Populism and Globalization The Return of Nationalism and The Global Liberal Order

Populism
and Globalization
The Return of Nationalism
and the
Global Liberal Order
Richard W. Mansbach
Yale H. Ferguson
Populism and Globalization
Richard W. Mansbach · Yale H. Ferguson
Populism
and Globalization
The Return of Nationalism and the Global Liberal
Order
Richard W. Mansbach Yale H. Ferguson
Department of Political Science Division of Global Affairs
Iowa State University Rutgers University
Ames, IA, USA Newark, NJ, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-72032-2 ISBN 978-3-030-72033-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72033-9
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Preface
For decades, we have been persuaded the spread and deepening of glob-
alization was a beneficent trend and that, owing to technological change
and other factors, was unlikely to be reversed. However, recent years
have revealed growing opposition to globalization and to the American-
dominated global liberal order that had facilitated globalization. We also
noted that declining U.S. hegemony, growing geopolitical conflict, and
the spread of authoritarianism were endangering principles that we regard
as essential to world peace and happiness, including democracy, human
rights, and equality among races, ethnicities, religions, and genders.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt reassured Americans at the height of
the Great Depression by asserting, “Let me assert my firm belief that the
only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified
terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”1
However, in reality, Roosevelt was wrong. America and other democra-
cies had much more to fear in 1932—the emergence of Fascism in Italy,
Nazism in Germany, militarism in Japan, and Communism in the Soviet
Union. It took two wars—World War II and the Cold War—to over-
come those threats. It was Roosevelt and his successor, Harry S. Truman,
who were responsible for the global liberal order and for the surge in
globalization.
All of this is endangered by the rise of a vulgar and bigoted new class of
politicians termed “nationalist populists.” Thus, President Donald Trump,
the poster boy of nationalist-populism, far from pursuing liberal values,
v
vi PREFACE
reinforcing the rule of law, or even fostering America’s national interest, is

their antithesis. “Everything he does,” two observers wrote, “is for ‘him-
self’ and his reelection, not for the country he is supposed to govern.”2
As Michael Gerson argues, we have “an American president who doesn’t
understand the meaning of America.”: “He calls for the renewal of nation-
alism, but in a manner that has little to do with our national values. He
wants us to take pride in blood and soil rather than in a set of universal
ideals. His calls for loyalty are based on geography not morality,” and
in a 2017 meeting with the Russian foreign minister, “Trump effectively
threw his country under the bus—endorsing the Russian perception of
American hypocrisy on election tampering.”3
President Trump routinely violated the Constitution and U.S. laws and
undermined the norms of a civilized country. He was caught red-handed
trying to get Ukraine, China, Italy, Australia and anyone else willing to
listen to provide information that would smear Vice President Joseph R.
Biden to facilitate his own reelection. Like fellow populists in Europe,
Asia, and elsewhere, Trump is an irresponsible authoritarian, narcissist. He
defended other authoritarian leaders such as North Korea’sKim Jong-un
and Vladimir Putin and demeans his own country and its values.
Peter Sloterdijk eloquently explained it. “Trump is a degenerate sheriff.
He acts as if he doesn’t care if the state comes into being or not, and
mocks the upright townsfolk. What makes Trump dangerous is that he
exposes parts of liberal democracies that were only shadowly visible up
until now. In democracies, there is always an oligarchic element, but
Trump makes it extremely, comically visible.” For Sloterdijk, Trump’s true
significance laid in the way that he instinctively subverted the norms of
civilized governance. “He’s an innovator when it comes to fear. Instead
of waiting for the crisis to impose his decree, his decrees get him the
emergencies he needs. The playground for madness is vast.”4,5
Indeed, spreading fear is Trump’s policy toward undocumented aliens
at the U.S. border: If his wall on the Mexican border was not funded,
he was prepared to close the entire border in March 2019. “Privately, the
president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-
filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a
cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could
pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants
if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that
was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they
PREFACE vii
shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. That’s not allowed either,
they told him.”
Donald Trump’s violations of American constitutional restraints, his
willingness to ignore U.S. laws, and his response to the prospect of
impeachment owing to his confessed effort to employ U.S. foreign policy
in a smear campaign against domestic political foes reveal his contempt
for democratic rules and traditions and his attraction to authoritarian
leaders rather than democratic friends of America. Nationalist-populists
and racists like Trump, ranging from Hungary’s Viktor Orbȧn and
Poland’s Jarosław Kacyński to India’s Narendra Modi and Italy’s Matteo
Salvini, who claim to work on behalf of the “people” against “elites,”
actually constitute new “elites” that foster authoritarianism and under-
mine civility and norms such as the rule of law, free trade, democracy,
and human rights. It is the dangers they increasingly pose that has led us
to write this book.
Ames, IA, USA Richard W. Mansbach

Newark, NJ, USA Yale H. Ferguson
Notes
1. “‘Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself’: FDR’s First Inaugural
Address,” History Matters, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5057/.
2. Mark Mazzetti, and Katie Benner, “Trump Pressed Australian Leader
to Help Barr Investigate Mueller Inquiries Origins,” New York Times,
September 30, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/us/pol
itics/trump-australia-barr-mueller.html.
3. Michael Gerson, “An American President Who Doesn’t Understand the
Meaning of America,” Washington Post, September 30, 2019, https://
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-cant-even-get-american-nat
ionalism-right/2019/09/30/be903b0e-e3a2-11e9-b403-f738899982d2_
story.html?wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1.
4. Cited in Thomas Meaney, “A Celebrity Philosopher Explains the Populist
Insurgency,” The New Yorker, February 26, 2018, https://www.newyor
ker.com/magazine/2018/02/26/a-celebrity-philosopher-explains-the-pop
ulist-insurgency.
5. Michael D. Shear, and Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “Shoot Migrants’ Legs,
Build Alligator Moat: Behind Trump’s Ideas for Border,”New York Times,
October 1, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/us/politics/
trump-border-wars.html.
Introduction
This book reviews some of the generally optimistic conclusions that we

reached about globalization in our 2012 volume, Globalization: The
Return of Borders to a Borderless World?,1 as well as the work of others
concerning globalization and the liberal order. Populism of all stripes in
politics is a doctrine that, among its additional characteristics, appeals
in demagogic fashion to and ostensibly serves “the people” rather than
“elites.” Over the last decade or so, it has become clear that, ironi-
cally, both populism and anti-globalization as a related movement have
themselves become increasingly global phenomena.
Two key definitions are in order at the outset. Globalization is
an evolutionary, multi-dimensional, non-unilinear process that has been
happening for millennia. The essence of the globalization process is the
spread of contacts and influence, exchange of ideas and goods, and coop-
eration and conflict (“interconnectedness”) across territorial space and
beyond. Such “interconnectedness” today has come to encompass in
some respects virtually the entire world and even to extend in limited
fashion into outer space. The process has multiple interrelated dimen-
sions: including (in no particular order and by no means a complete list)
ecology, disease, demography, migration, governance, economics, trade,
finance, technology, society, culture, religion, ideology, politics, and mili-
tary. Globalization may advance, stall, or retreat in one or more dimen-
sions without necessarily affecting others. Integration and disintegration
ix
x INTRODUCTION
are normal parts of the process. Forward advance frequently encourages

pushback.
Populism is somewhat more difficult to define than globalization
because it tends to share some characteristics with a variety of other more
familiar “isms”: nationalism, authoritarianism, fascism, libertarianism, and
socialism of the democratic left and Marxist authoritarian variety. Some-
times we will emphasize a particular linkage by using a hyphenated term
like “nationalist-populism” or “authoritarian-populism.”
This book is divided into several parts, Part I includes this introduc-
tion. Subsequent chapters in Part I will examine the erosion of the global
liberal order, the origins and characteristics of nationalist-populism, and
the return of geopolitics in global politics. The latter refers to the partial
retreat of U.S. hegemony in recent decades, the resurgence of Russia, and
the rise of China.
Part II consists of four chapters that examine the spread and impact
of nationalist-popularism in the United States, Great Britain, continental
Europe, and the Global South and describe how populist policies and
politicians have increasingly endangered and disrupted the post-Cold War
world. The first of these focuses on Donald Trump and the Trump years in
America; the second on the evolution of Brexit; the third on the spread of
nationalist-populism to Poland, Hungary, Italy and elsewhere in Europe
and the resulting divisions in the European Union (EU); and the fourth
on nationalist-populism in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America and
leaders such as India’s Narendra Modi, Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu, and
Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.
Part III consists of three chapters that analyze the impact of nationalist-
populism on three key dimensions of globalization: political, economic,
and socio-cultural. Finally, Part IV offers conclusions and predictions
regarding populism, globalization, and the global liberal order.
The subjects we discuss are controversial, and there are already several
books that we have found helpful. For example, Manfred Steger, Glob-
alisms: Facing the Populist Challenge 2 ; John Agnew and Michael Shin,
Mapping Populism, which explores how and why populism emerged and
grew3 ; Richard Haass, A World in Disarray 4 ; Stephen King, Grave New
World: The End of Globalization 5 ; and Robert Kagan’sThe Jungle Grows
Back.6 Owing to the relatively contemporary nature of the key topics we
treat, we have found much of our information in media such as the New
York Times, the Washington Post, The Economist, and theFinancial Times.
INTRODUCTION xi
Former President Donald Trump has decried such media as consisting

of “crazed lunatics” and “the enemy of the people.”7 Such comments
reflect demagoguery that threatens to undermine key democratic insti-
tutions and norms. “The current wave of populism,” as Steger argues,
“demonstrates that the ideological contest over the meaning and shape
of globalization has deeply impacted the political landscape of the new
century,”8 contradicting Francis Fukuyama’s belief that history had ended
after the Cold War.
Notes
1. Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach, Globalization: The Return of
Borders to a Globalized World? (London and New York: Routledge, 2012).
2. Manfred B. Steger, Globalisms: Facing the Populist Challenge, 4th ed.
(Lanham: MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).
3. John Agnew, and Michael Shin, Mapping Populism: Taking Politics to the
People (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).
4. Richard Haass, A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis
of the Old Order (New York: Penguin Press, 2017).
5. Stephen D. King, Grave New World: The End of Globalization, The Return
of History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017).
6. Robert Kagan, The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World
(New York: Knopf, 2018).
7. Cited in John Wagner, “‘Crazed lunatics’: Trump again attacks the news
media as ‘the enemy of the people’,” Washington Post, January 7, 2019,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/crazed-lunatics-without-exp
lanation-trump-again-attacks-the-news-media/2019/01/07/290aed10-
126d-11e9-b6ad-9cfd62dbb0a8_story.html?utm_term=.1b205a5e96c7.
8. Steger, Globalisms, p. 5.
Contents
Part I The Sources and Evolution of

Nationalist-Populism
1 Globalization and the Global Liberal Order 3
2 Nationalist-Populism, Its Causes, Content,
and Consequences 47
3 The Return of Geopolitics and Declining U.S.
Hegemony 89
Part II The Spread of Nationalist-Populism

4 The Sources and Spread of Populism: America 143
5 Great Britain: Brexit, and Nationalist-Populism 187
6 Europe and the Spread of Nationalist-Populism 231
7 Nationalist-Populism in the Global South and Middle
East 277
Part III Three Dimensions of Globalization: Present and

Future
8 The Political Dimension of Globalization 315
9 The Economic Dimension of Globalization 361
xiii
xiv CONTENTS
10 The Socio-Cultural Dimension of Globalization 407
Part IV Conclusions
11 The Future of Globalization and the Liberal Global
Order 459
Index 497
PART I
The Sources and Evolution

of Nationalist-Populism
CHAPTER 1
Globalization and the Global Liberal Order
A Dialectical Perspective
The question as to whether globalization is deepening, slowing down,
or even reversing is, to say the least, complex. As a multidimensional
condition and nonlinear process, changes that affect globalization may
constitute advances in some of its dimensions, while others are in retreat.
King concluded that “there is more than one version of globalization,”1
although his examples suggested these were really different dimensions of
globalization that may simultaneously move in different directions. King
seemed to recognize this when he wrote that in the nineteenth century,
“Globalization flourished economically and financially, yet politically it
was both unfair and unstable.”2 Although we focus on only three of
these in this book, it is notable that the spread of pandemics like avian
influenza and the presence of 703,000 (2015–2016) students studying
on extensions of British university branches around the world3 were also
manifestations of globalization.
Fragmentation of polities occurs alongside the integration of others,
a combination that James N. Rosenau called “fragmegration,” an imagi-
native concept and a term that emphasized the contradictions between
complex trends in global politics. Both fragmentation and integration
persist in any era. Like Rosenau, we regard the dimensions of globaliza-
tion and localization and liberal and illiberal global orders (or disorder) as
dialectically linked, that is, when they advance or ebb significantly in one
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 3

Switzerland AG 2021
R. W. Mansbach and Y. H. Ferguson, Populism and Globalization,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72033-9_1
4 R. W. MANSBACH AND Y. H. FERGUSON
direction, pressures will emerge to move in the opposite direction. “Glob-

alization,” Rosenau wrote, “is but one component of the transformative
dynamics that underlie the emergence of a new epoch,” yet “localization”
remains “a powerful force throughout the world.”4 Thus, the acceleration
and deepening of globalization in past decades produced a nationalist and
state-centric backlash against it. King correctly argued that, “globalization
can all too easily go into reverse,”5 which is true, but he implied it might
essentially disappear if the wrong actors enjoyed hegemonic power. What
he omitted is that historically globalization has moved back and forth
dialectically in fits and starts even in the absence of a liberal order.
The dialectical perspective becomes clearer in contrasting the liberal
order and its populist foes. Both sought to move the world away from the
other. The liberal order encouraged political globalization, multilateral
institutions and agreements, and cooperation to meet global problems
that constituted every country’s national interest (as earlier “collective
security” was perceived to do). In 1992, for example, the UN produced
a Framework Convention for Climate Change that was extended in a
1997 Kyoto Protocol, a 2012 Doha Amendment, and a 2015 Paris
Accord, a nonbinding agreement committing developed countries to
reduce carbon emissions and prevent the average global temperature from
rising more than 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) during the
twenty-first century. The U.S. Senate failed to ratify these, because of
a belief that the agreements would harm the U.S. economy and China
and other developing countries were exempted from such reductions. By
contrast, nationalist-populism encouraged nationalism, national interests,
and zero-sum relationships. Liberal democracy was flawed, but populists
only offered authoritarianism as a “solution.” Opposed to multilateralism,
former President Trump, as we shall see, declared his intention formally to
withdraw the U.S. from the Paris agreement and withdrew America from
the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA), despite the vocal effort of U.S. allies to dissuade him.
Both globalization and the liberal order fostered the movement of
things, people, and ideas. In thinking about whether globalization is
deepening or whether it is in retreat, we will use Rosenau’s distinc-
tion between globalizing and localizing processes. “What distinguished
globalizing processes,” Rosenau observed, “is that they are not hindered
or prevented by territorial or jurisdictional barriers. They can spread
readily across national boundaries and are capable of reaching into every
community everywhere in the world.” Moreover, “they consist of all
1 GLOBALIZATION AND THE GLOBAL LIBERAL ORDER 5
those forces that impel individuals, groups, societies, governments, insti-

tutions, and transnational organizations toward engaging in similar forms
of behavior or participating in more encompassing and coherent processes,
organizations, or systems.”6
“Globalization,” Rosenau concluded, “is rendering boundaries and
identity with the land less salient while localization, being driven by pres-
sures to narrow and withdraw, is highlighting borders and intensifying
the deep attachments to land that can dominate emotion and mean-
ing…. In short, globalization is boundary-eroding and localization is
boundary-strengthening. The former allows people, goods, information,
norms, practices, and institutions to move about oblivious to or despite
boundaries. On the other hand, the boundary-strengthening processes of
localization are designed … to inhibit, control, or (in some instances)
prevent the movement of people, goods, information, norms, practices,
and institutions.”7 The end of the Cold War and the subsequent ability
of Russia and other post-Soviet states to join the global economy and
multinational institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO)
on which political globalization was built—especially China’s accession
and its economic reforms—fostered several dimensions of globalization
while the so-called “elites” they criticize tend to support cosmopolitan
globalization.
Following Rosenau’s analysis, if globalization were in retreat, we would
expect “boundary-strengthening” trends and events to be outpacing
“boundary-eroding” trends and events. This is difficult to determine
because both trends may be occurring simultaneously and may be
complexly linked as when the spread of global norms fosters a reac-
tion among threatened political, ethnic, and religious elites. Nationalist-
populism encompasses nationalism, sectarianism, and economic protec-
tionism, all of which are manifestations of “boundary-strengthening”
reactions to “boundary-eroding” trends such as multilateral agreements,
pandemics, undocumented migrants, intrusive governance by interna-
tional and transnational institutions and groups, and the spread of norms
like secularism, democracy, human rights, and free-market capitalism.
Cyber-Technologies, Globalization, and Populism

Globalization owes much to information and communication technolo-
gies and social media. Cyber-technologies created global markets and
accelerated the movement of ideas and capital. Over 50% of the world’s
population was online by mid-2019. Along with container shipping and

jet aircraft, cyber-technologies removed barriers to trade, investment, and
ideas and enhanced the movement of people, many of whom sought
to escape poverty and violence or join relatives who had emigrated
earlier. Cyber-technologies eroded borders, national governance, and
sovereignty, and local ideas, and populations became increasingly effected
by remote events. Hacking, identity theft, and cyberespionage have also
become cyber-challenges. “That the globalization of this epoch,” argued
John Agnew and Michael Shin, “has its roots more in technological
change and in the strategies of multinational businesses searching for ways
to overcome the limits to their profitability imposed by remaining national
in orientation escapes much notice.”8
Technology and the proliferation of Internet-based media initially
served globalization and the extension of the liberal order. It had been
widely believed that cyber-technologies and social media would provide
an enlightened public with new sources of information that would foster
the spread of democracy, as they did during the Arab Spring. Social media
fostered pro-democracy uprisings that toppled dictators throughout the
Middle East.
Today, however, these technologies also have the opposite effect owing
to the proliferation of sites that permit users to avoid alternative infor-
mation by viewing only those that reinforce their views. Paradoxically,
globalization technologies including online social media and smartphones
have been responsible for globalizing national-populism as an ideology.
Cyber-espionage and bots that spread rumors and misrepresent reality
are among the consequences of the cyber-revolution. Social media such
as Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and cable television narrow
political views by encouraging users to limit the exchange of ideas and
information to individuals and groups with whom they already agree
and to remain oblivious of “true facts.” Social media have become a
force that can erode democracy as much as promote it and can spread
disinformation to millions.
Even more dangerous, according to a recent analysis, owing “to the
rise of ‘deepfakes’—highly realistic and difficult-to-detect digital manip-
ulations of audio or video—it is becoming easier than ever to portray
someone saying or doing something he or she never said or did,” and
“social media [will be] fertile ground for circulating deepfakes, with
potentially explosive implications for politics.… Deepfakes will also exac-

erbate the disinformation wars that increasingly disrupt domestic politics
in the United States and elsewhere.”9
The proliferation of numerous online and television media customized
to reflect the views of specific subgroups reinforces misinformation and
prejudices that frequently foster hatred and social divisions. Thus, Russia
used social media such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to spread
misinformation in America and Europe and support the candidacy of
those they sought to help like Donald Trump. The Russians aimed
to animate conservatives on issues such as gun rights and immigration
while reducing the political influence of minorities like African American
voters. The report of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, released in
April 2019, provided many details to reinforce U.S. intelligence reports
of Russian meddling in American politics. Elsewhere, an analysis of
Swedish nativism described a Russian-aided “international disinforma-
tion machine, devoted to the cultivation, provocation and amplification
of far-right, anti-immigrant passions and political forces.” Thus, Russia
operates an international disinformation machine that fosters right-wing,
anti-immigrant passions and the spread of intense nationalism.
Among those who rely on media with a narrow single perspec-
tive were former President Trump and his base. Trump read little and
obtained much of his information from Fox News. His contact with syco-
phantic programs like “Fox & Friends” reinforced his misconceptions and
conspiracy theories about the world around him. Trump also appeared
frequently on Fox to amplify these views. Trump’s tweets repeatedly
fed misinformation that reinforced racism, misogyny, and xenophobia
and sometimes even encouraged violence among the sixty-six million
Americans who got his tweets.
Almost half of Americans use Facebook to get news, much of which
is false. With two billion users posting in over 100 languages globally,
Facebook has assumed the almost impossible task of trying to eliminate
content that fosters extremism, violence, or disinformation, a task histor-
ically in the hands of government officials. Moreover, as the director of
global social action at the Simon Wiesenthal Center noted, “Evildoers
around the world learned from the 9/11 terrorists that you don’t need
the backing of a state or a mass movement. And then individuals who are
probably psychiatric cases are inspired to do these things because social
media spreads a culture of hate in the most public ways, and encrypted
communications allows them to go private to discuss the how-tos.”10
“This is an existential moment for global power structures, turned

upside down by technology,” wrote a Filipino journalist. “When jour-
nalists globally are under attack. When power structures are shifting. Our
problems are partly caused by yours: American social media technology
platforms, once empowering, now weaponized against journalists, activists
and citizens, spreading lies across borders; and, a president so much like
ours whose attacks against the press (and women) give permission to
autocrats (like ours) to unleash the dark side of humanity and extend
their already vast powers with impunity, especially in countries where
institutions have crumbled.”11
In sum, the idea that cyber-technologies would increase knowledge and
foster democracy seems naïve in retrospect. Instead, they enable author-
itarian populists and political extremists to enlarge and popularize their
own ideas and organize their followers, an accusation some make about
tech giants like Google.
Our Earlier Conclusions About Globalization

In what follows, we review and revise some of our earlier conclusions
regarding globalization. In 2012, we saw globalization as persisting and
declared it would take a catastrophe to end globalization. The global
pandemic of coronavirus (COVID-19) certainly gave the world at least
a temporary pause. As of 2021, the pandemic had sharply reduced the
movement of people across national borders, and even within liberal
countries such as the U.S., Canada, and Italy, and had caused economic
chaos owing to the severing of production chains, lower production,
and unemployment, consequences that would persist until the pandemic
waned.
Nevertheless, globalization dimensions wax and wane. And, just as
growing trade, economic outsourcing, supply chains, trans-border migra-
tion, cyber-technologies, and global social media reflected accelerating
globalization in earlier decades, so events like the Great Recession and,
even more, industrial automation and robotics allow a marked renational-
ization and re-localization of industries and thus a retreat from economic
globalization. “The combination of robotics, artificial intelligence, and
3D Printing,” wrote T. X. Hammes presciently, means “‘on-shoring,’
returning manufacturing to the home market, is increasing rapidly….
As robotics, artificial intelligence, and 3D printing eliminate jobs, the
political pressure for protectionism will rise.”12
Perhaps, the single greatest misjudgment in our earlier volume was

our assumption that the United States would remain at the forefront
of globalization and the guardian of the liberal order. Many of the
trends and shifts in the dimensions of globalization owe much to the
shocking triumph of Donald Trump in America’s 2016 presidential elec-
tion. Trump, of course, is a singular human being, although other
populists exhibit some of the same symptoms. He “is a textbook example
of narcissistic personality disorder. Reading the list of symptoms on the
Mayo Clinic’s website is like scrolling through the president’s Twitter:
‘Require constant, excessive admiration,’ ‘exaggerate achievements and
talents,’ ‘be preoccupied with … brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate,’
‘monopolize conversations and belittle … people,’ ‘expect special favors
and unquestioning compliance,’ ‘have an inability or unwillingness to
recognize the needs and feelings of others.’”13
Among our most important conclusions were that, although glob-
alization would not disappear, it might ebb in some dimensions and
simultaneously deepen in others. “Typically, some dimensions of global-
ization, while others slow or stop for at least a while, and a few retreat.”14
We also noted that globalization benefited developing countries like
China and India as well as the developed world. Indeed, although the
global order may become illiberal, China and most of the developing
world continue to support it. We also concluded that, “global process-
es…consist of apparent contradictions. Fission produces fusion and vice
versa; centralization of authority makes for diffusion of authority and vice
versa; fragmentation creates pressures for integration; and so forth.”15
Recent examples of these three conclusions will appear later in this book.
We also observed, “Globalization has been facilitated by state behavior
even as at constrains state autonomy and reduces state capacity” and
that the claim of politicians that “globalization limits authority provides
justification for policies they wish to undertake while denying responsi-
bility for them.”16 These conclusions will be apparent in our discussion
in this book of issues such as immigration and protectionism. However,
we should have added that those same claims could be used to justify
opposition to globalization and the liberal order. We also spoke briefly of
how multilateral organizations like the WTO and International Monetary
Fund (IMF) provided political leverage for major states, while institu-
tions were established to cope with waves of refugees or form military
alliances. Still others dealt with mundane issues like international mail.
We did not foresee that politicians like Trump, Vladimir Putin, and British
Brexiteers would believe that bilateralism would afford them advantages

in negotiating with other states, but we did predict correctly that some
politicians like Trump or Viktor Orbán would try to rescind conces-
sions to increase their political power. We did not appreciate, however,
how such efforts might also increase authoritarianism at the expense of
democratic institutions, the rule of law, and other liberal norms.
We remain comfortable with our conclusion that the sovereign state
would not become “obsolete” although we did not explicitly predict the
emergence of a populist belief in closure behind “walls” and less porous
borders. In addition, we argued that international organizations could
impose order and help form “an incipient global civil society.” We also
suggested that “efforts by international institutions. NGOs, or states to
foster global governance” might produce a “backlash.” This has in fact
taken place. Populists, as later chapters argue, have indeed resisted multi-
lateral institutions and multilateral cooperation. Whether such resistance
endures and proves effective remains to be seen.
Regarding the economic dimension, we noted, “Migration from poor
to rich regions … dilutes traditional cultures and poses problems of assim-
ilation. The influx of Latinos into the United States and of Africans and
Muslims into Europe involve cultural contradictions that produce social
tensions.”17 In fact, this trend has intensified since 2012. Concerning the
military dimension, we observed how terrorism would enhance the power
of states, and this trend continues today. Indeed, some leaders attribute
terrorism to globalization as did Russian President Vladimir Putin after
a mass shooting in a school in Kerch, Crimea. Putin declared that the
massacre was a “result of globalization.”18
In 2012, we also suggested that economic globalization, notably
outsourcing, would continue and would foster opposition to globaliza-
tion, a theme we still emphasize, and we spoke of economic cycles,
citing the growth in trade after the Great Recession. The recent prolif-
eration of tariffs reflects the emergence of yet another cycle. As for
political/environmental globalization, we refer in what follows to what
might be called “to Paris and back” in describing the shift from the
Obama to the Trump and then Biden eras.
Finally, in 2012, we described how globalization was seen to spread
democratic and capitalist values globally. This book will assess how global-
ization more recently has spread illiberal values. Former Australian Prime
Minister Kevin Rudd wisely argued, “The United States also needs to
re-embrace its responsibilities to the liberal international order it painstak-

ingly created after World War II. This order was anchored in the United
Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the International Monetary Fund and
other institutions and principles that have become the bedrock of free
societies, free economies and free polities. The world now asks: Does the
United States still embrace this order?”19
Three Key Dimensions of Globalization

The Political Dimension
The political dimension of globalization is reflected by the number and
variety of multinational and transnational international and nongovern-
mental organizations and by the number and variety of multilateral
treaties and agreements, especially those aimed at dealing with global
or regional problems. These are the elements of international and/or
transnational regimes that Stephen D. Krasner famously defined as “sets
of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making proce-
dures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of
international relations.”20
The Economic Dimension

Consider, for example, the liberal economic order. By late 2014, transna-
tional investment had risen to its highest level since 2011, but it was
still only a third of what it had been in 2007 and its growth has been
impeded by post-financial-crisis national regulations.21 Likewise, after the
crisis and negotiations to complete the Doha Round of global trade talks
had stalled, the IMF and World Bank concluded that world trade had
grown more slowly than the global economy between 2012 and 2014
for the first time in decades. “That particular engine [trade growth]
appears to have exhausted its propulsive energy for now,” according to
IMF economists.22 Nevertheless, the WTO’s dispute resolution system
continues to be moderately successful (though stalled by America under
Trump), and the WTO—having failed to achieve any new Doha-style
comprehensive agreements—has shifted its focus to achieving agreements
in key economic sectors. Highly significant in this regard was the conclu-
sion in July 2015 of the second Information Technology Agreement
(ITA-II). The fifty-four countries involved agreed to eliminate import

tariffs on 90% of the trade in IT products, which together represent 10%
of all world trade.
Meanwhile, negotiations were completed for an ambitious and
comprehensive “regional” trade and investment agreements—the Trans-
Pacific Partnership (TPP) among eleven North American, South Amer-
ican, and Asian countries (excluding the U.S. and China). By contrast,
negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
(TTIP) between the United States and the European Union have stalled,
encountering resistance from several European governments as well as a
firestorm of complaints from NGOs and activists. Among the controver-
sial issues are provisions allowing investors to bring cases alleging unfair
treatment directly against the country hosting the investment, financial
regulations (now more stringent in America than in Europe), labor-
union rights, genetically modified organisms, intellectual property, and
location-specific food designations (like parmesan cheese).
Washington signed the TPP, but in May 2015, Democratic Party
protectionists and labor unions initially blocked the Senate from giving
President Obama “fast track” authority to have trade agreements voted
on up-or-down, without potentially crippling amendments. However, in
June 2015, a Senate filibuster was narrowly averted and the “fast-track”
process finally did clear Congress. Nevertheless, both candidates for the
presidency in America’s 2016 presidential election opposed the TTP, and
Trump pulled America out of the negotiations after assuming office. Pres-
ident Biden, although elected by a party that is historically suspicious of
multilateral trade deals, seeks to minimize economic friction between the
U.S. and allies in Europe, Asia, and North America.
China had originally strongly opposed the TTP agreement, but, as it
appeared more likely to happen and Washington soured on the agree-
ment, Beijing becomes less vocal and rhetorically assumed the mantle
of global advocate of free trade. China positioned itself to negotiate
TTP membership later and in 2020 joined the Regional Comprehensive
Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade deal across the Asia-Pacific region.
In addition to China, it included the 10 members of ASEAN, as well as
Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. The deal gave China
significantly more influence in Asia, while shutting out America. Also, as
we shall see later, Beijing expanded trade and investment rapidly with
its Belt and Road Initiative. Although China has a long history of neo-
mercantile practices, over time Beijing has shown a greater propensity to
play by free trade and market rules.
China joined the WTO in 2001 and remained actively involved in
that organization’s dispute resolution mechanism, even while Washington
endangered it by preventing the appointment of new judges. Beijing is
pursuing reserve currency status for the renminbi, founded the Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank, and has launched a sweeping new foreign
investment program. Moreover, although the close linkages between the
U.S. and Chinese economies are no longer viewed as a marriage made in
heaven, crucial interdependencies still exist despite the trade war. Beijing
is keenly aware that its hoard of U.S. financial assets that help finance
Washington’s budget deficits also reduces its own autonomy. To begin
dumping those assets would cause the value of its remaining assets to
plummet. Neither country prospered from the trade war. Also, neither
could afford a shooting war (although the same was said of Europe on
the eve of World War I). Meanwhile, the United States and other coun-
tries are anxiously watching China’s slowing growth rate for its possible
negative consequences for world trade, investment, and value of equities.
Russia’s meddling in eastern Ukraine and in U.S. and European elec-
tions and its role in creating “frozen conflicts” elsewhere have shattered
what many believed was a stable post-Cold War security order in Europe
and has given NATO something of a new lease on life. Economic sanc-
tions levied against Russia by the U.S. and Europe, although by no means
trivial, have not been nearly as severe as they might have been, partly
because the Europeans have a significant trade and investment stake in
Russia and their economies were already battling recessionary trends.
On balance, it is safe to say that Russia suffered less from sanctions
than it did from the precipitous drop in 2017–2018 in the price of oil
to less than $50 a barrel. The collapse of global oil prices at that time
was a result of growing U.S. oil production (partly shale coming online),
the refusal of Saudi Arabia to reduce production, and reduced demand in
China. That fall in price has been reversed, benefiting the Kremlin in its
resistance to Western sanctions. Could any more eloquent testimony to
continued globalization be found than how global energy production and
prices have affected global politics? The military capabilities of states like
Russia are of little value in combating the “discipline” of global markets.
Turmoil in the EU was evident in a revival of English nationalism
and threatened European political and economic integration. “Brexit”
was essentially over the reacquiring of the economic authority previously

ceded to the EU. The British decision in June 2016 to leave the EU
reflected the influence of nationalist-populists and threatened European
political and economic integration.
The Brexit debate in the European Union also highlighted the impact
of financial markets, as well as the particular constraints and weaknesses
of the regional Eurozone. Having imposed austerity on member states
like Spain and Portugal, the EU, led by German Chancellor Angela
Merkel, has been at wit’s end trying to deal with the bankruptcy of
Greece. Successive Greek governments cheerfully mortgaged their coun-
try’s future, and the time came when it had to pay the piper, Athens
was bludgeoned into accepting draconian creditor terms and reforms that
most observers believed were unrealistic. Ironically, part of the problem
could be attributed to the long-standing failure of the EU to communi-
cate in a consistent fashion how far member countries could deviate from
fiscal responsibility targets without being “exited”—or indeed, even estab-
lishing a formal procedure for orchestrating such an exit. The Eurozone
is thus still far from a full-fledged monetary union, or indeed a banking
union, able to accomplish even the modest level of post-crisis reforms of
the financial sector that had already been enacted in America after the
Great Recession that began in 2008.
The challenge posed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed the pitiful
condition of Europe’s military preparedness and capability for unified
diplomacy. Several EU countries and candidates for membership like
Serbia openly refused to support sanctions against Russia. Potentially
even more serious is the rise of xenophobic right-wing parties in Europe
opposed to the very concept of the European integration and, espe-
cially, EU immigration policies. Thus, if regional integration contributes
to globalization—a debatable proposition—the most successful “experi-
ment” is in trouble. That said, EU doomsayers are not new and have
repeatedly underestimated the capacity of that regional organization to
adapt.
The Socio-Cultural Dimension

The socio-cultural dimension of globalization was challenged by populist
opposition to immigration in America and Europe and by the pandemic’s
barrier to the movement of people. According to Manfred Steger, “Inter-
connectivity caused by cultural globalization challenges parochial values
and identities because it undermines the linkages that connect culture

to fixity of location,” and “As images and ideas can be more easily and
rapidly transmitted from one place to another, they profoundly impact
the way people experience their everyday lives.”23
The issues we have examined revolve around how the “local,”
“regional,” and “global” continuously shape one another but still involve
numerous layered, overlapping, and interacting authorities. In sum,
the presumed post-Cold War security order has vanished with Russia’s
resurgent ultra-nationalism, China’s not-so-peaceful rise, and widespread
turmoil in the Middle East. Yet, despite U.S. protectionism, the liberal
economic order appears to be surviving and global and regional political
intercourse and institutions persist. As for the putative role of America’s
decline in undermining globalization, we are skeptical about this claim.
As noted in Chapter 3, American decline is relative. With the possible
important exception of U.S. partisan legislative gridlock in the Biden
years, there need be no significant diminishment of U.S. capabilities in
an “objective” sense—instead the “rise” of other countries and polities
that are increasing their own capabilities and autonomy. Perceptions of
America’s decline, however, are a “reality” that may ultimately produce
its decline. Two sets of perceptions are crucial: those of governments and
publics worldwide that closely follow what Washington says and especially
what it does, and those of U.S. leaders and attentive publics. Of late,
both audiences seem to have accepted or perhaps even welcomed U.S.
decline—or at least significant retrenchment to the level of a “normal”
country—as a foregone conclusion. However, America’s retreat from
global leadership under former President Trump accelerated the erosion
of the global liberal order to which we now turn.
The Evolution of the Global Liberal Order

The global liberal order and globalization are distinct phenomena.
Richard Haass saw the two as linked and contended that both were
in retreat. “What we are witnessing,” argued Haass, “is a widespread
rejection of globalization and international involvement and, as a result,
a questioning of long-standing postures and policies from openness to
trade and immigrants to a willingness to maintain alliances and over-
seas commitments.”24 Haass viewed nationalist-populism as a consequence
of globalization rather than conflating the two. Populist extremism
advanced in both mature democracies with authoritarian leaders and in
authoritarian societies. “The result was the opposite of a virtuous cycle:

challenges stemming from globalization contributed to many of these
domestic developments, while these same developments made it more
difficult to deal with global challenges.”25 Trump also saw the decline
of America as a consequence of what he denounced as “the false song
of globalism.” Shortly before his election in 2016, Lawrence Summers
presciently cautioned that, “Reflex internationalism needs to give way
to responsible nationalism or else we will only see more distressing
referendums and populist demagogues contending for high office.”26
Although Stephen King correctly observed that globalization could
rise and fall, he also revealed how the liberal order and globalization
could be conflated. Hence, he described how “the emergence of the US
as the world’s dominant superpower was, in many ways, the apotheosis
of post-Columbus globalization, signaling the triumph of Western liberal
democratic values and free-market capitalism.” King contrasted this with
the rise of “countries that are not natural cheerleaders of for Western
political and economic values,” adding that many of “the values and
beliefs that the Western world embraced following the end of the Second
World War are rapidly crumbling.”27 These trends, he believed, were
also likely to bring some aspects of globalization to an end. Later, King
recognized that events affecting contemporary perspectives of globaliza-
tion predated the liberal order when he identified the Black Death and the
fall of Constantinople, China’s silk road, and a fifteenth-century Chinese
financial crisis respectively as “accidents” that shaped Western and Chinese
versions of globalization.28 He again conflated liberal values and glob-
alization when he claimed that the “Western view of globalization has
always been based…on the spread of liberal values.”29 What King called
“values” were elements of the liberal order rather than globalization itself,
and the confusion left the mistaken assumption that globalization began
after World War II.
The difference between globalization and the liberal order becomes
clearer when we recognize that China’s rise may ultimately bring about
an illiberal order while still fostering globalization. Also, the expansion of
empires and the spread of religions in past centuries constituted glob-
alization without reference to values, liberal or illiberal. Thus, writing
about right-wing populists like Trump, Quinn Slobodian recognized that
Trump opposed the liberal order more than globalization as a whole.
“Trump and the far right preach not the end of globalization, but their
own strain of it, not its abandonment but an alternative form. They want
robust trade and financial flows, but they draw a hard line against certain
kinds of migration. The story is not one of open versus closed, but of
the right cherry-picking aspects of globalization while rejecting others.”30
Nevertheless, the decline of the liberal order was related to Trump’s
opposition to global governance and civil society, reflected in opposition
to multilateralism, trade, and immigration.
Moreover, was the liberal order ever truly “global”? Certainly, the
USSR and its bloc were never part of that order, and China and Russia
have not adopted liberal norms. Moreover, many postcolonial states were
not and remain not part of the liberal order. Indeed, with exceptions
such as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea, much of the
liberal world is located in North America and Europe, and populist leaders
have assumed power in countries as varied as Hungary, Poland, Brazil,
India, Pakistan, Israel, Turkey, Kazakhstan, and, of course (until 2021),
the United States. Former President Donald Trump befriended many of
the leaders of illiberal countries, while assailing leaders of liberal societies.
Illiberal societies were characterized by sham democracy, authoritarianism,
weak judicial and legislative institutions, the absence of civil society, oppo-
sition to multilateral institutions and agreements, and nativist attitudes
about minorities.
The Liberal Order: Another

Dialectical Phenomenon
The liberal order had some of its intellectual roots in the European
Enlightenment and the republican aspects of the American and French
revolutions. The woes of World War I and the 1930s followed an earlier
liberal era under British hegemony, which saw among other things,
the end of slavery and the spread of free trade and democracy. The
interwar League of Nations and Woodrow Wilson’s support for national
self-determination, though potentially subversive to existing states, were
liberal projects. However, the global liberal order evolved with remarkable
speed after World War II, with the creation of a panoply of institutions and
liberal norms, rules, and practices. These, in turn, encouraged more of the
same. After World War II, the American hegemon— with the support of
wartime allies and former enemies Germany and Japan—made possible
the inauguration of an even more ambitious and extensive global liberal
order.
Among the initial pillars of the global liberal order and political glob-
alization were economic institutions, all of which are within the UN
“family.” The Bretton Woods institutions (1944) were early institutional
pillars of economic globalization—the World Bank (IBRD, International
Bank for Reconstruction and Development), the International Mone-
tary Fund (IMF), and an International Trade Organization (ITO), later
the less powerful General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT),
which focused on defining “unfair trading practices” like “dumping”
(selling goods abroad at prices lower than those in the home country)
and on reducing tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade in goods. The
abortive ITO was intended to have the power to make binding rules
for international trade, but proved to be too ambitious an undertaking
until the World Trade Organization was founded in 1995. The latter’s
mission extended well beyond traditional goods trade to services and
more leading-edge concerns like intellectual property. Unlike the GATT,
the WTO was a formal international organization state with the capacity
to negotiate and enforce its rules.
The World Bank (now World Bank Group-WBG) initially concentrated
on making loans for postwar reconstruction and development but soon
shifted to making loans primarily for infrastructure projects undertaken
by credit-worthy middle-income and lower-income countries. An Inter-
national Development Association window of the World Bank offered
“softer” loan terms to needier recipients. In the 1970s, the bank’s focus
migrated to government projects designed to contribute to reducing
poverty.
Maintaining a stable global financial system was the IMF’s respon-
sibility. Most national currencies were fixed to the U.S. dollar, at that
time backed by gold. The IMF made loans to countries to help them
weather trade deficits while keeping their currency’s exchange rate within
set bounds. Although the U.S. dollar remained the most important
currency in global trade, America’s “Nixon shock” of 1971 unilater-
ally ended the direct international convertibility of the U.S. dollar to
gold (the “gold standard”), with the objective of countering inflation,
the outflow of gold, and persistent U.S. trade deficits. It ended fixed
exchange rates between the dollar and other currencies and allowed the
value of the dollar to “float” owing to the supply of and demand for
U.S. currency. The global economic system still depends heavily on the
U.S. dollar (61.82%). The IMF also recognizes seven other “reserve”
currencies that are widely traded (in 2019 order): the EU euro (20.24%),
Japanese yen (5.25%), British pound sterling (4.24%), Chinese renminbi

(yuan, 1.95%), Canadian dollar (1.92%), Australian dollar 1.67%), and
Swiss franc (0.15%).31
The post-World War II global economy enjoyed remarkable growth,
and the 1990s and beyond experienced a period of expansion not seen
since the nineteenth century. There was a surge in public and private
institution-building, including a parallel growth of multinational corpo-
rations and banks, as well as transnational networks and global supply
chains, and a veritable revolution in IT with digitalization. EU regional
integration proceeded apace, and there were major new trade agreements
including the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA).
The United Nations was launched in 1945. Among the key tasks of the
new world organization were maintaining international peace and secu-
rity, fostering economic and social development, exercising oversight over
decolonization, and advancing international law. The General Assembly
reflected state sovereignty and its decisions were non-binding. The Secu-
rity Council recognized power with five permanent members that could
veto resolutions, which, if adopted, were binding. The UN Charter
gave the Security Council primary responsibility for maintaining inter-
national peace and security and to that end provided a range of possible
measures from economic sanctions or the use of armed force. The Charter
also established an International Court of Justice, to which states could
refer disputes. Moreover, regional organizations like the Organization of
American States (OAS) and the European Union (EU) became major
actors. The wider UN System or “family” included a range of associated
“specialized” agencies that currently number seventeen. The Universal
Postal Union and International Labor Organization long predated the
UN. Other examples were the World Health Organization, International
Atomic Energy Agency, and the Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO).
There was a significant globalization human rights dimension early-
on to the postwar global liberal order. In 1948, the General Assembly
passed a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in 1949, it
passed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide
and four Geneva Conventions that created standards for treatment of
wounded, sick, and shipwrecked members of the armed forces; treat-
ment of prisoners of war; and protection of civilians in time of war. In
1998, representatives of more than 160 countries gathered in Rome and
agreed upon the creation of an International Criminal Court (ICC). The
ICC’s jurisdiction included crimes of genocide and other crimes against

humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. Liberal institution-
building continued apace in the transatlantic political space. During the
Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was estab-
lished in 1949 with twelve members, which number has now swelled
to thirty with the addition of Montenegro (2017) and North Mace-
donia (2020). Article 5 of the NATO treaty defined the obligation of
all member states to regard an armed attack on any one of them as an
attack upon all.
However, the emergence of nationalist-populism undermined the
liberal order.
The Erosion of the Global Liberal Order

Robert Kagan presciently observed that the liberal order was “fragile
and impermanent” and “is ever under siege from the natural forces of
history, the jungle whose vines and weeds constantly threaten to over-
whelm it.” He saw “signs all around us that the jungle is growing back”
with “nationalism and tribalism reemerging” and with the reemergence
in America of “racial and tribal forces that have always been part of the
‘subterranean stream’ of American history.”32
In fact, strains in the post-World War II global liberal order were
evident shortly after its establishment, with the Latin American “depen-
dency” theorists in the 1960s-1970s. Both Latin American liberal
reformists and neo-Marxists agreed that Latin America was caught in a
core-periphery trap, in which exports of raw materials would never be
sufficient to allow countries to import sufficient manufactured goods.
They argued that commodity prices tended to fluctuate wildly and tended
to decline over time. The only solution was for these countries to
prioritize import-substitution industrialization and protectionist tariffs
sheltering fledgling industries. Dependency theorists seemed to be vindi-
cated in the 1980s when Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, and Argentina found
themselves unable to meet debt payments, and lending institutions had
to accept a “haircut” on loans, reducing principal owed and interest. In
subsequent decades, developing countries began to question and push
back against the Washington Consensus that reflected the views of major
banks and the Reagan-Thatcher governments that budget austerity, low
tariffs, and an emphasis on private enterprise were the keys to national
development.
Even as economic globalization accelerated in the 1990s, so did anti-

globalization sentiments among those who were convinced that their
jobs and status were threatened and that they were “left behind” in the
global trend toward greater prosperity. In America and Europe, indus-
trial workers and farmers viewed with alarm the flow of jobs and market
shares to China and other countries with lower labor costs, while immi-
gration was seen as presenting additional threats to jobs and wages at
home. For industrial workers with less education and fewer technical
skills, the growth of employment opportunities in national and transna-
tional banking, finance, and high-tech companies offered little solace. The
financial crisis had raised doubts about whether states or multilateral insti-
tutions were able to control globalized economic and financial markets.
“As liberal democracies have become worse at improving their citizens’
living standards,” argued Yasha Mounk and Roberto Stefan Foa, “pop-
ulist movements that disavow liberalism” were “emerging from Brussels
to Brasilia and from Warsaw to Washington.”33
The Great Recession had suggested that free-market capitalism was
flawed. Global inequality continued to shrink between countries after the
2008 crisis, for decades, and Cardiff García noted: “This makes sense:
growth in advanced economies suffered a deeper and more protracted
collapse than in the rest of the world, which had already been catching
up quickly.”34 China, for one, weathered the crisis remarkably well and
in the process reduced the lead of the United States and other advanced
economies. The bad news about inequality after the financial crisis was
that in most of the world, the domestic gap between the very rich and
almost everyone else has been growing.35 Thus, Oxfam’s 2018 analysis
found that 82% of the wealth generated in 2017 went to the richest 1%,
while the 3.7 billion who represent the poorest half of the world’s popu-
lation saw no increase whatsoever.36 Trends in the world’s two largest
economies, America and China, reinforced this conclusion, and about
million Americans live in “distressed communities.” These were areas
with a declining number of businesses and in which the population has
low median income, insufficient jobs, high levels of poverty, and low
educational achievement.37
As for China, a pre-pandemic World Bank summary noted that that
country’s GDP growth since the beginning of market reforms in 1978
had averaged nearly 10% per year, constituting the “fastest sustained
expansion by a major economy in history,” which “lifted more than 800
million people out of poverty.” Nevertheless, by China’s own reckoning,
there were still 55 million poor in rural areas alone, and with 1.3 billion
people, the country’s per capita income remained “a fraction of that
in advanced countries.”38 Meanwhile, many in China’s globalized busi-
ness elite and even some in high government circles were living lives of
conspicuous consumption, and corruption was endemic.
Donald Trump: Enemy of the Liberal Order

The remainder of this chapter encapsulates and summarizes the essen-
tial features of what follows in the book. As we shall see, Trump and
his populist followers in America and abroad had little regard for democ-
racy and the institutions that sustained it. Their nationalism puts them
at odds with globalization. Nationalist-populists like Trump pushed back
against political globalization by opposing multilateral institutions ranging
from the World Health Organization (WHO) and WTO to the UN
and NATO, preferring bilateral arrangements in which powerful coun-
tries like the U.S. could impose its policies on others—foes or friends.
Right-wing populists also loathed sociocultural globalization and were
fiercely hostile to the free movement of people, notably immigrants and
refugees, and frequently harbored racist vies, including white supremacy
or the inferiority of ethnic and/or religious groups. Citizens increasingly
regarded democracy as less important, and inequality and slowing growth
in individual income fueled anti-globalization sentiment. Antiestablish-
ment sentiment that populists, many of whom were authoritarian, armed
with new tools of social control and misinformation could mobilize.
Authoritarianism, Kagan argued, was among the greatest threats to
the liberal order. “Today,” he wrote, “authoritarianism has emerged as
the greatest challenge facing the liberal democratic world — a profound
ideological, as well as strategic, challenge. Or, more accurately, it has
reemerged, for authoritarianism has always posed the most potent and
enduring challenge to liberalism, since the birth of the liberal idea
itself.”39 Shortly before he passed away, John McCain cited the growing
attraction of authoritarianism and the spread of intolerance. “In recent
years, we have seen the steady erosion of the liberal order and the insti-
tutions that protect it. Citizens of many nations have turned away from
universal values and toward old ties of ethnicity, race and sectarianism….
They have warmed to authoritarianism and embraced strongman politics.
Most troubling, they seem to have given up on the very idea of liberalism
itself, betraying the underlying will that is necessary to maintain any world
order.”40
Populist rejection of democratic values in America was evident in the
global fortunes of democracy. Larry Diamond concluded that “In every
year since 2007, many more countries have seen their freedom decrease
than have seen it increase, reversing the post-Cold War trend.” “What
went wrong?” he asked, and answered, “democracy lost its leading propo-
nent,” and Americans turned inward after disastrous interventions in the
Middle East “soured Americans on the idea of democracy promotion” as
well as a “wave of illiberal populism” was “sweeping developed and devel-
oping countries alike, often in response to anxiety over immigration and
growing cultural diversity.”41 As Agnew and Shin contended, “Populism
is not just an issue for the so-called liberal democracies. Rather, it signals
the end of the optimism about the spread of liberal democracy that was
based in large parts on multiparty elections and the institutionalization of
the rule of law that characterized the 1990s.”42
As Robin Niblett concluded, “The liberal international order has
always depended on the idea of progress. Since 1945, Western poli-
cymakers have believed that open markets, democracy, and individual
human rights would gradually spread across the entire globe.”43 But
history is not linear, and globalization, in the eyes of populists, had
reduced the belief in progress. Recent years have witnessed growing
unpredictability and disorder in global politics that raise questions about
the durability of the liberal order. As Jonathan Freedland pessimistically
expressed the historical shift, “Put starkly, the norms and taboos estab-
lished after the world witnessed the Holocaust are eroding before our
eyes. For 70-odd years, roughly the span of a human life, they endured,
keeping the lid on the darker impulses that, we had seen, lurked within all
of us.”44 “We have for the first time in American history an administra-
tion that actually prefers authoritarians over democrats,” declared Mounk
about Trump. He repeatedly ignored the Constitution and the separation
of powers, notably the role of Congress, evident in his refusal to turn
over information to congressional committees and his efforts to prevent
individuals from testifying before those committees. “That provides cover
for autocrats, because they don’t have to pay any price for what they do.
And it encourages others to go in that direction.”45 In sum, the liberal
order and democracy were endangered less from outside than irrational
rage from within.
Other threats to democracy that became apparent under Trump

included politicizing national security, replacing professional experts with
fawning partisans, ignoring evidence, propriety, and reason, selectively
enforcing the law, polarization, which led politicians to see their rivals
as illegitimate. He “unleashed a barrage of attacks on the underpinnings
of democratic governance, threatening checks and balances, civil liberties,
civil rights, and long-established norms,” and “discarded the notion of
facts as necessary anchors of political discourse and challenged the legiti-
macy of his political opponent, Hillary Clinton, threatening to ‘lock her
up’.”46 Trump assailed courts and judges, and even the electoral process.
During the Mueller investigation and congressional hearings that led to
his first impeachment, Trump manifested angry frustration expressed in
self-pity and invective. His electoral defeat did nothing to change his views
except to intensify his contempt for the rule of law and other features of
the liberal order. His refusal to concede the 2020 presidential election
was unprecedented and undermined his followers’ belief in the legitimacy
of the election itself.
Trump’s attraction to authoritarian leaders’ ability to maintain order
was evident in a comment during an interview in 2015. “I mean, look at
Libya. Look at Iraq. Iraq used to be no terrorists. He (Saddam Hussein)
would kill the terrorists immediately, which is like now it’s the Harvard of
terrorism.” He added, “If you look at Iraq from years ago, I’m not saying
he was a nice guy, he was a horrible guy, but it was a lot better than it is
right now. Right now, Iraq is a training ground for terrorists. Right now
Libya, nobody even knows Libya, frankly there is no Iraq and there is no
Libya. It’s all broken up. They have no control. Nobody knows what’s
going on.”47
In the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton had promised
to adhere to the rule-based liberal order. Her ideas emphasized
“smart power,” “choosing the right combination of tools—diplomatic,
economic, military, political, legal, and cultural—for each situation.”48
By contrast, Trump’s populist counselor, Stephen K. Bannon, argued,
“Trump stands as a direct challenge to the postwar, international rules-
based order where America gave an open-ended security guarantee.”49
Unlike Clinton, Trump had no foreign-policy experience and expressed
bewildering and inconsistent positions during the campaign. Concerning
policy towards North Korea, Trump talked about everything from
holding direct talks to launching a preventive military attack. Rather
than supporting internationalism and multilateralism, Trump emphasized
isolationist and unilateralist themes. He spoke of increases in military

expenditures while threatening to cut U.S. funding for UN peacekeeping.
He proposed a vast increase in U.S. military expenditures, without
outlining a clear set of strategic objectives. His proposed budget reduc-
tions in the State Department’s budget along with the extraordinary delay
in filling State’s senior positions reflected his contempt for traditional
diplomacy.
Far from supporting the liberal order, Trump disliked the “network of
institutions and alliances—the United Nations, NATO, the international
monetary system” that were the foundation for the rules-based order.
Unlike Trump’s zero-sum views, the liberal order was “based on cooper-
ation among countries and respect for individual rights,” that had been
“created and upheld by the world’s leading liberal democracy.”50 His
protectionist sentiments, his denigration of NATO allies, and ditching
of international agreements, such as the Paris climate accord and the
Iran nuclear deal, led even America’s closest partners to conclude that
he sought to wreck the liberal order.
Trump claimed that America had been a victim rather than the bene-
ficiary of the very norms, rules, and institutions that Washington had
fostered. He wanted “to make America great again,” while never clar-
ifying what had happened to make America “not great.” “Trump’s dark
narrative of national decline,” G. John Ikenberry argued, ignored “the
great American accomplishment of the twentieth century: the building
of the liberal international order,” and his “every instinct” ran counter
to the ideas that underpinned the liberal order. “A hostile revisionist
power has indeed arrived on the scene, but he sits in the Oval Office,
the beating heart of the free world.”51 Like Ikenberry, Eliot Cohen
concluded that Trump had turned away from the liberal order as well
as globalization. “The president,” he argued, “has outlined a deeply
misguided foreign policy vision that is distrustful of U.S. allies, scornful
of international institutions, and indifferent, if not downright hostile to
the liberal international order that the United States has sustained for
nearly eight decades…. To a stunning degree, the Trump administration
has diminished the sense of U.S. constancy that has been indispensable to
the postwar liberal order.”52
Trump’s decisions to leave the Paris climate accord and the Iranian
nuclear deal reflected the former president’s whims and his willingness
to ignore liberal norms and rules and evade multilateral commitments.
He imagined that America could act unilaterally, shaking hands with
foes or “giving the finger” to allies in pursuit of transactional advantages

that would free America from the constraints of multilateralism. In other
words, American populists, as Joseph Nye concluded, “argued that the
costs of maintaining the order outweigh its benefits and that Washington
would be better off handling the interactions with other countries on a
case-by-case transactional basis, making sure it ‘wins’ rather than ‘loses’
on each deal or commitment.”53
A Brazilian diplomat’s pithy comment captured the mood of knowl-
edgeable observers (“elites” as populists call them): “Time to buckle
your seatbelts and cross your fingers.”54 Consequently, Trump did not
see alliances like NATO as mutually beneficial among countries with
shared values and would support agreements only if he believed that
U.S. gains would exceed those of others. Trump’s transactional approach
better was evident in his defense of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman after the murder of a journalist who had criticized Saudi poli-
cies. For Trump, U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Saudi wealth were
more important than human rights. “They are ordering military equip-
ment. Everybody in the world wanted that order. Russia wanted it, China
wanted it, we wanted it. We got it,” Trump said. “I don’t want to hurt
jobs. I don’t want to lose an order like that.” According to Senator Chris
Murphy (D-Conn.), Trump was saying that. In effect, “the U.S. will
ignore your human rights abuses, assassinations or war crimes as long as
you buy things from us. He’s got it totally and completely backwards….
World leaders will now know they can act with impunity so long as they
are buying American weapons. That’s an insane message to send.”55
Donald Tusk, then president of the EU, was so concerned with
Trump’s deviation from America’s liberal past that he added the Trump
administration to a list of threats to the EU that included China, Russia,
and Islamic extremism. Tusk declared that “the change in Washington”
put the EU “in a difficult situation seeming to put into question the
last 70 years of American foreign policy” and that “worrying declara-
tions by the new American administration, all make our future highly
unpredictable.”56 German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas even placed
the Trump administration among the world’s rogue regimes: “Donald
Trump’s egotistical politics of ‘America First,’ Russia’s attacks on inter-
national law and state sovereignty, the expansion of gigantic China: the
world order we became used to, it no longer exists.”57 After taking office,
Trump continued to react to criticism with insults and threats, leading
Philip Gordon to lament, “there is a real risk that events will turn out far
worst—a future in which Trump’s erratic style and confrontational poli-

cies destroy an already fragile world order and lead to open conflict—in
the most likely cases with Iran, China, or North Korea.”58
Had Trump been reelected president for a second term, America
might, indeed, have become an illiberal rogue state. “Quite explicitly,”
argued the deputy director-general of the International Institute for
Strategic Studies, “the leader of the free world” wanted “to destroy the
alliances, trading relationships and international institutions” that had
“characterized the American-led order for 70 years.” If he succeeded,
she concluded, “America will be seen as — and may even become —
no different from Russia and China, and countries will have no reason to
assist America’s efforts rather than theirs.”59
Trump’s “base” included voters who were weary of foreign entan-
glements and doubtful that America could maintain the existing order.
Paradoxically, Trump’s “Make America Great Again” projected a nation-
alist message. That message echoed around the world and encouraged
other populist movements that were already concerned about economic
stagnation, income inequality, migrants streaming across porous borders,
and erosion of sovereign autonomy. Trump’s belief in U.S. decline and his
rhetorical isolationism underscored that the self-perception of weakness
may actually undermine a country’s policies. Hence, a Chinese official
declared that Xi Jinping’s advocacy of free trade “is not China rushing to
the front, but rather the front-runners have stepped back, leaving the
place to China.”60 What China’s leaders hoped “to achieve, with the
chaotic Trump in the White House” declared Michael Burleigh, was “to
add international engagement, colossal overseas infrastructural investment
and a predictable solidity to the limited things China is already renowned
for, namely autocratic governance and remarkable economic growth….”
Referring caustically to Trump, Burleigh added, “Foreign and national
security strategy is not for amateurs, Tweeters, or the easily bored.” He
described Trump as a “capricious, bullying narcissist… a creature of the
age of Twitter, a perfect 140-character vehicle for his impulses.”61
During Trump’s tenure, American soft power swooned. During Barack
Obama’s first year as president, median global approval of the U.S. rose
from 34% during George W. Bush’s final year in office to 49%, and disap-
proval dropped from 34 to 21%. On leaving office, Obama left a note for
Trump in which he wrote, “It’s up to us, through action and example
to sustain the international order that’s expanded steadily since the end
of the Cold War, and upon which our own wealth and safety depend.”
Instead, as Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay noted, “As Trump

has jettisoned old ways of doing business, allies have worked their way
through the initial stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, and depres-
sion. In the typical progression, acceptance should come next.” They
concluded, “American diplomacy is in shambles, but beneath the daily
chaos is an erosion of the postwar order that is even more dangerous.”62
Within a year after Trump had assumed office, America’s median
approval rating plummeted from 48 to 30% and its disapproval rating
had soared from 28 to 43%. “The weakened image of the U.S. in 2017,”
according to Gallup, reflected “large and widespread losses in approval
and relatively few gains. Out of 134 countries, U.S. leadership approval
ratings declined substantially — by 10 percentage points or more — in
65 countries that include many longtime U.S. allies and partners — and
aspiring U.S. partners.”63 In a 2019 poll of 32 countries, a median of
64% lacked confidence that Trump would do the right thing in foreign
policy in contrast to Obama’s consistent positive ratings. Negative views
of Trump were especially strong within America’s European allies,64 when
leaving office, his approval rating at home had dropped to 34%, the worst
evaluation of his presidency.
Populist leaders like Trump were demagogues who scapegoated
minorities to create fear and violated norms of decency and propriety.
“It is worth noting,” argued Anne Applebaum, “how often the president
repeatedly conflates refugees with illegal immigrants and MS-13 gang
members. This is not an accident: He has targeted a group and given
them characteristics — they are violent, they are rapists, they are gang
members — that don’t belong to most of them. He then describes them
with dehumanizing language.”65
Conclusions
The eminent historian John Lewis Gaddis concluded that, unlike the
USSR, “the United States… proved surprisingly adept at managing an
empire. Having attained their authority through democratic processes, its
leaders were experienced—as their counterparts in Moscow were not—
in the arts of persuasion, negotiation and compromise.”66 However, the
liberal order is eroding owing to America’s relative decline, growing
global economic inequality, cultural trends that had alienated many white
males, and Trump’s illiberal rhetoric and policies and ignorance.
Trump was perhaps the most ill-prepared of those who have held the
highest office in the land. The president knew no history, was igno-
rant of facts, was guided by sycophants and family members, and was
unwilling to hear views that did not coincide with his prejudices. After he
took office, America’s foreign policy became unpredictable and chaotic.
It began shortly after the election when Trump paid little attention to
former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who was preparing the tran-
sition. Although Christie had not considered General Michael Flynn as
a candidate for national security adviser because of “poor judgment,”
Trump appointed him. Shortly thereafter Flynn was fired for lying to
Vice President Mike Pence about meetings he had had with Russia’s
ambassador.
Daalder and Lindsay described a meeting that Trump had with his
foreign-policy advisers in July 2017. They sought to explain how and
why U.S. policies had supported the liberal global order. “[Secretary of
Defense] Mattis set the context for the meeting at the start. ‘The greatest
thing the ‘greatest generation,’ left us,’ the retired Marine four-star
general said…, ‘was the rules-based postwar international order.’… The
student, though, eventually challenged his tutors. He wasn’t impressed
with the alliances. At several points, agreements they were praising. ‘This
is exactly what I don’t want,’ he objected…. Some of the exchanges
grew testy as the experts tried to persuade a president who thought
he knew more than he did to adopt a worldview utterly foreign to his
thinking: At several points Trump rebuked his briefers with a simple
and direct rebuttal: ‘I don’t agree!’”67 It was after this meeting that
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson described the president as a “fucking
moron,” and John Kelly, then White House chief of staff, was reported to
have described Trump as an “idiot.” Both Tillerson and Kelly recognized
that their country had elected a president with the emotional and intel-
lectual maturity of a small child who screamed while having tantrums.
His advisers realized the president knew nothing about foreign affairs
or economics, and the leaders of America’s friends and foes learned this
quickly.
In Trump, Russia’s Vladimir Putin saw an opportunity to divide
its democratic foe. America’s intelligence agencies concluded, “Russian
efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most
recent expression of Moscow’s long-standing desire to undermine the US-
led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant
escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to
previous operations.”68 Trump, owing to his violent rhetoric and dislike

of societal norms, became a perfect agent for Moscow’s objective.
Immanuel Kant and later liberals believed that economic interdepen-
dence, along with democracy and international organizations—all pillars
of the liberal order—fostered peace. After the Cold War, it was widely
believed that China and Russia would join that order. However, Amer-
ica’s intelligence community concluded in early 2019 that Russia and
China were cooperating to take advantage of growing doubt about liberal
democracy.
Graham Allison concluded, that the “‘long peace’ was not the result
of a liberal order but the byproduct of the dangerous balance of power
between the Soviet Union and the United States during the four and
a half decades of the Cold War and then of a brief period of U.S.
dominance.” Although Washington itself had frequently pursued anti-
globalization policies and ignored rules of the liberal order, “when the
United States” had an “opportunity to advance freedom for others”69 it
had done so. Allison concluded that peace was a consequence of U.S.
global dominance, and the order reflected American efforts to globalize
its domestic norms and practices.
Although Allison’s emphasis on balance of power in creating the liberal
order as the Cold War loomed has merit, as Michael Mazaar suggests, it
was only part of the story. Elements of the order predated the Cold War
and thrived as U.S. officials sought to avoid the mistakes of the 1930s.
Although U.S. military power was used to protect and further America’s
global interests, as Allison contended, those who established the order
had more than that in mind. As Mazaar argued, “The order is far from a
myth; it is the United States’ most important competitive advantage.”70
Analysts remained divided about U.S. foreign policy even as Trump
left Washington. On the one hand, Mira Rapp-Hooper and Rebecca
Friedman Lissner concluded that “liberal universalism” was no longer
possible and argued for a strategy “in which states are free to make
independent political decisions; international waters, airspace, and space
remain accessible to military and commercial traffic; and countries coop-
erate informally and through modernized international institutions,”71
that is, a modification of globalization. The United States and its allies
should collaborate to modernize international institutions like the WTO
and prevent illiberal actors like China from exploiting the openness
of others or of cyberspace. Authoritarian great powers will certainly
compete to try to shape the future global order. Rapp-Hooper and Lissner
predicted that great power rivalries would persist, and both liberal and
illiberal actors would compete with illiberal China as threats to openness.
By contrast, Stephen Walt offered a “hard-nosed” realist alternative.
He argued that America had abandoned realism after the Cold War and
“tried to remake global politics in accordance with American values,” a
strategy he called “liberal hegemony” that led to “hegemonic hubris.”
That strategy, concluded Walt, had expanded American “security obliga-
tions without providing new resources,” even as globalization contributed
to growing disparities in wealth among those who would vote for Trump,
“an incompetent vulgarian.” Instead, Walt advocated “a strategy of ‘off-
shore balancing’” while abstaining “from crusades to remake the world
in its image, concentrating instead on maintaining the balance of power
in a few key regions” such as East Asia and the Middle East.72
Finally, in an essay that diverged from both Rapp-Hooper’s and Liss-
ner’s “openness” and Walt’s realism, Kori Schake concluded that, until
Trump, American support for the liberal order had been successful in,
“committing to the defense of countries that share U.S. values or inter-
ests, expanding trade, upholding rules-based institutions, and fostering
liberal values internationally.” Trump’s policies, he declared, “should
serve as a wake-up call” about straying from “the ideas that built the
America-led order,” but “not as a cause for fundamental change.” Schake
concludes that America would be wise to return to multilateralism and
rules-based institutions. “Washington doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel,
but it does need to improve on the things that have worked in the past.”73
In the following chapter, we describe nationalist-populism and its
roots. We shall explain how and why the phenomenon emerged and
spread, the perils it had fostered, and some of its implications for
globalization.
Notes
1. King, Grave New World, p. 7.
2. Ibid., p. 7. King also argued (p. x) that growing inequality and declining
economic growth tempt leaders to “use globalization as a scapegoat.”
3. “Dreaming of New Spires,” The Economist, August 25, 2018, p. 44.
4. James N. Rosenau, Distant Proximities (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2003), p. 8.
5. King, Grave New World, p. 6. See also Dan Balz, “Instability and Populist
Unrest Is the New World Order,” Washington Post, December 11, 2018,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/politics/instability-and-pop
ulist-unrest-is-the-new-world-order/2018/12/11/0959c858-fd7b-11e8-
862a-b6a6f3ce8199_story.html.
6. James N. Rosenau, Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Exploring Gover-
nance in a Turbulent World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997), pp. 80, 83. Emphasis in original.
7. Ibid., pp. 81–82.
8. John Agnew and Michael Shin, Mapping Populism: Taking Politics to the
People (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2020), p. 2.
9. Robert Chesney and Danielle Citron, “Deepfakes and the New Disinfor-
mation War,” Foreign Affairs 98:1 (January/February 2019), pp. 150,
151.
10. Cited in Marc Fisher, Roxana Popescu, and Kayla Epstein, “Ancient
Hatreds, Modern Methods: How Social Media and Political Division
Feed Attacks on Sacred Spaces,” Washington Post, April 28, 2019,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ancient-hatreds-modern-
methods-how-social-media-and-political-division-feed-attacks-on-sacred-
spaces/2019/04/28/51543e1a-69d5-11e9-a66d-a82d3f3d96d5_story.
html?utm_term=.a14394c2a35c&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1.
11. Cited in Philip Bump, “The Warning Offered by a Filipina Journalist
Targeted by Her Country’s President,” Washington Post, November
21, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/21/war
ning-offered-by-filipina-journalist-targeted-by-her-countrys-president/?
utm_term=.93ae1a43eae5.
12. T.X. Hammes, “The End of Globalization? The International Security
Implications,” War on the Rocks, August 2, 2016, https://waronther
ocks.com/2016/08/the-end-of-globalization-the-international-security-
implications/.
13. David von Drehle, “Let’s Asks the Psychiatrists, Mr. President. But
Let’s Start with Yours,” Washington Post, January 4, 2018, https://
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lets-ask-the-psychiatrists-mr-presid
ent-but-lets-start-with-yours/2019/01/04/ce2d42e4-1055-11e9-8938-
5898adc28fa2_story.html?utm_term=.af019ab727df&wpisrc=nl_most&
wpmm=1.
14. Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach, Globalization: The Return
of Borders to a Borderless World? (New York: Routledge, 2012), p. 279.
See also Ferguson and Mansbach, Remapping Global Politics: History’s
Revenge and Future Shock (Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press,
2004).
15. Ferguson and Mansbach, Globalization, p. 279.
16. Ibid., p. 280.
17. Ibid., p. 283.
18. Cited in Nataliya Vasilyeva, “Crimean City Turns to Mourning 20 Victims
of School Attack,” Washington Post, October 18, 2018, https://www.
washingtonpost.com/world/europe/wounded-in-crimea-school-attack-
to-be-flown-to-russia/2018/10/18/ffafbda2-d2ab-11e8-a4db-184311
d27129_story.html?utm_term=.3ec6a5bb675f.
19. Kevin Rudd, “The Rise of Authoritarian Capitalism,” New York Times,
September 16, 2018, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/16/
opinion/politics/kevin-rudd-authoritarian-capitalism.html.
20. Stephen D. Krasner, “Structural Causes and Regime Consequences:
Regimes as Intervening Variables,” International Organization 36:2
(Spring 1982), p. 186.
21. Elaine Moore, “Cross-Border Capital Flows Return to 2011 Levels,”
Financial Times, November 30, 2014, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/
0/10803656-74b5-11e4-8321-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3UZL5KnrO/.
22. Cited in Shawn Donnan, “IMF and World Bank Warn of ‘Peak Trade’,”
Financial Times, November 18, 2014, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/
0237d9fa-6f29-11e4-b060-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3UZL5KnrO.
24. Haass, A World in Disarray, p. 2.
25. Ibid., p. 11.
26. Lawrence Summers, “Voters Deserve Responsible Nationalism Not Reflex
Globalism,” Financial Times, July 9, 2016, https://www.ft.com/con
tent/15598db8-4456-11e6-9b66-0712b3873ae1.
27. King, Grave New World, pp. 5, 12.
28. Ibid., pp. 102–122.
29. Ibid., pp. 130–131.
30. Quinn Slobodian, “Trump, Populists and the Rise of Right-Wing Global-
ization,” New York Times, October 22, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/
2018/10/22/opinion/trump-far-right-populists-globalization.html.
31. Jeff Desjardins, “The World’s Most Powerful Reserve Currencies,” Visual
Capitalist (October 7, 2019), https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-wor
lds-most-powerful-reserve-currencies/.
32. Kagan, The Jungle Grows Back, pp. 4, 10.
33. Yasha Mounk and Roberto Stefan Foa, “The End of the Democratic
Century,” Foreign Affairs 97:3 (May/June 2018), pp. 29, 30.
34. Cardiff Garcia, “How Global Income Inequality Has Shifted Since the
Crisis,” Financial Times (August 11, 2017). https://www.ft.com/con
tent/f301d0d4-7ea3-11e7-ab01-a13271d1ee9c.
35. See Thomas Piketty, The Economics of Inequality, tr. by Arthur Gold-
hammer (Cambridge MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
2015).
36. Oxfam, “Richest 1 Percent Bagged 82 Percent of Wealth Created
Last Year—Poorest Half of Humanity Got Nothing,” January
22, 2018, https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-percent-
bagged-82-percent-wealth-created-last-year-poorest-half-humanity.
37. Sam Fleming and Lauren Leathersby, “Millions Mired in Poverty as US

Upturn Passes Them By,” Financial Times, September 25, 2017, https://
www.ft.com/content/82f5f0e8-9fcf-11e7-8cd4-932067fbf946.
38. World Bank, “China Overview,” http://databank.worldbank.org/data/
download/GDP_PPP.pdf.
39. Robert Kagan, “The Strong Men Strike Back,” Washington Post, March
14, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/
2019/03/14/feature/the-strongmen-strike-back/?utm_term=.93d533
033685&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1.
40. McCain, “Defending the Liberal World Order.”
41. Larry Diamond, “Democracy Demotion,” Foreign Affairs 98:4
(July/August 2019), pp. 17, 18.
42. Agnew and Shin, Mapping Populism, p. 1.
43. Robin Niblett, “Liberalism in Retreat,” Foreign Affairs 96:1
(January/February 2017), p. 17.
44. Jonathan Freedland, “Inspired by Trump, the World Could Be Heading
Back to the 1930s,” The Guardian, June 22, 2018, https://www.thegua
rdian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/22/trump-world-1930s-children-
parents-europe-migrants?wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
45. Cited in Griff Witte, Carol Morello, Shibani Mahtani and Anthony Faiola,
“Around the global, Trump style is inspiring imitators and unleashing
dark impulses,” Washington Post, January 22, 2019, https://www.was
hingtonpost.com/world/europe/around-the-globe-trumps-style-is-inspir
ing-imitators-and-unleashing-dark-impulses/2019/01/22/ebd15952-
1366-11e9-ab79-30cd4f7926f2_story.html?utm_term=.f3736d2bf1ac&
wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1.
46. Suzanne Mettler, “Democracy on the Brink,” Foreign Affairs 96:3
(May/June 2017), p. 121.
47. Cited in Jeremy Diamond, “Trump: World Would Be ‘100%’
Better with Hussein, Gadhafi in Power,” CNN , October 25,
2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/25/politics/donald-trump-moa
mmar-gadhafi-saddam-hussein/index.html.
48. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Hard Choices (New York: Simon & Schuster,
2014), 31.
49. Cited in Anne Gearan and Robert Costa, “‘I Think You Mean That,
Too’: Trump’s Aides Struggle to Defend, Explain His Foreign Policy
Statements,” Washington Post, March 6, 2019, https://www.washingto
npost.com/politics/i-think-you-mean-that-too-trumps-aides-struggle-to-
defend-explain-his-foreign-policy-statements/2019/03/05/b196149c-
3ea1-11e9-9361-301ffb5bd5e6_story.html?utm_term=.fddc9e309e95&
50. George Packer, “Donald Trump Goes Rogue,” The New Yorker, June
25, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/06/25/don
ald-trump-goes-rogue?currentPage=all&wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_daily202.
51. G. John Ikenberry, “The Plot Against American Foreign Policy,” Foreign
Affairs 96:3 (May/June 2017), pp. 3, 1.
52. Cohen, “America’s Long Goodbye,” pp. 138, 142.
53. Joseph S. Nye, Jr. “Will the Liberal Order Survive?” Foreign Affairs 96:1
(January/February 2017), 12.
54. Cited in Azam Ahmed, Steven Erlanger, and Gerry Mullany, “Leaders
Abroad, Joyful or Wary, Face Uncertainty of Trump Era,” New
York Times, January 21, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/
world/donald-trump-reaction-france-germany-japan-brazil.html.
55. Cited in Josh Rogin, “Trump Has It ‘Totally and Completely Backwards’
on Saudi Arms Sales,” Washington Post, October 18, 2018, https://
www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2018/10/16/trump-
has-it-totally-and-completely-backwards-on-saudi-arms-sales/?utm_term=.
ce26688c9f41&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
56. Cited in “EU Chief Sees Trump Announcements as Threats,” Boston
Herald, January 31, 2017, http://www.bostonherald.com/news/intern
ational/2017/01/eu_chief_sees_trump_announcements_as_threats.
57. Cited in Packer, “Donald Trump Goes Rogue.”
58. Philip Gordon, “A Vision of Trump at War,” Foreign Affairs 96:3
(May/June 2017), pp. 10, 11.
59. Kori Schake, “The Trump Doctrine Is Winning and the World Is Losing,”
New York Times, June 15, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/
15/opinion/sunday/trump-china-america-first.html?wpisrc=nl_todayw
orld&wpmm=1.
60. Cited in “Tortoise v Hare,” The Economist, April 1, 2017, p. 36.
61. Michael Burleigh, The Best of Times, the Worst of Times: A History of Now
(London, Macmillan: 2017), pp. xii, 277, 300.
62. Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay, “The Empty Throne: Ameri-
ca’s Abdication of Global Leadership,” The Chicago Council on Global
Affairs, October 16, 2018, https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/public
ation/empty-throne-americas-abdication-global-leadership?utm_source=
gi&utm_campaign=book&utm_medium=email&utm_term=empty-thr
one&utm_content=text.
63. Jon Clifton, “Rating World Leaders: 2018,” Gallup, 2018, https://www.
politico.com/f/?id=00000161-0647-da3c-a371-867f6acc0001, pp. 3, 4.
64. Richard Wike, Jacob Poushter, Janell Fetterolf, and Shannon Schu-
macher, “Trump Ratings, Remain Low Around Globe, While Views
of U.S. Stay Mostly Favorable,” Pew Research Center, January
6, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/01/08/trump-rat
ings-remain-low-around-globe-while-views-of-u-s-stay-mostly-favorable/.
65. Anne Appelbaum, “The Dark History Behind Trump’s Inflammatory

Language,” Washington Post, June 22, 2018, https://www.washingto
npost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-dark-history-behind-trumps-
inflammatory-language/2018/06/22/54288982-7649-11e8-b4b7-308
400242c2e_story.html?utm_term=.5f1de6da542f&wpisrc=nl_todayw
orld&wpmm=1.
66. John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 43.
67. Daalder and Lindsay, The Empty Throne, p. 2.
68. Intelligence Committee Assessment, “Assessing Russian Activities and
Intentions in Recent US Elections,” January 6, 2017 (ICA 2017-01D),
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf. Italics added.
69. Graham Allison, “The Myth of the Liberal Order,” Foreign Affairs 97:4
(July/August 2018), pp. 125, 128.
70. Michael J. Mazaar, “The Real History of the Liberal Order: Neither Myth
Nor Accident,” Foreign Affairs, August 7, 2018, https://www.foreignaf
fairs.com/articles/2018-08-07/real-history-liberal-order.
71. Mira Rapp-Hooper and Rebecca Friedman Lissner, “A Foreign
Policy for the Day After Trump,” Foreign Affairs September
30, 2020, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-
09-30/foreign-policy-day-after-trump.
72. Stephen M. Walt, “The End of Hubris and the New Age of American
Restraint,” Foreign Affairs 98:3 (May/June 2019), pp. 26, 29–30.
73. Kori Schake, “Back to Basics: How to Make Right What Trump Gets
Wrong,” Foreign Affairs 98:3 (May/June 2019), p. 36.
Questions
Multiple Choice
1. Which of the following is not one of the three key dimensions in
globalization? (choose one)
a. Economic
b. Trade
c. Socio-cultural
d. Political
2. According to Rosenau, localization is __________
a. Boundary strengthening
b. Boundary eroding
c. Boundary dismantling
d. Boundary reforming
3. Which of These is an example of a Multinational Institution?

a. American Medical Association
b. France
c. Iowa State University
d. World Trade Organization
4. Haas sees what as a consequence of globalization?
a. Nationalist populism
b. Liberalism
c. Trade
d. Localization
5. What did Rosenau call the combination where fragmentation of

some polities occurs alongside of the integration of others.
a. Integramation
b. Globalization
c. Politicization
d. Fragmegration
6. Which one of these has resulted in the slowing of economic

globalization in recent times?
a. Post-World War II free trade norms

b. Immigration
c. Violation of free trade norms by major actors (ex. U.S.
& China)
d. Multilateralism
7. Which of these is an example of a “boundary-eroding” trend?
a. Undocumented Immigrants
b. Nationalism
c. Sectarianism
d. Economic protectionism
8. Which of these is a manifestation of “boundary-strengthening”

trends?
a. Intrusive governance by international and transnational

institutions and groups
b. Nationalism
c. Multilateral agreements
d. Pandemics
9. Which of these politicians or types of politician believe that bilat-

eralism would afford them advantages in negotiating with other
states?
a. Donald Trump
b. Vladimir Putin
c. Brexiteers
d. All the above
10. Which country prospered as a result of the U.S.-China Trade war?

a. U.S.
b. China
c. Both
d. Neither
11. What is one reason why the U.S. and EU economic sanctions on
Russia may be, while no means trivial, not severe as they might
have been.
a. Russia does not trade internationally

b. The U.S. and Europe already had minimal trade with
Russia
c. The Europeans have a significant trade and invest-
ment stake in Russia and are going through a recessionary
trend.
d. Russia has a larger economy than both the U.S. and the
EU
12. The bankruptcy of what EU member lead to talks of it being

“exited” from the union?
a. United Kingdom
b. Italy
c. Germany
d. Greece
13. What country, in June 2016, decided to leave the EU reflecting
a revival of nationalism and threatening European political and
economic integration?
a. United Kingdom
b. Italy
c. Germany
d. Greece
14. Ideas from which period, in many ways, inspired the liberal order?
a. The Renaissance
b. The post-Cold War era
c. The Enlightenment
d. Directly after World War II
15. Which of the following is NOT one of the “Washington Consen-
sus” points?
a. Small budget deficits
b. Legally-based property rights
c. Elimination of barriers to foreign direct investment
d. Reduce privatization of state-owned enterprises
16. Which of the following has not been declared a threat by the EU
President?
a. Islamic extremism
b. Russia
c. The Trump administration
d. All the above
17. The United States withdrew from a nuclear non-proliferation
agreement involving the lifting of sanctions in exchange for post-
poning efforts to seek nuclear weapons. Which country had agreed
to postpone their efforts to seek nuclear weapons?
a. Iraq
b. Syria
c. North Korea
d. Iran
18. One year after Trump assumed office, what had happened to Amer-
ica’s global approval ratings? (compared to the time when Obama
was in office)
a. The ratings rose

b. They dropped
c. They stayed the same
d. The approval ratings were unclear due to faulty data
collection
19. What did greater global trade produce?

a. Just Economic globalization
b. Just Political globalization
c. Economic and political globalization
d. Neither economic nor political globalization
20. What is the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) primary role?
a. Maintaining a stable global financial system

b. Preventing pandemics
c. Preventing climate change
d. Increasing growth in the agriculture industry
True or False
1. True or False? Globalization gets most of its support largely from
populist.
False, populist do not like globalization

2. True or False? According to James Rosenau what distinguishes
globalizing processes “is that they are not hindered or prevented
by territorial or jurisdictional barriers.
True
3. True or False? Globalization and the global liberal order are

synonymous.
False, they are distinct phenomena
4. True or False? Populist extremism only has advanced in authori-

tarian societies.
False, it has also advanced in mature democracies
5. True or False? China’s rise may ultimately bring about an illiberal

order while still fostering globalization.
True
6. True or False? All anti-globalizers are national populist.
False
7. True or False? Some leaders, such as Russian President Vladimir
Putin, attribute terrorism to globalization.
True
8. True or False? After the Doha Round of global trade talks had
largely stalled, the IMF and World Bank concluded that world
trade had grown more slowly than the global economy between
2012 and 2014 for the first time in decades.
True
9. True or False? China has a long history of neo-mercantile practices,

and therefore over time Beijing has shown a lesser propensity to
play by free trade and market rules.
False, Although China has a long history of neo-

mercantile practices, over time Beijing has shown a greater
propensity to play by free trade and market rules (ex.
joining WTO in 2001, launching a sweeping new foreign
investment program)
10. True or False? Russia suffered more from U.S. and EU sanctions
than it did from the precipitous drop in 2017–2018 in the price of
oil to less than $50 a barrel.
False, it suffered more from the drop in the price of oil

11. True or False? For the U.S. to decline in power there needs to
be a significant diminishment of U.S. capabilities in an “objective”
sense.
False, the U.S. decline could be relative, caused by the

“rise” of other countries and polities that are increasing
their own capabilities and autonomy
12. True or False? There has been a rise of xenophobic rightwing

parties in Europe opposed to the very concept of the European
integration and, especially, EU immigration policies.
True
13. True or False? Populists view themselves as fighting for the “elites.”
False, they actively oppose the “elite.”
14. True or False? Populist movements around the world are

concerned with economic stagnation, income inequality, migrants
streaming across porous borders, and erosion of sovereign
autonomy.
True
15. True or False? The greatest threat to the liberal order is a multi-
polar system.
False, the greatest threat to the liberal order is authoritar-

ianism.
16. True or False? Stephen K. Bannon claims that “Trump stands as a

direct challenge to the postwar, international rules-based order.”
True
17. True or False? President Trump’s actions regarding NATO, and

international agreements indicate that he believes America is a
victim, rather than a beneficiary, of the liberal institutions it
fostered.
True
Give an example that demonstrates globalization exclusively

promotes liberal values.
A major reason is the rise of authoritarian China, which does
not spread the values of democracy, care for human rights, or
market capitalism as it globalizes.
Short Answer
Did globalization exist before WWII? Explain.
Yes, the world was connected in many ways before WWII; It
existed in the trade routes of the silk road, the spread of the
Black Plague, can be seen in the fall of Constantinople and more.
What sort of backlash did the acceleration and deepening of global-

ization in past decades produce and according to Rosenau why did
it produce this backlash?
It has produced a nationalist and state-centric backlash against
globalization, because of the natural wax and wane of globaliza-
tion and the force of localization
Describe James Rosenau’s distinction between globalizing and local-

izing processes.
Globalizing processes are not hindered or prevented by territo-
rial or jurisdictional barriers. They are boundary-eroding while
localizing processes are boundary-strengthening.
What trends and happenings today that reflect accelerating global-

ization?
Trends and happenings today that reflect accelerating globaliza-
tion include economic outsourcing, supply chains, trans-border
migration, cyber-technologies, and global social media reflect
accelerating globalization in recent decades.
How might events like the Great Recession and, even more, indus-
trial automation and robotics may allow a retreat from economic
globalization?
They may allow a marked renationalization and re-localization
of industries with the reduction of outsourcing and global trade.
What are some challenges of the migration of people from poor to

rich countries?
It dilutes traditional cultures and poses problems of assim-
ilation. For example, the influx of Latinos into the United
States and of Africans and Muslims into Europe involve cultural
contradictions that produce social tensions.
What are some of the controversial issues that lead to negotia-

tions for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)
between the United States and the European Union to stall.
Controversial issues include provisions allowing investors to
bring cases alleging unfair treatment directly against the country
hosting the investment, financial regulations (now more strin-
gent in America than in Europe), labor-union rights, genetically
modified organisms, intellectual property, and location-specific
food designations (like parmesan cheese).
Explain why leaders of the post-WWII era were determined to create

a liberal world order.
They had seen the previous world order break down during
the wars. Open markets had collapsed, and ethnic and nation-
alist groups were able to perpetrate unspeakable violence. These
leaders wanted nothing to do with the failures of the old world
order and pivoted from ethno-nationalism, spheres of influence,
and might-makes-right imperialism to universal values, human
rights, rule of law, open commerce, and national sovereignty.
In what ways has Donald Trump expressed views that conflict with
American ideals of democracy?
Examples include: Trump praised authoritarian leaders, encour-
aged violence, threatened to jail Hillary Clinton, called the
press “the enemy,” insulted judges and the electoral process,
and prevented individuals from testifying before congressional
committees.
How are globalization and the liberal order linked?

There was a legal order governing commerce, travel, and
communication between people, corporations and countries.
The liberal order’s norms extended to politics and facilitated

international cooperation and diplomacy, in turn strengthening
the possibilities of international regimes.
Essay Questions
1. Describe how changes and innovations in technology have impacted
globalization.
2. Describe the impact of Donald Trump on the liberal order.
3. Why is authoritarianism such a threat to the liberal order?
Under what circumstances would the public find authoritarianism
appealing?
4. The United Nations, when it was formed, placed decolonization
near the top of the priority list. How would decolonization foster
both globalization and state sovereignty?
5. How does the deterioration of United States hegemony impact the
liberal order?
CHAPTER 2
Nationalist-Populism, Its Causes, Content,

and Consequences
What Is Nationalist-Populism?
“The common thread of all these movements,” argued Martin Wolf,
was “rejection of the contemporary western elite and the synthesis of
liberal democracy, technocratic governance and global capitalism that
it promoted.”1 Democracy provided the public with participation in
decision-making and, if healthy, holds those elected responsible what takes
place. As noted earlier, populism was a revolution against the establish-
ment and democratic norms. While claiming it represented ‘real’ people,
Nationalist-populism fosters corruption and exploitation, while placing
the blame on globalization. It denies science and experts and their exper-
tise in everything from climate change to economics and health. Thus, it is
hardly surprising that the leaders of the four countries in which the coron-
avirus was increasing rapidly—Brazil, America, Russia, and Britain—were
governed by antiestablishment populist men. More succinctly, Agnew
and Shin asserted that “today’s populism is a style of mobilization and
communication based on the language and identity of ‘ordinary people’
versus a commanding political ‘elite’” that “reflects a blistering critique
of established mechanisms of politics such as traditional political parties,
state bureaucracies, professional politicians, and technocratic expertise.”2
Thus, populists believe that ordinary people using “common sense” are
preferable to professional experts.

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72033-9_2
Mainstream political parties found it difficult to appeal to both pro-

and anti-globalizers. Globalized elites and corporations were sources of
wealth creation as well as economic inequality. On the left, egalitarian
philosophy clashed with attention paid to minorities, whether people of
color, religious or ethnic group, women, or gays. On the right, parties
sought unsuccessfully to balance spending for local projects to bring
money to a politician’s district in exchange for votes with charges of
corruption and vaguely defined special interests. Mainstream parties were
torn asunder. In America, the Republican Party was divided between
traditional conservative low-budget conservatives and television person-
alities with no clear political views like Donald Trump. In Great Britain,
the Conservative Party divided between Brexit “leavers” and “remainers.”
The Labour Party was split between the traditional class-conscious left-
ists and the globalist Blair supporters. Such parties could no longer send
coherent messages to ideologically anchored electorates.
For heated rhetoric toward and dislike of technocrats and experts,
Trump must take considerable responsibility, having obsessively under-
mined his country’s law enforcement and national security apparatus like
no prior president. He frequently seemed at war with his Department of
Justice, the CIA and FBI, and even the Federal Reserve Bank. Like fellow
populists, Trump assailed mainstream media and fostered the use of social
media like Facebook and Twitter to mobilize supporters. These media,
however, began to censor Trump’s misstatements and provocations to
violence and prevent voting in 2020 and suspended his accounts. Like
other populists, Trump also repeatedly violated constitutional constraints
and the rule of law essential to democracy’s survival. Thus, in 2020,
Freedom House concluded that U.S. and Indian populist leaders were
eroding institutional safeguards and the rights of critics and minorities,
thereby undermining democratic norms. “Between the world of chaos
and the world of order stands the rule of law,” wrote former FBI chief
Andrew McCabe. “Yet now the rule of law is under attack, including from
the president himself.”3
As noted earlier, nationalist-populism also involved rejection of glob-
alization as well as the liberal order. In a speech to the UN General
Assembly in 2018, former President Trump decried political, economic,
and socio-cultural globalization. “We reject the ideology of globalism
and accept the doctrine of patriotism,” and “America will always choose
independence and cooperation over global governance, control and domi-
nation.” He continued, “Together, let us choose a future of patriotism,
2 NATIONALIST-POPULISM, ITS CAUSES, CONTENT … 49
prosperity, and pride.”4 In these three sentences, Trump rejected global-

ization and the liberal order in favor of economic protectionism, nativism,
and opposition to multilateral cooperation. A year later, the former pres-
ident said much the same. “The future does not belong to globalists.
The future belongs to patriots,” he argued. “The future belongs to
sovereign and independent nations who protect their citizens, respect
their neighbors and honor the differences that make each country special
and unique.”5 Concluded Eliot Cohen, “Patriotism,” as Trump saw it,
was “opposed to global governance, prosperity to bad deals that cheat the
United States, and national pride to universalistic visions of humanity.”6
Trump emphatically declared himself a “nationalist” and believed glob-
alization was weakening America’s relative power and prosperity. “After
more than 30 years of stagnant or declining real wages, the Amer-
ican people were receptive to that message,”7 thereby upending the
liberal global order and “protecting” America from a world of free trade,
immigration, or alliances. Liberals, he believed, allowed others to take
advantage of America in the name of democracy and human rights and
that he could close the door and terminate global interdependence. Other
populists around the world emulated Trump’s acerbic style, authoritarian
beliefs, and nationalist rhetoric.
By his inauguration, the world had come to recognize that America’s
new president was determined to carry out his campaign rhetoric, and
his views were not confined to the U.S. Others across Europe and else-
where demonized immigrants and minorities to gain votes. Trump was
prepared to see enemies everywhere, alienating friends as well as rivals like
China. America’s intelligence community had already recognized Russia’s
support of Trump and its interference in the presidential election. It was
hardly surprising that after hearing the populist rhetoric in Trump’s inau-
gural speech, that his predecessor, George W. Bush, was overheard saying,
“That was some weird shit.”8
Walter Russell Mead viewed America’s nationalist-populists as anti-
elitist “Jacksonians” prepared to jettison long-time U.S. foreign poli-
cies. “For Jacksonians—who formed the core of Trump’s passionately
supported base–the United States is not a political entity created and
defined by a set of intellectual positions rooted in the Enlightenment
and oriented toward the fulfillment of a universal mission”9 but a state
that should be preoccupied with national interests. Jacksonians empha-
sized transactional realism that assumes a zero-sum world and benefits the
state rather than humanitarian internationalism, liberal norms, or ethnic
or racial subgroups. Andrew Jackson (Trump’s favorite president) was

a white supremacist who used the spoils system to drain what Trump
called “the swamp” and to defend white male farmers and workers against
wealthy financiers. Like Trump, he resented wealthy and highly educated
elites while despising the lower classes.
Mead claimed that Trump’s supporters perceived their country as
“being attacked by internal enemies” like “an elite cabal or immi-
grants” that “offers economic benefits and social advantages” to “African-
Americans, Hispanics, women, the LGBTQ community, Native Ameri-
cans, Muslim-Americans” but not to white males of European ancestry.
Mead concluded that globalists who believed “tribal loyalties” were obso-
lete “failed to understand the deep roots of identity politics in the human
psyche.”10 Similarly, Michael Burleigh argued that Donald Trump was
“very much a product of our times, whose rage became a running
dialogue with enough voters angry about globalization,” who elected “a
billionaire with weird hair and a foul tongue.”11
Populist Authoritarianism
However, rather than Jacksonians at home or abroad, many American
populists, especially Trump, are inclined to illiberal democracy (even
authoritarianism), racism, misogyny, strident ignorance, and unilater-
alism. Trump’s xenophobic and racist rhetoric spurred white supremacists,
including some who resorted to violent extremism, and terrorism by
right-wing supremacists in America was significantly more dangerous than
Islamic terrorism or the amorphous left-wing “Antifa,” accounting for
three-quarters of extremist-related killings during the past decade. By
mid-2019, there had been more violent white supremacist incidents than
in all of 2018, but according to the Department of Homeland Securi-
ty’s former intelligence chief, a year later, the department’s senior officials
forced him to downplay white supremacy and Russian meddling in U.S.
election so as not to arouse Trump or harm his re-election campaign.
However, in November 2020, the Department of Homeland Security
warned that violent white supremacy was the “most persistent and lethal
threat in the homeland.”
Referring to Trump after the massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue by
a violent anti-Semite, an official of the American Civil Liberties Union
declared, “The numerous statements he’s made, calling himself a ‘nation-
alist,’ crowds at his rallies chanting threats against George Soros — it’s
all connected.”12 Historian Douglas A. Blackmon noted that Trump,

“is now invoking the white supremacist mentality of the early 1900s,
when anyone who looked ‘not white’ could be labeled as unwelcome
in America.”13 He also refused to condemn white supremacists in his
September 2020 presidential debate with Joe Biden even though his FBI
director, Christopher Wray, had testified in a congressional hearing that
racially motivated extremism accounted for the largest share of the FBI’s
domestic terrorism cases, and white supremacism was involved in most
racially motivated cases. In March 2019, the Australian white supremacist
Brenton Tarrant, who massacred fifty Muslims in New Zealand, described
Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”14
In the U.S. in 2018, 7120 hate crimes motivated by bias against race,
religion, sexual orientation, disability, or gender were reported to the
FBI, up from 6121 in 2016. Argued Adam Serwer, Americans mistakenly
“believe that the surge in white-supremacist violence and recruitment—
the march in Charlottesville, Virginia, where neo-Nazis chanted ‘Jews will
not replace us’; the hate crimes whose perpetrators invoke the president’s
name as a battle cry—has no roots in U.S. soil, that it is racist zealotry
with a foreign pedigree and marginal allure.”15
Nevertheless, the Trump administration refused to support a New
Zealand-initiated effort supported by major tech firms and eighteen
governments, including U.S. allies, to prevent online extremism. In a joint
statement, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter declared,
“It is right that we come together, resolute in our commitment to ensure
we are doing all we can to fight the hatred and extremism that lead
to terrorist violence.” However, the White House claimed rather ludi-
crously that it could not support the “Christchurch Call” (named after
the massacre) because it threatened free speech.
Who Are the Nationalist-Populists?

