assistance by the United States, offered in the past or present, or any actions by the country that provide their allies with a strategic advantage by converging interests, do not come without a check.

The President’s belief system is centred on the principle that it is beyond their means to right every wrong but has taken shape in the form of a declaration that the United States no longer comes to anyone’s rescue, that its areas of priority have shifted to sheer power and interest and that it urges allies to move towards strategic independence and self-reliance by building their capabilities, both military and diplomatie.

While the aspect of self-reliance is motivated equally by Europe and its pursuit of decreasing a longstanding dependency on the United States, countries such as Ukraine and Taiwan, which have been recipients of billions of dollars amidst their respective territorial tensions, can barely afford the dream of self-reliance, much less its actuality. President Trump’s personal doctrine hints at not only making policy decisions that cause tremors across the world but also those that fade as quickly as they take hold of the narrative.

Some of the strongest evidence in this regard was the 245% tariffs on China, the President’s desire to incorporate Canada as the 51st US State and the occupation of Greenland. 

With that said, the “America First” policy appears to lean towards the abandonment of moral convictions in the pursuit of political dominance rather than it does towards said pursuit itself, and frequently shifts between a stance of isolationism and engagement that reinforces geopolitical uncertainty. 

TARIFFS, DE-DOLLARISATION, PETRODOLLAR, NIXON SHOCK

The consequences of the “America First” doctrine, however, go beyond the realm of military alliances and diplomatic withdrawals into the very fabric of the global economic order. They untangle the fibres of financial relationships that have been forged over decades, placing the US at the heart of international trade.

As the United States retreats from its longstanding role as a reliable global partner, the very foundations of its position begin to erode, evident most prominently in the challenges to the petrodollar that was born out of the US-Saudi agreement to price oil exclusively in dollars, ensuring a perpetual demand for the greenback while also granting the United States unparalleled economic leverage.

Herein, the increasing assertiveness of Russia has prompted an exhaustive list of nations to conduct energy transactions in currencies apart from the petrodollar. With the BRICS nations exploring prospects for de-dollarisation through the promotion of local currencies, the steady decline of the dollar’s international importance is both a symptom and a catalyst of a tectonic shift that threatens to upend the global financial architecture. The world watches as the United States weaponises the dollar through sanctions and reduces international trade to a series of transactional negotiations.

Unlike the Nixon Shock of 1971, which replaced one system of dollar dominance with another, the current trajectory points toward a multipolar financial order, in which the dollar is but one of several competing currencies.

President Nixon’s unilateral abandonment of the gold standard and the immediate collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rate, while initially destabilising, ultimately reinforced the dollar’s centrality. It is this centrality that President Trump sacrifices for the sake of what can only be referred to as an ever-problematic pursuit of power.

The Trump shock, in this regard, is not one of American design but of American neglect that is not the result of a singular trade policy but the product of years of transactional diplomacy, diminishing credibility and the rise of credible alternatives. 

TAKING THE HELM

As the Trump administration makes it abundantly clear that the United States is not the most reliable figurehead of the global economic order, there has been a recalibration of diplomatic and trade alliances as countries attempt to strive for self-reliance to minimise the impacts of anticipated US withdrawals from extraterritorial themes.

While President Trump also hinted at the fact that US participation in international subjects, especially from a place of mediation, might not come to an end just yet, NATO countries are becoming increasingly aware of shifting global dynamics by virtue of who is behind the wheel. There has been a notable shift in alliances as states turn to minilateral and plurilateral alliances constituted to smaller, more agile coalitions, unlike the static coalitions of the past.

The expansion of BRICS+, the QUAD and regional groupings in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East are centred on issue-based cooperation as opposed to being ideological.

Further, Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been adopting the policy of hedging against risks presented by the American foreign policy’s volatility and uncertainty by strengthening ties with China and Russia. 

China and Russia are increasingly positioning themselves in its stead, leveraging strategic partnerships and shared ambitions to dismantle western influence, underscoring a deliberate shift toward multipolar systems that threaten dollar hegemony although it must be recognised that de-dollarisation is merely a distant dream, much less an ambitious reality. However, while the countries, as two independant actors, could, in the future, fathom their substitution of the American pedestal, their alliance takes place not on the basis of ideological kinship but mutual necessity.

Both of the countries pose, not only different threats to the United States and opportunities to the global order, but different natures of said threats and opportunities wherein Russia, as evident from its actions vis-a-vis Ukraine, takes on a militaristic an territorial threat while the threat posed by China is insofar as bolstering its own international presence is concerned. 

While the United States of America is in the process of stepping off the plinth of a global torchbearer, the Trump administration also seems to be in the process of easing in economic and geopolitical locum tenens by virtue of policies that do not only threaten the peace and security of nations previously insured by the US but overlook the reinforcement of its continued international significance in the absence of such insurance.

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BY DIA ATAL

TEAM GEOSTRATA

info@thegeostrata.com