Trump has buried liberal world order but what comes next could be better

The two terms of US President Donald Trump have shaken the old style of US liberal internationalist leadership. Yet, as some doors close, others open. The summit between President Xi Jinping and Trump in Beijing last month suggests that the United States and China might now have an opportunity to move beyond ideological confrontation and towards a more realistic framework of coexistence, strategic stability and managed competition.

For decades, Washington has held global primacy and pursued a liberal internationalist foreign policy of promoting democracy, open markets and stewardship of global institutions. Trump’s more realist foreign policy has been more transactional, sovereignty-centred and more openly sceptical of the post-war order.

Its focus on tariffs, alliance burden-sharing and resistance to Western progressive social values has changed the narrative that American power serves a universal project larger than itself. Further, even if Trump left office tomorrow, his tenure has made any future attempt to re-embrace old-style liberal internationalism less credible.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the transatlantic partnership. The Trump administration’s criticism of Europe’s reliability, defence posture and direct interference in European politics has weakened the idea that the Atlantic alliance can remain the unquestioned core of global order. Europe’s pursuit of strategic autonomy is now part of a wider reassessment of a world no longer disciplined by US-led blocs.

Multipolarity has also arrived. Middle powers are hedging, alliances are looser, regional institutions matter more and countries across the Global South increasingly resist fixed ideological camps. That creates an opening: with strategic stability newly recognised, the US and China can work to avoid the Thucydides Trap and the Kindleberger Trap.

Avoiding the Thucydides Trap – describing the potential danger when a rising and an established power come into conflict – requires both changing the narrative and de-securitising the relationship. Yet, this trap is by no means an ironclad law that cannot be crossed but, rather, is a subjective construct.