In 2004, Samuel Huntington wrote presciently that the “public, overall,
is concerned…with societal security…existing patterns of language,
culture, association, religion, national identity.” However, for elites “these
concerns are secondary to participating in the global economy, supporting
international trade and migration, strengthening international institu-
tions.”16 Recent events have fostered fear that markets were no longer
free and societies were no longer open. Among the unanswered ques-
tions in global politics, as Huntington sensed, was whether the global
order remained open or was increasingly closed, consisting of inwardly

looking territorial states that nationalist-populists seek.
Huntington’s final book, Who Are We?-- a wide-ranging treatise that

argued, among other things, that American elites were dangerously out
of touch with the American public when it came to issues of patriotism,
foreign policy, and national identity—was panned by most mainstream
reviewers in 2004 as an ideological and careless screed that flirted with
xenophobia. At 77, the eminent scholar was accused in respectable circles
of losing his marbles.17
The conflict that Huntington predicted was between “cosmopolitism”

and “nationalism.” The former was the ideology of pro-globalist liberal
elites. “The idea would be an open society with open borders, encour-
aging subnational ethnic, racial, and cultural identities, dual citizenship,
diasporas, and led by elites who increasingly identified with global
institutions, norms, and rules rather than national ones.” By contrast,
a “national approach would recognize and accept what distinguishes
America,” and “America cannot become the world and still be America.
Other people cannot become American and still be themselves.”18
Huntington’s cosmopolitans were similar to those who James Rosenau
regarded as living in one of four “global worlds,” notably “Affirmative
Globals” “who share positive inclinations toward the processes of glob-
alization” and resembled the elites that populists disliked. By contrast,
“Resistant Globals” “regard one or more of the prevailing dynamics that
sustain globalization as detrimental to the well-being of peoples,” and
“Specialized Globals” were “oriented toward only limited issues on the
global agenda.” “Territorial Globals,” who have a large “scale of thought
and action” but viewed “problems that arise anywhere abroad…in terms
of their country’s interest,”19 were similar to populists in some respects.
Huntington’s nationalists resembled those who lived in one of Rose-
nau’s “local worlds,” and “whose orientations are toward proximate hori-
zons.” “Insular Locals” were solely concerned “with the geographically
near at hand” and resembled those who did not follow the Russian inves-
tigation or the later impeachment hearings. “Resistant Locals perceive
the spatially remote as so threateningly close as to necessitate opposi-
tion.” “Exclusionary Locals are inclined to avoid the distant proximities
they view as becoming too close,” and “Affirmative Locals” “work and
think in a world that has imported foreign practices without substan-

tially altering their small-scale orientations.”20 “Resistant Locals,” who
overlapped “Resistant Globals,” were similar to contemporary populists,
who disliked multilateral institutions and agreements, supported protec-
tionism, opposed immigration, and voted for Trump.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair argued that nationalist-
populism “is intent on blowing up traditional conservative politics and
replacing it with a new coalition, comprising traditionally left-leaning
supporters in working-class communities who feel ignored by those in
charge and left behind by globalization and traditionally right-leaning
supporters who hate liberalism. Both constituencies believe that tradi-
tional culture is at risk from immigration and ‘political correctness.’ Both
believe in the nation-state as opposed to international alliances. Both
feel let down by the so-called elites and think that the solution is an
authoritarian figure strong enough not to care what a biased establish-
ment thinks about him.”21 Thus, nationalist-populism seized control of
conservative political parties, notably America’s Republicans and Britain’s
Tories, “in rhetoric and deed,” as Ben Rhodes eloquently argued. Repub-
licans “betrayed the United States’ values, coddled its adversaries, and
subjugated its interests to the political whims of an incompetent authori-
tarian.”22 Whereas traditional conservatives valued the institutions they
inherited, right-wing populists focused on identities such as ethnicity,
race, religion, and gender rather than national interests.
Nationalist-populism transformed anxieties and resentments into the
politics of anger, involving what Jeff D. Colgan and Robert O. Keohane
called “the belief that each country has an authentic ‘people’ who are held
back by the collusion of foreign forces and self-serving elites at home.” As
noted above, it embraced leaders who claimed legitimacy by representing
“the people,” a normative “imagined community” with a common and
sometimes mythical history, regardless of regional, professional, or other
particularistic interests, seeking to unite them as their “base.” Such leaders
try to weaken or destroy mediating institutions such as parties, legis-
latures, judiciaries, and the press—all led by self-interested “elites”—
and undermine foreign limits on the people’s national sovereignty. The
“Brexit and Trump phenomena” reflected “a breakdown in the social
contract at the core of liberal democracy: those who do well in a market-
based society promise to make sure that those disadvantaged by market
forces do not fall too far behind. But fall behind they have.”23 Elites,
argued nationalist-populists, used the liberal order to enrich themselves
in contrast to those whom Edward Luce called the “squeezed middle”

or “precariat.”24 Globally, in 2018, the top 1% had 47.2% of all house-
hold wealth, and blue-collar workers, formerly the core of leftist parties,
became followers of right-wing populists.
Put differently, unlike those whom they loathed, populists were, as
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt described them, “antiestablishment
politicians—figures who, claiming to represent the voice of the ‘people,’”
waged war on corrupt and conspiratorial elites. “Populists tend to deny
the legitimacy of established parties, attacking them as undemocratic and
even unpatriotic. They tell voters that the existing system is not really
democratic but instead has been hijacked, corrupted, or rigged by the
elite. And they promise to bury that elite and return power to the
‘people.’”25 They also tended “to offer superficial answers to complex
problems”26 to garner support among those who had lost confidence
with the politics of their country. Lech Walesa, who led Poland’s tran-
sition to democracy after the Cold War, concluded that the masses could
“sense the world has changed, but it hasn’t changed in their favor. So
that’s why so many people vote for those individuals or groups who claim
they will introduce change. That’s how they voted for President Trump
and for our leadership. We have to be truthful and say that both Trump
and our politicians diagnosed the situation correctly, but the treatment
they have been applying is wrong.”27
The Globalization of Nationalism

Donald Trump’s surprise electoral triumph in 2016 accelerated a global
revival of nationalism and reversed long-term American and European
domestic and foreign policies and the responsibilities they entailed. As
we shall see, Trump galvanized populist politicians elsewhere such as
Hungary’s Viktor Orbȧn, Poland’s Jarosław Kaczyński, Italy’s Matteo
Salvini, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro,
and Israel’s Benyamin Netanyahu. Polish, Hungarian, Italian, and other
populist politicians were similar, all supported by white Christian majori-
ties and adamantly opposed to immigrants, especially Muslims. These
politicians appealed to historical grievances, seeking the votes of those
who felt ignored. As in America, they attracted rural rather than urban
support.
Thus, the agenda of nationalist-populists was much the same glob-
ally. They opposed elites and migrants (especially minorities) whom they
blamed for the loss of jobs and the erosion of their national culture. As
in America, populists elsewhere fostered unilateralism, intolerance, racism,
and malignant nationalism. They focused on national interests rather than
global cooperation in confronting global challenges and providing collec-
tive goods, and they have a transactional view of global politics. (Liberals
believe governments can and should do both.) Their ideology and poli-
cies threatened the free movement of goods and people, multinational
global organizations and agreements, and challenged transnational and
international political, economic, and social networks that fostered inter-
dependence. Nevertheless, many of the most ardent populist politicians,
including Trump, are themselves “elite” by any objective standard—
wealth, education, or status. Trump’s supporters, like those in Britain who
favored Brexit, reflected widespread alienation of relatively uneducated
white males in areas outside the country’s cosmopolitan and relatively
prosperous cities who believed that the country’s political elites—the
“failed ruling class” as Trump called them—in the major political parties
had ignored them. They believed the parties catered to racial minorities
and competed to be “politically correct” even as they feared they would
soon become a minority in their own country. Moreover, a surprising
number of women also supported “macho populists.”28
“Neither Brexit nor Trump,” observed Ian Buruma, were “likely to
bring great benefits to these voters,” but “they can dream of taking
their countries back to an imaginary, purer, more wholesome past.”29
Indeed, populists sought to return to an imagined past of national
sovereignty that Stephen Krasner termed “organized hypocrisy.” Krasner
described several types of sovereignty that “do not necessarily covary.”
“Outcomes in the international system,” he wrote, “are determined by
rulers whose violation of, or adherence to, international principles or
rules is based on calculations of material and ideational interests, not
taken-for-granted practices derived from some overarching institutional
structures or deeply embedded generative grammars.”30 Krasner’s realist
logic described Trump’s transactional approach to foreign affairs.
Advocates of globalization were partly responsible for populism. In
a creative analysis of the sources of nationalist-populism, Dani Rodrik
argued. “Even globalization’s biggest boosters now concede that it has
produced lopsided benefits and that something will have to change.”
He continued, “Today’s woes have their roots in the 1990s, when poli-
cymakers set the world on its current, hyperglobalist path, requiring
domestic economies to be put in the service of the world’s economy
instead of the other way around.” “Globalization became the end,

national economies the means,” and leaders “came to view every conceiv-
able feature of domestic through the lens of global markets.” Thus,
national leaders established the WTO and liberalized capital flows that
“freed up vast quantities of short-term finance to slosh across borders
in search of higher returns.” Rodrik describes how WTO trade norms
fostered a loss of manufacturing jobs in developed countries, and unreg-
ulated capital flows and anonymous market forces produced the Great
Recession. He contended that this system, unlike the original Bretton
Woods system, resembled the earlier “intrusive” gold standard in which
countries could not use monetary policy to reduce “domestic economic
pain.”31
Growing economic inequality made many individuals feel left behind
by globalization and suffered what Arthur C. Brooks calls a “dignity
deficit.” In turn, the beneficiaries feared the impoverished, and both
groups turned away from democracy. Automation has eliminated low-
paying jobs and globalization has moved manufacturing jobs to less
developed countries. Brooks argued that, as president, Lyndon Johnson
viewed his War on Poverty as a commitment to human dignity. Although
such programs were well intentioned, they “got the U.S. government into
the business of treating people left behind as liabilities to manage rather
than as human assets to develop.” Lacking skills and with little educa-
tion, they suffered an “acute dignity crisis” and “languished while elites
…largely ignored them or treated them with contempt.”32
Perceptions of inequality and spreading anti-globalization sentiments
increased, especially after the Great Recession began in 2007–2008. It was
accompanied by a demographic shift in which previously dominant racial
and gender elites were becoming minorities and losing political power
in their own countries. The financial crisis also intensified resentment of
minority groups and migrants in America and Europe owing to a belief
that those minorities were receiving more aid from their governments
than they merited. Thus, a 2017 poll revealed that many of Trump’s
supporters, that is, “white working-class Americans believe discrimination
against whites is as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and
other minorities.”33 As wealthy residents moved back into cities like New
York and London, gentrification raised housing prices so high that less
wealthy residents were forced out, often further from their jobs creating
greater political divisions between wealthy urban elites and those who
previously had regarded themselves as “middle class.”34
During the financial crisis, markets appeared to foster what Susan

Strange called “casino capitalism,” a winner-take-all economy that eroded
democratic institutions and favored educated and wealthy elites. As
interest rates fell, financial institutions made increasingly risky invest-
ments, and global governance provided by institutions such as the
European Central Bank and the IMF proved inadequate to remedy the
problem posed by transnational capital flows and the bundling and sale of
risky investments.
Consequently, populists advocating “nationalism” and “national inter-
ests” criticized economic globalization. Economic globalization had
winners and losers, and the former, among the hated “elites,” supported
a global economy that increased monopolistic and oligarchic firms. The
growing contemporary wealth gap was partly a result of the global move-
ment of capital, which encouraged outsourcing by firms to other countries
and to poorly paying subcontractors. Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and
Howard Rosenthal argued that in America “inequality rose in a period of
increasing wealth, with the added riches going more to the haves than
to the have-nots.”35 As Thomas Piketty contended, the rich got richer
because the return on capital investment exceeded the rate of economic
growth except during periods of great violence. Among the factors that
contributed to this were returns on education, declining unions, global
trade, greater compensation for corporate executives, the increasingly
regressive U.S. tax code, and “the massive wave of immigration – legal
and illegal, since the 1960s.”36 Poor white males, mainly Trump voters,
perceived racial and ethnic minorities as having been the major beneficia-
ries of government welfare programs, and suicide rates among this group
soared.
Some extremists believe that the liberal order furthered “white geno-
cide” by permitting immigration and miscegenation. Vann R. Newkirk
claimed, “All the talk right now among people in the alt-right and the
broader white supremacist movement is about the need for a white ethno-
state.” Referring to Trump, he contended, “the pipeline that Trump and
his allies have built between hate groups and the mainstream isn’t acci-
dental, unwitting, or merely the product of being repeatedly taken in
by grifters. This is what was always promised with the refrain of ‘Make
America Great Again,’ a dog whistle that many minorities were once
ridiculed for properly hearing.”37 Peter Wehner added. “He takes a blow-
torch to the tinder.” “For Trump and for his presidency, the culture war
is central and defining — and it’s a culture war of a particular kind…. It’s
a culture war that manifests itself in race and ethnicity and nationality.”38
The rise of populists reflected a deep division between urban and
rural voters. The rural-urban divide appeared throughout Europe and
was evident in Britain’s 2016 Brexit referendum in which rural citizens
were mainly “leavers” and urbanites were largely “remainers.” Although
Trump was from New York City, his rhetoric depicted cities such as Balti-
more, San Francisco, and Chicago as either bastions of rich elites and/or
repositories of crime and poverty. Such cities, he claimed, harbored
undocumented minorities and liberal globalists unlike “real” America,
which encompassed states with declining populations and disappearing
towns but still had two U.S. senators and a disproportionate share of
electoral votes.
Trump’s campaign emphasized raising barriers to immigrants, both
legal and illegal, opposition to multilateral institutions and agreements,
and protectionism (economic nationalism). After the campaign, he
accused globalist elites of fostering immigration and trade policies that
forced American workers to face unfair competition from migrants and
poorly paid workers overseas. His anti-globalism was echoed by Stephen
K. Bannon who greeted the firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with
the tweet “Come on dude!!!…end of the globalists!!!”39
Trump derided professional economists and technocrats, who, for
example, opposed his trade policies. “These dummies say, ‘Oh, that’s a
trade war. Trade war? We’re losing $500 billion in trade with China. Who
the hell cares if there’s a trade war? Think of it: $500 billion and they’re
telling me about a trade war.”40 He supplemented economic nation-
alism with vows to make wealthy investors pay more and introduce huge
infrastructure funding, much of which was alien to conservative Repub-
licans. However, with the exception of his regressive tax proposal, he
achieved virtually none of his campaign promises, including completing
the building of a border wall that Mexico would pay for. His other breaks
with the past, notably criticism of allies and multilateral institutions and
agreements, and his protectionism, which threatened to undo complex
global production chains, eroded the liberal order and Western unity. His
effort to get rid of Obamacare was a dud as was his tax reduction a gold
mine for billionaires, and his efforts to roll back environmental and safety
regulations have proved disastrous.
Populists like Trump are, of course, not uniquely American. Even
Southeast Asia hosts demagogic populist politicians such as Thailand’s
Thaksin Shinawatra and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, who exhorted

culture and identity to acquire power. As in America and Europe,
populists in Southeast Asia exploited economic and communal divisions
like that between Chinese minorities in Malaysia and Indonesia and rural
Muslims and between Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar. Closer to
home, Ontario’s Premier Douglas Ford exploited populism to foster
cultural and identity conflicts. In his electoral campaign, he attacked
“elites” and emphasized his province’s Christian roots. His policies were
similar to Trump’s, stirring cultural and economic resentment in Ontario.
Nationalist-Populism and Democracy

Does nationalist-populism threaten democracy? “Over the past decade,”
wrote Ronald Inglehart, “marginally democratic countries have become
increasingly authoritarian. And authoritarian, xenophobic populist move-
ments have grown strong enough to threaten democracy’s long-term
health in several rich, established democracies,”41 including the U.S. “I
don’t think people will look back on the Trump years and think either
that was a complete outlier or that was the moment when everyone real-
ized ‘the change’,” argued David Runciman. “They will, I think, look at
the Trump era as part of a long story of democratic decline. So Trump
for me is more symptom than the cause, and when Trump goes, demo-
cratic institutions will have been damaged and corroded.”42 Indeed, the
weeks after Trump’s electoral defeat in 2020 during which he refused to
concede the outcome reflected this.
Trump’s base included Americans who admired authoritarianism, and
his policies encouraged authoritarian leaders everywhere. Referring to
Trump, conservative pundit George Will insightfully observed, “today’s
foremost enemy of modernity is populism, which cannot abide the idea
that majorities are not self-validating, and neither are intense minorities
(e.g., the ‘Elvis lives’ cohort). Validation comes from the ‘critical testers’
who are the bane of populists’ existence because the testers are, by dint
of training and effort, superior to the crowd, ‘no matter how many’ are
in it.”43
At this point, we must recognize that globalization, too, posed threats
to democracy. For one thing multinational and transnational institutions
like the World Bank and corporations made decisions without consulting
citizens of member states. Their bureaucrats and technocrats are respon-

sible to member states but not to the latter’s voting public, thus creating
a “democratic deficit.”
Although populists claimed to represent the voice of a country’s citi-
zens and advocated plebiscitary rather than representative democracy,
populists such as Trump and Viktor Orbán also undermined democ-
racy by attacking institutions such as political parties, legislatures, courts,
government bureaucracies, and the media and were contemptuous of
alternative views or policies. Populists have a majoritarian view of democ-
racy in the sense that those who get the most votes (popular or electoral)
should be able to impose whatever institutions and policies they wished
regardless of the views of minorities. They were unwilling to tolerate
dissent and utilized referendums to justify illiberal democracy. Demagogic
authoritarians bypassed democratic institutions by going directly to the
people, thereby doing away with genuine democracy.
Populist leaders are demagogues, and they claim there is no room for
separation of powers in government or even of constitutional restraints on
their actions. Martin Wolf described what he called “the age of the elected
despot,” all of whom were men. “He presents himself as a protector of
the ‘real people’ against foreigners, minorities and treasonous elites. This
is a moral, not a political claim. His is also the politics of paranoia. If
anything goes wrong, it is necessarily the fault of the ‘deep state’, or some
other enemy within or without. Their foes are damned as ‘elites; and
their enemies vary by country but frequently include the media, epistemic
communities, and the judiciary.”44 Donald Trump was one of these.
District Judge Carlton Reeves argued that Trump’s attacks were the
third major assault on America’s judiciary. Earlier ones occurred after the
Civil War and the Supreme Court’s decision banning segregation. “When
the executive branch calls our courts and their work ‘stupid,’ ‘horrible,’
‘ridiculous,’ ‘incompetent,’ ‘a laughingstock,’ you can hear the slurs and
threats of executives like George Wallace, echoing into the present.”45
Even worse, Candace Owens, a Trump supporter, averred, “I actually
don’t have any problems at all with the word ‘nationalism.’ I think that
the definition gets poisoned by elitists that actually want globalism. Glob-
alism is what I don’t want, so when you think about whenever we say
nationalism, the first thing people think about, at least in America, is
Hitler.” She continued, “The problem is that he wanted, he had dreams
outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize. He wanted everybody to
be German, everybody to be speaking German. Everybody to look a
different way. To me, that’s not nationalism.”46 Although Ms. Owens

claimed she was misunderstood, one need not be a postmodernist or a
Freudian to recognize what she meant.
Populist leaders undermine democracy, particularly in countries where
there was a backlash against cultural diversity. In Hungary, Orbán
erected “the Orwellian-sounding System of National Cooperation, which
included drastic restrictions on media pluralism and civil society; and
weakened the independence of the judiciary and other sources of checks
and balances.”47 This was only one example of how populist leaders
undermined a country’s institutions on which democracy depended.
Recognizing the danger of nationalist-populism to democracy, Dan Coats,
then Director of National Intelligence, included a warning in Amer-
ica’s 2019 National Intelligence Strategy. “Traditional adversaries will
continue attempts to gain and assert influence, taking advantage of
changing conditions in the international environment — including the
weakening of the post-WWII international order and dominance of
Western democratic ideals, increasingly isolationist tendencies in the West,
and shifts in the global economy.”48
Populism and the Media

Former President Trump like other populists repeatedly attacked main-
stream media. He decried such media as consisting of “crazed lunatics”
and “the enemy of the people.”49 Such comments reflect demagoguery
that threatens to undermine key democratic institutions and norms. “The
current wave of populism,” as Steger argued, “demonstrates that the ideo-
logical contest over the meaning and shape of globalization has deeply
impacted the political landscape of the new century,”50 contradicting
Francis Fukuyama’s belief that history had ended after the Cold War.
Whether Trump knowingly told falsehoods or was simply ignorant is
unclear. However, his repeating the same lies frequently without evidence
or even after they had been debunked suggested either a pathology
and/or deliberate deception. If journalists pointed this out, Trump
violently assailed them. He declared that 80% of news was “fake,” and, if
he achieved something, journalists ignored it. At the 2019 G-20 summit
in Osaka, Japan, Trump showed his contempt for journalists. A journalist
tweeted Trump’s comments to Russia’s President Putin. “Get rid of them.
Fake news is a great term, isn’t it?” Trump said. “You don’t have this
problem in Russia, but we do.”51 “Putinism,” wrote The Guardian, “has
an ally in Donald Trump, who greeted Russia’s president as an honoured

friend at this weekend’s Osaka G20 summit. The two men share a liking
for authoritarian governance by executive decree, intolerance for demo-
cratic, legal and parliamentary constraints and a crude vision of a world
divided by nations, money and brute force.”52
When winning elections by the narrowest of margins or even (as
Trump in 2016) without a majority in the popular vote, populists
nonetheless claimed a “mandate” and ran roughshod over any opposition.
Blatant lies and conspiracy theories abounded, and they dismissed unflat-
tering facts as “false” or “fake” news. Trump repeatedly referred even to
factual material as “fake news” (a term he claimed to have coined), and
populists globally emulated him, denouncing their media and political
foes for spreading “fake news.” “At this point,” wrote one commentator,
“the falsehoods are as much a part of his political identity as his floppy
orange hair and the ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan.”53
As a serial liar, President Trump was a major source of “fake news” in
American politics. For example, he repeatedly claimed that voter fraud in
the 2016 election cost him victory in the popular vote for which there is
absolutely no evidence and that he lost in 2020 owing to “fraud,” again
without evidence. Trump also repeatedly called journalists an “enemy of
the people,” a term used by Nazis to refer to Jews and the USSR against
dissenters. In response, seventy U.S. news organizations agreed in August
2018 to deny Trump’s bizarre claim simultaneously. Nevertheless, Trump
refused to acknowledge that his rhetoric regarding the press might be
dangerous. Instead, he repeatedly claimed to be the “victim” of “fake
news.”
Trump’s incendiary rhetoric and his personal attacks on political foes
created a climate of violence against racial and religious minorities as well
as journalists and even those state officials who checked his claims of
fraud in 2020. Thus, in October 2018, a Trump supporter sent bombs
to numerous Trump critics and politicians, and an anti-Semitic Trump
adherent massacred Jewish worshipers in a synagogue in Pittsburgh.
It was the deadliest anti-Semitic incident in U.S. history. Conservative
Republican thinker Irving Kristol, whom Trump had called a “loser” at
a raucous political rally, declared, “The idea that Trump and conserva-
tives share no blame for scaremongering on immigrants and the refugees
is really ridiculous.”54 Although Trump had intended to visit Pittsburgh
after the massacre, Jewish leaders addressed a letter to him declaring that
he was not welcome unless he denounced “white nationalism.” Noting
that Jews were frequently viewed as globalists, Brian Levin accused Trump
of other anti-Semitic incidents and tropes including his failure to mention
Jews on Holocaust Remembrance Day, his disavowal of former KKK
Grand Wizard David Duke, and his comment that some of the white
supremacists and neo-Nazis demonstrating in Charlottesville in August
2018 were “very fine people.”
At a meeting with Trump, New York Times editor A.G. Sulzberger
told the president that he “thought that his language was not just divi-
sive but increasingly dangerous. I told him that although the phrase ‘fake
news’ is untrue and harmful, I am far more concerned about his labeling
journalists ‘the enemy of the people.’ I warned that this inflammatory
language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead
to violence.”55 “What’s clear” Kathleen Parker concluded, “is that Trump
has made it a verbal open season on journalists, many of whom have felt
the sting one way or another. For all of us ink-stained wretches, the hate
mail is more vicious than ever. The death threats more frequent.”56
Populist politicians elsewhere emulated Trump’s attacks on the media,
even in countries that claimed to be democratic such as Lebanon, Kenya,
and Iraq. In Italy, the short-lived populist government appointed the
conspiracy theorist Marcello Foa as chairperson of Italy’s state broad-
caster RAI. Foa had “spread the claim that Hillary Clinton attended
a satanic dinner. He broke the news on his blog of a full-scale Amer-
ican military mobilization that never happened.”57 Among the allies of
populists was President Putin’s Russia. In this, Moscow emulated the
former Soviet Union. However, instead of seeking a communist world,
Putin’s Russia sought to build a reactionary bloc based on nationalism,
traditional values, and dislike of liberal democracy. Its targets included
NATO and the European Union (EU), both targets of Trump as well.
Finally, the Trump administration took a major step against the media
when it sought to prosecute WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange under
America’s Espionage Act. U.S. politicians in both political parties loathed
Assange, and, after being expelled from Ecuador’s embassy in London
where he had enjoyed immunity for four years, Washington sought
his extradition. In recent decades, however, the First Amendment had
protected U.S. journalists when publishing classified material. Among the
best-known cases that had cited “freedom of speech” in this way was
the publication of the Pentagon Papers that contained voluminous classi-
fied material about U.S. decisions regarding the Vietnam War that Daniel
Ellsberg, a former Pentagon official, had provided to the New York Times .
Nationalist-Populism and National Interests

Nationalist-populists advocate “national interest” in the realist sense,
including reliance on the territorial state for security and relative gains
and losses without recognizing why principles matter. As Daniel Drezner
argued, “the Trump administration seems wedded to a vulgar form of
realism that harms the national interest far more than it helps,” and U.S.
foreign policy had been previously “premised on the notion that even in
an anarchic world, one could nurture an international order grounded on
American values of liberty and democracy and free enterprise.”58
Donald Trump’s “realism” denied American exceptionalism, that is,
its uniqueness in upholding and spreading democracy and human rights.
Trump viewed America as a “normal” country that should enhance its
own security and seek advantages in dealing with others. “Every president
in recent history except Donald Trump,” wrote Daniel Baer, “has under-
stood (as Russian President Vladimir Putin surely does) that America has
a strategic as well as a moral interest in standing with democrats around
the world, and that America grows stronger and more powerful the more
successfully it represents universal values on the world stage.”59 Trump
failed to see that, for America, “values” served U.S. “interests.” Instead,
for the president, the pursuit of values was of no significance.
Thus, the Trump campaign and subsequent administration repeatedly
criticized civil rights measures at home, spoke approvingly of the torture
of terrorism suspects, railed against the admission of legal refugees, sold
military aircraft to countries without imposing human rights conditions,
refused to raise the subject of human rights with authoritarian leaders,
and even incited violence against those who refused to claim that he had
actually won the 2020 presidential election.
Moreover, having emphasized Kim Jong-un’s violations of human
rights early in his presidency by referring to Otto Warmbier, who died
after being released from captivity, Trump later cynically declared that
Kim probably had known nothing about what had happened. Warm-
bier’s parents were horrified by the president’s thoughtless comment,
which betrayed his willingness to surrender principle. Moreover, the
Trump administration prevented that UN General Assembly from even
discussing North Korea’s horrendous human rights record in order to
avoid offending that country’s President Kim. As these incidents showed,
Trump had little regard for human rights.
Further confusing the administration’s human rights policy, following

Syria’s use of poison gas against civilians, then Secretary of State Tillerson
declared that America would punish those who committed crimes against
“the innocents anywhere in the world.” After the Syrian government
used illegal nerve gas against civilians, Washington condemned the event
while retreating from the demand that President Bashar al-Assad resign.
Ultimately, the U.S. did launch multiple cruise missiles that struck the
airbase from which the use of nerve gas had originated. Finally, wrote
Elliot Abrams, “the ‘America first’ administration had used U.S. military
force on behalf of justice, the international community, and international
norms.”60
Negotiation and Compromise

As we have seen, former President Trump believed that America should
maximize its gains and minimize its losses in a zero-sum world and that
values were reflections of idealism rather than interests. He viewed the
world as a jungle in which people “act nice to your face, but under-
neath they’re out to kill you…. Lions in the jungle only kill for food,
but humans kill for fun.”61 Thus, Trump viewed America’s trade deficit
as indicating who won and who lost in trade agreements although such
agreements did not produce trade deficits but simply set trade rules. Like
other xenophobic nationalists, Trump sought “profitable” deals or else
coerced the “other” in trade wars or reducing foreign aid, while ignoring
diplomacy. In contrast to his predecessors, Trump “promised a foreign
policy that is nationalist and transactional, focused on securing narrow
material gains for the United States.”62 Indeed, he repeatedly called foes
“losers,” and his contempt for “losers” was reflected in his extreme and
baseless effort to overturn the 2020 election to prove he was not a
“loser.”
Erratic, unpredictable, inconsistent—all of these descriptions fit
Trump’s decision-making style. Thus, after meeting with German Chan-
cellor Angela Merkel in March 2017, Sylke Tempel, editor-in-chief of
Internationale Politik, wrote: “Once again, we’ve seen Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde. He was Mr. Jekyll while reading his statement, saying nice
things about economic ties, his commitment to Ukraine, common friend-
ship; all the niceties.” “Then, in the question-and-answer session, he’s
his old self: disparaging the media, criticizing the British.”63 Similarly,
in the midst of South Korea’s presidential campaign, Trump suddenly
commented that Seoul should pay for America’s THAAD anti-ballistic

missile system and assailed America’s bilateral trade agreement with South
Korea as “horrible.” Two days later, the administration reaffirmed that the
U.S. would indeed pay for the missile system. All this led Philip Gordon
to contemplate a worst case, “a future in which Trump’s erratic style and
confrontational policies destroy an already fragile world order and lead
to open conflict—in the most likely cases, with Iran, China, or North
Korea.”64
Nationalist-Populism and Economic Nationalism

As we shall describe in Chapter 10, nationalist-populism rejected
economic globalization and sought to raise barriers to free trade and
multilateral trade deals. Tony Blair characterized the cleavage as between
the “open-minded” who “see globalization as an opportunity but one
with challenges that should be mitigated” and “the close-minded” who
“see the outside world as a threat.”65
As noted earlier, in addition to white evangelicals, many Trump
supporters were relatively unskilled, poorly educated, working-class white
males who believed that global trade and immigration caused them to lose
their jobs or shut them out of the labor market completely. They also
suffered declining wages and rising mortality rates. Trump’s campaign
slogan “Make America Great Again” encouraged the outrage of his
“base”—those whom Hillary Clinton had called “deplorables”—about
the alleged impact of existing global and regional trade regimes on Ameri-
ca’s trade deficit and decline in manufacturing. In reality, domestic factors,
notably automation, especially “breakthroughs in sensors, machine
learning, and artificial intelligence,”66 and outsourcing “noncore” jobs by
major corporations within the U.S. to low-wage and non-union subcon-
tractors have been the most important factors in the loss of manufacturing
jobs.
Trump halted progress toward U.S. involvement in the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP), and threatened and then initiated trade wars with
countries he perceived to be treating America “unfairly” and contributing
to the U.S. trade deficits or loss of jobs. Treasury Secretary Steven
Mnuchin explicitly refused to condemn protectionism and endorse free
trade. Trump denounced and threatened to terminate the North Amer-
ican Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that had governed trade among
the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, despite the fact that it had demonstrably
raised the growth rate of all three. Although the U.S. trade deficit with
Mexico was $58 billion in 2015, additional impediments to trade with
Mexico would have harmed, among others, U.S. farmers in states such as
Iowa, Texas, Nebraska, and Idaho (all of which had supported his 2016
election). The administration’s trade policy was outlined in a document
it sent to Congress in 2017, which expressed a preference for bilateral
rather than multilateral deals. This was because, since America was more
powerful, it could bully the other.
The 2017 document recommended using sections 201 and 301 of the
1974 Trade Act, which permitted imposing tariffs to protect U.S. firms
from “serious injury” (201) caused by a surge of imports (though not
an unfair practice) and taking action against unfair trade practices (301)
like “dumping”—selling goods below the cost of producing them. The
document also implied that, in defending “national sovereignty” in trade,
Washington might ignore the rules of the WTO.
Protectionist sentiment, of course, was not uniquely American. China,
too, violated liberal trade norms. Beijing planned to achieve self-
sufficiency in crucial high-tech industries from aircraft to electric cars by
2025 by providing low-interest loans from state funds and banks, research
subsidies, aid for buying foreign competitors, and taxes on foreign cars.
Foreign firms such as Boeing, Airbus, Siemens, and Samsung feared that
the plan would effectively shut them out of China’s market and prevent
them from competing elsewhere as well. Beijing also refused to admit that
it had become an economically developed state, insisting China remained
a less developed country (LDC). It did so the World Trade Organi-
zation permitted China, as an LDC, to impose average tariffs roughly
three times higher than America, thereby allowing Beijing to export far
more to America than it imported. John Paulson concluded, “Chinese
firms have almost unrestricted access to U.S. markets, yet U.S. firms face
severe restrictions and roadblocks when trying to do business in China.”67
Nevertheless, China had profited from and worked hard to enter the
liberal economic order. It was revisionist but not revolutionary.
Nationalist-Populism
and Socio-Cultural Globalization
Populists feared the “other” and sought to reduce immigration that they
believed diluted their culture and traditions and harmed their economies.
They scapegoated minorities—religious, ethnic, racial, and even women—
for perceived economic, political, and social woes. Almost half of white
Republicans said it would bother them “some” or “a lot” to “hear people
speak a language other than English in a public place.”68 Most Republi-
cans believed that the American way of life needed to be protected from
foreign influence and concluded that, when whites were outnumbered,
America’s way of life would end. Indeed, observers frequently overlooked
the importance of whiteness itself among those who feared that impact of
demographic change that will alter America’s cultural profile. Tarrant and
Patrick Crusius, who massacred some 50 Latinos in El Paso, for instance,
both cited the “Great Replacement” theory that first appeared in Europe
and referred to migrant “invasions.”
These so-called “Identitarians” argued that falling birthrates of whites
and immigration of non-Europeans would “replace” whites in Europe
and North America. They also believed that elites intentionally sought
to encourage migration of non-Europeans, and they used violence to
produce social turmoil that would bring about what Cynthia Miller-Idriss
called “an apocalyptic race war which will result in a rebirth into a new
world order and a restored white civilization.”69
Anne Applebaum linked Identitarians’ fears of white genocide and
anti-Semitism with other murderous incidents. “The synagogue shooting
suspect in Poway, Calif. said he believed that ‘global Jewish elites’ were
secretly plotting to change the ethnic composition of the United States.
The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting suspect also said Jewish organizations
were bringing in ‘hostile invaders’.”70 When Trump spoke of “immi-
grant invasions,” he encouraged such individuals, as did the Russians,
who used social media to spread divisive misinformation during the 2016
presidential election.
Nevertheless, unlike Trump’s repeated attacks on Muslim extremists,
he dismissed white supremacists as “a small group of people that have
very, very serious problems.” The Internet and social media globalized
white supremacy and white nationalism and fostered links between its
advocates and Identitarians, who sought to spread xenophobic conspiracy
theories. In 2019, America’s Department of Homeland Security declared
that white supremacism was a dangerous security threat. “I would like to

take this opportunity to be direct and unambiguous in addressing a major
issue of our time. In our modern age, the continuation of racially based
violent extremism, particularly violent white supremacy, is an abhorrent
affront to the nation,” declared the department’s acting director.71
Max Fisher compared white supremacist violence to the terrorism
of the Islamic State (IS). “In both, there is the apocalyptic ideology
that predicts — and promises to hasten — a civilizational conflict that
will consume the world. There is theatrical, indiscriminate violence that
will supposedly bring about this final battle, but often does little more
than grant the killer a brief flash of empowerment and win attention
for the cause.”72 Similarly, General John R. Allen and Brett McGurk,
both of whom had been involved in the conflict with the IS, wrote,
“The United States now faces a new national security threat. The enemy
is not the Islamic State but domestic and homegrown white nation-
alist terrorism…. The strain of thought driving this terrorism is now a
global phenomenon, with mass atrocities in Norway, New Zealand, South
Carolina and also, law enforcement authorities suspect, El Paso…. The
terrorist acts may differ from Islamic State attacks in degree, but they are
similar in kind: driven by hateful narratives, dehumanization, the rational-
ization of violence and the glorification of murder, combined with ready
access to recruits and weapons of war.”73
Former President Trump sought to end legal migration of Muslims
and Latinos. In response to a refugee caravan seeking to escape violence
in Honduras, he tweeted, “I must, in the strongest of terms, ask Mexico
to stop this onslaught — and if unable to do so I will call up the U.S. Mili-
tary and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!” As with other issues,
Trump was prey to authoritarian xenophobic nationalism as were other
populist leaders. Hence, after Hungary’s populist leader Viktor Orbȧn
held a referendum about whether to accept its EU quota of refugees, an
elderly Holocaust survivor observed, “It very much feels like the atmo-
sphere in the 30s before the second world war. In the 1930s, we were in
a very bad economic situation. People had to be blamed, and then it was
the Jews. And that’s what I’m reminded of when I read the Hungarian
government’s propaganda.”74
Conclusions
As Tony Blair concluded, “The modus operandi of this populism is
not to reason but to roar,” and “[i]ts supporters welcome the outrage
their leaders provoke.”75 Although Trump was an archetypal populist,
other politicians elsewhere fit the description equally well. Ironically and
ominously, the rise of populism was accompanied by the “downfall” of
social democratic parties across Europe including Blair’s own Labour
Party.76 With Trump in mind, it was fitting that in a statement released
shortly after his death, John McCain declared, “We weaken our great-
ness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown
resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We
weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when
we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great
force for change they have always been.”77
Nationalist-populism is a dangerous ideology. It threatened to under-
mine genuine with sham democracy that brings with it demagogic
authoritarians. As such, it also threatened the global order that had
fostered democracy, human rights, and rule-based norms and practices
that had been established under America’s leadership. The next chapter
examines the decline of the hegemon and its possible replacement by one
or more major illiberal powers. In subsequent chapters, we will show
that nationalist-populism has infected ever more countries but that its
most important advocate had remained Donald Trump, former president
of the declining and increasingly marginalized hegemon. Former Euro-
pean Council President Donald Tusk argued that what was particularly
alarming was that the challenge was driven not by the “usual suspects,
but by its main architect and guarantor, the U.S.” Trump’s behavior, Tusk
observed, played “into the hands of those” who sought “a new post-West
order where liberal democracy and fundamental freedoms would cease
to exist.” Former U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley echoed
Tusk, asking rhetorically what Trump’s illiberal actions and policies meant
for America itself. “First, does the accumulation of these incidents over
time begin to erode trust and confidence?” asked Hadley. “Secondly, what
is it doing to public opinion and public views of the United States.”78
Nationalist-populism has spread across Europe, notably Great Britain and
the eastern members of the EU, and elsewhere, including Latin America
and South and Southeast Asia. Populism attracted “illiberal democrats”
and charismatic leaders who consistently lied, undermined democratic

institutions, and repressed opposition.
The decline of the liberal order owed much to American nationalist-
populism. For America, a successful foreign policy, as Jake Sullivan
contended, “must combine the best kind of patriotism (a shared civic
spirit and a clear sense of the national interest) and the best kind of
internationalism (a recognition that when your neighbor’s house is on
fire, you need to grab a bucket). And it should reject the worst kind of
nationalism (damn-the-consequences aggression and identity-based hate-
mongering)….”79 Trump immeasurably damaged America’s democratic
institutions and liberal norms, while popularizing authoritarian tactics.
A powerful actor—a hegemon—or group of actors must be prepared
to impose and enforce the rules of a global order. Early in the nineteenth
century, the great powers that had defeated Napoleon established the
Concert of Europe, which enforced the rules adopted by the Congress
of Vienna. Hegemonic actors must be satisfied with the status quo and
regard such rules as legitimate. By contrast, the late nineteenth century
and, later, the 1930s witnessed the rise of dissatisfied great powers that
sought to revise the rules of the order.
Before World War I, Great Britain had been the hegemon. After World
War II, America assumed that role. The two oceans assured U.S. military
security, and its two neighbors posed no threat. America’s economy was
immense, and the combination of military security and wealth allowed
it to be generous. America envisioned the new order implementing
Enlightenment ideals expressed in Magna Carta and its own Declara-
tion of Independence—individual rights, protection from arbitrary state
behavior, free speech, and freedom to assemble and protest peacefully.
America sought to make these norms universal. However, as Luce averred,
“Belief in an authoritarian destiny is staging powerful comeback.”80 Thus,
strong revisionist states still seek to undermine the postwar geopolitical
status quo.
Notes
1. Martin Wolf, “The Price of Populism,” Financial Times, October 23,
2018, https://www.ft.com/content/06181c56-d13b-11e8-a9f2-7574db
66bcd5.
2. Agnew and Shin, Mapping Populism, p. 3.
3. Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age
of Terror and Trump (New York: St. Martin’s, 2019), p. xi.
4. Cited in Alex Ward, “Read Trump’s Speech to the UN General
Assembly,” Vox, September 25, 2018, https://www.vox.com/2018/9/
25/17901082/trump-un-2018-speech-full-text.
5. Cited in Anne Gearan and Seung Min Kim, “Trump Condemns Glob-
alism, Touts Nationalistic View of Foreign Affairs at U.N.,” Washington
Post, September 24, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/
trump-touts-nationalistic-view-of-foreign-affairs-at-un/2019/09/24/e4a
8486a-ded2-11e9-8fd3-d943b4ed57e0_story.html?wpisrc=nl_politics-
pm&wpmm=1.
6. Cohen, “America’s Long Goodbye,” p. 143.
7. Gideon Rachman, “Donald Trump Embodies the Spirit of Our Age,”
Financial Times, October 22, 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/f3e
9fac6-d550-11e8-ab8e-6be0dcf18713.
8. Cited in Yashar Ali, “What George W. Bush Really Thought of Donald
Trump’s Inauguration,” Intelligencer, March 29, 2017, http://nymag.
com/intelligencer/2017/03/what-george-w-bush-really-thought-of-tru
mps-inauguration.html?gtm=top&gtm=top.
9. Walter Russell Mead, “The Jacksonian Revolt,” Foreign Affairs 96:2
(March/April 2017), p. 3.
10. Ibid., pp. 4–5, 7.
11. Burleigh, The Best of Times, the Worst of Times, pp. 284 and 288.
12. Cited in David Nakamura, “Critics Say Trump Has Fostered the Toxic
Environment for the Political Violence He Announces,” Washington
Post, October 27, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-
central-premise-of-his-presidency-critics-say-trump-has-fostered-the-toxic-
environment-for-the-political-violence-he-denounces/2018/10/27/cd4
5e43e-da1e-11e8-a10f-b51546b10756_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_
term=.9348800c398c&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1. https://www.
washingtonpost.com/world/2018/10/28/how-pittsburgh-shooting-
compares-attacks-jews-europe-where-anti-semitism-has-been-growing/?
utm_term=.490a9c1c335f&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
13. Cited in Peter Baker, “Trump Fans the Flames of a Racial Fire,” New York
Times, July 14, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/14/us/pol
itics/trump-twitter-race.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_190715?
campaign_id=2&instance_id=10894&segment_id=15214&user_id=318
a8b2e197d8de30abd1bb02c4382ea&regi_id=43321680715.
14. Cited in Anne Gearan, “A Church Service on a Blue-Skied Sunday
Interrupts Trump’s Weekend of Presidential Pique,” Washington Post,
March 17, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-church-
service-on-a-blue-skied-sunday-interrupts-trumps-weekend-of-president
ial-pique/2019/03/17/4c103b68-48d1-11e9-b79a-961983b7e0cd_
story.html?utm_term=.02f08d9d8f02.
15. Adam Serwer, “White Nationalism’s Deep American Roots,” The
Atlantic, April 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/
2019/04/adam-serwer-madison-grant-white-nationalism/583258/?wpi
src=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
16. Samuel P. Huntington, “Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the
American Elite,” National Interest (Spring 2004), http://archive.wphna.
org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/04-03_The_National_Interest._Sam
uel_Huntington_Davos_Man.pdf, p. 1.
17. Jason Willick, “How Samuel Huntington Predicted Our Political
Moment,” The American Interest, July 14, 2016, https://www.the-ame
rican-interest.com/2016/07/14/how-samuel-huntington-predicted-our-
political-moment/.
18. Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? (New York: Simon & Schuster,
2004), pp. 363, 364–365.
19. James N. Rosenau, Distant Proximities: Dynamics Beyond Globalization
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 119.
20. Rosenau, Distant Proximities: Dynamics Beyond Globalization, pp. 89, 91.
21. Tony Blair, “Tony Blair: Against Populism, the Center Must Hold,” New
York Times, March 3, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/
opinion/tony-blair-against-populism-the-center-must-hold.html?rref=col
lection%2Fspotlightcollection%2Feditorials-and-opeds-about-world-news.
22. Ben Rhodes, “The Democratic Revival: What It Will Take to Fix U.S.
Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs 99:5 (September/October 2020), p. 55.
23. Jeff D. Colgan and Robert O. Keohane, “The Liberal Order Is Rigged,”
Foreign Affairs (May/June 2017), pp. 36, 38, https://www.foreignaf
fairs.com/articles/world/2017-04-17/liberal-order-rigged.
24. Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism (New York: Grove Press,
2017), p. 10.
25. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (New York:
Crown Publishing, 2018), p. 22.
26. Kenneth Roth, “Human Rights in the Age of Trump”, Foreign Policy
(April 2018), p. 7.
27. Cited in Michael Hirsh, “Lech Walesa on Why Democracy Is Failing:
‘There Is No Leadership’,” Foreign Policy, November 14, 2019, https://
foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/14/lech-walesa-poland-why-democracy-fai
ling-there-is-no-leadership/?utm_source=PostUp&utm_medium=email&
utm_campaign=18108&utm_term=Editor#39;s%20Picks%20OC.
28. Jill Langlois, “The Feminine Appeal of Macho Populism,” Foreign Policy,
December 1, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/01/the-fem
inine-appeal-of-macho-populism/?utm_source=PostUp&utm_medium=
email&utm_campaign=28098&utm_term=Editors%20Picks%20OC&?
tpcc=28098.
29. Buruma, “The End of the Anglo-American Order.”
30. Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 4, 9.
31. Dani Rodrik, “Globalization’s Wrong Turn,” Foreign Affairs 98:4
(July/August 2019), pp. 26, 28.
32. Arthur C. Brooks, “The Dignity Deficit,” Foreign Affairs 96:2
(March/April 2017), pp. 109, 110.
33. Cited in Philip Bump, “How to Understand Trump’s Condemnation of
‘All Types of Racism’,” Washington Post, August 12, 2018, https://www.
washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/08/12/how-to-unders
tand-trumps-condemnation-of-all-types-of-racism/?utm_term=.b1bd92
595a40&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1.
34. Richard Florida, The New Urban Crisis (New York: Basic Books), p. 90.
35. Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, Polarized
America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches, 2nd ed. (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2016), p. 2.
36. Thomas Picketty, The Economics of Inequality (Cambridge, MA, Harvard
University Press, 2015), p. 3.
37. Cited in Vann R. Newkirk II, “Trump’s White-Nationalist Pipeline,” The
Atlantic, August 23, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc
hive/2018/08/trump-white-nationalism/568393/?utm_source=twb&
wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
38. Cited in Philip Rucker, “‘A Blowtorch to the Tinder’: Stoking Racial
Tensions Is a Feature of Trump’s Presidency,” Washington Post, June
20, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-blowtorch-to-
the-tinder-stoking-racial-tensions-is-a-feature-of-trumps-prrefleesidency/
2018/06/20/e95e71dc-73d9-11e8-805c-4b67019fcfe4_story.html?
utm_term=.4f4ffe71ac60.
39. Cited in Brian Levin, “Bannon’s Revenge: How Globalism Went from
a Mainstream Ideology to the Far-Right’s Favorite Smear,” Think, April
1, 2018, https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/bannon-s-revenge-
how-globalism-went-mainstream-ideology-far-right-ncna860221?wpisrc=
nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
40. Cited in Katie Zezima, “Trump ‘Who the Hell Cares If There’s A Trade
War’?” Washington Post, May 20, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.
com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/05/20/trump-who-the-hell-cares-if-
theres-a-trade-war/.
41. Ronald Inglehart, “The Age of Insecurity,” Foreign Affairs 97:3
(May/June 2018), p. 20.
42. Cited in Ishe Tharoor, “Trump’s Hard-Line View of Immigration Draws
Parallels to the 1930s,” Washington Post, June 25, 2018, https://www.
washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/06/25/trumps-har
dline-view-of-immigration-draws-parallels-to-the-1930s/?utm_term=.84b
ef8878389.
43. George F. Will, “Trump’s Presidency Is One Giant Act of Trolling,”
Washington Post, October 10, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/
opinions/trumps-presidency-is-one-giant-act-of-trolling/2018/10/10/
d6aa4632-cbe6-11e8-920f-dd52e1ae4570_story.html?utm_term=.74b
43628be48&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1.
44. Martin Wolf, “The Age of the Elected Despot Is Here,” Financial
Times, April 23, 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/9198533e-6521-
11e9-a79d-04f350474d62.
45. Cited in Reis Thebault, “‘You Can Hear the Klan’s Lawyers’: Federal
Judge Likens Trump’s Attacks on Judiciary to KKK,” Washington Post,
April 13, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/
13/you-can-hear-klans-lawyers-federal-judge-likens-trumps-attacks-judici
ary-kkk/?utm_term=.626a55067e1b.
46. Cited in Eugene Scott, “One of Trump’s Most Vocal Black Supporters
Seemed to Defend Hitler in a Recent Speech,” Washington Post, February
8, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/02/08/one-
trumps-most-vocal-black-supporters-seemed-defend-hitler-recent-spe
ech/?utm_term=.b2bf2e87a5ea.
47. Jan-Werner Müller, “False Flags: The Myth of the Nationalist Resur-
gence,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2019), p. 37.
48. Daniel R. Coats, The National Intelligence Strategy of the United States
of America 2019, p. 4, https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/docume
nts/National_Intelligence_Strategy_2019.pdf?utm_source=Press%20Rele
ase&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=NIS_2019. See Shane Harris,
“New Intelligence Strategy Warns of Threats to Western Democracy,”
Washington Post, January 22, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.
com/world/national-security/new-intelligence-strategy-warns-of-threats-
to-western-democracy/2019/01/22/a8ca5a5e-1e93-11e9-8b59-0a2
8f2191131_story.html?utm_term=.129c52ae85c3&wpisrc=nl_most&
wpmm=1.
49. Cited in John Wagner, ““Crazed Lunatics’: Trump Again Attacks the
News Media as ‘the Enemy of the People’,” Washington Post, January
7, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/crazed-lunatics-wit
hout-explanation-trump-again-attacks-the-news-media/2019/01/07/
290aed10-126d-11e9-b6ad-9cfd62dbb0a8_story.html?utm_term=.1b2
05a5e96c7.
51. Cited in Margaret Sullivan, “Trump Joking with Putin over Eliminating
Journalists Is a Betrayal of America: So Is Ignoring It.” Washington
Post, June 28, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/
trumps-jokes-with-putin-over-eliminating-journalists-is-a-betrayal-of-
america-so-is-ignoring-it/2019/06/28/b7ada93a-99be-11e9-916d-9c6
1607d8190_story.html?utm_term=.e71227e926a0&wpisrc=nl_most&
wpmm=1.
52. “The Observer View on Liberal Views Being as Vital to the World Order
as Ever,” The Guardian, June 30, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/
commentisfree/2019/jun/30/the-observer-view-on-vladimir-putin-and-
defence-of-liberal-values?CMP=share_btn_link.
53. Susan B. Glasser, “It’s True: Trump Is Lying More, and He’s Doing It
On Purpose,” The New Yorker, August 3, 2018, https://www.newyor
ker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/trumps-escalating-war-
on-the-truth-is-on-purpose.
54. Cited in Robert Costa and Felicia Sonmez, “Trump, GOP Defiant
Amid Allegations That Incendiary Rhetoric Contributed to Climate of
Violence,” Washington Post, October 28, 2018, https://www.washingto
npost.com/opinions/george-washington-saw-america-as-a-safe-place-for-
jews-trumps-america-isnt/2018/10/28/e21ea6e6-dade-11e8-b3f0-626
07289efee_story.html?utm_term=.63d36f5711bc. https://www.washin
gtonpost.com/politics/trump-gop-defiant-amid-allegations-that-incend
iary-rhetoric-contributed-to-climate-of-violence/2018/10/28/eecd91f6-
dae1-11e8-b732-3c72cbf131f2_story.html?utm_term=.90b137866b7d.
55. Cited in Philip Rucker, “N.Y. Times Publisher Said He Told Trump
That Attacks on Media Could Lead to Violence,” Washington Post,
July 29, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-says-
he-called-media-enemy-of-the-people-in-meeting-with-ny-times-publis
her/2018/07/29/fec5adee-9330-11e8-810c-5fa705927d54_story.html?
utm_term=.2a7a2cac87bf&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1.
56. Kathleen Parker, “Trump Has Made It a Verbal Open Season on
Journalists,” Washington Post, June 29, 2018, https://www.washingto
npost.com/opinions/trump-has-made-it-a-verbal-open-season-on-jou
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html?utm_term=.04406f97cfce.
57. Jason Horowitz, “Journalist Who Spread Conspiracy Theories Will
Oversee Italy’s State TV,” New York Times, September 28, 2018,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/world/europe/italy-journalist-
rai.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&con
tentCollection=world&region=rank&module=package&version=highli
ghts&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront.
58. Daniel W. Drezner, “The Most Extraordinary Op-Ed of 2017,” Wash-
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thing/wp/2017/06/01/the-most-extraordinary-op-ed-of-2017/?utm_
term=.fb646319e341.
59. Daniel B. Baer, “Trump’s Silence on Russia’s Corruption Protests Shows

Just How Big Putin Won,” Foreign Policy, March 29, 2017, http://for
eignpolicy.com/2017/03/29/trumps-silence-on-russias-corruption-pro
tests-shows-just-how-big-putin-won-in-taking-down-hillary-clinton/?wpi
src=nl_daily202&wpmm=1.
60. Elliot Abrams, “Trump the Traditionalist,” Foreign Affairs 96:4
(July/August 2017), p. 14.
61. Donald J. Trump and Bill Zanker, Think Big: Make It Happen in Business
and Life (New York: HarperCollins, 207), p. 29.
62. Stewart M. Patrick, “Trump and World Order,” Foreign Affairs 96:2
63. Cited in Melissa Eddy, “Germany Reacts to Merkel-Trump Visit: ‘Could
Have Been a Lot Worse’,” New York Times, March 18, 2017, https://
www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/world/europe/angela-merkel-trump-
germany.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Feurope&_r=0.
64. Philip Gordon, “A Vision of Trump at War,” Foreign Affairs, March
22, 2017, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2017-03-22/vis
ion-trump-war?cid=nlc-twofa-20170323&sp_mid=53691138&sp_rid=
bWFuc2JhY2hAaWFzdGF0ZS5lZHUS1&spMailingID=53691138&spU
serID=MjEwNDg3NTgxNTQ5S0&spJobID=1123983649&spReportId=
MTEyMzk4MzY0OQS2.
65. Blair, “Tony Blair: Against Populism, the Center Must Hold.”
66. Fred Hu and Michael Spence, “Why Globalization Stalled,” Foreign
Affairs 96:4 (July/August 2017), p. 58.
67. John Paulson, “Trump and the Economy,” Foreign Affairs 96:2
68. Christopher Ingraham, “Nearly Half of White Republicans Say It Bothers
Them to Hear People Speaking Foreign Languages,” Washington Post,
May 8, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/05/
08/nearly-half-white-republicans-say-it-bothers-them-hear-people-spe
aking-foreign-languages/?utm_term=.819dcd2f32df&wpisrc=nl_most&
wpmm=1.
69. Cited in Jennifer Rubin, “A Guide to the Ugly Ideology We’re Up
Against, and How Politicians Like Trump Spread It,” Washington Post,
August 12, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/
08/12/guide-ugly-ideology-were-up-against-how-politicians-like-trump-
spread-it/?wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1.
70. Anne Applebaum, “How Europe’s ‘Identitarians’ Are Mainstreaming
Racism,” Washington Post, May 17, 2019, https://www.washingto
npost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-europes-identitarians-are-mai
nstreaming-racism/2019/05/17/3c7c9a6e-78da-11e9-b3f5-5673ed
f2d127_story.html?utm_term=.731ad8b615b8&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&
wpmm=1.
71. Cited in Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “Homeland Security Dept. Affirms

Threat of White Supremacy After years of Prodding,” New York
Times, October 1, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/us/
politics/white-supremacy-homeland-security.html?nl=todaysheadlines&
emc=edit_th_191002?campaign_id=2&instance_id=12641&segment_id=
17504&user_id=318a8b2e197d8de30abd1bb02c4382ea&regi_id=433
21681002.
72. Max Fisher, “White Terrorism Shows ‘Stunning’ Parallels to Islamic
State’s Rise,” New York Times, August 5, 2019, https://www.nytimes.
com/2019/08/05/world/americas/terrorism-white-nationalist-suprem
acy-isis.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_190806?campaign_id=2&
instance_id=11320&segment_id=15907&user_id=318a8b2e197d8de30a
bd1bb02c4382ea&regi_id=43321680806.
73. John R. Allen and Brett McGurk, “We Worked to Defeat the Islamic
State: White Nationalist Terrorism Is an Equal Threat,” Washington Post,
August 6, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-wor
ked-to-defeat-the-islamic-state-white-nationalist-terrorism-is-an-equal-thr
eat/2019/08/06/e50c90e8-b87d-11e9-bad6-609f75bfd97f_story.html?
wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1.
74. Cited in Patrick Kingsley, “Hungary’s Refugee Referendum Not Valid
After Voters Stay Away,” The Guardian, October 2, 2016, https://www.
theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/02/hungarian-vote-on-refugees-will-
not-take-place-suggest-first-poll-results.
75. Blair, “Tony Blair: Against Populism, the Center Must Hold.”
76. Pierpaolo Barbieri, “The Death and Life of Social Democracy,” Foreign
Affairs, April 25, 2017, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/eur
ope/2017-04-25/death-and-life-social-democracy?cid=nlc-twofa-201
70427&sp_mid=53952057&sp_rid=bWFuc2JhY2hAaWFzdGF0ZS5l
ZHUS1&spMailingID=53952057&spUserID=MjEwNDg3NTgxNTQ
5S0&spJobID=1144755899&spReportId=MTE0NDc1NTg5OQS2.
77. “Read Senator John McCain’s Farewell Statement,” New York Times,
August 27, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/27/us/politics/
john-mccain-farewell-statement.html.
78. Cited in Cited in Karen DeYoung, “In Trump, Some Fear the End of the
World Order,” Washington Post, June 8, 2018, https://www.washingto
npost.com/world/national-security/in-trump-some-fear-the-end-of-the-
world-order/2018/06/08/d6026dde-6b44-11e8-bf8c-f9ed2e672adf_
story.html?utm_term=.18c20a621d4a.
79. Jake Sullivan, “What Donald Trump and Dick Cheney Got Wrong About
America,” The Atlantic, January/February 2019, https://www.theatl
antic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/yes-america-can-still-lead-the-
world/576427/?wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
80. Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism, p. 9.
Questions
Multiple Choice
1. Which of these provides the public with participation in decision-
making and, if healthy, holds those elected responsible what takes
place?
a. Democracy
b. Nationalist populism
c. Authoritarianism
d. Globalization
2. According to Martin Wolf, what is the common thread in all forms

of nationalist-populism?
a. Promotion of human rights and the desire to spread

democratic ideals on a global scale
b. Rejection of the contemporary western elite, the
synthesis of liberal democracy, technocratic governance,
and global capitalism
c. Rejection of authoritarian leadership
d. The predisposition to increase immigration whether illegal
or legal, especially to fill jobs requiring relatively unskilled
labor
3. Nationalist-populism _______?
a. Involves the rejection of globalization, but not the liberal

order
b. Involves the rejection of the liberal order, but not global-
ization
c. Involves the rejection of globalization as well as the
liberal order
d. Involves the rejection of neither globalization nor the
liberal order
4. What term does Walter Russell Mead use to describe America’s

nationalist-populism?
a. Trumpism
b. Liberalism
c. Backwardization
d. Jacksonian
5. Many American populist, including Trump, are inclined to which

of these?
a. Illiberal democracy (even authoritarianism)

b. Racism, misogyny, and strident ignorance
c. Unilateralism
d. All the above
6. Huntington’s final book — Who Are We? — is a wide-ranging trea-

tise that argued, among other things, that American elites were
dangerously out of touch with the American public when it came
to all these issues except what?
a. Research in Technology
b. Patriotism
c. Foreign policy
d. National identity
7. Which of James Rosenau four “global worlds” includes those who

share positive inclinations toward the processes of globalization and
resemble the elites that populists dislike?
a. Affirmative Globals
b. Resistant Globals
c. Specialized Globals
d. Territorial Globals
8. Which of James Rosenau four “global worlds” includes those

who regard one or more of the prevailing dynamics that sustain
globalization as detrimental to the well-being of peoples?
a. Affirmative Globals
b. Resistant Globals
c. Specialized Globals
d. Territorial Globals
9. Which of James Rosenau’s four “local worlds” includes those

who perceive the spatially remote as so threateningly close as to
necessitate opposition?
a. Insular Locals
b. Resistant Locals
c. Exclusionary Locals
d. Affirmative Locals
10. Which of James Rosenau’s four “local worlds” includes those who
are solely concerned “with the geographically near at hand?”
a. Insular Locals
b. Resistant Locals
c. Exclusionary Locals
d. Affirmative Locals
11. Nationalist-populist leaders try to weaken or destroy mediating
institutions. Which of these is not a mediating institution they
would try to weaken or destroy?
a. Legislatures
b. Judiciaries
c. The Press
d. Their own political base
12. Growing economic inequality can make many individuals feel left
behind by globalization and can make them suffer something called
what according to Arthur C. Brooks?
a. Nationalism
b. Dignity deficit
c. Globalization byproducts
d. Clouded Outrage
13. What is the term President Trump uses to dismiss unflattering facts
or factual material about him?
a. Fake news
b. Wrong news
c. Journalistic integrity
d. The facts
14. Which of these demographics is not typically Trump supporters?
a. White
b. Male
c. Highly educated
d. Working-class
15. President Trump denounced and threatened to terminate which
Trade Agreement that governs trade among the U.S., Mexico, and
Canada three?
a. North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
b. Western Free Trade Agreement (WFTA)
c. North American Trade Partnership (NATP)
d. Liberal Migration Agreement and Order (LMAO)
16. The World Trade Organization (WTO) permitted China to have
average tariffs roughly how much higher than the America, thereby
allowing Beijing to export far more to America than it imports?
a. Ten percent
b. One and a half times
c. Three times
d. Ten Times
17. To what does Max Fisher compare white supremacist violence?
a. Terrorism of the Islamic State (IS)
b. Gang violence
c. Secret Police
d. Striking workers
18. In 2019, which of these declared that white supremacism was a
dangerous security threat?
a. President Trump
b. Department of Homeland Security
c. Vladimir Putin
d. State Department
19. Either a group of actors or a what must be prepared to impose and
enforce the rules of a global order?
a. Non-governmental organization
b. No powerful actors are necessary
c. Powerless actor
d. Hegemon
20. Before World War I, Great Britain had been the hegemon. After
World War II, who assumed that role?
a. Germany
b. France
c. China
d. United States
True or False
1. True or False? Populism is a revolution against the establishment
and democratic norms.
True
2. True or False? Populists believe that professional experts are

preferable to ordinary people using “common sense.”
False, populists believe that ordinary people using

“common sense” are preferable to professional experts
3. True or False? Like fellow populist Trump uses mainstream media

to reach out to and mobilize supporter.
False, Trump undermined mainstream media and fostered
the use of social media like Facebook and Twitter to
mobilize supporters
4. True or False? Trump has emphatically declared himself a “nation-

alist”
True
5. True or False? Mead agrees with globalists who believed “tribal

loyalties” were obsolete.
False, Mead believes the globalist “failed to understand

the deep roots of identity politics in the human psyche.”
6. True or False? Many American populists, especially Trump, are

inclined to illiberal democracy (even authoritarianism), racism,
misogyny, strident ignorance, and unilateralism.
True
7. True or False? Terrorism by right-wing supremacists in America

was significantly more dangerous than Islamic terrorism or the
amorphous left-wing “Antifa,” accounting for three-quarters of
extremist-related killings during the past decade.
True
8. True or False? Whereas traditional conservatives valued the institu-

tions they inherited, right-wing populists focus on identities such as
ethnicity, race, religion, and gender rather than national interests.
True
9. True or False? The agenda of nationalist-populism does not have

much in common globally.
False, the agenda of nationalist-populism has a lot in

common globally.
10. True or False? The benefits of globalization have been spread

evenly across economic and social classes.
False, it has had lopsided benefits that have tend to go to
the already successful.
11. True or False? Some extremists believe that the liberal order
furthers “white genocide” by permitting immigration and misce-
genation.
True
12. True or False? Populists like President Trump are uniquely Amer-
ican.
False, they exist around the globe. Examples being south-

east Asian demagogic populist politicians such as Thai-
land’s Thaksin Shinawatra and the Philippines’ Rodrigo
Duterte, or Ontario’s Premier Douglas Ford.
13. True or False? Populists have a majoritarian view of democracy in

the sense that those who get the most votes (popular or electoral)
should be able to impose whatever institutions and policies they

wish regardless of the views of minorities.
True
14. True or False? President Trump himself has been notably honest
and not a major source of what he might call, “fake news.”
False, as a serial liar, President Trump was a major

source of “fake news” in American politics. For example,
claiming voter fraud cost him the popular vote with no
evidence.
15. True or False? Donald Trump understands that America has a

strategic as well as a moral interest in standing with democracies
around the world, and that America grows stronger and more
powerful the more successfully it represents universal values on the
world stage.
False, according to Daniel Baer, “every president in recent

history except Donald Trump” has understood this.
16. True or False? After the Syrian government’s use of illegal nerve gas
against civilians, Washington condemned the event and steadfastly
demanded that President Assad resign.
False, they retreated from the demand that President

Assad resign.
17. True or False? Trump viewed America’s trade deficit as indicating

who wins and who loses.
True
18. True or False? In 2019, America’s Department of Homeland Secu-
rity declared that white supremacism was a dangerous security
threat.
True
19. True or False? The rise of populism was accompanied by the rise
of social democratic parties across Europe.
False, it was accompanied by the “downfall” of the Euro-

pean social democratic parties.
20. True or False? Nationalist-populism has spread across Europe,
notably Great Britain and the eastern members of the EU, and
elsewhere, including Latin America and South and Southeast Asia.
True
Short Answer
Why would mainstream parties find it difficult to appeal to both pro-
and anti-globalizers?
On the left, egalitarian philosophy clashed with attention paid
to minorities, whether people of color, religious or ethnic group,
women, or gays. On the right, parties sought unsuccessfully to
balance spending for local projects to bring money to a politi-
cian’s district in exchange for votes with charges of corruption
and vaguely defined special interests. Also, globalization are
sources of wealth aside from the inequality.
According to Sam Huntington how are the concerns of the public

different from the concerns of the elites?
The public, overall, is concerned with societal security, existing
patterns of language, culture, association, religion, and national
identity. However, for elites “these concerns are secondary to
participating in the global economy, supporting international
trade and migration, strengthening international institutions.”
What part of the agenda of nationalist-populism is consistent glob-

ally?
They oppose elites and migrants (especially minorities) whom
they blame for the loss of jobs and the erosion of their
national culture. They foster unilateralism, intolerance, racism
and malignant nationalism. They focus on national interests
rather than global cooperation in confronting global challenges
and providing collective goods, and they have a transactional
view of global politics. Their ideology and policies threaten
the free movement of goods and people, multinational global
organizations, and challenge transnational and international

political, economic, and social networks that foster interdepen-
dence. Many of the most ardent populist politicians including
Trump are themselves “elite” by any objective standard–wealth,
education, or status.
How are advocates of globalization are partly responsible for the

acceleration of the rise of nationalist-populism?
Dani Rodrik argued, “Even globalization’s biggest boosters now
concede that it has produced lopsided benefits and that some-
thing will have to change.” Domestic economies were put in
the service of the global economy. Rodrik describes how WTO
trade norms fostered a loss of manufacturing jobs in developed
countries, and unregulated capital flows and anonymous market
forces produced the Great Recession. Many people, especially
white working-class males, at least in America, felt left behind
and perceptions of inequality and spreading anti-globalization
sentiments increased.
About the 2007–2008 recession, what did Susan Strange mean when
she said the markets appeared to foster a “casino capitalism?”
That it was a winner-take-all economy that eroded democratic
institutions and favored educated and wealthy elites. Lowering
interest rates allowed financial institutions to make increasingly
risky investments, and global governance provided by institu-
tions such as the European Central Bank and the IMF proved
inadequate to remedy the problem.
How might globalization itself pose a threat to democracy?

For one thing multinational and transnational institutions like
the World Banks and corporations make decisions without
consulting citizens of member states. Their bureaucrats and
technocrats are responsible to member states but not to the
latter’s voting public, thus creating a “democratic deficit.”
How have President Trump’s incendiary rhetoric and personal

attacks on political foes result in real world consequences?
It has created a climate of violence against racial and religious

minorities as well as journalists. The recent massacre at a Jewish
synagogue in Pittsburgh and the massacre of 50 Muslims in New
Zealand by a white supremacist, are both examples of extremist
motivated by hate speech.
How did domestic factor play into a loss of American manufacturing

jobs?
They include automation, especially breakthroughs in sensors,
machine learning, and artificial intelligence, and outsourcing
“noncore” jobs by major corporations within the U.S. to low-
wage and non-union subcontractors have been the most impor-
tant factors in the loss of manufacturing jobs.
Why is Nationalist populism such a dangerous ideology?

It threatens to undermine genuine democracy with sham democ-
racy that brings with it demagogic authoritarians. As such, it
threatens the global order that had fostered democracy, human
rights, and rule-based norms and practices established under
America’s leadership after World War II. Along with its rela-
tionship with other dangerous ideologies like racism, sexism,
nativism, and others.
What is the importance of a hegemon to the global order?

Either a hegemon or a group of actors is necessary for the rules
of a global order to be imposed and enforced.
Essay Questions
1. Who are the Nationalist-populist?
2. What is the role of institutions as a target and as a resistance to
nationalist-populism?
3. How have current events and the current climate lead to the
acceleration of nationalist-populism?
4. Will the liberal order be able to survive the threat of nationalist-
populism?
5. Why do nationalist-populist movements so often coincide with
racism, misogynistic, and nativist sentiments?
CHAPTER 3
The Return of Geopolitics and Declining U.S.

Hegemony
Recent years have witnessed growing disorder in global politics that raises
questions about the durability of the liberal order and globalization.
Simultaneously, geopolitical analysis, which focuses on geographic influ-
ences on power relationships among states, is getting renewed attention
owing to events such as Russia’s seizure of Crimea and China’s claims in
the South China Sea.
Only a few decades earlier, commentators like John Lewis Gaddis called
attention to “the long peace,” that is, the post-World War II era. This
was said to be the longest documented period since the Roman Empire
when the great powers of the time had not gone to war directly with
one another and indeed had experienced relative peace.1 John McCain
summarized: “Leaders of the post-war era had seen the breakdown of
the world order. They saw open markets give way to protectionism and
poverty. They saw ethnic and nationalist passions give way to violence and
misery. They saw the brutal ambition of hostile great powers give way
to war and genocide. In the aftermath of that tragic era, those leaders
forged a liberal world order that ushered in an unprecedented era of
stability, security and prosperity.”2 However, the global liberal order was
not entirely a reflection of idealism or altruism. It was also the expression
of what American leaders regarded as U.S. interests and responsibili-
ties as a hegemon. The multilateral institutions it established benefitted

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72033-9_3
everyone, but the rules and norms these institutions fostered were of
special advantage to America.
Declining American Hegemony

and the Liberal Order
Whether the spread of globalization, that was linked to American lead-
ership after World War II and accelerated during the post-Cold War
“unipolar moment” will continue is in doubt. With the Cold War’s end,
America was an unchallenged hegemon in a world in which globalization
was making people increasingly interdependent economically, politically,
socially, and culturally and was removing obstacles to the movement of
persons, ideas, and things. The proliferation of nongovernmental groups
(NGOs) advocating solutions to collective problems like global warming
fostered global civil society and enhanced prospects for global governance
in issue areas that required global cooperation.
Washington’s foes were not “just up against the United States; they
would also have to contend with the most globally organized and deeply
entrenched order the world has ever seen, one that is dominated by states
that are liberal, capitalist, and democratic.”3 “The United States,” Iken-
berry wrote, “took on the duties of building and running an international
order, organizing it around multilateral institutions, alliances, special rela-
tionships, and client states…. Defined in terms of the provision of security,
wealth creation, and social advancement, this liberal hegemonic order has
been, arguably at least, the most successful order in world history.” But,
observers believe we “are witnessing a passing of the American era” that
began with the George W. Bush administration’s unilateralism, “a return
to multipolarity, and the rise of rival nonliberal order-building projects.”4
Although recognizing the role of rising China and resurgent Russia,
Fareed Zakaria concluded that America’s loss of hegemony was its own
doing. Washington failed to pay sufficient attention to Russia after the
USSR collapsed. After 9/11, America got bogged down in disastrous
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Argued Zakaria, “one is struck by the
ways in which Washington—from an unprecedented position—mishan-
dled its hegemony and abused its power, losing allies and emboldening
enemies,” “under the Trump administration, the United States seems to
have lost interest, indeed lost faith, in the ideas and purpose that animated
its international presence for three-quarters of a century.”5
3 THE RETURN OF GEOPOLITICS AND DECLINING U.S. HEGEMONY 91
America’s retreat from the order it had established was evident

as Washington accelerated its retreat from its role in world affairs.
“America,” argued William Martel, no longer “had a coherent, func-
tioning grand strategy” as it did during the Cold War when “contain-
ment” guided U.S. foreign policy. Without a grand strategy, “the nation,
its leaders, and people will experience a sense of drift and confusion. How
do we know what is important, what threatens our interests, when we
should act, and what instruments of power should we use?”6 In recent
years, it became increasingly difficult to shape a grand strategy owing
to the proliferation of actors and crises, often simultaneously, in many
locations and issue-areas. Absent a grand strategy, there could be no
consensus about America’s interests, and neither allies nor foes could
perceive with any certainty what Washington sought—for what issues
and in what circumstances, for example, if and when America would use
military force.
Thus, foes became more willing to test U.S. resolve. Whether consid-
ered an era of “nonpolarity” or “disorder”7 in which many actors
exercised different types of power or “compounding complexity” in which
challenges grew exponentially and fostered one another, the strategic
environment became bewildering. What was taking place was a transition
from “an age of order to an age of entropy.”8
Concluded Kagan, “The United States, in short, was the ‘indispens-
able nation,’ as Bill Clinton would proclaim—indispensable, that is, to
the liberal world order.” Defending the liberal world order, he added,
“was the thinking behind most of Clinton’s foreign policy initiatives,”9
the enlargement of NATO, the effort to save Boris Yeltsin’s political and
economic reforms in Russia, and containing rogue states like North Korea
that undermined the global order. As for the consequences: “When the
prevailing order breaks down, when the rocks are overturned, the things
living beneath them, the darkest elements of the human spirit, crawl out.
That was what happened in the first half of the 20th century. The circum-
stances in which Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini rose to power — a world in
which no nation was willing or able to sustain any kind of international
order — gave them ample opportunity to show what they were capable
of. Had there been an order in place to blunt those ambitions, we might
never have come to know them as tyrants, aggressors and mass killers.”10
Those who argued that a hegemon like America is crucial for global
order and maintenance of international institutions that are pillars of
globalization pointed to America’s “decline” as a key factor. In fact, the
liberal order was hardly peaceful. There was continuous conflict involving
ideology, the legitimacy and utility of differing principles and institutions,
the limits of state sovereignty, and the virtues of democracy and human
rights. Moreover, the world witnessed an upsurge in terrorism, the spread
of ethnic and religious strife, and the proliferation of fragile states like
Somalia. By the twenty-first century, U.S. hegemony was eroding; multi-
polarity was growing; and the norms of the liberal order were increasingly
ignored.
However, some analysts feared that America was losing its dominant
position and was growing less able to maintain order. As Stephen Kotin
observed, “Every hegemon thinks it is the last; all ages believe they will
endure forever. In reality, of course, states rise, fall, and compete with one
another along the way.”11
The issue of hegemony is important, not least because the liberal order
manifested American leadership in fostering democratic norms, interna-
tional institutions, and economic interdependence. This is in contrast to
nationalist, ethnic and sectarian exclusionism, arms races, and preoccu-
pation with geopolitical interests associated with interstate war, identity
conflicts, and barriers to the movement of things, ideas, and persons.
Other challenges emerged in recent years with changes in the relative
economic, military, and political power of America and the growing
influence of “rising” China, and other poles of power.
“The United States,” as Ikenberry wrote, “took on the duties of
building and running an international order, organizing it around multi-
lateral institutions, alliances, special relationships, and client states….
Defined in terms of the provision of security, wealth creation, and social
advancement, this liberal hegemonic order has been, arguably at least, the
most successful order in world history.” However, he believed we were
“witnessing a passing of the American era” that began with the George
W. Bush administration’s unilateralism, “a return to multipolarity, and the
rise of rival nonliberal order-building projects.”12
Those who believed that a hegemon was necessary for global order
pointed to America’s “decline” as fostering growing global disorder.
Both claims—American decline and growing disorder—were contested.
If hegemonic-stability theory were correct, however, in time there would
be no single, benign leader willing and able to shape global institutions
and enforce the rules and norms that enabled globalization to flourish. In
fact, U.S. hegemony has at times been malign as in America’s invasion of
Iraq in 2003 or its brutal mistreatment of alleged terrorists after 9/11.
Similarly, market capitalism in the West and elsewhere had produced

great economic benefits, but also had experienced cycles of inflation and
recession.
Evidence of hegemonic decline included Russian aggression in
Ukraine, its annexation of Crimea, its intervention in Syria, and former
President Trump’s hasty withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. Observers
also cited China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and the Sea
of Japan, Iran’s growing influence in the Middle East, and North Korea’s
acquisition of nuclear weapons. They also pointed to the proliferation
of fragile states as additional evidence of hegemonic decline, spreading
sectarian and nationalist movements, and a return to a realpolitik world.
Hegemony Stability and American “Decline”

Realist scholars like Robert Gilpin, who concluded that, “a hegemon is
necessary to the existence of a liberal international economy”,13 treated
hegemonic stability and the consequences of its decline extensively. Gilpin
described the cyclical “hegemonic wars” as the ultimate tests “of change
in the relative standings of the powers in the existing system”14 that
erupted when a challenger threatened a hegemon. Graham Allison called
this the “Thucydides’s trap”15 because clashes of hegemon and challenger
resembled the relations between Sparta and Athens that Thucydides
viewed as the cause of the Peloponnesian War. Hence, former President
Trump upped U.S. resistance to China’s actions and policies, and, by
2020, it appeared Trump was making dislike of Beijing central to his
reelection despite having asked President Xi earlier to aid his campaign.
However, Robert Keohane argued persuasively that cooperation could
persist even after the decline of a hegemon owing to interdependence and
the presence of international regimes.16 Keohane admitted “hegemony
often plays an important role, even a crucial one” in establishing interna-
tional regimes, but he argued that regimes were easier to maintain than
construct and “may continue to foster cooperation even under conditions
that would not be sufficiently benign to bring about their creation.”17
The coming years will test Keohane’s optimism.
The claim that the U.S. was declining may be misleading because
there was little evidence of absolute decline. Instead, America’s decline
was relative to the growing capabilities of countries like China and
Russia. Although both sought to undermine U.S. hegemony and opposed
universal liberal values like democracy, their growing capabilities did not
mean that America’s capabilities were declining in absolute terms. Instead,

what may have been happening is what Barry Buzan and George Lawson
call “decentered globalism,” in which the configuration of modernity was
“no longer concentrated in a small group of states” but was “increasingly
dispersed.”18
Concern about “American decline” had been expressed before, notably
in the 1980s with respect to Japan’s economic growth, but that fore-
cast proved baseless. In 1990, Joseph Nye responded to this claim, citing
the “World War II effect” in which comparisons of contemporary U.S.
power with its power in 1945 were meaningless because major states
like Germany and Japan had been devastated during World War II. Nye
observed that there was “a history of premature and misleading predic-
tions of decline”19 and argued that a belief in decline may actually produce
it or tempt the “decliner” to begin a war to end its perceived decline.
More recently, Nye argued that the “American century,” which began
in 1941, would continue beyond 2041 because America would still have
“primacy in power resources and play the central role in the global balance
among states.”20 Nye’s prediction will also be tested in the coming years.
Under recent presidents, as America increasingly abdicated its role as
a global hegemon, illiberal rivals grew aggressive. Potential targets of
China, Russia, and Iran still relied on America extended deterrence to
protect them. The world following America’s retreat from hegemony will
be dangerous. Nuclear proliferation would become more likely; strategic
stability would be at risk; and deterrence would be less credible.21
Rising Powers
The concept of “rising powers” has a distinctly realist flavor. Realists saw
an anarchic world in which states must increase power for security and
survival. “Power factors,” primarily but not exclusively military in clas-
sical realism, constituted the “power” of states until, according to John
Mearsheimer, they acquired global hegemony.22 States pursued “national
interests” that ultimately translated into maintaining security by increasing
power and/or balancing others. Rules, norms, and morality played a
minor role in realist thought. Whatever “order” existed under anarchy
derived from a “balance of power” and “prudence” of leaders.23
When realists spoke of “power,” they usually meant “capabilities,”
that is, resources useful to influence others. States had different capa-
bilities, and some were powerful and others less so. Some were rising
and others declining in what realists saw as a perennial struggle for

power. Realists believed shifting alliances were common, and the overall
distribution of power determined the nature of the global system as a
whole. The problems with traditional realist worldviews are well known.
“Power” remained difficult to define and hard to measure. Realists
described leaders who fail to follow their eternal “laws,” “idealists,” or
“utopians and focused on “hard power” (capabilities for coercion or
reward). However, “soft power” (characteristics that others admire) were
also significant. The American superpower lost the Vietnam War even
though Henry Kissinger was convinced that hard power would win the
war and that a “fourth-rate power” like North Vietnam would capitulate.
America’s defeat was not due to insufficient hard power but to domestic
opposition and inadequate soft power to win Vietnamese “hearts and
minds.”
Capabilities are not fungible. They are situationally specific and contex-
tual. Nuclear weapons, for example, were of little value except to
generate prestige or deter (and possibly frighten) others. Currently, the
major powers are involved in expensive nuclear modernization programs.
Russian President Vladimir Putin frequently described his country’s
nuclear prowess and was using a third of Russia’s growing military budget
to increase it, while America embarked on a $348 billion modernization
effort. None of this was likely to provide additional security.
“Rising” China
China was the most important challenge to American hegemony and was
most likely to be America’s foe in the Thucydides trap. In 2016, Stephen
K. Bannon, Trump’s populist adviser, predicted a “war in the South China
Sea in five to 10 years,”24 China staked illegal territorial claims on islets
and reefs in the South China Sea and militarized some of these, sent
warships into Japanese territory near the Senkaku Islands, rammed fishing
boats in other countries’ territorial waters, occupied Indian territory in
the Himalayas, and sent an aircraft carrier through the Taiwan Straits.
China’s pride in having overcome foreign humiliation in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries was frequently cited, especially by President Xi
Jinping, after his accession as China’s “paramount leader” in 2012.
Beijing no longer followed the advice of then-supreme leader, Deng
Xiaoping that China should “hide its capacity and bide its time” in order
to maintain a stable and secure environment necessary to achieve rapid
economic growth. America’s incentive to engage Beijing was partly to

gain access to China’s immense economic market. Beijing viewed the
2008 Beijing Olympics as reflecting China’s historical status as a great
civilization along with its influence in neighboring states, its claims in the
South China Sea and the Sea of Japan, and its deployment of modern
weapons.
Economic Rise
China practices state capitalism in which states play major roles in markets.
This system, introduced by Deng in the late 1970s after the death of
Mao Zedong and the chaos caused by Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution (1966–1976), became an engine for growth. In 2007, Amer-
ica’s economy was four times larger than China’s. Five years later the
U.S. economy was only twice the size of China’s. After three decades
of rapid growth, the size of China’s economy as measured by nominal
gross domestic product (GDP) surpassed those of France, Britain, and
Germany. Using gross national product (GNP) as a baseline, analysts
calculated that China’s economy replaced Japan’s in 2010 as the world’s
second largest and might pass America’s by 2030. Huge Chinese firms like
Alibaba already accounted for 42% of global e-commerce in value, and,
in the near future, China will have 45% of the world’s largest companies.
Economist C. Fred Bergsten forecast an economic “G-2” in 2005.25
The World Bank in 2014 switched to purchasing power parity (PPP)
to calculate GNP. This suggested that China was poised to become the
world’s largest economy. However, even Beijing opposed the PPP stan-
dard and refused to endorse the World Bank report. Leading Western
experts also criticized the PPP referent as potentially misleading. Martin
Wolf and David Pilling wrote, “It is possible to debate whether the
newly revised numbers are right. The answer is they are reasonable. A
more important question is what they mean. What they do not mean is
that China is already the world’s greatest economic power.”26 Wolf and
Pilling observed that China remained in many respects a poor country. Its
purchasing power per capita was relatively low, and, since China invested
almost half its output, per capita consumption was lower than macro-
statistics might suggest. PPP measured national incomes in terms of what
they could buy domestically. Inasmuch as domestic spending on food
and housing were not internationally traded and since goods and services
were cheaper in China than America, China’s economy appeared rela-

tively larger. By contrast, comparing China and the U.S. by using market
exchange rates that measured national incomes by what they could buy on
international markets, America’s economy became almost twice China’s.
Nevertheless, in a few years, global income in illiberal societies will surpass
that of Western liberal democracies.
China also passed the U.S. in annual patent applications. Its scien-
tists ranked second in peer-reviewed research articles, and Beijing planned
to become globally competitive by 2025 in ten advanced manufacturing
sectors currently dominated by America including commercial aircraft,
robotics, 5G mobile phone communications, and computer microchips.
In sum, China was becoming a science and technological superpower.
When Deng initiated reforms in 1978, China was among the world’s
poorest countries. Since then, China’s economy has grown by an annual
average exceeding 8%, outstripping other major countries. China became
the world’s largest exporter and second largest importer, overtook
America as the world’s largest automobile market, and was an insa-
tiable consumer of raw materials. China has the world’s largest number
of homeowners, Internet users, and college graduates. Extreme poverty
has fallen to less than 1%. What had been an impoverished country had
become America’s most significant economic rival.
Past growth rates did not necessarily predict the future. Referring
to China and India, economists Lant Pritchett and Lawrence Summers
pointed out, “the single most robust fact about growth rates, which is
strong reversion to the mean,”27 that was, a lower growth rate over
time. Indeed, China’s growth rate had begun to slow to 7% (or less) at
present, depending on the reliability of Beijing’s statistics. It remained to
be seen whether large-scale government stimulus programs will succeed
in reversing China’s downward trend. The heavy debt burden of busi-
nesses, local governments, and private individuals in China was, however,
a significant problem. By 2019, China’s total debt —individual, corpo-
rate, and government—had soared to over 300% of its GDP, twice that
of 2008.
China’s growth has been uneven and produced widespread corrup-
tion, food safety concerns, and environmental problems. Beijing remained
dedicated to communist rule and Xi was increasing centralized regulations
on markets.28 Consequently, its state capitalist system was experiencing
strains in adopting freer markets, private investment, and greater domestic
consumption. Moreover, by 2016 inequality in China had become greater
than that of any major country. Although three-hundred million Chinese

had emerged from poverty—an example of positive globalization—its per
capita gross domestic product (PPP purchasing power parity) ranked 73rd
($18,110) globally compared to America, which ranked 10th ($66,609).
Rural China remained poor, and many of the country’s 250 million
migrant workers have left rural communities to work in cities where they
often resided illegally, lacking the detested hukou (required household
registration). Millions of migrants were squatters in cities where they
lacked legal protection and government services and were exploited as
cheap labor. The gap between China’s wealthy coastal regions and less
prosperous interior threatened political stability and placed pressure on
Beijing to maintain high growth.
China’s economic growth was driven by exports, aided by govern-
ment subsidies that kept the costs of domestic industries low. Between
1981 and 2017, the value of U.S.-China trade increased from $5 to
$421.4 billion. In 2018, America’s trade deficit with China was $419.2
billion, accounting for over half of America’s total trade deficit. U.S.
exports to China increased fivefold after 2001 when China joined the
WTO. Key Chinese exports to America included cell phones, computers,
video equipment, solar panels, and toys, while U.S. exports to China
included soybeans, airplanes, automobiles, and semiconductors. Until the
Sino-American trade war, China was America’s largest goods trading
partner, and the two countries were linked by complex supply chains that
are currently unraveling.
Chinese overseas investment and tourism increased Beijing’s global
visibility and soft power. Chinese leaders, while securing the country’s
peripheries, sought to maintain peace and stability, while expanding polit-
ical and economic links and avoiding war with America. This strategy
extended China’s influence and interests globally. Beijing also desired to
extend its “soft power” by establishing “Confucius Institutes” at U.S.
universities to teach Mandarin while spreading propaganda that some
American scholars believed should be shut down. China sought to attract
high-performing students to China, even while Chinese students overseas
in Australia and elsewhere were suspected of conducting espionage for
Beijing.
In 2015, China’s Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Commerce, with
the National Development and Reform Commission, announced Presi-
dent Xi’s hugely ambitious “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) to invest
in projects across Europe, Asia, and Africa to improve infrastructure,
encourage trade and finance, and boost China’s presence and image. Silk
Road Economic Belt targeted corridors in Asia and Europe and already
sends trains to Germany and Iran, while a Maritime Silk Road focused
on infrastructure projects including naval facilities in South Asia and East
Africa.29 The initiative also sought to invest in the northern Mediter-
ranean and Adriatic Seas. Italy’s government accepted China’s offer for
investment in much needed infrastructure and was one of twelve EU
members and the first of the Group of 7 (G-7) to do so. By 2020,
China had invested $400 billion in BRI projects and promised much more
and had persuaded 86 countries and international institutions to partici-
pate.30 Washington established the International Defense Corporation in
response to China’s Belt and Road initiative, but it had far less capital to
invest ($60 billion) than the BRI.
A Chinese company owns the port of Athens, the Piraeus, and China
is investing in the Italian ports of Genoa and Trieste. A spokesperson
for America’s National Security Council was critical of Italy, arguing that
it had not needed to “lend legitimacy to China’s infrastructure vanity
project,” and adding that China’s plan was “predatory” and that the deal
“will bring no benefits to the Italian people.”31
Such links provided China with political and military clout as well as
economic benefits, especially in the developing world. What was more
recent is China’s growing influence in Europe, notably, Cyprus, Greece,
the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Montenegro, and Portugal among
others. Although Italian leaders were delighted by Chinese invest-
ment, some Europeans were suspicious of China’s economic influence.
Some observers argued that China played off EU members against one
another, and they needed to protect their industries. European leaders
like France’s President Macron argued for closer cooperation among
Europeans toward China. Chinese penetration contributed to growing
Western coordination in policies toward Beijing, and this cooperation is
likely to deepen in the Biden years. Days before becoming president,
Biden warned the EU not to conclude a mutual investment agree-
ment hastily that would facilitate China’s ownership of European firms,
and, instead, wait for U.S.-EU consultation and cooperation regarding
Beijing’s economic and human-rights policies.
Investment for the BRI came from China’s $50 billion Silk Road Fund,
the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and the China
Development Bank that promised to invest over $890 billion in over
900 projects in sixty countries. If this gigantic project succeeds, it would
foster claims that authoritarianism could achieve security and growth

more effectively than “erratic” democracies. Some observers viewed the
BRI as a project to foster an illiberal world order.
The BRI provided outlets for China’s surplus investment funds and
overproduction of products like steel. It also afforded China with strategic
influence in regions like Central Asia, and the Indian and Arctic Oceans.
Indeed, China described “a ‘Pacific Silk Road’ a ‘Silk Road on Ice’ that
crossed the Arctic Ocean and a ‘Digital Silk Road’ through cyberspace.”32
China also invested where the West was reluctant to do so. African and the
Middle Eastern borrowers included countries that would find it difficult
to pay its loans such as Yemen, Syria, and Zimbabwe, countries largely
ignored by Washington. Moreover, Chinese loans placed no conditions on
recipients like fostering democracy. Hence, China’s economic, political,
and military involvement in Africa, in particular, surpassed the West’s.
Recipients by no means received a free ride. The BRI has already
created serious debt problems for countries like Nepal, Malaysia, and
Ecuador that borrowed Chinese funds at commercial interest rates,
forcing them to pay steep interest and surrendering to China control of
their natural resources. One example was the price tag China put on rail-
road construction in Malaysia. Ultimately, Beijing reduced the cost by
$11 billion. This concession entailed a reassessment of BRI because of
fear that it saddled countries with a huge debt for unnecessary projects.
Moreover, China’s treatment of debtors was reminiscent of the worst
of old-style Western imperialism, and Beijing has become sensitive to
charges of “debt-trap diplomacy,” that is, using loans that recipients
could not repay to acquire political and military influence. Beijing also
had a poor record of worker safety, environmental standards, and cultural
understanding.
An example of China’s “debt-trap diplomacy” was Chinese loans to
Ecuador for a gigantic dam. The dam has never functioned properly;
cracks appeared in its machinery; and many Ecuadoran officials involved in
the project were accused of taking bribes. Silt clogged the dam’s reservoir,
and when Ecuador tried to use the facility, it shorted out the national elec-
tricity grid. China’s loans were far beyond Ecuador’s financial capability
to repay. Therefore, China receives 80% of Ecuador’s oil production in
repayment. Beijing then profited by reselling the oil at a discount. Never-
theless, competition between China’s public and private firms with the
latter’s effort to put its own profits before China’s objectives and China’s
losses on overseas investments suggested that the BRI is not entirely

favorable for Beijing.
In Pakistan, Beijing was investing more in the “China-Pakistan
Economic Corridor” than all U.S. aid to that country since 2002.
Pakistan’s debt made it request a large loan from the IMF. However,
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo opposed the loan after he and Trea-
sury Secretary Mnuchin received a letter from a bipartisan group of U.S.
senators. The senators claimed that the BRI’s goal was “the creation of
an economic world order ultimately dominated by China,” and, there-
fore, “It is imperative that the United States counters China’s attempts
to hold other countries financially hostage and force ransoms that further
its geostrategic goals.”33
Nevertheless, the BRI’s priorities remained unclear, and it was uncer-
tain which projects would prove profitable and successful. The scheme
alienated those who see China as a new imperialist that buttressed author-
itarian leaders. Recipients unable to repay China’s loans might find
themselves unable to protect their sovereignty. Sri Lanka, for example,
sought to terminate Chinese construction of a strategically located port
on the Indian Ocean, but had to reverse its decision and grant China a 99-
years lease for the port. Beijing has recognized the negative views about
the BRI and sought to reduce criticism. President Xi demanded that
investments be transparent and declared that China would not tolerate
corruption. Nevertheless, as a scholar at the National Bureau of Asian
Research argued, “You can’t differentiate the Belt and Road with China’s
overall foreign policy, which is to push itself to the center stage of the
world.”34
In June 2015, China hosted the formal opening of the Asian Infras-
tructure Investment Bank (AIIB), an institution established to rival the
World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. China held a 30.34% share
of the AIIB’s initial $50 billion in assets and controlled 26.06% of the
voting rights. Some 93 countries had joined the AIIB by 2019, including
Britain, Germany, Australia, and South Korea, and others in Asia and
the Middle East. Most conspicuous in their absence were America and
Japan, which had opposed the AIIB from the outset. The AIIB, along
with U.S. withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and later estab-
lishment Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a free trade
area encompassing the members of ASEAN and countries with which
ASEAN had free trade agreements, as well as China, seriously reduced
U.S. economic and political influence in Asia. Moreover, in Asia, as
elsewhere, China used its economic clout by reducing imports from coun-
tries including Australia, Japan, and South Korea, all U.S. allies, with
which it had asymmetric economic relations and regarded as hostile to
Beijing. However, China’s economic growth still confronted difficulties.
For example, according to British analysts, “What was conceived as the
world’s biggest development programme is unravelling into what could
become China’s first overseas debt crisis. Lending by the Chinese finan-
cial institutions that drive the Belt and Road, along with bilateral support
to governments, has fallen off a cliff, and Beijing finds itself mired in debt
renegotiations with a host of countries.”35
China will soon become the world’s largest foreign investor. Much of
this will be in the form of foreign capital reserves and portfolio invest-
ments, but also direct investment in the West and in poorly governed
countries that the West avoids such as Yemen and Syria. Beijing is also
investing in oil pipelines in Myanmar, Turkmenistan, and South Sudan,
and an enormous hydroelectric-producing dam in Sudan. The sheer size
and variety of its commitments are impressive.
China also invested heavily in America, and its State Administration for
Foreign Exchange, which is in charge of Beijing’s foreign-exchange hold-
ings, established a New York office to acquire U.S. assets. Although such
investment may be mutually beneficial, some U.S. observers feared giving
Beijing influence that could harm America’s national security. Therefore,
in 2005 Washington barred the China National Offshore Oil Corpora-
tion’s (CNOOC) effort to purchase UNOCOL, a U.S. oil company, and
in 2013 CNOOC was permitted to buy the Canadian oil firm Nexen
only on condition that it surrender operating control of Nexen’s assets in
the Gulf of Mexico. More recently, the Trump administration described
Huawei Technologies as a “national security threat” because the acqui-
sition of U.S. telecommunications firms by such Chinese corporations
would allow them install equipment to conduct espionage. America’s
National Security Agency apparently had hacked into Huawei’s headquar-
ters to learn whether it had links with China’s army and whether it could
access the telephone and computer networks of countries that purchased
its equipment.
Also controversial was a decision by Virginia-based Smithfield Foods,
one of America’s largest pork producers, to sell itself to China’s Shuanhui
International in China’s largest corporate acquisition in America to that
time. Critics (who did not prevail) were concerned about the safety of
Chinese food products and feared Beijing’s exports of Smithfield’s pork
to China might cause a pork shortage in America. The Smithfield sale

reflected America’s willingness to do business with China. Agricultural
products accounted for a quarter of U.S. exports to China and could rise
significantly if not hindered by U.S. regulations and the Sino-American
trade war that began in 2018.
China and America have been economically interdependent for years,
so much so that Niall Ferguson and Moritz Schularick coined the term
“Chimerica” to describe their relationship, which was “a key driver in the
global economy.”36 An example of Sino-American interdependence was
Chinese purchases of U.S. government securities that finance America’s
budget deficits. A precipitous decline in the value of the U.S. dollar would
result if China sold these securities but would also trigger a dramatic
decline in the value of China’s remaining dollar assets.
In an exercise of neo-mercantilism, China for years kept the value
of its currency, the renminbi, undervalued relative to the U.S. dollar.
This lowered the price of Chinese exports and tilted the trade balance
in China’s favor. American politicians charged China with “currency
manipulation,” intentionally keeping the renminbi’s value artificially low,
thereby costing American jobs and encouraging U.S. firms to move
to China. However, after 2005, China gradually allowed its currency
to appreciate, thereby defusing the issue, Candidate Trump claimed
China was a currency manipulator but later walked back from his claim.
However, a dramatic drop in the value of China’s currency amid the
trade war in 2019 led Washington to renew the charge that China was
a “currency manipulator,” even though the decline was due to market
forces.37
China also sought to make the renminbi a reserve or hard currency
like the U.S. dollar, but that would require the currency to be “man-
aged” less by China’s authorities and more by market forces. China’s
capital controls prevented the establishment of, globally accessible capital
markets that safeguard assets, and therefore any market for renminbi as
a reserve currency would have to be outside of China. With the shut-
down of Hong Kong, it was difficult to imagine where this would be. In
2015, Chinese authorities rattled global markets by allowing the renminbi
to fall 2% over consecutive days, an action widely regarded as demon-
strating greater market flexibility in its currency campaign and fostering
a boost to slumping Chinese exports. By 2014, China was settling 20%
of its merchandise trade in renminbi assets. Despite such progress, the
renminbi remained a modest factor in the global currency markets.
China also became a major “offshore” destination for U.S. firms

seeking to become globally competitive by reducing labor wages and
benefits, lowering taxes and avoiding costly environmental regulations.
Many American firms also “outsourced” (subcontracted) work to Chinese
suppliers. In 2017, China became the world’s second leading destination
(after India) for outsourcing based on cost competitiveness, resources
skills, and business and economic environment. U.S. states such as
Michigan and Ohio deeply resented the loss of jobs to China as indus-
tries moved overseas, and this was a key factor in Trump’s 2016 electoral
victory in America’s Midwest “rust belt.”
A slowdown in China’s economic growth gave some corporate giants
pause about that country’s attraction. A shrinking population of working-
age Chinese and rising wages increased costs in China, encouraging U.S.
and Chinese firms to move elsewhere such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, and
Vietnam. Moreover, as costs were reduced in America by trimming corpo-
rate health and pension obligations and making available new sources
of energy, some firms returned home, a process termed “resourcing.”
Nevertheless, by 2019, China exceeded the number of U.S. compa-
nies on the Fortune Global 500 list. “Fortune’s Global 500 shows how
profoundly the world’s balance of power is shifting.… For the first time
since the debut of the Global 500 in 1990, and arguably for the first time
since World War II, a nation other than the U.S. is at the top of the
ranks of global big business.”38 Growing wealth enabled China to under-
take military modernization. America’s response was a combination of
economic and political engagement with China, while seeking to contain
that country’s ambitions.
Military Rise
China’s military modernization was rapid. The process was not easy
owing to the resistance of commanders of the People’s Liberation Army
(PLA) to shifting strategic and budgetary emphases toward air and naval
forces to project military power into the Western Pacific. As Andrew
Scobell argued, “You’ve got a lot of fiefdoms and there’s the strong
disproportionate influence and power of the ground forces.”39
China ranked second worldwide behind America in total defense
spending. In 2013, China increased its defense budget by 10.7%, in 2014
by 12.2%, and in 2015 by 10%. In 2016, China raised its military budget
to over $146 billion, less than previous years, but in 2018 upped it
to $228 billion. Although the gap between the two great powers had
narrowed, by 2019 U.S. defense spending had risen to $686 billion and
$743.3 billion by 2020, and China’s to $177.5 billion in 2019. Amer-
ica’s military budget remained over three times larger than China’s and
exceeded the combined total of the seven next largest military budgets
(including China’s). Its 2021 defense base budget was $671 billion plus
a warfighting budget of an additional $69 billion. Only Saudi Arabia, the
United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Israel spent more per capita on defense
than the U.S.
Arms sales also reflected international influence, including political
links as well as price and quality. America remained first in arms sales, and
Russia was a distant second. The U.S. accounted for 75% of arms sales
and Russia less than 15%. China ranked seventh in sales globally, but had
few scruples about selling arms to any regime—however unsavory—that
could pay.
A 2012 Department of Defense report concluded that Beijing was
pursuing a long-term, military modernization program designed to
improve the capacity of China’s armed forces “to fight and win ‘local
wars under conditions of informatization,’ or high-intensity, information-
centric regional military operations of short duration.” Such moderniza-
tion was “an essential component of their strategy to take advantage of
what they perceive to be a ‘window of strategic opportunity’ to advance
China’s national development during the first two decades of the 21st
century.”40 Under Xi, China established a new Strategic Support Force to
develop space, cyber, electronic, and psychological warfare to exploit U.S.
vulnerabilities, and Xi had begun to emphasize joint operations among its
military services.
A study by the Carnegie Endowment concluded that China’s military
capability in Asia was nearing America’s capability. It raised the question
of whether America could reassure its Asian friends that they were secure,
and in the Western Pacific, China enjoyed growing advantages over the
U.S. Hence, Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan justified the
proposed 2020 defense budget with three words, “China, China, China,”
and the commander of America’s Indo-Pacific Command concluded, “We
run the risk, if we don’t take proactive action, that China will indeed
surpass our capabilities in the middle of the next decade,”41 As Chris-
tian Brose, observed, “Over the past decade, in U.S. war games against
China, the United States has a nearly perfect record: We have lost almost
every single time.”42 This was a consequence of the growing vulnera-

bility of U.S. satellites, aircraft carriers, refueling aircraft, and bases in
Guam and Japan, and the geographic fact that China’s short range missiles
could reach virtually all U.S. military assets in Asia. In a 2020 report,
America’s Defense Department concluded that China was surpassing the
U.S. in shipbuilding, air defenses, and land-based missiles. Unlimited
by arms control agreements, notably the Intermediate-Range Nuclear
Forces Treaty (INF), Beijing had 1,250 ground-launch ballistic and cruise
missiles with ranges between 311 and 3,418 miles.
Does China’s intend growing military power for aggressive purposes
such as seizing Taiwan or cowing neighbors like Japan and Vietnam?
Chinese leaders insisted theirs was a peaceful rise and pointed out that
America remained the world’s leading nuclear power, that America’s
Pacific Command was the largest of its regional commands with some 180
naval vessels and 1,900 aircraft, and that alliances with Australia, Japan,
New Zealand, the Philippines, and South Korea augmented such forces.
Taiwan remained a contentious issue. In the 1972 Shanghai Commu-
niqué, Washington had agreed that “there is but one China and that
Taiwan is a part China.” This agreement led to a subsequent visit to
China by President Richard Nixon. Nixon’s joint statement with Mao
declared, “the Government of the People’s Republic of China is the
sole legal government of China; Taiwan is a province of China which
has long been returned to the motherland; the liberation of Taiwan is
China’s internal affair in which no other country has the right to inter-
fere; and all U.S. forces and military installations must be withdrawn from
Taiwan. The Chinese Government firmly opposes any activities which aim
at the creation of ‘one China, one Taiwan’.” Beijing also promised not to
seek regional hegemony. However, America guaranteed Taiwan’s de facto
independence and promised to defend Taiwan if China used force. The
subsequent Taiwan Relations Act described U.S. policy:
1. to preserve and promote extensive, close, and friendly commercial,

cultural, and other relations between the people of the United States
and the people on Taiwan, as well as the people on the China
mainland and all other peoples of the Western Pacific area.
2. to declare that peace and stability in the area are in the polit-
ical, security, and economic interests of the United States, and are
matters of international concern.
3. to make clear that the United States decision to establish diplo-

matic relations with the People’s Republic of China rests upon the
expectation that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful
means.
4. to consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other
than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat
to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave
concern to the United States.
5. to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character; and
6. to maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to
force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security,
or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.
In early 2019, President Xi spoke of his desire for reunification,

offering a “one country, two systems framework” like that which defined
Hong Kong’s relationship with Beijing. Taiwan’s leaders quickly refused,
noting that Beijing had violated the Hong Kong framework and had
imposed harsh security laws, reducing democracy and autonomy there.
Under Xi, China also pursued genetic and psychological genocide of its
Muslim Uighurs in detention camps.
China repeatedly threatened war if Taiwan declared formal indepen-
dence and sent numerous military aircraft across the Taiwan Strait in
September 2020 after it appeared America would sell Taiwan advanced
weapons, including drones and missiles that could reach targets in much
of China. Thereafter, Chinese increased missile-testing and sent aircraft
near Taiwan, and its propaganda increased references to a possible war
with China and America.
China accomplished its own military modernization beginning in the
1990s partly by espionage of military technologies of others that enabled
it to avoid costly research and development. Beijing successfully flew a
stealth drone in 2013, landed a spacecraft for the first time on the far
side of the moon, and was preparing a manned moon mission. Moreover,
China had large numbers of advanced military aircraft. It also has inter-
continental and intermediate ballistic missiles with multiple independently
targeted re-entry vehicle technology and antisatellite capability.
China’s naval capability grew rapidly after Beijing shifted its focus
from land-based threats to advancing sweeping claims to sovereignty
over virtually all South China Sea islands, reefs, and atolls and adjacent
waters. Beijing sought access to the Pacific and was pursuing an “anti-
access/area-denial” policy. Its growing naval power aimed to push beyond
what Beijing termed America’s “first island chain” that included the
Japanese home islands, the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
Nevertheless, Beijing has sought to avoid direct military confronta-
tion with America, preferring to use economic capabilities to extend its
influence.
“The task of building a powerful navy has never been as urgent as
it is today,” declared Xi in April 2018, and he told Defense Secretary
Mattis in June that China would not yield “even one inch” of territory
it claims in the South China Sea or the Sea of Japan. The Pentagon
predicted that China’s submarine fleet would grow significantly, although
it was widely believed that China’s submarine technology lagged well
behind America’s. In 2012, sea trials were held on China’s first aircraft
carrier, which had been refitted after its purchase from Russia. China
built a second carrier, was building a third, and perhaps several others in
subsequent years. China’s navy has more naval vessels than does America.
It was designing a new class of heavy cruisers and deploying additional
nuclear-armed submarines. Beijing also had anti-ship missiles called “car-
rier killers.” With rapidly improving radar and satellite capabilities, cruise
missiles, and additional aircraft carriers, “China,” declared America’s naval
commander in the Pacific, was “now capable of controlling the South
China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States.”43
In 1947, China’s Ministry of the Interior had published a U-shaped
“nine-dash-line” map of the South China Sea, reflecting a blend of histor-
ical and modern legal claims. President Hu Jintao in 2004 spoke of
China’s “Malacca dilemma” because most of the country’s oil passed
through the Strait of Malacca and then the South China Sea. In
2009, China sent a diplomatic message to the U.N. Secretary-General,
reasserting its claims and conveying the nine-dash map as documenta-
tion. The nine-dash line became a ten-dash line encompassing the South
China Sea and Taiwan in a 2014 version.
Although there had been frequent minor clashes between rival
claimants in the South China Sea, tensions heightened in 2014 when
China began mobile drilling operations near the Paracel Islands. That
resulted in a standoff with Vietnam, collisions of contending vessels, the
sinking of a Vietnamese fishing boat, riots in Vietnam, and the evacuation
from Vietnam of Chinese citizens. Thereafter, China conducted major
landfill (“island building”) in order to lay claim to the territorial waters
and their natural resources within surrounding exclusive economic zones.

