WHEN ENVOYS of President Donald Trump travel the world making promises, demands and threats, do they speak for America’s national interest? Or are they travelling partisans, representing the ambitions and prejudices of the 47th president, and—to be generous—of the 77m voters who returned him to office?
For allies and adversaries around the world, these are not idle questions. For decades no other country has wished to defy, for long, the unified will of America. To be sure, elections came and went, handing power to Democrats and Republicans in turn. Big policies changed. Wars began and ended. Globalisation enjoyed broad support among leaders of both parties, until it did not. But some core American interests were enduring.
That continuity raised the stakes for any challenger thinking of testing them. America’s leadership of military alliances in Europe and Asia, while costly, allowed it to project power worldwide and to pen in such would-be rivals as Russia and China. The global reach of its companies helped American operating systems and technologies—and the norms embedded in some of them—set international standards.
In foreign policy, especially during the cold war, successive presidents took a selective approach to moral principles that they called universal. For all that, most aspired to a world order secured by shared liberal democratic values, rather than by conquest.
The second Trump presidency marks the end of that America. Mr Trump has returned to office showing a belief in power and taste for domination that would not shame a 19th-century Russian tsar. That sets hard tests for his most eloquent defenders, starting with Marco Rubio, his secretary of state. Mr Rubio is a late convert to Trumpism after years as a hawkish Republican senator. On March 11th, during meetings with Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia, Mr Rubio scored a win for conventional diplomacy. After days of grumbles from Mr Trump that Ukraine is an obstacle to peace, Mr Rubio secured a Ukrainian offer of a 30-day ceasefire, which will now be put to Russia.
But Mr Rubio’s job has been revealingly unconventional since he took office. He has an uneasy relationship with radicals in his boss’s inner circle, such as Elon Musk, the technology billionaire who wants America to quit NATO and cut European allies loose. Mr Rubio has a hard task: to convince foreign governments to take seriously his president’s impatience with the status quo, while at the same time signalling that a Trumpist America will in time be a more reliable partner for the world, just as soon as the American people are confident that their interests are being put first.
In his confirmation hearing in the Senate, Mr Rubio described an “unmistakable mandate” from American voters who elected Mr Trump to pursue foreign policies that make America safer, stronger and more prosperous.
As secretary of state Mr Rubio has defended his president’s eagerness to end Russia’s isolation and stop the war in Ukraine. He emerged from earlier talks with his Russian counterpart in Saudi Arabia, waxing lyrical about “incredible opportunities that exist to partner with the Russians”. Echoing Mr Trump’s impatience with allies, he has publicly chided Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, for showing insufficient gratitude to America.
In common with other prominent Republicans who have embraced Trumpism, Mr Rubio casts his tough talk as old-school realism. He calls on critics to “grow up” and understand that the world is a dangerous place, so that all governments should coldly pursue their abiding, long-term security and commercial interests.
The problem with this claim is that American policy, notably towards Russia, looks anything but abiding and long-term. It has spun through 180 degrees since Mr Trump won re-election, leaving Republican grandees like Mr Rubio scrambling. In 2022 Senator Rubio called for America to stand by Ukraine—not as an act of charity, but in its self-interest. “The world will become a very scary place if we allow thugs like Putin to invade sovereign nations without severe consequence. We must be clear and unyielding in our support for the Ukrainian people’s fight against a merciless tyrant,” Mr Rubio declared. Two years before the invasion of Ukraine he warned political leaders being courted by Russia to remember that “Putin is always working an angle for himself”.
Now these former Russia hawks serve Mr Trump, who has blamed Ukraine for provoking its invasion. On March 7th, after Mr Trump paused help for Ukraine, the president was asked about the increase in Russian attacks on Ukraine. Mr Putin wants the war to end and is “doing what anybody else would do”, he replied.
When interests collide
The realist school cannot plausibly claim that American national interests reversed on the day of Mr Trump’s inauguration. Even talk of business deals with Russia make little sense: America is energy-rich and Russia’s main exports are oil and gas. What changed was the man in the Oval Office. Mr Trump is a longtime Putin apologist. As a property developer, he reportedly cut lucrative deals with Russian investors. In his inner circle, Vice President J.D. Vance, Mr Musk and others are advocates for hard-right, pro-Russian, anti-immigrant political parties in Europe.
Trump defenders praise him as a disrupter. But in foreign policy, he is doing something much more destructive. He is breaking decades-old understandings about America’s enduring interests, and replacing them with his own personal preferences. In consequence, foreign governments are being asked to weigh their own interests against Mr Trump’s whims. As the leader of the world’s most powerful country, Mr Trump will often get his way, for now. But he is squandering political capital he did not accrue. The costs will be paid by his successors. ■
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