President Harry Truman signed the Marshall Plan on April 3, 1948 in Washington. The plan played a key role in the reconstruction of Europe after the Second World War and was one of the major movements of the United States to establish a new international order which still defines the world to date.
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Since the ashes of the Second World War, President Harry Truman has chaired the creation of global institutions that have defined international order for 80 years.
“It must be the policy of the United States to support the free peoples who resist an attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by external pressures,” said Truman by stating his doctrine in a 1947 speech to the Congress.
In a few years, the United States has helped establish and lead the United Nations, NATO, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The United States has helped to rebuild Europe with assistance channeled by the Marshall Plan, and it also funded the reconstruction of Japan.
Democratic and republican presidents supported these institutions for generations. They sometimes growl at the price, but thought they finally strengthened the United States as the main superpower of the world.
But 100 days after the start of his second term, Donald Trump moves aggressively to reduce the role of the United States in the world, based on his “America First” program. Trump sees this network of alliances, treaties and soft power as expensive and outdated relics that retain America’s ability to act decisively by itself.
“I am not aligned with anyone. I am aligned with the United States of America and for the good of the world,” said Trump in February.
Trump says the United States should not be the world’s police officer and should not guarantee the security of his allies. Rather, he attacked a lot and threatened to take control of a territory from Greenland to Canada to the Panama Canal to the Gaza Strip.
Hal Brands, a historian from the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington Conservative reflection group, says it in this way: “If I had to do everything, I would say that Trump’s objective is to extract more privileges from the international order while having less responsibilities to confirm them.”
Trump reduced US global commitments to his first mandate. In his second mandate, he launched a much more ambitious effort.
“In the first term, I would say that the decisive characteristic of this foreign policy was chaos. This time, he really adopts an approach to American foreign policy and the institutions that surround him,” said Kelly Grieco with the Stimson Center, a non -partisan thinking group.
Trump wants to do it on all the main fronts – military, diplomatic and economic.
Reducing military commitments
President Trump and the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, held a controversial meeting at the White House on February 28 during the Russian-Ukraine war. Trump opposes additional American military aid to Ukraine, although the two countries signed an agreement on Wednesday to share future Ukraine natural resources income.
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With the American army, Trump wants to end the United States in open wars, such as the Ukraine Russian conflict.
So far, his signature moment has been the meeting of the White House two months ago when Trump and Vice-President Vance reprimanded Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying that the Ukrainian president had not shown enough gratitude for American aid and overestimated the military capacities of Ukraine.
“You are not in a good position. You don’t have the cards at the moment,” said a agitated Trump in Zelenskyy. “You are playing with the lives of millions of people. You play with the Second World War.”
The president opposes American military aid for Ukraine and wishes a permanent ceasefire. However, this is elusive while fighting is being set up, the Russian leader Vladimir Putin launching some of his largest war assaults in the past few weeks.
“He often underestimates his opponents,” said Stewart Patrick, with the non-partisan endowment of Carnegie for international peace, about Trump. “He seems to believe that Vladimir Putin will be satisfied with only 20% of Ukraine. This is the aperitif course with regard to Vladimir Putin. He wants the whole meal.”
A ceasefire would give Trump a certain coverage to withdraw to Ukraine, where the United States has no troops, although this has led the international effort to support this country since the Russia’s large-scale invasion in 2022.
But if war continues and Russia is making new gains, Trump might seem weak, unable to resist Russia.
This would raise even more questions about the future of NATO and the will of the United States to defend Europe.
“I think NATO will survive a second president of Trump,” said Brands. “But I don’t think a European country wants to be as dependent on the United States in the future as in the past.”
Diplomatic negotiations, but no breakthroughs
Vice-president Vance visits the American army Pituffik space base in Greenland on March 28. The Trump administration has called on the United States to take control of Greenland, which is a semi-automobile territory which is part of Denmark, an ally of NATO in the United States
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On the diplomatic level, Trump continues several agreements with high issues.
He is still at the start of his second term, but so far, he has had no major success. A ceasefire from Israel-Hamas, reached while Trump entered in January, collapsed.
Interviews with Iran on a nuclear agreement are underway.
Kelly Grieco applauds diplomatic efforts, but is essential as Trump approaches. He thinks that these complex negotiations can be made quickly and with little or no contribution from the allies.
“In many ways, he overestimates American power,” said Grieco. “This leads him to this more intimidating approach, because he thinks that the United States is so powerful that our allies and opponents will have to give in.”
This unilateral approach to diplomacy is also obvious in Trump’s trade policy. Its real or threatened prices against almost all countries have destabilized the global economy, and many economists say that it was also an important factor at home, where the American economy decreased by 0.3% in the first three months of this year.
Trump thinks that the American economic weight will give him the lever effect to gain much better terms in individual transactions. Its main target is China, but its approach that will have led it to upset the friendly countries that could help a collective effort to isolate China.
“If you try to press China on a number of different fronts, you would like to do it with allies,” said Patrick.
Eighty years after the United States has established the modern world order, employee analysts employees constantly on how it should be updated. The discussion often focuses on the question of whether the United States is still able and willing to assume the burden it has since the Second World War. But, said Hal Brands, if the United States abandons this role, no other country can replace it.
“If the United States said that it will stop being a global supplier of public goods and taking advantage of the system, I don’t know how long this system will last,” said Brands.
Trump seems determined to discover it.