In response, Washington imposed economic sanctions on companies that
aided China to build the islands. The Philippines challenged China’s ten-
dash-line claims in 2013 in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the
Hague. The Court ruled that that map itself constituted a “plea” and
decided in favor of the Philippines, although its decision is unenforceable.
China also fortified many of these islands with airplane hangars, anti-ship
cruise missiles, and surface-to-air missiles.
According to Admiral Philip Davidson, commander of U.S. forces in
the Pacific, “China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in
all scenarios short of war with the United States” and “easily overwhelm”
other Asians who claimed the islands.44 Nevertheless, America and its
allies continued to oppose China’s claims, and conducted maritime drills
and “freedom of navigation operations” to assert their rights. Some of
these threatened collisions with Chinese vessels in dangerous games of
chicken. According to China analyst Michael Pillsbury, the Chinese are
“interpreting these freedom-of-navigation exercises, even when they’re
innocent passage, as something more — provocations, or a declining
hegemon trying to maintain its power.”45
Trump Beijing shortly after his election when he accepted a phone
conversation from Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen. This implied that the
new administration might not feel compelled to adhere to the “One-
China” policy that on which Sino-American relations were based. In
December 2016, Trump declared, “I don’t know why we have to be
bound by a one-China policy unless we make a deal with China having
to do with other things, including trade.”46 Trump changed his mind in
February 2017 and agreed to honor the one-China policy “at President
Xi’s request.”
Like its predecessors, the Trump administration sold additional arms
to Taiwan and also allowed President Tsai, who Beijing suspected sought
Taiwanese independence, to visit America and later eased visits of U.S.
personnel to Taiwan, all anathema to China. The trade war with China
portended new geopolitical dangers. America had depended on Sino-
U.S. economic interdependence to stabilize its relationship with Beijing.
However, as Trump intensified the trade war, that stability vanished,
increasing the probability that Sino-American conflict might spread to
issues such as sovereignty over international waters. Chinese leaders
concluded that these events were part of a U.S. effort to “contain” China.
They also blamed Washington for anti-Beijing demonstrations in Hong
Kong and for China’s slowing economy. One venomous Chinese news
anchor declared that Americans “stir up more troubles and crave the
whole world to be in chaos, acting like a shit-stirring stick.”47
Cyber-Capabilities
Chinese cyber-espionage and cyber-strategy of Integrated Network Elec-
tronic Warfare posed other challenges. President Obama had alluded to
this in his 2013 State of the Union Address, noting “we know foreign
countries and companies swipe our corporate secrets,” and “our enemies
are also seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial insti-
tutions and our air traffic control systems.”48 Obama raised the issue
in a conversation with Xi in March 2013, and Secretary of the Trea-
sury Jacob Lew raised it again that month in Beijing. Press Secretary
Jay Carney declared, “The United States has substantial and growing
concerns about the threat to U.S. economic and national security posed
by cyber-intrusions, including the theft of commercial information.”49
Although sources of cyberattacks are difficult to trace because they
are routed through computer servers elsewhere, the Pentagon’s 2013
annual report concluded, “In 2012 numerous computer systems around
the world, including those owned by the U.S. government, continued to
be targeted for intrusions, some of which appear to be attributable directly
to the Chinese government and military.”50 All the digital addresses of
a hacking group that had stolen secrets from U.S. military contractors,
chemical plants, mining companies, universities, and telecommunications
corporations were traced by the cybersecurity company Mandiant to a
building in Shanghai on Datong Road that housed the PLA’s Shanghai
Unit 61398, also called the “Comment Crew” or the “Shanghai Group.”
According to Mandiant, Unit 61,398 had stolen massive amounts of data
from many companies including Mandiant’s clients. Stolen data included
aerospace designs, clinical trial results, pricing documents, negotiating
strategies, and wind-energy product schematics.
In 2012, American officials responded to complaints by U.S. compa-
nies about Chinese cyber-espionage of industrial secrets, presenting
detailed evidence of such hacking. In December 2018, Washington
alleged that two Chinese hackers, “in association with” the Chinese
Ministry of State Security, were part of a hacking squad known as
“Advanced Persistent Threat 10” or “Stone Panda,” that stole secrets
from twelve countries. “China’s goal, simply put,” according to America’s
FBI director, was “to replace the U.S. as the world’s leading super-
power, and they’re using illegal methods to get there.”51 Although Xi
had promised that China would not hack for commercial gain, Beijing
continued to do so. Hence, in 2015, it was revealed that Chinese hackers
had breached computers at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management
and obtained personnel records and social security numbers of at least
eighteen million current and prospective federal employees.
If companies hacked by China complained, Beijing was liable to hack
their computer systems again in retaliation. In 2014, Washington indicted
five members of Unit 61398 in absentia, not for national security spying
but for commercial espionage-for-profit theft. A private Commission on
the Theft of American Intellectual Property chaired by former Director
of National Intelligence Dennis Blair and former ambassador to China,
Jon Huntsman, argued that Washington needed to adopt strong measures
that would prove costly to China in response to Beijing’s persistent cyber-
espionage. China had “an elaborate, comprehensive system for spotting
foreign technologies, acquiring them by every means imaginable, and
converting them into weapons and competitive goods.”52 The growth
of the digital economy intensified competition for intellectual property,
especially patents, and several countries, including China and Russia, used
the excuse of cybersecurity to impose digital protectionism by requiring
foreign firms build local data servers and store data locally.
China’s cyber-capabilities were not limited to espionage but also
threatened America’s computer-dependent infrastructure, and the tools
China used for espionage could destroy a foe’s computer networks. Legal
and illegal hacking was widespread in China, and hacking and cyberse-
curity competitions attracted military, academic, and corporate observers.
China’s army recruited hackers from universities and has a training center,
the PLA Information Engineering University in Zhengzhou. Beijing’s
cyber-capabilities could initiate a surprise attack on U.S. command,
control, communications, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance
facilities. “These capabilities,” declared Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper, “put all sectors of our country at risk—from government
and private networks to critical infrastructures.”53 Washington indicated
that it might use nuclear weapons to retaliate if it were the victim of a
major cyberattack.
China cited information revealed by former CIA contractor Edward
Snowden that America had hacked numerous Chinese computer sites as
evidence that Washington was also guilty of hacking. Obama responded
defensively. “Every country in the world, large and small, engages in

intelligence gathering,” but gathering intelligence was different than “a
hacker directly connected with the Chinese government or the Chinese
military breaking into Apple’s software systems to see if they can obtain
the designs for the latest Apple product.” That was “theft, and we can’t
tolerate that.”54
America was engaged in an asymmetrical digital war with China,
and the Obama administration considered actions ranging from trade
sanctions and diplomatic pressure to offensive and defensive cyber coun-
termeasures if China did not cease cyber-espionage. “After several years
of making very little progress to improve behavior,” declared a former
State Department adviser, “it’s reasonable to throw out what you’ve
done in the past and use new instruments to try to get them to behave
responsibly.”55 Washington explained to China’s leaders its doctrine for
countering cyberattacks, hoping that China would reciprocate. While
visiting Beijing, Secretary of State John Kerry reached an agreement with
China’s leaders to establish a “cyber working group” to establish a code
of cyber-conduct, but China closed it down after America accused the five
Chinese military officers of cyber-espionage.
China’s Goals and Future

Owing to Beijing’s sensitivity to what Xi described as its “core inter-
ests,” U.S. military leaders have tried to understand what those inter-
ests were. Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd concluded
that China’s interests included “maintaining the territorial integrity of
the country (including countering separatist movements and defending
offshore maritime claims),” “ensuring China’s energy security,” “modern-
izing China’s military and more robustly asserting China’s foreign policy
interests, and enhancing China’s status as a great power.”56
Will China become a superpower or, like Japan some decades earlier,
will its “rise” prove illusory? According to two scholars, China was
“setting itself up as an autocratic superpower without any interference
from the usual counterweights which might otherwise submit its world
conquest to international scrutiny.”57 The belief that China is supplanting
America was widespread. Hence, a 2019 poll concluded that “the stag-
nant, low approval rating of 31% for the U.S. in 2018” suggested “that
the doubts sowed in Trump’s first year about U.S. commitments abroad”
had taken root and had “provided an opening for China and Russia to
assert global influence,”58 and, by 2020, a median of 20% of adults in 45

countries and areas approved U.S. leadership under outgoing President
Donald Trump.59 In sum, during Trump’s term I office, America’s soft
power had virtually disappeared.
Nevertheless, while acknowledging that “global publics” perceived
China’s global standing more positively, far from seeing China as an incip-
ient superpower, David Shambaugh argued that China was only a “partial
power” and had “a very long way to go before it becomes—if it ever
becomes—a true global power.” He claimed that China was deficient in
the most important measurement of power—influence. Its global influ-
ence was largely limited to trade, commodity and energy markets, finance,
real estate purchases, and tourism. Militarily, except for ballistic missiles,
a small space program, and cyber mischief-making, China was not (yet)
able to “project power outside of its Asian neighborhood” and only in
a limited way even there. The country possessed “little soft power, if
any, and is not a model for other nations to emulate.” Its pursuit of
narrow self-interests with regard to the South and Japan Seas, Taiwan,
Tibet, Xinjiang, and human rights does not inspire widespread admira-
tion. “China is a lonely power, lacking close friends and possessing no
allies.” Even its relations with Russia, Pakistan, and North Korea involved
“distrust.”60
Asian, European, North American countries began to push back
against China’s “wolf warrior” behavior. U.S. ad Chinese policies on
issues ranging from China’s territorial claims, violations of human rights,
and trade had brought the two to the brink of a cold war by autumn
2020. However, like Shambaugh, Dan Blumental described China’s
numerous domestic economic, social, and political weaknesses, and
attributed Xi’s assertive foreign policy as an effort to compensate for these
problems. He concluded that “in lieu of Marxism-Leninism,” Beijing
offered “increasingly strident appeals to an imperialist nationalism” and
pointed out that “declining powers are no less dangerous than rising
ones.”61
Unlike Donald Trump, China’s President Xi fostered an image of effi-
ciency and predictability, and as a leading supporter of free trade and foe
of global warming. Xi posed as a reliable friend, the antithesis of Trump,
whom Burleigh described as “capricious and erratic and mainly preoccu-
pied with his (abysmal) ‘ratings’,” and among the growing number of
“incommunicative idiots capable of little more than a tweet.” Burleigh
added, “With Trump and Putin around, Xi seems like the only responsible
adult in the room.”62
It was not that America lacks the capabilities for remaining a super-
power, even a hegemon, in the near future. Nye had cautioned, “A nation
may also decline in power relative to other nations because it chooses not
to use the power resources at its disposal.”63 If so, America’s decline had
begun during the Obama administration that had overreacted to the
hubristic excesses of the George W. Bush administration, notably, the
invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Barack Obama: Idealist or Realist?

Allies and domestic foes (correctly) regarded George W. Bush’s admin-
istration as overly eager to use military force in the War on Terror
after 9/11 and willing to violate human-rights norms in a failed effort
to spread democracy in the Middle East. America’s emphasis on anti-
terrorism contributed to the erosion of its conventional military capability
and delayed technological advances needed to fight China or Russia.
Bush’s “neo-conservative” triumphalism, militant unilateralism, and ill-
fated intervention in Iraq did immense damage to America’s image
around the world and left the U.S. public war-weary.
In reaction, Barack Obama adopted a cautious foreign-policy posture,
preferring optimistic rhetoric, negotiation and multilateralism, and defer-
ring to allies as though the world were already multipolar. Obama
explained, “One of the reasons I am so focused on taking action multi-
laterally where our direct interests are not at stake is that multilateralism
regulates hubris.”64 However, although Obama was a dedicated liberal,
his reluctance to engage with foes militarily contributed to the erosion
of the liberal order, a trend that Trump would continue and was partly
responsible for Trump’s reckless unilateralism.
The Obama presidency coincided with the Great Recession and a
period of escalating partisanship in domestic politics that produced legisla-
tive deadlock. Obama had to face a world that seemed to be “falling
apart.” If the financial crisis was the worst since the 1930s, his admin-
istration’s foreign challenges were the most complex since the Cold War.
The EU and Eurozone were in disarray; the rise of IS produced turmoil
in the Middle East; Iranian nuclear talks threatened to collapse; China
continued saber rattling in international waters; and Russia was meddling
in Ukraine. The Obama administration’s geopolitical leadership, however,
was generally weak and indecisive. Although polls agreed that Obama’s
self-effacing leadership style increased his popularity and that of America
abroad, nevertheless, soft power, though significant, was no substitute for
a willingness to lead. During the Obama years, America was punching
below its weight.
Having declared a “pivot” to Asia in response to China’s rise, Obama
failed to convince Beijing that America was not seeking to contain it.
Events in the Middle East and the danger in Europe posed by Russian
aggression in Ukraine, however, prevented a significant pivot. With minor
increments in its military forces in Asia, Washington’s scolding irritated
Beijing but failed to persuade Asian countries that U.S. commitments
were credible. It was difficult to believe that Washington would become
embroiled in a military confrontation with China over uninhabited islets
unless the security of Japan, South Korea, and/or Taiwan was in immi-
nent danger. Trump’s efforts to paper over U.S. differences with North
Korea, including concessions that would reduce America’s military pres-
ence in East Asia, strained U.S. ties with allies. Whether or not China
sought to compete with America globally, it did seek dominance in the
Indo-Pacific region. This was evident in skirmishes with Indian troops
in Ladakh, a disputed Himalayan border area, in 2020, which fostered a
process of U.S.-Indian cooperation against Beijing.
America and Global Disorder

As American relative capabilities declined, U.S. military strategy relied
more on local proxies trained and armed by Washington and largely
directed toward counterterrorism. Although this approach was more
acceptable to U.S. public opinion, it rarely achieved what Washington
sought, a fact reflected in the collapse of Iraq’s army in 2014.
Robert Kagan criticized Obama’s foreign-policy establishment when he
wrote of a “sense of futility” that followed America’s financial crisis and
embodied what John Mueller called the “Iraq syndrome,”65 the fear that
America could be dragged into another Middle East civil war. “Senior
White House officials,” wrote Kagan, “especially the younger ones, look
at problems like the struggle in Syria and believe that there is little if
anything the United State can do. This is the lesson of their generation,
the lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan: that America has neither the power
nor the understanding nor the skill to fix problems in the world.” Kagan
thought this was “escapism”66 because officials, including the president,
did not appreciate what was at stake and how quickly the liberal global
order might disappear. Responding to criticism, Obama’s final National
Security Strategy contained “lead” and “leadership” ninety-four times in
referring to America, but simply repeating the word was no substitute for
genuine leadership.
When President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, he had
admitted: “We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There
will be times when nations - acting individually or in concert - will find
the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.” Obama touched
upon the dilemma he would face. “So part of our challenge is recon-
ciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths--that war is sometimes
necessary, and war at some level is an expression of human folly.”67 That
dilemma became manifest as allies questioned U.S. commitments, thereby
eroding the post-Cold War order.
Obama’s policies reflected America’s declining interest in foreign
adventures. Events in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere seemed beyond U.S.
control and peripheral to its national interests. The president’s caution
was apparent when he defended his foreign-policy legacy by asking: “Why
is it that everybody is so eager to use military force after we’ve just gone
through a decade of war at enormous cost to our troops and to our
budget.” He used a baseball analogy to express his thinking: “You hit
singles, you hit doubles; every once in a while, we may be able to hit a
home run. But we steadily advance the interests of the American people
and our partnership with folks around the world.”68 Obama’s policy of
restraint was reasoned and thoughtful, but led a former national security
official to conclude pointedly, “We’re seeing the ‘light footprint’ run out
of gas.”69
After the Cold War, Americans were optimistic about the future.
However, the George W. Bush, Clinton, and Obama years witnessed
growing pessimism in the U.S. about America’s “decline” that was accom-
panied by support for limiting America’s role in world affairs and placing
greater responsibility on its friends and allies. Donald Trump’s would in
part be a consequence of these sentiments and would reduce America’s
military footprint in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and elsewhere.
It was Obama’s misfortune that multiple and simultaneous geopolitical
challenges simultaneously confronted him. This made it virtually impos-
sible to design a coherent strategy. While imposing sanctions on Russia
over Ukraine, Obama sought to cooperate with Moscow on arms control
and negotiate with North Korea and Iran about their efforts to acquire
nuclear weapons. While differing with Iran over the future of Syria and
Iran’s nuclear ambitions, America tacitly cooperated with Tehran against
the Islamic State, even as he sought a coalition against the IS consisting
of Sunni states and opponents of Syria’s President Assad. Obama also
sought to reassure Israel while condemning its war in Gaza and pres-
suring it to seek a two-state solution and end settlement expansion. In
the absence of a clear strategy, allies became concerned about the credi-
bility of America’s deterrence of China, Russia, and Iran. Under Obama,
the U.S. lost political and military influence in the Middle East, Asia,
and Europe. Regarding Asia, former deputy secretary of state William J.
Burns argued, “Without the steady centripetal force of American diplo-
macy,” disorder in Asia is spinning in all sorts of dangerous directions.
The net result is not only increased risk of regional turbulence, but also
long-term corrosion of American influence.70
Afghanistan and the Middle East

Before 9/11 President George W. Bush had tried to limit overseas
commitments including America’s humanitarian interventions in which
the Clinton administration had become involved. The U.S., declared
Richard Haass, would become a “reluctant sheriff,”71 involving itself only
when local powers could not maintain peace. The wars of the Bush years
led Kagan to conclude, “the rest of the world saw the United States not
as a global leader seeking the global good but as an angry Leviathan
narrowly focused on destroying those who had attacked it.” He warned,
“the only thing worse than a self-absorbed hegemon is an incompetent
self-absorbed hegemon.”72
In a speech in 2014, Obama declared: “You are the first class to
graduate since 9/11 who may not be sent into combat in Iraq or
Afghanistan.” He then added, “Since world war two, some of our most
costly mistakes came not from our restraint, but from our willingness
to rush into military adventures without thinking through the conse-
quences.”73 Obama observed that unless critical interests were at stake,
“the threshold for military action must be higher.” “I would betray my
duty to you, and to the country we love,” he continued, “if I sent
you into harm’s way simply because I saw a problem somewhere in the
world that needed to be fixed or because I was worried about critics who
think military intervention is the only way for America to avoid looking
weak.”74
The president also essentially declared an end to the War on Terror

and (admirably) brought an end to U.S. human-rights abuses involving
the War on Terror. However, Washington continued drone strikes and
Special Forces actions against terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia,
Libya, Iraq, and Syria and proposed to fund counterterrorist partner-
ships with countries under threat from terrorists. In a major escalation
of terrorist violence in the Middle East, the Islamic State seized large
areas in Syria and Iraq and announced the establishment of a territorial
“caliphate.” America had few options other than airstrikes to counter IS.
Obama had assumed office committed to ending the “bad” war in
Iraq, while pacifying and reforming Afghanistan in a “good” war. In
neither case did Washington achieve its goals. Although IS was driven
from the territory is had occupied in Iraq and Syria, both remained
deeply divided by sectarian conflict between Shia and Sunni Muslims.
Afghanistan remained threatened by the Taliban-led insurrection against
a government installed by Washington and descended again into civil war
among warlords with little to show for decades of U.S. intervention.
AS U.S. troops leave, al-Qaeda and IS militants may reoccupy Afghan
sanctuaries. Elsewhere, the Obama administration reluctantly contributed
airpower to assist America’s NATO allies in protecting Libyans foes of
Muammar al-Qaddafi. Qaddafi was overthrown, but America’s ambas-
sador was murdered in Benghazi. Chaos soon resumed, and Libya joined
the sorry roster of fragile states.
The death of Osama bin Laden was Obama’s most memorable foreign-
policy triumph (as was the death of IS “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi
during the Trump years). Otherwise, in the Middle East, the policies of
the Obama and Trump administrations seemed irresolute. Having threat-
ened to use force against Assad if he employed chemical weapons, Obama
backed off in return for a deal brokered by Russia for destroying Syria’s
remaining chemical weapons. Obama’s decision to back away on this
occasion was disastrous for America’s credibility. In 2013, Obama also
began to contribute non-lethal aid covertly to Syria’s Sunni opposition
in the areas it controlled. This led an opponent of Assad to comment
acidly, “Nonlethal assistance—blankets and cellphones—do not topple a
regime,” adding “Only Allah knows how Washington works.”75 By this
time, Assad was in the driver’s seat again, aided by Russia, Iran, and Iran’s
proxy, Hezbollah.
Only after IS had occupied much of the region, did Washington
help train “moderate” rebels. Obama authorized additional U.S. aid and
dispatched several hundred troops to train and arm rebels in September

2014. Obama had previously dismissed the claim that aid to “what was
essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists
and so forth” would have made a difference in Syria as “a fantasy.”76
Relations between Israel and America had been warm during the
Bush presidency but soured after Obama pressed Israel to cease building
settlements in the occupied territories. A new round of peace negoti-
ations initiated by Secretary of State Kerry yielded little and collapsed
in mutual recriminations, exacerbated by Washington’s willingness to
consider dealing with a Palestinian government that included Hamas if
the PLO wished to do so.
America’s passivity during the Arab Spring, especially in Syria’s civil
war and turmoil in Egypt, enhanced Islamic extremism in the Middle
East and North Africa, and the region became the “chief cauldron
of contemporary disorder.”77 America’s 2003 intervention in Iraq had
radicalized Muslims worldwide, and Obama’s indecisiveness encouraged
al-Qaeda affiliates After U.S. withdrawal in 2011, Iraq again descended
into sectarian violence with a weak Shia government that grew increas-
ingly dependent on Iran. Shia militias in Iraq also provoked conflict with
America in 2019–2020.
Some observers argued that Obama’s failure to carry out his threat
against Syria if the regime used chemical weapons undermined the cred-
ibility of U.S. threats toward Iran regarding Tehran’s nuclear program.
Moreover, having approved the overthrow of pro-American authori-
tarian President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt in the name of democracy,
Washington said little about the elected Muslim Brotherhood govern-
ment’s anti-democratic policies. American support for Egypt’s Islamic
government incensed long-term allies Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Nor did
America object after a coup by General Abdel Fattah Sisi overthrew that
government and installed a military dictatorship.
Obama’s willingness to negotiate with Iran over that country’s nuclear
ambitions provoked suspicion of U.S. motives among its allies. Israel and
America’s Sunni friends—Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and the United
Arab Emirates—opposed Washington’s negotiations with Tehran. Iran
continued to provide arms, fighters, and funding to Assad and remained
on the threshold of acquiring nuclear weapons. Domestic partisan divi-
sions surfaced in Washington where Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu
denounced a U.S.-Iranian agreement as “a bad deal.” Republican sena-
tors sent Iran’s leaders a letter that undermined presidential prerogatives
in making foreign policy by declaring (presciently) that a Republican

president might withdraw from the deal. Both events contributed to an
appearance of foreign-policy disarray and political gridlock in Washington.
A nuclear agreement with Iran that Obama called the best that could
be had was concluded in 2015 and would become a casualty of Donald
Trump’s myopic foreign policy. Those policies isolated America, alienated
U.S. allies, and allowed Russia to manipulate the Trump administration.
Resurgent Russia
Russia remained America’s chief military rival although it lagged far
behind America and China economically. Early post-Cold War relations
between America and Russia were relatively cordial as long as Boris Yeltsin
remained Russian president. Relations began to worsen after Vladimir
Putin became Russian president in 2000. A brief “reset” in U.S.-Russian
relations began during the Obama administration but ultimately failed.
Putin sought to restore Russia as a great power and cited “the collapse of
the Soviet Union” as the one event he would have liked to change, “the
greatest geopolitical tragedy of the twentieth century.”
Instability also became endemic in Eastern Europe. Russia argued
that there had been an agreement with America that NATO would not
move eastward, a claim that remains controversial. A united Germany was
already in NATO. In 1999, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic
joined NATO. In 2004, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania,
Slovenia, and Slovakia also joined. During the Trump years, Washington
alienated its European allies, and held NATO and the European Union
(EU) in contempt.
In 2008, Russia and Georgia went to war, and Russia occupied
the Georgian provinces of Abhazia and South Ossetia. Thereafter, civil
war engulfed Ukraine, and Russian intervention in Ukraine’s Donbas
and annexation of Crimea, along with the Armenian-Azeri conflict
over Nagorno-Karabakh, and “frozen conflicts” involving South Ossetia,
Abkhazia, and Transdniestria, produced considerable instability. The
annexation of Crimea violated the Cold War norm that countries should
not use force to seize territory, and Russian troops remained in South
Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Transdniestria. The situation in Ukraine, much
as observers predicted, became another “frozen conflict.” Putin did not
directly attack foes. He practiced judo that was sufficiently subtle not to
justify a major Western response.
Having removed U.S. forces from Europe and cut back plans for
European missile defense, the Obama administration was unprepared to
respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its heavy-handed “hybrid
war.” Geopolitics had returned to Eastern Europe as Russia responded to
NATO and EU expansion, and Putin exploited political divisions within
America and Europe to probe how much the West would tolerate. Few
Americans wanted to send U.S. troops to Ukraine, and the economic
sanctions imposed by Washington and the EU were insufficient to prevent
Russian “volunteers” from aiding those in eastern Ukraine seeking to
“federalize” the country or secede entirely from it.
Trump’s willingness to accept Putin’s denial of Russian involvement
in Ukraine intensified mistrust among U.S. allies about America’s policy
toward an aggressive Russia. The timing of America’s declining credibility
was especially unfortunate owing to Russia’s growing military capabilities.
Since 2008, Russia has modernized its forces, showed a willingness to use
military force to achieve foreign-policy objectives, and improved its ability
to project that force at greater distances. Russia had become a revanchist
and hostile foe, seeking to revise the European security system and divide
Europe into spheres of influence.
In October 2018, Washington announced its intention to exit the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with Russia (banning
land-based missiles with a range of 300–3,400 miles) that Ronald Reagan
and Mikhail Gorbachev had signed in 1987. The Trump administration
justified its action by alleged Russia’s violations of the treaty and China’s
INF missiles in the Pacific. Moscow’s cruise missiles in southern Russia
threatened America’s NATO allies in violation of the treaty and 95% of
China’s missiles were of the range of those covered by INF. (China was
not a party to the treaty.) Alexander Motyl concluded, “Kennan’s case
for containing Russia makes just much sense now”78 as it did during the
Cold War. Regarding U.S. withdrawal from the treaty, Gorbachev asked
rhetorically, “Do they really not understand in Washington what this can
lead to?”79
Trump’s decision further eroded U.S.-Russian relations and widened
divisions between America and Europe. Trump declared, “We’ll have to
develop those weapons, unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us
and they all come to us and say ‘let’s really get smart and let’s none of
us develop those weapons,’ but if Russia’s doing it and if China’s doing
it, and we’re adhering to the agreement, that’s unacceptable.”80 Amer-
ica’s withdrawal from INF and the Open Skies treaty in 2020 and its
reluctance to renew the New START treaty that placed limits of 1,550
deployed nuclear-armed missiles on Russia and America unless China
joined these undermined the nuclear arms-control regime. U.S. with-
drawal from INF was followed by a poll in which 41% of Germans
believed Trump was more dangerous than Putin, North Korea’s Kim
Jong-un, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, or China’s Xi Jinping.
A nuclear arms race with Russia further destabilized the liberal order,
and Russia’s massive cyber hacking of U.S. government facilities in
December 2020 deepened Russian-U.S. hostility.
Conclusions
Many contemporary issues reflected the return of geopolitics antithetical
to the liberal order. This coincided with growing nationalism in America,
Russia, China, and Iran. Putin was determined to restore Russia’s great
power status. Xi strove to give China a status equal to America’s, and
Iran’s ruling theocrats sought to extend their influence across the Middle
East. All three felt constrained by U.S. hegemony and perceived threats
to their regimes by American democracy promotion. Although many U.S.
and European populists embraced Russia, they regarded China as a foe
that must be contained owing to its challenges to U.S. hegemony. For its
part, Russia supported American and European populists and will find a
less friendly though more pragmatic rival than Trump in President Biden.
Notwithstanding America’s immense capabilities, Obama’s belief in
U.S. decline may have promoted it. Many defense officials cited Obama’s
foreign-policy accomplishments, but concluded that too often he had
failed to act, waiting for conditions to improve. This allowed foes to probe
further to learn how far they could go, leading to dangerous mispercep-
tions and increasing the prospect of military confrontations. “In short,”
as Haass argued, “the post-Cold War order is unraveling, and while not
perfect, it will be missed.”81 Even those who contributed to the erosion
of U.S. hegemony will miss it. No sensible analyst would wish a return
of U.S. hubris and triumphalism reflected by the reckless intervention in
Iraq in 2003.
Should America’s leaders reassess their role in the world with a clearer
eye and greater resolve, we may yet be able to write a different geopolitical
story. The institutions of globalization that America founded after World
War II served to organize and extend U.S. hegemony. Donald Trump
failed to seize the opportunity and accelerated America’s retreat.
As we shall see, Trump’s sudden announcement in 2018 that U.S.

troops would withdraw from Syria created shock waves. Many observers,
including Republicans, considered Trump’s decision dangerous. Even
worse, after changing his mind and leaving U.S. troops in Syria, Trump
impetuously decided to abandon America’s Kurdish allies. This made clear
his willingness to abandon America’s global role and cast another shadow
on the credibility of U.S. commitments. Even some of the president’s
consistent defenders denounced his abrupt decision. Mitch McConnell,
the Republican majority leader of the Senate wrote, “Withdrawing U.S.
forces from Syria is a grave strategic mistake.…. When the United States
threw off the comforting blanket of isolationism in the 1940s and took
the mantle of global leadership, we made the whole world better, but we
specifically made it much better for the United States. If we abandon that
mantle today, we can be sure that a new world order will be made — and
not on terms favorable to us.”82 Abandoning America’s Kurdish allies left
Russia, Iran, and Turkey to control Syria’s future.
Putin praised Trump’s announcement, and a Russian commentator
gleefully declared, “Trump is God’s gift that keeps on giving. Trump
implements Russia’s negative agenda by default, undermining the U.S.–
led world order, U.S. alliances, U.S. credibility as a partner and an ally.
All of this on his own. Russia can just relax and watch and root for
Trump, which Putin does at every TV appearance.”83 Trump’s nega-
tivism toward allies and cozy relationship with authoritarians like Putin led
French analyst François Heisbourg to conclude ominously, “Until now,
you could talk about hedging, and all allies were doing it fairly prudently.”
He added, “But now everyone will have to work on the assumption that
the alliance system is no longer there. The organizations are there, the
treaties are there, the troops and equipment are still there, but the high
priest of that church is gone.”84
Geopolitics had never actually disappeared. Conflict was inevitable
owing to global division between liberal and illiberal regimes. China,
Russia, and Iran shared the objective of targeting liberal democratic
societies to make the world safer for authoritarianism. Wrote Stephen
Kotkin, “now, as U.S. relative power has diminished and the U.S. brand
has run into trouble, the fragility of a system dependent on the might,
competency, and image of the United States, has been exposed,”85 and
Daalder and Lindsay sadly noted, “Trump saw himself doing what he had
promised, making America great again. But his actions were in fact setting
America on the road to a less secure and prosperous future—and ironi-

cally for a president who insisted he was defending American sovereignty,
one in which Americans would have less and not more control over their
destiny.”86
Chapter 5 deals with American populism. It is followed by descriptions
of populism in Great Britain, and continental Europe.
Notes
1. John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold
War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).
2. John McCain, “Defending the Liberal World Order,” The Economist, The
World in 2018, November 20, 2017, https://www.theworldin.com/edi
tion/2018/article/14416/defending-liberal-world-order.
3. G. John Ikenberry, “The Illusion of Geopolitics,” Foreign Affairs 93:3
(May/June 2014), pp. 84, 89.
4. G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transfor-
mation of the American World Order (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2011), Preface.
5. Fareed Zakaria, “The Self-Destruction of American Power,” Foreign
Affairs 98:4 (July/August 2019), pp. 10, 13.
6. William C. Martel, “America’s Grand Strategy Disaster,” The National
Interest, June 9, 2014, https://commentators.com/americas-grand-str
ategy-disaster-the-national-interest/.
7. Richard N. Haass, “The Age of Nonpolarity: What Will Follow U.S.
Dominance,” Foreign Affairs (May/June 2008), https://www.foreignaf
fairs.com/articles/63397/richard-n-haass/the-age-of-nonpolarity.
8. Randall L. Schweller, “The Age of Entropy,” Foreign Affairs, June
16, 2014, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141568/randall-l-sch
weller/the-age-of-entropy.
9. Robert Kagan, “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire,” The New Republic,
May 26, 2014, https://newrepublic.com/article/117859/superpowers-
dont-get-retire?utm_medium=App.net&utm_source=PourOver.
10. Robert Kagan, “Welcome to the Jungle,” Washington Post, October 9,
2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/welcome-to-the-jun
gle/2018/10/09/0f8ffb58-cbc5-11e8-a3e6-44daa3d35ede_story.html?
utm_term=.f19ad88a3bb8&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1.
11. Stephen Kotkin, “Realist World: The Players Change, but the Game
Remains,” Foreign Affairs 97:4 (July/August 2018), p. 10.
12. G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transfor-
mation of the American World Order (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2011), Preface.
13. Robert Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 88.
14. Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981), p. 198.
15. Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape
Thucydides’s Trap (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018).
16. Robert O. Keohane, Cooperation and Discord in the World Political
Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
17. Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the
World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989),
pp. 49, 50.
18. Barry Buzan and George Lawson, The Global Transformation: History,
Modernity and the Making of International Relations (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 274.
19. Joseph S. Nye Jr., Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American
Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990), p. 13.
20. Joseph S. Nye Jr., Is the American Century Over? (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 2015), p. 14.
21. Michael Mandelbaum, “The New Containment,” Foreign Affairs
(March/April 2019), pp. 130–131.
22. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of the Great Powers (New York: W. W.
Norton, 2001).
23. See Yale H. Ferguson, “Rising Powers and Global Governance: Theo-
retical Perspectives,” in James Gasgarth, ed., Rising Powers, Global
Governance and Global Ethics (Milton Park and Abington, Oxon, UK:
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24. Cited in Max Fisher, “Trump’s Military Ambition: Raw Power as a means
and an End,” New York Times, March 3, 2017, https://www.nytimes.
com/2017/03/03/world/americas/donald-trump-us-military.html.
25. C. Fred Bergsten, The United States and the World Economy (Washington,
DC: Institute for International Economic, 2005), p. 53.
26. Martin Wolf and David Pilling, “China: On Top of the World,” Financial
Times, May 2, 2014, www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c355e0e6-d1d1-11e3-
8ff4-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz33A0ZMQ00.
27. Lant Pritchett and Lawrence Summers, “Asiaphoria Meet Regression
to the Mean,” November 6, 2013, https://www.frbsf.org/economic-
research/events/2013/november/asia-economic-policy-conference/pro
gram/files/Asiaphoria-Meet-Regression-to-the-Mean.pdf.
28. Michael Schuman, “The Undoing of China’s Economic Miracle,” The
Atlantic, January 11, 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/
archive/2021/01/xi-jinping-china-economy-jack-ma/617552/?=.
29. See Yale H. Ferguson, “China’s OBOR Policy, China-U.S. Relations, and
the Return of Geopolitics,” Mainland China Studies 60:2 (June 2017),
pp. 55–85.
30. Oriana Skylar Mastro, “The Stealth Superpower,” Foreign Affairs 98:1
(January/February 2019), p. 32.
31. Cited in Chico Harland, “A Defiant Italy Becomes the First G-7 Country
to Sign on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative,” Washington Post, March
23, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/defiant-
italy-becomes-the-first-g7-country-to-sign-on-to-chinas-belt-and-road-ini
tiative/2019/03/22/54a732d4-4bdf-11e9-8cfc-2c5d0999c21e_story.
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32. “Planet China,” The Economist, July 28, 2018, p. 7.
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2019/04/25/373e699e-6500-11e9-a698-2a8f808c9cfb_story.html.
35. James Kynge and Jonathan Wheatley, “China Pulls Back from the World:
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36. Niall Ferguson and Moritz Schularick, “‘Chimerica’ and Global Asset
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41. Cited in Brian Everstone, “INDOPACOM Boss: China Close to
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Questions
Multiple Choice
1. What is the term used to describe America’s and China’s economic
interdependence?
a. “Americhina”
b. “China-merica”
c. “Chimerica”
d. “China-America”
2. Which country would most likely oppose America in a Thucydides
trap?
a. Russia
b. China
c. Iran
d. Iraq
3. Why did Taiwan reject a “one country, two systems” framework
offered by China?
a. The UN offered a better deal
b. Taiwan’s leaders had witnessed Beijing violate the same

system with Hong Kong
c. America threatened to withdraw any form of support to
Taiwan if they accepted the deal with China
d. Taiwan’s leaders would have rejected anything offered by
China
4. Which of the following is NOT a reason that America-Israel
relations suffered under President Obama?
a. Israel opposed the Iran nuclear deal
b. President Obama refused to give financial aid to Israel
c. Obama wanted Israel to cease building settlements in
occupied territories
d. Washington was willing to consider dealing with a Pales-
tinian government that included Hamas if the PLO so wished
5. What economic system does China use?
a. State capitalism
b. Capitalism
c. Socialism
d. Communism
6. When China modernized its military, its priorities shifted. What are
the new priorities?
a. Focusing on taking arms sales deals from the United States
b. Air and naval forces in the western Pacific
c. Coordinating joint military strategy with Russia against the
United States
d. Cultivating new proxies for future proxy wars
7. What is the current yearly growth rate of China’s economy?
a. 7% or less
b. 8%
c. 9%
d. 9.5%
8. To what school of thought do we attribute the concept of “rising
powers”?
a. Realism
b. Liberalism
c. Constructivism
d. Neorealism
9. Which country has the largest economy by GNP?
a. China
b. America
c. Japan
d. Germany
10. What is NOT one of the three main goals of “Belt and Road
Initiative” noted in the textbook?
a. Boosting China’s image
b. Investing to improve infrastructure in countries on multiple
continents
c. Encouraging investment in the clothing and textile
industry
d. Encouraging trade and finance
11. What currency is China trying to make a “hard” currency?
a. Yen
b. Dollar
c. Pound
d. Renminbi
12. What is stopping China from selling U.S. securities to drop the
value of the U.S. dollar?
a. The United States would retaliate with military action
b. There would be economic sanctions against China in
response
c. The United States would trigger a cyberattack against
China
d. China’s remaining U.S. securities would also drop in
value
13. How many countries spend more money per capita on their
military than the United States?
a. 1
b. 2
c. 3
d. 4
14. How do the foreign policies of Presidents Bush, Obama, and
Trump relate to each other?
a. Bush overused military force, influencing Obama’s
preference for negotiation and deference to allies, which
influenced Trump’s unilateralism
b. Bush appropriately used military force, having no impact
on Obama’s preference for negotiation and deference to allies,
which influenced Trump’s unilateralism
c. Bush overused military force, influencing Obama to do the
same, which impacted Trump’s preference for multilateralism
d. Bush overused military force, teaching Obama to prefer
negotiation and deference to allies, which influenced Trump
to follow Obama’s example
15. Under President Obama, there were many conflicting issues that
had to be addressed. Which of the following did NOT occur?
a. Obama cooperated with Iran against the Islamic State but
argued with Iran over their nuclear ambitions
b. Obama sought to reassure Israel even as he condemned its
war in Gaza and pressured it to seek a two-state solution
c. The United States tried to cooperate with Russia on arms
control while imposing sanctions due to Russia’s activity in
Ukraine
d. The United States condemned Ukraine for provoking
Russian aggression while providing arms to Ukraine in an
attempt to deter the Russians
16. In 2019, which of the following did President Trump decide to
abandon?
a. American spies in China
b. American allies in Ukraine
c. America’s Kurdish allies in Syria
d. American allies in Iran
17. What is NOT one of the three elements of a Kantian triangle?
a. Democratic norms
b. International institutions
c. Economic interdependence
d. Racial and ethnic diversity
18. What were the results of the World Bank’s switch to using
purchasing power parity to calculate GNP?
a. It appeared as if America was easily the largest economy
b. China appeared ready to replace America as the world’s
largest economy
c. Japan’s economy appeared to surpass China’s
d. Nothing appeared to deviate from the old standard
19. Despite China’s uneven growth and wealth gap, extreme poverty
has fallen to what level in China?
a. 1% or less
b. 2%
c. 5%
d. 10% or more
20. In 2018, what was America’s trade deficit with China?
a. $207 billion
b. $352 billion
c. $419 billion
d. $529 billion
True or False
1. True or False: President Xi is posing as President Trump’s opposite.
True
2. True or False: President Obama is liberal, so even though he was
indecisive and hesitant in his foreign policy, he did not harm the
liberal order.
False, President Obama’s Beliefs and Views Do not Erase
the Fact that His Actions (or Inactions) Contributed to
the Erosion of the Liberal Order.
3. True or False: The United States has more vessels in its navy than
China does.
False, China now has more naval vessels than the U.S.
4. True or False: China’s economy has an average annual growth rate
of greater than 8% and is the world’s second largest economy by
GNP.
True
5. True or False: Global income in illiberal societies will surpass
income in Western liberal societies in a few years.
True
6. True or False: China has over $400 billion invested in the Belt and
Road Initiative.
True
7. True or False: American resentment of outsourcing jobs to China
helped Trump win votes in 2016 in the Rust Belt, but it was not a
major factor in his victory in the region.
False, China now has more naval vessels than the U.S.
8. True or False: The United States honors the “one China” policy
but will defend Taiwan if Beijing uses force against it.
True
9. True or False: The United States is concerned about Huawei’s
potential to become a major player in the 5G market because it
could take too much business from domestic companies.
False, the United States is concerned about the security of
telecommunications if Huawei becomes a major player in
the 5G market.
10. True or False: Putin’s military actions in Eastern Europe are suffi-
cient to justify a major Western response, but not enough Western
countries are willing to engage in a major response.
False, the United States is concerned about the security of

telecommunications if Huawei becomes a major player in
the 5G market.
11. True or False: Obama essentially declared an end to the War on
Terror, but continued drone strikes against terrorists in the Middle
East.
True
12. True or False: Obama didn’t follow through on his threats of force
against President Assad after Assad employed chemical weapons,
but Obama restored his credibility by providing nonlethal aid to
the Sunni opposition.
False. Assad’s opponents even commented that “nonlethal
assistance … does not topple a regime.”
13. True or False: America’s passivity and Obama’s indecisiveness
during the Arab Spring enhanced Islamic extremism in the Middle
East and North Africa.
True
14. True or False: China’s rapid military modernization is due in part
to espionage, enabling them to skip the R&D phase.
True
15. True or False: The wealth gap between China’s coastal regions and
its interior will close very soon due to the rapid economic growth
of China’s economy.
False, the wealth gap is threatening political stability and
Beijing is pressured to maintain high growth.
16. True or False: After numerous cyberattacks and instances of espi-
onage against the U.S., Washington communicated to China’s
leaders its doctrine for countering cyberattacks, and China recip-
rocated in the interest of maintaining peace.
False, China has not reciprocated and China closed down
a “cyber working group” to establish a code of cyber-
conduct after America accused the Chinese military offi-
cers of espionage.
17. True or False: The death of Osama bin Laden during Obama’s
presidency is comparable to the death of ISIS “caliph” Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi during the Trump presidency.
True
18. True or False: President Putin once called the collapse of the Soviet
Union “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the twentieth century.”
True
19. True or False: America lost the Vietnam war not because of insuf-
ficient hard power but because of a combination of domestic
opposition and inadequate soft power.
True
20. True or False: When the World Bank switched to using purchasing
power parity (PPP) to calculate GNP, China embraced the change
because it suggested China was poised to become the world’s
largest economy.
False, even China opposed the PPP standard because it
was so misleading.
Short Answer Questions

What is the “one China” policy?
“There is but one China and Taiwan is a part China.” Nixon
declared jointly with Mao that the government of the People’s
Republic of China is the sole legal government of China, and
that Taiwan is a province of China, that no other country has
the right to interfere in the liberation of Taiwan, and that the
Chinese government firmly opposes any activities that aim to
create “one China, one Taiwan.”
Explain what was meant by describing the U.S. as a “reluctant

sheriff.”
Under President Bush, the U.S. would involve itself in over-
seas commitments only when local powers could not maintain
peace. Kagan remarked, “the rest of the world saw the United
States not as a global leader seeking the global good but as an
angry Leviathan narrowly focused on destroying those who had

attacked it … [it was an] incompetent self-absorbed hegemon.”
Describe President Obama’s simultaneous foreign policy challenges

and how they impacted one another.
The EU and Eurozone were in disarray, ISIS was causing
turmoil in the Middle East, Iranian nuclear talks were at risk,
China was posturing in the Sea of Japan and the south China
Sea, and Russia was meddling in Ukraine. Obama’s effort to
“pivot” to Asia to respond to China’s rise was not as effective
as hoped, due to the disorder in the Middle East and Russia’s
involvement in Ukraine.
What are “debt traps”? How can they be used to gain political and
military influence?
Debt traps involve lending money to countries, frequently
without conditions such as fostering democracy, but at high
interest rates that are impossible to repay. This forces the recip-
ients of the loans to hand over control of natural resources or
other assets. The lending country can acquire military and/or
political influence as well owing to debt-trap diplomacy. Recipi-
ents may find it difficult to maintain sovereignty.
How did President Trump justify his withdrawal from the

Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and how might with-
drawal and efforts to develop low-yield nuclear weapons impact
relations with Russia?
Trump justified it because Russia violated the treaty, and China
had INF missiles already (though China was not part of the
treaty). Moscow had deployed cruise missiles that threatened
American NATO allies, so Trump felt it acceptable to withdraw.
US-Russian relations have soured, and it’s very risky to develop
low-yield weapons because Moscow has no way of knowing if
a weapon is low-yield or high-yield and may therefore escalate
an already precarious situation. “This risks a future without a
nuclear taboo.”
Define and provide two examples each for “hard power” and “soft
power.”
Hard power consists of resources that allow for coercion or
reward, such as military action and economic sanctions. Soft
power consists of characteristics that others admire and “help
to provide co-optive behavioral power,” such as strong rela-
tions with allies, economic assistance programs, and cultural
exchange.
How might the success of the Belt and Road Initiative alter public
perceptions of authoritarianism? What would that mean for the
global liberal order?
It will foster claims that authoritarianism can foster security
and growth more effectively than “erratic” democracies, thus
making the general public more amenable to authoritarianism
over democracy. Some believe that the entire BRI is an attempt
to foster an illiberal world order.
In 2019, a Pew poll of 32 countries found that a median of 64%

lacked confidence that Trump would do the right thing in foreign
policy. What are some of the implications of this low rating?
It suggests that Trump’s actions during his first year in office
were not an anomaly, that doubts about U.S. commitments
abroad are widespread, that the unpredictability of the sitting
U.S. president is almost to be expected, the United States has
declining soft power, and that there is now an opening for China
and Russia to assert dominance.
In response to American accusations of hacking, China cited infor-

mation from the Snowden leak that America had hacked numerous
Chinese sites. How did President Obama justify it?
Obama replied by saying that “every country in the world, large
and small, engages in intelligence gathering.” However, he made
it clear that there was a difference between intelligence gathering
and a hacker directly connected to the Chinese government or
military trying to hack Apple to get designs for the newest Apple
product, the latter of which he considered theft.
America is pulling back from its role in international affairs. If

America abdicates its role as a global hegemon, what are some
potential consequences that may arise?
Rivals may grow aggressive and coerce their neighbors. Amer-
ican allies that are potential targets of China, Russia, and Iran
will be vulnerable to attack. Nuclear proliferation would become
more likely, strategic stability would be at risk, deterrence would
be less credible, and the world in general would be more
dangerous.
Essay Questions
1. Joseph Nye warns that the belief that a country is declining may
produce a decline, even if there was not one to begin with. Is this
true? Why or why not?
2. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo opposed Pakistan’s loan request
from the IMF due to the debt traps of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Explain his reasoning and elaborate on what it could mean for the
future of the liberal world order.
3. Gilpin argues that a hegemon is necessary to sustain a liberal inter-
national economy, while Keohane claims that once a hegemon
establishes international regimes, it may not be needed to main-
tain them. Based on current events, which prediction appears more
accurate?
4. David Shambaugh argues that China is deficient in influence and
soft power. How might this hobble China’s foreign relations and its
rise to becoming a global superpower?
5. What does President Trump’s abandonment of the United States’
Kurdish allies communicate about his views on international
commitments, and the status of U.S. isolationism now as opposed
to the 1940s? What does this mean for Syria?
PART II
The Spread of Nationalist-Populism

CHAPTER 4
The Sources and Spread of Populism: America
“Populism” in America during the last century was used mainly to

describe left-wing efforts to reduce economic inequality. Right-wing
nationalist- and authoritarian-populism were responsible for the election
of President Donald Trump.
Introduction: Authoritarian-Populism
According to Timothy Garton Ash, the Trump administration inau-
gurated “a new era of nationalism” in which “nationalists are
giving one another the Trumpian thumbs-up across the seas”1 that
included contempt for democracy and human rights. The administration
denounced the International Criminal Court and forced the UN Security
Council to dilute a resolution outlawing sexual violence in war by deleting
references to reproductive health. This provoked the UN’s French repre-
sentative to comment acidly, “Women and girls who suffered from sexual
violence in conflict, and who obviously didn’t choose to become preg-
nant, should have the right to terminate their pregnancy.”2 Trump also
spoke approvingly of torturing terrorism suspects.
Trump threatened to send military units into cities and demanded
that local officials “dominate” demonstrators after demonstrators across
America demanded an end to police brutality and racism after George
Floyd, an African-American, died in police custody in Minneapolis.

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72033-9_4
Former Defense Secretary General James Mattis responded to the pres-

ident’s incendiary rhetoric, “Donald Trump is the first president in my
lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even
pretend to try.” Mattis continued, “I swore an oath to support and defend
the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath
would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional
rights of their fellow citizens….”3
In America, authoritarian-populism accompanied declining trust in
government and rising political divisions. Growing economic inequality
was one of the causes. Declining status was as important as economic fear
for white Trump voters, except in America’s “rust belt,” and contributed
to cultural and racial anger and existential fear for their dominance
of the country. These factors endangered American democracy. Trump
supporters tended to be older, poorly educated, blue-collar white males
who opposed change, and believed “elites” and mainstream politicians
did not respect them. They thought other countries had unfairly treated
America and U.S. workers. Trump’s opponents tended to be young,
nonwhites and college-educated white voters, suburbanites, and women.
Republicans, which became the party of those “left behind” in 2016,
believed they could increase turnout among older blue-collar whites
without losing young and racially diverse voters who constituted future
voters. Evangelical Christians, among Trump’s most reliable voters, hypo-
critically supported Trump despite his blatant moral lapses. Not all
evangelicals, however, were so accepting. Mark Galli, editor of Chris-
tianity Today, demanded Trump’s removal because it was “not a matter of
partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments,”
and Trump was “a near perfect example of a human being who is morally
lost and confused.”4
Trump’s populism influenced populist leaders elsewhere. He admired
authoritarian leaders who sought to undermine the liberal order and
engaged in publicly demanding his attorney general and secretary of state
take unprecedented steps to smear political foes in the midst of the 2020
presidential campaign, actions that those like Putin, Xi, and Erdoǧan used
against their political foes. “What’s so dispiriting is to see the president
throwing away 70 years of accrued commitment, bipartisan commit-
ment, to America promoting human rights and freedom in the world,”5
declared a former state department official. “He’s just a bull carrying his
own china shop with him whenever he travels the world,” declared one
4 THE SOURCES AND SPREAD OF POPULISM: AMERICA 145
historian.6 “Who are the three guys in the world he most admires? Presi-
dent Xi of China, Erdogan and Putin,” a Trump aide confided. “They’re
all the same guy.”7 He praised China’s President Xi Jinping’s contempt
for democracy and congratulated Xi for his “extraordinary elevation” after
China’s president had removed limits to how long he could remain in
power and had placed most of China’s Muslim Uighurs in concentration
camps.
Trump defended Putin’s murder of political foes, comparing that
behavior favorably with America’s. Putin was unopposed in his rigged
election to a fourth term as Russia’s president, yet Trump ignored a
warning from his own advisers “DO NOT CONGRATULATE.” Indeed,
then National Security Adviser John R. Bolton expressed concern about
Trump’s doing favors for leaders like Erdoǧan and Xi. Trump and Putin
had in common a dislike of the liberal globalist establishment. personified
by Obama and Hillary Clinton.
The president also congratulated Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte
for doing an “unbelievable job” in his drug war, which involved thou-
sands of extrajudicial killings, and he called Egypt’s murderous President
Abdel Fatah el-Sisi a “fantastic guy.” Also, influenced by the dictators
of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Trump blindsided his secretary of state and
backed Libyan strongman Khalifa Hiftar in his effort to seize control of
his country from a UN-backed government in Tripoli. Trump also said he
would be honored to meet North Korea’s murderous leader Kim Jong-
un, a leader whom he had previously ridiculed. Kim, he declared, was still
young. “There was a lot of potential threats that could have come his
way. He’s managed to lead a country forward, despite the concerns that
we and so many people have.”8 Trump shrugged off Kim’s repression
by labeling him a “tough guy.” After meeting Kim in June 2018, Trump
declared. “He speaks and his people sit up at attention,” and “I want my
people to do the same.”9
Reflecting Trump’s contempt for human rights, John Bolton described
how Trump approved of Chinese President Xi’s internment of China’s
Uighurs, which he thought “was exactly the right thing to do.”10 He and
his son-in-law Jared Kushner also defended Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed
bin Salman whom the CIA concluded had arranged the brutal murder of
dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Iranian consulate in Istanbul.
He minimized the significance of the murder. Instead of accepting the
CIA’s “high confidence assessment,” Trump closed the matter by saying,
“It could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic
event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”11 Trump also emphasized

the importance of U.S. arms sales to the Saudis and Saudi Arabia’s rivalry
with Iran and resisted congressional efforts to end U.S. arms sales to
Saudi Arabia that MBS was using in Yemen, producing the world’s worst
humanitarian crisis.
One critic wrote, “Trump’s reaction—or non-reaction—to the Saudi
regime’s brutal killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is a holiday-season
gift to autocrats around the globe. It shows them that if you just shower
Trump with over-the-top flattery, feed him some geopolitical mumbo
jumbo and make vague promises to perhaps buy some American-made
goods in the future, he will literally let you get away with murder.”12 Iran
ultimately condemned and executed five minor officials for the murder
but took no action against the crown prince or his advisers. A former aide
to President Ronald Reagan concluded, “A clear and dangerous message
has been sent to tyrants around the world: Flash enough money in front
of the president of the United States, and you can literally get away with
murder.”13
Populist Themes in Trump’s

Policies and Governance
Since Donald Trump had no foreign-policy experience or knowledge and
no consistent ideology, those appointed as advisers and cabinet members
had more significant roles than usual. In campaigning, Trump voiced
controversial views that ran counter to U.S. support for a liberal order,
and, consequently, he was termed a “demolition man.” Rather than
supporting internationalism and multilateralism, he emphasized bilater-
alism and unilateralism. Trump’s populism also entailed a propensity to
ignore traditional diplomacy.
Trump’s campaign contained several themes, which persisted during
his presidency and some that he later reversed. Among the former was
dislike of multilateralism, which was evident in criticism of alliances and
international regimes. Another was hostility toward long-time friends and
allies and praising foes. This led former Vice President Dick Cheney, a
neoconservative hardliner, to conclude, “we’re getting into a situation
when our friends and allies around the world that we depend upon are
going to lack confidence in us.”14
Trump’s nationalism and contempt for science led to his refusal
to participate in cooperative efforts to solve collective dilemmas. He
dismissed scientific evidence about climate change, expressing skepticism

that global warming was manmade and calling it a “hoax” despite a report
by thirteen U.S. government agencies to the contrary that the admin-
istration refused to publish. Trump also reduced funding of scientific
research. He rolled back environmental regulations, promoted using coal,
and withdrew from the Paris climate accord although America’s defense
authorization bill referred to climate change as a national security threat.
Trump rejected globalization’s emphases on free trade and the unfet-
tered movement of people. Hence, he supported protectionism and racist
efforts to eliminate illegal and legal immigration. His racism was evident
when he attacked four new left-wing Democratic members of Congress—
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida
Tlaib—all U.S. citizens and women of color and of whom only one who
had been born overseas. Referring to them, he declared “if you’re not
happy in the U.S., if you’re complaining all the time, very simply, you
can leave.” “Trump’s demand,” wrote one observer, “is less a factual
assertion than a moral one, an affirmation of the president’s belief that
American citizenship is conditional for people of color, who should be
grateful we are even allowed to be here.”15 Democratic congressional
leader Nancy Pelosi argued that Trump’s “plan to ‘Make America Great
Again’ has always been about making America white again.”16 Trump’s
ugly xenophobia followed earlier tweets about Mexican immigrants as
“criminals, drug dealers” and “rapists,” Nigerians going back “to their
huts,” Haitians all having AIDS, or of African migrants from “shithole
countries.”17
The president was blind to the economic role that young migrants
played in paying taxes to provide medical and social funds for an aging
population. His administration rejected a Department of Health and
Human Services’ study that showed that refugees provided billions of
dollars more in government revenue than they cost. Although liberal
immigration was a source of America’s soft power, in 2017, Washington
withdrew from U.N. talks about a Global Pact on Migration, claiming
it would violate U.S. sovereignty. In addition to railing against Hispanic
immigrants, he pardoned the anti-Hispanic Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio
who had been imprisoned for violating prisoners’ rights. He sought to
build a wall on Mexico’s border, and, when Congress denied him funding,
he declared a national emergency to get around congressional authority.
Trump also demonized Islam and imposed a travel ban on Muslim visi-
tors. He praised Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, repeat-
edly questioned the relevance of America’s alliances, publicly insulted
friendly leaders, and opposed free trade, all contrary to the liberal
order. These were elements of a strident populism, reflecting impetuosity,
bullying and racism. The president made policy with little information
and read little, ignoring, for example, multiple warnings from the intel-
ligence community in presidential daily briefs concerning the dangers
of the coronavirus. He flogged mainstream media, ignored intelligence
reports, and made policy based on whims, Fox News, and false claims.
Frequently, without warning, he altered “decisions” abruptly, and was
routinely inconsistent, a nightmare for his advisers “In place of the march
towards truth,” wrote Luce, “we had reality-TV politics.”18 Trump told
tall tales, especially in mass meetings, which expressed his followers’
grievance, and he repeatedly attacked mainstream media to undermine
“true news” that he called “fake news.”
As president, Trump made 30,573 false and misleading claims, nearly
half in his final year, averaging six a day in his first year, 16 days in his
second, 22 claims day in his third, and 39 claims a day in his final year.19
“As a result of Trump’s constant lying through the presidential mega-
phone, more Americans are skeptical of genuine facts than ever before,”
observed historian Michael Beschloss.20 “Some days were extraordinary:
189 claims (a record) on Aug. 11, 147 claims on Aug. 17, 113 claims
on Aug. 20.”21 Many of these concerned the coronavirus, foreign policy,
events leading to his impeachment, the protests following George Floyd’s
death in police custody, and allegations and conspiracy theories about
President Obama spying on his campaign. Indeed, his references to the
crimes of “Obamagate” were entirely imagined. In 2019, almost 1,000
lies concerned the Ukraine investigation, including efforts to smear Joe
Biden. Media sycophants like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Rush
Limbaugh echoed and amplified Trump’s lies, and his base, living in an
Orwellian world, ignored them. Trump also lied 21 times in his accep-
tance speech of 70 minutes to the Republican convention in August 2020,
involving the border wall, drug prices, unemployment, the pandemic,
and Joe Biden’s supposed desire to defund the police (that he actu-
ally opposed). Many of his lies spread conspiracy theories or were in
vicious personal attacks on foes. Others promoted racial, religious, or
ethnic hatred, often directed at immigrants. Former FBI director Andrew
McCabe wrote, “Every day brings a new low, with the president exposing
himself as a deliberate liar who will say whatever he pleases to get whatever
he wants.”22
In her essay, “On Bullshit and the Oath of Office: The ‘LOL Nothing
Matters’ Presidency,” Quinta Jurecic argued that Trump was not simply
a bald-faced liar but created his own reality. She wrote “foundational
disrespect for meaning and consequence” would make it “impossible for
Donald Trump to faithfully execute the laws of this nation and the duties
of the oath of office and to preserve, protect, and defend the Consti-
tution.”23 Trump fit the role of a “bullshitter,” as defined by Harry
Frankfurt, even better than “liar,” “Someone who lies and someone who
tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game.
Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response
of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of
the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bull-
shitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority
of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no
attention to it at all.”24
“We in the intelligence world,” wrote Michael Hayden, former CIA
and NSA director, “have dealt with obstinate and argumentative presi-
dents through the years. But we have never served a president for whom
ground truth really doesn’t matter.” Over time, he continued, “it had
become clear to Hayden that reaching security decisions in the Trump
administration had a pattern.” “Discussion seems to start with a presi-
dential statement or tweet. Then follows a large-scale effort to inform the
president, to impress upon him the complexity of an issue, to review the
relevant history, to surface more factors bearing on the problem, to raise
second- and to raise second- and third-order consequences and to explore
subsequent moves.” Hayden recalled that Trump insisted “on five-page
or shorter intelligence briefs, rather than the 60 pages we typically gave
previous presidents.” 25 Many key issues could not easily be simplified.
“One dismaying factor of it all,” commented Nancy Pelosi, “is that the
president doesn’t just seem to have the attention span or the desire to hear
what the intelligence community has been telling him.”26 Trump’s tweets
were frequently gibberish. After one “tweet storm,” Nick Bilton, author
of Hatching Twitter, declared, “It’s almost like a kid who is screaming for
a lollipop and an ice pop and a caramel and a chocolate, and is eventually
going to get one of them, and it’s like, ‘Which is the thing that’s going
to work?’”27
Adding to the chaos in the White House, the former president was
remarkably lazy and was a part-time president, spending 60% of his time
as “executive time”—watching Fox TV, reading newspapers, and then
phoning advisers and friends, and officials rather than conducting offi-
cial business. Trump also spent considerable time grooming himself. “By
Trump’s own account, shampooing with Head & Shoulders and then an
hour of drying. Only then does the extensive combing and hair-spraying
begin. In addition, there is the coloring of both hair and skin to what-
ever bad ombre of orange he desires. Self-tanning creams can take four
to eight hours to do their magic before they can be washed off.”28
Trump’s impetuosity was evident in his sudden decision in December
2018 to withdraw America’s troops from Syria owing to the “defeat”
of the Islamic State. Only a month later America’s intelligence commu-
nity denied the president’s claim that the IS was no longer a threat, and
two months before Trump’s decision Bolton had vigorously reiterated
the administration’s determination to remain in Syria and repeated this
in January 2019 after Trump had announced his decision to withdraw.
Trump’s flipflop also triggered the resignation of Secretary Mattis, who
protested what he believed was not in America’s national interest. Eliot
Cohen, a former senior State Department official, wrote, “Henceforth,
the senior ranks of government can be filled only by invertebrates and
opportunists, schemers and careerists.”29
Shortly after his December decision, Trump reconsidered keeping
troops in Iraq to keep watch on Iran, but Iraq’s president rejected the
idea. Congressional concern about Washington’s support for Saudi Arabia
and withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan led bipartisan
Senate majorities to adopt nonbinding resolutions that decried Trump’s
policies. Then Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell offered an
amendment warning that, “the precipitous withdrawal of United States
forces from either country could put at risk hard-won gains and United
States national security.”30
Trump then reversed himself owing to the Pentagon’s objections.
America maintained a small military presence in Kurdish-occupied Syria
near the Turkish border. However, shortly after conversing with Turkish
President Erdoǧan in October 2019, who claimed the American-backed
Kurds were linked to domestic Kurdish terrorists, Trump ordered Amer-
ica’s withdrawal of the few remaining troops, virtually inviting Turkish
forces to invade Syria. This left America’s Kurdish allies at Turkey’s mercy.
Trump had again shocked his security advisers and members of Congress.
It seemed a capitulation to U.S. foes including Syria’s Assad regime, Iran,

and Russia, as well as Turkey’s authoritarian president, and was a deci-
sion influenced by criticism from conservative radio hosts and right-wing
supporters. The few hundred U.S. troops remaining to guard the “oil
wells” were faced with Russian military pressure, a dangerous develop-
ment. Trump then changed his mind yet again. He agreed to leave troops
in Syria to patrol the border with Iraq and protect Syria’s oil wells from
the Assad government and IS, and to send an additional 1,800 troops to
protect Saudi Arabia.
Conflicting signals tweeted by Trump produced confusion. “It is
chaos,” said Michael Stephens of London’s Royal United Services Insti-
tute. “The region is in chaos because the hegemonic power does not
seem to know what it wants to do, and so nobody else does.”31 The
Kurds, who had been loyal American allies, were forced to make a deal
with Syria’s. After this, Ambassador Thomas Pickering concluded, “The
prevailing mood is low and getting lower, if it can.”32 In an op-ed article,
Senator McConnell wrote that U.S. withdrawal from Syria would “leave
the American people and homeland less safe, embolden our enemies, and
weaken important alliances.”33 Unlike McConnell, Trump’s obsequious
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo endorsed Trump’s unprincipled deci-
sion. Following a critique of Pompeo’s humiliating willingness to support
every unwise and unconscionable presidential decision, two former U.S.
diplomats concluded, “If he continues on his current trajectory,” Pompeo
may end up being remembered as the worst secretary of state in modern
times,34 indeed, the worst in history.35
President Trump and Chaos in Government

Trump had ignored repeated warnings from intelligence officials in early
2020 that the coronavirus was becoming a global pandemic, and Secretary
Pompeo refused to cease calling it the “Wuhan virus.” Although it may
have first appeared in Wuhan, there was no evidence that the virus had
been manmade or genetically modified. Washington charged China with
withholding information about and failing to contain the virus. Chaos was
evident well into 2020 in the Trump administration’s confused, delayed,
ineffective, and politicized response to COVID-19, and its clumsy effort
to obtain global medical supplies even at the expense of allies. Even
wackier were Trump’s public recommendations that Americans consume
poisonous Lysol or implant ultraviolet lights inside themselves to avoid

the virus.
Shortly after America’s Centers for Disease Control identified the first
U.S. case of COVID-19 not linked to foreign travel, Trump said “when
you have 15 people — and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be
down to close to zero — that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” Trump,
of course, got it wrong as he tried to understate the seriousness of the
pandemic. He paid no attention to a Department of Health and Human
Services’ scenario, code-named ‘Crimson Contagion.’ It had simulated
an influenza pandemic carried out in 2019 and presciently predicted
the seriousness of a pandemic to Americans, while identifying “just how
underfunded, underprepared and uncoordinated the federal government
would be for a life-or-death battle with a virus for which no treatment
existed.” It also accurately predicted the problems of coordinating agen-
cies and the confusion it would cause within federal agencies and between
Washington and state and local agencies.
Trump demanded loyalty to him personally rather than the country
and tweeted criticisms of U.S. institutions including the State Depart-
ment, FBI, CIA, Congress, the courts, and the media. Indeed, the State
Department’s international organization bureau compiled “loyalty lists”
after Pompeo became secretary of state. Whether requiring America’s
ambassador to Britain to lobby for tournaments at his Scottish golf club
or replace professionals with avid followers, Trump showed that Martin
Wolf’s conclusion about recruiting authoritarian populists was correct.
“Replacing people of talent and principles with mediocrities who will do
anything for success has never been difficult” and who “shifted to the
nostalgia and cynicism of Trump.”36
In angry tweets, President Trump repeatedly attacked America’s intel-
ligence and law-enforcement agencies led by nonpartisan professionals
such as Robert S. Mueller III, James Comey, and Andrew McCabe. After
Trump fired Comey, the FBI initiated a counterintelligence investigation
of the president to see if he was working on behalf of Russia, and a poten-
tially explosive question was whether Putin had damaging information
about Trump. Thereafter, the Mueller investigation took over the FBI
inquiry. The president’s contempt for America’s security, intelligence, and
law-enforcement agencies eroded their morale and compromised their
effectiveness in providing intelligence information and timely advice vital.
Sometimes the president almost seemed at war with current and former
intelligence and national-security advisers. At the State Department, for
example, there was a significant increase in those who believed they could
disclose violations of law or rules without reprisal and a dramatic increase
in those who believed that State’s leaders were neither honest nor had
integrity.
Thus, in January 2019, contrary to Trump’s claims that Iran was still
seeking to acquire nuclear weapons and that North Korea was no longer
a threat, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Daniel Coats testified
before the Senate Intelligence Committee. “We do not believe Iran is
currently undertaking the key activities we judge necessary to produce a
nuclear device.” Astonishingly, Trump claimed to know what he imag-
ined in his alternate reality and derided his intelligence community. “The
Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes
to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong!” He then insultingly tweeted,
“Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!”37
The president also tweeted that the U.S-North Korea relationship
was better than ever and offered a good chance to denuclearize Korea.
Although the president claimed that Kim Jong-un wrote him “beau-
tiful letters,” Coats proved correct when in February 2019 the second
Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi collapsed with no agreement or even final
statement, an outcome caused partly by Trump’s overconfidence in his
negotiating skills and lack of preparation and discipline. This “should not
have happened,” wrote Richard Haass. “A busted summit is the risk you
run when too much faith is placed in personal relations with a leader like
Kim, when the summit is inadequately prepared, and when the president
had signaled he was confident of success.”38
Trump later said he was “happy” with Coats when, in reality, he was
furious, and told a former adviser that Coats was “not loyal” and was
“not on the team.” In this, as in many other instances, Trump demanded
loyalty to him personally rather to his country. “This is a consequence of
narcissism, but it is a strong and inappropriate public political pressure
to get the intelligence community leadership aligned with his political
goals,” said a C.I.A. official. “The existential danger to the nation is when
the policymaker corrupts the role of the intelligence agencies, which is to
provide unbiased and apolitical intelligence to inform policy.”39
The policymaking process of the National Security Council that
involved key agencies such as the State Department and CIA became
moribund. In an unprecedented decision, Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s
“chief strategist,” was given a role on the NSC’s decision-making Prin-
cipals Committee to assure that the president’s senior advisers carried
out his wishes. Equally unprecedented, the Director of National Intel-

ligence (DNI) the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and the CIA
director were no longer regular attendees in the Principals Committee
meetings. Bannon and Trump viewed professional foreign-policy bureau-
crats as pro-globalist, and Bannon vowed to fight for the “deconstruction
of the administrative state.” Several months later, Trump reversed the
decisions regarding NSC organization. Bannon was removed, while the
DNI and the CIA and JCS chiefs again became regular attendees of the
Principals Committee.
Trump, as former French Ambassador Gérard Araud observed, “is the
opposite of a bureaucratic president,” and “the chain of command, of
information up and down, is basically broken. So it’s quite difficult to
pick up information or transmit messages.”40 This was made worse by
Trump’s irascibility, vulgarity, his poor use of English, and his ignorance
of the Constitution and American law. Trump’s idiosyncratic decision-
making style fostered the breakdown of the systematic processes in the
NSC to develop and formulate alternative policies.
As National Security Adviser, John R. Bolton further weakened the
NSC process. Bolton had advocated overthrowing the Iranian regime, but
Trump, while in Japan in May 2019, undercut Bolton by declaring that
Washington was not seeking regime change in Iran. In September 2019,
Bolton became the third national security adviser fired by Trump who
tweeted that he strongly disagreed strongly Bolton’s suggestions. It was
a case of a hardline president finding his hardline national security adviser
too hardline regarding Iran, North Korea, and Afghanistan. Bolton was
replaced by a fourth adviser, Robert C. O’Brien. Under O’Brien, the NSC
ceased developing policy and was relegated to executing what Trump
wanted.
Some months later, a U.S. drone assassinated Qasem Soleimani, head
of Iran’s Quds Force, the external component of Iran’s Islamic Revolu-
tionary Guard Corps. The assassination was a significant escalation after
tit-for-tat provocations between America and Iranian-supported militias,
culminating in an effort by a Shia militia to occupy America’s embassy
in Iraq. Although Trump claimed the assassination preempted Iranian
violence against Americans, he was seeking to increase his credibility after
not reacting vigorously to previous Iranian provocations. Thereafter, Iran
announced it would resume unrestricted uranium enrichment, produc-
tion, research, and expansion that would violate the 2015 deal. That deal
would prevent production of uranium for a nuclear weapon for another
decade rather than a few months. Furthermore, Iraq’s parliament passed

a nonbinding resolution demands that U.S. troops in the country leave,
declaring the drone attack had violated Iraq’s sovereignty.
The Iranian imbroglio illustrated former Deputy Secretary of State
Anthony Blinken’s view of the president’s policymaking. “Mr. Trump’s
failure to develop policies — and his tendency to countermand them by
tweet — have caused major confusion worldwide about where we stand
on issue after issue,” resulting in “a long list of self-inflicted wounds.”41
Soleimani’s martyrdom revealed how dangerous was Trump’s neglect of
the NSC, which normally would have examined carefully consequences
of the action and the perils it posed to Americans and America’s rela-
tions with Iraq and Shia Muslims. Trump’s comments were conflicting
and muddled, menacing and conciliatory. His threat to bomb Iranian
cultural sites violated international law and undermined a norm supported
by advisers. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper thereafter withdrew the
threat to bomb cultural sites, and Trump unexpectedly ceased his belli-
cose comments after Iran retaliated by attacking U.S. bases in Iraq with
ballistic missiles.
Trump also shocked America’s military leaders by overruling the
Navy’s decision to punish a SEAL who had committed war crimes. He
thereby interfered with the Navy’s chain of command, apparently viewing
the military services as part of anti-Trump “deep state.” The Navy’s
politicization intensified when the commander of a U.S. aircraft carrier
was dismissed after requesting help to protect his crew from additional
COVID-19 cases. “The decay of norms, the rise of unaccountable fief-
doms, the discounting of civilian oversight, the loss of senior talent,
and the collapse of recruitment for new talent—none of those issues is
solved by a president with a different process or… a different ideology,”42
declared a former Justice Department official. Civil-military relations in
America were also complicated by fears before the 2020 election that
Trump might try to send troops into U.S. cities to quell disturbances
if he lost but tried to remain in the White House. U.S. military personnel
take an oath to protect the Constitution, not to any individual, including
the president.
Many positions in key agencies and ambassadorships remained vacant.
After four years, the Trump administration had failed to fill many
key government positions, including ambassadorships, directorships, and
undersecretaries. By February 2019, Trump had failed even to nomi-
nate 150 of 705 Senate-confirmed positions. As of mid-2019, only 455
confirmed appointees filled the 713 top positions in government, and

senior Pentagon positions were vacant or filled by temporary officials.
Trump named “acting” officials to high positions that could not muster
Senate approval, thereby evading the Senate’s constitutional authority to
“advise and consent” by confirming prudential appointees.
The Foreign Service had lost nearly half of its Career Ministers and
20% of its Minister Counselors within two years. The highest percentage
of political appointees in history were appointed U.S. ambassadors (44%),
and some 1,200 senior career service employees left during Trump’s
first three years. Trump’s reduction in the State Department’s budget
prompted Mattis to comment: “If you don’t fund the State Department
fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately.”43
Overall, during Trumps’ term, ten cabinet positions had a turnover,
eight of which had serial turnover (e.g., two secretaries of homeland secu-
rity and two secretaries of defense and state). Moreover, 91% (59/65) of
Trump’s senior-ranking advisers lost their jobs, 39% of which had serial
turnover (e.g., four chiefs of staff).44 Trump repeatedly declared “I’m the
only one who matters, because when it comes to it, that’s what the policy
is going to be.” He declared “I have a gut and my gut tells me more
sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me,”45 thus he did not
need experts. Instead, Trump surrounded himself with advisers, many of
whom were bootlickers, and some of whom were criminals. Within three
months of the 2020 elections, among those who had served him six were
convicted felons—Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Rick
Gates, Roger Stone, and George Papadopoulos—and Stephen K. Bannon
had been indicted. Moreover, shortly before ending his term as president.
Trump was involved in discussions involving pardoning family members
such as his Jared Kushner, and his children Ivanka, Donald Jr., and Eric,
who had acted as his advisers. He even considered pardoning himself,
although those whom he pardoned must be presumed to have committed
crimes for which he is pardoning them. What were their crimes?
Unfortunately, as Stephen Walt noted, the professional members of
these agencies, unlike political appointees, possessed “much of the insti-
tutional knowledge and expertise that enables the government to func-
tion.”46 As former Ambassador William J. Burns observed, “the real
threat to our democracy is not from an imagined deep state bent on
undermining an elected president. Instead, it comes from a weak state of
hollowed-out institutions and battered and belittled public servants, no
longer able to uphold the ever more fragile guardrails of our democracy
or compete on an ever more crowded, complicated, and competitive inter-

national landscape.”47 America’s career diplomats disliked the president’s
bullying of allies and transactional policies like his effort to “buy off”
China’s president in return for purchases of U.S. agricultural products
to aid his reelection. Trump’s impeachment further persuaded him that
the “deep state” included disloyal and partisan diplomats and advisers,
some of whom had testified. The consequence was his firing additional
professionals like Inspectors General of the intelligence community and
the State Department (whose successor resigned shortly afterward). The
foreign-policy community was in shambles.
The administration’s dysfunction, its failure to vet officials, and pres-
idential impetuosity were reflected in the revolving door of Trump’s
appointments. Thus, Trump axed DNI Coats whom he had praised only
days before and announced he would nominate to the position Rep. John
Ratcliffe (R-Tex.), who had served on the House intelligence committee
and had earned presidential approval by denouncing the Mueller report.
Coats was the tenth cabinet member to leave the Trump administration.
Ratcliffe had no experience in intelligence and, like many presidential
appointments to top national-security positions, was something of an
amateur. Ratcliffe also apparently had falsely overstated his achievements,
and, for this reason, Trump suddenly withdrew Ratcliffe’s nomination
and nominated Joseph Maguire, the director of the National Countert-
errorism Center, as acting director of national intelligence. Ratcliffe’s
nomination as permanent DNI was reinstated in 2020 to carry out
Trump’s wish to “rein in” the intelligence agencies that “have run amok.”
After resigning, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recalled, “What was
challenging for me coming from the disciplined, highly process-oriented
ExxonMobil corporation” was “to go to work for a man who is pretty
undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t
like to get into the details of a lot of things, but rather just kind of
says, ‘This is what I believe.’” Tillerson added, “So often, the president
would say, ‘Here’s what I want to do, and here’s how I want to do it,’
and I would have to say to him, ‘Mr. President, I understand what you
want to do, but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law.’”48 The
next day, Trump responded with a vulgar ad hominem tweet, declaring
that Tillerson “was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast
enough.”49
Trump and Russia

Among the mysteries of the Trump era was the president’s pro-Russian
views. President Obama had left a difficult problem for his successor by
expelling Russian operatives after accusing Moscow of meddling in Ameri-
ca’s 2016 election. Should the new administration confront Russia or seek
to reduce tensions? Had Trump been elected by Russian cyber-activities;
had the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow; and how would Trump
deal with Putin after assuming office?
During and after the campaign, there were numerous contacts between
Trump’s aides and Russians, including connections with Russian banks
and intelligence agencies. In December 2016, the CIA announced that
Russian computer hacking during the campaign was intended to make
Trump president. Some members in Trump’s coterie, including Jared
Kushner, Secretary Tillerson, national security adviser Michael Flynn, and
former campaign chairperson Paul Manafort had links with Russians.
Nevertheless, Trump denied Russian interference in the 2016 election
despite the unanimous judgment of U.S. intelligence agencies. Instead,
he insisted that Ukraine had meddled in America’s elections in order to
aid Hillary Clinton, a baseless claim.
Trump regarded the intelligence community’s investigation of foreign
involvement in America’s 2016 presidential election as politically tainted.
He described special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian
involvement as “a disgusting, illegal and unwarranted Witch Hunt.”
Nevertheless, before his inauguration, the CIA had shown Trump
evidence that Putin himself had ordered hacking before the election.
David Ignatius hit the nail on the head when he concluded that “Putin
probably doesn’t mind that his intelligence activities are so blatant that
they’re a subject of daily public debate. His goal isn’t to steal secrets
but to destabilize America’s political system.”50 Consequently, the Senate
Intelligence Committee issued a bipartisan report in April 2020 affirming
the Mueller investigation’s claim of Russian interference in America’s
2016 election. Trump’s disagreement with his intelligence agencies about
Russian motives increased their mutual mistrust.
Standing next to Putin in Helsinki in July 2018, Trump publicly cast
doubt on his own intelligence leaders and their voluminous evidence of
Russian hacking in 2016 and its continuation before the 2018 congres-
sional elections. This took place only days after the indictment of twelve
Russian intelligence agents for hacking. Referring to the 2018 election,
Christopher Wray, Trump’s appointed FBI director, reiterated that Russia

had interfered in 2016 and continued to do so. In the face of intense
bipartisan criticism, Trump improbably declared he had “misspoken,” and
that he had said to Putin, “I let him know we can’t have this,” and “We’re
not going to have it, and that’s the way it’s going to be.”51 In effect,
Trump had admitted he had made a huge blunder in Helsinki, perhaps the
worst since he had equated white supremacists (including Ku Klux Klan
members and neo-Nazis) with counterdemonstrators in Charlottesville.
Later, when asked if Moscow was still trying to manipulate Ameri-
ca’s elections, Trump answered “no,” but, when confronted with Coats’
opposing conclusion, the president reversed course. “Well, I accept. I
mean, he’s an expert,” Trump declared. “I have tremendous faith in Dan
Coats, and if he says that, I would accept that.” Two days later, Trump
reversed himself again, describing the issue of Russian interference in
U.S. elections as “a big hoax.”52 In fact, on hearing of Trump’s elec-
tion, Boris Chernyshev, a nationalist member of Russia’s Duma, lauded
Russia’s interference. Paraphrasing President Obama’s 2008 slogan, he
declared, “Tonight we can use the slogan with Mr. Trump: Yes we did,”53
and, when asked if he had wanted Trump to win, Putin admitted. “Yes, I
did.”54
Trump was also skewered for discussing Putin’s proposal to allow
Russian officials to interrogate America’s former ambassador to Russia,
Michael McFaul, in return for allowing special counsel Mueller to inter-
view the twelve Russian agents he had indicted (“an incredible offer”
Trump called it). McFaul called Trump’s action another example of
his naivete about Putin. Trump, McFaul argued, should not have had
a private talk with Putin in which the gullible president might have
reached other agreements. Former DNI James Clapper declared, “I’ve
never heard of such a thing. To turn over any U.S. citizen, particularly
a former ambassador, for the Russians to interrogate him? You’ve got to
be kidding.”55 Putin’s offer was possibly a trap sprung in their private
meeting. Trump thought he was a skilled dealmaker and wanted to leave
the meeting with a deal that reflected they could agree to a trade. Prob-
ably, Putin did not want to interrogate McFaul nearly as much as he
wanted Bill Browder, who had run Hermitage Capital Management, and
whose Russian attorney, Sergei L. Magnitsky, had died in jail in Russia
after receiving inadequate medical assistance. Browder had been instru-
mental in persuading Washington to pass the Magnitsky Act that imposed
sanctions on Russians involved in Magnitsky’s death. Washington did not

accept Putin’s proposal.
A Strategic Void
The fact that Trump’s unpredictable behavior fostered a confusing mix
of policies that collectively did not constitute a strategy was on view the
week following his disastrous summit with Putin in July 2018. For the
White House, the days after the summit demanded repeated corrections,
clarifications, and reversals in an effort to justify Trump’s pro-Russian
comments in Helsinki. Whatever Trump’s objectives, they were under-
mined by his mixed and muddled messages. Frequently, the confusion
took the form of Trump contradicting his own senior advisers and under-
mining their authority. This was not only apparent in his dealings with
Russia. Undermining his advisers was evident in Trump administration’s
shifting policies on other issues.
For example, when then-Secretary of State Tillerson declared he was
working to open negotiations with North Korea, Trump tweeted that it
was a waste of time. “Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be
done!”56 Notwithstanding the exchange of insults and threats with Kim
Jong-un, Trump met Kim in Singapore in June 2018 and again in Hanoi
the following year. The two leaders met a third time at the Demilita-
rized Zone in Korea in June 2019, marking another shift in tone and
policy between Trump and Kim from mutual bellicosity to engagement.
“When you talk about a wall,” Trump declared admiringly, “when you
talk about a border, that’s what they call a border. Nobody goes through
that border.”57 America and North Korea agreed to resume negotia-
tions although Washington continued economic sanctions against North
Korea, a policy Trump called “maximum pressure,” that differed little
from the Obama administration’s strategy of “strategic patience.”
Other examples included how Trump’s contradiction of U.S. Trade
Representative Robert E. Lighthizer regarding a potential trade deal with
China. He also publicly disagreed with his CIA director as to whether
Iran had violated the 2015 nuclear deal and contradicted National Secu-
rity Adviser Bolton about the value of negotiating with North Korea.
He again gainsaid the CIA regarding whether Saudi Crown Prince
Mohammad had ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. In May 2019,
Trump contradicted Bolton again after North Korea had tested several
short-range missiles. Bolton called the tests violations of UN resolutions,
while Trump declared he was unconcerned about them. In fact, the tests
significantly modernized Kim’s nuclear arsenal. America’s president had
again ignored “reality,” and, instead, had seen what he wished to see
rather that what was really happening.
Trump’s bewildering policy shifts in the Middle East had alarmed
U.S. allies that sought to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Meeting
with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Trump appeared both to abandon
America’s longstanding positions that a Palestinian-Israeli peace required
a two-state solution and U.S. opposition to additional Israeli settlements.
Nevertheless, Trump’s foreign-policy advisers reiterated the administra-
tion’s commitment to an independent Palestine, and Trump’s press
secretary suggested that: “while we don’t believe the existence of settle-
ment is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements
beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.”58
Then, after Trump hosted Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, whom he
praised, there was concern among pro-Israeli hardliners in the U.S. that
Trump was coming under the influence of moderate Jewish friends like
Ronald S. Lauder.
During a trip to Saudi Arabia in May 2017 where he met several Sunni
Arab leaders, Trump did not criticize Islam as he had previously done or
repeat that “Islam hates us,” but focused on the common fight against
terrorism, political Islam, and Iran as challenges to “decent peoples” of
all religions. He later claimed that his visit had been responsible for the
fact that Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE),
and Yemen had imposed a diplomatic and commercial boycott of Qatar, a
longtime U.S. regional military ally, for allegedly funding terrorist groups.
Trump had even encouraged Saudi Arabia and the UAE in their quarrel
with Qatar, contradicting his Secretary of State Tillerson shortly after
Tillerson had called for an end of the blockade.
These events suggested that the president, his secretary of state, and his
advisers were at odds over the Middle East as well as other issues. Pointing
out that, although Qatar hosted America’s largest airbase in the region, its
Arab foes hosted some of Trump’s business assets, a former State Depart-
ment adviser noted, “Other countries in the Middle East see what is
happening and may think, ‘We should be opening golf courses’ or ‘We
should be buying rooms at the Trump International.”59 The blockade of
Qatar led lasted January 2021 and reflected the desire for unity in the
face of President Biden’s desire to lower tension with Iran.
Trade and Tariffs

In the case of trade, Trump also repeatedly moved the goalposts. He went
back and forth on whether to leave NAFTA as well as trade wars with
Europe. Then, Trump threatened a trade war with China in early 2018,
but after brief bilateral negotiations, he backed off in May, and Secretary
of the Treasury Stephen Mnuchin announced, “We’re putting the trade
war on hold.”60
Trump’s new “decision” was greeted with dismay by the president
of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a group representing steel-
workers and their employers. “It’s a huge disappointment, given the
expectations,” he declared. “It plays right into Beijing’s hands... and is
more of the same old failed policies we saw under the Bush and Obama
administrations.”61 Others declared that Trump, who. As noted above,
viewed himself as a great “dealmaker” may have made a terrible deal.
China had already planned its “concessions” to America, which the pres-
ident trumpeted as a victory. China’s rapid growth and increasing wealth
increased its demand for fossil fuels and meat, especially pork, both of
which it could buy from the U.S. Notwithstanding Mnuchin’s comment,
the White House went forward with tariffs on Chinese goods a month
later, focusing on imports containing “industrially significant technolo-
gies,” and emphasizing Washington’s opposition to Beijing’s requirement
that U.S. companies in China’s turn over proprietary technological
information.
Trump’s indecisiveness was also evident when he walked back from
a decision to impose penalties on China’s ZTE electronics maker for
violating U.S. sanctions on Iran and North Korea. Considering the alle-
gations about ZTE, it was particularly odd that Trump tweeted that
his reason had to do with Chinese jobs, not sanctions. Comments by
administration advisers indicated that they were unsure of what Trump
sought from China in return. Mnuchin declared that the president was
not “going easy” on China over ZTE and wanted to be “very tough,”
and Larry Kudlow, then Trump’s chief economic adviser, ambiguously
claimed that the amount of tariffs to be imposed on China number was a
“rough ballpark estimate” that “interests the president a lot.” When the
Department of Commerce finally removed restrictions on ZTE sanctions,
it ignored the Senate’s concern that ZTE might steal U.S. technology.
As described in Chapter 9, a Sino-American trade war ensued. Wash-
ington also announced it was canceling an invitation for Beijing to
participate in a naval exercise in the South China Sea, thereby threatening

to poison Sino-American relations further. “On every issue, the balance of
power in this administration leans toward a more hostile and adversarial
relationship with China,”62 said a former adviser to President Obama.
Trump’s comments did not reveal how divided and chaotic the admin-
istration was in shaping trade policy as in other issues. Mnuchin and trade
adviser Peter Navarro, a virulent opponent of multilateral trade agree-
ments and a fervent economic nationalist, fought loudly and bitterly over
the issue of trade with China. Mnuchin unsuccessfully sought to exclude
Navarro from negotiations with China. He sought more and better
investment terms from Beijing, while Navarro sought to impede corpo-
rate outsourcing that he (wrongly) believed had eroded U.S. industry
and produced unemployment at home. These were very different objec-
tives. U.S. Trade Representative Lighthizer, who remarked that the
administration might yet impose tariffs on China, also undercut Mnuchin.
Astonishing Inconsistencies
“How to square these astonishing inconsistencies?” asked Max Fisher.
“Within the United States, the most common explanations draw on
Mr. Trump’s personality or on domestic politics. Perhaps he opposed
the Iran deal because he was not the one to close it, for instance, but
he can support a North Korea deal that would bear his signature.”63
Others focused on the president’s psychology. “It doesn’t take a person
with an advanced degree in psychology,” wrote Peter Wehner to see
Trump’s narcissism and lack of empathy, his vindictiveness and patho-
logical lying, his impulsivity and callousness, his inability to be guided by
norms, or his shamelessness and dehumanization of those who do not
abide his wishes.”64 Indeed, far from pursuing America’s national inter-
ests, former National Security Adviser Bolton, wrote In The Room Where
It Happened that in his year and a half in the White House, he was “hard
pressed to identify of significant Trump decisions … that weren’t driven
by reelection calculations.”65 Trump’s niece also focused on the presi-
dent’s narcissism, and his sister declared, “He has no principles. None.
None,” and “His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God.”66
George Will, one of America’s most respected conservative thinkers,
wrote what was among the most amusing and insightful description of
Trump. Shortly after Trump’s disastrous summit with Putin in Helsinki.
“America’s child president had a play date with a KGB alumnus ….
Like the purloined letter in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story with that title,
collusion with Russia is hiding in plain sight,” and “just as astronomers
inferred, from anomalies in the orbits of the planet Uranus, the existence
of Neptune before actually seeing it,” we might infer, and then find,
“still-hidden sources of the behavior of this sad, embarrassing wreck of
a man.”67
Inconsistencies also reflected changing advisers. Trump’s appoint-
ment of Mike Pompeo, former director of the CIA, as secretary of
state replacing Tillerson, and Bolton as national security adviser after
General H. R. McMaster in April 2018 left only one high-ranking offi-
cial that some termed “grown up,” Secretary Mattis. Both Tillerson
and Mattis had sought to maintain the Iran nuclear deal, but Pompeo
and Bolton were hardliners regarding Iran. In addition to using force
against Iran, Pompeo sought to foster a regional Arab alliance against
Tehran. However, divisions among Arab states made this difficult. As for
Bolton, one observer noted, “There are few more notorious hard-liners in
Washington than Bolton….He shares President Trump’s scorn for multi-
lateralism, and his loathing for the United Nations…is matched by his
contempt for the European Union. He sees both institutions as forums
for ponderous deliberations that undermine American sovereignty and
impede Washington’s ability to act decisively.”68 Thus, while attacking
the International Criminal Court and “supranationalism,” Bolton empha-
sized unilateralism and power in referring to America’s “righteous might”
as “the only deterrent to evil and atrocity.”69
Conclusions
Within a few years, most of those who were experts on foreign affairs
including Generals Mattis, H. R. McMaster, John F. Kelly had left. Mattis
was the last of those who Kimberly Dozier termed the “Axis of Adults,”
that had been “guiding national security by quietly tutoring the most
powerful man in America.”70 They had pushed back against ideolog-
ical amateurs like Bannon and Kushner and fostered policies to support
the American-led liberal order. Mattis’s resignation marked “the end of
the ‘contain and control’ phase of Trump’s administration — one where
generals, business leaders and establishment Republicans struggled to
guide the president and curb his most disruptive impulses.”71
The “adults” were gone, leaving the White House in the hands
of obsequious parvenus and inexperienced relatives like Jared Kushner.
Especially frightening was the role of Trump’s “gut” in making policy,

confidently asserting, “I know what I’m doing and I listen to a lot of
people, I talk to a lot of people. But my primary consultant is myself and
I have a good instinct for this stuff.”72 Thereafter, Trump’s effort to pres-
sure Ukraine’s new president to declare he would investigate a false claim
about Joe Biden and the role played by Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy
Giuliani, proved that the “adults” had lost the battle to prevent Trump
from making foreign policy for his own political ends. There was no
longer any accountability and no knowledgeable and influential adviser.
Not surprisingly, Bannon praised the president’s chaotic style of decision-
making. “The apparatus slow-rolled him until he just said enough and did
it himself. Not pretty, but at least done.”73
Trump fired General Kelly, his second chief of staff, in December
2018, by which time an astonishing 62% of those in the executive
office had changed. With the resignation of White House Counsel Don
McGahn in August 2018, turnover in senior level of White House
staff members had reached 83% including ten of twelve Tier One staff
members. Trump’s initial choices to replace Kelly in early 2019 refused
the job. “Why would anybody want to be Donald Trump’s chief of staff
unless you want to steal the office supplies before they shut the place
down?”74 said one observer.
Mick Mulvaney became Trump’s third chief of staff and after several
months was fired and replaced by number four, Mark Meadows, a right-
wing congressman who had chaired the House Freedom Caucus from
2017 to 2019. Then, amid the coronavirus pandemic, the director of
the Office of Personnel Management, who was charged with protecting
America’s 2.1 million civil servants, resigned. Chaos was the result
when. Trump ignored professional advisers, who were forced out if they
disagreed with the president. The final example was the resignation of
Attorney General William Barr only weeks before Biden was inaugurated
president after the otherwise submissive Barr had declared that there was
insufficient evidence of fraud presidential election to alter its outcome.
Trump had also derided allied leaders like French President Macron
and pandered to authoritarian foes like Putin and Kim, and he charged
Barack Obama with responsibility for everything that went amiss and
tweeted vulgar comments and lies about those who angered him.
In defense, trade, the environment, foreign aid for the COVID-19
pandemic and other issues, Trump surrendered U.S. leadership notably to
China, undermined the liberal order, and increased U.S. isolation. “Right
now,” declared a Russian observer, “the Kremlin is looking for ways that
Russia can use the chaos in Washington to pursue its own interests.”75
Even after Russia backed Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, who
was faced with giant protests for having rigged that country’s election,
and Russia had poisoned reformer Alexei Navalny, Trump refused to crit-
icize Moscow despite the efforts of the State and Defense Departments
to adopt a tougher policy.
However, when it was revealed in late September 2020 that Trump
had paid virtually no income taxes for many years and that he had huge
debts to pay in the near future and had hidden sources of income,
there was renewed concern that the president may have been compro-
mised by Russia or another country. Two knowledgeable observers argued
that Trump’s “financial situation presents a significant counterintelli-
gence risk.”76 “The strong-arm leaders Trump assiduously cultivates,
from India’s Narendra Modi to the Philippines’s Rodrigo Duterte and
Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan,” wrote another, “all head countries that
house his most lucrative overseas businesses—and they know it,” and
“their leaders have cannily used his business entanglements to diplomatic
advantage.”77
Trump’s policies forced friends to look elsewhere for allies. The
result accelerated the end of the postwar liberal world that America had
designed. This was no small thing. Nye warned, “Americans and others
may not notice the security and prosperity that the liberal order provides
until they are gone—but by then, it may be too late.”78 As Trump’s
impeachment loomed, Stephen Walt concluded “the Trump administra-
tion has yet to anything significant in foreign affairs, and its various
misguided initiatives have left it stuck in the breakdown lane,”79 and
Thomas Friedman described the president as “an amoral chump,” who
“sells out American values — awful enough — but then gets nothing
of value in return.”80
Notes
1. Cited in Rod Nordland, “Authoritarian Leaders Greet Trump as One of
Their Own,” New York Times, February 1, 2017, https://www.nytimes.
com/2017/02/01/world/asia/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-rodrigo-
dutert-kim-jong-un.html.
2. Cited in Rick Noack, “The U.N. Wanted to End Sexual Violence Kin
War. Then the Trump Administration Had Objections,” Washington Post,
April 24, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/04/

24/un-wanted-end-sexual-violence-war-then-trump-administration-had-
objections/?utm_term=.3f2dee4f922c&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1.
3. Cited in Jeffrey Goldberg, “James Mattis Denounces President Trump,
Describes Him as a Threat to the Constitution,” The Atlantic,
June 3, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/
james-mattis-denounces-trump-protests-militarization/612640/.
4. Cited in Sarah Pulliam Bailey, “Christianity Today, an Influential Evangel-
ical Magazine, Say ‘Trump Should Be Removed from Office,” Washington
Post, December 20, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/
2019/12/19/christianity-today-an-influential-evangelical-magazine-says-
president-trump-should-be-removed-office/.
5. Cited in Anne Gearan, “‘Don’t Worry About Us’: Critics Fault Trump’s
Hands-Off Response to Autocrat Abuses,” Washington Post, October 10,
2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/dont-worry-about-
us-critics-fault-trumps-hands-off-response-to-autocrat-abuses/2018/10/
10/d977fcce-cc9a-11e8-a360-85875bac0b1f_story.html?utm_term=.1a6
88c1e4349&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1.
6. Cited in Josh Dawsey and Philip Rucker, “Five Days of Fury: Inside
Trump’s Paris Temper, Election Woes and Staff Upheaval,” Washington
Post, November 13, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/
five-days-of-fury-inside-trumps-paris-temper-election-woes-and-staff-uph
eaval/2018/11/13/e90b7cba-e69e-11e8-a939-9469f1166f9d_story.
html?utm_term=.dd2301f99da9&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
7. Cited in Greg Miller, Greg Jaffe, and Philip Rucker, “Doubting the Intel-
ligence, Trump Pursues Putin and Leaves a Russian Threat Unchecked,”
Denver Post, December 14, 2017, https://www.denverpost.com/2017/
12/14/trump-pursues-putin/.
8. Cited in Jeremy Diamond and Zachary Cohen, “Trump: I’d Be
‘Honored’ to Meet Kim Jong Un Under ‘Right Circumstances’,” CNN
Politics, May 2, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/01/politics/don
ald-trump-meet-north-korea-kim-jong-un/.
9. Cited in Helene Cooper and Mark Landler, “Trump’s Promises to Kim
Jong-un Leaves U.S. and Allies Scrambling,” New York Times, June 15,
2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/world/asia/us-trump-
north-korea-credible-military-exercises.html?emc=edit_th_180616&nl=
todaysheadlines&nlid=43321680616.
10. John R. Bolton, The Room Where It Happened (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2020), p. 282.
11. Cited in Mark Landler, “In Extraordinary Statement, Trump Stands
with Saudis Despite Khashoggi Killing,” New York Times, November
20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/world/middleeast/
trump-saudi-khashoggi.html?emc=edit_th_181121&nl=todaysheadlines&
nlid=43321681121.
12. Eugene Robinson, “Trump Is Not a Champion of Human Rights. He Is
a Clueless Clown,” Washington Post, November 22, 2018, https://www.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-not-a-champion-of-human-rig
hts-he-is-a-clueless-clown/2018/11/22/979a1342-edd7-11e8-8679-
934a2b33be52_story.html?utm_term=.7ddd50cd80f6&wpisrc=nl_most&
wpmm=1.
13. Fred Ryan, “Trump’s Dangerous Message to Tyrants: Flash Money and
Get Away with Murder,” Washington Post, November 21, 2018, https://
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-dangerous-message-to-tyr
ants-flash-money-and-get-away-with-murder/2018/11/21/4202e69e-
edc2-11e8-8679-934a2b33be52_story.html?utm_term=.97285d4182ac&
wpisrc=nl_ideas&wpmm=1.
14. Cited in Robert Costa and Ashley Parker, “Former Vice President Cheney
Challenges Pence at Private Retreat, Compares Trump’s Foreign Policy
to Obama’s Approach,” Washington Post, March 11, 2019, https://www.
washingtonpost.com/politics/former-vice-president-cheney-challenges-
pence-on-trumps-foreign-policy/2019/03/11/ecddbff6-4436-11e9-
aaf8-4512a6fe3439_story.html?utm_term=.94a733011a69.
15. Adam Serwer, “What Americans Do Now Will Define Us Forever,” The
Atlantic, July 18, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/
2019/07/send-her-back-battle-will-define-us-forever/594307/?wpisrc=
16. Cited in Felicia Sommez and Nike DeBonis, “‘Trump Tells Four Liberal
Congresswomen to ‘Go Back’ to Their Countries, Prompting Pelosi to
Defend Them,” Washington Post, July 14, 2019, https://www.washin
gtonpost.com/politics/trump-says-four-liberal-congresswomen-should-
go-back-to-the-crime-infested-places-from-which-they-came/2019/07/
14/b8bf140e-a638-11e9-a3a6-ab670962db05_story.html https://www.
washingtonpost.com/politics/he-always-doubles-down-inside-the-politi
cal-crisis-caused-by-trumps-racist-tweets/2019/07/20/b342184c-aa2e-
11e9-86dd-d7f0e60391e9_story.html?utm_term=.80b88dc8a981&wpi
src=nl_most&wpmm=1.
17. Cited in Fred Barbach, “Trump’s Racist Comments Can Be Used Against
Him in Courts as Judges Cite Them to Block Policies,” Washington Post,
July 16, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/tru
mps-racist-comments-can-be-used-against-him-in-court-as-judges-cite-
them-to-block-policies/2019/07/16/6ed0ea6a-a7f1-11e9-86dd-d7f0e6
0391e9_story.html?utm_term=.53bad714dc34&wpisrc=nl_daily202&
wpmm=1.
19. Glenn Kessler, “Trump Made 30,573 False or Misleading Claims as

President. Nearly Half Came in His Final Year,” Washington Post, January
23, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-fact-checker-
tracked-trump-claims/2021/01/23/ad04b69a-5c1d-11eb-a976-bad643
1e03e2_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&
utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.
washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F2edd9cf%2F600da33e9d2fda0efbb
ef8d4%2F596b51d8ae7e8a44e7d58086%2F9%2F66%2F600da33e9d2fd
a0efbbef8d4.
20. Cited in ibid.
21. Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo, and Meg Kelly, “Trump Is Averaging
More Than 50 False or Misleading Claims a Day,” Washington Post,
October 22, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/
10/22/president-trump-is-averaging-more-than-50-false-or-misleading-
claims-day/?utm_campaign=wp_the_daily_202&utm_medium=email&
utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_daily202.
22. Andrew G. McCabe, “Every Day Is a New Low in Trump’s White
House,” The Atlantic, February 14, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.
com/politics/archive/2019/02/andrew-mccabe-fbi-book-excerpt-the-
threat/582748/.
23. Cited in Roger Cohen, “Donald Trump Can Just Not Help It,” New York
Times, January 11, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/opi
nion/donald-trump-illegal-immigration-border-wall.html.
24. Harry Frankfurt, “On Bullshit,” n.d., https://www2.csudh.edu/cca
uthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_-_on_bullshit.pdf.
25. Michael V. Hayden, “Michael Hayden: The End of Intelligence,” New
York Times, April 28, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/28/
opinion/sunday/the-end-of-intelligence.html.
26. Cited in John Wagner and Shane Harris, “Trump Blasts U.S. Intelligence
Officials, Disputes Assessments on Iran and Other Global Threats,”
Washington Post, January 30, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/
politics/trump-claims-great-progress-on-isis-north-korea-after-intellige
nce-officials-present-less-optimistic-view/2019/01/30/e95b74c6-23b7-
11e9-90cd-dedb0c92dc17_story.html?utm_term=.f8e39eec8a19&wpisrc=
nl_most&wpmm=1.
27. Cited in Ashley Parker, “Fifty-Two Tweets in 34 Hours: How a Trump
Twitter Frenzy Defined a Weekend,” Washington Post, March 24,
2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fifty-two-tweets-in-34-
hours-how-a-trump-twitter-frenzy-defined-a-weekend/2019/03/23/3be
d256c-4bf0-11e9-93d0-64dbcf38ba41_story.html?utm_term=.6c6c38cf1
a98&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1.
28. Dana Milbank, “It’s Obvious What Trump Is Doing During His Exec-
utive Time,” Washington Post, February 4, 2019, https://www.washin
gtonpost.com/opinions/mr-president-take-all-the-executive-time-you-
need/2019/02/04/88ab921a-28bb-11e9-8eef-0d74f4bf0295_story.
html?utm_term=.21591b3442d5.
29. Eliot A. Cohen, “You Can’t Serve Both Trump and America,” The
Atlantic, December 22, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc
hive/2018/12/mattis-proved-you-cant-serve-both-trump-and-america/
578902/?utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheAtlantic+%28The+Atlantic+-+
Master+Feed%29&utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedburner.
30. Cited in Catie Edmondson, “Senate Rebukes Trump Over Troop With-
drawals from Syria and Afghanistan,” New York Times, January 31, 2019,
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/us/politics/senate-vote-syria-
afghanistan.html?emc=edit_th_190201&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=433
21680201.
31. Cited in David D. Kirkpatrick, Ben Hubbard, and David M. Halbfinger,
“Trump’s Abrupt Shifts in Middle East Unnerve U.S. Allies,” New York
Times, October 12, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/
world/middleeast/trumps-abandonment-of-the-kurds-in-syria-has-other-
allies-worried.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_191013?campaign_
id=2&instance_id=12939&segment_id=17841&user_id=318a8b2e197d
8de30abd1bb02c4382ea&regi_id=43321681013.
32. Cited in Karen DeYoung, John Hudson, Josh Dawsey, and Ellen
Nakashima, “Demoralized State Department Personnel Question
Pompeo’s Role in Ukraine Crisis,” Washington Post, October 7, 2019,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/demoralized-state-
department-personnel-question-pompeos-role-in-ukraine-crisis/2019/
10/07/85536c3c-e93b-11e9-9306-47cb0324fd44_story.html?wpisrc=
nl_powerup&wpmm=1.
33. Mitch McConnell, “Mitch McConnell: Withdrawing from Syria Is a
Grave Mistake,” Washington Post, October 18, 2019, https://www.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/mitch-mcconnell-withdrawing-from-syria-
is-a-grave-mistake/2019/10/18/c0a811a8-f1cd-11e9-89eb-ec56cd414
732_story.html.
34. Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky, “Pompeo May Go Down as
the Worst Secretary of State in Modern Times,” CNN , October 5, 2019,
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/05/opinions/mike-pompeo-worst-sec
retary-of-state-miller-sokolsky/index.html?utm_medium=social&utm_sou
rce=twCNN&utm_term=link&utm_content=2019-10-06T17%3A45%
3A06&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
35. Jackson Diehl, “Mike Pompeo Is the Worst Secretary of State in History,”
Washington Post, August 30, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/
opinions/global-opinions/mike-pompeo-is-the-worst-secretary-of-state-
in-history/2020/08/30/00515750-e869-11ea-bc79-834454439a44_
story.html?utm_campaign=wp_todays_worldview&utm_medium=email&
utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_todayworld.
36. Martin Wolf, “Alarm Signals of Our Authoritarian Age,” Financial
Times, July 21, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/5eb5d26d-0abe-
434e-be12-5068bd6d7f06.
37. Cited in Mark Landler, “An Angry Trump Pushes Back Against His
Own ‘Naïve’ Intelligence Officials,” New York Times, January 30,
2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/us/politics/trump-intell
igence-agencies.html.
38. Cited in David E. Sanger, “Trump-Kim Summit’s Collapse Exposes
the Risks of One-to-One Diplomacy,” New York Times, February 28,
2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/world/asia/trump-
north-korea-nuclear-sanctions.html?emc=edit_th_190301&nl=todayshea
39. Cited in Landler, “An Angry Trump Pushes Back Against His Own
‘Naïve’ Intelligence Officials.”
40. Cited in Karen DeYoung, “Departing French Ambassador Reflects on
a Turbulent Time in Washington,” Washington Post, April 19, 2019,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/departing-
french-ambassador-reflects-on-a-turbulent-time-in-washington/2019/
04/18/a7cf350e-6202-11e9-9ff2-abc984dc9eec_story.html?utm_term=.
f2cd239b0203&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1.
41. Anthony J. Blinken, “No People. No Process. No Policy,” New York
nion/trump-foreign-policy-crisis.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&wpisrc=
nl_powerup&wpmm=1.
42. Heather Hurlburt, “Bolton Leaves the National Security Council in
Ruins,” Foreign Policy, September 13, 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/
2019/09/13/bolton-walks-away-from-the-national-security-councils-cor
pse-trump/?utm_source=PostUp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=
14961&utm_term=Editor#39;s%20Picks%20OC.
43. Cited in “China First,” The Economist, March 25, 2017, p. 10.
44. Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, “Tracking Turnover in the Trump Adminis-
tration,” Brookings, October 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/res
earch/tracking-turnover-in-the-trump-administration/?utm_campaign=
wp_power_up&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_
powerup.
45. Cited in Philip Rucker, Josh Dawsey, and Damian Paletta, “Trump
Slams Fed Chair, Questions Climate Change and Threatens to Cancel
Putin Meeting in Wide-Ranging Interview with The Post,” Washington
Post, November 27, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/
trump-slams-fed-chair-questions-climate-change-and-threatens-to-cancel-
putin-meeting-in-wide-ranging-interview-with-the-post/2018/11/27/
4362fae8-f26c-11e8-aeea-b85fd44449f5_story.html?utm_term=.741d0f
6ca6b0.
46. Stephen Walt, “Impeachment Is Redeeming the Blob,” Foreign Policy,
November 14, 2019, NPR, November 3, 2017, https://foreignpolicy.
com/2019/11/14/stephen-walt-foreign-policy-establishment-my-apolog
ies-to-the-blob/?utm_source=PostUp&utm_medium=email&utm_cam
paign=18108&utm_term=Editor#39;s%20Picks%20OC.
47. William J. Burns, “Trump’s Bureaucratic Arson,” The Atlantic, November
17, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/
deep-state-isnt-problem-weak-state/602131/?wpisrc=nl_todayworld&
wpmm=1.
48. Cited in Aaron Blake, “Rex Tillerson on Trump: ‘Undisciplined, Doesn’t
Like to Read’ and Tries to Do Illegal Things,” Washington Post,
December 7, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/
12/07/rex-tillerson-trump-undisciplined-doesnt-like-read-tries-do-illegal-
things/?utm_term=.0cce54e1ca34&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1.
49. Cited in Peter Baker, “Trump Says Tillerson ‘Is Dumb as a Rock’ After
Former Secretary of State Criticizes Hum,” New York Times, December 7,
2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/us/politics/trump-tiller
son.html?emc=edit_th_181208&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=43321681208.
50. David Ignatius, “This Is Not Your Grandfather’s KGB,” Washington Post,
July 26, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-is-not-
your-grandfathers-kgb/2018/07/26/f8775c04-9118-11e8-b769-e3fff1
7f0689_story.html?utm_term=.27d0781bdebc.
51. Cited in Mark Landler and Eileen Sullivan, “Trump Says He Laid Down
the Law in His Latest Account of His Meeting with Putin,” New York
Times, July 18, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/us/pol
itics/trump-putin-higher-intelligence.html?emc=edit_th_180719&nl=tod
aysheadlines&nlid=43321680719.
52. Cited in Felicia Sonmez, “Trump Again Reverses Course on Russian
Interference, Calls It ‘All a Big Hoax’,” Washington Post, July 23, 2018,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-again-reverses-course-
on-russian-interference-calls-it-all-a-big-hoax/2018/07/22/c8321528-
8e13-11e8-b769-e3fff17f0689_story.html?utm_term=.12b56eb6f1f7&
53. Cited in David Filipov and Andrew Roth, “‘Yes We Did’: Russia’s
Establishment Basks in Trump’s Victory,” Washington Post, November 9,
2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/
11/09/yes-we-did-russias-estnablishment-basks-in-trumps-victory/?utm_
term=.b899a44e487c.
54. Cited in Robert Draper, “Unwanted Truths Inside Trump’s Battles
with U.S. Intelligence Agencies,” New York Times Magazine, August
8, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/08/magazine/us-russia-
intelligence.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article.
55. Cited in Samantha Schmidt, “Outrage Erupts Over Trump-Putin ‘Con-
versation’ About Letting Russia Interrogate Ex-U.S. Diplomat Michael
McFaul,” Washington Post, July 19, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.
com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/07/19/trump-putin-conversation-
about-russian-interrogation-of-u-s-diplomat-prompts-outrage-astonishm
ent/?utm_term=.9ab2a86c2cde&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1.
56. Cited in Peter Baker and David E. Sanger, “Trump Says Tillerson Is
‘Wasting His Time’ on North Korea,” New York Times, October 1,
2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/01/us/politics/trump-tiller
son-north-korea.html.
57. Cited in Margaret Talev, “Trump Calls Korean DMZ a ‘Real Border’
Compared with His Wall,” Bloomberg, June 28, 2019, https://www.blo
omberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-29/trump-calls-korean-dmz-a-real-
border-compared-with-his-wall.
58. Cited in Mark Landler, Peter Baker, and David E. Sanger, “Trump
Embraces Pillars of Obama’s Foreign Policy,” New York Times, February
2, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/world/middleeast/
iran-missile-test-trump.html.
59. Cited in David D. Kirkpatrick, “Trump’s Business Ties in the Gulf Raise
Questions About His Allegiances,” New York Times, June 17, 2017,
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/17/world/middleeast/trumps-bus
iness-ties-in-persian-gulf-raise-questions-about-his-allegiances.html?_r=0.
60. Cited in Allen Rappeport and Noah Weiland, “U.S. Suspending New
Tariff, While Negotiating Trade with China, Mnuchin Says,” New York
Times, May 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/20/us/pol
itics/mnuchin-kudlow-china-trade.html?emc=edit_na_20180520&nl=bre
aking-news&nlid=4332168ing-news&ref=cta.
61. Cited in David J. Lynch, “Critics Fear Trump Is Ceding too Much to
China on Trade,” Washington Post, May 20, 2018, https://www.washin
gtonpost.com/business/economy/critics-fear-trump-is-ceding-too-much-
to-china-on-trade/2018/05/20/6d6d2b76-5c6a-11e8-a4a4-c070ef53f
315_story.html?utm_term=.d8642270e58d.
62. Cited in Mark Landler and Ana Swanson, “Trump, Strung by Being
Attacked at Soft on China, Pushes Ahead on Tariffs,” New York Times,
May 29, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/business/
white-house-moves-ahead-with-tough-trade-measures-on-china.html?
emc=edit_th_180530&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=43321680530.
63. Max Fisher, “How Trump’s Mixed Signals Complicate America’s Role
in the World,” New York Times, April 27, 2018, https://www.nytimes.
com/2018/04/27/world/asia/korea-iran-trump-interpreter.html?wpi
src=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
64. Peter Wehner, “A Damaged Soul and a Disordered Personality,” The

Atlantic, March 18, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc
hive/2019/03/trump-tweets-attack-john-mccain/585193/?wpisrc=nl_
daily202&wpmm=1.
65. Bolton, The Room Where It Happened, p. 437.
66. Cited in Michael Kranish, “In Secretly Recorded Audio, President
Trump’s Sister Says He Has ‘No Principles’ and ‘You Can’t Trust Him’,”
Washington Post, August 22, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/
politics/maryanne-trump-barry-secret-recordings/2020/08/22/30d
457f4-e334-11ea-ade1-28daf1a5e919_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_
post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_
most.
67. George F. Will, “This Sad, Embarrassing Wreck of a Man,” Washington
Post, July 17, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-
sad-embarrassing-wreck-of-a-man/2018/07/17/d06de8ea-89e8-11e8-
a345-a1bf7847b375_story.html?utm_term=.71da98d0c2e1&wpisrc=nl_
most&wpmm=1.
68. Ishaan Tharoor, “The Return of John Bolton Paves the Way for More
War,” Washington Post, March 26, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.
com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/03/26/the-return-of-john-bolton-
paves-the-way-for-more-war/?utm_term=.ad6336fa0ccc.
69. Cited in Ishaan Tharoor, “The White House’s New Attack on the
International System,” Washington Post, September 11, 2018, https://
www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/09/11/white-houses-new-att
ack-international-system/?utm_term=.840f139e557a.
70. Kimberly Dozier, “New Power Center in Trumpland: The ‘Axis of
Adults’,” Daily Beast, April 16, 2017, https://www.thedailybeast.com/
new-power-center-in-trumpland-the-axis-of-adults.
71. Julie Pace and Zeke Miller, “Analysis: One by One, Trump’s ‘Axis of
Adults’ Leaving,” AP, December 23, 2018, https://www.apnews.com/
b3e12e162abd46f2bb4ac9b4f3a81109.
72. Cited in Eliza Collins, “Trump: I Consult Myself on Foreign Policy,”
Politico, March 16, 2016, https://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-
primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03/trump-foreign-policy-adviser-
220853.
73. Cited in Mark Landler, “Trump Unites Left and Right Against Troop
Plans, but Puts Off Debate on War Aims,” New York Times, December
27, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/27/us/politics/trump-
syria-afghanistan-withdraw.html?emc=edit_th_181228&nl=todaysheadli
nes&nlid=43321681228.
74. Cited in Katie Rogers, Maggie Haberman, and Annie Karni, “After Ayers
Turns Down Chief of Staff Job, Trump Is Left Without a Plan B,” New
York Times, December 10, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/
12/10/us/politics/white-house-hiring-trump.html?wpisrc=nl_daily202&
wpmm=1.
75. Cited in Neil MacFarquhar, “Russia Looks to Exploit White
House ‘Turbulence,’ Analysts Say,” New York Times, February
27, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/27/world/europe/rus
sia-looks-to-exploit-white-house-turbulence-analysts-say.html.
76. Michael Morrell and David Kris, “Trump Is in Debt. We Can’t Ignore
the National Security Risks That Come with It,” Washington Post,
October 11, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/
10/11/trump-is-debt-we-cant-ignore-national-security-risks-that-come-
with-that/.
77. Ananya Chakravarti, “Trumpworld’s Corruption Is as Globalized as the
Ultra-Rich the President Mingles With,” Foreign Policy, October 12,
2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/12/trumpworld-corruption-
elliott-broidy-ultra-rich/.
78. Nye, “Will the Liberal Order Survive?” p. 16.
79. Stephen M. Walt, “Welcome to Trump’s Impeachment Foreign Policy,”
Foreign Policy, October 7, 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/
07/impeachment-trump-foreign-policy-turkey-syria/?utm_source=Pos
tUp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=15477&utm_term=Editor#
39;s%20Picks%20OC. Italics in original.
80. Thomas Friedman, “Trump’s Black Friday Sale: Oil, Guns and Morals,”
New York Times, November 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/
2018/11/20/opinion/trump-mohammed-bin-salman-khashoggi.html?
emc=edit_th_181121&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=43321681121. Italics in
original.
Questions
Multiple Choice
1. In America, what has accompanied declining trust in government
and rising political divisions?
a. Democracy
b. Authoritarian populism
c. Multilateralism
d. Socio-cultural globalization
2. Which of these are one of Trump’s most reliable voters, and
hypocritically support him despite his blatant moral lapses?
a. Evangelical Christians
b. Liberals
c. Muslims
Asian-Americans
3. President Trump congratulated the Chinese president Xi Jinping
for his “extraordinary elevation” after China’s president had done
what?
a. Launched a manned mission into space
b. Passed Marriage equality legislation
c. Declared July 4th a national holiday
d. Removed limits to how long he could remain in power
4. Which of these actions or policies regarding climate change did
President Trump do or enact while in office?
a. Instituted environmental regulations
b. Promoted the use of coal
c. Joined the Paris climate accord
d. Ordered dumps of oil in the Pacific Ocean
5. How many lies or misleading statements did Donald Trump tell
during his first three years as president?
a. 1,000
b. 3,363
c. 5,679
d. 16,241
6. Instead of consulting professional diplomats concerning Middle
East policy, President Trump assigned which member of his family,
who like Trump had no diplomatic experience, to lead an effort to
break the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate
a. Jared Kushner
b. Ivanka Trump
c. Eric Trump
d. Donald Trump Jr.
7. President Trump recognized what city as Israel’s capital?
a. Tehran
b. Jerusalem
c. Tel-Aviv
d. Nazareth
8. President Trump’s impetuosity was evident in his sudden decision
in December 2018 to do what owing to the “defeat” of ISIS?
a. Claim that he would send more troops anyway
b. Decrease the military budget by a third
c. Removed all US sanctions against Iraq and Syria
d. Withdraw America’s 2,000 troops from Syria
9. What is the name of Trump’s “chief strategist,” who was, in
an unprecedented decision, initially given a role on the NSC’s
decision-making Principals Committee to assure that the presi-
dent’s senior advisers carried out the president’s wishes?
a. Eric Trump
b. Robert Mueller
c. Stephen K. Bannon
d. Donald Trump Jr.
10. In early 2020, after the US assassination of an Iranian general,
Iraq’s parliament passed a nonbinding resolution demanding what?
a. All U.S. troops in the country leave
b. A formal apology from the president
c. A billion dollars in aid.
d. The deployment of 2,000 more troops to their country
11. Trump unexpectedly ceased his bellicose comments about Iran
after what?
a. Iran allow an increase in the amount of US troops
b. Tehran targeted U.S. bases in Iraq with ballistic missiles
c. The discovering of WMD in Iran
d. Meeting with the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
12. In December 2016, the CIA announced its judgment that Russian
computer hacking during the campaign was intended to do what?
a. Encourage voters for Hilary
b. Make the America election less corrupt
c. Discourage Trump voters
d. Make Trump president
13. After returning from the fiasco in Helsinki, Trump tweeted “The
Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy
of the people.” Who did President Trump say was the real enemy
of the people?
a. The Russians
b. The French
c. The Fake News Media
d. The American People
14. Under President Trump, America and North Korea agreed to
resume negotiations although Washington continued economic
sanctions against North Korea, a policy Trump called what?
a. Maximum pressure
b. Strategic patience
c. Maximum patience
d. Strategic pressure
15. President Trump threatened a trade war with what country in early
2018?
a. Canada
b. China
c. Brazil
d. Costa Rica
16. President Trump regards himself as being which of these?
a. Expert
b. Academic
c. Politician
d. Dealmaker
17. Secretary Defense General Jim Mattis was the last of the profes-
sionals whom Kimberly Dozier wrote had been “guiding national
security by quietly tutoring the most powerful man in America”
and last of which she called which of these terms?
a. Trumps minions
b. Axis of Adults
c. The Alliance
d. The Conspirators
18. President Trump said in a 2016 interview, that which of these was
his primary consultant in decision making?
a. Experts
b. His advisors
c. History
d. His gut
19. Which country’s president did Trump make an effort to pressure
into declaring they would investigate, what was a false, claim about
Joe Biden?
a. Russia
b. Ukraine
c. China
d. France
20. As of February 2019, Trump had failed even to nominate how
many of 705 Senate-confirmed positions?
a. 10
b. 20
c. 30
d. 105
True or False
1. True or False? Trump proposed slashing America’s budget for the
National Endowment for Democracy.
True
2. True or False? Trump opponents tend to be young, nonwhites and
white voters without a college education, suburbanites, and men.
False, Trump opponents tend to be college-educated
white voters not white voters without a college education
and tend to be women not men
3. True or False? Trump and Putin share a dislike of the liberal,
globalist establishment.
True
4. True or False? Candidate Trump had the benefit of foreign-policy

experience and knowledge along with a consistent ideology.
False, Candidate Trump had no foreign-policy experience
or knowledge and no consistent ideology
5. True or False? President Trump’s populism entailed a propensity
to utilize traditional diplomacy.
False, Trump’s populism has a propensity to ignore tradi-
tional diplomacy
6. True or False? President Trump supported protectionism and racist
efforts to eliminate illegal and legal immigration.
True
7. True or False? Trump also demonized Islam and imposed a travel
ban on Muslim visitors Muslim in his presidency.
True
8. True or False? Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA
and NSA, recalled that Trump “insists on five-page or shorter
intelligence briefs, rather than the 60 pages we typically gave
previous presidents,” but “[t]here are some problems that cannot
be simplified.”
True
9. True or False? Donald Trump’s relationship with the US intelli-
gence agencies has been one of mutual support.
False, the president’s contempt for and disregard of Amer-
ica’s security, intelligence and law-enforcement agencies
eroded their morale and threatened to compromise their
effectiveness in providing intelligence information and
advice vital in making foreign policy
10. True or False? The second Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi lead to
widespread agreement and was a major success.
False, the second Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi collapsed
in disarray with no agreement or even final statement
11. True or False? The foreign service lost nearly half of its Career
Ministers and 20% of its Minister Counselors during Trump’s first
two years.
True
12. True or False? During and after the presidential campaign, there
were numerous contacts between Trump’s aides and Russians,
including connections with Russian banks and Russian intelligence
agencies.
True
13. True or False? The details of all President Trump’s conversations
with Vladimir Putin were open to the public.
False, Trump concealed details of his conversations with
Putin during five meetings with the Russian president
14. True or False? Trump described the issue of Russian interference
in U.S. elections as a genuine problem.
False, Trump described the issue of Russian interference
in U.S. elections as “a big hoax”
15. True or False? When Talking about the Demilitarized Zone in
Korea, President Trump said admiringly, “when you talk about a
border, that’s what they call a border. Nobody goes through that
border.”
True
16. True or False? Meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu,
Trump appeared both to support America’s longstanding positions
that a Palestinian-Israeli peace required a two-state solution and
support U.S. opposition to additional Israeli settlements.
False, President Trump seem to abandon support for both
17. True or False? The Chinese have one of the slowest-growing
economies and middle classes in the world.
False, they have one of the fastest
18. True or False? Trump indecisiveness was evident when he walked

back from a decision to impose penalties on China’s ZTE elec-
tronics maker for violating U.S. sanctions on Iran and North
Korea.
True
19. True or False? During Trump’s term, trade war notwithstanding,
the United States had not gone to war with a major foe such as
Russia or China.
True
20. True or False? When President Trump fired General John F. Kelly,
his second chief of staff, in December 2018, an astonishing 62% of
those in the executive office had changed.
True
Short Answer
What are some factors that endanger American democracy today?
The declining trust in government and rising political divisions
as a result of growing economic inequality and for many white
Trump voters fear of declining. Declining status was even more
important than economic fear for white Trump voters, except
in America’s “rust belt”, and contributed to cultural and racial
anger and existential fear for their dominance of the country.
What has Donald Trump’s relationship been like with authoritarian

leaders? Be specific.
The president admires authoritarian leaders who seek to under-
mine the liberal order. He praised Chinese President Xi Jinping’s
contempt for democracy and human rights and congratulated
Xi for his “extraordinary elevation” after China’s president had
removed limits to how long he could remain in power and had
placed most of China’s Muslim Uighurs in the equivalent of
concentration camps. Trump defended Putin’s murders of polit-
ical foes, comparing that behavior favorably with America’s.
The president also congratulated Philippine President Rodrigo
Duterte for doing an “unbelievable job” in his drug war, which

involved thousands of extrajudicial killings.
Why did those appointed as advisers and cabinet members under

President Trump have a more significant role than usual?
President Trump had no foreign-policy experience or knowledge
and no consistent ideology, and because of all this inexperience
he would supposedly need to rely on those advisors and cabinet
members more.
How was President Trump and his administration blind to the polit-
ical and economic role that young migrants play in paying taxes to
provide medical and social funds for an aging population?
His administration rejected a Department of Health and Human
Services’ study that showed that refugees provide billions of
dollars more in government revenue than they cost. Although
liberal immigration has been a source of America’s soft power,
in 2017, Washington withdrew from U.N. talks about a Global
Pact on Migration, claiming it would violate U.S. sovereignty.
He sought to build a wall on the Mexican border, and, when
Congress denied him the necessary funding, he declared a
national emergency to get around congressional authority.
How has President Trump damaged the prospect for a Palestinian-

Israeli two-state solution?
Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moved the U.S.
embassy there, refused to endorse a two-state solution to the
issue, and no longer regarded Israeli settlements in the occu-
pied territories as violating international law. He also recognized
Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights and provided
cover for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who
threatened to annex the West Bank as well.
What were the consequences of President Trump’s use of a drone to

assassinate of General Qasem Suleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force?
It was a significant escalation after tit-for-tat provoca-
tions between America and Iranian-supported militias. Iran
announced it would resume unrestricted uranium enrichment,
production, research and expansion, essentially ending the 2015

deal that would have prevented production of sufficient uranium
for a nuclear warhead for another decade rather than a few
months. Also, Iraq’s parliament then passed a nonbinding reso-
lution demands that all U.S. troops in the country leave.
When ambassador William Burns said, “the real threat to our democ-
racy is not from an imagined deep state bent on undermining an
elected president. Instead, it comes from a weak state of hollowed-
out institutions and battered and belittled public servants.” What did
he mean?
Under the Trump administration many positions in key agen-
cies and ambassadorships in key countries remained vacant. For
example, by July 2019, only 455 confirmed appointees filled the
713 top positions in the government. Without these people to
do their job the US cannot compete on the ever more crowded,
complicated, and competitive international landscape.
Did President Trump accomplish any specific objectives or goals

during the 2018 Helsinki summit?
Most of President Trump’s statements required repeated correc-
tions, clarifications, and reversals in an effort to justify his pro-
Russian comments in Helsinki. Whatever Trump’s objectives,
they were undermined by his mixed and muddled messages.
How was the Trump administration’s dysfunction, its failure to vet

officials, and presidential impetuosity reflected in President Trump’s
appointments? Give an example.
All these were reflected by how Trump’s appointments were
a revolving door of people he would continually contradict
and fire. One example is Trump’s firing of DNI Dan Coats
whom he had praised only days before and announcing he
would nominate to the position Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Tex.),
Ratcliffe had little experience and was something of an amateur
so Trump suddenly withdrew Ratcliffe’s nomination and nomi-
nated Joseph Maguire, the director of the National Counterter-
rorism Center, as acting director of national intelligence.
Why did a former State Department adviser remark, “Other coun-

tries in the Middle East see what is happening and may think, ‘We
should be opening golf courses’ or ‘We should be buying rooms at
the Trump International”?
He was suggesting that President Trump has a conflict of
interest since he has business interest in the Middle East which
could lead him to do what best his financial self instead of what’s
in America’s interest.
CHAPTER 5
Great Britain: Brexit,

and Nationalist-Populism
Although overturned days before it was to take effect, British voters

narrowly favored their country’s withdrawal from the European Union
(EU) in a flawed referendum that former Prime Minister David Cameron
had promoted in order to overcome cleavages in his Conservative Party
over whether to remain in or leave the EU. Cameron had expected that
voters would wish to remain in the EU and resigned after “Leavers”
narrowly outnumbered “Remainers.” The Leavers narrow victory left
unclear what the UK’s relationship with the EU would be thereafter.
Fifty-two percent of Britons voted to “leave” the EU and 48 percent
sought to “remain” in the EU. The UK was deeply divided. Wales and
England had voted to “leave,” but Scotland and Northern Ireland had
voted to “remain.” A high percentage of elderly voters participated in the
referendum and were more likely to favor leaving than younger voters.
Moreover, a much lower percentage of the young voted. This was a key
factor in the outcome.
The Brexit Debate

There followed several years of constitutional crisis in the UK and
increasing disarray in the ruling Conservative Party, once the home of an
elite establishment but transformed into a group of nationalist-populists.
Brexit had become Britain’s leading ideological division, overcoming

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72033-9_5
class, religion, or economic status. Toward the end of the path toward
Brexit, British voters appeared to have changed their mind. Only months
before the Britain were initially due to leave the EU. Boris Johnson’s
action reflected authoritarian populism as he sought to avoid Parliament.
“Britain is in an existential crisis, and the U.S. is in a form of crisis,”
declared a former leading State Department official. “Both of their leaders
are mercurial, and they’re entirely unpredictable.”1
The proponents of “leaving” exemplified nationalist-populism in the
UK, especially nostalgia for England’s imperial past as well as opposition
to globalism, multilateralism, and, most importantly, immigration, “Many
Remainers” argued George Will, “disparage many Leavers as ‘English
nationalists.’” Brexiteers can cite a noble pedigree for their sentiments:
Speaking in 1933 to the Royal Society of St. George, Winston Churchill
had said: ‘On this one night in the whole year we are allowed to use a
forgotten, almost a forbidden word. We are allowed to mention the name
of our own country, to speak of ourselves as ‘Englishmen’.”2 However,
Fareed Zakaria predicted that if the UK left the EU in a fit of nation-
alism, it would mark the end of that country as a great power. “To me,
the best evidence of this is that Britain’s Euroskeptics generally want to
leave the E.U. because they see it as a statist juggernaut. In virtually every
other member country, Euroskeptics dislike the E.U. because they see it
as a free-market juggernaut. So either all of those other countries have it
backward, or Britain’s Conservatives have gone nuts.”3
During the debate over Brexit, the UK Independence Party (UKIP),
founded by Nigel Farage, had led the pro-Brexit movement. Farage
stepped down as party leader in late 2016. Thereafter, the party lost
most of its voters although Farage became Vice Chairman of the pro-
Brexit organization, Leave Means Leave, which advocated leaving the EU
whether or not Britain reached an agreement with the EU. The candidates
of Farage’s Brexit Party, established a few months earlier in the run-up
to the EU’s parliamentary elections, had advocated bare-bones populism
without of any clear political ideology or policies except taking Britain out
of the EU even with no deal.
Farage attracted those, who sought to eliminate the liberal order, and
he was more aware of the global reach of his actions than those whom
he sought to undermine. In the 2019 elections to the EU Parliament,
the Brexit Party (renamed Reform UK), as expected, did well, winning
at the expense of both the Conservative and Labour Parties. The Liberal
Democrats came in second, Labour third, the Greens fourth, and the
5 GREAT BRITAIN: BREXIT, AND NATIONALIST-POPULISM 189
Conservatives last. Both the Liberal Democrats and Greens were pro-
EU and anti-Brexit. The results showed that the UK remained deeply
divided. Farage pushed British politics to right-wing nationalism and was
an effective and dangerous demagogue.
Farage publicly supported Donald Trump and was the first British
politician to visit the president after his electoral triumph in 2016. He was
praised by Trump and appeared with him at campaign rallies in the U.S.
in 201,8 and also became involved in Mueller’s investigation of Russian
meddling in America’s election. The FBI viewed Farage as “a person of
interest” in Russia’s hacking of U.S. elections, notably, his relationship
with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Moreover, despite reports of Russian
efforts to influence the Brexit referendum, the UK apparently failed to
investigate Russian meddling in the referendum.
Like many national-populists, the Brexiteers opposed membership
in a multilateral group, the EU, which they claimed limited British
sovereignty. Their campaign emphasized ‘take back control’ and raised
fears about immigrants. Trump applauded “leavers” because they had
“taken back their country.” Withdrawal from the world economy was
never their objective. On the contrary, Brexiteers advocated a pivot from
the EU to the global economy without EU regulations or the Euro-
pean Court of Justice. Most negotiations after the referendum sought to
preserve the free flow of goods and money across the channel but without
accompanying labor migration or other EU regulations. Brexiteers argued
that Britain would enjoy the benefits of a common market as well as trade
deals with other countries and regions.
Although at a summit in March 2017 in Rome, EU leaders declared
“Europe is our common future,” and the EU is a “unique union with
common institutions and strong values, a community of peace, freedom,
democracy, human rights and the rule of law,” fissures in the group
were evident. To some, Brexit seemed inevitable, but others hoped
that London might reverse its course. Moreover, illiberal populist politi-
cians across the continent were also assailing the EU. Like Trump,
populists elsewhere were suspicious of political globalization, as reflected
in opposing participation in multilateral organizations and agreements.
Nationalist-populist Europeans feared migration could bring about the
EU’s collapse. Nevertheless, “Now, as Europeans struggle with the social
and political strains set off by migration from poor and war-torn nations
outside the bloc,” wrote Max Fisher, “some are clamoring to preserve
what they feel they never consented to surrender. Their fight with Euro-
pean leaders is exploding over an issue that, perhaps more than any other,
exposes the contradiction between the dream of the European Union and
the reality of European nations: borders.”4
Brexit reflected a retreat from several dimensions of globalization
owing to its impact on the world’s most significant economic and polit-
ical regional polity as well as cultural change. In addition to the challenge
posed by Brexit, the EU was increasingly divided between the liberal states
of the West and a populist bloc consisting of Italy, Hungary, Austria,
Slovakia, and Poland.
The Brexit Political Divisions

In the British referendum, “Leavers” won by a narrow margin of 52–48%
for “Remainers.” To achieve this, the Vote Leave group waged a campaign
filled with false claims regarding among other things the amount of
money, Britain would save by exiting the EU. The group also appar-
ently violated election laws by spending more than the legal limit of $9.2
million. All this led James Moore to conclude “we are being governed
by a caucus of fanatics, ideologues and unprincipled power-mad crazies (I
see you, Boris Johnson) that Osama bin Laden might happily have palled
around with in another life.”5
Brexiteers had a similar profile to Americans who had voted for Donald
Trump. Like Trump’s election, the Brexit referendum revealed divisions
between urban and rural voters, young and old, level of education, and
those who had benefited from globalization and those “left behind.”
Typical pro-Brexit voters were poorly educated males living in old indus-
trial towns similar to those in America’s “rust belt.” “Brexit,” wrote
Bagehot, “was driven by a peculiar combination of despair (about the way
that the old model had left so many people behind) and optimism (that
by freeing itself from the EU Britain would be able to reignite its growth
engine. The despair may have been justified, but the optimism certainly
wasn’t.”6 The similarity between Trump’s supporters as described by
Peter Hall, notably the combination of economic and cultural factors, was
striking. The pro-Brexit vote was the result of “a virulent populist nation-
alism, stirred up by a campaign laden with wild and inaccurate claims that
80 million Turks were on the brink of gaining EU membership and that a
British contribution of 350 million pounds ($460 million) a week might
otherwise be spent on the National Health Service.”7
Candidate Trump had publicly supported Brexit. “I know Great

Britain very well. I know, you know, the country very well. I have a
lot of investments there. I would say that they’re better off without”8
the EU. In 2017, he even tweeted that “Many people would like to see
@Nigel Farage represent Great Britain as their Ambassador to the United
States. He would do a great job!”9 These were improper intrusions in
Britain’s domestic affairs, and a British spokesperson responded, “There
is no vacancy. We already have an excellent ambassador to the US.”10
Farage had campaigned for Trump’s election and declared that Trump’s
victory and Brexit were the beginning of a revolution in the West.
As in America’s 2016 election, Russia was covertly involved in
supporting “Leavers” in Britain, seeking to divide and weaken the EU.
Given the close vote Russia may have altered the outcome. The leading
contributor to the Brexit campaign was Aaron Banks, who had secretly
been in contact with Russians officials between 2015 and 2017. Banks
turned out to have had significant Russian business connections that he
tried to conceal. Concluded Anne Applebaum, “Arron Banks was the
most important funder of the pro-Brexit UK Independence Party (UKIP)
as well as Leave.EU…. It illustrates how the modern Kremlin political
influence machine operates—legally, and without necessarily incurring any
government expense.”11
An Endless Drama
Several years after the referendum, the outcome remained unclear, but it
slowed the British economy owing to widespread uncertainty. “A stub-
born three-way divide over Brexit…” noted William Booth, persisted
“between supporters of a hard, clean divorce with the European Union
and a soft, fuzzy separation — followed by a third alternative, all
those who want a do-over in a repeat referendum (these folks don’t want
any Brexit at all).”12 Norway and Switzerland, both of which refused to
join the EU or its custom union (goods from member states are traded
for reduced or no tariffs) but had access to its single market, represented
one of the soft alternatives. One poll found “almost 60% of voters ready
to accept free movement of people from the EU in exchange for free
access to its single market,”13 similar to the Norwegian model. Fear that
Parliament might reject whichever course Prime Minister Theresa May,
Cameron’s successor, selected or be unable to muster a majority for the
course she selected produced growing interest in a second referendum,
and the European Court of Justice ruled that Britain could unilaterally
reverse its decision to leave the EU.
The UK’s political parties remained deeply divided, and the British
party system was undergoing the most significant change since the nine-
teenth century because the most important cleavage in British politics was
no longer between Conservatives and Labour, but between Remainers
and Leavers. Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, which voted
against the no-confidence motion, also opposed the prime minister’s
compromise proposal owing to its inclusion of a “backstop” at the border
with the Republic of Ireland.
Since Northern Ireland was part of the UK, it seemed to be neces-
sary either that Britain remained in the customs union or establish
checkpoints, separating the Irish Republic that was an EU member
and Northern Ireland. However, such a border would endanger the
fragile peace that had ended decades of violence between Protestants
and Catholics and the efforts of many in Northern Ireland to join the
Irish Republic. The Protestant and unionist community and the Catholic
nationalists continued to argue about the status of Northern Ireland.
Decades of violence between Catholics and Protestants, known as
“the Troubles,” had left many dead near their border. The violence
ended with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which established a
power-sharing arrangement and guaranteed unimpeded passage between
Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. A hard border between the
two Irelands would violate the terms of the Good Friday Agreement and
might trigger renewed violence and deepen political divisions in the UK.
“The backstop provision says that as long as there is no long-term trade
pact, Britain would remain in the European customs union (the E.U.
Customs Union means it negotiates trade laws as a bloc), and Northern
Ireland would also be bound by many rules of the single market (the
EU has no trade barriers within it).”14 This was anathema to hardline
Brexiteers and the DUP.
For his part. President Trump continued to urge Brexit and meddled
in British politics, tweeting, “My Administration looks forward to nego-
tiating a large-scale Trade Deal with the UK. The potential is unlimited!”
Criticizing Prime Minister May, he later added, “I’m surprised at how
badly it’s all gone from the standpoint of a negotiation,” Trump said.
“I gave the prime minister my ideas on how to negotiate it, and I think
you would have been successful. She didn’t listen to that and that’s fine —
she’s got to do what she’s got to do. I think it could have been negotiated
in a different manner, frankly. I hate to see everything being ripped apart

now.”15 According to PM May, Trump “told me I should sue the E.U.
— not go into negotiations. Sue them.”16 What this meant remained
unclear. Stephen Bannon said that Trump gave May three pieces of advice.
These were, “Number one, overshoot the target on your deal because it
will come apart. Number two, get on with it — you ought to be on terms
agreed within six months — and number three, use every arrow in your
quiver even if you have to do litigation later.” Trump indicated that May
did not do so because she was “not terribly sophisticated.”17 Not only
had Trump disparaged the EU, but he had also insulted Britain’s prime
minister.
“The Mother of All Messes”

It was “the mother of all messes.”18 Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour
Party, argued that the first vote was “the largest defeat in the history
of our democracy,” and that the prime minister was leading a “zombie
government.”19 Many Labour Party members supported a second refer-
endum and formally adopted this position in its September 2018 party
conference. Corbyn himself was a euroskeptic who had voted for Brexit,
and he feared the loss of blue-collar Labour voters in northern England
and Wales.
However, Corbyn’s refusal to mobilize his party against Brexit and
his indecision left the Labour Party even more divided over Brexit than
the Conservatives. Corbyn’s refusal to lead his party against Brexit and
Labour’s alleged anti-Semitism led nine Labour MPs to leave the party
and form the Independent Group, further fragmenting an already frag-
mented Parliament. One of those who had bolted, Chris Leslie, said
Labour had been “hijacked by the machine politics of the hard left” by
Corbyn and his shadow chancellor of the exchequer, John McDonnell and
that its “betrayal on Europe was visible for all to see.”20 Shortly afterward,
three Conservative MPs also joined the Independent Group because, as
Anna Soubry, a former minister, said “The right wing, the hard-line anti-
EU awkward squad that have destroyed every leader for the last 40 years
are now running the Conservative Party from top to toe.”21
Under pressure, Corbyn changed his mind and declared his support of
a second referendum, prompting one anti-Brexit Labour MP to applaud
Corbyn’s reversal, “This is a big step towards uniting our party and most
importantly our country. No Brexit deal meets the fantasy promised in
2016. So, the only way any specific form of Brexit can be made legiti-
mate is through ratification in a #PeopleVote which includes the option
to remain.” By contrast, an anti-Brexit Liberal Democrat, Tim Farron,
was critical. “This is so weak. Or utterly cynical. One or the other.”22
Nevertheless, after getting a delay from the EU, three parliamentary
defeats of her proposal, a parliamentary defeat of “no deal,” and its failure
to muster a majority for any alternative, PM May in desperation offered
to resign if Parliament finally accepted her proposal. Then, to the dismay
of Conservative Brexiteers after this failed, she undertook to negotiate a
deal with Corbyn and Labour. Brexiteers grew increasingly fearful that
this would lead to a soft deal that would keep the UK in the common
market. However, these negotiations failed to produce an agreement, and
May sought to offer Parliament a fourth vote on her plan.
The prime minister also requested an additional delay and grudgingly
was forced to agree that the UK participate in elections to the European
Parliament, which she had sought to avoid by reaching a deal earlier. “It
is in the interests of neither the United Kingdom as a departing member
state, nor the European Union as a whole, that the United Kingdom
holds elections to the European Parliament,” she wrote to Donald Tusk,
President of the European Council.23 For their part, Brexiteers sought
to elect as many anti-EU politicians as possible to the EU Parliament.
“A situation where Britain is with one foot inside the E.U. and with one
foot outside the union is a tragedy, is bad for the European Union,” 24
declared the European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator.
The threat still remained of a hard and disorderly Brexit if no other
solution were found. As a new deadline loomed, Prime Minister May
made a last fruitless effort to persuade the EU to drop its requirement
for an Irish backstop. Wrote Peter Kellner, “If you drive from Northern
Ireland into the Irish Republic, the only obvious indications that you have
entered another country are that kilometers replace miles on road signs,
and post boxes are green instead of red. The unrestricted flow of trade and
people is one of the great benefits of two decades of peace. Nobody wants
to return to the era of border posts, far less the paraphernalia of passport
checks and customs buildings.”25 Brexiteers argued that customs officials
were unnecessary and could be replaced by untested modern technology,
but the technology did not yet exist. The EU wanted Northern Ireland to
remain within its customs union, but, while agreeing there should be no
“hard border” in Ireland, it demanded an “Irish backstop” in the Irish
Sea that would establish controls between Northern Ireland and main-
land Great Britain and keep Northern Ireland in the EU customs union
until a trade deal was finalized. Also, Scottish politicians demanded that,
if Northern Ireland remained in an EU customs union, then Scotland,
too, should have that option.
Consequently, British firms began to prepare for the possibility of no
deal with the EU, taking steps such as shipping goods for sale before
the new March 2019 date. Some firms did not wish to wait. Anticipating
Brexit, major automobile firms including Honda and Nissan announced
they were moving manufacturing out of the UK. “Dublin is our head-
quarters for our European bank now — full stop,” the Bank of America’s
vice chairman, declared. “There isn’t a return. That bridge has been
pulled up.”26 Thus, during a visit to the U.S., Irish Taoiseach (Prime
Minister) Leo Varadkar reasoned, “Potentially, when the U.K. leaves the
European Union, we can be a strong partner for the U.S. [in the E.U.].
We will always be on team Europe, but we are going to be an English-
speaking country — the only one in the European Union — and a
country with a very similar business culture to the U.S.”27 He added
that the Irish Republic could replace the UK as a bridge between the EU
and the United States.
Donald Tusk sadly concluded, “I’ve been wondering what that special
place in hell looks like, for those who promoted Brexit, without even a
sketch of a plan how to carry it out safely.”28 Brexiteers criticized Tusk’s
comment, but The Guardian’s Martin Kettle concluded, “he should have
said far more. He should have added that, within that special place, there
should be an executive suite of sleepless torment for those politicians who
promoted Brexit without ever giving a stuff about Ireland.”29
Concerning no deal between the EU and UK, Jean-Claude Juncker,
then president of the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission,
declared, “While we do not want this to happen, the European Commis-
sion will continue its contingency work to help ensure the EU is fully
prepared.”30 Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator said. “It’s
up to the British government to indicate how we ought to take things
forward on March 29 toward an orderly withdrawal.”31 The EU had
been willing to extend the transition period after Brexit from a year
to 21 months. However, if no agreement were reached, London could
request an extension of Article 50 of the EU treaty, which the UK had
invoked on March 29, 2017 to leave the group on March 29, 2020. Such
an extension though would require the approval of all EU member states.
Negotiations between the UK and EU began in June 2017. The EU made

it clear that it wanted agreement regarding the terms of Brexit before
considering future relations with the UK, and in November 2018 an
agreement was reached that the prime minister submitted to Parliament
for approval.
Meanwhile, the populism sweeping Europe has deepened the resolve
of mainstream politicians, who argued that Brexit should not be viewed
as beneficial for Britain. The Brexit referendum threatened a retreat
from several dimensions of globalization. First, Brexit would have eroded
the political dimension because it rejected multilateralism. It would also
have been a retreat from globalization’s economic dimension inasmuch
as it entailed restoring impediments to trade between Britain and the
remaining members of the EU. Finally, it would have been a retreat
from the socio-cultural dimension of globalization because it would have
erected additional barriers to the free movement of persons between
Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic and allowed the EU to prevent
British citizens from freely traveling or residing in much of Europe and
vice versa. Reducing immigration, concern for relative deprivation, and
resentment of elites were crucial elements of the Leavers’ arguments for
Brexit. A poll revealed that 58% of those who thought that “politicians do
not listen to people like me” were Leavers, and 87% of Leavers sought to
reduce immigration, while 40% believed it was the country’s most impor-
tant political issue. In fact, a marked reduction in immigration, which was
actually relatively small in Britain, would harm the country’s economy in
several ways.
Brexiteers’ criticisms of the EU were similar to those of populists else-
where in Europe, emphasizing what they regarded as disadvantages of
membership. First, free movement of EU migrants, they claimed, fostered
crime and terrorism across national borders and took jobs from citi-
zens. Second, membership entailed a variety of fees and costs, which
they thought onerous. Third, members had to adhere to EU laws and
regulations regardless of costs and preferences. Complaints about “med-
dling eurocrats” were linked to a more general concern about the loss
of sovereignty to Brussels. Other Europeans emulated the Brexiteers.
Following Britain’s referendum, Marine Le Pen called for a “Frexit”
vote; Geert Wilders demanded a “Nexit” referendum; and sentiment for
“Grexit” remained high. Like Trump, many of these politicians used social
media to taunt foes, denounce mainstream media, and animate their base.
Political Turmoil and Brexit

Prime Minister Theresa May had initially opposed Brexit but soon decided
she had more to fear politically from the Leavers in her party. “Appeasing
them would become her top political priority. She launched her leader-
ship campaign on July 11, 2016, with a speech declaring: “Brexit means
Brexit,”32 and Britain, she decided, would leave the EU’s political institu-
tions, the single market, and the customs union, and get what she wanted
through negotiations.
British political stability had eroded owing to absence of a majority
government, the divisions within its major political parties, and the poor
quality of party leaders. One observer of May’s performance as prime
minister wrote, “She is not sensible, she does not know what she is doing,
and, increasingly, she doesn’t seem to be entirely sane either,” but “almost
everything about Brexit — from the nature of the deal she negotiated to
the divisions in her party and her country — is very much her fault.”33
Following May’s decision to call a quick election in April 2017, the
governing Conservative Party, which had previously enjoyed a clear parlia-
mentary majority, had retained the largest number of seats (318), but lost
its majority in a surprising outcome. This led to a minority government
that depended on the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland
that had won 10 seats for the government’s survival.
The Conservative Party’s dependence on the DUP complicated nego-
tiations with EU regarding Brexit because the DUP vigorously opposed
reinstating a border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
If such a border were reinstalled, it would harm Ireland’s trade with the
EU’s continental members because the Channel Tunnel in England was
the quickest route for trucks going in either direction. The Conservatives
had lost 13 seats, and the Labour Party was the major beneficiary, adding
30 new seats in Parliament. The prime minister had called the election
because she believed it would provide a mandate to facilitate carrying out
the Brexit referendum. The Scottish National Party (SNP), which had
opposed Brexit, also lost a significant number of seats, and the Liberal
Democrats, which supported remaining in the EU, gained a few.
Both of Great Britain’s two leading political parties were divided over
Brexit, and their leaders were mediocrities who were described by The
Economist as “a charisma-free robot [Theresa May] and a superannuated
Marxist [Jeremy Corbyn].”34 The Conservatives had for many years been
deeply divided between those Members of Parliament (MPs) who wished
to remain in the EU and those who wanted to leave and reassert British
sovereignty and autonomy. The prime minister had opposed Brexit but
was determined to get a mandate to carry out the majority of referendum
voters’ decision to leave the EU. Her decision to call an election proved
a major mistake and left her greatly weakened and vulnerable to potential
rivals for party leadership.
A majority of Labour MPs supported remaining in the EU, but
Corbyn, had only tepidly supported remaining in the EU and had failed
to put forward a plausible Brexit policy. Corbyn had been a highly contro-
versial choice to lead the Labour Party. That choice had been opposed by
a majority of Labour MPs, but he had been chosen in a poll of party
members. He was a long-time member of the party’s extreme left wing,
which advocated nationalization of key industries, unilaterally surren-
dering the UK’s nuclear weapons, and persistently criticizing U.S. foreign
policy and NATO. Although Corbyn had retreated from his pacifist views
to enable his selection, the opposition of many Labour MPs weakened
his position as did repeated claims that, along with several other Labour
parliamentarians, he was anti-Semitic. The party as a whole was criticized
for refusing to accept the definition of anti-Semitism provided by the
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The charge that Corbyn
was anti-Semitic was partly a result of a photographs of his presence
at a wreath-laying ceremony in 2014 at a memorial in Tunis for Black
September terrorists that had carried out the 1972 attack on the Israeli
Olympic team in Munich.
Seeking a Deal
Negotiations between London and Brussels had divided British politicians
in both major parties, and, with divided parties and uncharismatic and
weak leaders, it proved difficult to reach a decision in London about how
to conduct those negotiations. Some like Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson
sought a “hard” exit when Britain was due to leave the group on March
29, 2019, while others preferred a “soft” deal in which London would
remain in a customs union and accept many EU regulations and norms
involving environmental and social policies in return. The former would
free Britain from EU trade policies and migration regulations, while the
latter would allow Britain to avoid EU tariffs but give it no voice in EU
decisions and would entail large payments that London still owed the EU.
The result would be catastrophic for the British economy if no deal were
reached, and predictions of the consequences of a hard exit were fright-

ening. Efforts to “bluff” the EU that London would accept “no deal”
were at best dangerous and at worst potentially self-fulfilling. Indeed, the
mere fact that Brexit was approaching had a negative impact on Britain’s
economy.
The debate in Britain was virulent, especially among the Conser-
vatives, and May’s cabinet was split. Growing sentiment for a second
referendum, especially within the Labour Party, and the prospect of a
majority in Parliament opposed to a catastrophic hard exit pushed the
prime minister toward a softer exit and produced a complex compromise
involving a “facilitated customs arrangement,” which the cabinet accepted
in a meeting at Chequers, the prime minister’s country residence. After
the cabinet announced that Britain would seek “a common rule book
for industrial goods and agricultural products,” that is, it would follow
EU regulations until a final agreement was reached even though it had
no voice in establishing them, Johnson and Brexit Secretary David Davis,
both advocates of a hard Brexit, resigned.
Johnson wrote bitterly, “You can’t leave an organisation and still be
bound by its rules. But that is what the Chequers white paper means.
It is vassalage, satrapy, colony status for the UK. For the first time in a
thousand years, our laws will be made overseas, enforced by a foreign
court. It can’t and won’t work. Chuck Chequers.”35 In a speech to the
annual Conservative conference, Johnson violently attacked May’s effort
to compromise with the EU, which he argued was anti-democratic and
would not allow the UK to regain control of its own affairs. Johnson’s
successor as foreign minister, Jeremy Hunt, compared the EU to the
Soviet Union, which stopped people from leaving. If the EU did the same,
other members would also seek their “freedom.”
In either event, EU leaders remained opposed to the prime minis-
ter’s effort to achieve a soft Brexit that would allow “frictionless” trade
to continue between the UK and EU, while excluding the free move-
ment of people and services. French President Emmanuel Macron called
those who argued that Brexit would not be painful “liars,” adding that
“The Chequers plan cannot be take it or leave it.”36 Donald Tusk said
May’s proposal to allow British-EU free trade that included agriculture
and goods but not services was unacceptable and might undermine the
single market. Tusk added that, as regards the Irish question or the frame-
work for economic cooperation, British proposals needed to be revised,
reworked, and renegotiated.
According to the chief European analyst for the Eurasia Group, “The
French won the argument that the E.U. has to come out more firmly
against Chequers, and we see that in the Tusk statement that Chequers
‘will not work.’ I didn’t expect that and I don’t think the prime minis-
ter’s office did, either.”37 May, who sought to delay making additional
compromises or accepting a sudden and complete rift with the EU, was
confronted by a united front of leaders who were frustrated by the slow
pace of decision-making in London.
Most polls indicated that British voters regretted the initial decision to
leave. To make matters more difficult for May, President Trump criticized
her movement toward a “soft Brexit,” declared it would make a bilateral
trade deal with America difficult to achieve because Washington would
have to negotiate with the EU rather than Britain, and expressed admira-
tion for Johnson whom he said would make a fine successor to Theresa
May as prime minister. Trump even had the gall to tell the press that he
had told the prime minister what he thought she should do.
In a state visit to the UK in 2019, Trump continued to criticize the
EU and support Brexit, even meeting with Farage again and denouncing
Sadiq Aman Khan, the Muslim mayor of London. Observers denounced
Trump’s involvement in British politics and argued that any arrangement
for a trade deal on Trump’s terms would reduce British sovereignty. They
also pointed out that, as well as Trump’s sympathy with the populist char-
acteristics of Brexit, “this orange blow-in” sensed a profitable bargain and
opportunity, that is, a large bilateral trade deal with a pro-Brexit British
leader. Columnist Ian Birrell concluded, “Britain sent out a message that
it is replacing bridges with walls — walls less obvious but more of a barrier
than the one Trump wants to build …. Trump is terrible. But Brexit is a
bigger and more enduring act of sabotage.”38
To complicate matters Britain’s Parliament had to approve any final
deal with the EU. This was by no means assured. May’s government
had only a slender majority that included the small DUP that opposed
any boundary between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Majorities in both houses of Parliament preferred a soft Brexit and were
prepared to reject a deal that did not compromise with the EU. The
governing Conservative Party was deeply divided between Brexiteers in
the European Research Group (ERG) led by Jacob Rees-Mogg and
Foreign Minister Johnson, which demanded that London walk away with
no deal rather than compromising with the EU. About 100 Conservative
MPs who formed the ERG were among the most determined Brexi-
teers. Rees-Mogg declared that any compromise would make Britain a
“slave state.” They opposed remaining in either the EU’s single market
and/or customs union or leaving Britain subject to any EU regulations
that would limit the UK’s sovereignty. However, the prime minister was
aware that she needed to negotiate a compromise. She was also willing to
remain in several EU agencies and accept trade regulations. Her so-called
customs partnership, some Brexiteers feared, would become a customs
union, which they vigorously opposed. Britain, they argued, had rejected
these conditions, requiring London to choose that either the UK as a
whole remain in the customs union or left it but granted Northern Ireland
a special status.
Incompetent Dealmakers
In November 2018, Prime Minister May revealed the final deal she had
offered the EU, which in turn had accepted the prime minister’s proposal
for a soft Brexit. The prime minister opted for a lengthy transition period
during which Britain would remain a non-voting member of the EU, and
she agreed to pay billions of dollars that the EU claimed London owed it.
The UK would also remain a member of the customs union but without
an entirely independent trade policy that May had sought until at least
2021. The proposal preserved the EU’s four freedoms—free movement
of goods, services, capital, and people, although the UK would regain
the right to limit immigration from Europe. “This is the deal,” said Jean-
Claude Juncker. “It’s the best deal possible. The European Union will
not change its fundamental position.” And he added, “It’s not a moment
for jubilation nor celebration; it’s a sad and tragic moment.”39
“This deal,” wrote Anne Applebaum, “offers something for everyone
to hate.”40 Brexiteers were angry because the deal meant that Britain
would temporarily remain in the EU single market in which there were
no barriers among members to the movement of goods, services, invest-
ment, and people. The negotiators had agreed that the UK would remain
in the single market (still under the jurisdiction of the European Court
of Justice) and customs union including existing regulations with no clear
date for finalizing matters, and this would limit British efforts to negotiate
other trade agreements. However, the deal would not allow the “friction-
less” trade in the EU that the UK enjoyed because London would have
to face separate markets with different legal systems.
Opponents also feared that the UK might be indefinitely obliged to

follow the regulations of the European single market yet would be unable
to shape them. Remaining in the single market would make it impossible
for the U.K. to pursue separate trade deals with anyone else including
the United States. “Trade flexibility, supposedly, the great advantage of
Brexit,” “would become a distant dream,” wrote Applebaum. “Anti-
Brexit campaigners were furious because the deal would leave Britain
weaker and less influential than before. The Northern Irish hate it because
it implies that they still might end up in a separate trading arrangement
from the rest of Britain. The Scottish hate it because they would like a
guarantee similar to the one that the Northern Irish had obtained. And
so on.”41
Because it was a compromise, it was no surprise that British politi-
cians from all sides of the controversy criticized it. After Brexiteers had
promised that leaving the EU would be costless, Prime Minister May had
agreed to pay the EU a substantial sum ($50 billion) of what Brussels
thought London still owed. The arrangement would also preclude the
need to erect a customs border that would separate Northern Ireland
from the Irish Republic during this period. However, the deal allowed a
“backstop,” that is a period to devise technology to establish a boundary
during which the entire UK would remain in both the customs union and
the single market with its numerous regulations.
This period would also enable London with time to dismantle and
replace EU regulations with its own rules. During that time, the UK
would remain in the EU customs union that Brexiteers feared might
become permanent because the withdrawal agreement could not be
altered to include a time limit or an exit clause without undermining
Brexit. However, Britain would no longer have to allow citizens from
other EU member states to live and work within its borders, a victory for
Brexiteers. In the event a technological solution to the Irish boundary
issue proved impossible, all of Great Britain might remain in the EU
customs union, but Northern Ireland would be subject to more of the
bloc’s economic regulations, a clause that Northern Ireland’s members
of Parliament opposed. Indeed, Brexit had significantly complicated UK
relations with Republic of Ireland, which remained an EU member. “The
general discourse in parts of the U.K. is extremely arrogant and quite
condescending, the feeling that ‘these people don’t know their place,’”
declared Tony Connelly, the author of Ireland and Brexit. “That, in
turn, has awakened a kind of ancient defiance on the Irish side as well,”
he argued. “All these historical nerve endings that were buried by the
Anglo-Irish peace process have reawakened a bit.”42
British leaders refused to hold a second referendum, and modification
of the government’s decisions regarding Brexit rested with Parliament.
Although Parliament could not scrub Brexit as a whole, a plurality favored
a soft landing that would include negotiating a customs union with the
EU. In the end, if London could not settle the issues raised by Brexit with
the EU, there would be no agreement, which would be a catastrophic
outcome for Britain’s economy and for Western unity more generally.
Although polls in late 2018 indicated that British voters preferred
to “remain” rather than accept a hard Brexit with no deal, in January
2019, as feared, Parliament overwhelming voted down the prime minis-
ter’s proposal by a vote of 432–202, and shortly afterward she narrowly
survived a vote of no confidence by the majority. The defeat of May’s
proposal was the worst in modern British history. “Historians had to
go as far back as the Victorian age to find a comparable party split and
parliamentary defeat — to Prime Minister William Gladstone’s support
for Irish home rule in 1886, which cut the Liberal Party in two.”43 Just
weeks before the March 29 deadline she resubmitted the same proposal
to Parliament with a few minor tweaks, and, not surprisingly, the “new”
proposal was defeated 391–242 with 75 Conservative MPs deserting the
prime minister.
“Deeply saddened by the outcome of the #Brexit vote this evening,”
Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen tweeted. “Despite clear
EU-assurances on the backstop, we now face a chaotic #NoDeal #Brexit
scenario.”44 Thereafter, Parliament rejected leaving the EU without a
withdrawal agreement and sought an extension beyond the March 29
deadline, while turning down having a second referendum. However,
the drama continued. May requested an additional three months before
Brexit would take effect, but the EU was only willing to grant her a few
weeks. As the UK approached the wire, Parliament took control of the
issue away from the prime minister and empowered itself to vote on alter-
natives to the government’s Brexit plan, even as over five million people
signed a petition to override Brexit. However, none of eight options could
muster a majority in Parliament.
Parliament turned down May’s proposed deal for a third time only
two weeks before Brexit was to take place, and shortly thereafter failed
to muster a majority for any of four options put before it again. Only
two days before a Brexit with no deal was to occur, the EU agreed to an
additional delay until October 31, 2019. In May 2019, Prime Minister
May offered Parliament her original Withdrawal Agreement Bill that was
tweaked to assure Labour MPs that the UK would apply European stan-
dards on workplace protections and environmental rights. She also would
permit Parliament to demand, at least temporarily, a customs union with
the EU and allow it to vote again on the issue of a second referendum.
Hence, the drama continued.
When it became clear that the tweaked version of Prime Minister May’s
compromise proposal would not pass muster in Parliament, she resigned
in June 2019, and several Conservative MPs fought to succeed her.
The prime minister’s resignation triggered a constitutional crisis. Britain’s
unwritten constitution placed its sovereignty in the House of Commons.
However, this had been eroded by several referendums, notably the vote
in Scotland about remaining in the UK and then whether to remain in
the EU. After PM May’s resignation as leader of her party, her successor
as prime minister would be selected by its 124,000 members. If it were
a candidate supporting Brexit like Boris Johnson, the former mayor of
London, foreign minister, and something of a political buffoon, it would
mean that the result of an “unrepresentative sample” would reverse the
decision of Britain’s sovereign Parliament that had voted against “such a
no-deal Brexit on the ground that it would do the country grave harm.”45
The “quirks of British parliamentary procedure provide various ways
in which a sufficiently bloody-minded prime minister might force a ‘no-
deal’ Brexit without a majority in Parliament.”46 It would also ignore the
decision of the Scots who had voted against Brexit in the referendum
and who might seek a new referendum on whether to remain in the UK.
Johnson was a nationalist-populist, a characteristic reflected both by his
support for Brexit and his comment that all British residents, especially
immigrants and presumably Scots, Welsh sand Irish, should speak English
as their first language. A Scottish politician tweeted in response, “Boris is
just moronic & clueless.”47
After Johnson became the new prime minister, he sought to prorogue
parliament to prevent any serious effort to avoid a hard Brexit before the
new date when Brexit would go into effect. Although legal, the effort
was an affront to the UK’s democratic tradition. Declared The Economist,
“Boris Johnson, lacking support among MPs for a no-deal Brexit, has
outraged his opponents by manipulating procedure to suspend Parliament
for five crucial weeks.”48 Unable to muster a clear majority in Parliament,
he sought to silence it, a dangerous precedent for British democracy. After
one Tory joined the Liberal Democrats, Johnson lost his parliamentary
majority. “Remainers,” including Tories, sought to pass a bill to delay
Brexit, and Johnson warned that, if his foes succeeded, he would call a
snap election and refuse to let defectors run as Conservatives.
Johnson’s foes succeeded in regaining control over the process and
sought to ask the EU for yet another delay. Parliament then passed a
proposal to prevent a no-deal Brexit and refused to authorize a national
election until that proposal became law. Johnson retaliated by informing
Tories who voted against him that they would be thrown out of their
party and would not be able to compete as Conservatives for their parlia-
mentary seats in the next election. Among those were leaders of the
party including several former cabinet ministers such as Philip Hammond,
a former foreign secretary and chancellor of the exchequer and David
Gauke a former Lord Chancellor. It also included Winston Churchill’s
grandson, Nicholas Soames. Shortly thereafter, Work and Pensions Secre-
tary Amber Rudd quit the cabinet and her party, accusing Johnson of
committing “political vandalism.” Britain’s Supreme Court also unani-
mously ruled that Johnson had violated the country’s constitution and
had misled Queen Elizbeth II when he suspended Parliament to prevent
it from meeting to deal with Brexit. The court ruled that Johnson was
preventing Parliament from meeting its legal obligations.
Confronted by a hostile Parliament that had voted against no-deal exit,
Johnson reached a minimalist agreement with the EU, unlike the deal that
Prime Minister May had sought, under which Northern Ireland would
be legally outside the EU and its customs union. Johnson’s proposal
would keep Northern Ireland subject to EU rules in practice but legally
outside the group with the rest of Britain. Parliament, however, voted
to delay final approval on the agreement until after it passed detailed
legislation to enact it. This made it difficult to achieve Johnson’s goal
of leaving the EU by the end of October 2019 and forced him to
request yet another extension required by Parliament (while simultane-
ously denouncing such an extension and having said he would rather
be “dead in a ditch” than asking for it). Johnson did so, and Brexit
was deferred once more. Although polls indicated that the opponents
of Brexit, especially young voters, narrowly outnumbered Brexiteers,
Parliament approved the proposal.
The prospect of any agreement before that deadline darkened after
London announced in September 2020 that it was passing legislation to
revise the Northern Ireland Protocol of the Withdrawal Agreement to
which it had earlier agreed to give its government authority to decide,

unilaterally, about checks on goods between Northern Ireland and the
rest of Britain. Johnson described this Internal Market Bill as a “legal
safety net” to prevent a border at the Irish Sea in the event no agreement
was reached. In addition to no additional checks on goods from Northern
Ireland to the rest of Britain, were no agreement EU-UK agreement
reached, the bill provided London with authority to renege on obliga-
tions concerning state assistance to British business even if a violation of
international law. London’s unilateral action prompted the EU to begin
legal action against the UK. Moreover, U.S. presidential candidate Joe
Biden with Irish roots warned that if London’s action led to a solid border
between the two Irelands, thereby endangering the Good Friday Agree-
ment that had brought peace to Ireland, he would oppose the British
effort to forge a trade agreement with America.
The UK, however, remained in the EU’s single market and customs
union until the end of 2020 and was given a year to negotiate a bilat-
eral trade agreement with the EU. The added year was a short time to
finalize a complex trade deal and proved fractious regarding such issues as
which EU standards and regulations to accept or refuse or reach agree-
ments on issues such as fishing quotas and state aid to industries. The
EU’s Common Fisheries Policy gave European vessels access to British
waters, and the EU demanded that these rules remain after Brexit. In
British fishing fleets in Scotland, discontent took the form of whether
to have a second referendum about leaving the UK, but, with the Scots
opposed to Brexit, the likelihood of a pro-independence majority in Scot-
land had grown, led by Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the SNP. Moreover, in
the absence of a deal with the EU, the supply chains of Britain’s major
industries like automakers were at risk.
Although Johnson’s proposed deal closely resembled that which Prime
Minister May had proposed and that Parliament had repeatedly voted
down, Johnson’s deal might have been adopted because, as Yascha Mounk
explained, “Brexit is best understood as a civil war over the country’s
culture,” and Johnson is a nationalist-populist who “understood that
Brexit is as much a symbol as a cause. A lot of people voted for Brexit
out of a desire to show an establishment they had come to loathe who
was really in charge; above and beyond negotiating an exit, pleasing them
would require the leader to prove that (s)he is on the side of the angry
people rather than on that of technocratic elites.”49
Amid this tumult, Trump continued to support Johnson, even though

Johnson’s own brother resigned from Parliament to protest his actions.
When Johnson was asked if he would resign, Trump, who was standing
next to him at the UN, commented, “I’ll tell you, I know him well, he’s
not going anywhere.” Johnson agreed. “No, no, no,” he said.50 Trump
then described Johnson as a friend who knew how to win. Johnson
finally led Parliament to declare a general election before the end of
2019, and Trump again interfered, supporting Johnson and criticizing
the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, as bad for the UK. “He’d take you
into such bad places.” In July 2019, Trump virtually endorsed Johnson,
declaring, “They call him ‘Britain’s Trump,’ and people are saying that’s
a good thing.”51 The outcome of the election was a decisive Conser-
vative victory. Johnson’s pro-Brexit supporters included many formerly
pro-Labour working-class voters from both rural and northern “rust belt”
constituencies.
Had Labour won, it would have great strained NATO unity. Jeremy
Corbyn, as we noted, was a pacifist who had repeatedly criticized NATO,
the use of force more generally, and Britain’s retention of a nuclear
deterrent, while advocating left-wing policies. Britain’s withdrawal from
NATO would have removed a nuclear power that accounted for about
one-quarter of Europe’s military capability. Close military cooperation,
consultation, and planning would continue between post-Brexit Britain
and its European allies only if t remained in NATO. Military coordina-
tion required constant communication among the EU, the UK, and the
United States.
Brexit officially took place on January 31, 2020 and was approved by
the EU although negotiations about specifics continued to days before
January 1, 2021. An agreement remained difficult owing to Johnson’s
demand for a free-trade agreement with zero tariffs and quotas such as
those to which Canada and the EU had agreed, and London’s effort to
revise the Northern Ireland Protocol unilaterally. Such a revision made
it more difficult for the EU and UK to sign a deal by the end of 2020,
which would, under World Trade Organization rules, mean that goods
traded between the two would allow tariffs and quotas in both directions
and fracture long-time supply chains.
Notwithstanding the compromise that London finally negotiated, the
consequences were significant. Since the UK was leaving the customs
union and single market, unregulated free movement of people between
the EU and UK ceased, and many individuals were forced to leave
where they had come to consider “home.” Britain was losing access to
migrants, who had provided taxes and helped compensate for an aging
and shrinking population and had benefited from lower prices and lower
taxes because care homes, hospitals, public transport, and much else had
been cheaper to run. Nevertheless, one of Johnson’s first acts as prime
minister had been to alter immigration rules to reduce the number of
unskilled workers from non-English speaking countries and impose a
skills-focused, points-based system of immigration. A reduction in immi-
gration of EU and non-EU citizens will harm the British economy,
particularly in health care, especially for the elderly, and agriculture, which
depended on migrants in food processing and seasonal work on farms.
Business and labor union leaders denounced the change, warning about
job losses, factory closings, and the reduction in health care. In addition,
there would be a loss of skilled immigrants who were needed for the
economic benefits they brought through innovation and technology. In a
word, Britain will decline unless the EU adopted a multi-tiered system in
which members in each group have different obligations.
A potentially serious consequences of Brexit would be a decision by
Scotland to seek independence. Scots had been anti-Brexit and retained
deep links with the EU and were unhappy with fishing quotas provided
EU members in Scottish waters in the December 2020 deal. Scottish MPs
voted against the compromise deal in Parliament, Ian Blackford, an SNP
MP, declared, “Scotland’s story is European. And that story does not end
today.”52
As for Northern Ireland, in June 2020, the UK and EU had managed
to agree that there would no hard customs barriers t goods moving
between Northern Ireland and elsewhere in Britain. Notwithstanding
Johnson’s metaphor that the UK was “leaving its chrysalis” like a butterfly
entering a world of global free trade, Joe Biden declared that, unlike
Trump, he would be unwilling to conclude a bilateral trade pact with UK
if there were a hard border between the two Irelands. Hence, under the
December 2020 compromise, the border between Ireland and Northern
Ireland would remain open even though Northern Ireland would no
longer remain in the EU. To retain this unique status, Northern Ireland
would have had to follow all EU rules on agricultural and manufac-
tured goods. Moreover, although there will be no hard border between
Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, goods sent to Northern
Ireland from elsewhere in the UK may be checked at points of entry into
Northern Ireland, and, if those goods were to be sent on to the Republic
of Ireland, a tariff would be imposed, with refunds to firms that can prove
the goods remained in Northern Ireland.
As time grew shorter, in September 2020, Michael Gove, minister for
the Cabinet Office, provided a potential preview of what might happen
with no deal. After January 1, 2021, he predicted, truck drivers would
need a “Kent access permit” to get into Britain or arrive in Kent intending
to board a ferry or use a Eurotunnel train to enter the EU. To some
extent, a “de facto Brexit border” was to avert traffic chaos after the UK
let the EU.53 The December 2020 deal made these unnecessary.
All’s Well that Ends Well

Only days before the Brexit rupture was due to begin, an EU-British
compromise agreement regarding UK-EU relations after Brexit was
reached on Christmas eve 2020. “It was a long and winding road, but
we have got a good deal to show for it,” said Ursula von der Leyen, pres-
ident of the European Commission. “This moment marks the end of a
long voyage,”54 the EU’s chief negotiator declared, “Today is a day of
relief but tinged by some sadness as we compare what came before with
what lies ahead. The United Kingdom has chosen to leave the European
Union and the single market, to renounce the benefits and advantages
enjoyed by member states.”55
The UK left the customs union and EU single market, and there were
neither tariffs nor quotas on traded goods. Nevertheless, Britain agreed to
a “level playing field,” continuing to follow EU standards and regulations,
especially those dealing with workers’ rights, environmental standards and
state subsidies, to prevent either the EU or the U.K. from undercutting
the other. Consequently, Britain agreed to continue following many EU
rules and regulations and permit arbitration in the event of disagreement,
not automatic penalties that the EU had sought. Boris Johnson had previ-
ously and repeatedly refused any deal that would make London follow
EU rules, but the EU feared that if it permitted the UK to do as Johnson
wished it would have to compete with a highly competitive, less regu-
lated economy. The deal thus undermined Johnson’s claim, “We have also
today resolved a question that has bedeviled our politics for decades and
it is up to all of us together as a newly and truly independent nation to
realize the immensity of this moment and to make the most of it.”56 The
UK also retained the right to negotiate additional free-trade agreements
with non-EU countries including the U.S.
Also, although there will be no tariffs or quotas on goods traded

that would interfere with the $900 billion in cross-channel trade (2019),
services, which account for four-fifths of the UK economy, were not
included. Although London’s enormous financial sector would remain
relatively unaffected by the deal, Brexit complicated the ability of British
financial institutions to provide services to foreign clients in the EU.
According to the former director of a research institute, “The result of
the deal is that the European Union retains all of its current advantages
in trading, particularly with goods [in which it enjoyed a trade surplus],
and the U.K. loses all of its current advantages in the trade for services
[in which it enjoyed a surplus],” Consequently, he concluded, “Brexit was
always going to be a long-running hit to the U.K.’s competitiveness. But
the way it’ll play out is by damaging investment in the U.K., so it’s a slow
puncture, not a quick crash.”57
However, the agreement will generate considerably more red tape for
those involved in EU-UK trade. Because London left the EU’s frictionless
single market and customs union, firms have to file forms and customs
declarations. There are also different rules on product labeling as well
as checks on agricultural products. Goods require sufficient inspections
to prevent smuggling, especially of live animals, and the UK no longer
participated in the Erasmus exchange program, a Europe-wide program
that allowed many students a year to travel abroad for study and/or work
experience. Regarding the difficult question of fishing in British waters,
the negotiators agreed on a 25% reduction in EU quotas for European
Union members to be phased in over five and a half years. Britain had
had sought a three-year transition, while the EU had demanded a slower,
fourteen-year transition. Finally, people were no longer able to move
freely between EU members and the UK. EU citizens require visas to
live and work in Britain although those already in the UK are free of this,
and British citizens can no longer freely work or retire in EU member
states.
The agreement also meant that Northern Ireland and the Republic of
Ireland remained without a hard boundary between them. Trade between
the two Ireland’s will only be minimally affected. There would be no
need for physical customs barriers between them. Goods sent from Britain
to Northern Ireland were exempted from EU tariffs. EU customs offi-
cials can observe border checks but not carry them out, and Northern
Irish firms only have to complete few British export declarations. Finally,
British subsidies for Northern Ireland’s fishing and farming businesses
are not subject EU regulations that govern state aid. Thus, according to
Michael Gove, “The deal protects unfettered access for Northern Ireland
businesses to their most important market.”
The last-minute agreement was made even more important by the
negative economic impact of the pandemic, especially a more transmis-
sible strain in the UK that briefly closed British ports and caused chaos
owing to the backup of trucks, a condition that will recur in early
2021. The new strain of the virus showed up in several other countries,
including the US, Canada, and many were linked to arrivals from the UK.
However, scars remained, including mutual EU-UK political and
economic mistrust. Brexiteers, especially Boris Johnson, had reflected the
spread of nationalist-populism in Great Britain. Johnson had violated the
UK’s unwritten constitution repeatedly during his tenure as PM. He had
declared that with Brexit the UK would become “Global Britain,” when
it was more likely to become “little England.” As prime minister, Johnson
emulated Trump’s conflict with professional civil servants, that is, against
the so-called deep state, most of whom would have preferred for the UK
to remain in the EU.
British leaders during the Brexit era were profoundly incompetent.
Concluded Pankaj Mishra: “Britain’s rupture with the European Union is
proving to be another act of moral dereliction by the country’s rulers. The
Brexiteers, pursuing a fantasy of imperial-era strength and self-sufficiency,
have repeatedly revealed their hubris, mulishness and ineptitude….”58
Equally harsh, Thomas Friedman argued, “Conservative and Labour
members of Parliament keep voting down one plan after another, looking
for the perfect fix, the pain-free exit from the E.U. But there is none,
because you can’t fix stupid.”59
One consequence of the chaos caused by the Brexit controversy was a
dramatic decline in Britons’ faith in their political system. As the deadline
for decision was imminent, a British worker in a pro-Brexit community
expressed a widely held perception. “I think people have totally lost confi-
dence in democracy, in British democracy and the way it’s run. You’ve got
egotistical people in politics, and they want to follow their own agenda.”
He added, “They don’t want to follow what the people have voted for….
We’re in the last hour. I’m wondering: What does more damage? Leaving
without a deal? Or the total annihilation of faith in democracy?”60 A poll
revealed that 71% of respondents agreed that British political parties were
so divided “within themselves that they cannot serve the best interests of
the country,” and 54% said they would approve of a prime minister, like
Johnson, who was willing to break the rules.
After expanding eastward after the Cold War, the liberal European
project as a whole suffered significant setbacks, most importantly the
controversy over Brexit. As we shall see in later chapters, the EU’s and
NATO’s expansion after the Cold War had made their membership polit-
ically and economically more diffuse, their management more complex,
and negotiations among members increasingly fractious. An extended
period of economic malaise during the Great Recession, threats from
Russia and Islamic terrorism, a flood of refugees from the Middle East,
Central Asia, and Africa, and the coronavirus all undermined the EU’s
cohesion. Stewart Patrick observed, “The European Union is locked in a
perpetual state of crisis management. It has had to head off the collapse
of the Eurozone, deal with waves of undocumented migrants, and now
come to terms with a renewed terrorist threat, underscored by the recent
attacks in Brussels and France. On top of all this, the EU confronts
a British exit, or Brexit…. The European idea, which has helped to
inspire the continent’s integration since World War II, may be the next
casualty.”61
Although resolved, the Brexit controversy dealt a blow to the EU and
its multilateral approach to global and regional issues, thereby slowing
political globalization. Resistance had spread in the UK to immigra-
tion, that is, socio-cultural globalization, and the liberal norms of the
free movement of persons and free trade. Tom McTague summarized
what had happened as “a process in which the EU moved inexorably
forward as Westminster collapsed into political infighting, indecision and
instability.”62 Dani Rodrik described “the inescapable trilemma of the
world economy.”63 In a globalized world, European countries could have
economic integration, an independent state, or democracy, but not all
three. Thus, British voters repeatedly discovered that their preferences
were rejected by the EU or some other globalizing agent because the UK
could not have both democracy and economic integration with indepen-
dence. Only if London agreed to abide by EU regulations could it have
remained in a common market, a demand that would have given it signif-
icant advantages over EU members.64 Although the Brexit agreement
required the approval of the British and European Parliaments, it over-
turned the original referendum, and critics will denounce it as violating
democratic norms. Moreover, the agreement itself had maintained limits
on British “independence.”
Notes
1. Cited in Edward Wong and David E. Sanger, “Trump and Johnson: Allies
in Disruption,” New York Times, July 23, 2019, https://www.nytimes.
com/2019/07/23/world/europe/trump-boris-johnson.html?nl=todays
headlines&emc=edit_th_190724?campaign_id=2&instance_id=11093&
segment_id=15491&user_id=318a8b2e197d8de30abd1bb02c4382ea&
regi_id=43321680724.
2. George F. Will, “Theresa May’s Brexit Plan Isn’t Dead Yet,” Washington
Post, January 16, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/glo
bal-opinions/theresa-mays-brexit-plan-isnt-dead-yet/2019/01/16/17f
c6a00-19cd-11e9-8813-cb9dec761e73_story.html?utm_term=.f6c967ac4
780&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1. Italics in original.
3. Fareed Zakaria, “Brexit Will Mark the End of Britain’s Role as a Great
Power,” Washington Post, March 14, 2019, https://www.washingto
npost.com/opinions/global-opinions/brexit-will-mark-the-end-of-bri
tains-role-as-a-great-power/2019/03/14/5df139fa-468c-11e9-8aab-95b
8d80a1e4f_story.html?utm_term=.ee7ebf70b9e1&wpisrc=nl_daily202&
wpmm=1.
4. Max Fisher, “Why Europe Could Melt Down Over a Simple Question
of Borders,” New York Times, July 6, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/
2018/07/06/world/europe/europe-borders-nationalism-identity.html?
5. James Moore, “If You Weren’t Scared by the Prospect of a No-Deal
Brexit, You Sure as Hell Should be Now,” Independent, August 23, 2018,
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/no-deal-brexit-assessment-dom
inic-raab-papers-scared-you-should-be-trade-a8504726.html?wpmm=1&
wpisrc=nl_todayworld.
6. Bagehot, “Downhill All the Way,” The Economist, July 28, 2018, p. 43.
7. Peter A. Hall, “The Roots of Brexit,” Foreign Affairs, June 28, 2016,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-kingdom/2016-06-28/
roots-brexit.
8. Cited in Sam Levin, “Donald Trump Backs Brexit, Saying UK Would be
‘Better Off’ Without EU,” The Guardian,
9. Cited in “Donald Trump: Niger Farage Would be Great UK Ambas-
sador,” BBC, November 22, 2016, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-380
60434.
10. Cited in Nicky Woolf and Jessica Elgot, “Nigel Farage Would be Great
UK Ambassador to US, Says Donald Trump,” The Guardian, November
22, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/22/nigel-
farage-uk-ambassador-us-donald-trump.
11. Anne Applebaum, “This is How Putin Buys Influence in the West,”
Washington Post, June 15, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/
opinions/global-opinions/this-is-how-putin-buys-influence-in-the-west/
2018/06/15/45ccbb2a-70b2-11e8-bf86-a2351b5ece99_story.html?
utm_term=.e3d90dae98fa.
12. William Booth, “Two Years After Brexit Vote, British Leaders Still Tied
in Knots Over How to Leave Europe,” Washington Post, June 20, 2018,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/two-years-after-brexit-vote-bri
tish-leaders-still-tied-in-knots-over-how-to-leave-europe/2018/06/20/
53af6192-73ce-11e8-bda1-18e53a448a14_story.html?utm_term=.f63482
fdaf79. 45229426?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.com/news/top
ics/c8nq32jw5jpt/nigel-farage&link_location=live-reporting-story.
13. “The Elusive Will,” The Economist, March 30, 2019, p. 59.
14. Richard Pérez-Peña, “What Is the Irish Backstop, and Why Is It Holding
Up Brexit?” New York Times, January 30, 2019, https://www.nytimes.
com/2019/01/30/world/europe/irish-backstop-brexit.html.
15. Cited in William Booth, Karla Adam and Michael Birnbaum, “British
Parliament Votes to Delay Brexit, Rejects a Second Referendum for Now,”
Washington Post, March 14, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/
world/europe/brexit-vote-delay-and-second-referendum/2019/03/14/
d97ffdd8-4405-11e9-94ab-d2dda3c0df52_story.html?utm_term=.541c49
e272ab&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1.
16. Cited in “Theresa May: Trump Told Me to Sue the EU,” BBC News, July
15, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-44838028.
17. Cited in Amanda Walker, “Steve Bannon Talks Russia, Brexit, 2020 and
His Controversial Following,” Sky News, March 18, 2019, https://news.
sky.com/story/steve-bannon-talks-russia-brexit-2020-and-his-controver
sial-following-11668563?wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
18. “The Mother of All Messes,” The Economist, January 19, 2019, p. 12.
19. Cited in Stephen Castle and Richard Pérez-Peña, “Theresa May Survives
No-Confidence Vote in British Parliament,” New York Times, January
16, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/world/europe/bre
xit-theresa-may-no-confidence-vote.html?emc=edit_th_190117&nl=tod
20. Cited in Karla Adam and William Booth, “Seven Lawmakers Quit Britain’s
Labour Party over Brexit and Anti-Semitism,” Washington Post, February
18, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/seven-lawmakers-
quit-britains-labour-party-over-brexit-and-anti-semitism/2019/02/18/
a90c5154-7f8d-451a-b941-78b7cc32fe86_story.html?utm_term=.cc84c4
6e1344.
21. Cited in “Independent Group: Three MPs Quit Tory Party to Join,”
BBC News, February 20, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-
47306022.
22. Cited in William Booth, “Jeremy Corby says Labour Would Back a Second
Brexit Referendum,” Washington Post, February 25, 2019, https://www.
washingtonpost.com/world/europe/jeremy-corbyn-says-labour-would-
back-a-second-brexit-referendum/2019/02/25/ea765b14-392e-11e9-
b10b-f05a22e75865_story.html?utm_term=.69920c52229e&wpisrc=nl_
powerup&wpmm=1.
23. Cited in Karla Adam and Michael Birnbaum, “Brexit: Britain Preps for
E.U. Elections, Three Years After Voting to Leave the E.U.,” Washington
Post, April 5, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/britain-
to-take-part-in-european-parliament-elections-signaling-a-brexit-delay/
2019/04/05/e7042028-577f-11e9-a047-748657a0a9d1_story.html?
utm_term=.ae22a5b43b07.
24. Cited in ibid.
25. Peter Kellner, “The Reopening of the Irish Question,” Carnegie
Europe, https://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/76208?utm_source=
rssemail&utm_medium=email&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiT1RsbFpUQm1OVFk0
TldVeiIsInQiOiIydzF5dzFHTjc4ZDJoMnRycTUxNFwveDNKTDNtSE
JPRnZUN0tWbkI4S0ZDVzZxbXROV0wzdmtHMDczYmY3bVJoM0
gzRk9IWDFuVEF2WXhQSFwvQkRHV0N2NUNMTFwvb1lvYnU5bE
tXTW5cL0hXVUpkTTRpUkgxRlp0YnRIRXNRdWxsMzcifQ%3D%3D.
26. Cited in Karla Adam and William Booth, “Will Brexit happen? When?
And how? The Uncertainty is Maddening for Business,” Washington
Post, March 9, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/
will-brexit-happen-when-and-how-the-uncertainty-is-maddening-for-bus
iness/2019/03/09/900525fe-3468-11e9-8375-e3dcf6b68558_story.
html?utm_term=.9aa526df2640&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1.
27. Cited in Adam Taylor, “Ireland’s Prime Minister Talks Brexit
and Trump. Today’s World View,” Washington Post, March 14,
2019, C:\Users\mansbach\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache
\Content.Outlook\HVCX7VXP\email (004).mht.
28. Cited in Stephen Castle, “Theresa May Is Off to Brussels for Brexit
Talks, but She’s Not Feeling the Love,” New York Times, February 6,
2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/world/europe/theresa-
may-brexit-tusk-brussels-backstop.html?emc=edit_th_190207&nl=todays
headlines&nlid=43321680207.
29. Martin Kettle, “A Special Place in Hell? Donald Tusk Didn’t Go far
Enough,” The Guardian, February 6, 2019, https://www.theguardian.
com/commentisfree/2019/feb/06/donald-tusk-brexiters-ireland-tories?
CMP=share_btn_tw&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
30. Cited in William Booth Karla Adam and Michael Birnbaum, “Brexit
Vote: British Parliament Rejects Theresa May’s Brexit Deal, Leaving
Withdrawal from E.U. and Prime Minister’s Future in Doubt,” Wash-
ington Post, January 15, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/
world/europe/brexit-vote-2019/2019/01/15/8eb6579a-1816-11e9-
b8e6-567190c2fd08_story.html?utm_term=.80f64555e885&wpisrc=nl_
powerup&wpmm=1.
31. Cited in Michael Birnbaum, “As Brexit Deal Goes Down in Flames,
Exasperated Europe Wonders What Britain Wants,” Washington Post,
January 16, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/as-
brexit-deal-goes-down-in-flames-exasperated-europe-wonders-what-the-
britons-want/2019/01/16/33abb552-1979-11e9-a804-c35766b9f234_
story.html?utm_term=.549e66fe7f1c.
32. Cited in David Frum, “It’s Five Minutes to Midnight in the U.K.,” The
Atlantic, March 10, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/
2019/03/brexit-short-history-bad-idea/584524/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_
todayworld.
33. Anne Applebaum, “Theresa May isn’t the Adult in the Room. She’s Part
of the Problem,” Washington Post, March 22, 2019, https://www.was
hingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/dont-pity-theresa-may-shes-
the-worst-prime-minister-in-living-memory/2019/03/22/405920e6-
4ca5-11e9-93d0-64dbcf38ba41_story.html?utm_term=.dcf44cd77abb.
34. Bagehot, “An Equilibrium of Incompetence,” The Economist, September
8, 2018, p. 49.
35. Boris Johnson, “Boris Johnson: Why we Should Chuck Chequers,” The
Spectator, July 28, 2018, tps://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/07/boris-joh
nson-why-we-should-chuck-chequers/.
36. Cited in William Booth, “As Theresa May Tries to Sell her Brexit Plan,
Macron Calls Brexit Backers liars,” Washington Post, September 20, 2018,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/as-theresa-may-tries-
to-sell-her-brexit-plan-macron-calls-brexit-backers-liars/2018/09/20/
5f7779c6-bcec-11e8-8243-f3ae9c99658a_story.html?utm_term=.892433
4bbf41&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
37. Cited in Steven Erlanger, “U.K.’s Brexit Plans Will Not Work,’ a Top
E.U. Official Says,” New York Times, September 20, 2018, https://www.
nytimes.com/2018/09/20/world/europe/brexit-european-union-che
quers-plan.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=
click&contentCollection=world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&
version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=sectionfront.
38. Ian Birrell, “Trump is Terrible, but the Sabotage of Brexit will Outlast
Him,” Washington Post, February 18, 2019, https://www.washingto
npost.com/opinions/trump-is-terrible-but-the-sabotage-of-brexit-will-
outlast-him/2019/02/18/51ef7fb0-3082-11e9-8ad3-9a5b113ecd3c_
story.html?utm_term=.a9e53a03c5fa&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1.
39. Cited in Stephen Castle and Steven Erlanger, “E.U. Leaders and U.K.
Agree on Brexit Divorce Terms,” New York Times, November 25, 2018,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/25/world/europe/brexit-uk-eu-
agreement.html?emc=edit_na_20181125&nl=breaking-news&nlid=433
2168ing-news&ref=cta.
40. Anne Applebaum, “Theresa May’s Brexit Deal Gives Everyone Something
to Hate,” Washington Post, November 15, 2018, https://www.washingto
npost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/11/15/theresa-mays-bre
xit-deal-gives-everyone-something-to-hate/?utm_term=.a43691664bea&
41. Ibid.
42. Cited in Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, “Amid Brexit Strains, Anglo-Irish
Relations Are ‘Fraying’,” New York Times, February 23, 2019, https://
www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/world/europe/ireland-brexit-britain-
uk.html?emc=edit_th_190224&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=43321680224.
43. William Booth, Karla Adam and Michael Birnbaum “Brexit vote: British
Parliament Rejects Theresa May’s Brexit Deal, Leaving Withdrawal from
E.U. and Prime Minister’s Political Future in Doubt,” Washington Post,
January 15, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/
brexit-vote-2019/2019/01/15/8eb6579a-1816-11e9-b8e6-567190c2f
d08_story.html?utm_term=.07fd4cf26294.
44. Cited in William Booth and Karla Adam, “Brexit Vote: British Parliament
Overwhelmingly Rejects Theresa May’s Plan, Diminishing Chances of
Withdrawal on March 29,” Washington Post, March 12, 2019, https://
www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/british-parliament-to-vote-tue
sday-on-theresa-mays-new-brexit-plan-but-the-tweaked-deal-faces-strong-
opposition/2019/03/12/850e2c52-4405-11e9-94ab-d2dda3c0df52_
story.html?utm_term=.77192c6939c1&wpisrc=nl_powerup&wpmm=1.
45. “The Next to Blow,” The Economist, June 1, 2019, p. 9.
46. “The Referendums and the Damage Done,” The Economist, June 1, 2019,
p. 16.
47. Cited in Siobhán O’Grady, “‘Moronic & Clueless’: Boris Johnson Sparks
Outrage, Saying Everyone in Britain Should Speak English First,” Wash-
ington Post, July 6, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/
2019/07/06/moronic-clueless-boris-johnson-sparks-outrage-saying-eve
ryone-uk-should-speak-english-first/?utm_term=.3c09e2f84c06.
48. “The Corrupting of Democracy,” The Economist, August 29, 2019,
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/08/29/the-corrupting-of-
democracy?cid1=cust/ednew/n/bl/n/2019/08/29n/owned/n/n/
nwl/n/n/NA/299863/n.
49. Yascha Mounk “Brexit Is a Cultural Revolution,” The Atlantic, October
24, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/irchive/2019/10/what-
brexit-mieans-europe/600583/?wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
50. Cited in Landler and Castle, “Boris Johnson Sends Letter to E.U. Asking
for Brexit Delay.”
51. Cited in William Booth and Karla Adam, “Trump Isn’t Running in
Britain’s Election. That Hasn’t Stopped Him from Getting in the
Middle,” Washington Post, November 30, 2019, https://www.washin
gtonpost.com/world/europe/trump-isnt-running-in-britains-election-
that-hasnt-stopped-him-from-getting-in-the-middle/2019/11/29/d49
73fee-0bb4-11ea-8054-289aef6e38a3_story.html?utm_campaign=post_m
ost&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&
wpmm=1.
52. Cited in Adam Taylor, “The Looming Questions the Brexit Deal Didn’t
Answer,” Washington Post, January 1, 2021, https://www.washingto
npost.com/world/2021/01/01/brexit-deal-unanswered-questions/?
utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=new
sletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.
com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F2e079e9%2F5fef50879d2fda0efb9af245%2F596b
51d8ae7e8a44e7d58086%2F27%2F72%2F5fef50879d2fda0efb9af245.
53. Lisa O’Carroll, “Lorry Drivers Will Face de facto Brexit Border in Kent,
Gove Confirms,” The Guardian, September 23, 2020, https://www.the
guardian.com/politics/2020/sep/23/truck-queues-could-be-7000-long-
when-brexit-transition-ends-ministers-warn,
54. Cited in Mark Landler and Stephen Castle, “Britain and E.U. Reach
Landmark Deal on Brexit,” New York Times, December 24, 2020,
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/world/europe/brexit-trade-
deal-uk-eu.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20201224&instance_
id=0&nl=breaking-news&ref=headline&regi_id=4332168&segment_id=
47735&user_id=318a8b2e197d8de30abd1bb02c4382ea.
55. Cited in David M. Herszenhorn, “EU and UK Wrap up Christmas Eve
Deal on Post-Brexit Trade,” Politico, December 24, 2020, https://www.
politico.eu/article/uk-eu-brexit-trade-deal-agreed/.
56. Cited in ibid.
57. Cited in Benjamin Mueller, “Brexit Deal Done. Britain Now Scram-
bles to See How It Will Work,” New York Times, December 25,
2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/25/world/europe/brexit-
britain-european-union.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20201226&
instance_id=25423&nl=todaysheadlines&regi_id=4332168&segment_id=
47831&user_id=318a8b2e197d8de30abd1bb02c4382ea
58. Pankaj Mishra, “The Malign Incompetence of the British Ruling Class,”
New York Times, January 17, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/
01/17/opinion/sunday/brexit-ireland-empire.html?wpisrc=nl_todayw
orld&wpmm=1.
59. Thomas L. Friedman, “The United Kingdom Has Gone Mad,” New York
Times, April 2, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/opinion/
brexit-news.html.
60. Cited in Ellen Barry and Benjamin Mueller, “‘We’re in the Last Hour’:
Democracy Itself Is on Trial in Brexit, Britons Say,” New York Times,
March 30, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/world/eur
ope/uk-brexit-democracy-may.html?emc=edit_th_190331&nl=todayshea
61. Stewart Patrick, “An Ever-Looser Union,” Foreign Affairs, March 29,
2016, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/europe/2016-03-29/
ever-looser-union.
62. Tom McTague, “How the UK Lost the Brexit Battle,” Politico, March
27, 2019, https://www.politico.eu/article/how-uk-lost-brexit-eu-negoti
ation/?wpisrc=nl_powerup&wpmm=1.
63. Cited in Jonathan Derbyshire, “Why Governments Can’t Have it
All,” Financial Times, July 28, 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/632
46e18-72b4-11e7-aca6-c6bd07df1a3c.
64. Edward Alden, “Why the World Should for the EU in Brexit Talks,”
Foreign Policy, December 11, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/
12/11/johnson-brexit-negotiations-european-union/?utm_source=Pos
tUp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=28307&utm_term=Editors%
20Picks%20OC&?tpcc=28307.
Questions
Multiple Choice
1. After the 2016 referendum, three years of constitutional crisis in
the UK followed and increasing disarray in the ruling Conservative
Party, once the home of an elite establishment transformed into a
group of which of the following?
a. Socialist
b. Nationalist-populists
c. Neoliberals
d. Labour Party
2. Which of the following is a proponent of “leaving” that exemplified

nationalist-populism in the UK?
a. Opposition to immigration
b. Opposition to globalism
c. Opposition to multilateralism
d. All the above
3. During the debate over Brexit, what political party, founded by

Nigel Farage, led the pro-Brexit movement?
a. UK Independence Party (UKIP)

b. Labour Party
c. Conservative Party
d. Scottish Nation Party (SNP)
4. In addition to the challenge posed by Brexit, the EU was increas-

ingly divided between the liberal states of the West and a populist
bloc. Which of the following is not a member of that populist bloc?
a. Italy
b. Poland
c. Spain
d. Hungary
5. As in America’s 2016 election, what country was covertly involved

in supporting “Leavers” in Great Britain, seeking to divide and
weaken the EU, in which members were already at odds over
immigration?
a. Russia
b. Ukraine
c. France
d. Israel
6. Which of the following is true about the leading contributor to the

Brexit campaign Aaron Banks?
a. Banks had secretly been in contact with Russians officials

between 2015 and 2017
b. Banks had significant Russian business connections that he
tried to conceal
c. Neither a nor b
d. Both a and b
7. As a result of Brexit, most important cleavage in British politics was

no longer between Conservatives and Labour, but between what
groups?
a. Left-wing and right-wing

b. Labour and Liberal

c. Remainers and Leavers
d. Conservative and Remainers
8. Decades of violence between Catholics and Protestants, known as
“the Troubles,” ended with which of the following, which estab-
lished a power-sharing arrangement and guaranteed unimpeded
passage between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic?
a. 1998 Good Friday Agreement
b. Treaty of Versailles
c. 1991 Dissolution of the USSR
d. Brexit
9. The EU wanted Northern Ireland to remain within its customs
union, but, while agreeing there should be no “hard border” in
Ireland, it demanded the creation of a what?
a. A separate Scottish state
b. EU-UK Trade deal
c. Irish backstop
d. Scottish soft borders
10. The EU had been willing to extend the transition period after
Brexit from a year to how long?
a. 21 months
b. Two years
c. Five years
d. Ten years
11. Why had British governance had deteriorated post Brexit refer-
endum?
a. Absence of a majority government
b. Divisions within its major political parties
c. Poor quality of party leaders
d. All the above
12. What was the name of the Labour Party leader post Brexit?
a. Theresa May
b. Nigel Farage
c. Boris Johnson
d. Jeremy Corbyn
13. In November 2018 Prime Minister May revealed the final deal she
had offered the EU, which in turn accepted the prime minister’s
proposal for what type of Brexit?
a. Quick
b. Slow
c. Hard
d. Soft
14. After Brexiteers had promised that leaving the EU would be cost-
less, Prime Minister May had agreed to pay the EU a substantial
sum of how much that Brussels thought London still owed?
a. $1 billion
b. $5 billion
c. $10 billion
d. $50 billion
15. Britain’s unwritten constitution placed sovereignty in the crown
where?
a. House of Commons
b. House of Lords
c. Prime Minister
d. House of Youngs
16. After Boris Johnson became the new prime minister, he sought to
do which of the following?
a. Rejoined the EU
b. Conduct a second referendum
c. Deter Parliament and force a “hard” Brexit
d. Convince parliament to consider a “soft” Brexit
17. After it became to difficult to achieve Johnson’s goal of leaving
the EU by the end of October 2019, he was forced to request an
additional extension required by Parliament. What of the following
had Johnson previously said about asking for an extension?
a. He would do it if necessary
b. It would be “the best-case scenario”

c. He would “probably need to do it eventually”
d. He would rather be “dead in a ditch”
18. Who warned that if London’s action led to a solid border between
the two Irelands, thereby endangering the Good Friday Agreement
that had brought peace to Ireland, he would oppose the British
effort to forge a trade agreement with their country?
a. President Donald Trump

b. The, at the time, U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden
c. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders
d. President Emmanuel Macron
19. Although negotiations about specifics continued to January 1,

2021, when did Brexit officially take place?
a. March 19th, 2019

b. July 19th, 2019
c. December 30th, 2019
d. January 31st, 2020
20. Because of Brexit, Britain would lose access to migrants. Migrants

did which of the following for Britain?
a. Filled lower paying jobs

b. Provided taxes
c. Helped compensate for an aging and shrinking population
d. All the above
True or False
1. True or False? In 2016, British voters narrowly opposed their
country’s withdrawal from the European Union
False, British voters narrowly favored their country’s

withdrawal from the European Union
2. True or False? Toward the end of the path toward Brexit, British
voters appeared to have changed their mind and leaned more
toward remain.
True
3. True or False? In the 2019 elections to the EU Parliament, the

Brexit Party, as expected did well, winning at the expense of both
the Conservative and Labour Parties.
True
4. True or False? UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage

publicly opposed Donald Trump during Trump’s presidential
campaign.
False, Farage publicly supported Donald Trump and was

the first British politician to visit the president after his
electoral triumph in 2016
5. True or False? In the British referendum, “Leavers” won by a wide

margin over “Remainers.”
False, in the British referendum, “Leavers” won by a

narrow margin 52–48% for “Remainers.”
6. True or False? Three years after the referendum, what Brexit would
entail remained unclear.
True
7. True or False? One poll found “under 30% of voters were ready to
accept free movement of people from the EU in exchange for free
access to its single market,” similar to the Norwegian model.
False, One poll found “almost 60% of voters ready to

accept free movement of people from the EU in exchange
for free access to its single market,” similar to the Norwe-
gian model
8. True or False? President Trump continued to urge Brexit and

meddle in British politics, tweeting, “My Administration looks
forward to negotiating a large-scale Trade Deal with the United
Kingdom. The potential is unlimited!”
True
9. True or False? Many Labour Party members supported a second

referendum and formally adopted this position in September 2018
party conference.
True
10. True or False? Brexiteers believed in the need for customs officials
to enforce customs laws and regulations.
False, they argued that customs officials were unnecessary
and could be replaced by untested modern technology, but
the technology did not yet exist
11. True or False? Reducing immigration, concern for relative depriva-
tion, and resentment of elites were crucial elements of the Leavers’
arguments for Brexit.
True
12. True or False? David Cameron’s successor as British Prime
Minister, Theresa May, had initially support Brexit but soon
decided she had more politically to fear from the Remainers and
in her party.
False, Theresa May had initially opposed Brexit but soon
decided she had more politically to fear from the Leavers
and in her party.
13. True or False? Observers denounced Trump’s involvement in
British politics and argued that any arrangement for a trade deal
on Trump’s terms would reduce British sovereignty.
True
14. True or False? The British parliament did not need to approve any
final deal with the EU.
False, the British parliament had to approve any final deal
with the EU
15. True or False? In late 2018 indicated that the British preferred to
“leave” rather than accept a “hard Brexit” with no deal.
False, they preferred to “remain”
16. True or False? In 2019, Parliament turned down the proposed deal
for a third time only two weeks before Brexit was to take place, and
shortly thereafter failed to muster a majority for any of four options
put before it again
True
17. True or False? Boris Johnson is something of a nationalist-populist,
a characteristic suggested both by his support for Brexit and
his comment that all British residents, especially immigrants and
presumably Scots, Welsh sand Irish, should speak English as their
first language.
True
18. True or False? After Parliament passed a proposal to prevent a “no-
deal” Brexit and refused to authorize a national election until that
proposal became law. Boris Johnson began to work towards that
goal.
False, Johnson retaliated by informing Tories who voted
against him that they would be thrown out of the Conser-
vative Party and would not be able to compete as Tories
for their parliamentary seats in the next election
19. True or False? The UK remained in the EU’s single market and
customs union until the end of 2020 and had a year to negotiate a
bilateral trade agreement with the EU.
True
20. True or False? The EU feared that if it permitted the UK to do as
PM Boris Johnson wished it would have to compete with a highly
competitive, less regulated economy.
True
Short Answer
What was the demographic turnout of the 2016 Brexit vote?
The Leavers narrow victory left unclear what the UK’s rela-
tionship with the EU would be thereafter. Fifty-two percent
of Britons voted to “leave” the EU and 48 percent sought to

“remain” in the EU. The United Kingdom was deeply divided.
Wales and England had voted to “leave,” but Scotland and
Northern Ireland had voted to “remain.” A high percentage
of elderly voters participated in the referendum and were more
likely to favor leaving than younger voters. Moreover, a much
lower percentage of the young voted. This was a key factor in
the outcome.
How was the Vote Leave group dishonest in its campaign to leave
the EU?
The Vote Leave group waged a campaign filled with false claims
regarding among other things the amount of money, Britain
would save by exiting the EU. The group also apparently
violated elections laws by spending more than the legal limit of
$9.2 million.
What was the economic objective of the Brexiteers’ opposition to

membership in a multilateral group, the EU?
Brexiteers advocated a pivot from the European economy to the
global economy without EU regulations or the European Court
of Justice. Most negotiations after the referendum sought to
preserve the free flow of goods and money across the channel
but without accompanying labor migration. Brexiteers argued
that Britain would enjoy the benefits of a common market as
well as trade deals with other countries and regions.
Brexit supporters had a similar profile to the Americans who voted

for Donald Trump. Describe this profile.
Like the election of Trump, the Brexit referendum revealed divi-
sions between urban and rural voters, young and old, education,
and those who had benefited from globalization and those “left
behind.” Typical pro-Brexit voters were poorly educated males
living in old industrial towns similar to those in America’s “rust
belt,” who won the election for Trump.
According William Booth, who was the three-way divide over Brexit
between?
According to Booth, it was “between supporters of a hard, clean

divorce with the European Union and a soft, fuzzy separation —
followed by a third alternative, all those who want a do-over in
a repeat referendum (these folks don’t want any Brexit at all).”
Why is the fact that Northern Ireland was a part of the UK, such a
complicating factor for Brexit?
Since Northern Ireland was part of the UK, it would be neces-
sary either that Great Britain remain in the customs union or
establish checkpoints, separating the Irish Republic that was an
EU member and Northern Ireland. However, such a border
would endanger the fragile peace that had ended decades of
violence between Protestants and Catholics and the efforts of
many in Northern Ireland to join the Irish Republic. The
Protestant and unionist community and the Catholic national-
ists continued to argue about the status of Northern Ireland.
How did the Brexit referendum demonstrate a retreat from several

dimensions of globalization?
First, Britain’s withdrawal from the EU eroded the political
dimension because it rejected multilateralism. It was a retreat
from globalization’s economic dimension since it entailed addi-
tional impediments to trade between Britain and the remaining
members of the EU. Lastly, it was a retreat from the socio-
cultural dimension of globalization because it erected additional
barriers to the free movement of persons between Northern
Ireland and the Irish Republic and allowed the EU to prevent
British citizens from freely traveling or residing in much of
Europe and vice versa.
Why was the choice of Jeremy Corbyn to lead the Labour Party
highly controversial?
He was a long-time member of the party’s extreme left wing,
which advocated nationalization of key industries. He had also
been a leader of the effort to force Britain to surrender unilat-
erally its nuclear weapons and had been a persistent critic of
U.S. foreign policy and NATO. Although he had retreated from
his pacifist views to enable his selection, the opposition of many
parliamentary Labourites weakened his position as did repeated

claims that, along with several other Labour parliamentarians,
he was anti-Semitic
What occurred in the immediate blow back to Boris Johnson

informing Tories who voted against him that they would be thrown
out of the Conservative Party and would not be able to compete as
Tories for their parliamentary seats in the next election?
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd quit the cabinet and
the Conservative Party, accusing Johnson of committing “polit-
ical vandalism.” Britain’s Supreme Court also unanimously
ruled that Johnson had violated the country’s constitution and
had misled Queen Elizabeth II when he suspended Parliament
to prevent it from meeting to deal with Brexit. The court ruled
that Johnson was preventing Parliament from meeting its legal
obligations.
How would of a Labour Party win in the general election before

the end of 2019 impacted the United Kingdom’s membership in
NATO?
Had Labour won, it would have great strained NATO unity.
Jeremy Corbyn was a pacifist who had repeatedly criticized
NATO, the use of force more generally, Britain’s retention
of a nuclear deterrent, while advocating very leftwing policies
including renationalization of British industries. Britain’s with-
drawal from NATO would have removed a nuclear power that
accounted for about one-quarter of Europe’s military capability.
Essay Questions
1. How has Brexit changed and impact the parties in British Parlia-
ment?
2. Compare and Contrast the “Remain” and “Leave” movement.
3. Describe why three years after the Brexit referendum, the outcome
still remained unclear.
4. What are the implications for Brexit on globalization?
5. Predict the short—and long-term impact of Brexit.
CHAPTER 6
Europe and the Spread

of Nationalist-Populism
Europe was a beneficiary of the American-led liberal order. The Marshall

Plan fostered postwar reconstruction, and American leaders, both Demo-
cratic and Republican, consistently supported European integration,
liberal norms, open borders, and free trade that generated unparalleled
prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic. No longer did NATO’s members
arm against one another, pursue geopolitical goals, or seek a favorable
balance of power as long as America provided security in which liberal
norms thrived. This would change with America’s election of Donald
Trump in 2016. Thereafter, nationalist-populism spread across Europe.
Trump and European Populism

During and after the campaign, Trump encouraged Brexit, applauded
European populists, appeared unwilling to confront Russia over Ukraine,
insulted German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other allied leaders.
“Europe,” wrote Susan Glasser, “has had many fights with American Pres-
idents over the years, but never in the seven decades since the end of the
Second World War has it confronted one so openly hostile to its core
institutions.”1 Shortly after Trump’s election, the president of the Euro-
pean Council, Donald Tusk, in a letter to European leaders warned, “For
the first time in our history, in an increasingly multipolar external world,
so many are becoming openly anti-European, or Euroskeptic at best.”2

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72033-9_6
European integration had been fostered by the cooperation required

by Washington among European recipients of Marshall Plan funds in
1947, the establishment of NATO in 1949, and the formation in 1952
of the European Coal and Steel Community in which France, Germany,
Italy, and the Benelux countries agreed to pool their coal and steel indus-
tries. Donald Trump was the first postwar American president not to favor
deeper European integration. “Not only that, but he’s against it and sees
the destruction of the European Union as in America’s interest.” The
result, according to the director of the European Council on Foreign
Relations, was that Europeans saw “Trump as the biggest threat to global
order and the European ideal of how the world should be organized.”3
Thereafter, Tusk’s warning seemed prescient. “There’s no question it’s
a big moment,” declared a fellow at the Center for a New American
Security after the disastrous G-7 meeting of June 2018. “All the funda-
mentals are being called into question. We’re at a point where we have
a U.S. president who doesn’t value the rules-based international order,
and I’m not convinced he even knows what it is.”4 Also, following the
same meeting, Tusk admitted that it was America, the architect of the
rule-based order that threatened it. Simultaneously, nationalist-populism
divided Europeans much as it divided Americans. The populist disease
infected several of the eastern members of the EU as well as Italy. Stephen
Bannon argued, “The fight right now in the E.U. is between those who
look at the nation-state as something to be overcome and the others, who
look at the nation-state as something to be nurtured.”5
Nationalist-populists in America and Europe viewed Vladimir Putin
as a potential ally because, like Russia, they feared Islamic radicalism,
opposed global economic integration, and disliked secularism, and the
liberal order. The EU had been established to avoid another war in
Europe, but that memory was dimming. Thus, Italy’s populist leader
Matteo Salvini exclaimed, “In 1990, Europe was our future. Now, we
are Europe’s future.”6 Salvini and his populist colleagues threatened EU
unity as reflected in the unprecedented enmity that triggered France to
recall its ambassador to Italy, claiming that Salvini had made France “the
object of repeated accusations,” and “unfounded attacks.” If national
sovereignty were Salvini’s priority, European integration was French Pres-
ident Emmanuel Macron’s priority. The dispute had focused on Italy’s
criticism of French refusal to accept migrants who had initially entered
their country and on Italian populists’ encouragement of the “yellow
6 EUROPE AND THE SPREAD OF NATIONALIST-POPULISM 233
vest” (les gilets jaunes ) French protesters, who had demonstrated against
Macron and growing economic inequality.
Populism: Infecting Europe

The EU was increasingly divided between liberals and immigrant-nativists.
Europe’s populists consisted largely of relatively older and pious men,
the less well-off, the poorly educated, and ethnic majorities. Many
thought the EU cost countries their sovereign independence and that
migrants were diluting their cultural heritage. The Schengen Agreement
(1995) permitted citizens and investment to move freely across members’
borders, thereby enhancing economic efficiency. However, it also allowed
terrorists to move across the continent. Moreover, unified monetary
policy in the Eurozone prevented currency devaluation by less compet-
itive members like Italy. Before the euro, Italy had devalued the lira to
cope with slow growth. Its economic growth fell increasingly behind the
EU’s northern members after entering the Eurozone, and in 2019 Italy
fell into recession as growth in the entire EU fell.
As nationalist-populism spread across Europe, one group of analysts
used the term “authoritarian populism” because of the anti-democratic
tendencies of American and European populists. They shared “a rhetoric
that divides society between good, pure-hearted ordinary people and
a self-serving, out-of-touch elite; a lack of patience with the standard
procedures and constraints of liberal democracies, often accompanied by
demands for direct democracy; and promises of radical changes to policies
and institutions—both at home and internationally.”7
Although at a 2017 EU summit, leaders declared “Europe is our
common future,” and the EU is a “unique union with common insti-
tutions and strong values, a community of peace, freedom, democracy,
human rights and the rule of law,” fissures were evident. Post-Cold
War members of the EU in Central and Eastern Europe manifested
“authoritarian populism,” which spread elsewhere as well.
Italian elections brought a populist government to power in 2018.
Populist politics even infected Latvia in elections that increased support
for a pro-Russian populist party, Harmony Center. Sweden, Finland,
Ireland, and Estonia also saw the spread of nationalist-populism. Thus,
the Sweden Democrats, like other populist parties, opposed immigration
and came in third in the country’s 2018 election, while Sweden’s Social
Democrats suffered their worst defeat since 1908. The Sweden Democrats
won 17.5% of the vote, sufficient to create difficulties for Sweden to form
a working parliamentary coalition. As elsewhere in Europe, Sweden put
the brakes on immigration, using rhetoric like that of the Trump admin-
istration. Austria, too, formed a populist coalition. Immigration was a
seething issue across the continent, and in Norway, Denmark, Finland,
and Switzerland anti-immigrant populist parties emerged.
The spread of populism facilitated Russia’s efforts to destabilize Euro-
pean politics and foster European differences with Trump’s America.
Like Trump, Putin preferred bilateral negotiations with individual states
rather than multilateral groups like the EU because it increased Russian
bargaining leverage. Thus, Moscow befriended Greece during that coun-
try’s acute economic problems as Putin sought to intensify Greek resent-
ment of the EU’s austerity program and mobilize opposition to EU
sanctions on Russia.
In several elections, about a fifth of Europe’s electorate voted for a
populist party. Their numbers grew after the 2008 financial crisis, and
support for right-wing populists reached over 12% in 2016. In Hungary,
over two-thirds voted for populists as did almost half of Polish voters. In a
pessimistic article, Thomas Friedman wrote, “the European pillar” of the
community of Western democracies “has never been more under assault
— so much so that for the first time I wonder if this European pillar will
actually crumble.” After describing problems such as refugee flows from
Africa and Russian efforts to divide America and the EU, he added, “As
for Trump, he has no appreciation for how important the E.U.-U.S. part-
nership has been to catalyzing the global cooperation and rule-making
that has made America, Europe and the world as a whole steadily freer,
more stable and more prosperous since World War II.”8 Nobelist Paul
Krugman was as pessimistic as Friedman. “There was a time, not long ago,
when people used to say that our democratic norms, our proud history of
freedom, would protect us from such a slide into tyranny…. But believing
such a thing today requires willful blindness. The fact is that the Repub-
lican Party is ready, even eager, to become an American version of Law
and Justice or Fidesz….”9
European Populism: A Political Pandemic

Although nationalism reemerged throughout the EU, its supporters
proved less successful in older western member states such as the Nether-
lands, Germany, and France than in more recent eastern members in
Europe such as Hungary and Poland. The latter had a shallower demo-
cratic tradition and less resilient political systems and institutions than
the former. Additional factors that determined the relative success of
populist politicians and parties were a country’s electoral system and
political parties, and whether voters were selecting members of a parlia-
ment or voting in referendums. Many working-class whites in France and
Germany, like Trump supporters in America, were rural and had assumed
populist views. These included resentment toward immigrants, who they
believed were diluting their cultures and harming their economies.
Western Europe
Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party (PVV) and known as a
“Dutch Trump,” was among Europe’s leading Islamophobes. Wilders’s
political party ran second in Dutch elections in March 2017 but
won fewer seats than had been predicted. Other right-wing populists
in Europe, notably Marine Le Pen who led France’s National Front
(renamed National Rally), threatened mainstream parties. Le Pen lauded
Trump supporters who had “kept faith with their national interest,” while
insisting that the French had been “dispossessed of their patriotism.”10
She called her supporters “patriots” and her foes “globalists” who were
pro-EU and supported the admission of Muslim refugees in Europe. In an
ideological twist, many of her followers were “left-behind” workers who
had previously been members of France’s Socialist Party. The founder of
the National Front had been Marine Le Pen’s overtly anti-Semitic father,
Jean-Marie Le Pen, who had been a follower of the earlier French populist
Pierre Poujade. Despite her belated efforts to depict herself as a moderate,
neo-Nazis remained among her political advisers.
Le Pen, whose political party had borrowed Russian funds for France’s
presidential campaign, echoed Trump’s admiration of Putin and Russia.
“She’s the only one who can speak with both Putin and Trump,” declared
one of her advisers. “She’s got a privileged relationship with Putin. You
can’t be isolated when you’ve got both Putin and Trump on your side.”11
In the first round of the French 2017 presidential election, Le Pen
came in second, qualifying for a run-off with Emmanuel Macron who
had established a new party, En Marche! (Onward!). Macron was a
centrist who believed in liberal democracy and free trade and supported
deeper EU integration. Neither was a candidate of France’s existing main-
stream parties. Obama and outgoing French President François Hollande
endorsed Macron, and Trump and Putin indicated they supported Le

Pen. Although many voters did not vote, Macron won the second
round with over 63% of the vote, to the immense relief of beleaguered
defenders of the EU and the liberal order. Had France followed Britain
out of the EU, it would have fatally weakened the group. After the
Group of 20 (G-20) summit in Germany, Macron sadly observed, “Our
world has never been so divided. Centrifugal forces have never been
so powerful. Our common goods have never been so threatened.” He
added, “We need those organizations that were created out of the Second
World War. Otherwise, we will be moving back toward narrow-minded
nationalism.”12
Germany, the preferred country for many refugees, witnessed a surge
in the anti-immigrant right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), with
the support of about 16% of the electorate (only 2% behind the Social
Democrats), and it won seats in all of Germany’s state parliaments. In
Saxony, only Chancellor Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU)
enjoyed greater popularity. In elections in September 2019, although the
AfD failed to form a government in either Saxony or Brandenburg as
had been feared, it made significant gains from earlier elections. The
AfD advocated policies that overlapped with the extreme left-wing Left
Party that encompassed the former Communist Party. AfD extremism was
evident in an e-mail sent in 2013 by one of its leaders, Alexander Gauland.
“The reason we are inundated by culturally alien [kulturfremden] peoples
such as Arabs, Sinti and Roma etc. is the systematic destruction of civil
society as a possible counterweight to the enemies-of-the-constitution by
whom we are ruled. These pigs are nothing other than puppets of the
victor powers of the Second World War….”13
The AfD also fostered neo-Nazi violence in Germany, as did Pegida
(“Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident”). Chem-
nitz, site of anti-foreigner riots by neo-Nazis in August 2018, had been in
East Germany. Thereafter, Merkel removed Germany’s chief of domestic
intelligence whom she regarded as too sympathetic to right-wing extrem-
ists. In February 2020, a xenophobic extremist, probably influenced by
the AfD, killed nine Germans with immigrant backgrounds in Hanau,
and German politicians began to receive death threats.
After Germany’s reunification, the former East Germany suffered a loss
of jobs owing to the closing of obsolete industries. Also, unlike West
Germany, it had done little to eliminate pro-Nazi sentiment. The AfD,
with the smaller but less overtly offensive right-wing Generation Iden-
tity, became a major political force in the east. In August 2019 found
Merkel’s conservative CDU-CSU alliance at all-time low of 20% of voters,
while the AfD achieved a record high. Consequently, after the CDU
did poorly in elections in Hesse, Merkel announced she would retire in
2021, which would prove a blow to European stability. Although the
AfD initially attracted voters by vigorous opposition to migrants, political
analyst Paul Hokenos argued that this was changing. “The AfD is racking
up supporters in the east by claiming to be the real heir of the democratic
revolution of 1989–1990, when millions of East Germans took to the
streets to overthrow the Soviet communist system in the German Demo-
cratic Republic. The job, the AfD says, was just half completed, leaving a
cluster of western German parties in charge of a corrupt, undemocratic,
colonialist regime.”14
As Germany’s centrist parties retreated, another alternative to the AfD
emerged. The center-left Green party, which was pro-environment, pro-
European, and pro-refugee, became the country’s second most popular
political force. “We are the anti-populists,” said Robert Habeck, the
party’s co-leader. “We see ourselves at the center of the nation, and that
also means reclaiming the symbols of our country from the national-
ists.”15 Thereafter, the Greens increasingly became a target of Europe’s
right-wing populists.
Nevertheless, Robert Kagan contemplated the frightening prospect
of a German return from its postwar liberalism to the extreme nation-
alism that had characterized German history from its unification to World
War II. “In the coming years, Germans may find themselves living in a
largely renationalized Europe, with blood-and-soil parties of one type or
another in charge of all the major powers,” and, referring to the AfD,
he asked, “Could the Germans under those circumstances resist a return
to a nationalism of their own?” Kagan identified Trump as a source of
spreading nationalism in Europe and concluded his essay darkly. “Think
of Europe today as an unexploded bomb, its detonator intact and func-
tional, its explosives still alive. If this is an apt analogy, then Trump is a
child with a hammer, gleefully and heedlessly pounding away. What could
go wrong?”.16
Italy
Nationalist-populism also gained traction in one original members of the
EU, Italy. In that highly indebted country, the anti-euro Five-Star Move-
ment (M5S) and the right-wing anti-immigrant Northern League (now
called The League or La Lega), led by Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini,
respectively, gained fifty percent of the vote in March 2018 parliamen-
tary elections. They ran on a joint platform of increasing budget deficits,
more welfare, closer relations with Russia, and a less integrated EU. The
euroskeptic coalition sought to alter Italy’s relationship with Europe,
and possibly withdraw from the Eurozone. Thus, Italy became the first
of the original EU members and the third largest Eurozone economy
in which anti-EU populists assumed power. Its populist coalition soon
engaged in conflict with the EU over Italy’s increased deficit spending
and, more importantly, its anti-immigrant policies as well as its opposition
to continued EU sanctions against Russia.
Salvini’s career began in the 1990s when anti-globalization protests
fostered populism in the Northern League. That party was unified by
its belief in regional secession from Italy and its contempt for southern
Italians. Salvini was once recorded chanting a derogatory song mocking
Neapolitans, saying they “‘smell so bad, even the dogs run away’.”
According to Salvini’s biographer, Alessandro Franzi, “He understood
that people were fighting against globalization, inequality, migration,
unemployment….”17
Salvini sounded a populist anti-EU theme when he declared, “Today
Italy is not free; it is occupied financially by Germans, French and euro-
crats.”18 Concern about Italian potential withdrawal from the Eurozone
was even greater in the EU than the financial bailout of Greece, whose
economy was dwarfed by Italy’s. However, Italy’s coalition collapsed, and
Salvini, who had been minister of the interior and sought to become
prime minister, lost his role in Italy’s government. The League had to
withdrew from the government, although Salvini hoped there would be a
new election soon. Instead, the Five Star Movement and the center-right
Democratic Party combined to form a new government without Salvini
and with Giuseppe Conte remaining as prime minister.
“Many members of the League accept that they are racists,” argued
Cecile Kyenge, Italy’s first black cabinet minister, “It is very difficult for
me to see that a party that accepts it is racist is going to manage law, which
is supposed to protect all the community.”19 The anti-establishment
populists were skeptical about the EU and advocated “Italy first” poli-
cies. Together, their economic policies threatened Italy’s solvency. The
League sought to lower taxes, while the Five-Star Movement sought to
raise spending for a “citizenship income” for all citizens.
Elsewhere in Europe, there also was criticism of the EU. As noted
above, the single currency (the euro), without EU-wide fiscal integration,
prevented laggards like Italy or Greece from devaluing their currency to
increase exports, requiring instead painful austerity and/or lower wages
and slow growth. The European Central Bank had limited capability,
and bonds and banking tended to remain national. Finally, the EU was
largely unable to help poorer members because the debt crisis after 2008
persuaded Germany and hawkish northern members that fiscal and mone-
tary discipline was lacking in the south and that they would have to fund
needed bail-outs.
For such reasons, Germany, the EU economic dynamo, was concerned
about events in Italy. “The whole German worry is about risk sharing and
giving other countries guarantees and not being able to have any sort of
rules-based mechanism working well,” declared the director of Germany’s
Council on Foreign Relations. “The arrival of a populist government in
Italy — or the scenario now is uncertainty in Italy — basically feeds into
the fear that Italy doesn’t play by the rules and that will make any move
toward deeper integration more difficult.”20
The crucial fault line in the EU’s West-East fracture involved immi-
gration. Trump used the issue to divide Europeans and reinforce illiberal
leaders in Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (collectively
the “Visegrad”), and Romania, which inveighed against immigration and,
like other European countries including Ukraine, were nearing “state
capture” by corrupt authoritarian politicians. “The people of Germany,”
declared Trump, were “turning against their leadership as migration is
rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition.”21
Eastern and Central Europe

Populism infected the politics of several more recent EU members in
Eastern and Central Europe, notably the increasingly authoritarianism
of the governments of Poland and Hungary that were undermining
the rule of law, institutions like the courts, and democratic values. Ivan
Krastev argued that “two of the region’s poster children for postcom-
munist democratization, Hungary and Poland, have seen nationalist-
populists win sweeping electoral victories while demonizing the political
opposition, scapegoating minorities, and undermining liberal checks and
balances.”22 Others like Romania and the Czech Republic may follow.
Thus, the Czech Republic elected Prime Minister Andrej Babis, a billion-
aire whose views mirrored Trump’s.
Ivan Krastev argued that after the Cold War “the most educated and
liberal eastern Europeans” emigrated westward, “provoking major demo-
graphic and identity crises in the region,” “the stage for the nationalist
revolt against liberalism seizing the region today.” Surprisingly, post-
Cold War young people joined their elders in “casting themselves as the
authentic voice of the nation against its internal and external enemies.”23
Populists resented admitting migrants from the Middle East and Africa
into their homogeneous Catholic populations, fearing that their culture
would be diluted amid shrinking populations. Immigration and emigra-
tion in Eastern Europe help to explain the emergence of populism there
and produced fissures in the EU.
Eastern members were also aware of the economic benefits derived
from EU membership and benefited from grants, Structural Funds, and
other EU outlays. However, the move toward populism there was largely
driven by political opportunism, which tapped into frustrations that many
years after joining the EU their quality of life was not yet equal to
that of western members. Trump provided them with useful ideological
support although the protectionism of “America First” and the erosion of
NATO unity were threats to Europe’s stability and security. Former EU
foreign minister Federica Mogherini concluded, “A more transactional
approach means Europeans will be more transactional, and we will base
our approach on our interests.”24
Populists in Eastern Europe were cut from the same cloth as those in
America, while those who supported the liberal order were young and
relatively well educated. However, the movement of young and educated
Eastern Europeans westward in the EU in search of economic opportuni-
ties contributed to the emergence of populist politicians such as Jarosław
Kacyzński in Poland, Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, and Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s president. Poland’s populist President Andrzej
Duda visited Trump for a lift in his polls only days before Poland voted
in June 2020.
In these countries, populist authoritarian leaders and parties attracted

older, less educated, and rural voters who remained passionate nation-
alists and venerated traditionally hard national boundaries. Brexit will
send many skilled migrants home, where they may liberalize politics in
their own countries in Eastern Europe. Eastern European populists also
identified with Trump’s effort to push back globalization and multilater-
alism. Nevertheless, even in Hungary and Poland where populists were
in power, there remained large numbers of voters who maintained liberal
values.
Hungary: An Illiberal Democracy

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán praised Trump’s election as
bringing an end to “liberal non-democracy.” Orbán led a populist political
party, Fidesz. “Fidesz” is an abbreviation of “Fiatal Demokraták Szövet-
sége”, meaning “Alliance of Young Democrats”. Under Orbán, it became
a populist party that sought to move Hungary toward “illiberal democ-
racy.” Orbán, who was invited by Trump to the White House in May
2019, had endorsed Trump’s candidacy in July 2016, the first foreign
leader to do so. They had much in common. “Both Donald Trump and
Viktor Orban have made immigration their signature issue,” wrote a soci-
ologist and analyst of international affairs. “Whipping fears and nationalist
sentiments is exactly how they operate. So it would be really tempting to
say that they’re working from the same song sheet.”25
Orbán and his party altered the country’s constitution, packed its
Constitutional Court while limiting its authority, and attacked Hungary’s
independent media. Like Trump, Orbán sought to erase the sepa-
ration of powers between the executive and legislative branches of
government. Corruption also increased. and government accountability
declined. Consequently, Freedom House downgraded Hungary, which
since 1990 had ranked as “free,” to “partly free,” the first EU member
to be downgraded from “free.” Secretary of State Pompeo visited both
Hungary and Poland in February 2019 despite the authoritarian populists
that governed both.
Orbán and other Fidesz leaders also denounced “foreign-funded”
nongovernment organizations and imposed control over those receiving
foreign funding, especially groups aided by Jewish liberal billionaire
George Soros. Orbán’s effort to close the Central European University,
which had been founded by Soros in Budapest to spread democratic
values, and his personal attacks on Soros reflected hyper-nationalism and

anti-Semitism. “We sent home the [Ottoman] sultan with his army, the
Habsburg Kaiser with his raiders and the Soviets with comrade,” declared
Orbán in one tirade. “Now we will send home Uncle George.”26 After
anti-Orbán demonstrations erupted in Budapest in 2018, the Fidesz blog
dismissed the participants as “Soros network putschists.”
Orbán was “a state-of-the-art autocrat; he understands that he need
not resort to the truncheon or the midnight knock at the door,” wrote
Franklin Foer. “His assault on civil society arrives in the guise of legalisms
subverting the institutions that might challenge his authority.”27 Orbȧn
undermined democracy’s institutions by gerrymandering parliamentary
districts, providing government positions to relatives and followers,
drafting a new constitution, establishing a powerful National Judiciary
Office, and passing laws that made Hungary a one-party state. Then, in
2020, Orbȧn began to govern by decree with the COVID-19 epidemic
as his excuse. Although rule by decree ended in July 2020, the govern-
ment essentially retained it by declaring a state of public health emergency
without a parliamentary vote. Like Hungary, in Italy, too, Salvini accused
migrants of spreading COVID in summer 2020, tweeting “An invasion
of illegal migrants, a boom of infections, Sicily is collapsing.”28
Orbȧn’s attacks on George Soros were part of his effort to destroy civil
society and eliminate critics in Hungary. Soros, as a former Polish foreign
minister noted, had “been a consistent advocate of the liberal order….”29
The Central European University was ultimately forced to leave Hungary,
and Trump-appointed U.S. ambassador to Hungary refused to criticize
the action although it was a flagrant violation of academic freedom.
Instead, he called Orbán his “friend” and shamelessly said it simply
reflected a conflict between Soros and Orbán, and had nothing to do
with academic freedom. It was remarkable how a small country was able
to manipulate the Trump administration.
Orbán, like many other populists, was Islamophobic. In response,
Manfred Weber, another right-wing politician, declared, “If we say gener-
ally that you have to be afraid about Muslims and generally attack a
religion, then we do the job of the Jihadists who want to create a clash
inside of our societies.” Weber added. “We have invented human rights,
and not Christian rights, on this Continent.”30 Orbȧn also enjoyed influ-
ence among Hungarian speakers in western Ukraine whom he used to
loosen Kiev’s ties in the West even as Russia was conducting a hybrid war
on Ukraine from the East.
After his overwhelming re-election victory in 2018, Orbán sought to

export populism across Europe, especially to Slovenia and Macedonia,
and an effort to tame him by bringing him into an alliance of conser-
vative political parties failed. A one-time liberal during the Cold War,
Orbán had become an “illiberal democrat,” a majoritarian populist who,
like Trump, promoted nationalism and cultural purity and vehemently
opposed Muslim refugees.
Influenced by Orbán, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and his
Austrian People’s Party had a close relationship with extremists in
Austria’s Freedom Party. They echoed Orbán’s opposition to immigra-
tion, and, more dangerously, Freedom Party supporters were appointed
to the country’s interior ministry and its security agencies. After an official
in the ministry, Sybille Geisler, refused to provide the names of informants
who had penetrated right-wing groups, armed police forced their way
into her office and seized intelligence information. As in Hungary, “what
we’ve seen in different corners of Europe — an assault on independent
institutions, the separation of powers and the rule of law,” declared Yascha
Mounk. “The Freedom Party plainly believes that the security apparatus
should serve its worldview, and that is dangerous.”31
Consequently, other countries were wary about sharing intelligence
information with Austria. However, Austria’s coalition collapsed when
Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache was filmed offering government
contracts to the niece of a Russian oligarch in May 2019. Despite all
the nationalist rhetoric of populist leaders, Strache’s fall was evidence that
“lofty” ideas were used for political opportunism and that political moder-
ates might regret seeking support from populists. Thereafter, Kurz also
had to resign, although he regained leadership of a coalition government
with Austria’s Green Party in January 2020.
Stephen Bannon described Orbán as the “most significant guy in the
European scene,”32 and “Trump before Trump.” Like Trump, Orbán
attacked the judiciary and the media. Moreover, Bannon and Raheem
Kassam, a former adviser to British populist Nigel Farage, formed a group
called “The Movement” that, according to Kassam, “will be our clearing
house for the populist, nationalist movement in Europe. We’re focusing
attention on assisting individuals or groups concerned with the matters of
sovereignty, border control, jobs, amongst other things.”33 Like Orbán,
Bannon denounced Soros and sought to incite a European-wide right-
wing revolution. In September 2018, Salvini joined “The Movement,”
in what Bannon called a joint effort to create a “loose association” for
right-wing populist leaders to meet and form alliances. Salvini also hosted
Marine Le Pen and advocated a “Europe of nations,” while establishing
a political bloc in a populist European Parliament bloc called the Euro-
pean Alliance for People and Nations. Orbán also reasserted Hungary’s
sovereignty within the EU and, after his reelection, he implied that he
was prepared to combat the EU and declared war on its values by saying,
“Now we will be hunting for big game.”34
The European Parliament invoked Article 7 of the EU Treaty to
impose sanctions on Hungary as a “systemic threat” to democracy and
considered revoking Hungary’s voting rights in the EU. “The alt-right in
Europe is trying to undermine this European Union,” declared a Belgian
member of the parliament. “And it is, in fact, trying to take over Euro-
pean politics from within.”35 According to a Dutch member who was
leading the process, “the existence of a clear risk of a serious breach
by Hungary of the values on which the Union is founded.”36 Orbán
described the report as insulting to him and the “Hungarian nation.”
“Democracy is not just a voting system. It is a culture that respects truth,”
declared Jason Stanley discussing Hungary. “If a government prevents the
public from accessing true information…through a propaganda system
that lies to everyone in the country, then everyone will vote for the
supreme leader every time. And that’s not democracy.”37
Poland
The populism of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) and its
leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, led to purges of the government bureaucra-
cies and judiciary, and efforts to control the state media, limit checks
and balances and the rule of law, and “repolandize” firms in the country
owned by foreigners. Kaczyński sought to emulate Hungary’s “illib-
eral democracy” and “have Budapest in Warsaw.” The narrow reelection
in 2020 of Polish President Andrzej Duda, who had Donald Trump’s
support, further threatened Polish democracy. The PiS threatened gay
rights and outlawed claims that Poland was complicit in the Holocaust. It
also staffed public enterprises with those who supported the PiS agenda.
Kaczyński’s populist ideas appealed to farmers and factory workers who
had lost their jobs after Poland entered the EU. In 2019, the PiS was
again reelected.
Polish leaders believed that Trump supported such policies, and they
were correct. In a speech to the UN in September 2018, Trump praised
Poland’s illiberal leaders and their emphasis on national sovereignty. This

prompted Stanford’s Amy Zegart, to respond, “What makes Trump’s
comments so disturbing is that they reveal a president who believes
in projecting American power but not American values — he believes
in might but not right.”38 It was hardly surprising that, while visiting
Europe in July 2017, Trump felt at home in Warsaw and expressed a
belief in “the clash of civilizations,” asking: “Do we have the desire and
the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would
subvert or destroy it?”.39
The European Parliament accused Poland’s government of “endan-
gering democracy, human rights and the rule of law” by appointing
additional justices to the country’s Constitutional Tribunal and limiting
the tribunal’s authority. Moreover, the opposition of Poland’s populist
leaders to the reappointment of former Polish Prime Minister Donald
Tusk as president of the European Council was seen as attacking the EU
itself. Thus, its Supreme Court warned that Poland, like Britain, might
exit the EU if it continued to ignore EU rules. Despite populist politi-
cians, Poland’s highest court ruled a year later that judges appointed
under new government rules could not issue judgments. In December
2018, Poland’s government reversed its purge of the country’s Supreme
Court owing to pressure from the EU, and reinstated judges who had
lost their positions.
Divisions in Polish society between populists who opposed democracy
and those seeking to sustain it were evidenced by the assassination of
Gdansk’s liberal mayor, Pawel Adamowicz in January 2019. The struggle
between populists and their opponents was also evident regarding immi-
gration. Poland reneged on a pledge to accept 6,000 refugees because,
as a government spokesperson declared, “We can’t allow for events
in Western Europe to happen in Poland.”40 Paradoxically, Poland had
quietly issued the highest number in Europe of first residence permits
in 2017. Most were given to Christian Ukrainians even while Poles living
elsewhere in Europe remitted significant funding home. One consequence
of growing authoritarianism among the EU’s eastern members was Brus-
sels’s redirection of funds away from Poland and Hungary and toward
southern members in its 2021–2027 draft budget. One policy paper put
this shift in the context of “cohesion and values.”
Turkey
Turkey was among the European countries in which nationalist-populism
found traction. For the West, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had argued
that Islam and democracy could coexist. However, after an abortive mili-
tary coup in 2016 allegedly planned by a Sufi group led by exiled Islamic
cleric Fethullah Gulen, who had fled Turkey and resided in Pennsylvania,
Erdoğan became increasingly authoritarian and began to distance himself
from the West. He demanded that America extradite Gulen, which Wash-
ington refused, supported Hamas terrorists, and bought advanced Russian
weapons. His expansionist military and political policies in the Middle
East and the Mediterranean threatened American interests and those of
allies, including Kurdish militias, the United Arab Emirates, Greece, and
even France. Erdoğan’s attacks on U.S.-supported Kurds also strained
relations with Washington. Then, Turkey invaded Syria after Trump with-
drew U.S. troops, thereby tacitly permitting the Turks to do so. America
did not respond vigorously largely because Erdoğan publicly supported
Trump’s reelection and denounced Joe Biden.
After the abortive coup, Erdoğan purged Turkey’s army, government
bureaucracies, universities, media and, like other populists, the elites they
represented. His repressive policies alienated the country’s Kurds (whom
he initially had sought to appease). His growing emphasis on Islam and
references to the glories of the Ottoman Empire appealed to relatively
poor, rural, and elderly citizens. Thus, Erdoğan won a decisive elec-
toral victory in 2018 that allowed him to change Turkey’s constitution
to give him vast authority to issue decrees, dissolve parliament, single-
handedly draw up the country’s budget, and place his friends in key
government positions. Thus, Freedom House ranked Turkey as “not free”
in 2018. However, Erdoğan was increasingly challenged by the Repub-
lican People’s Party led by Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu and the
party’s district head in that city, Canan Kaftancioglu.
Erdoğan’s increasingly militant foreign policies included Turkey’s
involvement in Libya against a Russian-supported faction, his incursion
into Syria to eliminate the Kurds there, a shift from opposing Syrian Pres-
ident Bashar al-Assad, and his cooperation with Russia and Iran in Syria.
Russian and Turkish cooperation in Libya threatened NATO’s southern
flank.
However, Turkish aid to Azerbaijan in its renewed conflict with
Armenia over control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed region in the
southern Caucasus, including sending Turkish-backed members of the

Syrian National Army to aid Azerbaijan, who are ethnically Turkic, put it
at odds with Russia because Azerbaijan was not Russia’s foe, and Armenia
was a member of Russia’ Collective Security Treaty Organization.
However, the Armenian government had criticized Armenia’s depen-
dence on Russia, reneged on an agreement reached earlier in Madrid for
negotiations over Nagorno-Karabakh, and, citing a defunct post-World
War I treaty claimed territory in Turkey itself.41 Then, in November
2020, much to Armenia’s dismay, Russian peacekeepers entered ethnic
Armenian territory in Nagorno-Karabakh, preserving Azerbaijani gains.
Thereafter, the Russians were joined by Turkish soldiers.
Even more dangerous were Turkey’s claims to and military presence in
an oil rich area of the Mediterranean claimed also by Greece and Cyprus.
The dispute gave Erdoğan an opportunity to spout nationalist slogans
and threatened violence as France and Italy also deployed naval vessels to
support Greece in August 2020. The dispute reflected the region’s geog-
raphy. Greece owned numerous islands in the area and thus legally was
entitled to resources on its continental shelf with sole drilling rights, while
Turkey argued that many of Greece’s eastern islands were on Turkey’s
continental shelf. Therefore, they had overlapping economic zones.
Erdoğan’s refusal to release an imprisoned American pastor triggered
a crisis in U.S.-Turkish relations and Turkey’s purchase of S-400 missiles
from Russia forced the U.S. to impose sanctions on Turkey, and America
suspended its sale of jet fighters to Ankara, fearing that the Russian
missiles could reveal information about the advanced aircraft. Trump
doubled tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum, exacerbating Ankara’s
economic woes, notably a precipitous fall in the value of its currency.
Erdoğan argued that America failed to understand Turkey’s concerns,
citing American policy concerning Gulen and Turkey’s Kurdish foes, and
he implied a willingness to look for allies elsewhere. Moreover, in a
provocative populist gesture in July 2020, Erdoğan decreed that Hagia
Sophia, a World Heritage Site—originally a sixth-century cathedral, then
an Ottoman mosque, and thereafter a museum—again become a mosque,
further alienating the West and Christians globally.
North Versus South

Economic issues were also divisive. Southern EU member, Italy, Greece,
Spain, Cyprus, and Portugal were the hardest hit by the Great Recession
and remained poor compared with northern members, Germany, France,

and the EU’s Scandinavian members. They viewed themselves as “back-
ward” and sought the EU’s help to even the economic playing field.
Along with economic differences, there were perceptions of different
values between these groups of states. The wealthier populations viewed
themselves as hardworking, dedicated, and pragmatic and condemned the
laggards for their focus on the good life and unwillingness to knuckle
down and put in the hours at the job. The former cited the latter’s
shorter working hours, long vacation times, and early retirement ages.
In Greece and Italy over a third of taxes were never collected, and over
half of households paid nothing.
This division had an important financial dimension, that is, southern
Europe’s heavily indebted countries could not devalue their currencies
to increase exports. Also, wealthy members like Germany and interna-
tional institutions such as the IMF and the European Central Bank forced
southern European members to impose austerity, raise taxes, and reduce
public services as conditions for receiving additional loans. This fostered
left-wing and right-wing populist political parties such as Italy’s Five-
Star and Northern League, Greece’s Syriza and Golden Dawn parties,
and Spain’s left-wing populist Podemos and right-wing Vox. Populists
opposed domestic austerity and the growing domestic and intra-European
wealth gaps. Vox, for example, copied the tactics used by right-wingers in
America and elsewhere in Europe. It used social media to deepen polar-
ization, spread conspiracy theories, and denounce “elites” and mainstream
parties, politicians, and media.
During and after the Great Recession, much of the media had focused
on Greece and its fiscal problems. Although Greece had begun to
recover, it found it difficult to service its debt. In the case of Italy,
in October 2018, the EU refused to approve Italy’s budget owing to
the “irresponsible” deficit—far higher than the previous government’s
commitment of 0.8%—it would produce. This was the first time in EU
history that it had taken such an action, and Salvini responded, “This
doesn’t change anything. Let the speculators be reassured, we’re not
going back.” He then added a populist interpretation. “They’re not
attacking a government but a people. These are things that will anger
Italians even more.”42
Italy’s populist government then returned a similar budget to the EU
that would decide whether to penalize Italy for breaking EU rules. The
populists claimed that the EU was responsible for Italy’s weak economic
growth, claiming their budget deficit would be an economic stimulus.

The EU, notably the frugal northern members, viewed the populist
budget as a giveaway with tax cuts, pension benefits, and welfare programs
that Italy, one of the EU’s largest economies, could not afford and might
lead to the collapse of Italy’s banks and produce political instability. In
December 2018, the Italian government acceded to EU demands for
a budget reduction, thereby lowering the risk of Italy’s exit from the
Eurozone or the EU.
Although the EU took steps to reform its financial structure including
the Stability Mechanism, EU budget oversight, and special fund for
economic downturns, there was still no overall financial strategy. Unem-
ployment remained stubbornly high in some countries, and growth rates
remained low. The very mechanisms that had been designed to avoid
another crisis like that of 2008 remained controversial. The Stability
Mechanism and special bailout funds were underwritten by additional
levies on member states, and many voters, especially in Germany, were
reluctant to increase their country’s contribution, anticipating that the
funds would wind up bailing out the laggards. The latter objected not just
to the austerity measures imposed on them, but also the oversight of their
budgets by the European Central Bank and the European Commission.
These measures, they argued, limited their sovereignty and interfered in
national policies.
Transatlantic Frictions
Anti-populists applauded the sweeping electoral triumph EU-enthusiast
and liberal Emmanuel Macron and his new party En Marche over Le
Pen’s populist followers. France’s new president sought reforms to the
EU including a more integrated EU banking system. After assuming
office, Macron declared, “The American people have chosen their presi-
dent,” and “Our relationship with the United States is absolutely critical,
in fact, fundamental.”43 Nevertheless, in a speech to Congress on a state
visit to Washington (the first during the Trump presidency), Macron took
issue with several of Trump’s policies, and lauded the liberal order when
he spoke of the need to oppose “isolationism, withdrawal and nation-
alism.” He added, “The United States is the one who invented this
multilateralism; you are the one who has to help to preserve and reinvent
it.”44
Regarding America’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement,

Macron argued, “we must find a transition to a low-carbon economy.
What is the meaning of our life, really, if we work and live destroying the
planet, while sacrificing the future of our children?”45 Macron phoned
Trump to defend the climate agreement. He declared, “Nothing is rene-
gotiable in the Paris accords. The United States and France will continue
to work together, but not on the subject of the climate.”46 Germany’s
Chancellor Merkel vigorously reiterated Macron’s support for the Paris
accord. “We will and must take on this existential challenge,” she said,
“and we cannot and will not wait until every last person in the world
can be convinced of climate change by scientific evidence.”47 Trump’s
nationalist view, however, was that he was fighting for “Pittsburgh, not
Paris.”48 Macron also restated his support for the Iran nuclear deal, which
Trump had denounced. “There is an existing framework,” Macron said,
“the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] to control the activity
of Iran. We signed it, at the initiative of the United States.”49
However, Macron was unable to alter Trump’s populist views, and
transatlantic differences grew. Trump’s telephone conversation with
Macron in June 2018 was described as “Just bad. It was terrible,”
according to one source. “Macron thought he would be able to speak his
mind, based on the relationship. But Trump can’t handle being criticized
like that.”50 Macron remained an even more crucial advocate of the liberal
global order in Europe after Merkel said she would step down. Macron,
according to a French social scientist, was “pretty isolated, because he
represents the idea of a world that’s open — multilateralism, defending
liberal society.”51 However, Macron’s position was weakened by massive
protests against his domestic reforms, his criticism of French Muslims,
and plummeting popularity at home.
In November 2018, at a memorial in Paris to the 100th anniversary of
the end of World War I, Macron made clear his differences with Trump,
Putin, and others who had declared themselves “nationalists” by decrying
“selfishness of nations only looking after their own interests. Because
patriotism is exactly the opposite of nationalism.”52 In France for the
ceremonies, Trump seemed politically alone. “Watching the event from
France I cannot recall a time when America seemed so isolated,” said
David Axelrod.53
Europeans reacted strongly when Trump ditched the Iranian nuclear
agreement partly because it had marked one of the first instances that
Europe had confronted a complex security issue and appeared to solve
it. Europeans, however, still depended on America for security, notably

against Russia.
Security and Defense

Europeans were profoundly concerned by President Trump’s antics, and
America’s NATO allies were alienated by Trump’s policies. Europeans
had clues of the future during Trump’s campaign when he demanded
that allies “pay more” for their own defense and had initially refused
to confirm his adherence to Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which
committed members to collective defense. European security concerns
included Russian aggression in Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea,
Islamic terrorism, and a massive influx of refugees fleeing from conflicts
in the Middle East and South Asia that produced divisions in the EU.
Right-wing European populists tended to be culturally insecure, pro-
Russian, authoritarian and opponents of the EU and NATO. They were
preoccupied with tribalism and identity politics.
Eastern members regarded the EU and NATO as safeguards against
Russian imperialism and were disturbed by candidate Trump’s criticisms
of these groups. They were among those willing to meet Trump’s demand
that allies contribute more to their own defense. These countries had
been either Soviet republics (Estonia, Latvia Lithuania) or members of the
Soviet-led Warsaw Pact (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland,
Romania, and Slovakia) and were sensitive to Russia’s aggressive behavior
in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, fearing that Moscow might extend
its aggression westward. Hence, they advocated more militant responses
to Russia than either the Trump administration or the more cautious
NATO western members.
The Ukraine crisis had been triggered by that country’s effort to align
itself more closely with the West. Ukraine seemed eager to sign an EU
association agreement at a meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania in November
2013. Such agreements, part of the EU’s Eastern Partnership program,
would establish a framework for bilateral relations with the EU that
provided for trade liberalization and could lead to EU membership.
Moscow sought to dissuade Ukraine from accepting the agreement,
coercing Kiev by imposing restrictions on bilateral trade and warning
Ukraine that signing the association agreements would be “suicidal.”
Moscow wanted Ukraine to join the Eurasian Economic Union, that
consisted of Russia, Armenia. Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.
Moscow sought regional hegemony, and Putin viewed Ukraine’s choice

as a zero-sum competition with the West. Russian threats and promises
persuaded Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich to turn down the
EU agreement. His eastward turn left pro-European Ukrainians in the
country’s western region aghast and triggered large demonstrations.
The association agreement was an important initiative because the EU,
according to a European analyst, had “major strategic and economic
interests at stake: strategically, the EU strives to create a benign environ-
ment for itself by spreading its model of rule of law and transparency
to its periphery. And inducing Russia to respect the sovereignty [of
Ukraine] would finally cement the post-Cold War European order.”54
Without Ukraine, the Eastern Partnership program was at risk. For
the EU, Ukraine’s decision to capitulate under Soviet pressure was a
serious setback. As protests continued in February 2014, violence in Kiev
exploded and special police and shadowy government supporters massa-
cred over 100 demonstrators. Ukraine’s parliament ultimately impeached
the president who fled to Russia. Thereafter, Moscow initiated hybrid
war against Ukraine, aiding pro-Russian separatists in the county’s eastern
region.
The Baltic states, members of the EU and NATO, were frightened by
Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Their large ethnic Russian minorities consti-
tuted what Moscow termed its “near abroad.” The doctrine implied that
in the region was an area of exclusive Russian interest. Russian minori-
ties in the Baltic countries had indeed been persecuted after Russia’s
withdrawal. Hence, although Russians accounted for almost a quarter
of Estonia’s population, after independence in 1991, they were neither
given citizenship, even if they had been born there, nor could they vote
in national elections. To obtain citizenship, they had to pass an Esto-
nian language exam. The Baltic states were, therefore, especially sensitive
about the threat from the east and the intensification of Russia’s military
presence in and around the Baltic and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.
Based on geography and history, they feared that Moscow. at a minimum,
would bully them and, at worst, threatened their recent independence.
Europeans were horrified when President Trump sought a meeting
with Putin while its NATO allies were trying to isolate Moscow after
its intervention in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. Europe’s place
in the world was defined by both its alliance with America and Amer-
ica’s enforcement of the liberal order, and Trump seemed to pressure
Europeans to choose between them. Russia exerted pressure on EU and
NATO members in other ways as well, and, though the EU imposed

punishing economic sanctions on Moscow, western members remained
reluctant to go further in defense of Ukraine and take strong measures
like providing Kiev with arms. EU sanctions had a differential impact on
members. Thus, 6,000 German companies were involved in selling to
Russia, and 300,000 German jobs depended on these exports. Britain’s
financial sector profited from investments by wealthy Russians in every-
thing from bonds and property to private schools for Russian children.
Sanctions did not only hurt Russia, but also all of Europe.
Differential European access to energy accentuated differences within
the EU. Germany began to import natural gas—a Russian geopolitical
weapon—directly via the Nord Stream pipeline. Western Europe had
easier access to pipeline gas than Eastern Europe, much of which was
landlocked and lacked access to liquefied natural gas delivered by sea.
Pipelines already linked some European countries. Germany could send
gas to Italy, Poland, and the Czech Republic, but the Baltic countries
and Bulgaria depended entirely on Russian gas. Hungary, Slovakia, and
Poland could re-route gas to Ukraine (“reverse flow”) but were reluctant
to do so, fearing Russian retaliation.
Germany was crucial because of its unique postwar economic, political,
and military relationship with America. That relationship had emerged out
of co-dependency that began in 1945, and continued with Germany’s
entry into NATO, America’s role in Germany’s reunification in 1990,
and German desire for American presence on Europe’s front line and
its bases in Germany that America used to project power to Africa, the
Middle East, and Eastern Europe. America and Germany were econom-
ically interdependent and, in 2019, Germany had been America’s fifth
largest trading partner globally and it’s largest in Europe.
However, after Trump’s July 2018 Helsinki summit with Putin, Wolf-
gang Ischinge, a former German ambassador to America, declared, “Let’s
face it: Mr. Trump’s core beliefs conflict with the foundations of Western
grand strategy since the mid-1940s.… He expresses admiration for auto-
crats like Kim Jong-un and Mr. Putin, while reserving his most acidic
comments for democratic partners like Germany’s Angela Merkel and
Canada’s Justin Trudeau.” Ischinge concluded, “Mr. Trump’s perfor-
mance seemed to indicate that America is ready to give up its ambition to
be the free world’s respected leader.”55
Confronted by Trump’s criticisms of NATO and the EU and his
demands that Europeans pay more for defense, France and Germany
were fearful that Trump’s America was no longer a reliable partner. Thus,
Macron sought to deepen EU security cooperation, including an inte-
grated defense policy and a European army. He proposed to go beyond
the EU’s Permanent Structured Cooperation that committed signatories
to develop joint defense capabilities, arguing that Europe must protect
“civilization” by protecting itself and not depending on Trump’s America.
After all, the EU already had two nuclear-armed states (France and
Britain), and Russia’s economy was smaller than Italy’s.
Macron proposed a “European intervention initiative” to establish a
military coalition of EU members plus Britain that would be available
for threats in Europe and beyond. He also sponsored the Paris Peace
Forum that sought to mobilize global cooperation in confronting issues
like climate change. Trump was among the few leaders who refused to
come to Macron’s forum. Germany and France signed a treaty in January
2019 that promised to develop the “efficiency, coherence in the military
field,” leading Germany’s defense minister to argue that “Europe’s army
is already taking shape.” However, Germany’s military ambitions for the
EU were more modest than Macron’s.
Meanwhile, Trump was undermining multilateral institutions like
NATO, the EU, and the WTO and multilateral agreements like the
Iranian deal and NAFTA. Argued former German foreign minister Sigmar
Gabriel: “We can’t live with Trump. And we can’t live without the United
States,” adding, “I find it shocking that, in such a short time, he has
managed to rip apart a relationship that has taken decades to build.”56
Two-thirds of Germans had begun to see relations with America as “bad,”
while three-quarters of Americans appeared unaware of developments
after 2016 and thought relations with Germany were “good.”
As we shall see in Chapter 9, trade was an especially difficult multilat-
eral issue.
In spring 2018, the G-7 summit declared that tariffs undermined confi-
dence in the global economy and expressed “unanimous concern and
disappointment” over U.S. tariff threats. A second meeting of the group
in Ottawa with was acrimonious. Although Trump had initially proposed
ending all tariffs among G-7 members, he then assailed Europe’s tariffs
on U.S. exports. “It’s going to stop, or we’ll stop trading with them. And
that’s a very profitable answer, if we have to do it. We’re like the piggy
bank that everybody’s robbing — and that ends.”57 Trump’s unilater-
alism was on view in his delay of the G-7 meeting scheduled in America
for July 2019 because Merkel refused to attend in person owing to the
coronavirus.
Before Trump left the 2018 G-7 meeting, he agreed to a joint commu-
niqué in which the participants pledged “free, fair, and mutually beneficial
trade and investment.” Thereafter, however, Canada’s Justin Trudeau,
who had hosted the meeting, reaffirmed his opposition to U.S. tariffs
on steel and aluminum imports and said Canada would retaliate. “I have
made it very clear to the president that it is not something we relish
doing. But it is something that we absolutely will do. Because Canadians,
we’re polite, we’re reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around.”58
After learning of Trudeau’s comments, Trump backed away from the joint
statement and rudely attacked Trudeau, claiming he had been respon-
sible for the disagreement by making “false statements” and that Canada’s
“massive” tariffs were harming U.S. farmers and workers. After a NATO
summit in 2019, Trump again attacked Trudeau for consoling other
leaders about Trump’s behavior, calling him “two-faced.”
Trump’s personal attacks on Trudeau, an American ally, were another
of similar insults to the leaders of France, Britain, and Germany. It seemed
an intentional effort to unravel the western alliance, isolate America, and
undermine the liberal order. Trump’s tantrum may have been a first
step toward destroying the WTO, a pillar of liberal trade. Trump also
denounced the Russian-backed Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic
Sea to Germany that he said would make Europe dependent on Russia
for energy, and he threatened to impose economic sanctions on German
firms working on the pipeline with Russia’s Gazprom.
Trump’s behavior widened fissures between America and its allies.
European leaders were angry at his violations of diplomatic norms and
long-time trade agreements. “I think this is a case of ‘kick the dog.”
concluded Fen Hampson. “My reading is that Trump is, you know, trying
to negotiate with the Koreans and dealing with much bigger players, the
Chinese and the Europeans, on trade issues. I think he’s trying to make an
example of Canada. Canada’s a small, super-friendly ally... and I think he’s
just kind of sending a message to the rest of the world: ‘If we can treat
the Canadian this way, you ain’t seen nothing yet in terms of what might
be coming your way.’”59 Perhaps it was inevitable that Donald Trump
would dislike multilateral groups like NATO and the EU that had been
established on a normative foundation of democracy, free trade, human
rights, and collective efforts to solve global dilemmas.
Conclusions
Trump was more willing to forgive dangerous foes than U.S. allies with
which America shared common values. Hence, the transatlantic rift posed
a growing danger to the liberal order. As Kagan concluded, “The crucial
issue is not the Middle East or even Russia, and it may not even be
China. The big game is what it’s been for over a century. If we lose
Europe, if we send Europe back to its normal condition, it’s over.”60
Nevertheless, as a British analyst argued, as long as Trump was in power,
Europe could “expect more sanctions, selfish stupidity and brutishness
where US foreign policy used to be.” If Trump were reelected in 2020,
he continued, Europe “would face a second-term, president hostile to
Germany in particular, contemptuous of the EU in general, and free to
indulge his destructive instincts to the full.”61
In sum, Europeans were taken aback by Trump’s hostility but were
seeking ways to push back, including discussions about an EU military
cooperation and retaliating against U.S. tariffs. One point of consensus
among America’s allies midway in Trump’s term in office was that it was
uniquely unsettling, even frightening. Nevertheless, despite the attacks on
the liberal order and globalization, the world avoided catastrophe. Trade
war notwithstanding, the United States had not gone to war with a major
foe such as Russia or China. However, Trump may not be a transitory
anomaly. Instead, America’s long-term commitments to security, stability,
and the liberal order were eroding, and dangers lay ahead.
The EU represented the multilateralism, economic and social liber-
alism, and environmental anxiety that Trump loathed. Shortly after
Trump had attended a NATO summit and had met with Putin in 2018,
David Brooks wrote disturbingly about the future. “This trans-Atlantic
partnership was a vast historical accomplishment, a stumbling and imper-
fect effort to extend democracy, extend rights, extend freedom and build
a world ordered by justice and not force…. Over the weekend, Trump
ripped the partnership to threads…. Trump essentially sided with Vladimir
Putin.”62 Trump further exacerbated transatlantic relations two years later
by blaming Europeans and banning their entry into America owing to
the coronavirus without consulting EU officials. In March 2020, the EU
banned Americans and renewed it later in a stinging rebuke to Trump’s
incompetence in dealing with the pandemic.
European populists’ retreat from the EU’s four freedoms had eroded
the liberal order and slowed globalization. The schism between liberal
governments in Europe and populists in Italy and Eastern Europe threat-

ened EU unity. Nationalist-populists found it difficult to compromise,
fanned conspiracy theories, and were consistently provocative. Divisions
deepened when mainstream parties adopted populist ideas and rhetoric to
gain votes. Populism also exacerbated the desire of national sub-groups
like Spain’s Catalonians for independence. The traditional East/West split
of the EU member states widened. Divisions appeared between old and
new (post-communist) states involving security and democracy. Populism
eroded European cohesion. Hungary and Poland had populist leaders and
the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy, and Austria had prominent populist
politicians who emphasized national sovereignty, opposed immigration,
tapped racism, and did not comply with EU directives. Populists, advo-
cating white Christianity, viewed it as equivalent to European culture and
civilization.
In the 2019 elections to the European Parliament, anti-EU populists
who opposed immigration and sought greater control over the EU
budget did well, although not as well as they had hoped. In France,
the vote suggested President Macron would find governing increasingly
difficult, and in Italy it reinforced the populists who had briefly taken
control of the country’s government. The Greens in Germany came in
second behind the CDU, while Germany’s Social Democrats continued to
fade, endangering their participation in the country’s governing coalition.
Chancellor Merkel had announced that she would not seek reelection
as leader of her party and would step down as chancellor in 2021.
Her successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer urged Europe to foster the
“European way of life”—representative democracy, the rule of law, indi-
vidual freedom, and a market economy. However, Kramp-Karrenbauer
stepped down as Merkel’s successor after an election in Thuringia forced
her party to cooperate with the AfD, breaking the taboo of not coop-
erating with extremists. Armin Laschet, governor of North-Rhine West-
phalia, was then elected to head Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union
and will likely become the CDU’s candidate for chancellor after Merkel
steps down.
Nevertheless, the EU continued to muddle through despite the Euro-
pean elections that showed how much right-wing populism had become
mainstream. Consequently, a neo-Nazi party became the third largest
in Germany and among the largest in several other EU member states.
The division between euroskeptics and supporters of deeper European
integration was visible in the razor-thin confirmation of newly elected
Ursula von der Leyen by the European Parliament in 2019 as presi-

dent of the European Commission. Alluding to Presidents Trump and
Xi, she declared, “Some are turning toward authoritarian regimes. Some
are buying their global influence and creating dependencies by investing
in ports and roads, and others are turning toward protectionism. None
of these options are for us. We want multilateralism. We want fair trade.
We defend the rules-based order because we know it is better for us.”63
Voter turnout was higher than in previous elections, and anti-EU parties
increased their share of the vote to 25%. Along with the populists, the
Greens were the main beneficiaries of the election, confirming growing
European consciousness of and concern about climate change.
EU-U.S. trade frictions impeded the free movement of goods and
services. The quarrels between wealthy EU members like Germany
and poorer European states like Greece and Italy fostered resistance in
southern EU states that threatened the Eurozone. The North–South
cleavage reappeared after Germany and several other northern states
rejected an effort led by Italy, Spain, and France to issue joint bonds
(“coronabonds”) for nine countries in the Eurozone during the COVID-
19 pandemic to spread debt among members in which costs would
be lower for highly indebted countries. Along with Brexit, these were
setbacks to political and economic globalization. In addition, the growing
role of services like banking in the EU was eroding the single market
because, unlike goods, they were largely regulated nationally, sometimes
even locally. Finally, the flood of immigrants in 2015 provoked resistance
to the liberal norm of refugee asylum and triggered nationalist resistance
to the free movement of people even within the Schengen zone. No
longer was Europe as integrated nor as stable as it had been before the
spread of populism.
Nevertheless, anti-populist sentiment had begun to emerge. In Italy,
for example, the liberal Sardines (named for its ability to pack piazzas)
grassroots movement emerged, opposing Salvini’s nativism, his dislike of
the EU, and his attacks on Italian institutions. Furthermore, in May 2020,
Germany and France proposed a coronavirus “recovery fund” that would
permit the European Commission to borrow huge sums and distribute
the money as grants and loans to members most afflicted by the pandemic
such as Italy and Spain. Raising money centrally and redistributing it
(thus, creating common debt), as well as issuing EU-backed bonds had
never been done before in the EU and was a welcome step toward deeper
integration. Despite divisions, members agreed to a massive $2.2 trillion
budget and stimulus package of funds and emergency pandemic aid. The
main disagreement had been between “frugal” and wealthy countries—
the Netherlands, Sweden, Austria, Denmark and Finland—that sought
to minimize funds for southern Italy, and Spain and how much control
donors should have over how the funds were spent. The compromise
involved reducing grants (the remainder will be loans), and donors would
receive billions in rebates from their contributions to the EU budget.
Populists in Hungary and Poland cooperated after distribution of funds
was no longer made contingent to upholding the rule of law. Hence, the
EU failed to resolve the growing problem of illiberal democracies with
authoritarian leaders, and George Soros declared, “The primary victims of
the deal that Merkel has reportedly struck with Orbán will be the people
of Hungary.”64
However, the transatlantic community continued to erode. To the
east, Russia remained a security threat even as Trump’s America to the
west grew more distant. Also, the risk of renewed flows of refugees
was again growing owing to America’s retreat from the Middle East,
Turkey’s intervention in Syria, and the victory of Assad’s Russian- and
Iranian-supported army.
The next chapter describes nationalist-populism in areas of the global
south, which will be followed by chapters that deal with the three key
dimensions of globalization.
Notes
1. Susan B. Glasser, “How Trump Made War on Angela Merkel and
Europe,” The New Yorker, December 24–31, 2018, https://www.newyor
ker.com/magazine/2018/12/24/how-trump-made-war-on-angela-mer
kel-and-europe?wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1.
2. Cited in James Kanter, “Trump Threatens Europe’s Stability, a Top Leader
Warns,” New York Times, January 31, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/
2017/01/31/world/europe/trump-european-union-donald-tusk.html.
3. Cited in Steven Erlanger, “For Europe: There’s a New Threat in Town:
The U.S.,” New York Times, February 2, 2017, https://www.nytimes.
com/2017/02/02/world/europe/trump-european-union.html.
4. Cited in Peter Baker, “Trump Shakes Up World Stage in Break With U.S.
Allies, New York Times, June 8, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/
06/08/us/politics/trump-russia-g7-readmitted-tariffs.html.
5. Cited in Elisabeth Zarofsky, “Viktor Orbȧn’s Far-Right Vision for
Europe,” The New Yorker, January 14, 2019, https://www.newyorker.
com/magazine/2019/01/14/viktor-orbans-far-right-vision-for-europe?
6. Cited in Katrin Bennhold, “Can Europe’s Liberal Order Survive as the
Memory of War Fades?” New York Times, November 10, 2018, https://
www.nytimes.com/2018/11/10/world/europe/europe-armistice-mer
kel-macron-peace-war.html?emc=edit_th_181111&nl=todaysheadlines&
nlid=43321681111.
7. Matt Browne, Dalibor Rohac, and Carolyn Kenney, “Europe Populist
Challenge,” Center for American Progress, May 10, 2018, https://
www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/2018/05/10/
450430/europes-populist-challenge/
8. Thomas L. Friedman, “Can I Ruin Your Dinner Party?” New York Times,
August 7, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/opinion/can-
i-ruin-your-dinner-party.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopin
ion-columnists&wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_todayworld.
9. Paul Krugman, “Why It Can Happen Here,” New York Times, August
27, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/27/opinion/trump-rep
ublican-party-authoritarianism.html?emc=edit_th_180828&nl=todayshea
dlines&nlid=43321680828..
10. Cited in Adam Nossiter, “Marine Le Pen Echoes Trump’s Bleak
Populism in French Campaign Kickoff,” New York Times, February 5,
2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/05/world/europe/marine-
le-pen-trump-populism-france-election.html.
11. Cited in Adam Nossiter, “Marine Le Pen of France Meets with Vladimir
Putin in Moscow,” New York Times, March 24, 2017, https://www.nyt
imes.com/2017/03/24/world/europe/marine-le-pen-of-france-meets-
with-putin-in-moscow.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fw
orld&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=rank&module=pac
kage&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront.
12. Cited in Steven Erlanger, “Feeling That Trump Will ‘Say Anything,’
Europe Is Less Restrained, Too,” New York Times, July 9,
2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/09/world/europe/donald-
trump-europe.html.
13. Cited in Timothy Garton Ash, “It’s the Kultur, Stupid,” The New York
Review of Books December 7, 2017, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/
2017/12/07/germany-alt-right-kultur-stupid/.
14. Paul Hokenos, “Germany’s Far-Right Freedom Fighters,” Foreign Policy,
August 28, 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/29/germanys-
far-right-freedom-fighters-afd-merkel-saxony-brandenburg/?utm_source=
PostUp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=14719&utm_term=Edi
tor#39;s%20Picks%20OC.
15. Cited in Katrin Bennhold, “Greens Thrive in Germany as the ‘Alternative’
to Far-Right Populism,” New York Times, November 27, 2018, https://
www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/world/europe/germany-greens-mer
kel-election.html?emc=edit_th_181128&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=433
21681128.
16. Robert Kagan, “The New German Question: What Happens When
Europe Comes Apart?” Foreign Affairs 98:3 (May/June 2019), pp. 118,
120.
17. Cited in Stephanie Kirchgaessner, “Matteo Salvini: A Political Chameleon
Thriving on Fears,” The Guardian, June 22, 2018, https://www.thegua
rdian.com/world/2018/jun/22/matteo-salvini-a-political-chameleon-thr
iving-on-fears?wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=.
18. Cited in Steve Scherer, “Italy’s Fresh Election Risks Being Referendum
on Euro,” Reuters, May 28, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-
italy-politics-euro-election-analysis/italys-fresh-election-risks-being-refere
ndum-on-euro-idUSKCN1IT1IF?wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
19. Cited in Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Jennifer Rankin, “Italy’s First Black
Minister Fears Far-Right Party’s Government Influence,” The Guardian,
May 18, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/18/
italy-government-cecile-kyenge-the-league-lega-far-right?wpisrc=nl_tod
ayworld&wpmm=1.
20. Cited in Rachel Donadio, “Spitting in Europe’s Face Won’t Help Italy,”
The Atlantic, May 28, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/internati
onal/archive/2018/05/italy-five-star-league/561365/?wpisrc=nl_tod
ayworld&wpmm=1.
21. Cited in Patrick Kingsley, “As Europe’s Liberal Order Splinters, Trump
Wields an Axe,” New York Times, June 18, 2018. https://www.nytimes.
com/2018/06/18/world/europe/germany-merkel-coalition.html.
22. Ivan Krastev, “Eastern Europe’s Illiberal Revolution,” Foreign Affairs
97:3 (May/June 2018), p.49.
23. Ibid, pp. 50, 51.
24. Cited in Gardiner Harris, “As Ties With U.S. Cool, Euro-
peans Look to Forge Other Alliances,” New York Times, February
10, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/world/europe/as-
ties-with-us-cool-europeans-look-to-forge-other-alliances.html.
25. Cited in Joanna Kakissis, “In Trump, Hungary’s Viktor Orban Has a
Rare Ally in the Oval Office,” NPR, May 13, 2019, https://www.npr.
org/2019/05/13/722620996/in-trump-hungarys-viktor-orban-has-a-
rare-ally-in-the-oval-office?wpisrc=nl_powerup&wpmm=1.
26. Cited in Griff Witte, “Once-Fringe Soros Conspiracy Theory Takes
Center Stage in Hungarian Election,” Washington Post, March 17, 2018,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/once-fringe-soros-con
spiracy-theory-takes-center-stage-in-hungarian-election/2018/03/17/
f0a1d5ae-2601-11e8-a227-fd2b009466bc_story.html?utm_term=.4b74cf
aa5d7c.
27. Franklin Foer, “Viktor Orbȧn’s War on Intellect,” The Atlantic,

June 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/
george-soros-viktor-orban-ceu/588070/?wpisrc=nl_powerup&wpmm=1.
28. Cited in Gaia Pianigiani and Emma Bubola, “As Coronavirus Reappears
in Italy, Migrants Become a Target for Politicians,” New York Times,
August 28, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/world/eur
ope/coronavirus-italy-migrants.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_2020
0829&instance_id=21739&nl=todaysheadlines&regi_id=4332168&seg
ment_id=37150&user_id=318a8b2e197d8de30abd1bb02c4382ea.
29. Cited in “Public Enemy Number 1,” The Economist, May 20, 2017, p. 26.
30. Cited in Maïa de la Baume and David M. Herszenhorn, “Orbán
Clashes with European Parliament Critics,” Politico, September 11,
2018, https://www.politico.eu/article/viktor-orban-unbowed-in-face-of-
eu-criticism-hungary-president/?wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
31. Cited in Katrin Bennhold, “As Far Right Rises, a Battle Over Security
Agencies Grows,” New York Times, May 7, 2019, https://www.nytimes.
com/2019/05/07/world/europe/austria-far-right-freedom-party.html.
32. Cited in Ishaan Tharoor, “How Viktor Orban Became the Real Threat
to the West, Washington Post, April 6, 2018, https://www.washingto
npost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/04/06/how-victor-orban-bec
ame-the-real-threat-to-the-west/?utm_term=.1b9e8cfc727d&wpisrc=nl_
todayworld&wpmm=1.
33. Cited in Mark Hosenball, “Former Trump Aide Bannon Sets Up
Group to Undermine EU,” Reuters, July 23, 2018, https://www.reu
ters.com/article/us-eu-parliament-bannon/former-trump-aide-bannon-
sets-up-group-to-undermine-eu-idUSKBN1KD20J?wpisrc=nl_daily202&
wpmm=1.
34. Cited in Marc Santora and Helene Bienvenu, “Secure in Hungary,
Orban Readies for Battle with Brussels,” New York Times, My
11, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/11/world/europe/hun
gary-victor-orban-immigration-europe.html.
35. Cited in de la Baume and Herszenhorn, “Orbán Clashes with European
Parliament critics.”
36. Cited in Michael Birnbaum and Griff Witte, “E.U. Parliament Votes
to Punish Hungary for Backsliding on Democracy,” Washington Post,
September 12, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/eur
ope/amid-threats-to-rule-of-law-in-hungary-european-lawmakers-vote-
to-start-sanctions-proceedings/2018/09/12/4ba20fe8-b63d-11e8-ae4f-
2c1439c96d79_story.html?utm_term=.7814b9233257.
37. Cited in Patrick Kingsley, “On the Surface Hungary Is a Democracy. But
What Lies Underneath,” New York Times, December 25, 2018, https://
www.nytimes.com/2018/12/25/world/europe/hungary-democracy-
orban.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&
contentCollection=world&region=rank&module=package&version=highli
ghts&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront.
38. Cited in Philip Bump, “In His Speech at the U.N., Trump Again
Embraces Poland’s Shift Away from Liberal Democracy,” Washington
Post, September 25, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/
2018/09/25/his-speech-un-trump-again-embraces-polands-shift-away-
liberal-democracy/?utm_term=.3afad0d15b9d&wpisrc=nl_daily202&
wpmm=1.
39. Cited in Glenn Thrush, “Despite Deep Policy Divides, Europe
Trip Seen by Buoyant Trump as High Point,” New York Times,
July 8, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/08/world/europe/
group-of-20-trump-europe.html.
40. Citied in Liz Alderman, “Migrants in Greece, Ready to Go Anywhere in
Europe, Scramble to Enter E.U. Relocation Program,” New York Times,
March 26, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/world/eur
ope/migrants-in-greece-ready-to-go-anywhere-in-europe-scramble-to-
enter-eu-relocation-program.html.
41. Robert M. Cutler, “Azerbaijan Has the Upper Hand in Nagorno-
Karabakh,” Foreign Policy, October 8, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/
2020/10/09/russia-aid-armenia-azerbaijan-putin-nagorno-karabakh/?
utm_source=PostUp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=26049&
utm_term=Editors%20Picks%20OC&?tpcc=26049.
42. Cited in Jason Horowitz and Steven Erlanger, “E.U. Rejects Italy’s
Budget, and Populists Dig In,” New York Times, October 23, 2018,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/world/europe/italy-budget-
eu.html?emc=edit_th_181024&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=43321681024.
43. Cited in Alisa J. Rubin and Adam Nossiter, “Macron Takes a Risk in
Courting Trump But Has Little to Show for It,” New York Times,
April 21, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/22/world/eur
ope/donald-trump-emmanuel-macron.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncol
lection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=rank&
module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sec
tionfront.
44. Cited in Karen DeYoung, “French President Macron Charms Both
Parties in an Impassioned Speech to Congress,” New York Times,
April 25, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-sec
urity/french-president-macron-charms-both-parties-in-an-impassioned-
speech-to-congress/2018/04/25/bbd600ba-4894-11e8-827e-190efa
f1f1ee_story.html?utm_term=.606d87b7757c&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&
wpmm=1.
45. Cited in ibid.
46. Cited in Michael Birnbaum, “Trump’s Tangle with Europe Leads the
Continent to Find Partners Elsewhere,” Washington Post, June 2, 2017,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/trumps-tangle-with-
europe-leads-the-continent-to-find-partners-elsewhere/2017/06/02/
429b1c0c-4599-11e7-8de1-cec59a9bf4b1_story.html?utm_term=.8a4c18
38eadf.
47. Cited in Melissa Eddy, “Angela Merkel Sets Collision Course with Trump
Ahead of G-20,” New York Times, June 29, 2017 https://www.nytimes.
com/2017/06/29/world/europe/angela-merkel-trump-group-of-20.
html.
48. Cited in Birnbaum, ““Trump’s Tangle with Europe Leads the Continent
to Find Partners Elsewhere.”
49. Cited in DeYoung, “French President Macron Charms Both Parties in an
Impassioned Speech to Congress.”
50. Cited in Michelle Kosinski and Maegan Vazquez, “Trump’s Phone Call
with Macron Described as ‘Terrible’,” CNN , June 4, 2018, https://
www.cnn.com/2018/06/04/politics/donald-trump-emmanuel-macron-
call-terrible/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_daily202.
51. Cited in Alissa J. Rubin and Adam Nossiter, “Macron Hopes WW1
Ceremonies Warn of Nationalism’s Dangers. Is Anyone Listening?” New
York Times, November 8, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/
08/world/europe/macron-nationalism-populism-wwi-armistice.html?
52. Cited in David Nakamura, Seung Min Kim and James McAuley, “France’s
Macron, Denounces Nationalism as a ‘Betrayal of Patriotism’ in a Rebuke
to Trump at WW1 Remembrance,” Washington Post, November 11,
2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/to-mark-end-
of-world-war-i-frances-macron-denounces-nationalism-as-a-betrayal-of-pat
riotism/2018/11/11/aab65aa4-e1ec-11e8-ba30-a7ded04d8fac_story.
html?utm_term=.a3fcf8ebca99&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1.
53. Cited in David Nakamura, “In Paris, a Relatively Understated Trump
Finds He’s Still the Center of the World’s Attention – and Outrage,”
Washington Post, November 11, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.
com/politics/in-paris-a-relatively-understated-trump-finds-hes-still-the-
center-of-the-worlds-attention--and-outrage/2018/11/11/cc39320c-
e5ff-11e8-bbdb-72fdbf9d4fed_story.html?utm_term=.ef344a8f5221&wpi
src=nl_most&wpmm=1.
54. Jonas Grätz, “Freedom of Association,” Foreign Affairs, November 20,
2013, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140280/jonas-graetz/fre
edom-of-association.
55. Wolfgang Ischinger, “For Allies, Trump’s Behavior Is Painful to Watch,”
New York Times, July 21, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/
21/opinion/sunday/trump-europe-nato-russia.html?wpisrc=nl_todayw
orld&wpmm=1.
56. Cited in Dan Balz and Griff Witte, “Europeans fear Trump May Threaten
Not Just the Transatlantic Bond, But the State of Their Union,” Wash-
ington Post, February 4, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/pol
itics/europeans-fear-trump-may-threaten-not-just-the-transatlantic-bond-
but-the-state-of-their-union/2019/02/04/a874e9f4-25ad-11e9-81fd-
b7b05d5bed90_story.html?utm_term=.6ca1b34cc3e4&wpisrc=nl_most&
wpmm=1.
57. Cited in Michael D. Shear and Catherine Porter, “Trump Refuses to
Sign G-7 Statement and Calls Trudeau ‘Weak’,” New York Times. June
9, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/world/americas/don
ald-trump-g7-nafta.html.
58. Cited in Damian Paletta and Joel Achenbach, “Trump Accuses Canadian
Leader of Being ‘Dishonest’ and ‘Weak’,” Washington Post, June 10,
2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-attacks-canada-
to-show-north-korea-hes-strong-aide-says/2018/06/10/afc16c0c-6cba-
11e8-bd50-b80389a4e569_story.html?utm_term=.d4eaeea170fa&wpi
59. Cited in Selena Ross, “Trudeau Takes His Turn as Trump’s Principal
Antagonist, and Canadians Rally Around Him,” Washington Post, June
10, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/trudeau-takes-his-
turn-as-trumps-principal-antagonist-and-canadians-rally-around/2018/
06/10/162edcf8-6cc6-11e8-b4d8-eaf78d4c544c_story.html?utm_term=.
a497b2194881&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
60. Cited in Steven Erlanger, “Is the World Becoming a Jungle Again? Should
Americans Care?” New York Times, September 22, 2018, https://www.
nytimes.com/2018/09/22/world/europe/trump-american-foreign-pol
icy-europe.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=
click&contentCollection=world&region=rank&module=package&ver
sion=highlights&contentPlacement=11&pgtype=sectionfront.
61. Simon Tisdall, “How Should Europe Respond Now That Its American
Ally Has Turned Hostile?” The Guardian, August 30, 2020, https://
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/30/how-should-eur
ope-respond-now-its-american-ally-has-turned-hostile?utm_campaign=
wp_todays_worldview&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&
wpisrc=nl_todayworld.
62. David Brooks, “The Murder-Suicide of the West,” New York
Times, July 16, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/16/opi
nion/trump-nato-european-union-history.html.
63. Cited in Michael Birnbaum, “European Divisions on Display as Ursula
von der Leyen Wins Narrow Approval for E.U.’s Top Job,” Washington
Post, July 16, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/
european-parliament-faces-nail-biter-confirmation-vote-on-ursula-von-
der-leyen-for-european-commission-president/2019/07/16/bd8510ea-
a7b1-11e9-ac16-90dd7e5716bc_story.html?utm_term=.2d750b1a7841&
wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1.
64. Cited in Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Benjamin Novak and Monika Pronczuk,
“E.U. Reaches Deal on Major Budget and Stimulus Package,” New York
Times, December 10, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/10/
world/europe/eu-deal-poland-hungary.html.
Questions
Multiple Choice
1. Nationalist-populists in America and Europe viewed Vladimir Putin
as a which of these answers?
a. A dangerous foe
b. A potential ally
c. A globalist
d. Ally to global elite
2. What EU agreement signed in 1995 permitted citizens and invest-
ment in member countries and movement freely across their
borders, thereby enhancing economic efficiency?
a. Paris Climate Accord
b. NAFTA
c. Brexit
d. Schengen Agreement
3. What policy in the Eurozone prevented currency devaluation by
less competitive members like Italy that had previously devalued
the lira to cope with slow growth
a. Unified monetary policy
b. Diversified monetary policy
c. Deflation policy
d. Inflation policy
4. Who, to the immense relief of beleaguered defenders of the
EU and the liberal order, won the second round of the French
presidential election with over 63 percent of the vote?
a. Marine Le Pen
b. François Hollande
c. Gene Wilder
d. Emmanuel Macron
5. After Germany’s reunification, which of these sections of German
suffered a loss of jobs owing to the closing of obsolete industries,
and had little done to eliminate pro-Nazi sentiment?
a. North Germany
b. East Germany
c. South Germany
d. West Germany
6. As Germany’s centrist parties retreated, what pro-environment,
pro-European, and pro-refugee party emerged as a center-left alter-
native to the Alternative for Germany (AfD), and became the
country’s second most popular political force
a. Freedom Front party
b. Republican party
c. Green party
d. Northern League
7. Which country became the first of the original EU members and
the third largest Eurozone economy in which anti-EU populists
assumed power?
a. Italy
b. Germany
c. Turkey
d. United Kingdom
8. Which Eastern European Leader invited by Trump to the White
House in May 2019, and had endorsed Trump’s candidacy in July
2016, the first foreign leader to do so.
a. Angela Merkel
b. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
c. Viktor Orbán
d. Jarosław Kacyzński
9. Orbán and other Fidesz leaders also denounced “foreign-funded”
nongovernment organizations and imposed control over those
receiving foreign funding, especially groups aided which billion-

aire?
a. Bill Gates
b. Jeff Bezos
c. George Soros
d. Jack Ma
10. The European Parliament accused which of Europe’s government
of “endangering democracy, human rights and the rule of law”
by appointing additional justices to the country’s Constitutional
Tribunal and limiting the tribunal’s authority?
a. France
b. Britain
c. Germany
d. Poland
11. in July 2020, Turkey’s President Erdoğan decreed which World
Heritage Site—originally a sixth-century cathedral, then an
Ottoman mosque, and recently a museum—to again become a
mosque, further alienating the West and Christians globally?
a. Hagia Sophia
b. Uffizi
c. Taj Mahal
d. Borobudur
12. Europeans had clues of the future during Trump’s campaign when
he demanded that allies “pay more” for their own defense and
had initially refused to confirm his adherence to what, which
committed members to collective defense.
a. United Nations
b. WHO
c. Article 5 of the NATO treaty
d. Paris Climate Agreement
13. Which of these are most sensitive about the threat from the east
and the intensification of Russia’s military presence in and around
the Baltic and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad?
a. Nordic countries
b. Western Europe
c. British Isles
d. Baltic states
14. Which of these are major factors in defining Europe’s place in the
world?
a. Its alliance with America
b. America’s enforcement of the liberal order
c. Neither its alliance with America nor America’s enforce-
ment of the liberal order
d. Both its alliance with America and America’s enforce-
ment of the liberal order
15. Which two EU states are currently nuclear-armed states?
a. France and Britain
b. France and Germany
c. Britain and Italy
d. Germany and Italy
16. What world leader sponsored the Paris Peace Forum that sought
to mobilize global cooperation in confronting issues like climate
change?
a. Donald Trump
b. Emmanuel Macron
c. Vladimir Putin
d. Victor Orbán
17. Why did America strongly object to Europe’s acquisition of
Huawei Chinese 5G telecommunications equipment?
a. It may increase immigration
b. 5G telecommunications are not an improvement over 4G
c. Europe had previously agreed to exclusively let American
companies do it before Huawei offered to do it cheaper
d. Concern that backdoors in Chinese-manufactured
infrastructure would make Europe vulnerable to Chinese
spying
18. In March 2020, the EU did something that they also renewed later
in a stinging rebuke to Trump’s incompetence in dealing with the
pandemic. Which of these was it?
a. Declared the U.S. had the initial cases of Covid-19
b. Cut funding to the World Health Organization
c. Banned American travelers
d. Objected to funding cuts in U.S. vaccine research
19. Voter turnout was higher than in previous elections, and anti-EU
parties increased their share of the vote by how much.
a. 25 percent
b. 80 percent
c. 100 percent
d. Zero percent
20. What happened in 2015 that provoked resistance to the liberal
norm of refugee asylum and triggered nationalist resistance to the
free movement of people even within the Schengen zone?
a. The Paris Climate Accord
b. The U.S. Election
c. A massive influx of immigrants
d. Brexit
True or False
1. True or False? Trump was the first postwar American president not
to favor deeper European integration.
True
2. True or False? In recent elections, about a twentieth of Europe’s
electorate voted for a populist party.
False, about a fifth did
3. True or False? Although nationalism has reemerged throughout
the EU, its supporters have proved less successful in getting elected
in more recent eastern members in Europe such as Hungary
and Poland than in older western member states such as the
Netherlands, Germany, and France.
False, vice versa its supporters have proved less successful

getting elected in older western states than in eastern
states
4. True or False? Marine Le Pen her France’s National Front
(renamed National Rally) borrowed Russian funds for France’s
presidential campaign and echoed Trump’s admiration of Putin
and Russia.
True
5. True or False? Populism infected the politics of several more recent
EU members in Eastern and Central Europe, notably the increas-
ingly authoritarianism of the governments of Poland and Hungary
that were undermining the rule of law and democratic values
True
6. True or False? Economic issues divide Europe. Germany, France.
and the EU’s Scandinavian members were the hardest hit by the
Great Recession and remained poor compared with Italy, Greece,
Spain, Cyprus, and Portugal.
False, the opposite. Italy, Greece, Spain, Cyprus, and
Portugal were the hardest hit by the Great Recession and
remained poor compared with Germany, France. and the
EU’s Scandinavian members
7. True or False? In Greece and Italy over a third of taxes were never
collected. and over half of households paid nothing.
True
8. True or False? Populists support domestic austerity and the
growing domestic and intra-European wealth gaps.
False, populist opposed these.
9. True or False? The Stability Mechanism and special bailout funds
were underwritten by additional levies on member states, and
many voters, especially in Germany, were reluctant to increase their
country’s contribution, anticipating that the funds would wind up
bailing out the laggards.
True
10. True or False? In Eastern European countries, centrist liberal

leaders and parties attracted older, less educated, and rural voters
who remained passionate nationalists and venerated traditionally
hard national boundaries.
False, the populist authoritarian parties attracted these

demographics
11. True or False? A one-time liberal during the Cold War, Orbán had
become an “illiberal democrat,” a majoritarian populist who, like
Trump, promoted nationalism and cultural purity and vehemently
opposed Muslim refugees.
True
12. True or False? The European Parliament invoked Article 7 of the

EU Treaty to impose sanctions on Hungary as a “systemic threat”
to democracy and consider revoking Hungary’s voting rights in the
EU.
True
13. True or False? Poland’s populist leaders threw their support behind
the reappointment of former Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk
as president of the European Council.
False, they opposed it and the opposition was seen as

attacking the EU itself
14. True or False? Liberal European centrist tended to be culturally

insecure, pro-Russian, authoritarian and opponents of the EU and
NATO. They were preoccupied with tribalism and identity politics.
False, those are tendencies of Right-wing European

populist
15. True or False? President Macron sought to deepen EU secu-

rity cooperation, including an integrated defense policy and a
European army.
True
16. True or False? The Russian economy is smaller than Italy’s

economy.
True
17. True or False? In sum, Europeans were taken aback by Trump’s
hostility but have not yet gone to seeking ways to push back.
False, they have been seeking way to push back including

discussions about an EU military buildup and retaliating
against U.S. tariffs
18. True or False? A neo-Nazi party became the third largest in

Germany and among the largest in several other EU member
states.
True
19. True or False? In the 2019 elections to the European Parliament,

anti-EU populists who opposed immigration and sought greater
control over the EU budget did well, including far better than
they hoped and any other group did.
False, they did well, but not better than they hoped or all
other groups
20. True or False? Despite divisions, EU members reached a compro-

mise of $857 billion for a coronavirus “recovery fund” that was
proposed in May 2020.
True
Short Answer
Why have Nationalist-populists in America and Europe viewed
Vladimir Putin as a potential ally?
Because, like Russia, they feared Islamic radicalism, opposed
global economic integration, and disliked secularism and the
liberal order.
Post-Cold War members of the EU in Central and Eastern Europe

clearly manifested “authoritarian populism,” but it spread elsewhere
as well. Give an example of its spread across Europe?
Italian elections brought a populist government to power in
2018. Populist politics even infected Latvia in elections that
increased support for the pro-Russian populist party, Harmony
Center. Sweden, Finland, Ireland, and Estonia too, saw the
spread of nationalist-populism. Thus, the Sweden Democrats,
like other populist parties opposed immigration and came in
third in the country’s 2018 election, while the Social Democrats
suffered their worst defeat since 1908. Austria formed a populist
coalition. Immigration was a seething issue across the conti-
nent, and Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Switzerland had
anti-immigrant People’s Parties.
Why has nationalism’s reemergence in elections been stronger in

Eastern Europe than in Western Europe?
The Eastern European countries typically have a shallower
democratic tradition and less resilient political systems and
institutions than the former.
What factors helped determine the relative success of populist politi-

cians and parties in Europe?
The factors include the country’s electoral system and polit-
ical parties, and whether voters were selecting members of a
parliament or voting in referendums. Many working-class whites
in France and Germany, like Trump supporters in America’s
Midwest, had left their cities and assumed populist views. These
included resentment toward immigrants, who they believed were
diluting their cultures and harming their economies and were
most evident in eastern Europe.
What criticism of the EU exist throughout Europe?

The single currency, without EU-wide fiscal integration,
prevented laggards like Italy or Greece from devaluing their
currency to increase exports, requiring instead painful austerity
and/or lower wages and slow growth. The European Central
Bank had limited capability, and bonds and banking tended
to remain national. Finally, the EU was largely unable to help

poorer members because the debt crisis after 2008 persuaded
Germany and hawkish northern members that fiscal and mone-
tary discipline was lacking in the south and that they would have
to fund needed bail-outs.
Why did populist resent migrants from the Middle East and Africa?
They feared the impact that migrants would have by entering
their homogeneous Catholic populations, fearing that their
culture would be diluted amid shrinking populations
How has Viktor Orbȧn undermined his country’s democratic insti-

tutions?
He undermined them by gerrymandering parliamentary
districts, providing government positions to relatives and
followers, drafting a new constitution, establishing a powerful
National Judiciary Office, and passing laws that made Hungary
a one-party state. Also, in 2020, Orbȧn began to govern by
decree with the covid-19 epidemic as his excuse.
How did the Trump administration deal with the fact that Pres-
ident Erdoğan’s expansionist military and political policies in the
Middle East and the Mediterranean threatened American interests
and those of allies, including Kurdish militias, the United Arab
Emirates, Greece, and even France?
The Trump administration did little, largely because Erdoğan
publicly supported Trump’s reelection and denounced Joe Biden
France’s President Macron has lauded the liberal order when he

spoke of the need to oppose “isolationism, withdrawal and national-
ism” and has taken issue with which of President Trump’s policies?
He took issue with President Trump’s rejection of the Paris
Climate Agreement, denouncement of the Iran Deal, and
Trump’s declaration of himself as nationalist.
What are some of the main European security concerns?

Security concerns include Russian aggression in Ukraine and its
annexation of Crimea, Islamic terrorism, and a massive influx of
refugees fleeing from conflicts in the Middle East and South Asia
that produced divisions in the EU.
Why were EU members were shocked that Trump justified his tariffs
as protecting “national security?”
Because tariffs on things like metal imports hurt European
allies, and how could America’s closest allies be perceived by an
American president as threats to U.S. “national security?”
CHAPTER 7
Nationalist-Populism in the Global South

and Middle East
Nationalist-Populism Latin America

We begin this survey of nationalist-populism in the global south with
Latin America, focusing on Argentina, Venezuela, and Brazil, Unlike the
United States, Latin American populism was dominated by leftists, at least
until Jair Bolsonaro assumed office in Brazil. One left-wing populist leader
was Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador who attacked his
critics, ignored Mexico’s constitution, planned to call a referendum to put
five ex-presidents on trial, and assailed the country’s institutions.
Argentina and Peronism

Among the most durable populist movements in the global south was
Argentina’s Peronists. Juan Perón was elected president of that country in
1946. Argentina was among Latin America’s earliest countries to industri-
alize, thereby attracting many European (especially Italian) migrants in a
rapidly growing population. It became prosperous by exporting beef and
grains, and the wealthy conservative elites established a sham democracy
until voted out of power in 1916.
Perón, a colonel in the Argentine army, became involved in politics as
a member in a secret society, the United Officer’s Group, that ousted that
overthrew the Argentina government in 1943. Becoming the new govern-
ment’s minister of labor, he became increasing sympathetic to the needs

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72033-9_7
of workers, advocating policies that seemed to threaten the armed forces.

He was imprisoned in 1945 but was released after a short time owing
to demonstrations organized by the Argentine labor confederation. The
following year he led a victorious coalition of workers and elements of
the middle class, and his political career continuously required efforts to
bridge worker-military tensions. As Perón himself explained, “Peronism
is humanism in action; Peronism is a new political doctrine, which rejects
all the ills of the politics of previous times; in the social sphere it is a
theory which establishes a little equality among men… capitalist exploita-
tion should be replaced by a doctrine of social economy under which the
distribution of our wealth, which we force the earth to yield up to us and
which furthermore we are elaborating, may be shared out fairly among all
those who have contributed by their efforts to amass it.”1
Notwithstanding his links with workers, Perón and his second wife
Eva, who was idolized by the poor, were attracted by Benito Mussolini’s
fascism, notably its corporatist aspect. Corporatism required economic
sectors to join a government-sponsored interest group that collaborated
with the state in making policy, thereby giving the state influence over
the country’s economic and political life. Fascism more broadly appealed
to Perón because it encompassed industrialization, nationalism, author-
itarianism, and militarism, that is, many of the elements of nationalist-
populism. It also utilized referenda and demagoguery rather than genuine
democracy but entailed recognition of mass popularity.
Peronism increasingly became a massive workers’ party, determined to
eliminate poverty, but Argentina’s military establishment became its foe.
Perón was again elected as president in 1952. After Eva died, Perón’s
vigorous efforts to conscript young Argentinians into the movement led
Argentina’s Catholic Church to consider forming its own political party to
oppose Peronism. Perón reacted by ceasing to subsidize Catholic schools
and trying to legalize divorce and prostitution. Peron’s actions also alien-
ated many officers in the military, who eventually seized power. In 1954,
the Catholic Church, opposed to Perón’s legalization of divorce, joined
conservative military officers in an unsuccessful effort to oust Perón, but,
in September 1955, he was overthrown. As perhaps, his greatest polit-
ical error, as James W. McGuire argued, “was the government’s failure to
leave space for political opposition.”2
Retaining popular support but unable to enter politics, Perón and his
followers turned to organizing labor, and Peronistas became Latin Amer-
ica’s most influential labor movement. Thereafter, Peronistas alternated
7 NATIONALIST-POPULISM IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH AND MIDDLE EAST 279
political power with military coups, and their hostility dominated Argen-
tine political life. However, radical Peronists leftists calling themselves the
Montoneros resorted to terrorism and guerrilla warfare in the 1970s. The
so-called Dirty War of that period led the army to “disappear” some thirty
thousand Montonero followers.
Peronism’s ideology was “a vague blend of nationalism and labourism,
expressed in the Justicialist Party founding ‘three banners’ of political
sovereignty, economic independence and social justice.”3 Perón had his
aides develop a five-year plan that aimed to achieve full employment,
increase workers’ pay, trigger significant industrial growth, improve trans-
portation, communication, energy and social infrastructure, and diversify
the Argentine economy. “Perón was a populist politician who provided
for and was supported by the masses, yet his regime was in many ways
authoritarian.” Katherine J. Wolfenden argued that Perón “exploited the
poor to get and to stay in power, and enacted progressive reforms, but he
did so in ways that were calculated to maintain his control of the coun-
try…. At the same time, by recognizing industrial workers as legitimate
citizens and by uniting and then supporting them as a social and political
class, Perón brought the urban masses into politics and paved the way for
increased political participation.”4
During the following period of two military dictatorships, interrupted
by two civilian governments, the Peronist party was outlawed and Perón
was exiled in 1955. Nevertheless, as of 2015, of “the presidential elec-
tions since 1946 in which Peronists were permitted to run, they won
nine, losing only two.”5 After Perón’s follower Héctor José Cámpora
was elected Argentina’s president in 1973, Perón returned and thereafter
was elected to a third term as president. After he died in 1974, his third
wife Isabel, who had been his vice president, became Argentina’s presi-
dent. Presidents Carlos Saúl Menem (1989–1999), Adolfo Rodríguez Saá
(2001–2002), Eduardo Duhalde (2002–2003), Néstor Kirchner (2003–
2007), Cristina Kirchner (2007–2015), and Alberto Fernández (2019–),
with Cristina Kirchner, despite having been tainted with corruption
as president, as his vice president, were all heirs of Juan Perón. The
Peronistas triumphed in the 2019 election largely owing the country’s
economic difficulties. The country was beset by debt. The value of its
currency had plummeted, and inflation along with poverty had soared.
“When we have a [government] that excludes Peronism, we always go
back to Peronism,” argued Felipe Solá, a long-time Peronista. “Because
that is [our] model of national survival.”6
Among leading left-wing populist leaders in Latin America were Fidel

Castro and his brother Raúl, both communists, Fidel came to power in
1959 after a lengthy guerrilla war led to the overthrow of U.S.-backed
military dictator Fulgencio Batista. Thereafter, Cuba was allied with the
Soviet Union until the end of the Cold War. Fidel eliminated other
political parties and politicians, establishing a one-party, socialist state
under communist rule that emphasized economic equality. Fidel served
as Cuba’s president and prime minister and was First Secretary of the
Cuban Communist Party between 1961 and 2011 and was succeeded in
that position by and his brother, Raúl, who stepped down in 2018.
Venezuela and Bolivarianism

Elsewhere, the left-wing populist Hugo Chávez served as president of oil-
rich Venezuela from 1919 and 2013. Chávez led what he called the “Boli-
varian Revolution,” a socialist political movement, named after Simón
Bolívar, the nineteenth-century leader of an independence movement
from Spain. Chávez secretly established the Bolivarian movement within
the Venezuelan army in the 1980s, and like other populists, rejected
democracy. According to Chávez, the Bolivarian ideology fostered nation-
alism and a state-controlled economy. After Chávez assumed power in
Venezuela in 1999, he established a constitution that imposed a socialist
economy that was paid for with Venezuela’s oil revenue.
Chávez rejected democracy and pursued authoritarian policies that he
believed fostered the philosophy of Simón Bolívar including the violent
overthrow of democratic and/or capitalist governments. However,
although he viewed his ideology as a means for regime change across
Latin America, it was copied in only a few countries such as Bolivia
and Ecuador and did not achieve traction in countries that continued
to uphold the norms of the liberal order.
Bolivarianism eroded democracy and fostered authoritarianism.
Chávez, however, considered Bolivarianism as a populist form of democ-
racy featuring state intervention in economic life. In 2004, Venezuela and
Cuba established the leftist populist group, the Bolivarian Alternative for
the Americas (ALBA), later renamed the Alliance, that Bolivia, Ecuador,
Nicaragua, Honduras, and a number of small Caribbean countries joined.
Prominent leftist populists such as Chávez, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and
Rafael Correa in Ecuador were spokesmen of Bolivarianism, but its ideas
ran far deeper, infecting such countries as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and
Uruguay as well.
Evo Morales was of Aymara ethnicity and was elected Bolivia’s presi-
dent in 2006. He was that country’s first indigenous leader and indige-
nous tribal groups were his “real” or “authentic” people. His policies
of “communitarian socialism” increased tensions between the country’s
indigenous and non-indigenous citizens. While serving a second term
in office, Morales initially said he would not run for a third term in
2014, but changed his mind. Bolivia’s constitutional prohibited a pres-
ident from serving more than two consecutive terms, thereby precluding
Morales from running for a third term. However, after disruptive protests,
Bolivia’s constitutional court removed term limits for the presidency,
claiming it did not apply to Morales, because his second term had
preceded the ratification of the 2009 constitution, a decision upheld
in December 2018 by the Supreme Electoral Court. The decision trig-
gered widespread protests among his foes, but allowed Morales to run
for reelection in 2019. Bolivians, mainly supporters of Morales, brought
the country to a standstill in August 2020 by blockading some seventy
roads to protest a delay in deciding an election in which Morales won
a plurality but which had not reached the required majority of voters.
The election was then “fixed” to achieve the necessary majority, thereby
avoiding a run-off between Morales and his closest contender.
In Venezuela, Chávez’s left-wing populist policies included the redistri-
bution of land and wealth from the rich to the rural poor and improving
education and medical access, while emulating Castro’s Cuba in estab-
lishing state control over political life and the economy. In 2006, after
winning the presidential election for the third time, Chávez obtained
parliamentary approval to nationalize key economic sectors, beginning
with oil and telecommunications. When U.S. oil companies, Exxon Mobil
and ConocoPhilips, refused to surrender areas they owned in the Orinoco
Belt to the Venezuelan government, it expropriated them.
Chávez was anti-American and consistently opposed what he called
American imperialism. Consequently, Washington regarded him as a
threat and supported an unsuccessful coup to overthrow him in 2002.
According to Venezuelan academic, Leopoldo E. Colmenares Gutiérrez,
“Chávez’s plan was characterized by a hostile and confrontational posture
toward the United States,” and his Bolivarian Revolution “was char-
acterized by a hostile and confrontational posture toward the United
States, actions designed to export Chávez´s autocratic, socialist model to
other countries of the region,”7 including support for the violent Marxist
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Chávez also cultivated close relations with Russia. In 2006, he nego-
tiated a multi-billion arms deal with Russia that involved Venezuela’s
purchase of fighter jets and helicopters. He also negotiated a deal with
Russia to develop jointly Venezuela’s oil and gas resources. Chávez
established PetroCaribe to extend his country’s influence by providing
Venezuelan oil to Caribbean countries, especially communist Cuba, at
discount prices, while seeking to foster popular unrest in Ecuador, Peru,
and Bolivia. On two occasions in 2008 and 2013, Chávez organized
joint military maneuvers with Russia during which, Russian Tu-160 inter-
continental bombers landed in Venezuela, creating concern and anger
in Washington. “If the Russian long-distance planes that fly around the
world need to land at some Venezuelan landing strip, they are welcome,
we have no problems,”8 Chávez said. He defended his military ties
with Russia, claiming he feared an American invasion and arguing that
Venezuela needed Russia as an ally to help deter the United States.
After the death of Chávez in 2013, he was succeeded by Nicolás
Maduro, the country’s vice president. In addition to virtually destroying
the country’s economy and crushing virtually all political opposition,
Maduro retained Chávez’s foreign policies and political ideology. Two
days after talks with Russian President Putin, two Tu-160 Russian
strategic bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons flew 6,200 miles,
landing at Maiquetia airport near Caracas in Venezuela in a show of
Russian support for Venezuela’s embattled leader. This infuriated Wash-
ington. America’s angry Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted, “The
Russian and Venezuelan people should see this for what it is: two
corrupt governments squandering public funds, and squelching liberty
and freedom while their people suffer.” This led a Russian spokesman to
respond, “As for the idea that we are squandering money, we do not
agree. It’s not really appropriate for a country half of whose defense
budget could feed the whole of Africa to be making such statements.”
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza termed Pompeo’s comments
“not only disrespectful, but cynical,” alluding to overseas U.S. military
bases. “It’s strange the U.S. government questions our right to cooperate
on defense and security with other countries, when @realDonaldTrump
publicly threatens us with a military invasion,”9
For its part, the United States, along with many other states, recog-
nized Juan Gerardo Guaidó, President of Venezuela’s National Assembly,
as the country’s legitimate, though largely powerless, president. Although

Venezuela had the most oil reserves in the world, Venezuela’s state oil
company, Petròleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA), which had provided
95% of the country’s export revenue, had virtually collapsed in the face
of inadequate capital investment, corruption, incompetence, falling global
oil prices, and multinational sanctions owing to the government’s violence
against protesters. In February 2019, U.S. refiner Citgo Petroleum Corp,
the country’s largest foreign asset, ended ties with Venezuela’s state-run
oil firm, making it necessary for the oil-rich country to import neces-
sary refined energy products. In 2019 alone, Venezuela’s oil exports fell
by a third in the face of sanctions. Chávez had previously established
close links with Iran to acquire oil that it could no longer produce at
home, thereby aiding Tehran to evade American and European economic
sanctions aimed at bringing an end to Iran’s program to acquire nuclear
weapons. Also, Russia’s state oil company Rosneft became the main
purchaser of Venezuelan oil, thereafter exporting it to India and China.
Maduro intensified his country’s anti-Americanism and increased its
isolation. He encouraged criminal activities, especially drug smuggling
by transnational networks linked to his government. This led America’s
Justice Department to bring charges against Maduro and his associates
in March 2020. “The Venezuelan regime, once led by Nicolás Maduro,
remains plagued by criminality and corruption,” declared Attorney
General William P. Barr. “For more than 20 years, Maduro and a number
of high-ranking colleagues allegedly conspired with the FARC, causing
tons of cocaine to enter and devastate American communities. Today’s
announcement is focused on rooting out the extensive corruption within
the Venezuelan government – a system constructed and controlled to
enrich those at the highest levels of the government. The United States
will not allow these corrupt Venezuelan officials to use the U.S. banking
system to move their illicit proceeds from South America nor further their
criminal schemes.”10
Bolivarianism Elsewhere
In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, a Marxist trained in guerrilla warfare in
Cuba, became a leader of the leftist Sandistas who had overthrown the
U.S.-supported dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979. Thereafter, Ortega
became leader of the ruling Junta of National Reconstruction, and in
1984 Ortega easily won Nicaragua’s presidential election. However, after
the Sandinistas provided weapons to leftist Salvadoran rebels, the Reagan

administration aided the anti-Sandinista Contras in a civil war that lasted
until 1987. Although unsuccessful in several subsequent elections for
president, Ortega was finally returned to office in 2006, and became an
increasingly repressive dictator who remained in power as of 2021.
After taking office in Ecuador in 2007 and serving until 2017, Rafael
Correa, another leftist populist, raised spending significantly for health
care and education and increased subsidies for agriculture. Like other left-
wing Latin American populists, Correa, who served until 2017, pursued
anti-American policies, and Ecuador’s London embassy gave WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange asylum for almost seven years.
In Honduras, President Manuel Zelaya (2006–2009) was a demagogue
who broadcast propaganda on radio and television for two hours or more
every day and aided and obtained the support from rural farmers. In 2008
Honduras joined Alba, the Bolivarian alliance. However, the populist
Zelaya went too far in 2009 when he organized a referendum that had
been declared illegal by the Honduran Supreme Court to change the
constitution and allow him to seek reelection. Thus, on June 28, 2009—
the day the referendum was to be held—army officers ousted him from
office.
Chávez’s Bolivarianism had initiated to “a ‘pink tide’ that rolled over
much of South America after the turn of the millennium with a number
of left-wing governments winning elections,”11 and riding “a wave of
popularity based on generous government spending that was underpinned
by the commodities boom…. But leftist rule in most countries came to
an inglorious end when the bubble burst.”12 However, Bolivarian ideas
influenced Pablo Iglesias, a Spanish political scientist, who opposed the
spread of neoliberal economic globalization. They worked with Latin
American leftist populists including Correa and Morales, and Iglesias and
his followers established a populist political party they named Podemos
(“We Can”).
Brazil: From Lula to Bolsonaro

In Brazil, a left-wing populist government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
governed between 2003 and 2011. “Lula,” as he became known, was a
founding member of Brazil’s Workers’ Party and ran for the presidency
three times—1989, 1994, 1998—before being elected in 2002. Although
moderating his tone, Lula governed with his eye on Brazil’s grassroots
citizens offering a program aimed at ending corruption, enhancing the

economy, and enacting social reforms. As his first term ended, crime,
corruption, and inadequate education remained key issues. Although
members of his Workers’ Party had been tainted by corruption, Lula was
not implicated, and he won a decisive victory in the second round of
voting in 2006.
Lula remained extraordinarily popular during his second term, and
Brazil’s economy thrived. Oil was discovered, and Brazil was chosen
to host the 2016 summer Olympics. Brazil’s constitution precluded a
third consecutive term as Brazil’s president, and Lula selected his chief
of staff, Dilma Rousseff, to succeed him. Promising to continue Lula’s
populist policies, especially the Growth Acceleration Program, Rousseff
was elected as Brazil’s first woman president. She was reelected in
2014, but shortly afterward found herself confronting a massive scandal
involving kickbacks by Brazilian corporations and the Workers’ Party to
officials of Petrobras, the country’s state-owned oil company. Among the
many official and politicians who were arrested was Lula’s former chief
of staff. Thereafter, Lula himself was caught up in the investigation, and
in March 2016 he was charged with money laundering regarding hiding
ownership of a luxury apartment that had been paid for by a construction
company. Although Rousseff tried to protect Lula by appointing him her
chief of staff, a judge blocked the appointment, which would have legally
exempted him from prosecution and revealed a phone conversation that
indicated she was trying to protect him.
Thereafter, President Rousseff was impeached, and, although Lula
proclaimed his innocence, he was tried and was convicted in July 2017.
Despite subsequent appeals all the way to Brazil’s Supreme Court, Lula’s
conviction was upheld, thereby legally precluding his running for the
presidency in 2018. In April 2018, Lula was imprisoned. Nevertheless, he
remained enormously popular, and in August, the Workers’ Party nomi-
nated him as its candidate for the presidency. However, after Brazil’s
Superior Electoral Court declared that Lula was ineligible to run, the
party had to nominate Lula’s running mate, Fernando Haddad, a former
mayor of São Paulo, who was easily defeated by Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro, a right-wing nationalist-populist, became Brazil’s president
in 2019. He had copied Trump’s example in temperament, tactics, and
style during his campaign, exploiting Brazil’s racial and social divisions to
become president. After Bolsonaro, whose followers called him “Trump
of the Tropics,” was elected in 2018, Trump phoned to congratulate him.
Former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso explained, “Bol-

sonaro surfed a tsunami of popular anger and despair that swept away
the entire Brazilian political system, along with the old party leaders.
He was able to do so because of the people’s growing suspicion that
representative democracy is incapable of delivering what they need.”13
His supporters included white supremacists, and one declared, “We don’t
have a social debt to blacks. We need to be responsible for ourselves.”
“Bolsonaro’s slogan,” wrote an observer, “is ‘Brazil before everything,
and God above all,’”14 a variant of Trump’s “make America great again.”
Perhaps, the most destructive evidence of Bolsonaro’s nationalism was
his encouragement of Brazilian landowners to step up the burning and
clearing of the Amazon rainforest in order to provide more land for
loggers, ranchers, and miners. The Amazon jungle, frequently termed the
world’s “lungs,” absorbed large amounts of carbon dioxide and thereby
fights global warming. By contrast, the burning of the rainforest released
large amounts of carbon dioxide, while destroying the habitat of endan-
gered species of animals and plants that might have medicinal or genetic
value, and reducing the living space of indigenous peoples. “Where there
is Indigenous land,” Bolsonaro said, “there is wealth underneath it,” and
“The Indigenous person can’t remain in his land as if he were some
prehistoric creature.”15 Thus, instead of protecting indigenous peoples,
Bolsonaro supported legislation to overturn the country’s constitutional
protection of them, cut funding for the National Indian Foundation, the
agency responsible for upholding those indigenous rights, and supported
oil and gas exploration and hydropower plants on their land.
Bolsonaro also argued that it was a “fallacy” to describe the Amazon as
belonging to the entire world humanity and a “misconception” that the
rainforest was the world’s lungs. “Using and resorting to these fallacies,
certain countries, instead of helping … behaved in a disrespectful manner
and with a colonialist spirit,” and “They even called into question that
which we hold as a most sacred value, our sovereignty.”16 “Deforesta-
tion and fires will never end,” Bolsonaro told reporters. “It’s cultural.”17
However, in 2020, under pressure from the EU, foreign investors, and
Brazilian companies, Bolsonaro outlawed forest fires for the four months
of the dry season during which fires had been intentionally started to clear
land for cattle grazing and planting crops and ordered the armed forces
to prevent deforestation and illegal mining and logging. His shift owed
much to finalizing of a trade deal with the EU, acquiring membership
in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and

retaining private foreign investment in Brazilian companies.
Bolsonaro paid an official visit to Washington in 2019. On meeting
Trump, he declared, “We do have a great deal of shared values. I
admire President Donald Trump,”18 Prior to Bolsonaro’s arrival, Stephen
Bannon had hosted an event for Olavo de Carvalho. Carvalho, who
was Bolsonaro’s adviser, “writes and rants against ‘cultural Marxism’ and
climate change, immigrants and Islam…”19 His influence on Bolsonaro
had earned him the title “Bolsonaro’s Bannon,” owing to Bolsonaro’s
repeated claims that Carvalho had inspired his racism, sexism, and
homophobia.
Moreover, in an effort to rally his base of right-wingers and evan-
gelicals seeking to gather in churches after several weeks of quarantine,
Bolsonaro became a COVID-19 denier, encouraging citizens, especially
the thirty-eight million Brazilians who were in the country’s vast informal
economy, to leave their homes and go to work and congregate. “The
virus is there,” he said. “We need to face it like a man, dammit. We
will all die someday.”20 He described the deadly virus as a “measly
cold,”21 and even spoke enthusiastically at an anti-quarantine protest.
Like Trump, he rejected science and saw the virus as more a political than
a medical problem, and he fired his minister of health, Luiz Henrique
Mandetta, for disagreeing with him. Mandetta had continued advocating
social distancing and enforcement of lockdown orders. Bolsonaro himself
contracted the illness in early July 2020.
Bolsonaro’s adamant position regarding the pandemic isolated him
from former allies, most government ministers, and many average Brazil-
ians. The country’s highest court blocked his appointment of a personal
friend to head the federal police, who had been investigating his sons
for defamation and disinformation campaigns. Brazil’s parliament began
investigating Bolsonaro’s efforts to control the police with an eye toward
possibly impeaching him.
In addition, Brazil’s chief justice authorized investigating into
Bolsonaro for alleged corruption and obstruction of justice. Fabrício
Queiroz, an aide to Flávio Bolsonaro, one of President Bolsonaro’s sons,
was arrested for allegedly siphoning public funds to the Bolsonaro family.
Moreover, Queiroz’s daughter had been on the payroll of Bolsonaro’s
congressional office between 2016 and 2018, although she was working
as a personal trainer elsewhere at the time during which she sent tens of
thousands of dollars to her father. Another of the president’s sons, Carlos,
was also being investigated for improper use of public funds and involve-
ment in a disinformation campaign, while a third, Eduardo, was accused
of involvement in the same campaign. “It’s a return to the old polit-
ical practice of being shielded by judicial maneuvers,” declared a former
Brazilian prosecutor. “In Brazil we have a republic of untouchables and a
republic for the rest of the population.”22
Bolsonaro was caught on microphone during an April 2020 cabinet
meeting declaring that the federal police “want to fuck with my family,”23
seemingly confirming the allegations of Sergio Moro, the former justice
minister, who resigned two days after the video was recorded. After
Bolsonaro threatened a military takeover, Moro declared “This is destabi-
lizing the country, right during a pandemic,” and “It is reprehensible. The
country does not need to be living with this type of threat.”24 The right-
wing governor of the country’s most populous province, São Paulo state,
João Doria, declared “Do not follow the guidance of the president.”25
To reinforce his political position, Bolsonaro, himself a former military
officer, increased the influence of military personnel in his government,
perhaps to prepare for a military takeover. “We are not going to tolerate
interference — our patience has ended,” he declared in May 2020 to a
crowd that called for the removal of a congressional leader. “We have
the people on our side, and we have the armed forces on the side of the
people.”26
As in Trump’s America, regional leaders were left to fight the
pandemic. Doria declared, “The president despises us and attacks us.
He has put us in an impossible position by creating a narrative that
impedes the protection of people and life. The governors — from the
left, center and right — have decided to follow the correct path and
maintain the [World Health Organization] protocols.”27 In May 2020
Bolsonaro encouraged anti-democracy demonstrators in front of his pres-
idential palace, as they called for the closing of the Supreme Court and
a return to the dictatorship used that had accompanied Brazil’s years of
military rule.
Asia
We now turn to populism in Asia, starting with China and then turning
to the Philippines, India, and Myanmar.
China
At least three of China’s Paramount Leaders have used populist themes
to reinforce their authority and force China’s Communist Party and
governing institution to change. Beijing’s repression of the Muslim
Uighurs and Tibetans were examples of cultural and genetic genocide
in which the Buddhist or atheist Han Chinese were regarded as authentic
Chinese. It is difficult to show these were populist policies. However,
both found approval among the dominant Hans, many of whom settled
in non-Han areas of the country.
Asian populists in China, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and, to some
extent, the Philippines had in common an antipathy toward Islamic
minorities. China’s paramount leader for life, President Xi Jinping, was a
communist dictator, who encouraged nationalism and blamed foreigners
when confronting domestic challenges, and he would not usually be
thought of as a populist. However, his genocidal policies toward Muslims
in eastern China and Tibetans reflected his belief that the Han Chinese
were the “real” or “authentic” people in China.
Beijing forced over one million Muslim Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other
Muslim minorities into huge indoctrination camps in order to make them
abandon their traditions, culture, and language. Among the practices that
China sought to change were worshipping at mosques, participation in
pilgrimages to Mecca, growing beards, maintaining a “heavy religious
environment” for their families, having more than one child, seeking
passports, and having “suspicious” friends or acquaintances.
Tibetans, too, suffered at the hands of the Han Chinese. Although
Buddhist, Tibetans were an East Asian ethnic and cultural group of
about 6.5 million people, and, like the Uighurs, constituted one of
China’s fifty-six non-Han ethnicities. In 1950, a year after the communist
triumph in Beijing, China invaded Tibet in part because of its strategic
location north of India, and Tibet became a semiautonomous region
in China. According to one scholar, “Tibet in 1950 was an isolated,
working theocracy, possibly unique among the various political systems
of the modern world,” governed by its supreme Dalai Lama (thought
to be an incarnation of the Buddha), but “was doomed as a result of
conflicting British, Chinese and Russian imperialist interests in Central
Asia.” Between 1951 and 1959, “the only contacts the common Tibetans
had with the Communists were at were at road camps and on jour-
neys.”28 However, in 1959, an unsuccessful revolt took place that “was
caused fundamentally by the inevitable clash of two diametrically opposed

value systems,” Tibetan Buddhism and atheist communist “democratic
reformism.” Thus, “the moment the Chinese tried to alter the functioning
and sacred social system in Inner Tibet which they considered de jure
China proper, the revolt began”29 in defense of Buddhist values.
The Philippines
The Philippines was governed by one of the world’s most dictatorial right-
wing populists, Rodrigo Duterte, who had made repeated references to
cultural identity and nationalism to acquire power and led him to sever
the country’s previously close relations with the United States. Like his
predecessors, Duterte had to combat a pro-independence insurgency by
Muslim Moros in the Mindanao region of the Philippines that began in
1969 and lasted to 2019, and which still erupts from time to time.
Nevertheless, Donald Trump expressed his approval of President
Duterte, whose policies exemplified the trampling of human rights.
Duterte met his country’s drug problem by ordering police to kill drug
suspects without a trial. These were largely poor young men living in
impoverished slums. Consequently, more than 20,000 suspected Philip-
pine drug offenders were summarily murdered in three years. Instead of
criticizing Duterte, Trump phoned Duterte and told him that he was
doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem.”30
Duterte’s response to the coronavirus epidemic was equally violent.
The Philippines had suffered the second-highest number of deaths and
the second-lowest recovery rate in Southeast Asia. As in Hungary in which
parliament had granted Prime Minister Orbán authority to rule by decree,
Duterte used the pandemic to undermine his country’s democratic insti-
tutions. Despite the opposition of the Philippine congress, he imposed
the Bayanihan Act (Republic Act No. 11469), in March 2020, which
gave him vast additional authority including control of private medical
facilities, public transportation, and government-owned and controlled
corporations. In addition, the Enhanced Community Quarantine placed
Manila and the entire island of Luzon on lockdown, suspending domestic
and international travel, closing most businesses, and imposing a curfew
8 pm and 5 am.
Duterte threatened to kill anyone violating the country’s curfew or
other rules to cope with the pandemic. “My orders to the police and
military … if there is trouble or the situation arises where your life is on
the line, shoot them dead,” Duterte declared. “Understand? Dead. I’ll
send you to the grave. … Don’t test the government.” A police broad-
cast was even blunter: “Anyone out at the wrong time will be shot, you
sons of bitches.”31 “I personally experienced being the victim of the
weaponization of the law to silence democratic dissent, a useful tool in
the Tyrant’s Toolbox,” declared an imprisoned Philippine politician, and,
as a human-rights advocate observed, “The most worrisome aspect of
tens of thousands of arrests is that they are thrown into crowded jails
and holding areas, which completely eliminates the possibility of social
distancing.”32 By contrast, Singapore managed to control the pandemic
better than other Asia countries, at least until large numbers of migrant
workers in crowded dormitories, many of whom were from Bangladesh
or India, became infected.
Myanmar
Myanmar, too, was steeped in Islamophobia on the part of the country’s
Buddhist majority and thus became a model for India’s Hindu extremists.
Myanmar’s armed forces were charged with war crimes and/or genocide,
and two soldiers confessed to the charge in September 2020 in an ICC
hearing. The result was a crisis in neighboring Bangladesh as 723,000
of its Muslim Rohingyas from Myanmar’s Rakhine State fled in 2017.
Myanmar’s army killed thousands, although its army, the Tatmadaw,
continued to deny it targeted the Rohingyas. Previous violence in 2012
had resulted in confining about 130,000 Rohingya as internally displaced
persons in squalid camps in Sittwe, where they remained without freedom
of movement. Aung San Suu Kyi, who had been awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1991 for encouraging human rights and democracy and had
become Myanmar’s first State Counsellor, repeatedly denied allegations
of genocide, thereby greatly disappointing her followers.
India
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist followers
in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were re-elected for a second five-year
term in 2019. Modi had been appointed Chief Minister of Gujarat in
2001 and was assailed for having failed to control and even encouraging
anti-Muslim riots in that province in February–March 2002. The riots
began after a train caught fire, resulting in the death of a large number of
Hindus. The event was almost immediately blamed on local Muslims, and
Hindu extremists triggered the subsequent violence that led to roughly
2,000 Muslim deaths.33 Although a Special Investigation Team found no
evidence of Modi’s culpability personally, Muslims held him responsible
for the violence. His policies in Gujarat had fostered economic growth,
a factor that would later aid him in running for office. In August 2020,
Modi began the construction of a Hindu temple on the site of a destroyed
mosque in Ayodhya. This was among his many provocative actions as
he sought to transform India from a secular democracy into a Hindu
nationalist country.
During his 2019 campaign, Modi and the BJP repeatedly assailed
India’s Muslim minority, and Modi’s muscular approach to Pakistan and
Kashmir was among the leading reasons for his re-election. He unilat-
erally rescinded the constitutional autonomy of Kashmiris to make their
own laws, eroding the rights of Muslims in that region. By eliminating a
law that barred non-residents from buying land in Kashmir and Jammu,
the constitutional change permitted an influx of Hindus into the province
as part of Modi’s effort to encourage a demographic shift there in which
Hindus would outnumber Muslims.
Although the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) had given non-
Muslim migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh a path to
citizenship, Modi also established the all-India National Register of Citi-
zens to identify “foreigners.” This required Muslims to “prove” their
citizenship, although many Indian-born Muslims lacked the documenta-
tion to show they were citizens. Combined with other laws that brought
the citizenship of many of India’s own people into doubt, the CAA trig-
gered violent demonstrations among India’s large Muslim minority as well
as among many secular Hindus.
In the year after the CAA updated India’s National Register of Citi-
zens, the official register of Indian citizens in Assam, a northeastern
province bordering Bangladesh, excluded 1.9 million people, primarily
Muslim Bengalis, leaving them effectively stateless. An Indian consti-
tutional expert argued the new laws were a movement toward “an
arrangement where citizenship is centered on the idea of blood and soil,
rather than on the idea of birth.”34 According to Snigda Poonam, “Jai
Shri Ram” (Victory to Lord Ram, a Hindu god) had become “a Hindu
chauvinist slogan but also as a threat to anyone who dares to challenge
Hindu supremacy.”35 “I could be lynched right now and nobody would
do anything about it,” said one Muslim.36 Hindu anger at and violence
toward India’s 200 million Muslims was further intensified by claims that
an Islamic seminary was spreading the coronavirus. The Muslim group,
Tablighi Jamaat, had sponsored a large meeting of preachers in March
2020. By late 2020, the coronavirus had shattered India’s once vibrant
economy, threatening to send two-hundred million people back into
poverty. Notwithstanding criticism of Muslims, the blame was increasingly
placed on Modi’s lockdown of the country and premature reopening it.
Hindus referred to Modi as “our Trump,” and, during his campaign,
he encouraged anti-Muslim polarization. Like other populists, Modi
undermined India’s democratic institutions, notably its court system,
political parties, and the media. He closed the media in Kashmir after
annexing it and shut down TV channels and/or increasingly pressured
advertisers not to use media that criticized his government, described
the increasingly violent unrest caused by the government’s anti-Muslim
laws, or reported the effects of his lockdown of the country’s 1.3 billion
inhabitants in response to COVID-19. Modi’s attack on India’s vast and
previously lively media also produced self-censorship among the coun-
try’s journalists. Rajdeep Sardesai, a leading news anchor, concluded, “A
large section of the Indian media has become a lap dog, not a watchdog,”
and Shakuntala Banaji, a professor of media and communication, declared
“In the past six years, the Indian media has deteriorated. There is no
semblance of truth or responsibility left in the vast majority of media
reports.”37 Modi’s Islamophobia spread to the Hindu diaspora elsewhere
and attracted the support of right-wing populists in the West.38
Modi’s foes argued that he was undermining India’s vibrant democ-
racy, and his anti-Muslim populism appeared to do so. However, the
country’s institutions like its judiciary and parliament remained strong,
and good governance reinforced “middle democracy.” Subrata K. Mitra
focused on the “perception” of Modi’s anti-democratic actions, arguing
that in India, “where partisanship is based not on long-term party identifi-
cation but short-term opportunity, these factors, thanks to a combination
of low trust and high citizen efficacy, get easily transformed into mass
protest. This explains the paradoxical resilience of India’s flawed democ-
racy that neither rises to the Scandinavian heights of full democracy, nor
goes down to a hybrid democracy or worse. I call it India’s ‘middle
democracy’ trap.”39
Iran
Iran’s theocratic leaders were also populists. They claimed that true
Muslims were Shia and emphasized that most Iranians were Shia Muslims
and were Persian rather than Arab. Iranian leaders have repressed Iran’s
Arab minority, supported the Shia terrorist group Hezbollah, both in its
effort to aid Syria’s al-Assad regime and aiding that regime by providing
it with funds and arms. Iran’s pro-Shia policies extended to supporting
Lebanese Shia political groups like Amal in addition to Hezbollah as well
as Shias in Bahrain and the Zaidi-Shia Houthi movement in Yemen’s
seemingly endless civil war that began in 2004. Tehran also provided aid
to Iraqi Shia militias in their struggle with the Islamic State and acquired
considerable influence over Shia politicians and parties in that country.
If Tehran developed nuclear weapons, those would surely be described
as “Shia” bombs and/or missiles. If this occurred, Saudi Arabia and other
Sunni states would almost certainly develop “Sunni” bombs and missiles.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman publicly stated that Saudi Arabia
would acquire nuclear weapons if Iran acquired them, and, with China’s
help, was building a nuclear reactor. Satellite photos taken in spring 2020
revealed that the Saudis had placed a roof over its reactor and had not
asked the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor the site and
inspect the reactor’s design as required under the Nuclear Nonprolifera-
tion Treaty (NPT) that it had signed. Moreover, The Guardian claimed
that western intelligence sources believed that the “Saudi monarchy paid
for up to 60% of the Pakistani nuclear programme, and in return has the
option to buy a small nuclear arsenal (five to six warheads) off the shelf if
things got tough in the neighbourhood.”40
Middle East
Egypt and Nasser
Among the most significant of the region’s nationalist-populist leaders
was Egypt’s Gamel Abdel Nasser, as was his successor Anwar Sadat. As
Saadedine Ibrahim, an Egyptian political activist, recalled: “One of the
very early phrases that Nasser coined was addressing the common man:
‘Raise your head fellow brother, the end of colonialism has come.’ And
that is the kind of language, message that echoed very deeply with the
average man, because it was a simple language and people who were
downtrodden, people who were beaten, mistreated, felt worthless, began
to gain that kind of confidence, spirit that they didn’t have before.”41
More recently, during the Arab Spring, the elected President Mohamed
Morsi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, sought to encourage populist
policies before being overthrown by in a military coup.
Israel and Netanyahu

Before Israel’s 2019 elections, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu culti-
vated nationalist-populist leaders ranging from Trump and Putin to
Orbȧn, and they aided him diplomatically and politically. He was indicted
for fraud, breach of trust and bribery, sought to limit the independence of
Israel’s Supreme Court, and shut Israel’s public broadcasting station. He
derided Israel’s Arab minority, annexed the Golan Heights, and said he
planned to annex areas of the occupied West Bank. Additional symbolic
support from the Trump administration was evident in Secretary of State
Pompeo’s precedent-breaking visit to illegal Israeli settlements in the
Golan Heights and the West Bank in November 2020.
Regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict, as with other issues, Trump
ignored professional diplomats, while trusting his family’s advice. Thus,
instead of consulting professional advisers familiar with the region, he
assigned his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who like Trump had no diplo-
matic or regional experience, to lead an effort to break the Israeli-
Palestinian stalemate. Previous presidents had sought to mediate the
Palestinian-Israeli imbroglio and avoid taking sides. Trump made no
effort to do so. He recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moved the
U.S. embassy there, refused to endorse a two-state solution, and no
longer regarded Israeli settlements as violating international law. He also
recognized Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights, providing
cover for Netanyahu just before an Israeli election. Trump’s action
was intended to aid Netanyahu, who was seeking reelection despite his
indictment.
Kushner revealed the Trump administration’s plan in January 2020
after Netanyahu and his electoral opponent Benny Gantz were consulted
in Washington. If Israel accepted the plan, Netanyahu planned to annex
settlements in the West Bank and part of the Jordan Valley that would
encircle a small divided Palestinian non-sovereign entity and undermine
the Oslo Accords that had made the Palestine Liberation Organization
sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, governing the
West Bank after 1994 through the Palestinian Authority.
Ironically, Netanyahu’s annexation plan facilitated an improvement of

Israeli-Arab relations. In August 2020, Israel “suspended” the annexa-
tion in exchange for “full normalization of relations” with the United
Arab Emirates (UAE)—the Abraham Accords—as part of an effort to
improve relations with the Arab states and forestall a possible break in
relations with Egypt and Jordan if it had gone forward with the annex-
ation. In addition to diplomatic recognition, the UAE-Israeli agreement
also encompassed investment, tourism, security, technology, energy, and
flights between the two countries and led to U.S. sales of highly sophisti-
cated warplanes to the UAE. Bahrain followed the UAE, indicating that
other Arab states might establish formal relations with Israel. Thereafter,
Sudan normalized trade with Israel in return for which the U.S. removed
Sudan from its list of states sponsoring terrorism, and Morocco, too,
normalized relations with Israel in exchange for U.S. recognition of that
country’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara, ending America’s forth
years of neutrality on that issue and a violation of legal norms. The UAE-
Israel agreement was a major setback to the cause of an independent
Palestinian state and was partly a consequence of their joint opposition
to Iran. It also offered Israel profits from an oil pipeline built in Israel
decades earlier that would enable Persian Gulf states to offload oil from
supertankers that are too large to pass through the Suez Canal.
Although the plan aimed to improve the electoral prospects of
Trump and Netanyahu, neither candidate won Israel’s 2020 election, and
Netanyahu and Gantz agreed to rotate the post of prime minister. Israel’s
judiciary determined that Netanyahu could remain prime minister despite
his indictment for corruption. Although Netanyahu had been praised for
his initial response to the coronavirus, he was later besieged by Israeli
protesters, who were angered at the resurgence of the pandemic. The
resulting tension between the two brought down the government in late
December 2020 with a fourth election in two years scheduled for March
2021.
For his part, Trump continued to praise Netanyahu in order to increase
his electoral prospects with America’s Jewish and evangelical Christian
voters. However, the Biden administration and/or Congress may remove
the incentives for the Abraham Accords, thereby leaving those countries
that had endorsed them in the lurch. No Palestinians accepted Kushner’s
“Peace to Prosperity” plan, and Israel cannot be both a Jewish state and
a democracy while governing over two million more Palestinians. Pales-
tinian Administration President Abbas angrily declared he was freed from
commitments made in the Oslo accords, including security cooperation

with Israel in the West Bank and its more than two million Palestinians.
Israeli annexation would have surely produced violence, but this prospect
was further reduced after the PLO again began to accept taxes it was owed
by Israel and once more pay Palestinian police to help maintain security
in the West Bank.
“Cut from the same political cloth, Trump and Netanyahu have
forged a symbiotic alliance,” argued Shalom Lipner. “Trump’s benev-
olence toward Israel — attributed singularly to Netanyahu’s success in
cultivating his friendship — buoys the prime minister’s prospects. And
when he responds gratefully by heaping praise on Trump, Netanyahu
bolsters the president’s standing among his core Republican and evangel-
ical supporters.”42 Comparing the two, Thomas Friedman wrote, “They
are both men utterly without shame, backed by parties utterly without
spine, protected by big media outlets utterly without integrity.”43
Conclusions
The evolution and impact of populism in the global south varied by
region and country. Much of the global south was endangered not only
by the novel coronavirus but by mass starvation owing to lockdowns and
social distancing that broke production chains and reduced income for
millions, especially poor laborers, as well as the collapse of oil prices, no
tourism, shortages of hard currency to buy imports, the end of remit-
tances home from workers living abroad, and climate change and the
catastrophes like drought that it causes.
In Latin America, for example, the coronavirus threatened democra-
cies, partly because their economies depended so heavily on trade and the
export of commodities. The coronavirus crisis gave “populist leaders the
opportunity to use the tools of the state to sideline the opposition and
build in unfair political advantages. And it could also give the growing
ranks of budding autocrats in the region pretense to delay elections,
suspend freedom of assembly and speech, and shut down institutions like
congress and the courts.”44
Notes
1. Cited in “What Is Peronism?” telesurtv.net, November 10, 2014,
https://www.telesurenglish.net/analysis/What-is-Peronism-20141111-
0014.html%20What%20Is%20Peronism?.
2. James W. McGuire, Peronism Without Perón: Unions, Parties, and Democ-
racy in Argentina (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), p. 73.
3. Bello, “The Persistence of Peronism,” The Economist, October 15,
2015. https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2015/10/15/the-per
sistence-of-peronism.
4. Katherine J. Wolfenden, “Perón and the People: People’s Democ-
racy and Authoritarianism in Juan Perón’s Argentina,” Inquiries 5:2
(2013), https://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/728/peron-and-the-
people-democracy-and-authoritarianism-in-juan-perons-argentina.
5. Bello, “The Persistence of Peronism.”
6. Cited in Anthony Faiola, “Argentina’s Economy Is Collapsing. Here
Come the Peronistas, Again,” Washington Post, October 23, 2019,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/argentinas-eco
nomy-is-collapsing-here-come-the-peronistas-again/2019/10/23/c83
b3f04-f131-11e9-bb7e-d2026ee0c199_story.html.
7. Leopoldo E. Colmenares Gutiérrez, “Criminal Networks in Venezuela:
Their Impact on Hemispheric Security,” Military Review, January–
February 2016, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military-
review/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20160228_art012.pdf, p. 54.
8. Cited in “What Is Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution?” TRTWorld,
January 24, 2019. https://www.trtworld.com/americas/what-is-venezu
ela-s-bolivarian-revolution-23587.
9. Cited in Andrew Osborn, “Russian Nuclear-Capable Bomber Aircraft Fly
to Venezuela, Angering U.S.,” Reuters, December 11, 2018, https://
www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-russia-airforce/russian-nuclear-cap
able-bomber-aircraft-fly-to-venezuela-angering-u-s-idUSKBN1OA23L
10. “Nicholas Maduro Moros and 14 Current and Former Venezuelan
Officials Charged with Narco-Terrorism, Corruption, Drug Trafficking
and Other Criminal Charges,” I.S. Department of Justice, March
26, 2020, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/nicol-s-maduro-moros-and-
14-current-and-former-venezuelan-officials-charged-narco-terrorism.
11. Michael Reid, “Obama and Latin America: A Promising Day in the
Neighborhood,” Foreign Affairs 94:5 (September/October 2015), p. 46.
12. Michael Albertus, “The Coronavirus Will Cause New Crises in Latin
America,” Foreign Policy, April 6, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/
2020/04/06/the-coronavirus-will-cause-new-crises-in-latin-america/?
utm_term=Editor#39;s%20Picks%20OC&?tpcc=20797.
13. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, “How the Unthinkable Happened Is

Brazil,” Washington Post, October 29, 2018, https://www.washingto
npost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/10/29/bolsonaro/?utm_
term=.f5a3b44a8b53. See also Bello, “The Apprecentice President of
Brazil, The Economist, March 30, 2019, p. 41.
14. Cited in Anthony Faiola and Marina Lopes, “’Just Like Trump’:
Bolsonaro Leads Brazil’s Presidential Race with Right-Wing Populist
Pitch,” Washington Post, October 4, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.
com/world/the_americas/just-like-trump-bolsonaro-leads-brazils-pre
sidential-race-with-right-wing-populist-pitch/2018/10/04/c4ba3728-
c65c-11e8-9c0f-2ffaf6d422aa_story.html?utm_term=.823288a8bc2c&wpi
15. Cited in Ernesto Londoño and Letícia Casado, “As Bolsonaro Keeps
Amazon Vows, Brazil’s Indigenous Fear ‘Ethnocide’,” New York Times,
April 19, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/19/world/ame
ricas/bolsonaro-brazil-amazon-indigenous.html?campaign_id=2&emc=
edit_th_200419&instance_id=17771&nl=todaysheadlines&regi_id=433
382ea.
16. Cited in “Amazon’s Rainforest Belongs to Brazil, Say Bolsonaro,” BBC
News, September 24, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-
america-49815731.
17. Cited in Marina Lopes, “Brazil’s Bolsonaro Calls Deforestation ‘Cul-
tural,’ Says It ‘Will Never End’,” Washington Post, November 20, 2019,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/brazils-bolson
aro-calls-amazon-deforestation-cultural-says-it-will-never-end/2019/11/
20/ba536498-0ba3-11ea-8054-289aef6e38a3_story.html.
18. Cited in Anne Gearan, “Trump Sees a Lot to Like in Brazil’s Unapolo-
getically Far-Right, Nationalist Leader,” Washington Post, March 19,
2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-sees-a-lot-to-
like-in-brazils-unapologetically-far-right-nationalist-leader/2019/03/19/
bcd1542c-4a4d-11e9-9663-00ac73f49662_story.html?utm_term=.5ea
491362efe&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1.
19. Travis Waldron, “Brazil President’s U.S. Visit Kicks Off With Steve
Bannon-Sponsored Paranoia Fest,” Huffpost, March 18, 2019, https://
www.huffpost.com/entry/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-steve-bannon-olavo-
de-carvalho_n_5c8fb5a1e4b0d50544fe2318?ncid=engmodushpmg000
00004&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
20. Cited in Bryan Harris and Andres Schipani, “Bolsonaro Doubles Down
on Denialism,” Financial Times, April 1, 2020, https://www.ft.com/con
tent/36020f3c-cf50-427b-a83a-bda122bec593.
21. Cited in Ernesto Londoño, Manuela Andreoni and Letícia Casado,
“Bolsonaro, Isolated and Defiant, Dismisses Coronavirus Threato Brazil,”
New York Times, April 1, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/

01/world/americas/brazil-bolsonaro-coronavirus.html?campaign_id=2&
emc=edit_th_200402&instance_id=17267&nl=todaysheadlines&regi_id=
4332168&segment_id=23587&user_id=318a8b2e197d8de30abd1bb0
2c4382ea.
22. Cited in Ernesto Londoño, Manuela Andreoni and Letícia Casado, “‘A
Family Business:’ Graft Investigation Threatens Brazil’s Bolsonaro,” New
York Times, August 28, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/
world/americas/brazil-bosonaro-corruption.html?campaign_id=2&emc=
edit_th_20200829&instance_id=21739&nl=todaysheadlines&regi_id=
4332168&segment_id=37150&user_id=318a8b2e197d8de30abd1bb0
2c4382ea.
23. Cited in Tom Phillips and Dom Phillips, “Bolsonaro Claims Police Are
Persecuting in a Foul-Mouthed Rant-Reports,” The Guardian, May 12,
2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/12/jair-bolson
aro-claims-police-persecuting-family-foul-mouthed-rant-reports#img-1.
24. Cited in Simon Romero, Letícia Casado, and Manuela Andreoni, “Threat
of Military Actions Rattles Brazil as Virus Deaths Surge,” New York
Times, June 10, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/world/
americas/bolsonaro-coup-coronavirus-brazil.html?campaign_id=2&emc=
edit_th_200610&instance_id=19251&nl=todaysheadlines&regi_id=433
2168&segment_id=30516&user_id=318a8b2e197d8de30a.
25. Cited in Dom Phillips, “Bolsonaro Ignored by State Governors Amid
Anger at Handling in Covid-19 Crisis,” The Guardian, April 1, 2020,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/01/brazil-bolsonaro-
ignored-by-state-governors-amid-anger-at-handling-of-covid-19-crisis.
26. Cited in Terrence McCoy and Heloísa Traiano, “As Brazil’s Challenges
Multiply, Bolsonaro’s Fans Call for a Military Takeover,” Washington Post,
May 12, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/
brazil-bolsonaro-military-takeover-coronavirus/2020/05/11/935b680e-
8fce-11ea-a9c0-73b93422d691_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_todays_
worldview&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_tod
ayworld.
27. Cited in Matt Sandy and Flávia Milhorance, “Brazil’s President Still
Insists the Coronavirus Is Overgrown. These Governors Are Fighting
Back,” Time, April 6, 2020, https://time.com/5816243/brazil-jair-bol
sonaro-coronavirus-governors/?utm_campaign=wp_todays_worldview&
utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_todayworld.
28. Dawa Norbu, “The 1959 Tibetan Rebellion: An Interpretation,” China
Quarterly 77 (March 1979), pp. 74, 78.
29. Ibid., pp. 80, 81, 82.
30. Cited in David E. Sanger and Maggie Haberman, “Trump Praises Duterte
for Philippine Drug Crackdown in Call Transcript,” New York Times, May

duterte-phone-transcript-philippine-drug-crackdown.html.
31. Cited in Lynzy Billing, “Duterte’s Response to the Coronavirus: ‘Shoot
Them Dead’,” Foreign Policy, April 16, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.
com/2020/04/16/duterte-philippines-coronavirus-response-shoot-
them-dead/?utm_source=PostUp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=
20946&utm_term=Editors%20Picks%20OC&.
32. Cited in ibid.
33. Martha C. Nussbaum, The Clash Within Democracy: Religious Violence,
and India’s Future (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 2.
34. Cited in Aatish Taseer, “India Is No Longer India: Exile in the Time
of Modi,” The Atlantic, May 20, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/
magazine/archive/2020/05/exile-in-the-age-of-modi/609073/?utm_
campaign=wp_todays_worldview&utm_medium=email&utm_source=new
sletter&wpisrc=nl_todayworld.
35. Snigda Poonam, “The 3 Most Polarizing Words in India,” Foreign
Policy, February 13, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/13/jai-
shri-ram-india-hindi/.
36. Cited in Jeffrey Gettleman, Kai Schultz, Suhasini Raj and Hari Kumar,
“Under Modi, a Hindu Nationalist Surge Has Further Divided India,”
New York Times, April 11, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/
11/world/asia/modi-india-elections.html?module=inline.
37. Cited in Vindu Goel and Jeffrey Gettleman, “Under Modi, India’s
Press Is Not So Free Anymore,” New York Times, April 2,
2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/world/asia/modi-india-
press-media.html?smid=em-share.
38. Steven Zhou, “From India, Islamophobia Goes Global,” Foreign Policy,
July 1, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/01/india-islamopho
bia-global-bjp-hindu-nationalism-canada/?utm_source=PostUp&utm_
medium=email&utm_campaign=22789&utm_term=Editors%20Picks%
20OC&?tpcc=22789.
39. Subrata K. Mitra, “For India, ‘Middle’ Democracy Works,” AsiaNow,
March 2020, italics in original, https://www.globalasia.org/v15no1/
cover/for-india-middle-democracy-works_subrata-k-mitra.
40. Julian Borger, “Pakistan’s Bomb and Saudi Arabia,” The Guardian, May
11, 2010, https://www.theguardian.com/world/julian-borger-global-sec
urity-blog/2010/may/11/pakistan-saudiarabia.
41. Cited in “Arab Unity: Nasser’s Revolution,” Al Jazeera, June
20, 2008, https://www.aljazeera.com/focus/arabunity/2008/02/200
852517252821627.html.
42. Shalom Lipner, “Mr. Netanyahu Goes to Washington,” Atlantic Council,
March 24, 2019, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlant
icist/netanyahu-trump-washington?wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
43. Thomas L. Friedman, “Bibi Trump and Donald Netanyahu,” New York
Times, April 10, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/opi
nion/netanyahu-trump-israel-election.html?emc=edit_th_190411&nl=tod
44. “The Coronavirus Will Cause New Crises in Latin America.”
Questions
Multiple Choice
1. Unlike the United States, Latin American populism was dominated
by which of the follow groups, at least until Jair Bolsonaro assumed
office in Brazil?
a. Alt-Right
b. Leftist
c. Neo-Nazis
d. Classic Liberals
2. What Argentinian group increasingly became a massive workers’
party, determined to eliminate poverty?
a. Republicans
b. Stalinist
c. Military Establishment
d. Peronistas
3. Fidel eliminated other political parties and politicians, developing
a socialist state under communist rule that emphasized economic
equality, and created a ______ party system?
a. One
b. Two
c. Multiple
d. Zero
4. Leftwing populist Hugo Chávez led a socialist political move-
ment, named after a nineteenth-century leader of an independence
movement from Spain called what?
a. Columbus Revolution
b. Francesco Revolution
c. Bolivarian Revolution
d. Garcian Revolution
5. Hugo Chavez established a constitution that imposed a socialist
economy for Venezuela that was paid for with which of the
following?
a. Oil revenue
b. Arms sales
c. Foreign Investment
d. Mineral trade
6. Hugo Chávez established which of the following to extend his
country’s influence by providing Venezuelan oil to Caribbean
countries, especially communist Cuba, at discount prices?
a. VenPetro
b. PetroCaribe
c. C Petroleum
d. Oil Caribbean
7. After the death of Hugo Chávez in 2013 he was succeeded by
which of the following?
a. Simon Bolivar
b. Juan Peron
c. Nicolás Maduro
d. Hugo Chávez Jr.
8. In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, a Marxist trained in guerrilla warfare
in Cuba, became a leader of which leftist group that overthrew the
U.S.-supported ruling dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979?
a. Sandistas
b. Gueverians
c. Bolivarians
d. Peronistas
9. In January 2014, Pablo Iglesias, a Spanish political scientist, who
opposed the spread of neoliberal economic globalization, and his
followers established a populist political party that they named
what?
a. Vamos (“We Go”)
b. Peronistas
c. Podemos (“We Can”)

d. Republicans
10. Brazilian president Bolsonaro rejected science and saw the virus as
more a political than a medical problem and therefore fired Luiz
Henrique Mandetta for disagreeing with him. What government
position did Mandetta hold?
a. Minister of Health
b. Minister of Public Safety
c. Minister of Security
d. Minister of the Environment
11. Asian populists in China, India, Myanmar and Sri Lanka have in
common their antipathy toward which of the following?
a. Communist
b. Hindus
c. Islamic minorities
d. None of the above
12. Which of these groups have suffered greatly at the hands of the
Han Chinese?
a. Uighur Muslims
b. Tibetans
c. Neither a or b
d. Both a and b
13. The current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, who is still regarded by
China as its enemy, fled to which country after Lhasa was occupied?
a. Russia
b. France
c. United States
d. India
14. Which country is governed by one of the world’s most dictato-
rial rightwing populists, Rodrigo Duterte, who has made repeated
references to cultural identity and nationalism to acquire power?
a. Vietnam
b. Brazil
c. China
d. The Philippines
15. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist
followers in which of the following parties were re-elected for a
second five-year term in 2019?
a. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
b. Hindu Party
c. India Party
d. Communist Party of India
16. Which of the following gave only non-Muslim migrants from
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh a path to citizenship?
a. Non-Muslim Citizen Statue
b. Locality Act
c. The Citizenship Amendment Act
d. Recoverment Act
17. Like other populists, Modi undermined which of the following of
India’s democratic institutions?
a. Court System
b. Political Parties
c. The Media
d. All the Above
18. In August 2020, Israel “suspended” the annexation of Jewish
settlements in the West Bank and part of the Jordan Valley in
exchange for “full normalization of relations” with which country?
a. Iran
b. United Arab Emirates (UAE)
c. United States
d. Saudi Arabia
19. The UAE-Israel agreement was a major setback to the cause of
an independent Palestinian state and was partly a consequence of
a. The coronavirus pandemic
b. Shared religious background of populations
c. Benjamin Netanyahu’s indictment of corruption
d. Their joint opposition to Iran
20. Instead of consulting professional advisers familiar with the region

concerning, President Trump assigned who to lead an effort to
break the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate?
a. John Bolton
b. Jared Kushner
c. Ivanka Trump
d. Mike Pence
True or False
1. True or False? Notwithstanding his links with workers, Juan Perón
and his second wife Eva, who was idolized by the poor, were
attracted by Benito Mussolini’s fascism, notably its corporatist
aspect.
True
2. True or False? Perón’s vigorous efforts to conscript young Argen-
tinians youth into the Peronist movement received support from
the Catholic Church.
False, this conscription lead to the Catholic Church to
consider forming its own political party to oppose Pero-
nism
3. True or False? After Perón died in 1974, his third wife Isabel, who
had been his vice president, became Argentina’s president.
True
4. True or False? Cuba clashed with the Soviet Union back and forth
until the end of the Cold War.
False, Cuba was allied with the Soviet Union until the end
of the Cold War.
5. True or False? When U.S. oil companies, Exxon Mobil and Cono-
coPhilips, refused to surrender areas they owned in the Orinoco
Belt to the Venezuelan government, the Venezuelan government
expropriated them.
True
6. True or False? Hugo Chávez was overtly pro-American and consis-

tently received support from the United States government.
False, he was overtly anti-American and consistently
opposed what he called American imperialism
7. True or False? On two occasions in 2008 and 2013, Chávez orga-
nized joint military maneuvers with Russia during which, Russian
Tu-160 intercontinental bombers landed in Venezuela. Both fully
supported by the United States.
False, it created concern and anger in Washington
8. True or False? After the Sandinistas provided weapons to leftist
Salvadoran rebels, the Reagan administration aided the anti-
Sandinista Contras in a civil war that lasted until 1987.
True
9. True or False? Bolivarian ideas influenced Pablo Iglesias, a Spanish
political scientist, who opposed the spread of neoliberal economic
globalization.
True
10. True or False? Lula remained president for three consecutive terms
in Brazil.
False, Brazil’s constitution precluded a third consecutive
term as Brazil’s president
11. True or False? Instead of protecting indigenous peoples, Bolsonaro
has supported legislation to overturn the country’s constitutional
protection of them, cut funding for the National Indian Founda-
tion, the agency responsible for upholding those indigenous rights,
and supports oil and gas exploration and hydropower plants on
their land.
True
12. True or False? In an effort to rally his base of right-wingers and
evangelicals seeking to gather in churches after several weeks of
quarantine, Brazilian President Bolsonaro began to stress the need
to follow Covid-19 recommendations seriously.
False, Bolsonaro became a Covid-19 denier, encouraging

citizens, especially the 38 million Brazilians who were in
the country’s vast informal economy, to leave their homes
and go to work congregate
13. True or False? In May 2020 Bolsonaro encouraged anti-democracy
demonstrators in front of his presidential palace, as they called for
the closing of the Supreme Court and a return to the dictatorship
used that had accompanied Brazil’s years of military rule.
True
14. True or False? Although China’s paramount leader for life, Pres-
ident Xi Jinping was a communist dictator, who encouraged
nationalism and blamed foreigners, when confronting domestic
challenges, he would not usually be classified as a populist.
True
15. True or False? President Trump has been consistent on rebuking
President Duterte’s disregard of human rights in his dealing of his
country’s drug problem.
False, instead of criticizing Duterte, Trump phoned
Duterte and told him that he was doing an “unbelievable
job on the drug problem.”
16. True or False? The Philippine’s President Duterte threatened to
kill anyone violating the country’s curfew or other rules to cope
with the pandemic.
True
17. True or False? As Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi
was assailed for failing to control and/or even encouraging anti-
Muslim riots in that province in February-March 2002.
True
18. True or False? During his 2019 campaign, Modi and the BJP
repeatedly pandered to India’s Muslim minority, and Modi’s
supportive approach to Pakistan and Kashmir was among the
leading reasons for his re-election.
False, Modi and the BJP repeatedly assailed India’s

Muslim minority, and Modi’s muscular approach to
Pakistan and Kashmir was among the leading reasons for
his re-election
19. True or False? Modi’s attack on India’s vast and previously lively
media also produced self-censorship among the country’s journal-
ists.
True
20. True or False? Benjamin Netanyahu won Israel’s 2020 election
outright and will hold the position of prime minister.
False, neither Netanyahu or his opponent Gantz won
Israel’s 2020 election, so they agreed to rotate the post
of prime minister.
Short Answer
The region referred to as the “global south” harbors both leftwing
and rightwing populists with traits like populists in the United States,
Europe, and Great Britain. List three of these traits.
Preoccupation with nationalism, dislike of globalization, anti-
liberal and authoritarian tendencies, and preoccupation with
identity politics
After Peron was overthrown in 1955, and for the time being unable
to enter politics, what did he and his followers do?
They turned to organizing labor and became Latin America’s
most influential labor movement. Peronistas alternated polit-
ical power with military coups, and their hostility dominated
Argentine political life. Some radical Peronists leftists calling
themselves the Montoneros resorted to terrorism and guerrilla
warfare in the 1970s
What economic difficulties helped the Peronistas triumph in the

2019 election?
The country was beset by debt, the value of its currency had
plummeted, and inflation along with poverty had soared.
What leftwing populist policies did Hugo Chávez’s institute?

The redistribution of land and wealth from the rich to the
rural poor and improving education and medical access, while
emulating Castro’s Cuba in establishing state control over polit-
ical life and the economy.
What led America’s Justice Department to bring charges against

President Maduro and his associates in March 2020?
He encouraged criminal activities, especially drug smuggling by
transnational networks linked to his government
Why did army officers oust Honduras President Manuel Zelaya from
office?
Zelaya went too far in 2009 for them when he organized a refer-
endum that had been declared illegal by the Supreme Court
to change the Honduran constitution and allow him to seek
reelection. Thus, on June 28—the day the referendum was to
be held—army officers ousted him from office
What is the impact of the Amazon or the destruction of the Amazon

on the environment?
The Amazon, frequently termed the world’s “lungs,” absorbs
large amounts of carbon dioxide and thereby fights global
warming. By contrast, the burning of the rainforest released
large amounts of carbon dioxide, while also destroying the
habitat of endangered species of animals and plants that might
have medicinal or genetic value, while reducing the living space
of indigenous peoples
Give an example of an investigation into President Bolsonaro or his

associates?
Brazil’s chief justice authorized investigating into Bolsonaro for
alleged corruption and obstruction of justice. Fabrício Queiroz,
center, an aide to Flávio Bolsonaro, one of President Bolsonaro’s
sons, was arrested for allegedly siphoning public funds to the
Bolsonaro family. Moreover, Queiroz’s daughter was on the
payroll of Bolsonaro’s former congressional office between 2016
and 2018, although she was working as a personal trainer else-

where at the time during which she sent tens of thousands of
dollars to her father. Another of the president’s sons, Carlos
was also being investigation for improper use of public funds
and involvement in a disinformation campaign while a third,
Eduardo, was accused of involvement in that campaign.
How did President Duterte of the Philippines respond to the

problems of coronavirus pandemic domestically?
Duterte’s response to the coronavirus epidemic had the same
intensity as his response to the drug epidemics. The Philip-
pines had suffered the second-highest number of deaths and the
second-lowest recovery rate in Southeast Asia. As in Hungary
in which parliament had granted Prime Minister Viktor Orbán
authority to rule by decree, Duterte used the pandemic to under-
mine further his country’s democratic institutions. Despite the
opposition of the Philippine congress, Duterte imposed the
Bayanihan to Heal as One Act (Republic Act No. 11469), in
March 2020, which gave him vast additional authority including
control of private medical facilities, public transportation, and
government-owned and controlled corporations. In addition,
the Enhanced Community Quarantine placed Manila and the
entire island of Luzon on lockdown, suspending domestic and
international travel, closing most businesses, and imposing a
curfew 8 pm and 5 am
Describe the recent treatment of Muslim people and group in

Myanmar?
Myanmar is steeped in Islamophobia on the part of the coun-
try’s Buddhist majority and thus became a model for India’s
Hindu extremists. Myanmar’s armed forces were charged with
war crimes and/or genocide, and two soldiers confessed to the
charge in September 2020. The result was a crisis in neigh-
boring Bangladesh as 723,000 of its Muslim Rohingyas from its
Rakhine State fled in 2017. Myanmar’s army killed thousands,
although its army, called the Tatmadaw, continued to deny it had
targeted the Rohingyas. Previous violence in 2012 had resulted
in confining about 130,000 Rohingya to internally displaced
persons in squalid camps in Sittwe, where they remained without

freedom of movement
Essay Questions
1. How has the Trump administration handled the Israeli-Palestinian
stalemate?
2. What has been the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the global
south?
3. How has the rhetoric and policy of India’s Prime Minister Narendra
Modi impacted the nations Muslim minority?
4. Describe one aspect of the rise of populism across Central and South
America?
5. Describe the political and socio-economic background behind the
rise of right-wing populism in Brazil?
PART III
Three Dimensions of Globalization: Present

and Future
CHAPTER 8
The Political Dimension of Globalization
Support for multilateral, international organizations and international

regimes, and transnational nongovernmental organizations such as corpo-
rations indicates political globalization. “For the first time in history,
global institutions are now necessary to realize basic human interests,
intense forms of interdependence that were once present only on a smaller
scale are now present on a global scale.”1 Few multilateral institutions
and agreements are universal and governments frequently joined or estab-
lished institutions and agreements that they believed were rewarding to
themselves and their friends such as the G-7 (Group of Seven) and the 5
+ 1 group that negotiated with Iran in 2015.
In 2011 Donald Trump published Time to Get Tough: Making America
#1 Again, emphasizing a perspective central to his 2016 campaign.
During his campaign, Trump attacked international and transnational
organizations and agreements that fostered cooperation and provided
rules and norms of the liberal order. In challenging institutions such as the
World Health Organization (WHO) and NATO and promoting transac-
tional and bilateral strategies, Trump questioned U.S. leadership of the
order and threatened to increase barriers to globalization. In Europe,
Brexit had a similar impact.
Ivo Daalder described Trump’s speech to the UN in September 2018
as declaring “war on multilateralism.” All multilateral groups “in Trump’s
telling” were “agents of ‘global governance, control, and domination’.”2

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72033-9_8
Trump’s aversion to multilateralism was evident when he asked French

President Emmanuel Macron, an EU enthusiast, “Why don’t you leave
the E.U.?”3 promising he would offer France a better bilateral trade deal
than the multilateral union. At a political rally, America’s former president
denounced the EU and supported Brexit. By contrast, China’s Xi Jinping
was more active and supportive of multilateral institutions such as the
United Nations, the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the WHO,
as well as agreements like the Iran nuclear deal, thereby fostering Beijing’s
effort to replace America as a global hegemon.
Unlike those who had established the multilateral institutions of the
liberal order, populist critics like Trump and Vladimir Putin preferred
bilateral negotiations that made it easier for them to bully weaker coun-
tries and gain advantages that served their interests in a zero-sum world.
Former President Trump’s preference was evident when the administra-
tion announced it would renegotiate bilateral trade deals with the EU,
Britain, and Japan. The administration also considered making bilat-
eral deals with members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership from which
Trump had withdrawn, thereby indirectly placing pressure on China to
deal bilaterally to end the Sino-American trade war. Trump’s dislike of
multilateralism was echoed by Secretary of State Pompeo who declared,
“Multilateralism has become viewed as an end unto itself. The more
treaties we sign, the safer we supposedly are…. Was that ever really true?”4
Trump’s preference for bilateralism disturbed U.S. allies. For example,
as it became clear that Trump’s bilateralism with North Korea was
not reaping benefits, South Koreans—U.S. allies since 1950—became
nervous. Trump later shocked South Korea by demanding that they quin-
tuple their contribution to $4.7 billion in 2020 to cover the cost of
keeping U.S. troops there. Not only did this demand alienate a long-time
American ally and its president who had sought to help Trump achieve
North Korean denuclearization, it might ultimately persuade South Korea
to acquire nuclear weapons. If it did so, this might lead Japan and Taiwan
to do the same.
Trump and Multinational Organizations

Trump has shown contempt for NATO, the EU, the UN, the Universal
Postal Union, and the WHO. NATO fostered security, prosperity, and
stability in Europe and elsewhere. NATO, wrote Germany’s defense
8 THE POLITICAL DIMENSION OF GLOBALIZATION 317
minister, “is a political alliance as well, based on the common aspira-

tions of its members which, as the NATO Treaty says, ‘are determined to
safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilization of its peoples,
founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule
of law,’”5 that is, the values of the liberal order. NAFTA sustained free
trade, investment, and corporate chains in North America. The UN was
established for the collective maintenance of peace and security, and the
WTO was responsible for enforcing the norms and practices of the global
economic system and sustaining open trade and investment.
The UN and Affiliated Agencies

Trump’s former UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, described the UN as
“basically a club” and spoke of “a wave of populism that is challenging
institutions like the United Nations, and shaking them to their foun-
dations.”6 She threatened those who failed to support Washington’s
positions in the UN. “For those who don’t have our back, we’re taking
names.”7 Indeed, America was the only UN member to vote against a
nonbinding draft resolution to reduce violence against girls and women,
and was one of two members to oppose forced marriage of women.
The Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts for the UN,
declared a UN spokesperson, “would simply make it impossible for the
U.N. to continue all of its essential work advancing peace, develop-
ment, human rights and humanitarian assistance.”8 UN Secretary-General
António Guterres thought America’s retreat from leadership was neither
good for the U.S. nor for the world as a whole, and, if America retreated
from leadership in issues like climate change, it would allow illiberal others
like China to replace America. Visiting the UN General Assembly, Trump
declared, “I will always put America first, just like you, as the leaders of
your countries, will always and should always put your countries first.”9
This appeared to refute America’s role in the UN’s mission to undertake
collective action in coping with collective problems.
Washington withdrew from the UN Human Rights Commission, the
UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and cut its contri-
bution to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), reducing aid to
Palestinian refugees. Moreover, although U.S. health experts at WHO
provided Washington with timely information, Trump claimed that it
had not investigated a Chinese coverup of the origins of the coronavirus
and “terminated America’s relationship” with the organization. America
thus refused to participate in a global effort to develop a vaccine for

the coronavirus because it would not cooperate with the WHO even
though more than 170 countries were negotiating to participate in the
COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (Covax) Facility. Trump’s actions
stunned those who believed no one would refuse cooperation on health
issues. Contrasting himself with Trump, China’s President Xi pledged $2
billion to the WHO to aid developing countries deal with COVID-19 and
agreed to international collaboration to review the pandemic’s origins,
although only after it had ended. On taking office, President Biden
almost immediately restored relations the WHO and entered America into
Covax, a multilateral plan to distribute coronavirus vaccines, especially to
less-developed countries, which Trump had spurned.
Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, even attacked the little-known
Universal Postal Union, claiming that its rules were exploited by China
to send inexpensive e-commerce packages to America because developing
countries enjoyed lower “terminal dues” than developed ones. These were
fees post offices paid foreign mail services to deliver mail from airports to
its final destination.
John Bolton, Trump’s third national security adviser, encouraged
Trump’s opposition to multilateral institutions and agreements. He
singled out the International Criminal Court (ICC), a permanent inter-
national court that prosecuted those accused of war crimes and genocide
because he regarded it as violating U.S. sovereignty. Fearing that the
court might indict U.S. soldiers stationed overseas, Bolton declared, we
will “ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States,”
and “sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system.”10 In April
2019, Washington revoked the visa of the ICC’s chief prosecutor who
was investigating war crimes in Afghanistan and continued threatening
investigators after Bolton left office.
European Allies and NATO: “Pay Up!”

Trump criticized NATO for several reasons. He admired authoritarian
leaders like Putin and disliked multilateralism. In another example of
transactional policy, Trump argued that America’s NATO allies failed to
pay their fair share for defense. He questioned America’s presence in Japan
and South Korea and their costs, even suggesting that those countries
should develop their own nuclear weapons. In February 2017, Defense
Secretary James Mattis tried to meet Japan’s concern, assuring Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe that “we stand firmly, 100 percent, shoulder with
you and the Japanese people,” and that “our mutual defense treaty is
understood to be as real to us today as it was a year ago, five years ago, and
as it will be a year and 10 years from now.”11 Mattis gave similar assur-
ances to South Korea, and Vice President Mike Pence reiterated these
shortly thereafter. Pence retuned for the same purpose in February 2019,
along with Pompeo and Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan. An
Asian specialist likened Japan and South Korea to “skittish small dogs that
need constant reassurance and are constantly nervous.”12 Pence declared
in Warsaw that “the United States will always put the security and pros-
perity of America first. But as the president has made clear — and as all
of you prove every single day — America first does not mean America
alone.”13
Thereafter, Congressional leaders extended a bipartisan invitation to
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to speak before a joint session
to celebrate NATO’s 70th anniversary. Stoltenberg’s appearance was
significant owing to Trump’s “Cost Plus 50” idea for allies to pay the cost
for U.S. troops stationed in their countries plus an additional fifty percent.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s reaction to the idea was caustic. “I
don’t know, that sounded like a New York state real estate deal to me.”14
Much to the relief of allies, Shanahan denied that the administration was
considering the “Cost Plus 50.”
After the 2008 financial crisis, NATO allies had slashed defense expen-
ditures while Washington continued spending 3.6% of America’s gross
domestic product (GDP) on defense. NATO had agreed in 2014 that all
members should spend a minimum of 2% of GDP for defense and meet
that goal by 2024. Trump also spoke of tariffs at a NATO summit unless
members paid the alliance’s “dues,” although, there are no “dues” associ-
ated with NATO membership. NATO members paid their required share
of NATO’s collective budget, based on their GDP.
By 2018, only a few—Belgium, Estonia, Britain, France, the Nether-
lands, and Poland—had reached the 2% goal. Indeed, during the previous
decade, several members, including Spain and Italy, had cut their military
budgets to about 1% of GDP. Germany spent only 1.2% of its GDP on
defense, and its armed forces were poorly prepared to carry out their
mission. Germany may not even reach its current objective of 1.5% in
2024. America’s ambassador to Germany declared, “That the German
government would even be considering reducing its already unacceptable
commitments to military readiness is a worrisome signal to Germany’s 28
NATO allies.”15 By contrast, several east European and Baltic members

increased their defense budgets owing to their perception of a growing
Russian threat.
Although German leaders agreed with Trump in principle, his demands
tended to create a counter-reaction among Germans who believed they
were being bullied. After meeting Germany’s Chancellor Merkel in March
2017, Trump tweeted, “Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO &
the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expen-
sive, defense it provides to Germany!”16 At NATO’s May 2017 summit,
Trump again hectored allies about the need to increase defense budgets,
singling out Germany in an angry tweet: “We have a MASSIVE trade
deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on
NATO & military.”17
Trump’s advisers were concerned that the president’s choleric rhetoric
would undermine the July 2018 NATO summit as it had the previous
summit. To prevent this, Bolton told America’s NATO ambassador, Kay
Bailey Hutchison, a month before the meeting to press America’s allies to
complete a declaration before the summit. The president was only given a
short outline of what the declaration would contain without the “details
of the document of 79 paragraphs, running 23 pages” in order to protect
the alliance from the president’s “unpredictable antipathy” and salvage a
successful outcome.
Indeed, before NATO’s July summit, Trump wrote threatening letters
to allies, demanding increased defense spending. “Many countries are not
paying what they should, and, frankly, many countries owe us a tremen-
dous amount of money from many years back,” and “They’re delinquent,
as far as I’m concerned, because the United States has had to pay for
them.”18 In his letter to Merkel, he argued that America provided more
resources to the defense of Europe than its prosperous allies, and decried
German dependence on Russian natural gas owing to the construc-
tion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline beneath the Baltic Sea that would
allow Russian gas to reach Germany without passing through Ukraine
or Poland. As the NATO summit ended, Trump surprisingly declared, “I
believe in NATO,” and “The United States commitment to NATO is very
strong, remains very strong.”19 Equally surprising, he exclaimed, “The
additional money that they’re willing to put up has been really amazing.”
President Macron disagreed, noting that the final communiqué did no
more than reaffirm the two-percent goal.
In June 2018, Trump authorized a study of the cost and impact of

a large-scale withdrawal or transfer of U.S. troops in Germany. As a
former NATO secretary-general pointed out, “The danger is that he’s
turning at least his base, and maybe other Americans, against NATO and
against U.S. global leadership by falsely defining it as a protection racket
where we haven’t been paid enough by the protectees, rather than as a
mutually beneficial alliance that has kept peace and expanded the fron-
tiers of democracy.”20 America’s allies had been particularly disturbed
by Trump’s reluctance at the NATO’s summit in May 2017 to reaffirm
Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which committed all members to collective
defense. Secretary of State Tillerson had hastily told reporters, “Of course
we support Article 5,” and, thereafter, the president shifted, reaffirming
Article 5. Nevertheless, Trump indicated that the commitment made
him uneasy when discussing NATO’s newest member, tiny Montenegro.
“They have very aggressive people. And they may get aggressive, and
congratulations, you are in World War III.”21
After Trump’s initial comment about Article 5, Mattis and Tillerson
sought to reassure allies. Mattis described NATO as the “fundamental
bedrock for the United States and the trans-Atlantic community.”22
Vice President Pence delivered a similar message when visiting Europe,
and Nikki Haley, America’s UN ambassador, indicated that Washington
remained committed to Europe’s defense in confronting Russian provo-
cations. Like Haley, Tillerson endorsed sanctions against Russia, but later
seemed to waver, asking the G-7 foreign ministers, why U.S. taxpayers
should be interested in Ukraine?
Although Trump continued criticizing NATO allies, especially
Germany, for failing to pay their “fair share” for defense, NATO’s July
summit accomplished several goals. Members agreed to improve the
readiness and mobility of NATO’s armed forces, invited Macedonia to
join the alliance, agreed to cooperate on cybersecurity, and criticized
Russia’s seizure of Crimea. The allies also agreed to establish an Atlantic
Command to coordinate a response to any attack by allowing members’
armed forces to cross one another’s borders quickly. Prodded by Mattis,
the allies also agreed on the “Four 30 s”: mobilizing 30 mechanized
battalions, 30 air force squadrons and 30 warships, within 30 days.
However, in another impulsive decision after Chancellor Merkel
refused to come in person to the G-7 meeting in America in June
2020 because of the pandemic, Trump decided to remove 12,000 of the
36,000 U.S. troops stationed in Germany and cap U.S. forces there at
25,000. The announcement led the premiers of Bavaria, Hesse, Baden-

Wuerttemberg, and Rhineland-Palatinate, which hosted U.S. bases, to
write letters to thirteen members of Congress, urging them to persuade
the president to reverse his decision. Although then Defense Secretary
Esper, who defamed U.S. protesters and journalists as “adversaries,”
explained the withdrawal was to increase U.S. deterrence of Russia,
Trump undercut Esper by explaining it was his reaction to Germany’s
failure to pay nonexistent “NATO fees.” Putin was surely pleased.
Trump’s perverse, dangerous, and petulant decision regarding
Germany threatened to weaken NATO, please Putin, and possibly
persuade Russia to test Trump’s commitment to Article 5 by seizing
Estonia or starting hybrid war in that country. Thus, the proposal met
with significant opposition in Congress including a letter to Trump
from 22 Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee, led by
ranking member Mac Thornberry (Tex.). “We believe that such steps
would significantly damage U.S. national security as well as strengthen
the position of Russia to our detriment,” they wrote. “In Europe, the
threats posed by Russia have not lessened, and we believe that signs of
a weakened U.S. commitment to NATO will encourage further Russian
aggression and opportunism.”23 Hence, in its annual defense policy bill
in December 2020 Congress proposed minimizing any reduction of U.S.
troops in Germany. The bill was vetoed by Trump, but Congress overrode
the veto.
In a meeting with Trump, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven
explained that Sweden, though not a NATO member, partnered with the
alliance on a case-by-case basis. Trump responded jokingly that America
should consider that approach. In 2018, Trump even suggested that
America withdraw from NATO, leading observers to ask why any U.S.
leader would even think of leaving NATO now. “The things that are
the most debilitating from the perspective of most of the Europeans,”
concluded Joe Biden, “is the way he [Trump] conducts himself when
he is with allies,” and European leaders “have said to me the degree of
disrespect shown is debilitating.”24
Trump’s criticism of allies for insufficient burden-sharing led two
former U.S. ambassadors to NATO to conclude that NATO’s “single
greatest danger is the absence of strong, principled American presiden-
tial leadership for the first time in its history.”25 Such concerns triggered
growing sentiment for larger German and Japanese military forces, and
discussion of a nuclear “Eurodeterrent.” French President Macron argued
that Europe should regain its “military sovereignty.” “To my mind,

what we are currently experiencing is the brain-death of NATO.”26
Macron’s conclusion divided NATO allies, some of which believed his
comment would embolden foes, notably Russia, with which Macron
proposed a “strategic dialogue.” His comment, however, was largely
aimed at mistrust that Trump’s America would fulfill its commitment
to defend Europe. Secretary-General Stoltenberg described a growing
Russian military threat from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, and congres-
sional Democratic leaders declared that the president’s behavior reflected
Trump’s loyalty to Putin rather than U.S. allies.
At a contentious meeting of the G-7 in Quebec in June 2018, Trump’s
pro-Russian views were on view. Without consulting, U.S. allies, he
proposed readmitting Russia to the G-8 group from which it had been
expelled after its aggression in Ukraine, a proposal he made again in 2020
despite the continued opposition of U.S. allies. He also described Crimea
as historically Russian. Always unpredictable, a month later Trump agreed
to a NATO communiqué that condemned Russia’s “illegal and illegiti-
mate annexation of Crimean, which we do not and will not recognize.”
Then, in November 2018, NATO held its largest military exercise since
the Cold War in Norway and the surrounding seas close to the Russian
border. NATO also deployed additional battle groups in Poland and the
Baltic states.
Although polls indicated that U.S. public opinion did “not support”
Trump’s “view that U.S. alliances may be obsolete,” or that Washington
should reduce its involvement overseas, Robert Kagan’s take on the
NATO summit was pessimistic. “Any student of history knows that it
is moments like this summit that set in motion chains of events that are
difficult to stop. The democratic alliance that has been the bedrock of the
American-led liberal world order is unraveling. At some point, and prob-
ably sooner than we expect, the global peace that that alliance and that
order undergirded will unravel, too.”27
Trump’s attacks on the press and American intelligence and law
enforcement agencies led Celeste A. Wallander, a Russian expert, to
conclude that “Americans must face the fact that the biggest threat to
NATO today may be the United States itself.” NATO, she argued, was
also threatened by “the breakdown of liberal democracy itself” and its
commitment to human rights and the rule of law. Populist politicians in
Hungary, Poland, Italy, and Turkey have rejected NATO’s requirement
for high standards of “good governance” and its “belief that liberal insti-
tutions, practices, and values would prevent a return to the nationalist,
and intolerant dynamics that had driven destructive conflicts in Europe
for centuries.”28
The World Trade Organization (WTO)

After World War II, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT) reduced global tariffs and other impediments to trade in eight
“rounds” of negotiation until the Uruguay Round (1986–1994). The
ninth round of the GATT, the Doha Round that began in 2001 accom-
plished little largely because many developing countries were dissatisfied
by the progress in opening the markets of the developed world to their
agricultural exports while subsidizing their own agricultural exports.
Replacing the GATT with the WTO in 1995 was a high point of the
postwar rules-based economic order. Using arbitration panels of trade
experts to determine if countries had violated those rules, the organiza-
tion became a powerful multilateral institution. In sum, as Peter Gallagher
wrote, the “World Trade Organization, with a clear legal status and
mandate was in itself the crossing an important threshold in international
trade relations.”29 With China’s admission in 2001 and Russia’s in 2012,
all major countries had become WTO members and accepted its authority
to make decisions that limited their sovereignty.
Nevertheless, Trump told aides that he wanted America to leave the
WTO in which China used its “developing-country” status to take advan-
tage of others. One of them revealed that Trump had told them, “I don’t
know why we’re in it. The WTO is designed by the rest of the world to
screw the United States.”30 Responding to Trump’s criticism, the WTO
began to consider significant reforms, that included establishing measures
to judge whether countries pursued policies that distorted markets and
facilitating gathering information on violations of the rules. However, it
would be difficult to get the unanimous consensus needed to institute
reforms. Nevertheless, the Trump administration threatened the WTO’s
survival because only three members of seven remained on its decision
panel in 2019, the minimum to hear a case. The terms of two of them
have had ended, but Trump refused to permit their replacement, thus
blocking resolution to trade disputes.
The Trump administration also prepared a bill called “the United
States Fair and Reciprocal Trade Act” that was submitted to Congress in
2019. It would permit Washington to raise tariffs without congressional

consent regardless of WTO rules, including the Most Favored Nation
principle that prohibited discrimination in tariffs imposed on different
states. If passed, the bill would permit America to ignore the WTO’s
trade rules, ending the liberal economic system and possibly reviving the
“beggar-thy-neighbor” policies that exacerbated the Great Depression in
the 1930s. However, President Biden will likely reverse this as well as
America’s refusal to add the necessary additional judges to the WTO.
Multilateral Agreements
President Trump’s preference for bilateral bullying was also evident in
America’s withdrawal or threats to withdraw from multilateral agree-
ments. Among Trump’s first acts was removing America from the Trans-
Pacific Partnership (TPP), even while the remaining signatories moved
toward its completion and renamed it the Comprehensive Agreement for
Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The CPTPP came into effect among
the signatories and their 500 million consumers in 2019. Negotiations
began among the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN), which constituted most of the members of the CPTPP
and countries with which ASEAN had bilateral free trade deals—Australia,
China, India, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea—for an addi-
tional multilateral trade group called the Regional and Comprehensive
Economic Partnership.
The TPP would have reduced tariffs on thousands of U.S. exports and
provided many Asians with unprecedented workers’ rights and environ-
mental protection. When withdrawing from the TPP, Trump explicitly
expressed a preference for bilateral trade negotiations. Unless Washington
changed its policies, America will be economically isolated in Asia and
enjoy none of the benefits of membership in these groups. President
Biden may try to join these groups to restore America’s waning economic
and political influence in Asia.
The Paris Climate Accord

Despite irrefutable scientific evidence concerning the causes and conse-
quences of climate change, in November 2019, Trump confirmed that
America was leaving the multilateral Paris Climate Accord a year later—
the first country to do so—that had been signed by virtually all countries.
America’s official withdrawal took place in November 2020. The U.S. had
been the world’s leading source of greenhouse gases until surpassed by
China, and Trump’s decision was an example of his contempt for science
and scientific evidence. The Trump administration even sought to elimi-
nate any mention of climate change by the multinational Arctic Council
that included eight Arctic countries despite the importance of the issue
to the region. Trump’s decision also reduced U.S. competitiveness in the
enormous clean energy global marketplace, and abandoned leadership on
a major global issue, isolating it from America’s friends while allowing
China to assume global leadership on another critical issue.
The accord was a nonbinding agreement to mitigate the impact of
greenhouse gas emissions and provide funding for countries that needed
to adapt to global warming. In Paris, America had agreed to cut its green-
house gas emissions 26–28% below 2005 levels by 2025 and provide
$3 billion to aid poor countries by 2020. However, Trump argued that
the claim that climate change was anthropogenic was a “hoax” although
11,258 scientists in 153 countries confirmed that the planet faced a
manmade climate emergency. He also advocated renewed dependence
on coal, rolling back the environmental initiatives of the Obama years
including limits on methane (among the worst carbon emissions), and
making deep cuts in America’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
budget, including support for research on climate change.
Announcing his decision in 2017, Trump had declared, “The Paris
climate accord is simply the latest example of Washington entering into
an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit
of other countries, leaving American workers…and taxpayers to absorb
the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories, and vastly
diminished economic production.”31
Trump’s posturing led Chancellor Merkel to conclude, “There’s a situ-
ation where it’s six…against one.”32 Trump’s justification for leaving the
agreement was untrue as well as divisive. The agreement had met all of
Washington’s demands. At a meeting of the G-20 in Hamburg, Germany,
Washington was isolated as the other nineteen members declared the
agreement “irreversible.” Merkel declared that the president’s decision
would “not deter all of us who feel obliged to protect the earth,” and
Japan’s environment minister said that Trump had “turned his back on
the wisdom of human beings.”33 “Whatever leadership is,” declared a
French diplomat, “it is not being outvoted, 19 to 1.”34
Major U.S. corporations including oil producers, states such as Cali-

fornia and New York, and cities as varied as Atlanta, Orlando, Los
Angeles, and Salt Lake City were determined to maintain the Paris
Accord regardless of Washington’s withdrawal. Foes of Trump’s decision,
which were being organized by New York City’s former mayor Michael
Bloomberg and California Governor Jerry Brown, joined a coalition called
“We Are Still In” that by 2019 consisted of 2,918 CEOs, governors,
mayors, college presidents and other political, civic, and religious leaders.
The coalition sought to do what America would have done under the
terms of the accord. Even the heavily Republican state of Alaska, which
depends on revenues from oil and gas production, recognized the dangers
of climate change. However, the withdrawal process required Washington
to remain a member until November 4, 2020, the day after America’s
presidential election, and President Biden made reducing climate change
a major goal and rejoined the Paris agreement when he took office.
The Trump administration also removed fuel-efficiency requirements
for automobiles and trucks. This effort to reverse the Obama adminis-
tration’s effort to reduce carbon emissions was an attack on America’s
federal system because individual states wished to retain higher standards
to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In May 2018, seventeen states
led by California sued to maintain Obama-era standards requiring auto-
mobiles sold in America to average more than 50 miles per gallon by
2025. By contrast, China assumed leadership in global climate efforts
by announcing in September 2020 that it would “scale up its Intended
Nationally Determined Contributions by adopting more vigorous policies
and measures. We aim to have [carbon dioxide] emissions peak before
2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.”35 However, Biden
committed himself to restoring Obama’s fuel-efficiency requirements.
The Iran Nuclear Agreement

Despite the 1968, Nonproliferation Treaty, India, Pakistan, Israel, and
North Korea violated the effort to prevent nuclear proliferation, and
Iran, too, began developing nuclear weapons. In May 2018, President
Trump abrogated the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which he called “the
worst deal ever.” That deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA), which had been negotiated with Iran by the P5 + 1 (the
permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany) lifted
the economic sanctions that the UN had placed on Iran. Tehran agreed to
limit development of centrifuges to enrich uranium for ten years and cease
enriching uranium for fifteen years. The International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) was empowered to inspect Iran’s nuclear facilities, and
Tehran agreed to surrender its existing low-enriched uranium.
However, Trump, pressured by Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu,
officially withdraw from the JCPOA in May 2018, although the IAEA
had issued ten reports stating Tehran had been abiding by the agreement.
Trump’s decision, which the director of the CIA had warned would be
“the height of folly,”36 was among the Obama administration’s greatest
achievements. Trump claimed he wanted Iran to cease developing its
nuclear program permanently and end developing ballistic missiles and
“terrorist activities,” in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Iraq.
Thereafter, Trump re-imposed harsh sanctions on Iran in August and
November 2018, including banning Iranian oil imports, a step that
greatly exacerbated Iran’s economic woes. In May 2019, Washington also
removed the significant reduction exceptions (“SREs”) that had allowed
countries like China, India, and Turkey to continue purchasing Iranian
oil without being subject to U.S. sanctions. “The policy of zero Iranian
imports originated with Secretary Pompeo,” declared a State Department
official. “He has executed this policy in tight coordination with the pres-
ident every step of the way. Because the conditions to not grant any
more SREs have now been met, we can now announce zero imports.”37
Whether Washington sought to overthrow Iran’s regime was unclear.
Clearly, former National Security Adviser John Bolton had been a hawk
on this issue, declaring, “The people of Iran, I think, deserve a better
government; there’s absolutely no doubt about it. …. We’ll see what
happens as the economic pressure continues to grow.”38
Sanctions rarely worked unless they were supported by many countries,
but they appealed to Trump because they did not require congressional
approval. American sanctions reinforced the claim of Iranian hardliners
that American commitments could not be trusted. Iran’s President
Hassan Rouhani, who had negotiated the 2015 deal, said there was only a
“short time” to salvage the agreement and ordered preparations to renew
uranium enrichment in case the other four signatories failed to do so. “We
will proudly break the sanctions,” declared Rouhani.39 Iran’s supreme
leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared he would be “worm food” before
Iran capitulated. Nevertheless, Trump predicted his action would make
Iranian leaders agree to “a new and lasting deal.” Instead, Iran stepped
up its military activity in Syria and support for Hezbollah. Tehran also
launched missiles against Israel, which retaliated by bombing Iranian mili-

tary facilities across Syria. Only Russia had sufficient leverage to rein in
Iran, but the two began to compete for influence in Syria.
America’s European allies urged the president to retain the Iran deal
and were furious when he ignored them. Trump’s unilateral action again
isolated Washington from its allies, which continued to support the deal
and sought ways around America’s renewed “highest level of economic
sanctions” on Iran. The coalition that negotiated with Iran proved diffi-
cult to recreate, and Trump was unable to persuade allies to enforce
renewed sanctions. Thus, the EU sought to prohibit its companies, espe-
cially those which provided parts for U.S. products, from complying with
the resumption of “secondary sanctions” against Iran despite the prospect
of U.S. actions against them.
American sanctions, Europeans believed, reflected America’s “creeping
extraterritoriality” that Europeans claimed was intended to promote U.S.
economic interests. Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt angrily
tweeted, “U.S. Iran sanctions are hardly hitting any U.S. companies,
but aim primarily at European ones,”40 and Trump’s new ambassador
to Germany, Richard Grenell, infuriated Germans by tweeting, “German
companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immedi-
ately.”41 Thereafter, Ambassador Grenell behaved even less diplomatically,
declaring to the far-right Web site Breitbart that he sought to empower
conservatives throughout Europe. Trump later appointed Grenell, who
had no experience in intelligence, as Acting Director of National Intelli-
gence (DNI), a position he held between February and May 2020.
Secretary Pompeo demanded that Iran fulfill twelve “basic require-
ments.” These included ending ballistic missile development, ceasing
involvement in countries like Syria, releasing American citizens it had
imprisoned, and permanently ending its nuclear enrichment program.
After sanctions resumed, Pompeo declared, “Iran will be forced to make
a choice — either fight to keep its economy off life support at home or
keep squandering precious wealth on fights abroad. It will not have the
resources to do both.”42
Despite Washington’s re-imposition of tariffs, Iran initially continued
abiding much of the agreement. Consequently, a group of fifty former
high ranking foreign-policy authorities from both Republican and Demo-
cratic administrations warned Trump that the outcome could be an
unwelcome war. “Applying pressure and unilateral sanctions without
viable diplomatic options… could lead to a more dangerous, destructive

and enduring regional conflict with Iran.”43
Visiting Warsaw in 2019, Vice President Pence threatened additional
penalties against Europeans who violated American sanctions on Iran, a
threat that hardly “reassuring” to allies. Responding to Pence, Merkel
declared, “The only question that stands between us on this issue is, do
we help our common cause, our common aim of containing the damaging
or difficult development of Iran, by withdrawing from the one remaining
agreement? Or do we help it more by keeping the small anchor we have
in order maybe to exert pressure in other areas?”44
However, the murder of Saudi-American journalist Jamal Khashoggi
in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018, just days before the
Trump administration prepared to re-impose sanctions to cut Iran’s oil
exports, could not have occurred at a worse time. Trump regarded the
Saudis and their leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (a close
friend of Jared Kushner) as Washington’s closest regional ally against
Iran and sought to protect him from congressional anger that might
undermine that relationship.
Iran gradually resumed uranium enrichment in violation of the 2015
deal as remaining signatories failed to provide sufficient incentives to
compensate for American sanctions and refused to reopen negotiations.
In May 2019, Rouhani announced that Iran would withdraw from part
of the deal and retain enriched uranium and heavy water, rather than sell
these to other countries, unless the other five signatories of the 2015 deal
allowed Iran to sell its oil to them. After Washington assassinated Qasem
Soleimani the leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps in a drone
attack in January 2020, Tehran announced it would no longer be bound
by limitations on its nuclear program, and Britain, France, and Germany
reluctantly initiated the deal’s dispute resolution mechanism to “snap-
back” UN sanctions. By March, Iran had resumed enriching uranium
and restarted development of advanced centrifuges, halving the time it
would need under the JCPOA to produce enough weapons-grade fuel
to build a nuclear bomb. Iran also began blocking the IAEA’s inspec-
tion of several nuclear sites identified in documents smuggled from Iran
by Israeli agents about which the agency expressed “serious concern.”
Although a fire in July 2020 destroyed its Natanz facility for making
advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges, Tehran, which had claimed the
fire had been caused by sabotage, began reconstructing the facility later
in the year.
The assassination of a leading Iranian scientist and member of the

Revolutionary Guard Corps in late November, probably by Israel, perhaps
intentionally, complicated the plans of the Biden administration to renew
the nuclear deal and led Tehran’s hardliners to legislate requirements
that the government speed up enriching nuclear fuel. However, Tehran
hesitated retaliation, indicating it remained prepared to negotiate with
the incoming Biden administration although the steps already taken by
December 2020 had reduced the time Iran needed to make a nuclear
bomb from one year under the 2015 deal to three months.45 Moreover,
Tehran threatened to bar IAEA inspectors and ramp up uranium enrich-
ment unless sanctions were lifted after Biden would become president.
Facing additional problems including Arab Sunni states that opposed
it, a slowing economy, and growing dissatisfaction of its Arab minority,
Iran had few alternatives. It might seek to close the Strait of Hormuz, the
chokepoint for the oil exiting the Persian Gulf. This would be risky and
would likely trigger war. Declared Secretary Mattis, “Clearly, this would
be an attack on international shipping,” and “it would have, obviously,
an international response to reopen the shipping lanes with whatever that
took, because of the world’s economy depends on that energy….”46
Efforts by America’s European allies and Russia and China to compen-
sate Iran for the costs of renewed U.S. sanctions failed owing to Wash-
ington’s threats to impose secondary sanctions on firms that violated its
sanctions on Iran. Washington bullied European states and their compa-
nies while these sought ways to continue trading with Iran and maintain
the nuclear deal. Thus, in January 2020, Trump threatened to impose a
25% tariff on European autos unless Germany, France, and Britain accused
Iran of violating the nuclear agreement.
Nevertheless, America’s European allies sought ways to keep the Iran
deal alive by devising the means to move money from place to place free
from U.S. control. Since banks would have to cease handling transac-
tions with Iran or face U.S. penalties, the Europeans considered using
their central banks to move funds to Iran, believing that Trump would
not go so far as sanctioning the central banks of its allies. According to
EU representative for foreign affairs, Federica Mogherini, EU members
were seeking to establish an institution to facilitate financial transac-
tions with Iran, while allowing European companies to continue trading
legally with Iran. Ms. Mogherini and the foreign and finance ministers of
Britain, France, and Germany jointly declared, “We remain committed to
implementing” the nuclear deal “as a matter of respecting international

agreements and of our shared international security….”47
Europeans were particularly concerned about Trump’s effort to
disconnect Iran from SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Finan-
cial Telecommunication), a service that moves funds among countries.
This would force firms trading with Iran to use barter or pay in cash.
“I want Europe to be a sovereign continent, not a vassal,” declared
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire. “And that means having totally
independent financing instruments that do not today exist.”48
Finally, the EU announced it would use the European External Action
Service to provide European companies with a new “special purpose vehi-
cle” to avoid U.S. sanctions against companies dealing with Iran. Ms.
Mogherini explained: “In practical terms, this will mean that EU member
states will set up a legal entity to facilitate legitimate financial transactions
with Iran and this will allow European companies to continue to trade
with Iran in accordance with European Union law, and could be open
to other partners in the world.”49 Nevertheless, companies’ fear of U.S.
retaliation made this difficult to implement.
Seeking to retain the JCPOA by enabling European companies to do
business with Iran despite U.S. threats, in January 2019, Britain, France,
and Germany established the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges
(INSTEX), as a “special purpose vehicle” to enable European compa-
nies to trade food, medicine, and medical devices with Iran. To avoid
using real money for Iranian-European trade that Washington could use
as evidence to justify sanctions, INSTEX was a clearinghouse for “credit
points.” Companies involved in Iranian-European trade could use credits
to pay for goods. “This is really the first instance in which Europe is trying
to stand up to the coercive economic power the U.S. is wielding,”50
declared the founder of the Europe-Iran Forum.
However, Europeans were only able to purchase about a third of
Iran’s exports because many firms refused to trade with Iran lest they
incur Washington’s wrath. According to the Centre for European Reform,
Washington was “making the euro’s standing in global markets a question
of foreign policy, rather than simply of economics.” Consequently, giving
“the euro a greater role in global markets faces huge economic and polit-
ical obstacles. Not only is the dollar’s role in the world economy deeply
entrenched, the policy changes that would bring about the conditions
necessary for growing the euro’s role – an ample supply of European safe
assets and a European Central Bank … – would meet fierce resistance,
especially in Berlin.”51 America placed countries in a dilemma. They are

obligated by the U.N. Security Council to support the JCPOA, while
America threatened to impose penalties unless they obeyed U.S. sanc-
tions. Washington was isolated in the Security Council regarding Iran
when Trump visited the UN in September 2018. U.S. threats regarding
secondary sanctions divided Washington and its closest allies. Owing to
the sanctions, admitted President Rouhani in January 2019 that Iran was
suffering its worst economic crisis since the Islamic revolution of 1979
and that Iranians should not blame their government.
Rouhani depicted Iran as a law-abiding state that kept its part of
the bargain. He declared that, after Trump’s withdrawal from the deal,
he had considered either reciprocating or “a short grace period for the
remaining parties to compensate” for the impact of America’s sanctions
and had chosen the latter. Iran’s continued compliance of remaining
participants in the JCPOA, Rouhani claimed, opened “a serious chasm
between the United States and its European partners on a critical foreign
policy matter.”52 Rouhani concluded that the American-led liberal system
isolated Washington, not Tehran. Trump had put Washington in the
unenviable position of appearing as the “bad guy,” especially after the
International Court of Justice ruled that not permitting exports of
humanitarian goods and services to Iran violated the 1955 U.S.-Iranian
Treaty of Amity. Thereafter, Secretary Pompeo announced U.S. with-
drawal from that treaty, an action that he claimed was “39 years overdue”
referring to Iran’s 1979 revolution. Trump’s criticism of the JCPOA was
denounced by all other permanent members of the Security Council. The
failure of America’s policy toward Iran became evident in July 2020, when
Iran and China signed a comprehensive economic and security agree-
ment, dramatically increasing Beijing’s influence in a region in which it
previously had little.
A Brookings Institution fellow argued that the absence of a clear
U.S. policy on Iran was the result to Trump’s refusal to think through
issues and pay attention to detail. Instead of crafting a plan to deal with
Iran after dumping the nuclear deal, Trump remained “undisciplined and
impervious to normal forms of argumentation and bureaucratic process.”
He likes those who praise him and hates those who don’t.53 Although
Trump had withdrawn America from the JCPOA, Washington argued
that it remained a “participant state” in a deal it had abrogated, allowing
it to “snapback” sanctions if the pre-JCPOA arms embargo on Iran was
lifted. The claim was bizarre, and a snap back would be of dubious legality.
Although Secretary Pompeo declared it would be “just nuts” to let

Tehran purchase arms, when the fifteen members of the Council, which
included key U.S. allies, voted on renewing the embargo in August
2020, it passed. Only the Dominican Republic supported Washington,
prompting Pompeo to accuse U.S. of “siding with the ayatollahs.”54
The same day the U.S. announced that, during previous weeks, it had
seized over 1.1 million barrels of Iranian oil heading to Venezuela in
Greek-owned ships that violated American sanctions. The U.S. “snap-
back” of sanctions, while causing Iran more economic pain, provided
another incentive for Iran to continue developing nuclear weapons.
Indeed, extending the embargo would have violated Security Council
Resolution 2231, which had endorsed the Iranian nuclear deal.
Then, in January 2021, Iran announced it was resuming uranium
enrichment in an underground facility at Fordow to the level of 20% and
only a step from the 90% of uranium 235 needed for nuclear weapons,
raising tensions dramatically and pressuring President Biden to act swiftly
after taking office. At the same time, it seized a South Korean oil tanker.
Moreover, here, again, regarding the Iran nuclear deal, Biden declared he
would try to reverse Trump’s policy, a commitment he may find difficult
to achieve owing to Iranian suspicions of U.S. motives.
In sum, Trump trashed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris climate
accord, and the Iran nuclear deal, which were multilateral. By contrast, he
pursued unsuccessful bilateral summits with Kim Jong-un and Vladimir
Putin.
Bilateralism: Russia and North Korea

Russia
National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster had argued that Wash-
ington should improve its relationship with Russia but that this required
changes in Russian behavior. Russia’s UN ambassador admitted it would
be “frivolous” to speculate about Trump’s policies toward Russia, and
a Russian journalist noted that Russian leaders thought Trump was
“unstable, that he can be manipulated, that he is authoritarian and a
person without a team.”55 The chaos in Washington, declared Putin,
“made us laugh at first” but had become “a matter of concern”56 in
Moscow.
U.S. allies were inadequately consulted about Trump’s bilateral

summits and were disturbed about how poorly equipped he was for
personal negotiations with Kim and Putin. The nadir of Trump’s first
years in office was his summit with Putin in July 2018 in Helsinki. The
two leaders met alone with no advisers, no written notes. DNI Daniel
Coats, who knew nothing of the meeting, said that he would have advised
against it. We can only infer what they discussed from their interviews
with journalists and their joint public appearance after the summit. Putin
spoke of “agreements” they had reached but gave no further information.
Thomas Friedman concluded, “There is overwhelming evidence that our
president, for the first time in our history, is deliberately or through gross
negligence or because of his own twisted personality engaged in trea-
sonous behavior — behavior that violates his oath of office to ‘preserve,
protect and defend the Constitution of the United States’.”57
Following the Trump-Putin meeting, after which Trump said he did
not believe his intelligence agencies concerning Russia, former CIA
director John Brennan used the word “treasonous,” adding that Trump
was “wholly in the pocket of Putin.”58 Trump’s behavior horrified analyst
Max Boot. “As with a rotting fish, the stench from President Trump’s
execrable performance in Helsinki only grows more putrid with the
passage of time. The leader of the sole superpower was simpering and
submissive in the face of a murderous dictator’s ‘strong and powerful’
lies.”59 Trump retaliated against Brennan by revoking his security clear-
ance. Thereafter, thirteen former senior intelligence officers sent Trump a
letter objecting to the reprisal against Brennan as violating free speech and
using security clearances for political ends. Among those who signed the
letter were seven former CIA directors, five former deputy directors, and a
former director of national intelligence. Later, another former director of
national intelligence and a former CIA deputy director added their names.
Two of the signatories, former Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper and former CIA Director Michael Hayden, who had criticized
the president, also had their clearances reviewed.
Nevertheless, after returning from the Helsinki fiasco, Trump tweeted
“The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy
of the people, the Fake News Media.”60 Such claims explained why,
some months earlier, in an oblique criticism of the president, Tillerson
concluded that the president’s unwillingness to be truthful was a threat
to American democracy. “If our leaders seek to conceal the truth or we
as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer
grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to

relinquishing our freedom.”61
Two weeks after the Trump-Putin summit, Coats admitted that he was
“not in a position to either understand fully or talk about what happened
in Helsinki,” and had previously declared that he did not “know what
happened in that meeting.”62 Despite the controversy surrounding the
summit, Trump planned to invite Putin to visit Washington. The plan
surprised Coats, who, when informed, asked, “Did I hear you?” When
told again, he let out a loud sigh, “Okaaaay,” Coats said. “That’s going to
be special.”63 Trump was furious with Coats because he believed Coats’s
awkward response was intended to embarrass him.
Trump concealed details of conversations with Putin during five meet-
ings with the Russian president. Thus, in March 2019, the chairmen
of three House committees sought that information from the White
House owing to national security concerns. A year before, after a Trump-
Putin meeting at a G-20 summit in Hamburg, Tillerson, who had been
present, was unwilling to discuss what had been said, and Trump took the
translator’s notes and told him not to discuss what had transpired with
other officials. Later, Trump and Putin met again and spoke quietly with
each other after dinner for about an hour with only a Russian translator
present. There was no record kept of what they discussed.
Such behavior was extraordinary. No one knew what Trump and Putin
had agreed to. Trump never revealed what transpired at his meetings
with Putin, and two Democratic senators wrote him: “Your insistence on
secrecy related to these interactions, even with your own staff, is alarming,
unprecedented, and could be in violation of the Presidential Records Act
and Federal Records,” should “be preserved and immediately provided
to Congress.”64 An adviser during the Clinton administration concluded,
“The fact that Trump didn’t want the State Department or members of
the White House team to know what he was talking with Putin about
suggests it was not about advancing our country’s national interest but
something more problematic.”65
Trump’s statement at the joint news conference in Helsinki met harsh
criticism. Senator John McCain observed, “No prior president has ever
abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant.”66 Indeed, as a Repub-
lican congressman and former CIA operative wrote, “By playing into
Vladimir Putin’s hands, the leader of the free world actively participated
in a Russian disinformation campaign that legitimized Russian denial and
weakened the credibility of the United States to both our friends and
foes abroad.”67 Trump had violated every norm about how a president
should conduct himself and so at odds with his advisers that some even
questioned whether Moscow knew something secret about Trump that
enabled Russia to influence him.
Had Trump made agreements with Putin at the expense of Amer-
ica’s allies? Had he made commitments to Russia that were contrary
to U.S. interests? Why was he pandering to Russia and appeared so
“weak” in their “shameful” joint press conference? Kagan argued that the
Helsinki summit “was not a meeting between adversaries” but between
two leaders, “with convergent interests and common goals.”68 Both, he
concluded, sought to destroy the liberal order. In capitulating to Putin
and leaving the Iran deal, Trump gave North Korea a reason to question
America’s honesty in any agreement to denuclearize Korea.
North Korea
Trump’s initial interactions with Kim were characterized by insulting
rhetoric and threats. North Korean officials provoked Trump by declaring
that his Asia visit in November 2017 had been “nothing but a busi-
ness trip by a warmonger to enrich the monopolies of the US defense
industry,” and Trump had “laid bare his true nature as destroyer of the
world peace and stability.” Kim called Trump “a frightened dog,” “a
gangster fond of playing with fire,” and a “mentally deranged dotard.”
Trump tweeted back: “Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me
‘old,’ when I would NEVER call him ‘short and fat’?”69
Trump directed part of his speech before South Korea’s National
Assembly to Kim. “The weapons you are acquiring are not making you
safer, they are putting your regime in grave danger. Every step you take
down this dark path increases the peril you face.”70 In turn, the official
newspaper of North Korea’s communist party denounced Trump. “The
worst crime for which he can never be pardoned,” having “dared [to]
malignantly hurt the dignity of the supreme leadership.”71 After returning
to Washington, Trump repeated his description of Kim as “Lil’ Rocket
Man,” adding: “He is a sick puppy.”72
Thereafter, after threatening North Korea with “fire and fury” and
trading new insults with Kim, Trump succumbed to Kim’s charm offen-
sive in early 2018 and undertook his transactional approach to foreign
policy. South Korean President Moon Jae-in persuaded Trump that
Kim would surrender North Korea’s nuclear weapons in exchange for
increasing North Korea’s security from an American attack or effort to

overthrow his regime and acquiring economic aid and legitimacy for his
regime. Kim then offered to negotiate directly with Trump, and, though
advisers feared that Trump would be overly eager to accept a bad deal, a
summit was arranged for June 12, 2018 in Singapore.
A deal with North Korea in which Kim agreed to surrender long-range
missiles would drive a wedge between Washington and its allies Japan
and South Korea, both of which were in range of Kim’s shorter-range
missiles. Hence, Japan urged Washington to demand complete denu-
clearization before making significant concessions. In May 2018, during
U.S.-South Korean annual military maneuvers, Kim announced he would
not “unilaterally” surrender his country’s nuclear weapons, threatening
to cancel the summit and denouncing Bolton for comparing U.S. policies
toward North Korea with the “maximum pressure” that had forced Libya
to cease its nuclear program in 2004. Kim apparently thought Bolton
was referring to Qaddafi’s overthrow and death in 2011. Bolton had
previously published an op-ed piece in which he had argued that “the
inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israel’s 1981 attack
on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a
Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea, can accomplish what
is required.”73
Infuriated by Bolton’s analogy, Kim backed away from the planned
summit. Still seeking to bring Kim to the negotiating table, however,
Trump dropped his demand that Kim dismantle his entire nuclear arsenal
before Washington made concessions. Kim then let journalists witness the
destruction of its Punggye-ri nuclear test site. However, a day later in an
impetuous decision, Trump canceled the planned summit, alluding to a
comment by a North Korean official who had called Vice President Pence
“ignorant and stupid.” In effect, Bolton’s references to Libya influenced
Trump, who seemed to echo Bolton, causing Pence to defend Ameri-
ca’s president. This triggered North Korean insults about Pence, which
persuaded Trump to cancel the meeting.
The cancellation was a setback for South Korea’s President Moon
and reinforced perceptions that Washington was an unreliable negoti-
ating partner. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) criticized the cancellation, calling
it “a sad example of the petulance and shallowness of the foreign policy
being pursued by this President,” adding, “From the beginning to the
present, the dealings with North Korea have been sophomoric and
without strategic or tactical merit.”74 A Chinese newspaper also assailed
Trump for having “tricked” Kim, having announced his decision shortly
after North Korea had dismantled its test site.
Moon and Kim then met again, and the following day Trump indi-
cated he might change his mind again. Bolton’s opposition to the meeting
and his comparison of Korea with Libya led to a violent argument with
Pompeo who persuaded the president to keep Bolton out of a meeting
with a high-ranking North Korean emissary who had come to Wash-
ington to rescue the Trump-Kim meeting. Paradoxically, Bolton’s rhetoric
and reputation as a warmonger and bully and his influence over Trump
may have frightened Kim to try to change Trump’s mind again. Thus,
after soothing words from Kim, the self-professed “great” dealmaker
reversed himself yet again, agreeing to meet Kim. Kim might have been
willing to make some concessions like ending nuclear testing since he had
already succeeded in deploying a “state nuclear force” capable of striking
America’s homeland and a deterrent to A U.S. attack, but however, prob-
ably had no intention of surrendering his entire nuclear arsenal, which
was “a sacred national goal.” An intelligence estimate predicting that
North Korea would not denuclearize soon angered Trump because it
contradicted his own belief.
Although Trump said he would no longer speak of “maximum pres-
sure,” it was unclear whether the change was merely rhetorical or whether
Washington would reduce sanctions and agree to a process of gradual
denuclearization, much as President Bill Clinton had sought unsuccess-
fully. Democratic senators urged the president to remain firm and demand
complete and verifiable North Korean denuclearization, while Pompeo
assured critics that sanctions would be withdrawn only after complete
denuclearization.
Nevertheless, with nothing tangible in return, the president abruptly
declared an end to joint military exercises with South Korea. The unilat-
eral action shocked South Korea and threatened to divide the two allies.
A retired South Korean general declared, “We sometimes wonder, ‘Is he
really the president of our ally?’ He is so confusing. Is he really the shrewd
negotiator he says he is, with us missing the method behind his madness,
or is he just plain impulsive?”75
On returning from his summit with Kim in Singapore, the presi-
dent blithely tweeted, “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North
Korea.” Trump’s claim prompted Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to
suggest that Trump did not know what he was talking about: “What
planet is the president on?” asked Schumer. “Saying it doesn’t make it
so. North Korea still has nuclear weapons. It still has ICBMs. It still has
the United States in danger. Somehow President Trump thinks when he
says something it becomes reality.”76
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that North Korea immediately
began to disperse and hide its nuclear assets and was expanding two secret
sites including an underground plant to enrich uranium the existence
of which it had never admitted. North Korea was also upgrading the
Yongbyon facility for nuclear enrichment, producing additional mobile-
launch vehicles for ballistic missiles, expanding its production of solid fuel
engines, and assembling additional long-range missiles.
Indeed, the two sides had come away from the summit with different
versions of what had taken place. There had not even been agreement
on the meaning of “denuclearization.” Secretary Pompeo declared that
U.S. sanctions would be lifted only after “complete denuclearization,”
while North Korea claimed that the president had offered “security guar-
antees” and had agreed to “lift sanctions” while negotiations continued.
Kim also demanded that Washington declare a formal end to the Korean
War before Pyongyang would provide a detailed, written disclosure of
its stockpiles of nuclear weapons, its nuclear facilities and missiles. After
much toing and froing between Pyongyang, Beijing, Washington, and
New York, Trump reversed gears again, agreeing to meet Kim.
Following the Singapore meeting, North Korea took none of the steps
toward denuclearization that Washington thought had been agreed upon.
Consequently, the Trump administration continued sanctions on North
Korea and canceled a trip to Pyongyang by Pompeo. Washington also
urged China not to resume normal relations with North Korea, a demand
that Beijing, already the target of Trump’s tariffs, ignored. In September,
however, Kim sent Trump what his press secretary called a “warm, very
positive letter,” inviting the president to a second summit, and Trump
accepted.
Trump’s first meeting with Kim, which the president regarded as
a success, had accomplished less than the Iran deal, which he had
trashed. While reducing the immediate risk of war, it would not have
denuclearized Korea. Such an agreement would have entailed further
negotiations, verification of dismantling, and Kim’s willingness to cease
breaking agreements. Thus, shortly before Trump’s second summit with
Kim in Hanoi in 2019, America’s threat assessment concluded, “we
currently assess North Korea will seek to retain its W.M.D. capability
and is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production
capability.”77 As with Iran, Trump declared the intelligence community

was wrong, although North Korea continued to enlarge its nuclear capa-
bility. Neither the second Kim-Trump meeting nor a third brief meeting
at Korea’s demilitarized zone (DMZ) achieved anything. Then in June
2020, amid harsh North Korean denunciations of Washington, North
Korea blew up the liaison building used for contacts with South Korea
and America and threatened to send additional troops to the DMZ.
Conclusions
Hundreds of leading international relations scholars joined in a petition,
which argued that the Trump administration “has called into question
the U.S. commitment to NATO, threatened to pull the United States
out of the WTO and NAFTA, and imposed tariffs on our partners under
dubious national security rationales. In doing so, the president abdicates
U.S. leadership of these institutions,”78 undermining the liberal order
and political globalization. Some multilateral institutions have survived,
at least for moment, including NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank.
Among the most endangered multilateral institutions was the WTO.
Under Trump, U.S. “leadership” meant that Washington did what Trump
wanted. Although he preferred bilateralism, it had achieved little, as meet-
ings with Kim and Putin illustrated. However, the election of Joe Biden
as president will restore a preference for multilateralism in Washington.
The next chapter deals with economic globalization and, again, reflects
Trump’s dislike of multilateralism. Trump was a protectionist who agreed
with the director of the East India Company in the 1600s. “Wherein
we must ever observe this rule: to sell more to strangers yearly than we
consume of theirs in value.”79 From this perspective, trade deficits were
viewed as incurring a cost to the debtor, making it less powerful globally,
lowering economic output, and losing jobs.
Notes
1. Deudney and Ikenberry, “Liberal World,” p. 17.
2. Ivo Daalder, “The Week’s Reads: America Was Alone at the United
Nations,” September 27, 2018, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs,
https://engage.thechicagocouncil.org/webmail/557772/531391492/
5788b061b0f0e86ed3d3e27785e62d80d116b2d8a666c7d75ccc8e892
625d009.
3. Cited in Josh Rogin, “Trump is Trying to Destabilize the European

Union,” Washington Post, June 28, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.
com/opinions/global-opinions/trump-is-trying-to-destabilize-the-eur
opean-union/2018/06/28/729cb066-7b10-11e8-aeee-4d04c8ac6158_
story.html?utm_term=.ad8be9e3ef56&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1.
4. Cited in Daniel W. Drezner, “Europeans are Quite Aware of What
They’re Going Through. Is Mike Pompeo?” Washington Post, December
6, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/12/06/eur
ope-is-quite-aware-what-theyre-going-through-is-mike-pompeo/?utm_
term=.5df073318169&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
5. Ursula van der Layen, “The World Still Needs NATO,” New York
nion/nato-european-union-america.html.
6. Cited in “Nikki Haley Calls United Nations Human Rights Council ‘So
Corrupt’,” New York Times, March 29, 2017, https://www.nytimes.
com/2017/03/29/world/nikki-haley-un-human-rights-council-corrupt.
html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&con
tentCollection=world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=lat
est&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=sectionfront.
7. Cited in Somini Sengupta, “World’s Diplomats, Seeking a Bridge
to Trump, Look to Haley,” New York Times, February 12,
2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/12/world/world-diplomats-
trump-nikki-haley.html.
8. Cited in Rick Gladstone, “U.N. Says Trump Budget Cuts Would
‘Make It Impossible’ to Do Its Job,” New York Times, May
24, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/24/world/americas/
un-trump-budget-cuts.html.
9. Cited in Mark Landler and Maggie Haberman, “Trump to Preside Over
U.N. Security Council, Prompting Anxiety All Around,” New York Times,
September 6, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/06/us/pol
itics/trump-un-security-council-iran.html?emc=edit_th_180907&nl=tod
10. Cited in Mark Landler, “Bolton Expands on His Boss’s Views, Except
on North Korea,” New York Times, September 10, 2018, https://www.
nytimes.com/2018/09/10/us/politics/trump-plo-bolton-international-
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Questions
Multiple Choice
1. Which dimension of globalization reflects the extent of cross-
border trade and investment and revenue flows in relation to
GDP as well as the impact of restrictions on trade and capital
transactions?
a. Socio-Cultural
b. Economic
c. Political
d. None of the Above
2. Which of these facilitated the organization of enormously large and
complex economic enterprises and the movement and assembly of
valuable products more inexpensively overseas and their “export”
back to countries of origin?
a. Protectionism
b. Isolationism
c. Analogism
d. Digitalization
3. Which of these undermines international economic institutions of
globalization like NAFTA and the WTO?
a. Economic Nationalism
b. Free Trade
c. Multilateralism
d. Trade Surpluses
4. Economic nationalism frequently finds support among Trump
supporters in what predicament?
a. Stable job in highly populated areas
b. Rising industries like tech
c. Obsolete industries who have lost jobs or fear they will
lose them
d. Those with strong job security
5. Free trade rewards industries in which countries have what, which
then emphasizes the value of improving products and keeping
prices down, thereby reducing inflation?
a. Trade deficit
b. Tariff
c. Low job security
d. Comparative Advantage
6. What did the Trump administration used to justify the use of
tariffs, using the WTO’s 1962 Trade Expansion Act?
a. Condemnations of free trade
b. National Security
c. Common good rule
d. Trade Surpluses
7. Which country had become the single largest source of U.S.
imports by value in 2010?
a. Germany
b. Brazil
c. China
d. Japan
8. Owing to their violations of American sanctions on Iran and its
theft of trade secrets, the U.S. and several other countries banned
the use of what?
a. Huawei’s 5G cell phone networks
b. Chinese factories
c. Verizon 5G networks
d. Russian oil
9. By March 2019, the trade war had become the most expensive
since when, costing U.S. exporters about $40 billion a year?
a. The fall of the Berlin Wall
b. The Civil War
c. The Great Depression
d. The 2008 Great Recession
10. Which of these did Washington do to attempt to minimize the
tariff’s impact on Americans?
a. Placed tariffs on Chinese products for which there were
alternative suppliers
b. Agreed to only place tariffs in response to Chinese tariffs
c. Promised to refrain from future use of tariffs as a tactic
d. Placed tariffs on things that only impacted U.S.-China
trade
11. Why did the U.S.-China trade war also affect other countries in
East and Southeast Asia?
a. Because armed conflict threatened the stability of the region
b. Because they were force to introduce tariffs of their own
c. Because they produced intermediate goods in supply
chains
d. It did not affect countries in East and Southern Asia
12. China has allowed the value of the renminbi to do what thereby
increasing its exports and reducing its imports?
a. Increase
b. Depreciate
c. Appreciate
d. Stay the same
13. Economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and
Princeton, Yale and Columbia Universities concluded that who was
bearing nearly the entire cost of Trump’s tariffs?
a. Chinese Businesses
b. Chinese Government
c. Europeans
d. Americans
14. In 2019, after Beijing devalued its currency to an 11-year low,

making its exports less expensive, and Washington swiftly named
Beijing a what?
a. Bad faith trader

b. Unfair trader
c. Loyal trade partner
d. Currency manipulator
15. Which multilateral trade agreement, that the president repeatedly

referred to as “the worst trade deal maybe ever,” was a particular
target of President Trump’s venom?

b. European Union (EU)
c. Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
d. Central American-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agree-
ment (CAFTA-DR)
16. Which of these allowed Beijing to limit the political blowback of

the trade war more effectively than could Washington?
a. China’s democratic institutions

b. China’s authoritarian system
c. China’s significantly larger economy
17. What cost General Motors $300 million more in additional

expenses and Ford $145 million more in the second quarter of
2018 than in the same period the year before?
a. Corporate tax rate increases
b. Increased cost of labor due to outsourcing
c. Tariff-fueled increases in commodity prices
d. Chinese corporate espionage
18. Which of these countries’ economic growth in mid-2019 had fallen
to its lowest level in almost three decades?
a. United States
b. China
c. United Kingdom
d. Canada
19. What group was especially vulnerable to foreign tariffs?
a. Chinese farmers
b. European farmers
c. Southern Asia farmers
d. U.S. farmers
20. New corporate cross-border investment was ________ relative to
GDP, and trade using supply chains was ________? (filling in the
blank)
a. Chinese farmers
b. Falling, slowing
c. Rising, increasing
d. Rising, slowing
True or False
1. True or False? Populists, as a rule, support the economic norms
and practices of the liberal global system and seek to uphold
globalization.
False, populist, as a rule, oppose the economic norms and
practices of the liberal global system and seek to reverse
globalization.
2. True or False? Trade surpluses or deficits do not measure economic

vigor.
True
3. True or False? Some of Trump’s policies will increase America’s
trade deficit and cost U.S. jobs by protecting obsolete industries
like coal and steel, and persuading others to retaliate against U.S.
exports.
True
4. True or False? Free Trade creates employment in obsolete indus-
tries but harms more skilled workers.
False, it creates employment in innovative industries but
harms relatively unskilled workers.
5. True or False? Overall, U.S. firms liked the trade war, which
increased profits for major corporations like Apple owing to
boosted sales in China.
False, US firms disliked the trade war, which decreased
profits for major corporations like Apple owing to
decreased sales in China.
6. True or False? In July 2018, Trump declared he was prepared to
place tariffs on all Chinese imports.
True
7. True or False? Chinese state banks provide unprofitable loans
to state-owned and highly subsidized industries like steel. These
industries can increase production, dump their surplus production
overseas, and create global excess capacity that reduces prices and
makes private foreign companies uncompetitive.
True
8. True or False? President Trump strategy of imposing tariffs rather
than continuing to negotiate is consistent with the U.S.’s longtime
multilateral approach to trade
False, it is unique in this case.
9. True or False? Chinese leaders regarded the U.S. tariffs as part of

a concerted effort to contain their country.
False, although Washington had collected tariffs on $250

billion of Chinese goods, the amount, as of 2019, was
insufficient to meet the cost of Trump’s two bailouts for
farmers of $12.6 and $16 billion as well as other U.S.
industries harmed by the trade war.
10. True or False? The U.S. supply chains for tech and energy indus-
tries do not rely on foreign countries.
False, China is a major source of rare earths, encom-

passing seventeen elements on the periodic table that turn
oxides into metals and these into products necessary for
semiconductors, batteries, cellphones, and other high-tech
products.
11. True or False? President Trump’s bailouts for farmers of $12.6 and
$16 billion as well as other U.S. industries was payed for by Wash-
ington with the collected tariffs, as of 2019, on $250 billion of
Chinese goods,
12. True or False? President Trump threatened a 25-percent tariff on

imported automobiles in order to force America’s trading partners,
especially, Mexico, Japan, Canada, and Germany, to increase the
content of U.S-made parts in their autos.
True
13. True or False? It cost American consumers more than $900,000 a

year for every U.S. job saved or created by the metal tariffs
True
14. True or False? NAFTA may have increased China’s exports by

aiding U.S. companies to source products from Mexico instead of
China.
False, this would cause a reduction in China’s exports.
15. True or False? U.S. tariffs on aluminum imports raised prices for
cans of beer and soft drinks sold by American companies. For
example, Coca-Cola raised prices because his aluminum tariffs were
making its cans more expensive.
True
16. True or False? In a survey of 430 U.S. firms in China released in

September 2018, almost two-thirds answered that Trump’s tariffs
had harmed by actions such increased inspections and difficulties
with Chinese customs, but most still said they might return to
America.
False, only 6 percent said they might return to America.
17. True or False? GM sells more cars in China than in the America,
and BMW, a German firm, is the largest exporter of cars from
America by value.
True
18. True or False? The Europeans and Chinese tariffs targeted exports
like motorcycles and agricultural products such as soybeans, apples,
orange juice, and pork produced in key political districts, especially
those that had voted Republican in states like Florida and Iowa.
True
19. True or False? At the G-20 conference in March 2017, Presi-
dent Trump joined other members in expressing concern about
protectionism.
False, President Trump pointedly refused to join other

members in expressing concern.
20. True or False? Americans seem unpersuaded by Trump’s tireless

protectionist rhetoric. One 2017 poll suggested that a record-high
of 72 percent of Americans viewed foreign trade as an opportu-

nity and 71 percent, including majorities in both political parties,
believed promoting favorable trade policies was “very important.”
True
Short Answer
Over time what are the impacts of protectionism by one country
followed by retaliatory tariffs and/or currency manipulation of
others?
It becomes painful for everyone because they undermine supply
and production chains that depend on intermediates necessary
for products. Severing such chains harms trade, costs jobs in
export-oriented firms, reduces economic growth, and triggers
inflation globally.
How does free trade impact those in more obsolete industries?

It increases economic inequality between those working in high-
tech export industries and those in uncompetitive companies.
Unemployment in those industries can stem from outsourcing.
It creates employment in innovative industries but harms rela-
tively unskilled workers.
If China opened its markets to U.S. exports why would it not change
America’s global trade deficit?
Even if China opened its markets to U.S. exports, the U.S. could
not produce the additional goods to export to China, and China
would merely shift to imports from countries like Brazil and
South Korea.
Although they do not share Trump’s harsh tactics, what do, to some
extent, other countries share complaints with Washington about
China’s trade actions?
They share complaints regarding China’s tariffs, its coercive
demands that foreign firms provide it with their technology, and
its cyber-espionage of high-tech information.
In what ways could China retaliate to U.S. trade policy?

China could impose new regulations, slow goods passing
through customs, or resort to a host of other non-tariff barriers.
It could halt exports of critical components or items that US
producers would be hard-pressed to replace. Also, it could to
resort to non-economic forms of retaliation, for example easing
up on sanctions on North Korea or accelerating the militariza-
tion of the South China Sea.
What was did a provision in the USMCA involving large pharma-

ceutical companies do that was highly objected to?
There was a provision in the USMCA that allowed large phar-
maceutical companies (“Big Pharma”) to raise prescription drug
prices, especially ultra-expensive drugs produced in living cells,
by extending some patents, to ten years, thereby precluding
inexpensive generic versions and competitive pricing.
How did President Trump eventually gain Democratic support for

the USMCA in January 2020?
The president agreed to strengthen labor, environmental, phar-
maceutical and enforcement provisions of the agreement.
Give an example of how U.S. manufacturing firms had to alter their

supply chains significantly due to the U.S.-China trade war.
As global firms, U.S. automakers require massive amounts of
steel and aluminum and many components made elsewhere as
well as in Chinese-owned factories in Michigan including auto-
motive supplier Nexteer and Henniges that produces sealing
products for cars, both of which are owned by China’s state-
owned Aviation Industry Corporation. America’s large tech
firms like Google, Dell, Intel, IBM and others also depend on
components from China in their production chains.
Many U.S. companies began responding to tariffs on Chinese

exports, not by moving production back to America, as the Trump
administration had hoped, but how?
They responded by moving it to countries such as Indonesia and
Mexico, which are less expensive.
How did the U.S. China trade war and President Trump’s wholesale
resort to tariffs and his refusal to use the WTO, constituted severe
attacks on economic globalization?
The tariffs challenged the post-World War II consensus on
free trade, and decades of trade liberalization. His trade wars
disrupted investment and global supply chains, and slowed the
spread of new technologies, thereby lowering global produc-
tivity. America’s trade-weighted tariffs of 4.2 percent were
higher than those of other G7 members. Despite the initial
agreement, mutual tariffs may become permanent, ending Sino-
American economic interdependence, dubbed “Chimerica,” that
had contributed to China’s rapid growth and economic global-
ization.
Essay Questions
1. Has the U.S.-China trade war been beneficial or harmful for the
countries involved? How?
2. In what ways does economic protectionism cost economies?
3. Has the Trump administration’s trade policy made the U.S. weaker
or stronger on the international stage?
4. Are the Trump administration’s tariff proposals and trade wars
against both foes China and allies like those in the EU and Canada
a logical move?
5. Is economic globalization in retreat?
CHAPTER 9
The Economic Dimension of Globalization
As with political globalization, our approach to economic globalization

uses the KOF index. “The economic dimension of globalization reflects
the extent of cross-border trade and investment and revenue flows in rela-
tion to GDP as well as the impact of restrictions on trade and capital
transactions.” Economic equality affords greater opportunity, democ-
racy, tolerance of diversity, and social mobility, while inequality produces
the opposite. Thus, the financial and economic crisis of 2008–2009
heightened perceptions of domestic and global economic inequalities that
contributed to the spread of nationalist-populism. Foes of globalization
emphasize inequality and low economic growth because the blame falls
on foreigners, especially rival states and/or immigrants.
Economic Roots of Populism

Digitalization has facilitated the organization of enormously large and
complex economic enterprises and the movement and assembly of valu-
able products more inexpensively overseas and their “export” back to
countries of origin. Tariffs and retaliation, as well as Trump’s preference
for bilateralism, impeded global trade. Populists, as a rule, opposed the
norms and practices of the liberal economic system and sought to reverse
economic globalization, but that was only part of the story.

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72033-9_9
The economic costs of protectionism by one country followed by retal-

iatory tariffs or currency manipulation by others were painful for everyone
because they undermined supply and production chains that depended
on intermediate items necessary for finished products. The U.S.-China
trade war also affected other countries in East and Southeast Asia because
they produced intermediate goods in supply chains such as Taiwanese
computer chips that were sent to China, which assembled iPhones for
export to the U.S. Such intermediate products accounted for more than
half of the exports and three-fifths of the imports of these Asian countries.
Foxconn, a Taiwanese company, for example, provided semiconduc-
tors for Apple iPhones and iPads assembled in China. Chinese and South
Korean firms provided batteries; Japanese firms provided LCD screens;
France, Britain, China, South Korea, and Taiwan provided semiconduc-
tors; and German and American firms provided additional components.
Severing such chains harmed trade, cost jobs in export-oriented firms,
reduced economic growth, and triggered inflation globally.
Protectionism was an existential threat to the global economy, under-
mining economic institutions of globalization like the WTO. Transna-
tional corporations and banks proliferated, and transnational production
and sales were steps in a production process from initial research to after-
sales service that used to take place within state boundaries. These stages
were linked such that changes in any step caused by tariffs, inaccessible
resources, or industrial strikes affected all stages. Indeed, much of global
trade takes place within transnational firms even though they are counted
as national imports and exports.
Industries reduced overall costs by creating economies of scale, moving
funds among different currencies, merging with foreign firms, and
outsourcing to countries with lower costs and fewer regulations. Firms
could utilize labor, resources, components, investment, and services from
around the world. Protectionism in one country encouraged transna-
tional firms to move facilities elsewhere, thereby avoiding additional costs.
Consequently, workers in protectionist societies lost jobs, which moved
elsewhere to increase profits and sales.
Protectionism and the Trump Administration

U.S. nationalist-populists assailed economic globalization, claiming that
foreign investments outsourced jobs. As one economist put it, President
Trump displayed “a breezy ignorance of facts and limited understanding
9 THE ECONOMIC DIMENSION OF GLOBALIZATION 363
of basic principles of economics.”1 Trump and his trade advisers, Peter

Navarro and Robert Lighthizer, opposed trade deficits although these
merely reflected relative savings and consumption in different countries.
China, in which citizens were savers, exported more and imported less
than America in which citizens spent a lot but saved relatively little. As
consumerism in China grows, however, China may begin to import more
and seek additional foreign investment. Trade surpluses or deficits do not
measure economic strength.
Some of Trump’s policies increased America’s trade deficit and cost
American jobs by protecting obsolete industries like coal and steel, and
persuading others to retaliate against U.S. tariffs. Economic nationalism
found support among Trump supporters in obsolete industries who had
lost jobs or feared they would lose them.
Free trade is “win-win” because consumers have a better choice of
products. It rewarded industries in which countries enjoyed a “compar-
ative advantage,” an ability to produce goods and services at a lower
opportunity cost than that of trade partners. If prices were low, such
countries would export more. However, free trade penalized those in
obsolete industries, increasing inequality between those working in high-
tech export industries and unskilled workers in uncompetitive industries.
Unemployment owing to “outsourcing” fostered populism.
“We must,” thundered Trump in his inaugural address, “protect
our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products,
stealing our companies and destroying our jobs.” Trump believed that
“unfair” trade costs American jobs. Tariffs, he claimed, were necessary for
“national security” according to Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expan-
sion Act and a rarely noted passage in the WTO treaty preventing the
organization from dealing with issues that affected national security. His
use of the concept was simply an excuse for protectionism. Other coun-
tries may do the same, thereby undermining the WTO. A former WTO
deputy director observed, “If the United States has rewritten the rules of
the W.T.O. system to say you can do anything you want if it’s in your
national security interests, be prepared for every country in the world
to come up with a new definition of what is its critical national security
interest.”2
Trump’s critics denounced his protectionism. “This is dumb,” declared
Senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb). “We’ve been down this road before—blanket
protectionism is a big part of why America had a Great Depression. ‘Make
America Great Again’ shouldn’t mean ‘Make America 1929 Again.’”3
Although Trump justified his actions in terms of national security, he was

actually indulging his populist followers by appealing to their nationalist
sentiments.
Tariffs on imports were taxes on consumers and imposing them for
“national security” invited retaliation. American presidents could do so
without congressional approval, and Trump’s protectionism split the
Republican Party, which was traditionally “pro-free trade,” and several
Republican senators joined Democrats in seeking to require congressional
approval for presidential tariffs. One Republican senator asked Commerce
Secretary Wilbur Ross, “Know that you are taxing American families,
you are putting American jobs at risk, and you are destroying markets
— both foreign and domestic — for American businesses of all types,
sorts and sizes.” Ross replied, “allowing imports to continue unchecked
threatens to impair our national security,” and another Republican senator
responded, “I wish we would stop invoking national security because
that’s not what this is about. This is about economic nationalism.”4
Trump’s rhetoric and his dislike of the WTO’s dispute-settlement
system weakened the economic norms of the liberal order. They also
allowed China’s President Xi Jinping to pose as a leading defender of
world’s open trading system (despite China’s own protectionism). At the
2017 World Economic Forum, Xi had declared, “Pursuing protectionism
is really like locking oneself in a dark room,”5 and in late 2020, Chinese
Premier Li Keqiang called the phase 1 Sino-American trade deal “a victory
of multilateralism and free trade.”6
As president, Bill Clinton had abandoned the link prior U.S. presidents
had made between trade and human rights. Nevertheless, notwith-
standing Sino-American economic interdependence, Trump initiated a
trade war with China and threatened to do so with Europe. The pres-
ident also announced he was ending the benefits received by India and
Turkey under the Generalized System of Preferences, which promoted
trade from developing countries. Terming India a “high-tariff nation,”
he stripped that country of its special status that exempted many of its
exports from U.S. tariffs. India predictably retaliated by placing tariffs on
28 U.S. products and aiming particularly at Walmart and Amazon.
“Protection,” Trump claimed in his inaugural, “will lead to great pros-
perity and strength,” a view reflecting the influence of economic adviser
Navarro. An “America first” trade policy based on tariffs would lose, not
create, new jobs or shrink the trade deficit. They would harm all coun-
tries involved as they did during the Great Depression. As economist
Douglas Irwin argued, “The share of Americans who work in manufac-

turing has fallen steadily since the early 1950s, mainly due to automation
and productivity growth,” long before the “‘China shock’ of the first
decade of this century.”7 Navarro put it succinctly, “We love tariffs. Tariffs
are a wonderful thing.”8
The Trade War with China

China had become the single largest source of U.S. imports by value in
2010. In 2018, China sold $558 billion in goods and services to America
while importing about $179 billion in U.S. goods and services. America’s
merchandise trade with China had become its largest in history—over
$891 billion—as had goods deficit with China, which had ballooned to
$419 billion and, including services, to $621 billion. Moreover, Trump’s
tax cuts exacerbated the deficit because they increased domestic consump-
tion, which includes purchasing imports. Even if China opened its markets
to U.S. exports, it would not reduce the U.S. trade deficit because
America could not produce the additional goods to export to China, and
China would merely import more from countries like Brazil.
Technological Rivalry and Huawei

“China apparently has no intention of changing its unfair practices related
to the acquisition of American intellectual property and technology,”9
Trump declared. China’s theft of intellectual property and its requirement
that foreign firms turn over proprietary technology to Beijing to foster
its “Made in China 2025” goal and dominate global high-tech indus-
tries such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing exacerbated
Sino-American trade relations. U.S. firms disliked the trade war, which
reduced profits for major corporations like Apple owing to declining sales
in China. In 2018, President Trump imposed tariffs on $50 billion in
Chinese goods and threatened to increase this from 10 to 25% on an
additional $250 billion of Chinese imports.
In July 2018, Trump declared he was prepared to place tariffs on all
Chinese imports. In response, Senator Orrin Hatch, chair of the Senate
Finance Committee and a staunch Trump supporter, announced that, if
the administration did so, he would advance legislation to limit presiden-
tial trade authority. Washington also considered limiting China’s ability
to invest in high-tech start-ups in America that might threaten U.S.
national security. The trade war reflected a significant deterioration in

Sino-American relations that was part of emerging hegemonic rivalry.
“You don’t do this with the Chinese. You don’t triumphantly proclaim all
their concessions in public. It’s just madness,”10 declared a China analyst.
Negotiations were complicated by Canada’s arrest of Meng Wanzhou,
an executive in China’s tech corporation Huawei and eldest daughter
of the company’s CEO, for extradition to America for violating U.S.
sanctions on Iran. China retaliated by detaining two Canadian citizens.
Washington was concerned that backdoors in Chinese-manufactured
infrastructure would make its recipients vulnerable to Chinese spying and
undermine national security. Moreover, Huawei was required to coop-
erate with China’s intelligence agencies and could conduct espionage.
According to an official in the U.S. intelligence community, “We are
going to have to figure out a way in a 5G world that we’re able to manage
the risks in a diverse network that includes technology that we can’t
trust.”11 Declared Trump, “Secure 5G networks will absolutely be a vital
link to America’s prosperity and national security in the 21st century.”12
Although Britain reversed its earlier decision to use Huawei’s 5G
network, other U.S. allies still considered allowing it, despite Washing-
ton’s threat to cease sharing intelligence information with them. Although
Huawei-made servers in the African Union headquarters had provided
classified information to a server farm in Shanghai, Beijing put enor-
mous pressure on Germany not to follow America’s ban by threatening
German auto sales in China where it had sold 7 million cars in 2019. Ren
Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei combatively said he wanted his company
to be the world’s best and that required conflict with America. After
a brief ceasefire in 2019, Washington intensified the conflict, banning
companies from using U.S.-made machinery and software to design or
produce chips for Huawei after September 2020.
The Sino-American Trade War Deepens

By early 2019, the trade war had become the most expensive since the
Great Depression, costing U.S. exporters about $40 billion a year. The
Federal Reserve estimated that America’s “2018 tariffs imposed an annual
cost of $419 for the typical household” and would rise to $831 in 2019
owing to additional tariffs on Chinese goods. Some observers believed
that the Trump administration was overstating the negative impact of
China’s economic practices. Journalist Peter Beinart argued that China’s
policies were similar to those of many countries at the same stage of

development and that China was seeking to avoid “the ‘middle-income
trap,’ in which rising wages undermine its advantage as a center of
low-cost manufacturing before it develops the capacity to produce higher-
value goods.”13 Beinart insisted that U.S.-Chinese economic relations
had reduced Sino-American geopolitical and human rights differences and
that U.S. politicians had intensified their criticisms of Chinese economic
practices to appeal to pro-Trump voters in America’s Midwest. He also
contended that “the best way to accelerate China’s transition” was “to
build alliances with other governments concerned by its economic prac-
tices” rather than “the self-destructive absurdity of Trump’s behavior”
that included economic warfare against U.S. allies.14
Other countries shared Washington’s complaints about China’s tariffs,
its coercive demands that foreign firms provide it with their technology,
and its cyber-espionage. German firms, for example, discovered that oper-
ating in China meant surrendering technology and following rules that
favored Chinese rivals. Chinese state banks provided unprofitable loans
to state-owned and highly subsidized industries like steel. These indus-
tries increased production, dumped surplus production overseas, and
created global excess capacity that lowered commodity prices, making
private foreign companies uncompetitive. America’s trade representative
described cyber-espionage and requiring foreign firms to surrender tech-
nology as “an existential threat to America’s most critical comparative
advantage.” Michael Schuman concluded that “many of the problems
Washington wants resolved in China will require more than a few regu-
latory tweaks. The bureaucratic harassment, theft of intellectual property,
and overt favoritism toward local firms that make doing business in China
such a nightmare for American chief executives are caused by the very
way the Chinese economy works.”15 Although Trump began the trade
war, Washington and European and Asian countries agreed that China’s
state subsidies made it an economic foe. Central to these complaints was
the dominant role of China’s government, which funneled cheap capital
toward state firms, distorting markets.
Nevertheless, unlike America’s longtime multilateral approach to trade,
Trump was largely alone in imposing tariffs rather than continuing to
negotiate. However, by unilaterally placing tariffs on others rather than
bringing complaints to the WTO, Trump was breaking existing rules and
looked at the world like a property developer who feared being screwed.
Washington sought to minimize the impact on Americans by placing
tariffs on Chinese products for which there were alternative suppliers. A

few days later, Trump claimed, “China has been taking out $500 billion
a year out of our country and rebuilding China. They’ve taken so much.
It’s time folks, it’s time. So we’re going to get smart, and we’re going to
do it right.”16 In July, China retaliated with $34 billion in tariffs on U.S.
goods, the same amount that Trump added in tariffs on Chinese goods
and lodged a complaint with the WTO, and in August 2018 another
tit-for-tat Sino-American tariff increase took place.
China’s Reaction to the Trade War

Even while Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin began trying to renew
U.S.-Chinese trade talks, Trump decided to carry out his threat in
September 2018. U.S. tariffs encompassed half of America’s imports from
China. Trump also threatened to increase tariffs on the remaining Chinese
imports valued at $267 billion if Beijing retaliated, a step that Beijing, of
course, took, adding $60 billion in tariffs on U.S. goods.
“The Chinese are livid and drafting their own battle plan — they won’t
take this sitting down,” said James Zimmerman, the former chairman
of the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing. “Washington’s view
seems to be that tariffs and threats of more tariffs will soften up the
Chinese and make them more amenable to negotiations,” argued a
Cornell economist and trade specialist. “The evidence that, in response
to U.S. bullying tactics, China just stiffens its spine and strikes back with
proportionate tariffs against U.S. imports has had no discernible effect
on the Trump administration’s take-no-prisoners approach to this rapidly
escalating trade war.”17 Agreement also proved elusive owing to the lack
of clarity in what Trump was seeking from China.
“As long as our market is expanding economically and growing, China
will win the trade war,” declared a Chinese journalist. “The Chinese are
more tolerant of pain because we have been poor for so long,” said
a Chinese private equity investor. “Wealth has only arrived in the last
decade.”18 Thus, the Chinese, he argued, were better prepared than
Americans for a lengthy trade war. In addition, the ill will generated by
the trade war spilled over into other areas. China, for example, canceled
the annual high-level “diplomatic and security dialogue” with American
officials, and Washington imposed sanction on China’s military Equip-
ment Development Department owing to its purchase of weapons from
Russia.
Chinese leaders regarded the U.S. tariffs as part of a concerted effort

to contain their country. Beijing argued that Washington used threats
to extract concessions. Beijing had to retaliate because China’s growing
middle class was becoming increasingly nationalistic, and President Xi had
to look tough. Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd pointed out
that “China has politics too,” adding, “The whole notion of ‘back down’
and ‘face’ is as live a consideration within internal Chinese politics as it is
within U.S. politics.”19
Trump’s tariffs threatened a larger conflict with China, frightening
firms in both countries and undermining complex global commercial and
financial links. Additional escalation could lead to an economic Cold War
with China “We’re probably talking about a world with two centers: a
China-centered economic domain… and another centered on the United
States,” predicted Aaron Friedberg.20 As the trade war continued, it
became ever more difficult to deescalate and resolve differences. Beijing
might even dump some of the more than $1 trillion in U.S. foreign debt
that it holds. Both countries would suffer from such a step, but Beijing
might be sufficiently angry to do so.
China denounced the tariffs, alluding to WTO rules. “The wrong
actions of the U.S. have brazenly violated the rules of the World Trade
Organization, attacked the whole world’s economic sustainability and
obstructed the global economy’s recovery,” declared a spokesperson for
China’s Foreign Ministry. “It will bring disaster to multinational corpo-
rations, small and medium businesses and normal consumers across the
world.”21 However, in a trade war, China, too, had much to lose. Indeed,
China could not match Trump’s tariffs because it imported less from
America than America did from China, and Washington could ultimately
deny Chinese banks access to its markets. U.S. tariffs were violations of
the WTO’s rules-based trading system as were China’s retaliation. Beijing,
however, threatened to kill major deals of U.S. multinational corporations
like Qualcomm that involved mergers with other firms.
Having begun a trade war with China, however, Washington had
to recognize that Beijing would prove unlikely to assist Washington in
preventing North Korea from retaining nuclear weapons, would retal-
iate against Trump’s American base, and could intensify the pain by
adding qualitative impediments on U.S. imports. In addition, Beijing
could employ bureaucratic non-tariff barriers to make life difficult for U.S.
companies. Ivo Daalder elaborated this. Beijing could establish new regu-
lations, slow processing goods through customs, or erect other non-tariff
barriers. It could halt exports of key components of production chains

or items for which there were few substitutes. China could also respond
politically, for example, easing sanctions on North Korea or accelerating
the building of island bases in the South China Sea or opposite Taiwan.
Finally, the tariff would ultimately create economic pain for American
consumers, who pay most of the tariffs as taxes on purchases.
Trump was “treating trade policy as though it were a real estate deal,
where the goal is to beat your opponent, step on his throat and humiliate
him,”22 said the director of trade policy studies at the Cato Institute.
Trump’s objectives regarding China were murky but, even if they were
achieved, trust in America would decline. A fellow at the US. Council
on Foreign Relations presciently warned, “The Trump administration is
gambling that by wielding such a big club, it will force China to back
down. That is almost certainly a serious miscalculation. China is far more
likely just to find other ways to hit back in kind.”23
For example, China was a major source of rare earths, encompassing
seventeen elements that turn oxides into metals and these into products
necessary for semiconductors, batteries, cellphones, magnets for motors of
electric vehicles, wind turbine generators, and missile-guidance systems.
By withholding them, Beijing could disrupt crucial supply chains of
Western high-tech corporations. China’s vice minister of commerce and
deputy international trade representative warned that while China “has
the biggest reserves of rare-earth metals, and we would like to meet the
justified demands,” it would be “unacceptable” for other countries to use
these resources to impede China’s economic development.24 The Huawei
controversy was a major escalation, and President Xi responded by paying
a symbolic visit to a rare earth company. The Pentagon began to seek new
sources of rare earths, for instance, in Africa, and U.S. firms contemplated
how to reduce dependence on products manufactured in China that were
components in their production chains.
Although U.S. officials claimed they were prepared to bargain, it was
difficult to see how to end the trade war. Mnuchin admitted to a congres-
sional committee in July 2018 that trade talks with China had “broken
down.” However, at the 2018 G-20 conference in Buenos Aires, Trump
and President Xi agreed that Washington would postpone increasing
tariffs of Chinese imports to 25% in return for additional Chinese imports
of U.S. goods, including agricultural exports for ninety days, while nego-
tiations continued. The negotiations were to include “structural changes”
in Chinese activities such as technology transfer, cyber-espionage, and
non-tariff barriers. Trump, however, seemed confused regarding what

was in the deal, and Lighthizer and Navarro sought to prevent him from
compromising with Beijing. Navarro also advised the president to order
the purchase of medical supplies and pharmaceuticals manufactured in
America, seeking to reduce dependence on their import from China and
punish Beijing for its reluctance to provide information about the coron-
avirus. The two countries seemed far from resolving their differences and
were prepared for a lengthy conflict.
Negotiations to End the Sino-American Trade War

Negotiations to end the trade war resumed in early 2019, but the issues
were difficult to resolve owing to differences between China’s state capi-
talism and America’s reliance on free markets and private firms. Shortly
before China’s Vice Premier Liu He, regarded as an economic reformer,
was due in Washington to foster a deal in May 2019, U.S. officials charged
Beijing with reneging on crucial commitments involving key issues such as
intellectual property and forced technology transfers. Trump responded
with new threats of tariffs on all Chinese imports, declaring that Beijing
had broken the trade deal.
Although American business continued to have major problems with
China’s commercial policies, “we simply must find a way to tackle
these that doesn’t turn our most competitive companies into collateral
damage,”25 urged Peter Robinson of the Council for International Busi-
ness. The negotiations collapsed in May 2019 over the issue of Chinese
government subsidies to home industries. Trump, as he had threat-
ened, raised tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports from 10 to 25%.
Several days later, the Trump administration moved ahead with plans to
impose 25% tariffs on additional $300 billion in Chinese imports, which
would place the same tariff on over 90% of China’s exports to America.
China retaliated by raising its tariffs on numerous U.S. imports to 25%
and adding tariffs of between 5 and 20% on many other U.S. imports.
Combined, these raised tariffs on $60 billion in U.S. imports to China
on June 1, 2019.
With the G-20 2019 summit meeting looming, American companies
were desperately trying to persuade Trump not to impose the additional
tariffs on China. “If we are forced to move production from China,
it will take a long time to make sure that new factories will make the
garment correctly and can get the proper materials. The costs may be
too great too, as we are barely profitable now,” declared one company
executive. Others argued, “We know firsthand that the additional tariffs
will have a significant, negative and long-term impact on American busi-
nesses, farmers, families and the U.S. economy.”26 At the G-20 summit,
Presidents Trump and Xi agreed to continue negotiating.
China continued to act cautiously. Beijing could have roused nation-
alism at home, encouraged a boycott of U.S. goods, ceased exports of
rare earth minerals, and imposed additional nontariff barriers on U.S.
imports. Worse, it could have dumped its vast holdings of $1.1 tril-
lion U.S. treasury securities on the global market, causing a precipitous
increase in interest rates and a dramatic decline in the value of the U.S.
dollar. It would also harm itself by lowering the value of those securities it
had not sold. Moreover, America’s Federal Reserve could purchase those
securities, and China’s sale of them would increase the value of its own
currency, the renminbi, thereby increasing the cost of and thus reducing
demand for its exports. China might also allow the value of the renminbi
to depreciate thereby increasing its exports and reducing its imports. This,
however, posed a problem for China because it would reduce Beijing’s
dollar reserves that were needed for overseas investment, debt repayment,
and payment for imports. Nevertheless, President Xi symbolized his will-
ingness for a long fight by visiting a monument to the beginning of the
4,000-mile yearlong 1934 Long March by followers of communist leader
Mao Zedong.
Notwithstanding fears of U.S. investors, farmers, and businessper-
sons, President Trump tweeted, “Tariffs will make our Country MUCH
STRONGER, not weaker.” In reality, U.S. consumers and farmers would
bear many of the costs. Although Washington had collected tariffs on
$250 billion of Chinese goods, the amount in 2019 was insufficient to
meet the cost of Trump’s two bailouts for farmers of $12.6 and $16
billion as well as other U.S. industries harmed by the trade war. Although
the compensation was inadequate to make up expected losses, Trump
took this step because of the negative reaction in farm states.
Unlike Trump’s claim, the Director of the National Economic Council
Larry Kudlow admitted that America and China would pay for the tariffs
on Chinese imports. Some economists concluded that Americans were
bearing nearly the entire cost of Trump’s tariffs. According to a study by
Trade Partnership Worldwide, if the president imposed all the tariffs on
China that he had threatened, they would cost a U.S. family of four about
$2,400 annually, and the economy would lose 2.2 million jobs and $200
billion. By 2020, tariffs in the trade war had cost Americans an additional
$46 billion, and China may have suffered even more than the United
States. Even if a final settlement were achieved, mistrust would persist
in U.S.-Chinese trade relations. A “final” deal to satisfy Trump would
require a structural transformation to make China a market economy like
America’s economy. China regarded this as nonnegotiable, and analysts
in both countries recognized this.
After negotiations failed again in August 2019, the president carried
out his threat to add tariffs of 10% that could rise to 25% on the remaining
$300 billion of Chinese imports. “We thought we had a deal with China
three months ago, but sadly, China decided to renegotiate the deal before
signing,” Trump tweeted. “More recently, China agreed to buy agricul-
tural products from the U.S. in large quantities but did not do so.”27
A Chinese spokesperson responded that America sought to remedy its
domestic problems through the negotiations. There was more than a
grain of truth in this. China retaliated against Trump’s planned tariffs,
announcing tariff increases in late 2019 on about 69% of U.S. exports.
Beijing also devalued its currency to an 11-year low, making its exports
less expensive, and Washington swiftly named Beijing a “currency manip-
ulator.” China also asked state-owned companies to cease importing U.S.
agricultural products.
Trump then tweeted, “Our great American companies are hereby
ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China,
including bringing your companies HOME and making your products
in the USA.”28 It is doubtful that the president had the legal authority
to “order” companies this way. Trump also angrily tweeted, “China
should not have put new Tariffs on 75 BILLION DOLLARS of United
States products (politically motivated!) Starting on October 1st, the 250
BILLION DOLLARS of goods and products from China, currently being
taxed at 25%, will be taxed at 30%.”29 He also declared he would tax
another $300 billion in Chinese imports at 15%, rather than the 10%
initially planned to go into effect in September. If Trump went ahead,
they would affect virtually all Chinese imports. However, a day later
at the 2019 G-7 summit in Biarritz, Trump seemed to have “second
thoughts” about increasing tariffs on China. In September 2019, the pres-
ident delayed the increases for two weeks as “a gesture of good will,” and
China reciprocated.
U.S. companies were aghast at Trump’s tweets. An official of the
National Retail Federation complained, “It’s impossible for businesses
to plan for the future in this type of environment. The administration’s

approach clearly isn’t working, and the answer isn’t more taxes on Amer-
ican businesses and consumers.”30 “Is Trump really losing it, or is this
just more of the same, but more?” asked presidential scholar Russell Riley,
adding that democracies tended to avoid trade disputes with authoritarian
regimes because they recognized they lack “the tool of last resort for the
autocrat: a command economy.”31 Both countries seemed prepared for
a lengthy conflict. Like a poker player, Trump believed he had a strong
hand. However, the best he could hope for was minimizing the inevitable
political and economic damage. Trump, who had earlier predicted a quick
deal, suggested that, if necessary, he would wait until after America’s 2020
election for an agreement.
In October 2019, Washington and Beijing achieved a partial cease-
fire. America agreed not to proceed with its planned tariffs on additional
Chinese imports in return for Chinese increases in imports of U.S. agri-
cultural exports. However, knotty disagreements remained unresolved,
delaying the ceasefire. After additional negotiations, Washington and
Beijing reached an “agreement in principle.” Between July 2018 and
2020, U.S. firms had paid roughly $42 billion in additional tariffs.
In January 2020, Washington and Beijing agreed to “Phase 1” of
an agreement. China pledged to enforce protection of intellectual prop-
erty, open financial services such as banks, insurers, and pharmaceutical
companies to foreign investors, and cease forcing foreign firms to transfer
technology to China. America suspended a planned tariff on $162 billion
in additional Chinese goods and halved its 15% tariff on $110 billion of
Chinese imports imposed earlier. In return, China would purchase addi-
tional American agricultural and energy products as part of an increase of
$200 billion in exports to China by 2021. China would also open markets
for U.S. biotechnology, beef, and poultry. Washington also canceled its
scheduled tariffs on an additional $160 billion of Chinese exports shortly
before they were due to go into effect.
Despite the agreement, a 25% tariff on $250 billion in Chinese goods
remained, mainly involving automobile components and equipment. U.S.
tariffs also remained on $360 billion worth of Chinese imports or about
65% of U.S. imports from China. Finally, the two countries agreed not to
use the WTO to determine whether either was violating the agreement.
Instead, they would monitor each other and restore higher tariffs if viola-
tions occurred. The agreement entailed a retreat from free to managed
trade.
Given previous failed “agreements in principle” in 2019, observers

remained cautious about the deal. Phase I was in danger, owing to China’s
economic woes resulting from the coronavirus that had reduced imports,
especially oil, from America. Beijing could invoke a clause in the agree-
ment that allowed for additional negotiations “in the event that a natural
disaster or other unforeseeable event” postponed the ability of either
country to verify that commitments were being met.
Tough issues also remained for “Phase 2,” including U.S. objections
to Chinese subsidies for state enterprises and cyber-espionage. Trump’s
former economic adviser, Gary Cohn, had argued the president was “des-
perate” to reach a trade agreement with China and needed “a win,” but
he was pessimistic about a lasting agreement. “I think market access, the
Chinese will give because they’ve been close to giving it for a while. But
how are we going to stop the Chinese from stealing intellectual property
or not paying for it?” he said. “How are we going to stop them from
copyright infringement? What is the enforcement mechanism, and what
are the punitive damages if they don’t stop?”32 Until the Sino-American
trade war ended, economic globalization would stall.
American tariffs remained among the highest of any major country, a
trade-weighted tariff rate of 4.2%. That was more than twice the rate for
Canada, Britain, Italy, Germany, France, Russia, and even China. More-
over, the mutual tariffs may become permanent, bringing an end to
Sino-American economic interdependence—“Chimerica”—and pushing
back economic globalization. Sino-American relations remained strained
in 2020 after Beijing ended Hong Kong’s autonomy, and Washington
terminated Hong Kong’s preferential economic status that had allowed it
to avoid the Sino-American trade war.
The North American Free

Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
Even more than China, NAFTA was a special target of Trump’s venom.
The president repeatedly referred to NAFTA as “the worst trade deal
maybe ever.” Canada’s former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who had
negotiated NAFTA, responded, “when they say Nafta is the worst deal
ever, remind them of what it has done. There are 500 million people
who are 7 percent of the world’s population producing 29 percent of
the world’s wealth.”33 Without NAFTA, complex supply and produc-
tion chains would have to be reassembled, probably at great expense to
consumers. The Ford F-150, for example, had a body made with Cana-
dian aluminum, window wipers and pistons from Mexico, and an engine
and transmission made in America.
Trump’s former ambassador to Mexico revealed how disorderly was the
administration’s decision-making process regarding NAFTA. “The back
story of Mr. Trump’s campaign to dismantle Nafta is not just about his
obsession with one agreement. It is also a window into a chaotic decision-
making style that has undermined America’s diplomacy and national
interests across the globe.…. I learned about the draft one-page notifi-
cation of our plan to exit Nafta from countless emails and phone calls
from reporters and Mexican officials.”34
Although an agreement in principle was reached, it still had to be
ratified by a reluctant Congress. Trump declared that he was unhappy
about the deal being negotiated and would not sign anything until after
America’s congressional elections in November 2018. After multilateral
talks to change NAFTA stalled, the president set out to reach trade
agreements with Canada and Mexico separately. His demands included
lower America’s trade deficits with Canada, higher U.S. content in North
American-made automobiles, changing the dispute-settlement system that
largely exempted Mexico and Canada from U.S. anti-dumping tariffs,
duty-free imports of textiles to the U.S. from Canada and Mexico that
contain large amounts of Chinese yarn, and the mandatory five-year
renewal of the treaty.
As multilateral negotiations to alter NAFTA ground to a halt, Presi-
dent Trump began bilateral negotiations with Mexico, again reflecting his
preference for bilateral rather than multilateral deals. An agreement was
reached in August 2018 that would only modestly alter NAFTA. Mexican
workers in the automobile industry would receive a minimum wage of at
least $16 an hour for cars sold in America, and at least 75% of those
cars had to be made in the U.S. or Mexico. The purpose of this was to
reduce outsourcing of components from other countries such as China
and South Korea. Canada was left out of U.S.-Mexican negotiations, and
Trump demanded that Ottawa acquiesce to the bilateral agreement almost
immediately. That agreement would produce higher prices for consumers
and a less competitive auto industry in North America. It would also
rearrange supply chains, probably at the expense of Mexico owing to
the requirement that it grant workers higher wages and reducing incen-
tives for auto companies to move south. America’s International Trade
Commission concluded that the agreement would have a marginally posi-

tive impact on the U.S. economy, “a minor update to NAFTA,” said a
U.S. senator, with limited benefits for U.S. workers.
Joining America and Mexico was complicated by Canadian anger at
Trump’s insulting description of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “very
dishonest and weak” and Trump’s highhanded demand that Canada
immediately accept the U.S.-Mexican deal with no changes. Trump also
alienated Mexican leaders shortly after praising the U.S.-Mexican agree-
ment when he repeated his campaign vow that Mexico would pay for the
wall that would be built on its border.
However, recognizing that Congress would probably reject a bilat-
eral arrangement and that many American states depended on exports
to Canada, Trump sought to bring Ottawa on board and lengthened
the time available for Ottawa to consult Washington. Nevertheless,
Trump continued to criticize Canada in remarks that he thought were
off the record. A Canadian newspaper published his remarks, and the
president went ballistic, tweeting “Wow, I made OFF THE RECORD
COMMENTS to Bloomberg concerning Canada, and this powerful
understanding was BLATANTLY VIOLATED.”35
Nevertheless, Washington and Ottawa reached an agreement an hour
before the U.S. deadline of September 30, 2018, to rescue NAFTA,
renamed “United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement” (USMCA). Wash-
ington agreed to retain NAFTA’s tariff dispute settlement system
involving anti-dumping rules and countervailing duties that Trump had
sought to eliminate. America got modest access to the highly protected
Canadian dairy industry, which Trump had declared was a “disgrace” to
America’s dairy farmers. In fact, retaliation for Trump’s aluminum and
steel tariffs threatened the survival of dairy farmers in Wisconsin who
stored their product in metal containers. In addition, Trudeau denied
Trump’s claims, noting that the U.S. had a dairy surplus with Canada.
The USMCA upgraded environmental and safety rules and increased
protection of intellectual property. The deal, which must be reviewed after
six years, gave Canada and Mexico “accommodations” for their automo-
bile industries in the event Trump decided to impose tariffs on imported
cars. The agreement required that by 2023 a tariff-free vehicle would have
to contain at least 40% of its components made in a “high wage” factory,
that is, with a minimum wage of $16 an hour. Although reducing the
number of automobiles made in Mexico, North American auto manu-

facturers would find it more difficult to compete with European and
Japanese automakers.
Trump had vowed to leave NAFTA if Congress did not ratify the
new agreement. One objection to the USMCA involved a provision
allowing pharmaceutical companies (“Big Pharma”) to raise prescription
drug prices, especially ultra-expensive drugs produced in living cells, by
extending some patents to ten years. This would preclude inexpensive
generic drugs and competitive pricing. Democrats sought to reduce drug
prices by shortening patent protection for drugs by making it easier for
generic companies to force Big Pharma to provide materials to develop
generic alternatives. They also sought to prevent Big Pharma from paying
other companies to delay developing generic alternatives.
Finally, some members of Congress demanded that Trump rescind his
tariffs on steel and aluminum imports before approving the new deal. To
gain Republican support for the new USMCA, Trump removed tariffs
on industrial metals from Mexico and Canada (later restoring some on
Canada) but tried to make those countries agree to impose quotas on
exports of these metals, thereby preventing Chinese exports to enter
America indirectly via its neighbors.
U.S. consumers would have paid the price if trilateral negotiations
had collapsed, a fact evident when Trump imposed a tariff on Mexican
tomato imports, leading to price increases on tomatoes sold in America.
The president also threw a wrench into the works by threatening to raise
tariffs against Mexico beginning in June 2019 if that country failed to
end the migrant flow of Latinos to the U.S. border. This would have
ended any prospect for the USMCA. However, Mexico increased efforts
to reduce Central American migration and agreed to take unprecedented
steps to curb irregular migration. Mexico’s apparent capitulation further
convinced the president of the utility of tariffs in dealing with China and
Europe. “People haven’t used tariffs,” Trump said, “but tariffs are a beau-
tiful thing when you’re the piggy bank, when you have all the money.”
Richard Fontaine of the Center for a New American Security responded
“Where we seem to be right now are that tariffs are a big hammer and
every foreign policy problem looks like a nail,”36 and are used to deal
with every issue.
Trump gained Democratic support for the USMCA in January 2020,
after he agreed to strengthen labor, environmental, pharmaceutical, and
enforcement provisions of the agreement. Had Trump failed to enact the
USMCA, farmers such as those in Idaho who exported potatoes and dairy
products to Mexico, those in Iowa who exported high-fructose corn syrup
to Mexico, and Texans who sold chickens to Mexico would have suffered
most. Trump also thought the deal strengthened his hand with China
and hailed the agreement as a victory. NAFTA may have reduced China’s
exports by aiding U.S. companies to source products from Mexico instead
of China. However, after Trump threatened tariffs on Mexico if that
country failed to slow migrant movement to the U.S. border, American
firms that were considering leaving China and moving to Mexico began
to rethink their plans.
The USMCA and the Sino-American trade ceasefire slowed the decline
of economic globalization. However, the two deals reversed the reduction
of trade barriers that had existed before the Trump years and moved the
global economy from the free trade sought by supporters of the liberal
order. Despite the agreement, three-quarters of Mexican and Canadian
adults disapproved of U.S. leadership.
Tariffs on Allies
Trump’s decision in March 2018 to impose tariffs of 25% on steel imports
and 10% on aluminum imports affected numerous firms. In May, he
extended these metal tariffs to allies in the EU, Canada, and Mexico,
earning the opposition of domestic firms. Among the first to suffer in
America were employees who lost their jobs at the Mid-Continent Nail
Company in Missouri in June. Trump’s aluminum tariffs on aluminum
for washing machines created 1,800 American jobs, costing more than
$817,000 apiece.
Washington’s tariffs on solar panels and aluminum and steel imports
harmed Germany in particular. The EU exported $6.2 billion of steel and
$1.1 billion of aluminum products to America in 2017 and was prepared
to retaliate. EU members were shocked that Trump justified his tariffs
as protecting “national security.” How could America’s closest allies be
perceived by an American president as threats to U.S. “national secu-
rity”? Opponents also included the United Steel Workers, which feared a
loss in jobs for union members in Canada, and the U.S. Aluminum Asso-
ciation, because 97% of the workers in the aluminum industry depended
on supply chains that went back and forth into Canada. Indeed, it cost
American consumers more than $900,000 a year for every U.S. job saved
or created by the metal tariffs. The cost was so high because steel and
aluminum were capital-intensive industries with relatively few workers.

Overall, including retaliation, additional tariffs could have affected over
$1 trillion in global trade.
Mexico announced it would retaliate with tariffs on U.S. cheese,
bourbon, pork, apples, and other exports produced in states governed
by Republicans. Although Europeans declared they would retaliate,
they remained uncertain about how far to go, fearing that if they
responded too vigorously, the situation would worsen, harming everyone,
including themselves. With remarkable hypocrisy, U.S. Trade Represen-
tative Lighthizer declared that reciprocal tariffs imposed by Europe,
Canada, Mexico, and China damage the “multilateral trading system,”
and he vowed to act according to both U.S. law and international rules to
protect American interests. Merkel stressed the role of multilateral insti-
tutions, and Macron emphasized that the correct course would be using
the World Trade Organization (WTO) and following rules.
The EU, Japan, Russia, Turkey, and India swiftly filed formal
complaints to U.S. metal tariffs at the WTO. A year later, Washington
added Brazil and Argentina to this list (later removing the threat to
Brazil), claiming they were manipulating their currencies to increase
exports. “It’s unprecedented to have gone after so many U.S. allies and
trading partners, alienating them and forcing them to retaliate,” said
Douglas Irwin. “It’s hard to see how the U.S. is going to come out
well from this whole exercise.”37 Thomas Donohue, president of the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce, was still sharper: “If this proposal is carried out,
it would deal a staggering blow to the very industry it purports to protect
and would threaten to ignite a global trade war.”38
Although Europe depended on America for trade and thus prosperity,
China was increasingly investing in the EU, including a deal reached in
early 2021 to let China invest more easily in EU-based companies. Both
deplored Trump’s protectionist policies, and the investment agreement
created a wedge in U.S.-EU relation. U.S. trade was especially vital for
the UK, which was completing Brexit and negotiating free trade agree-
ments with countries such as New Zealand and Japan. Although President
Biden had hoped Europe would wait until consulting Washington, the
agreement benefited both China and Europe. European companies, for
example, would no longer be required to operate joint ventures with
Chinese partners or be required to share technology with Beijing.
Trump also threatened to impose tariffs on automobiles and car parts
in the event of retaliation for U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum, an
action that would especially harm U.S. allies Germany and Japan. He
also threatened a tariff on imported automobiles from America’s trading
partners—Mexico, Japan, Canada, and Germany—to make them increase
the content of U.S-made parts in their autos. Ironically, Europeans had
been coming closer to U.S. views about China’s economic practices when
Trump’s actions threatened transatlantic trade. Trump’s threat was met
by angry criticism. Pointing to the “car situation,” Trump declared, “The
European Union is possibly as bad as China, just smaller.”39 “If there’s
a full-blown trade war, it will be pretty tough for the auto industry and
consumers,” said one analyst, adding, “If you add a tariff, my guess is a lot
of people just won’t buy new cars.”40 Trump dismissed these concerns.
“What’s going to really happen is there’s going to be no tax. You know
why? They’re going to build their cars in America. They’re going to make
them here.”41
Trump’s threat was again rationalized by national security. “It would
be very difficult to imagine” how automotive imports to America would
“create any sort of threat to the national security,”42 argued Jyrki
Katainen, a European Commission vice president. “Economic security is
national security,” declared Peter Navarro. “And if you think about every-
thing the Trump administration has been doing in terms of economic
and defense policy, you understand that this maxim really is the guiding
principle.” Irwin dismissed Navarro’s claim, especially regarding Euro-
pean. “In the past, we’ve used trade sanctions as a way of trying to
punish or discipline other countries when they’ve violated a particular
norm. But deliberately going after European allies over autos, where the
domestic auto industry does not want protection, seems like a needless
antagonization.”43
Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on imported autos led General
Motors, which already was paying higher prices for metals imported to
make cars and components made by foreign subcontractors, to warn that
it would produce “less investment, fewer jobs and lower wages” for its
employees and increase car prices in America. Indeed, many “foreign” cars
such as BMWs, Volvos, and Mercedes were manufactured in pro-Trump
southern American states and exported overseas depended on imported
components. “We are vulnerable to further escalations of this conflict
because we ship products from the U.S. to Europe and from Europe to
the U.S.,”44 said an executive of a German company with a transmission
factory in South Carolina.
Following a meeting with EU Commission President Jean-Claude

Juncker, Trump, who had called the EU a trade “foe,” backed down, a
least temporarily, on imposing new tariffs on European autos. Trump and
Juncker also agreed to try to achieve “zero tariffs, zero non-tariff barriers
and zero subsidies on non-auto industrial goods.” Juncker tweeted “I
came for a deal, we made a deal.”45 Negotiations proved difficult, espe-
cially owing to EU refusal to discuss agricultural trade. Trump was
concerned about the prospect of Republican losses in congressional elec-
tions in states like Tennessee that hosted foreign car plants and the
agricultural Midwest.
Consequently, the EU sought alternative trade partners. It already had
bilateral trade agreements with fifteen countries including Canada and
Japan—the latter signed shortly after Trump had imposed tariffs on EU
members—and was awaiting ratification for a deal with the Latin Amer-
ican trade group, Mercosur. The EU also updated trade agreements with
Mexico, Singapore, and Vietnam. A German member of the European
Parliament pointedly declared, “we don’t want to build walls, we want
to build bridges,” and Canada’s minister for international trade declared,
“The world was waiting for a strong voice from Europe and Canada, and
today, Europe has spoken with a strong voice for open and progressive
trade.”46 “We did everything we could to avoid this situation, but now
we have no choice but to respond,” said Cecilia Maelstrom, then the
European commissioner for trade. “The E.U. has a responsibility to stand
up for open global trade.”47 Indeed, an official of a Belgian economic
research institute rhetorically asked, “The question is, how much do you
give into a bully?” She added, “But you can’t really depend on Trump.
His understanding of global trade is bilateral balance, which is as good as
arbitrary, given global supply chains. And it depends on what side of the
bed he wakes up on tomorrow.”48
Another trade spat erupted between Europe and the U.S. in 2019
involving a long-running quarrel over government subsidies to Europe’s
Airbus and America’s Boeing Corporation. The WTO decided that EU
subsidies to Airbus had harmed America. Thereafter, Washington imposed
tariffs on European goods as permitted by the WTO. Washington adopted
“carousel retaliation,” rotating tariffs on different European products
every six months. Thereafter, the WTO also ruled that the EU could
place tariffs of $4 billion on U.S. products annually owing to Amer-
ican subsidies given to Boeing and the EU did so. In January 2020,
the U.S. imposed WTO-approved tariffs on $7.5 billion worth of EU
goods. However, both Boeing and Airbus began to remove the subsidies
in November 2020, and an agreement ending the U.S. and EU tariffs
seemed likely.
A U.S. report about French taxes on online services that “discrim-
inates against U.S. companies” produced another spat until a ceasefire
in January 2020 to facilitate negotiations. However, in July, Wash-
ington threatened tariffs on French goods in January 2021 unless France
forewent its tax. Trump also threatened tariffs on Germany at the 2019
NATO summit unless it paid the alliance’s “dues,” although there are no
“dues” for NATO membership. Unfortunately, Washington and Brussels
were threatening tariffs rather than solving mutual grievances.
European reaction to Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on allies was
one of anger that Washington would treat allies as though they were
foes. As Macron had said, “We will talk about anything in principle
with a country that respects W.T.O. rules,” but “We will not talk about
anything when it is with a gun to our head.”49 Juncker called America’s
unilateral tariffs “unjustified” and “protectionism, pure and simple.”50
Malmstrom observed, “Throughout these talks, the U.S. has sought to
use the threat of trade restrictions as leverage to obtain concessions from
the EU,” sadly concluding: “This is not the way we do business, and
certainly not between longstanding partners, friends and allies.” France’s
finance minister was irate. “Our U.S. friends must know that if they were
to take aggressive actions against Europe, Europe would not be without
reaction.”51
Trump’s tariffs directed against allies seemed strange. Argued Paul
Musgrave. “Since the campaign, he has made clear that he views allies
as takers and wants to renegotiate the post-World War II liberal trading
order to put the screws on them.”52 A senior official in Trump’s
administration declared, “The Trump Doctrine is simply ‘We’re America,
Bitch.’ That’s the Trump Doctrine.” The author explained: “To Trump’s
followers, ‘We’re America, Bitch’ could be understood as a middle finger
directed at a cold and unfair world, one that no longer respects American
power and privilege. To much of the world, however, and certainly to
most practitioners of foreign and national-security policy, ‘We’re America,
Bitch’ would be understood as self-isolating, and self-sabotaging.”53
America’s Domestic Economic Consequences

What were the domestic consequences of Donald Trump’s tariffs? They
triggered retaliatory tariffs and raised the costs for companies in America
that imported components or resources. Canada, for example, retali-
ated to Trump’s tariffs on imported metals by imposing tariffs on U.S.
products like Heinz ketchup. In 2014, Heinz had angered Canadians
by closing a factory in Canada, putting 700 employees out of work.
Thereafter, Canadians began a campaign to boycott Heinz and hired
a Toronto subcontractor to set up a complete production line, which
produced bottles with labels that read: “Bottled in Canada with 100
percent Canadian Tomatoes.” Prime Minister Trudeau encouraged Cana-
dians to buy French’s ketchup. Interestingly, both companies were owned
by McCormick & Co., a Baltimore-based food company. As a Canadian
trade union leader observed, Canada had oil, water, and all the things
that America needed. Thus, a trade fight with Canada made no sense.
However, having raised tariffs on Canadian aluminum still higher in 2020,
Washington retreated in September of that year in the face of threatened
retaliation.
Tariffs were less likely to help home industries today than in earlier
decades. Many U.S. imports currently were components in transna-
tional production chains, and American firms sold these to foreign firms
further up the production chains. Import restrictions that helped some
upstream producers by raising the prices of their products hurt indus-
tries that needed those goods in production. America’s auto companies
uniformly opposed Trump’s metal tariffs. American automakers depended
on imported parts and cars and were enmeshed in a global value chain.
No U.S. automaker sought protection because the industry was so highly
globalized. About half the cars sold in America were imported. Of those
made at home, nearly half were made by foreign firms. As global firms,
U.S. automakers required massive amounts of steel and aluminum and
many components made elsewhere as well as in Chinese-owned factories
in Michigan, including Henniges that produced sealing products for cars
and was owned by China’s state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation.
If a tariff raised the price of U.S. steel, it harmed American firms like
General Motors by raising their prices relative to foreign companies like
Volkswagen. Therefore, two large American steel manufacturers, Nucor
and U.S. Steel, with close ties to the Trump administration successfully
objected to the efforts of hundreds of smaller U.S. firms for exemptions
from Trump’s steel tariff. Nucor and U.S. Steel presumably sought to
make smaller firms buy such components as pipes, wire, and screws from
them for their supply chains. Retail companies had a particularly diffi-
cult time because they imported much of their inventory from China and
could not reroute their supply chains easily. Thus, stores across America
were closing as Trump’s tariffs persisted.
China’s authoritarian system allowed Beijing to limit political blowback
more effectively than Washington. Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on
Chinese imports led many normally pro-Republican businesspersons to
try persuading the president not to carry out his threat for fear of Chinese
retaliation. By mid-2018, it was evident that prices were rising owing to
Trump’s tariffs. U.S. tariffs on aluminum imports, for example, raised
prices for cans of beer and soft drinks. Coca-Cola raised prices because
aluminum tariffs were making its cans more expensive. Winnebago, maker
of RVs, also had raised its prices, blaming higher steel and aluminum
costs.
One Republican businessperson, who expected the tariffs would halve
profits, complained, “If we fail because the company is being harmed by
the government, that just makes me sick.”54 In a 2018 survey of U.S.
firms in China, almost two-thirds answered that Beijing had met Trump’s
tariffs with nontariff barriers such as increased inspections and difficulties
with Chinese customs. However, only six percent said they might return
to America. It was always unlikely that China would capitulate in a trade
war with America, especially with its own immense domestic market.
Beijing’s initial tariffs affected about 5,200 types of U.S. exports to
China. Apple predicted that America would suffer more than China,
leading to lower U.S. competitiveness and higher prices. China could
boycott Apple products, and the trade war would sever the compa-
ny’s production chain in which cellphones were assembled in China and
exported to America. If continued, Trump’s tariffs would raise the price
of Apple cellphones significantly for Americans. In response to Apple’s
concern, the president tweeted that Apple should make its products in
America, not China. Other large U.S. tech firms like Google, Dell, Intel,
and IBM also depended on components from China in their production
chains. Tariffs harmed the infrastructure of the Internet, thus hurting
America as well as China.
Many manufacturing firms also had to alter their supply chains. The
supply chains of America’s auto industry were particularly vulnerable and
therefore, so was the state of Michigan. Declared a business executive
in Michigan, “I’m angry, I’m frustrated, and honestly, I’m scared.”55

Chinese investment in Michigan, including in firms that were subcon-
tracted for U.S. autos, accounted for numerous American jobs. GM sold
more cars in China than in America, and BMW, a German firm, was the
largest exporter of cars from America by value. Japan’s Honda Odyssey
was thought to have the highest proportion of content of U.S. and
Canadian parts. Separating China and Michigan would harm the entire
auto industry. Tariff-fueled increases in commodity prices cost GM $300
million more in additional expenses and Ford $145 million more in the
second quarter of 2018 than in the same period the year before. Trump
declared that his tariffs on China would make it possible for Ford to build
its Focus Active in the U.S. instead of China, but Ford refused.
Apple feared it would be caught in the middle of a Sino-American
trade war. It had forty-one stores in China and sold millions of cell-
phones there. Apple designed phones in America but assembled the
components in China. In a Sino-American trade war, Apple feared that
Beijing would delay its supply chain and investigate its products, alleging,
like America, national security concerns. Indeed, many U.S. companies
began responding to tariffs on Chinese exports, not by moving produc-
tion back to America, as the Trump administration had hoped, but
by outsourcing to countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh,
and Mexico, which were less expensive. Owing to declining exports,
China’s economic growth in mid-2019 fell to its lowest level in almost
three decades, and Chinese investment in America declined by 90
during Trump’s presidency, reflecting the deterioration in Sino-American
economic relations.
The Europeans and Chinese targeted exports like Harley-Davidson
motorcycles and agricultural products like soybeans that were produced
in key political districts, especially those that had voted Republican in
2016. To evade these, Harley-Davidson infuriated Trump by moving
some production from America to Europe. Trump had earlier thanked the
company for “building things in America,” but after it had announced it
would move some facilities, he tweeted angrily, “they surrendered, they
quit!”
U.S. farmers were especially vulnerable to foreign tariffs. “I would like
to tell the president, ‘Man, you are messing up our market,’” exclaimed
the secretary of the American Soybean Association. Changing NAFTA,
he added, “gives us a lot of heartburn in farm country.”56 The tariffs
were also “potentially devastating” for farmers argued the president of
Iowa’s Pork Producers Association. Trade had been good for farmers,
until Trump’s tariffs, and farm exports had been near record highs in
value.
China’s retaliatory tariffs, however, reduced the price of U.S. soybeans
by 20%. The chair of the American Soybean Association observed that the
market was volatile, and, consequently, farmers were nervous. Between
January and September 2018, U.S. pork and soybean exports to China fell
36 and 98%, respectively, and plummeting soybean prices proved disas-
trous for U.S. farmers. Following the breakdown of Sino-American trade
negotiations in 2019, China completely ceased purchasing U.S. soybeans
that it had previously continued buying while negotiations continued.
Trump tweeted that China had focused on U.S. farmers. “Not good. Not
nice,” but farmers are saying we’re standing firm. In fact, Trump’s tariffs
were “not good” for U.S. farmers, companies, or consumers.
America’s agricultural exports, which had been growing, began to
fall, and farm incomes declined. Farm organizations appealed to Trump
for help, and he responded with direct payments to farmers, mainly
those with large farms. Nevertheless, farm bankruptcies rose, and farm-
ers’ income fell significantly in 2019 and 2020. The 2020 budget Trump
submitted to Congress proposed to reduce subsidies for crop insurance
premiums to 48 from 62% and limit current subsidies for less prosperous
growers. However, the late December 2020 COVID-19 relief package
included some $13 billion to aid farmers and ranchers.
Trump’s tariffs harmed the U.S., European, and Chinese economies,
as well as the global economy. China’s policies had contributed to the
trade war, but Trump’s wholesale resort to tariffs and his refusal to use
the WTO constituted attacks on economic globalization. The tariffs chal-
lenged the post-World War II consensus on free trade and decades of
trade liberalization. In September 2020, a WTO panel ruled that Trump’s
tariffs on Chinese imports were illegal.
Trump’s trade wars disrupted investment and global supply chains, and
slowed the spread of new technologies, thereby lowering global produc-
tivity. America’s trade-weighted tariffs of 4.2% actually were higher than
those of other G-7 members. Despite the Phase 1 agreement with China,
mutual tariffs may become permanent, ending Sino-American economic
interdependence. Moreover, America’s Magnitsky Act that imposed sanc-
tions on foreigners who violated human rights further magnified Sino-
American tension by preventing imports from a Chinese paramilitary firm
that produced over 7% of the world’s cotton owing to its exploitation of

Muslim Uighurs.
Conclusions: Is Economic
Globalization Entering a New Phase?
Economic globalization enriched the entire world. It reduced inequality
among countries but fostered inequality among individuals that intensi-
fied opposition to it. Globalization had created wealth by persuading firms
in rich countries to invest abroad rather than elsewhere at home, thereby
increasing economic efficiency. As resistance by U.S. corporations and
politicians to Trump’s tariffs suggested, those most effected continued
defending economic globalization.
Trump’s trade policies undermined the liberal order by debasing the
system of rules. Launching trade wars against U.S. trade partners was
counterproductive. It raised domestic prices, cost U.S. jobs, and reduced
America’s global influence. It was unclear whether Trump sought to
balance exports and imports with individual countries, run a trade surplus
rather than a deficit in trade, and/or emasculate postwar trading norms.
The answer probably depended on the time of day, the president’s mood,
which White House adviser was speaking, or what Trump heard on
Fox News. Haass concluded that Trump’s “focus on narrowly defined
economic interests” led to “almost total neglect of other aims of U.S.
foreign policy” and “reinforced the corrosive message that U.S. support
for allies has become transactional and conditional.”57
Trump’s views and actions, and Brexit and the divisions between
the EU’s liberal and populist governments eroded economic as well as
political globalization. Thus, at a 2017 G-20 summit, Trump pointedly
refused to join other members in expressing concern about protectionism.
The communiqué merely noted, “We are working to strengthen the
contribution of trade to our economies.” To thrive, free trade must
benefit all participants and foster a win-win situation.
However, Americans seemed unpersuaded by Trump’s tireless protec-
tionist rhetoric. A 2017 poll suggested that a record-high of 72% of
Americans viewed foreign trade as an opportunity and 71%, including
majorities in both political parties, believed promoting favorable trade
policies was “very important.” A 2018 poll found “a record level of
Americans” thought that trade was good for the US economy (82%),
consumers (85%), and creating jobs (67%).
Moreover, despite more than 6,000 protectionist measures instituted

by G-20 members after the Great Recession began, globalization was in
fact “continuing its forward march—but along new paths.” Until then,
it had been trade-based and largely Western. “Today,” concluded Susan
Lund and Laura Tyson, “globalization is being driven by digital tech-
nology and is increasingly led by China and other emerging economies.”
As the role of trade declined, “new digital technologies mean that more
actors can participate in cross-border transactions than ever before, from
small businesses to multinational corporations.”58 Digital flows include
e-mail, video streaming, Skyping, and Internet links among computers,
involving data exchanges and financial flows, including purchases of
foreign bonds and equities, international lending, and foreign direct
investment.
By contrast, the retreat of multinational corporations in recent years
may indicate receding economic globalization. A key feature of economic
globalization was the effort of companies to acquire transnational
customers and foster transnational production, investment, and manage-
ment. These trends were slowing owing partly to fears about the future.
New corporate cross-border investment was falling relative to GDP, and
trade using supply chains was slowing.
Trump’s rhetoric initially persuaded some U.S. companies to invest
at home, but investment slowed in 2018. U.S. companies that the
former president had bullied to remain in America increasingly ignored
his threats, and many of his promises concerning companies such as
General Motors, Ford, and Harley-Davidson proved wrong. Increasingly,
his tweets were less effort to persuade and more merely evidence of
Trump’s tantrums. However, despite American tariffs, surprisingly the
pandemic dramatically increased Sino-American trade because of growing
online purchases as people stayed at home. In November 2020, China
had a record trade surplus of over $75 billion, owing to 21.1% surge
in exports compared with November 2019. American purchases which
climbed a record 46.1% were the leading cause.59
Nevertheless, U.S. tariffs remained and that most exclusions from
tariffs for U.S. companies were terminated in January 2021. Neverthe-
less, the trade war continued. “In one way,” as Paul Krugman concluded,
“Donald Trump’s attack on our foreign trade partners resembles his
attack on immigrants: in each case, the attack is framed as a response
to evildoing that exists only in his imagination. No, there isn’t a wave
of violent crime by immigrants, and MS-13 isn’t taking over American
towns; no, the European Union doesn’t have ‘horrific’ tariffs on U.S.
products (the average tariff is only 3 percent).”60 As the next chapter
emphasizes, Trump’s economic illogic only makes sense when you link
it to xenophobia—hence, the centrality of immigration in his MAGA
agenda.
Notes
1. Cited in Ana Swenson, Jim Tankersley and Alan Rappeport, “Trump
Blasts Fed, China and Europe for Putting U.S. Economy at a Disad-
vantage,” New York Times, July 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/
2018/07/20/business/trump-fed-china-economy.html?emc=edit_th_1
80721&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=43321680721.
2. Cited in Ana Swanson and Jack Ewing, “Trump’s National Security
Claim for Tariffs Sets Off Crisis at W.T.O.,” New York Times, August
12, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/12/us/politics/trumps-
tariffs-foster-crisis-at-the-wto.html?emc=edit_th_180813&nl=todaysheadli
nes&nlid=43321680813.
3. Press Releases, “Sasse Statement on Trade War,” May 31, 2018, https://
www.sasse.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2018/5/sasse-statement-on-tra
de-war.
4. Cited in Erica Werner, “Republicans, Commerce Secretary Square Off in
Heated Hearings over Tariffs,” Washington Post, June 20, 2018, https://
www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/republicans-trump-off
icial-square-off-in-heated-hearing-over-tariffs/2018/06/20/21bfe670-
749b-11e8-b4b7-308400242c2e_story.html?utm_term=.47263bc75
281&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1.
5. Cited in Jane Perlez and Yufan Huang, “Behind China’s $1 Trillion Plan
to Shake Up the Economic Order,” New York Times, May 13, 2017,
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/business/china-railway-one-
belt-one-road-1-trillion-plan.html. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/
13/business/china-railway-one-belt-one-road-1-trillion-plan.html.
6. Cited in Keith Bradsher and Ana Swanson, “China-Led Trade Pact Is
Signed, in Challenge to U.S.,” New York Times, November 15, 2020,
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/15/business/china-trade-rcep.
html?smid=em-share.
7. Douglas A. Irwin, “The False Promise of Protectionism,” Foreign Affairs
96:3 (May/June 2017), pp. 45, 47.
8. Cited in David J. Lynch, Heather Long, and Damian Paletta, “Trump
Says He Will Impose New Tariffs on $300 Billion of Imports from China
Starting Next Month, Ending Brief Cease-Fire in Trade War,” Washington
Post, August 1, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/eco
nomy/trump-says-he-will-impose-new-tariffs-on-300-billion-in-chinese-
imports-starting-next-month-ending-brief-cease-fire-in-trade-war/2019/
08/01/d8d42c86-b482-11e9-8949-5f36ff92706e_story.html.
9. Cited in Ana Swanson, Keith Bradsher, and Katie Rogers, “Trump
Threatens Tariffs on $200 Billion in China Goods, Escalating Fight,”
New York Times, June 18, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/
06/18/us/politics/trump-says-us-may-impose-tariffs-on-another-200-bil
lion-worth-of-chinese-goods.html?emc=edit_th_180619&nl=todaysheadli
nes&nlid=43321680619.
10. Cited in Damian Paletta, David J. Lynch, and Josh Dawsey, “Cracks
appear in Trump’s Claims of China Trade Agreement,” Washington
Post, December 4, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/
economy/i-am-a-tariff-man-trump-says-as-china-talks-show-signs-of-spu
ttering/2018/12/04/516425e4-f7e0-11e8-8c9a-860ce2a8148f_story.
html?utm_term=.a2d75159fcc6.
11. Cited in Ellen Nakashima and Souad Mekhennet, “U.S. Officials Plan-
ning for a Future in Which Huawei Has a Major Share of 5G Global
Networks,” Washington Post, April 1, 2019, https://www.washingto
npost.com/world/national-security/us-officials-planning-for-a-future-in-
which-huawei-has-a-major-share-of-5g-global-networks/2019/04/01/
2bb60446-523c-11e9-a3f7-78b7525a8d5f_story.html?utm_term=.0ee
267db3893&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1.
12. Cited in Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger, “Trump Announces 5G
Plan as White House Weighs Banning Huawei,” New York Times, April
5g-network.html?emc=edit_th_190413&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=433
21680413.
13. Peter Beinart, “China Isn’t Cheating on Trade,” The Atlantic, April 21,
2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/us-trade-
hawks-exaggerate-chinas-threat/587536/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_todayw
orld.
14. Ibid.
15. Michael Schuman, “The U.S.-China Trade War Isn’t Going Anywhere,”
The Atlantic, January 28, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/internati
onal/archive/2019/01/us-china-trade-talks-resume/581434/?wpisrc=
16. Cited in Ana Swanson, “Trump’s Trade War Spooks Markets as White
House Waits for China to Blink,” New York Times, June 19, 2018,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/business/china-trade-war-
peter-navarro.html?emc=edit_th_180620&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=433
21680620.
17. Cited in Jim Tankersley and Keith Bradsher, “Trump Hits China with
Tariffs on $200 Billion in Goods, Escalating Trade War,” New York
Times, September 17, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/17/

us/politics/trump-china-tariffs-trade.html?emc=edit_th_180918&nl=tod
18. Cited in Jane Perlez, “China Is Confronting New U.S. Hostility, But Is
It Ready for the Fight?” New York Times, September 23, 2018, https://
www.nytimes.com/2018/09/23/world/asia/china-us-trade-war.html?
19. Cited in Mark Landler, “Trump Has Put the U.S. and China on the Cusp
of a New Cold War,” New York Times, September 19, 2018, https://
www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/us/politics/trump-china-trade-war.
html?emc=edit_th_180920&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=43321680920.
20. Cited in David J. Lynch and Danielle Paquette, “New U.S.-China Tariffs
Raise Fears of an Economic Cold War,” Washington Post, September
18, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/new-
round-of-us-china-tariffs-raise-fears-of-an-economic-cold-war/2018/09/
18/749ec99a-bb74-11e8-bdc0-90f81cc58c5d_story.html?utm_term=.
c4beb13037a3&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1.
21. Cited in Raymond Zhong, “China Strikes Back at Trump’s Tariffs, but
Its Consumers Worry,” New York Times, June 6, 2018, https://www.
nytimes.com/2018/07/06/business/china-trump-trade-war-tariffs.html?
22. Cited in Ana Swenson and Neil Irwin, “Trump Starts a Trade War,
but the Path to Success Remains Unclear,” New York Times, July
trade-war-unclear-outcome.html.
23. Cited in David J. Lynch and Danielle Paquette, “President Trump Makes
Good on His Threat to Target an Additional $200 Billion in Chinese
Imports with Tariffs, Ramping Up the Trade War,” Washington Post, July
10, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/presid
ent-trump-makes-good-on-his-threat-to-target-an-additional-200-billion-
in-chinese-imports-with-tariffs-ramping-up-the-trade-war/2018/07/10/
aee91cbc-8489-11e8-8f6c-46cb43e3f306_story.html?utm_term=.023d95
d7ea53&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1.
24. Cited in Alexandra Stevenson, “China Strikes Defiant Stance on Trade
Against Trump,” New York Times, June 2, 2019, https://www.nytimes.
com/2019/06/02/business/china-trump-trade-fedex.html.
25. Cited in Ana Swanson and Alan Rappeport, “Trump Increases China
Tariffs as Trade Deal Hangs in the Balance,” New York Times, May
9, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/us/politics/china-
trade-tariffs.html?emc=edit_th_190510&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=433
21680510.
26. Cited in David J. Lynch, “Companies in Furious Bit to Prevent New
China Tariffs as Summit Looms,” Washington Post, June 17, 2019,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trumps-plan-for-
more-china-tariffs-sparks-business-uproar/2019/06/16/5e7f71d8-9048-
11e9-aadb-74e6b2b46f6a_story.html?utm_term=.96298b5ee853.
27. Cited in Lynch, Long and Paletta, “Trump Says He Will Impose New
Tariffs on $300 Billion in Imports from China Starting Next Month,
Ending Brief Cease-Fire in Trade War.”
28. Cited in Peter Baker, “A Gyrating Economy, and Trump’s Volatile
Approach to It, Raises Alarms,” New York Times, August 23, 2019.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/us/politics/trump-economy-
trade.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_190824?campaign_id=2&
bd1bb02c4382ea&regi_id=43321680824.
29. Cited in Alan Rappeport and Keith Bradsher, “Trump Says He Will Raise
Existing Tariffs on Chinese Goods to 30%,” New York Times, August 23,
2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/business/china-tariffs-
trump.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_190824?campaign_id=2&
bd1bb02c4382ea&regi_id=43321680824.
30. Cited in Nathaniel Popper, “Business Groups Warn of Peril as Trump’s
Trade War Spirals,” New York Times, August 25, 2019, https://www.
nytimes.com/2019/08/25/business/trump-trade-war-businesses.html?
nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_190826?campaign_id=2&instance_id=
382ea&regi_id=43321680826.
31. Cited in Baker, “A Gyrating Economy, and Trump’s Volatile Approach to
It, Raises Alarms.”
32. Cited in David J. Lynch, “Gary Cohn Says Trump Is ‘Desperate’ for
Trade Deal with China,” Washington Post, March 13, 2019, https://
www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/gary-cohn-says-trump-is-
desperate-for-trade-deal-with-china/2019/03/13/56af2396-45c9-11e9-
8aab-95b8d80a1e4f_story.html?utm_term=.3f3ade50b273.
33. Cited in Guy Lawson, “First Canada Tried to Charm President Trump.
Now It’s Fighting Back. Inside Justin Trudeau’s Campaign Against the
American Trade War,” New York Times, June 9, 2018, https://www.
nytimes.com/2018/06/09/magazine/justin-trudeau-chrystia-freeland-
trade-canada-us-.html?nl=top-stories&nlid=4332168ries&ref=cta.
34. Roberta S. Jacobson, “My Year as a Trump Ambassador,” New York
Times, October 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/20/opi
nion/sunday/nafta-mexico-trump-ambassador.html.
35. Cited in Greg Lacour and Anne Gearan, “Trump Stands by Disparaging
Remarks on Canada and Trade,” Washington Post, August 31, 2018,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-stands-by-dispar
aging-remarks-on-canada-and-trade/2018/08/31/24d41cec-ad52-11e8-
8a0c-70b618c98d3c_story.html?utm_term=.b544a7cd9281&wpisrc=nl_
politics-pm&wpmm=1.
36. Cited in Cited in David Nakamura, “‘Tariffs Are the Answer’: Trump
Appears Emboldened After Economic Brinksmanship with Mexico,”
Washington Post, June 10, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/pol
itics/tariffs-are-the-answer-trump-appears-emboldened-after-economic-bri
nkmanship-with-mexico/2019/06/10/a701b63c-8b93-11e9-b08e-cfd
89bd36d4e_story.html?utm_term=.c30bde14c83a&wpisrc=nl_daily202&
wpmm=1.
37. Cited in David J. Lynch, Josh Dawsey, and Damian Paletta, “Trump
Imposes Steel and Aluminum Tariffs on the E.U., Canada and Mexico,”
business/economy/trump-imposes-steel-and-aluminum-tariffs-on-the-eur
opean-union-canada-and-mexico/2018/05/31/891bb452-64d3-11e8-
a69c-b944de66d9e7_story.html?utm_term=.76c1923cc01f.
38. Cited in Ana Swanson and Jim Tankersley, “Potential Auto Tariffs
Prompt Warnings From Industry and Allies,” New York Times, May
auto-tariffs-trade.html.
39. Cited in Heather Long, “Trump Stands Firm on Trade, Even as Foreign
Tariffs Begin Kicking in,” Washington Post, July 1, 2018, https://
www.washingtonpost.com/national/trump-stands-firm-on-trade-even-
as-foreign-tariffs-begin-kicking-in/2018/07/01/796142c2-7d6d-11e8-
b0ef-fffcabeff946_story.html?utm_term=.0db77cb691f0&wpisrc=nl_dai
ly202&wpmm=1.
40. Cited in Tiffany Hsu, “G.M. Says New Wave of Trump Tariffs Could
Force U.S. Job Cuts,” New York Times, June 29, 2018, https://www.nyt
imes.com/2018/06/29/business/automakers-tariffs-job-cuts.html?emc=
edit_na_20180629&nl=breaking-news&nlid=4332168ing-news&ref=cta.
41. Cited in Heather Long, “Trump Says He Won’t Sign Any NAFTA Deal
Until After Midterms,” Washington Post, July 1, 2018, https://www.
washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2018/07/01/trump-says-
he-wont-sign-any-nafta-deal-until-after-midterms/?utm_term=.2e5a21
7e7b60.
42. Cited in Ana Swanson, “Trump Initiates Trade Inquiry that Could
Lead to Tariffs on Foreign Cars,” New York Times, May 23,
2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/business/trump-tariffs-
foreign-autos.html.
43. Cited in Ana Swanson and Paul Mozur, “Trump Mixes Economic
and National Security, Plunging the U.S. Into Multiple Fights, New
York Times, June 8, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/08/
business/trump-economy-national-security.html?nl=todaysheadlines&
emc=edit_th_190609?campaign_id=2&instance_id=10026&segment_id=
14127&user_id=318a8b2e197d8de30abd1bb02c4382ea&regi_id=433
21680609.
44. Cited in Jack Ewing, “Trump Voters May Be the Biggest Losers from
Trump’s Auto Tariffs,” New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/
2018/07/03/business/trump-auto-tariffs.html?emc=edit_th_180704&
nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=43321680704.
45. Cited in “Sealed with a Kiss,” The Economist, July 28, 2018, p. 19.
46. Cited in James Kanter, “E.U. Parliament Votes to Ratify Canada
Trade Deal and Send Trump a Message,” New York Times, February
15, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/business/canada-eu-
trade-ceta.html.
47. Cited in Jack Ewing, “Europe Retaliates Against Trump Tariffs,” New
York Times, June 21, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/
21/business/economy/europe-tariffs-trump-trade.html?emc=edit_th_1
48. Cited in Steven Erlanger, “Europe Averts a Trade War With Trump. But
Can It Trust Him?” New York Times, July 26, 2018, https://www.nyt
imes.com/2018/07/26/world/europe/donald-trump-us-eu-trade.html?
rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentColle
ction=world&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&conten
tPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront.
49. Cited in Peter S. Goodman, “For Europe, an Unpleasant Question:
Confront Trump or Avoid a Costly Trade War,” New York Times,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/business/europe-trump-trade-
war.html?emc=edit_th_180602&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=43321680602.
50. Cited in James McAuley and Griff Witte, “European Leaders Plan to
Hit Back Against Trump’s Steel and Aluminum Tariffs,” Washington
Post, May 31, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/
european-leaders-plan-to-hit-back-against-trumps-steel-and-aluminum-
tariffs/2018/05/31/d1a38934-56ec-416d-99cc-57e09031d667_story.
html?utm_term=.631ec7a06539&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
51. Cited in James McAuley and Griff Witte, “European Leaders Plan to
Hit Back Against Trump’s Steel and Aluminum Tariffs,” Washington
Post, May 31, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/
european-leaders-plan-to-hit-back-against-trumps-steel-and-aluminum-
tariffs/2018/05/31/d1a38934-56ec-416d-99cc-57e09031d667_story.
html?utm_term=.631ec7a06539&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
52. Cited in Zach Beauchamp, “Why Trump’s Steel and Aluminum Tariffs
on US Allies Are so Dangerous,” Vox, May 31, 2018, https://www.vox.
com/world/2018/5/31/17413172/trump-tariff-steel-aluminum-eu-can
ada-mexico?wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
53. Cited in Jeffrey Goldberg, “A Senior White House Official Defines the
Trump Doctrine: ‘We’re America, Bitch’,” The Atlantic, June 11, 2018,
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/a-senior-white-
house-official-defines-the-trump-doctrine-were-america-bitch/562511/?
utm_source=twb&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
54. Cited in Peter S. Goodman, “Trump Has Promised to Bring Jobs Back.
His Tariffs Threaten to Send Them Away,” New York Times, January 6,
2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/06/business/trump-tariffs-
trade-war.html?emc=edit_th_190107&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=433216
80107.
55. Cited in Ana Swanson, “Businesses Race to Washington to Sway Trump
on China Tariffs,” New York Times, May 15, 2018, https://www.nyt
imes.com/2018/05/15/us/politics/trump-china-tariffs-hearings.html?
emc=edit_th_180516&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=43321680516.states.
html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&
module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news.
56. Cited in Coral Davenport and Ana Swanson, “How Trump’s Policy
Decisions Undermine the Industries He Pledged to Help,” New York
Times, July 4, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/04/climate/
trump-industry-policy-consequences.html?emc=edit_th_180705&nl=tod
57. Richard Haass, “Present at the Disruption: How Trump Unmade
U.S. Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs 99:5 (September/October 2020),
pp. 28, 31.
58. Susan Lund and Laura Tyson, “Globalization Is Not in Retreat,” Foreign
Affairs 97:3 (May/June 2018), pp. 130, 132.
59. Ana Swanson, “With American Stuck at Home, Trade With China Roars
Back,” New York Times, December 14, 2020 https://www.nytimes.com/
2020/12/14/business/economy/us-china-trade-covid.html.
60. Paul Krugman, “Trump’s Taking Us From Temper Tantrum to Trade
War,” New York Times, July 2, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/
07/02/opinion/trump-trade-war.html.
Questions
Multiple Choice
1. Which dimension of globalization reflects the extent of cross-
border trade and investment and revenue flows in relation to
GDP as well as the impact of restrictions on trade and capital
transactions?
a. Socio-Cultural
b. Economic
c. Political
2. Which of these facilitated the organization of enormously large and
complex economic enterprises and the movement and assembly of
valuable products more inexpensively overseas and their “export”
back to countries of origin?
a. Protectionism
b. Isolationism
c. Analogism
d. Digitalization
3. Which of these undermines international economic institutions of
globalization like NAFTA and the WTO?
a. Economic Nationalism
b. Free Trade
c. Multilateralism
d. Trade Surpluses
4. Economic nationalism frequently finds support among Trump
supporters in what predicament?
a. Stable job in highly populated areas
b. Rising industries like tech
c. Obsolete industries who have lost jobs or fear they will
lose them
d. Those with strong job security
5. Free trade rewards industries in which countries have what, which
then emphasizes the value of improving products and keeping
prices down, thereby reducing inflation?
a. Trade deficit
b. Tariff
c. Low job security
d. Comparative Advantage
6. What did the Trump administration used to justify the use of
tariffs, using the WTO’s 1962 Trade Expansion Act?
a. Condemnations of free trade
b. National Security
c. Common good rule

d. Trade Surpluses
7. Which country had become the single largest source of U.S.
imports by value in 2010?
a. Germany
b. Brazil
c. China
d. Japan
8. Owing to their violations of American sanctions on Iran and its
theft of trade secrets, the U.S. and several other countries banned
the use of what?
a. Huawei’s 5G cellphone networks
b. Chinese factories
c. Verizon 5G networks
d. Russian oil
9. By March 2019, the trade war had become the most expensive
since when, costing U.S. exporters about $40 billion a year?
a. The fall of the Berlin Wall
b. The Civil War
c. The Great Depression
d. The 2008 Great Recession
10. Which of these did Washington do to attempt to minimize the
tariff’s impact on Americans?
a. Placed tariffs on Chinese products for which there were
alternative suppliers
b. Agreed to only place tariffs in response to Chinese tariffs
c. Promised to refrain from future use of tariffs as a tactic
d. Placed tariffs on things that only impacted U.S.-China
trade
11. Why did the U.S.-China trade war also affect other countries in
East and Southeast Asia?
a. Because armed conflict threatened the stability of the region
b. Because they were force to introduce tariffs of their own
c. Because they produced intermediate goods in supply

chains
d. It did not affect countries in East and Southern Asia
12. China has allowed the value of the renminbi to do what thereby
increasing its exports and reducing its imports?
a. Increase
b. Depreciate
c. Appreciate
d. Stay the same
13. Economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and
Princeton, Yale and Columbia Universities concluded that who was
bearing nearly the entire cost of Trump’s tariffs?
a. Chinese Businesses
b. Chinese Government
c. Europeans
d. Americans
14. In 2019, after Beijing devalued its currency to an 11-year low,
making its exports less expensive, and Washington swiftly named
Beijing a what?
a. Bad faith trader
b. Unfair trader
c. Loyal trade partner
d. Currency manipulator
15. Which multilateral trade agreement, that the president repeatedly
referred to as “the worst trade deal maybe ever,” was a particular
target of President Trump’s venom?
b. European Union (EU)
c. Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
d. Central American-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agree-
ment (CAFTA-DR)
16. Which of these allowed Beijing to limit the political blowback of
the trade war more effectively than could Washington?
a. China’s democratic institutions
b. China’s authoritarian system

c. China’s significantly larger economy
17. What cost General Motors $300 million more in additional
expenses and Ford $145 million more in the second quarter of
2018 than in the same period the year before?
a. Corporate tax rate increases
b. Increased cost of labor due to outsourcing
c. Tariff-fueled increases in commodity prices
d. Chinese corporate espionage
18. Which of these countries’ economic growth in mid-2019 had fallen
to its lowest level in almost three decades?
a. United States
b. China
c. United Kingdom
d. Canada
19. What group was especially vulnerable to foreign tariffs?
a. Chinese farmers
b. European farmers
c. Southern Asia farmers
d. U.S. farmers
20. New corporate cross-border investment was ________ relative to
GDP, and trade using supply chains was ________? (filling in the
blank)
a. Falling, increasing
b. Falling, slowing
c. Rising, increasing
d. Rising, slowing
True or False
1. True or False? Populists, as a rule, support the economic norms
and practices of the liberal global system and seek to uphold
globalization.
False, populist, as a rule, oppose the economic norms and

practices of the liberal global system and seek to reverse
globalization.
2. True or False? Trade surpluses or deficits do not measure economic
vigor.
True
3. True or False? Some of Trump’s policies will increase America’s
trade deficit and cost U.S. jobs by protecting obsolete industries
like coal and steel, and persuading others to retaliate against U.S.
exports.
True
4. True or False? Free Trade creates employment in obsolete indus-
tries but harms more skilled workers.
False, it creates employment in innovative industries but
harms relatively unskilled workers.
5. True or False? Overall, U.S. firms liked the trade war, which
increased profits for major corporations like Apple owing to
boosted sales in China.
False, US firms disliked the trade war, which decreased
profits for major corporations like Apple owing to
decreased sales in China.
6. True or False? In July 2018, Trump declared he was prepared to
place tariffs on all Chinese imports.
True
7. True or False? Chinese state banks provide unprofitable loans
to state-owned and highly subsidized industries like steel. These
industries can increase production, dump their surplus production
overseas, and create global excess capacity that reduces prices and
makes private foreign companies uncompetitive.
True
8. True or False? President Trump strategy of imposing tariffs rather

than continuing to negotiate is consistent with the U.S.’s longtime
multilateral approach to trade.
False, it is unique in this case.
9. True or False? Chinese leaders regarded the U.S. tariffs as part of
a concerted effort to contain their country.
True
10. True or False? The U.S. supply chains for tech and energy indus-
tries do not rely on foreign countries.
False, China is a major source of rare earths, encom-
passing seventeen elements on the periodic table that turn
oxides into metals and these into products necessary for
semiconductors, batteries, cellphones, and other high-tech
products.
11. True or False? President Trump’s bailouts for farmers of $12.6 and
$16 billion as well as other U.S. industries was payed for by Wash-
ington with the collected tariffs, as of 2019, on $250 billion of
Chinese goods,
12. True or False? President Trump threatened a 25% tariff on
imported automobiles in order to force America’s trading partners,
especially, Mexico, Japan, Canada, and Germany, to increase the
content of U.S-made parts in their autos.
True
13. True or False? It cost American consumers more than $900,000 a
year for every U.S. job saved or created by the metal tariffs
True
14. True or False? NAFTA may have increased China’s exports by

aiding U.S. companies to source products from Mexico instead of
China.
False, this would cause a reduction in China’s exports.
15. True or False? U.S. tariffs on aluminum imports raised prices for
cans of beer and soft drinks sold by American companies. For
example, Coca-Cola raised prices because his aluminum tariffs were
making its cans more expensive.
True
16. True or False? In a survey of 430 U.S. firms in China released in
September 2018, almost two-thirds answered that Trump’s tariffs
had harmed by actions such increased inspections and difficulties
with Chinese customs, but most still said they might return to
America.
False, only 6% said they might return to America.
17. True or False? GM sells more cars in China than in the America,
and BMW, a German firm, is the largest exporter of cars from
America by value.
True
18. True or False? The Europeans and Chinese tariffs targeted exports
like motorcycles and agricultural products such as soybeans, apples,
orange juice, and pork produced in key political districts, especially
those that had voted Republican in states like Florida and Iowa.
True
19. True or False? At the G-20 conference in March 2017, Presi-
dent Trump joined other members in expressing concern about
protectionism.
False, President Trump pointedly refused to join other
members in expressing concern.
20. True or False? Americans seem unpersuaded by Trump’s tireless
protectionist rhetoric. One 2017 poll suggested that a record-
high of 72% of Americans viewed foreign trade as an opportunity
and 71%, including majorities in both political parties, believed

promoting favorable trade policies was “very important.”
True
Short Answer
Overtime what are the impacts of protectionism by one country
followed by retaliatory tariffs and/or currency manipulation of
others?
It becomes painful for everyone because they undermine supply
and production chains that depend on intermediate necessary for
products. Severing such chains harms trade, costs jobs in export-
oriented firms, reduces economic growth, and triggers inflation
globally.
How does free trade impact those in more obsolete industries?

It increases economic inequality between those working in high-
tech export industries and those in uncompetitive companies.
Unemployment in those industries can stem from outsourcing.
It creates employment in innovative industries but harms rela-
tively unskilled workers.
If China opened its markets to U.S. exports why would it not change
America’s global trade deficit?
Even if China opened its markets to U.S. exports, the U.S. could
not produce the additional goods to export to China, and China
would merely shift to imports from countries like Brazil and
South Korea.
Although they do not share Trump’s harsh tactics, what do, to some
extent, other countries share complaints with Washington about
China’s trade actions?
They share complaints regarding China’s tariffs, its coercive
demands that foreign firms provide it with their technology, and
its cyber-espionage of high-tech information.
In what ways could China retaliate to U.S. trade policy?

China could impose new regulations, slow goods passing

through customs, or resort to a host of other non-tariff barriers.
It could halt exports of critical components or items that US
producers would be hard-pressed to replace. Also, it could to
resort to non-economic forms of retaliation, for example easing
up on sanctions on North Korea or accelerating the militariza-
tion of the South China Sea.
What was did a provision in the USMCA involving large pharma-

ceutical companies do that was highly objected to?
There was a provision in the USMCA that allowed large phar-
maceutical companies (“Big Pharma”) to raise prescription drug
prices, especially ultra-expensive drugs produced in living cells,
by extending some patents, to ten years, thereby precluding
inexpensive generic versions and competitive pricing.
How did President Trump eventually gain Democratic support for

the USMCA in January 2020?
The president agreed to strengthen labor, environmental, phar-
maceutical and enforcement provisions of the agreement.
Give an example of how U.S. manufacturing firms had to alter their

supply chains significantly due to the U.S.-China trade war.
As global firms, U.S. automakers require massive amounts of
steel and aluminum and many components made elsewhere as
well as in Chinese-owned factories in Michigan including auto-
motive supplier Nexteer and Henniges that produces sealing
products for cars, both of which are owned by China’s state-
owned Aviation Industry Corporation. America’s large tech
firms like Google, Dell, Intel, IBM and others also depend on
components from China in their production chains.
Many U.S. companies began responding to tariffs on Chinese

exports, not by moving production back to America, as the Trump
administration had hoped, but how?
They responded by moving it to countries such as Indonesia and
Mexico, which are less expensive.
How did the U.S. China trade war and President Trump’s wholesale
resort to tariffs and his refusal to use the WTO, constituted severe
attacks on economic globalization?
The tariffs challenged the post-World War II consensus on
free trade, and decades of trade liberalization. His trade wars
disrupted investment and global supply chains, and slowed the
spread of new technologies, thereby lowering global produc-
tivity. America’s trade-weighted tariffs of 4.2% were higher
than those of other G7 members. Despite the initial agree-
ment, mutual tariffs may become permanent, ending Sino-
American economic interdependence, dubbed “Chimerica,” that
had contributed to China’s rapid growth and economic global-
ization.
Essay Questions
1. Has the U.S.-China trade war been beneficial or harmful for the
countries involved? How?
2. In what ways does economic protectionism cost economies?
3. Has the Trump administration’s trade policy made the U.S. weaker
or stronger on the international stage?
4. Are the Trump administration’s tariff proposals and trade wars
against both foes China and allies like those in the EU and Canada
a logical move?
5. Is economic globalization in retreat?
CHAPTER 10
The Socio-Cultural Dimension

of Globalization
According to KOF, socio-cultural globalization entailed the movement

of people and ideas across boundaries, including “the size of the resi-
dent foreign population,” “cross-border personal contacts,” “informa-
tion flows,” and “cultural proximity to the global mainstream.” This
encompassed national homogeneity/heterogeneity, languages, religious
and racial diversity, and migration flows. Socio-cultural factors, notably
migration that brought with it linguistic, religious, and racial diversity,
roused passionate anger among populists. Their nationalism, nativism,
and xenophobia constituted a significant effort to reduce globalization’s
socio-cultural dimension.
Samuel Huntington feared that large-scale migrations were fostering a
“clash of civilizations,” each civilization being a “cultural entity.”1 Such
conflicts, he argued, would replace interstate wars. Religion and race
were elements of culture, and populists appealed to their followers by
stressing cultural purity and stoking fears of multiculturalism. In Europe
and America, cultural and racial purity was central to populist oppo-
sition to the immigration of “aliens.” Hungary’s leaders, for example,
only accepted “Christian” refugees, and Trump asked, regarding Africans,
“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come
here?” adding, “Why do we need more Haitians? Take them out.”2
Some months later in another diatribe about undocumented Latino immi-
grants, the president declared, “These aren’t people. These are animals.”3

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72033-9_10
Instead, Trump preferred Caucasian migrants from “Norway.” When

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was asked whether she
knew whether Norway was predominantly white, she answered to every-
one’s astonishment, “I actually do not know that, sir. But I imagine that
is the case.”4
As law professor Amy Chua, argued, “tribalism remains a powerful
force everywhere,” and “has begun to tear at the fabric of liberal democra-
cies in the developed world, and even at the postwar liberal international
order.”5 Tribalism in America was not entirely partisan. “Mr. Trump’s
immigration policies may be more popular with Republicans than with
Democrats,” wrote Robert Kagan, “but few Democratic politicians are
running on a promise to bring more immigrants into the country.”6
Like America in the 1920s, isolationism, anti-immigration sentiment, and
protectionism were central to Trump’s MAGA slogan.
Even earlier, in the late nineteenth century the influx of European
migrants produced violent resentment of immigrants in the U.S. They
formed the “Know Nothing” movement (1844–1860), named the Native
American Party and the American Party after 1855. The “Know Nothing”
(their response to questions about the movement), like contemporary
populism, was a far-right nativist movement during the 1850s. Members
loathed urban Polish, Italian, and Irish migrants and Catholics generally,
who they feared would exercise political influence. Before the emergence
of the Republican Party but after the decline of the Whigs, the move-
ment was a rival of the Democrats. One early Republican supported by
the Know Nothing movement, Nathaniel Banks, was elected to Congress
and became Speaker of the House of Representatives, and another Know
Nothing politician, Millard Fillmore, had been America’s president, but
running as a Know Nothing in 1856, lost badly.
Donald Trump and Immigration

Former President Donald Trump intensified identity politics in America
by denigrating religions (e.g., Islam and Judaism), nationalities (e.g.,
Mexican, Central American, and African), gender (e.g., women), and
race (e.g., African-American and Latino). In America, elections, dema-
goguery, and xenophobia owed much to a demographic change in
which “whites” were losing their dominance as the country’s majority.
Trump’s appeal was partly racial, and many of his tweets explicitly or in
coded fashion appealed to racial biases of white supremacists. Indeed, his
10 THE SOCIO-CULTURAL DIMENSION OF GLOBALIZATION 409
second impeachment was based on his arousing violent right-wing white

supremacist populists who entered the Capitol in January 2021. Populists
elsewhere emulated Trump.
Among Trump’s earliest quarrels with an ally began when he argued
with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Trumbull who had phoned to
congratulate America’s new president. Australia had also been opposed to
admitting undocumented migrants and had detained refugees in isolated
camps in Papua New Guinea, Nauru, and Manus Island. Trump took
the “opportunity” to denounce an agreement that Australia had reached
with the Obama administration under which the U.S. would accept a
number of refugees that Australia had refused to admit. Declared the new
president, “I think it is a horrible deal, a disgusting deal that I would have
never made. It is an embarrassment to the United States of America, and
you can say it just the way I said it… As far as I am concerned that is
enough Malcom [sic]… I have been making these calls all day and this is
the most unpleasant call all day. Putin was a pleasant call.”7
Donald Trump’s views about immigration, as with other issues,
were, as former National Security Adviser Susan Rice argued, “impul-
sive, improvisational and inchoate” and were “simply to service his
domestic politics.”8 An ardent nationalist-populist, President Trump tried
to reduce immigration and promote socio-cultural homogeneity. He
sought to end “birth tourism,” the practice of entering a country as a
tourist and giving birth there so the child can obtain citizenship. He
also criticized “chain migration,” that is, cases in which legal immi-
grants could sponsor members of their families who were foreign nationals
living elsewhere for American citizenship. A week before America’s 2018
midterm elections, Trump threatened to reinterpret the Constitution’s
14th amendment by using an executive order to revoke the citizen-
ship to those born in America to noncitizens. Trump even considered
invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act to deport undocumented aliens. This
obscure law was intended to let the president use troops in America to
put down insurrections. In 2020, he again considered invoking the act to
end demonstrations after the death of African-American George Floyd.
Under Trump, the State Department denied passports to migrants
from Mexico with official birth certificates proving they were born in
America and to the children of U.S. Vietnamese veterans who were immi-
grants and had green cards but had never become U.S. citizens. Trump
sought to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) that protected 400,000
immigrants from several developing countries that were in the throes of
violence or had experienced natural disasters, and in September 2020

a U.S. Appeals Court upheld Trump’s right to do so. Perhaps most
controversial, Trump sought to terminate Deferred Action for Child-
hood Arrivals (DACA) that President Barack Obama had introduced to
protect hundreds of thousands of “dreamers,” who had been brought to
America illegally as children and had led productive lives. In June 2020,
the Supreme Court refused to let him do so because he had not provided
adequate justification for his decision. Then, in December, a federal court
overturned a memorandum of the acting director of Homeland Security
that restricted DACA to those already enrolled. Consequently, as many as
300,000 new applicants could join the program.
Categories of Migrants
There are several categories of migrants who included all those who
moved to different countries. Countries have no obligation to admit “eco-
nomic migrants,” who migrate to escape poverty. The flow of economic
migrants will intensify in the future owing to high birth rates, overpopu-
lation, insufficient water and fertile land, and environmental stress in less
developed countries (LDCs) like Nigeria.
Developed countries like Canada regularly admit migrants who have
professions that recipient countries need or do jobs that a country’s citi-
zens are unwilling to take. China has sought to attract highly educated
Chinese or others living overseas, especially those with skills in high-
tech professions. Those who enter another country without permission
are termed “illegal aliens” or “undocumented migrants.” Undocumented
aliens may have to pay high fees to individuals or groups able to smuggle
them across borders (“human smugglers”) or who coerce them (“human
traffickers”) to enter other countries as slaves or prostitutes. Many undoc-
umented aliens had entered countries legally but remained after their visas
had expired.
By contrast, “refugees” (sometimes called “asylum-seekers”),
according to the 1951 Refugee Convention, are persons “who, owing
to a well-founded fear of” being persecuted for reasons of race, religion,
nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion,
are outside the country of their nationality and are unable, or owing
to such fear, are unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of
that country. According to Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights and the UN Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.
“Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum
from persecution.” “Refugees” apply for admission outside countries
they seek to enter, whereas “asylum-seekers” are those who have legally
or illegally already entered those countries. To obtain asylum in America,
according to Philip Bump, “a migrant has to actually be on U.S. soil.
So, migrants enter the country either by crossing the border between
established border checkpoints — an illegal crossing — or by showing up
at one of those checkpoints, called a port of entry.” In other words, the
“image of migrants entering illegally to surreptitiously make their way
further into the country is somewhat outdated; now, migrants often turn
themselves in immediately.”9
Countries are bound by the principle of “non-refoulement” in Article
33 of the Refugee Convention, that is, not forcing those to return to
their own countries if their fears of persecution are legitimate. Migrants
who enter America legally at points of entry or illegally can claim to
be victims of persecution. However, the Refugee Convention includes
a “geographical exception” that limits the rights from outside Europe
who are given only “temporary protection status.” Hence, Turkey termed
Syrian refugees as “guests,” not “refugees.” According to the UN refugee
agency, by the end of 2019, America, Peru, Turkey, Germany, and Brazil
had the highest number of pending asylum applications.10
America’s Supreme Court has ruled that refugees’ fear is “well-
founded” if there is a 10% chance, they will face persecution, and
such persons are referred to immigration judges. If that official decides
there is a “significant possibility” that the refugee will face persecu-
tion on returning home, a court date should be set for a final hearing
regarding granting asylum. In fiscal year 2018, America’s Citizenship and
Immigration Services (USCIS) “confirmed a credible fear of persecu-
tion” of 74,677 of the 97,728 of those asylum-seekers it interviewed.
Only about 20% of asylum-seekers succeed in remaining permanently in
America. USCIS began rejecting applications unless every field was filled
in, however irrelevant like “middle name” for applicants without a middle
name.
“Unwelcoming” America
America has the world’s largest number of foreign-born residents,
although they constitute a smaller percentage of the population than
those in Australia or Canada. America’s population now has the highest
percentage of foreign-born residents than any time since 1910. “This

is quite different from what we had thought,” said William H. Frey,
a demographer at the Brookings Institution. “We think of immigrants
as being low-skilled workers from Latin America, but for recent arrivals
that’s much less the case.”11 According to the UN, the number of asylum-
seekers or internally displaced persons (IDPs) increased by 9 million in
2019 to about 80 million. America resettled only 27,500, fewer than
Canada.
Until the Trump administration, roughly 75% of those coming to
America claiming a “credible fear” passed their initial hearing. Under
Trump, however, America has ceased welcoming refugees. As Amy
Chua noted, tribalism in America based on “electoral outcomes, hate-
mongering, demagoguery,” and “political tribalism” owe much “to a
massive demographic transformation” in which “whites are on the verge
of losing their status as the country’s majority.” “Trump’s appeal,” Chua
continued, “is racial” and. as candidate and president, “Trump has made
many statements that either explicitly or in a coded fashion appeal to some
white voters’ racial biases.”12
In 1980, the U.S. resettled more than 200,000 refugees. In 2017,
America admitted only 33,000 refugees, far lower than 2016, when it
accepted 97,000 and a precipitous drop from the numbers admitted
during the Obama years. This was the first time since the 1980 Refugee
Act that America had resettled fewer refugees than the entire rest of the
world. In 2018, the U.S. admitted just 22,491 refugees, and Trump
lowered it to 15.000 for fiscal year 2021. This indicated Washington’s
abdication of its leadership of the liberal order. Thus, the president of
Church World Service declared, “With one final blow, the Trump admin-
istration has snuffed out Lady Liberty’s torch and ended our nation’s
legacy of compassion and welcome.”13
Stephen Miller was the leading anti-immigration zealot in the Trump
administration. “When the news stories began to surface … of sobbing
young migrant children being forcibly removed from their parents at the
border, many close White House watchers instantly suspected Stephen
Miller was behind it,” and he had “cultivated a reputation as the most
strident immigration hawk in the West Wing.”14 Miller’s antipathy toward
immigration ignored international law and long-time U.S. norms, and
his right-wing populism and nationalist rhetoric stirred cultural hatred of
multiculturalism.
At meetings, Miller focused on “horror stories” about immigrants, and

he was largely responsible for reducing the number of immigrants after
2016. A former National Security Council official recalled Miller saying,
“What are we doing to save American lives? We must save American
lives! We must save Americans from these immigrant criminals!”15 Miller’s
proposals included ending aid to Central American countries from which
many recent migrants came to escape violence and threatening to close
the border with Mexico unless it reduced the flow of Central American
migrants.
Responding to advice from Miller, who was furious that a high
percentage of asylum-seekers were being approved at their initial
screening, the Trump administration provided new guidelines for inter-
viewing refugees to ascertain “discrepancies” between the credible-fear
interviews and other sworn statements and substituting border patrol for
trained asylum officials to determine “credible fear.” The administration
was prepared to fund enforcement, while refusing to meet the needs of
the children it detained.
However, what makes asylum “legitimate” is contested. The immigra-
tion issue has greatly aided populists attract public support in America,
Europe, and elsewhere. Many Trump supporters were nativist oppo-
nents of “foreigners,” and the Trump administration arbitrarily decided
that those fleeing in “caravans” from Central America who feared that
their lives were threatened by domestic abuse, gang brutality, and/or
environmentally-caused poverty could not claim asylum in America.
Although asylum is a human right, Trump viewed it differently. “The
asylum program is a scam,” involving people “who look like they should
be fighting for the U.F.C [United Fighting Championship]” with large
muscles and face tattoos. “Some of the roughest people you’ve ever
seen.”16 Some Trump supporters even claimed that billionaire philan-
thropist George Soros had funded a caravan of Central Americans who
were marching northward.
The president also considered sending detained asylum-seekers to
“sanctuary cities” like San Francisco as a punishment for refusing to
let local police aid federal officials find undocumented migrants. The
president claimed without evidence that these cities did not want these
asylum-seekers, thereby showing that the sanctuary city thing was a “big
scam.” Then, in February 2020, the president took revenge against New
York State, which had been unwilling to cooperate with federal offi-
cials, by barring New Yorkers from the Trusted Traveler Program that
permitted thousand to move more quickly through airport security lines.

Trump claimed with no evidence that New York endangered national
security by letting undocumented aliens obtain driver’s licenses. The
administration also deployed agents from elite U.S. Border Patrol Tactical
Unit in sanctuary cities to enhance the capability of immigration officers
with whom those cities had refused to aid., In July, however, the adminis-
tration admitted it had made false statements that had improperly justified
“a central argument” in Trump’s case regarding New York and restored
New Yorkers access to the program “effective immediately.”
Trump berated then acting head of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), Ronald D. Vitiello, for failing to institute a ban
on benefits to legal immigrants and eliminate protections for migrant
children and in April 2019 fired Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen,
who was replaced by Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan. Nielsen had
repeatedly cautioned the president not to violate laws regarding asylum-
seekers, including closing the border. He had humiliated Nielsen in front
of his entire cabinet the year before. She believed that the President
was becoming “unhinged” about the border crisis and making “unrea-
sonable” demands. Nielsen’s ouster was followed by a purge of senior
administrators involved with immigration and undermined McAleenan’s
authority by appointing Thomas D. Homan as his “border czar.” who
would report directly to him.
Soft Power and Demography

Soft power increased by admitting refugees who were victims of perse-
cution in their own countries. America’s admission of refugees was an
important tool of U.S. foreign policy and enhanced America’s global
standing. “We evacuated Vietnamese after the fall of Saigon,” declared
two former officials, took in Soviet Jews in the 1980s, airlifted Kosovars
fleeing genocide in the 1990s, admitted thousands of Sudanese “Lost
Boys” orphaned by war in this century. In each instance, we sent an
important signal to the world—and so goaded governments into action,
undermined the legitimacy of authoritarian leaders and defended religious
freedom.17
America’s soft power had enabled the country to attract the best and
brightest from around the world. “That should come as no surprise if
you are familiar with the origins of the most iconic companies of the
last few decades,”18 noted Farhad Manjoo. Among Google’s founders
was a Russian immigrant, and its CEO was an immigrant from India
as was Microsoft’s chief executive, and immigrants founded EBay and
Yahoo. Facebook’s largest subsidiaries, Instagram and WhatsApp were
co-founded by immigrants, the child of an immigrant established Apple.
Thus, immigrants have been crucial to America’s high-tech industries. A
member of a U.S. venture-capital firm predicted that, if he were asked in
ten years why Silicon Valley had failed, he would answer it was because
of screwing up immigration. In sum, America had attracted much global
technological talent to Silicon Valley.
Skilled immigrants under America’s H-1B visa system played a major
role in technological and scientific innovation and attracting venture
capital. Nevertheless, the Trump administration limited such immigrants,
and many chose to go elsewhere where governments were actively seeking
them. Recognizing the need for highly-skilled workers, former Presi-
dent Trump endorsed a proposal in 2019 that focused on admitting
high-skilled workers rather those with family members who were U.S. citi-
zens. However, the proposal met opposition from both Trump’s followers
because it did not reduce immigration sufficiently and critics who asked
why family ties were insufficient.
Applications for such visas and the rejection rate have increased in
America. Following the expiration in 2004 of the 195,000 cap, the
number of H-1B visas annually available declined to 85,000. Available
on first-come, first-served, the demand for H-1B visas exceeded supply.
In 2019, requests for these visas were over 100,000 more than that year’s
cap. Consequently, the deans of fifty U.S. university business schools
called on the Trump administration to increase the H-1Bs owing to the
prospect of the loss of talented migrants needed for America’s economy
to prosper.
Trying to force universities to reopen despite the coronavirus, the
Trump administration issued a directive on July 6, 2020, requiring inter-
national students, another source of soft power, to take at least one
in-class course to retain their visas. Almost immediately some twenty
states, as well as Harvard and M.I.T., sued the administration to block
the directive, which they argued would undermine their efforts to ensure
students’ health. Some forty universities filed declarations supporting the
states’ lawsuit as did major hi-tech companies such as Google, Facebook,
and Twitter. Under pressure, the Trump administration rescinded the
directive a week later.
Demographic factors created a need for immigrants. America, Japan,

Russia, and even China have aging populations and relatively fewer of
those of working-age, and immigration eased that problem. Migrants
to America from Latin America and elsewhere provided young workers
who paid taxes that supported social security and medical benefits for
the elderly and work in low-paying jobs that most Americans shunned.
In February 2020, the Trump administration began refusing green cards
to those who were not financially self-sufficient and declined to release
a study by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that
concluded that migrants had provided $63 billion more in government
revenue than they had cost during the previous decade. They were less
likely to seek welfare benefits and, when they did, consumed a lower dollar
value of them than native-born Americans. Nevertheless, nationalist-
populists believed that government programs that benefited them were
deserved, while foreigners receiving benefits were exploiting the system.
Although President Trump tweeted “Our country is full,” demogra-
phers and economists saw an aging population and declining birthrates
among the native-born population. Trump’s efforts to curb immigra-
tion, including highly skilled migrants needed in high-tech industries
and laborers needed in agricultural states, harmed U.S. firms and farms.
America’s H-2A visa program, which permitted unskilled nonagricultural
workers to take temporary jobs, was capped at 66,000. America would be
unable to replace undocumented Latin Americans who worked in seasonal
agricultural jobs. Thus, there was an incentive to hire undocumented
aliens, especially for low-paying jobs in fruit picking or meatpacking. The
owners of farms, who had voted for Trump but depended on seasonal
workers from Guatemala with H-2A visas, feared they might go out of
business owing to the cap. Ironically, Trump’s properties in Florida and
New York had knowingly hired undocumented and poorly paid Latin
Americans.
Globally, migrants in agriculture played an important economic role,
and Trump tweeted, “We’re gonna let them in,” as the demand for
temporary workers soared after 2016 from 165,000 to 242,000 owing
to a decline in undocumented aliens. The demand was especially high for
berry, tobacco, and apple pickers in states such as Georgia, Florida, Wash-
ington, North Carolina, and California. Agricultural firms sent people to
Mexico and elsewhere to recruit such workers.
In Hungary, where the fertility rate had plummeted to 1.5, Prime
Minister Orbán, who vehemently opposed immigration, offered to
exempt Hungarian women who gave birth to four or more children from
paying taxes and other rewards. “We are living in times when fewer and
fewer children are being born throughout Europe. People in the West
are responding to this with immigration,” declared Orbán. “Hungarians
see this in a different light. We do not need numbers, but Hungarian
children.”19 However, America’s economy fared better than that of coun-
tries like Hungary owing to immigrants, who compensated for declining
populations in countries with fertility rates below replacement level—
1.79 in 2019. Although immigration was important for countries where
birthrates were falling and populations were aging, nativists opposed the
entry of “foreigners.”
Islamophobia
Concern about issues connected Muslim migrants has received much
publicity globally.
The Palestinian Conundrum

A major source of refugees in the Middle East was a consequence of
Arab-Israeli hostility. Palestinians born in the West Bank, Gaza, and
refugee camps elsewhere, whose descendants were driven from or left
their homes in what is now Israel have “refugee” status provided by
the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). They origi-
nally numbered about 750,000 but have increased to about five million.
UNRWA was a vital source of aid for Palestinian refugees, but their status
as refugees implied that they had a right to return to their ancestors’
homes. Israel’s government objected to the “refugee” status of Pales-
tinians who had never lived in those homes. Many of Israel’s leaders also
opposed a “two-state” (Israel and Palestine) solution to the conflict.
Trump met Israel’s ambitions, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem,
and supporting Israel’s annexation of territories it had occupied after the
1967 Six-Day War. Jared Kushner, whom the president appointed as an
envoy to mediate the Israel-Palestine conflict, advocated removing the
refugee status of Palestinians. Regarding UNRWA, Kushner wrote, “This
[agency] perpetuates a status quo, is corrupt, inefficient and doesn’t help
peace.”20 The Trump administration’s decision to end funding UNRWA,
along with recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the legality of
Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, were actions that Kushner
believed would take the issues of refugees’ right of return and the status of
Jerusalem off the negotiating table. Ending funding for UNRWA threat-
ened a humanitarian crisis for Palestinians who depended on it for medical
care, jobs, and education.
Syrian Civil War

Millions of Syrians fled their homes during Syria’s civil strife that began
in 2011 when the country’s Sunni Muslim majority sought to overthrow
Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian regime and its minority Alawite Muslims.
The conflict included Kurds, aided by America, who sought to end the
Islamic State’s occupation of much of Syria and Iraq and its territo-
rial caliphate. Kurdish militias, seeking their own state, triggered Turkish
intervention in Syria. Russia and Iran also became involved, supporting
Assad and increasing their influence in the region.
Turkey became home to almost 4.1 million refugees, the largest
number in any country. Other Syrians sought refuge in Jordan or
Lebanon, which hosted the world’s highest number of refugees relative
to population. In all three countries, citizens increasingly wished them
to leave, and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoĝan sought to move
many of the Syrian refugees to a slice of territory in Syria near Idlib. Many
already had fled to Europe, but Syrian/Russian attacks on Idlib triggered
countless additional refugees, and Turkey closed its Syrian border and
reopened its border with Greece (see below).
Regarding admitting Syrian refugees to America, Trump declared,
“This could be one of the great Trojan horses.”21 Overestimating
the number of Muslim migrants, populists in the West feared Islamic
terrorism, although America’s DHS declared that domestic white
supremacist terrorism was more dangerous. Nativists fit the profile of
American, European, and Australian populists—poorly educated, right-
wing male workers in low-skill jobs. Many who had voted for Trump
in 2016 viewed America as divided between white and angry “us” and
nonwhite “others.” Immigration opponents argued that many asylum-
seekers really sought economic benefits, thereby disqualifying them for
refugee status. Trump was Islamophobic, even nominating an ambassador
to Germany in 2020 who had said Islamic migrants in Europe had “the
goal of eventually turning Europe into an Islamic state.”22
Islamophobia in America
Although the Supreme Court ultimately upheld former President
Trump’s ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries in
December 2017. Previously, two federal judges had blocked the executive
order, and one wrote that a “reasonable, objective observer” would view
the revised order as “issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion,
in spite of its stated, religiously neutral purpose.”23 UN Secretary-General
António Guterres argued that the ban violated global norms and would
not reduce the threat of terrorism. Defending Trump’s original executive
order, John Kelly, then Director of Homeland Security (DHS), noted
that unvetted travel was not a universal privilege, especially if it involved
national security. Later, the administration added six additional countries
with substantial numbers of Muslims to its ban, including Nigeria, Africa
largest country.
Despite a DHS report that concluded that citizenship was a poor indi-
cator of potential terrorism, Trump also added checks on Muslims seeking
visas as tourists, business travelers, or relatives of Americans as part of a
policy of “extreme vetting” to prevent the entry of terrorists. During his
campaign, Trump had defended his promise to keep out visitors from
Islamic countries, “terror states,” claiming “those people that knocked
down the World Trade Center most likely under the Trump policy
wouldn’t have been here to knock down the World Trade Center….”24
Trump’s Islamophobia was evident. “The hateful ideology of radical
Islam,” the president declared, must not be “allowed to reside or spread
within our own communities.”25 Trump’s first National Security Adviser,
General Michael Flynn, tweeted “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL,”
adding: “Islam is not necessarily a religion but a political system that
has a religious doctrine behind it.”26 Trump was using the post-9/11
fear of Islam that appealed to his supporters. However, it seemed to
confirm the claim of Muslims that the West hated Islam rather than
terrorism, probably helping recruit additional supporters of extremism.
It also reduced immigration to America. The number of migrants appre-
hended by authorities along the Mexican border dropped by 72% between
May and October 2019. During Trump’s second fiscal year, travelers from
the Muslim countries on Trump’s travel ban dropped by 81% although
6.6 million U.S. jobs remained unfilled.
European Islamophobia
As in America, Muslim migration to Europe posed the question of how to
deal with migrants from alien cultures. In the Netherlands, migrants who
entered for a lengthy period of time and were between eighteen and state
pension age were obliged to learn Dutch and taking a civic integration
exam, rules that applied even to clerics. In France, an historian wrote,
“Laïcité, the French term for secularism, today has acquired so much
mystique as to be practically an ideology, a timeless norm that defines
Frenchness.” Originally a guarantee of religious pluralism, wrote histo-
rian Robert Zaretsky, became “a series of battles over a simple strip of
clothing. In 1989, a few Muslim girls were expelled from school when
they refused to take off their hijabs, or headscarves, which the prin-
cipal believed was an assault on the secular character of public schools.”
Although “all ‘ostentatious’ signs of religious faith — be they Jewish
yarmulkes or Sikh turbans — were declared verboten in public schools,
everyone knew that the principal target of the law was the hijab.”27
French President Macron took a hardline position against political
Islam, the result of terrorist incidents experienced in France in 2015 and
2016. “Islamist separatism is incompatible with freedom and equality,” he
argued. “We are talking,” he said in another speech, “about people who,
in the name of a religion, are pursuing a political project, that of a political
Islam that wants to secede from our Republic.”28 In 2020, Macron intro-
duced measures that heightened perceptions of Islamophobia, including
limits on home-schooling, increasing attention on religious schools,
forcing institutions that sought public funding to commit themselves to
secularism, and ending the practice of bringing foreign imams to France.
Islamic migration became an inflammatory issue in Europe after a
tsunami of Muslims entered in 2014–2015. Driven by civil wars in Syria
and Iraq, strife in Afghanistan, and violence elsewhere, the number of
asylum applications in the EU in 2015 rose to 1,321,560, not including
those who had not then made claims for asylum. The largest number
of applications were made in Germany (476,000), with Hungary second
(177,130). Hungary had the highest ratio of applicants to population—
1,800 per 100,000—followed by Sweden and Austria. The flood of
Islamic migrants fueled fears about the future of “Christian” Europe,
terrorism, and the imposition of “Sharia law.” The EU had sought to
export democracy to the Arab world, but owing to the influx of Muslims,
European governments embraced authoritarian governments in Egypt

and Turkey.
Most Muslim asylum-seekers to Europe initially traveled via Turkey,
but, by mid-May 2016, many had taken the perilous voyage across the
Mediterranean, mainly from Libya. The Italian government used Libya’s
coast guard rather than Italian naval vessels to rescue refugees from
danger because Libya had agreed to return them to North Africa, while
Italy would have had to admit them to obey international and EU laws.
Italy’s parliament also enacted a law declaring rescuers accomplices of traf-
fickers. Rome funded Libya’s coast guard, established migrant centers in
North Africa, and tried to mobilize Saharan tribes to secure Libya’s coun-
try’s southern border and send migrants elsewhere in Africa. The result
was a humanitarian disaster for those seeking to reach Europe but caught
in Libya’s vicious civil war.
Germany initially welcomed the refugees, assuming that many would
remain in Greece and Italy, because the EU’s 1990 Dublin Convention
required that refugees register in the first EU country that they entered
and those countries determined whether migrants qualified for asylum.
However, Greece and Italy, lacking facilities to house refugees, hoped
they would move to wealthier countries. Chancellor Merkel defended
Germany’s liberal policy, but, as their number mounted, she began to face
growing electoral opposition. Hostility soared after sexual assaults upon
women by migrants in Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2016, and a deadly
terrorist attack on a Christmas market in Berlin.
Consequently, Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered
a significant loss of seats in Germany’s 2017 federal election owing
to her stance on immigration. Several of Germany’s EU partners also
resisted accepting migrants, and their resistance threatened survival of the
Schengen zone. “A Europe without internal borders can only exist if it
has functioning external borders,”29 declared Sebastian Kurz, Austria’s
populist chancellor. In fact, Schengen intended free movement only for
Europeans and permitted screening to detect illegal migrants. Merkel’s
coalition government threatened to collapse, owing to the potential
defection of the CDU’s traditional Bavarian ally, the Christian Social
Union (CSU). “Beset by the surge of the anti-immigrant Alternative
for Germany, or AfD,” wrote Josef Joffe, “the Christian Social Union is
staring at polls giving it only 36 percent of the vote in the state elections
on Oct. 14 — after almost four decades of holding absolute majorities
in mighty Bavaria.” Joffe added, “Trying to claw back voters from the
AfD, the CSU is echoing the nationalist upstart, which has vaulted from
nowhere to become the Bundestag’s third-largest party.”30
Horst Seehofer, the CSU chairman and federal interior minister,
wanted to turn refugees away at Germany’s borders as his party began
to adopt populist themes. Had the CSU defected, it would have brought
down the government, requiring new elections. Trump maliciously
tweeted, “The people of Germany are turning against their leadership
as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition. Crime in
Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions
of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!”31
In German state elections in October 2018, the CSU lost its absolute
majority in Bavaria’s parliament, and the AfD won seats for the first time.
Thereafter, Merkel modified her position, proposing to distribute the
refugee burden among EU members because it was a European-wide
problem. The EU was divided. One group led by Austria and several
Balkan countries limited the number of refugees they were willing to
accept and imposed strict border controls on those seeking to move
northward. Macedonia closed its border with Greece, stranding migrants
there. Croatia, Macedonia, and Serbia also began to screen refugees by
nationality, admitting only those from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.
In Italy, the Northern League (renamed “the League”), which
assumed influence in a coalition government in June 2018, virulently
opposed immigration, and among the first of the new government’s
actions was to turn away a rescue boat with 600 migrants. “Rescuing
lives is a duty, transforming Italy into an enormous refugee camp is
not,”32 wrote Matteo Salvini, the populist minister of interior in Face-
book. “The good times for illegals are over,” said Salvini when rescued
migrants disembarked in Sicily, adding, “Get ready to pack your bags.”33
After meeting with Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte in July 2018, Trump
praised Italy’s new populist leaders, declaring he was “most closely
aligned” with them. “We agreed that border security is national secu-
rity — they are one and the same,” and, like America, Italy was “under
enormous strain as the result of illegal immigration,” and “got tired of it;
they didn’t want it any longer.”34
On returning from Africa, Salvini aped Trump’s criticism of Mexican
refugees. Refugees, he declared, “who rape, steal and deal” will be
stopped, and Italy has had enough of migrants “who aren’t fleeing from
war but who are bringing war to our country.”35 On another occa-
sion, Salvini assailed “the hotshot do-gooders,” who “condemned to
death thousands” by encouraging migrants to “come, come, come.”36

With strict border controls in France, Austria, and Switzerland, 160,000
refugees were living in temporary quarters in Italy.
Italians were growing fearful of migrants owing in part to Salvini’s
heated rhetoric. Then, in late June 2019, Italy arrested German Captain
Carola Rackete, whose vessel had rescued migrants at sea and forced its
way into the Italian island of Lampedusa rather than returning them to
Libya as Italian authorities demanded. Salvini accused Rackete of being a
“pirate” for ramming an Italian motorboat in order to enter Lampedusa,
and his arrest further divided Europe over the migration issue.
“We are now entering a situation in which everybody is trying to
stop of the refugees before they reach their border,” noted Bulgarian
scholar Ivan Krastev. “The basic question” was “which country turns
into a parking lot for refugees.”37 Greece and Italy constituted Krastev’s
“parking lot” because most migrants crossed their borders first, forcing
them to bear a disproportionate burden for their care. Both also faced
fiscal crises that were exacerbated by the requirement to host refugees.
Northern EU members argued that Greece and Turkey failed to vet
those who were entering, adding to the terrorist threat. As democra-
cies and open societies, many EU members were vulnerable and failed to
coordinate their efforts to prevent terrorism. Terrorist attacks increased
xenophobic sentiment throughout Europe.
France suffered deadly terrorist attacks in Paris on the magazine
Charlie Hebdo office in January 2015, a concert hall and a stadium
in November, and in Nice, against marchers, on Bastille Day in 2016.
Several of the terrorists in France had traveled from Belgium, and Brus-
sels’ airport and a metro station were attacked in March 2016. Germany
was the victim of four terrorist attacks in six days in July 2016, two of
which were committed by asylum-seekers, as well as a later attack in Berlin
at Christmas. Then, in March 2017, central London was the target of a
terrorist, who drove a car into pedestrians as had the terrorists in Berlin
and Nice. Manchester, too, was a victim of a brutal terrorist attack at
a pop music event in May. Journalist Henry Porter wrote, “The great
fear that swept through the Continent focused on the threat from within,
from suburbs such as Molenbeek, in Brussels, and St. Denis, just outside
Paris’s Périphérique,” and he concluded that Europe could not “protect
its citizens, let alone defend its borders.”38
In distributing asylum-seekers so that Greece and Italy, and other
major migrant recipients would not have to bear an unfair share of the
burden, the EU concluded a deal with Turkey that was described as “tem-
porary and extraordinary.” Turkey agreed to repatriate migrants arriving
illegally in Greece if they had not sought asylum or their applications
were rejected and would take “all necessary measures” to prevent refugees
from opening new routes from Turkey into Europe. In return, Turkish
citizens would be allowed to travel to the EU without visas, and the
EU would accelerate consideration of Turkey’s application to become a
member. The EU would also provide Turkey with funding to cope with
its refugee population, and EU members would accept asylum-seekers
from Turkey equivalent to the number whom they would return to that
country. UN officials and NGOs criticized the arrangement as illegal. In
January 2020, Turkey threatened to end the deal because the EU had not
provided promised funding. Then, in late February, citing EU failure to
aid Turkey’s incursion into Syria, Erdoğan declared that his country could
no longer absorb additional Syrians and reopened its border with Greece,
thereby terminating the 2016 deal. Syrian asylum-seekers again sought
to flee to Europe, but Greece refused to admit them, thus violating the
EU’s norm regarding refugee treatment. Athens argued that Turkey had
committed a hostile act and used force to prevent the entry of refugees.
Greece also began to expel migrants illegally at sea by forcing them back
beyond Greek territorial waters. After European criticism of Turkey’s
repressive measures, its foreign minister declared that the EU was fanning
anti-Erdoğan sentiment for domestic reasons.
Although the refugee issue remained politically divisive, the actual
number arriving in Europe had declined dramatically. A 2018 Euro-
barometer poll found that immigration was “seen as the most important
issue facing the EU in 21 Member States (up from 14 in autumn
2017).”39 In April 2020, the European Court of Justice ruled that
Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary had failed to honor EU agree-
ment to accept their fair share of asylum-seekers. Populist politicians
including Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Austria’s Sebastian Kurz, and Italy’s
Matteo Salvini continued calling immigration a “crisis,” using the issue to
attract voters who associated migrants with cultural dilution, crime, and
terrorism.
Even the leaders of liberal Denmark, noted for its willingness to accept
refugees, became concerned about their Muslim communities. Denmark’s
populist People’s Party announced an agreement with the ruling party
that migrants who had committed crimes were not wanted. As criminals,
their own countries might not accept them. Denmark would send them to
a tiny seventeen-acre island, called “the Virus,” because it had a crematory

of a laboratory that studied contagious animal diseases.
At a tumultuous EU summit meeting in June 2018, Europe’s leaders
reached a compromise to paper over differences regarding migrants.
Germany, Austria, Greece, and Spain agreed to strengthen their borders
and increase “support for the Sahel region, the Libyan Coastguard,
coastal and Southern communities, humane reception conditions, volun-
tary humanitarian returns, cooperation with other countries of origin and
transit, as well as voluntary resettlement.”40 The deal would establish
“transit centers” in Europe and possibly North Africa to house, screen,
and determine swiftly whether asylum-seekers were genuine. Screening at
the German-Austrian border would prevent asylum-seekers whose asylum
hearings were the responsibility of other EU countries from entering.
Germany’s “transit centers” would send ineligible asylum-seekers back
to “relevant third countries” notably Italy, Austria’s neighbor, but only
if those countries agreed. Otherwise, they would be returned to Austria.
However, during the ensuing years few people were stopped by Germany
at the border in accordance with the agreement, and some of Europe’s
detention centers had become squalid humanitarian concerns.
Islamophobia and the growing popularity of nationalist politicians in
several EU states reflected both racism and nostalgia. Poles, Hungarians,
Romanians, and Bulgarians believed that the influx of refugees would slow
their economic development, increase unemployment, and permit terror-
ists to enter the Schengen zone. They also recalled the Ottoman Turkish
occupation of much of the Balkans. Like Austria, these countries aided
Macedonia in its efforts to isolate refugees in Greece and supported police
efforts elsewhere to screen asylum-seekers.
Hungary tried to stop the flow by closing its frontier with Croatia in
October 2015. It held a referendum a year later about whether to cease
accepting its EU quota of refugees, which passed easily but was invali-
dated because too few had voted. Prime Minister Orbán described migra-
tion as terrorism’s “Trojan horse.” He argued that, like the Ottoman
rulers, he was defending Christian Europe from Muslim terrorists, and
sought to save Hungary for “genuine” Hungarians. To mobilize support,
Orbán distributed a questionnaire implying that migrants were spongers
or terrorists. He also had billboards erected, addressed to migrants,
declaring that they would not be permitted to take Hungarian jobs. When
Czech President Milos Zeman declared his opposition to the EU’s quota
system, he described the influx of migrants as an organized invasion. In
2019, Hungary’s government even claimed that George Soros and EU

Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker were encouraging migration
that threatened the country’s security, notably, “mandatory resettlement
quotas” that would erode its right to protect its borders, and Hungary’s
parliament passed several laws against migration, including a “Stop Soros”
bill that outlawed assistance to migrants seeking asylum permits. In late
2020, following the burning of a large Greek camp for asylum-seekers
on Lesbos, the EU proposed a migration system that would speed up
deportations and, with cash incentives, seek to persuade members to
accept migrants voluntarily. However, the EU border agency Frontex was
accused of concealing the Greek policy of sending migrant back to Turkey
without a hearing.
Latin American Migrants and Refugees

Many refugees in Latin America fled dictatorships in Venezuela and
Nicaragua. About five million Venezuelans (over an eighth of its popu-
lation) left their country between 2016 and 2019 owing to human rights
abuses and the collapse of the country’s economy resulting from the poli-
cies of President Nicolás Maduro. At the present rate, the number could
reach eight million by 2021. Neighboring Colombia bore much of the
refugee burden, allowing more than 1.4 million Venezuelans to enter
by September 2019, and by mid-2018, Peru hosted over half a million
Venezuelan refugees. Even the status of 70,000 Venezuelans who fled
to America to acquire TPS status was heatedly debated in Washington
notwithstanding the Trump administration’s efforts to oust Maduro.
Colombia and Peru saw a backlash against the refugees, and there was
opposition in Brazil, Trinidad, and Ecuador to Venezuela’s economic
migrants.
Moreover, 23,000 Nicaraguans fled to Costa Rica owing to President
Daniel Ortega’s violent repression of political demonstrators. Costa Rica
was a tolerant society, but the influx of many refugees in a small country
led its foreign minister and president to conclude that the Nicaraguans
were too numerous. However, the movement of Latinos northward from
Central America proved the most contested Latin American refugee issue.
After Trump called Hispanic immigrants vermin that would “pour into
and infest our country,” Peter Wehner of the Ethics and Public Policy
Center declared, “He takes a blowtorch to the tinder. For Trump and for
his presidency, the culture war is central and defining.”41
Donald Trump and Latino Asylum-Seekers

Samuel Huntington provocatively claimed that Hispanic migrants in the
U.S. were diluting America’s European Protestant identity by not assimi-
lating. He argued that “the ideologies of multiculturalism and diversity
eroded the legitimacy of the remaining central elements of American
identity, the cultural core and the American Creed.”42
Millions of undocumented immigrants live in the U.S., many of whom
reside in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Houston. However, it
was the flood of asylum-seekers in caravans from El Salvador, Guatemala,
and Honduras (the “Northern Triangle”), seeking to escape violence
and poverty and reach America through Mexico, that laid bare Trump’s
nativism. Indeed, in a June 2019 cable the U.S. embassy reported that
Guatemala “remains among the most dangerous countries in the world”
and “does not provide sufficient safeguards against refoulement.”43
Trump’s comments about Hispanic asylum-seekers were appalling. He
began his presidential campaign by deriding Mexican migrants: “They’re
bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”44 Regarding
Central Americans, Trump later tweeted “Many Gang Members and some
very bad people are mixed into the Caravan heading to our Southern
Border,”45 “These aren’t people,” he declared, “These are animals.”46
Data do not show, however, a relationship between the number
of refugees and crime. White supremacists and right-wing anti-Semites
threatened more violent terrorism in America and Europe than did
Muslim refugees. America’s refusal to reduce the number of displaced
people by resettling them threatened U.S. national security by prolonging
conflicts, destabilizing fragile states, and undermining allies.
Nevertheless, in April 2018, frustrated by the failure to prevent undoc-
umented immigrants from entering America from Mexico, Trump sent
National Guard units to the border to deter them. Shortly thereafter,
the governors of New Mexico and California withdrew their units. The
administration then imposed a regulation (Migrant Protection Proto-
cols) requiring that asylum-seekers remain in Mexico until their cases
were resolved. This clashed with the existing practice that refugees could
remain in America while courts considered their claims. Trump also
reached an agreement with Mexico, the Migrant Protection Protocols
program, also known as “Remain in Mexico,” to keep refugees in that
country while awaiting an initial hearing in a process that might last for
months, even years. Only 11 of the roughly 10,000 initially completed
cases under the program resulted in asylum, and a year later, of the 1,155
cases in the “Remain in Mexico” program, only 14 applicants—1.2%—
had legal representation. Of 12,997 cases then pending among those in
Mexico, only 163 had been filed with legal assistance. If America decided
not to grant asylum, it would immediately deport the applicant back to
his/her own country, violating international law.
After a federal judge temporarily blocked the “Remain in Mexico”
program, the DHS began allowing Central American migrants waiting
in Mexico to enter the U.S. Meantime, U.S. officials found it increasingly
difficult to house migrants in detention centers, and briefly considered
housing migrant children at Guantánamo Bay. Trump further tight-
ened asylum policies by banning work permits for those crossing the
border illegally, adding a fee for asylum application and requiring that
applications be judged within 180 days. After several different lower
court rulings, in March 2020 the Supreme Court agreed “Remain in
Mexico” could continue. Also, a federal judge negated directives that
halved the time that detained asylum-seekers could consult with attor-
neys before being interviewed by asylum officers and prohibited officers
from granting migrants extensions to prepare for interview to assess their
fear of returning to their own countries.
Still frustrated by the entry of Central Americans, Trump exploded in
October 2018, declaring “Close the whole thing!” The president angrily
tweeted, “If for any reason it becomes necessary, we will CLOSE our
Southern Border.”47 His threat covered all 1,954 miles of the border,
including entries used by tourists, businesspeople, and others who had
a legal right to enter America. Had advisers not dissuaded him, Trump
might have made a decision that would have severed U.S.-Mexican trade,
travel and, tourism at immense cost to both countries owing to stopping
trade of $1.7 billion in goods and services that daily crossed the border.
It would also have severed the production chains of major U.S. corpora-
tions. Trump urged DHS Acting Secretary McAleenan to go ahead and
close it, promising to pardon him if he were later faced with legal prob-
lems. Frustrated by Trump’s policies, McAleenan resigned in October
2019 and was replaced by Acting Secretary Chad Wolf. According to a
former administration official, Trump promised to pardon others whom
committed illegal acts to keep out immigrants, a promise that would be
illegal.48
Simultaneously, Trump deployed troops to the border, possibly
violating the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 that prohibited using the
armed forces (“power or force of the country”) for law enforcement

except as explicitly authorized by the Constitution or an act of Congress.
Marine Commandant General Robert Neller sent a remarkable internal
memo to Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan arguing that
Trump’s action posed an “unacceptable risk to Marine Corps combat
readiness and solvency.” According to a DHS email, troops were being
sent to the Mexican border with California with “the primary purpose”
of improving “the aesthetic appearance” Trump’s wall “by painting it.”49
Although international and U.S. laws required governments to provide
hearings for all asylum-seekers to determine whether their requests were
legitimate, even if they had entered illegally, the president asserted emer-
gency powers to deny asylum to anyone entering the country illegally by
not using official “ports of entry.” The DHS contended that low stan-
dards for claiming a fear of persecution had allowed undocumented aliens
to argue “credible fear,” and then be released pending lengthy hearings.
Trump’s action violated long-standing laws that provided asylum-seeker
status to all those who reached U.S. soil and expressed a fear of perse-
cution, whether or not they had entered illegally, thus denying them due
process, that is, without a judicial hearing. The administration also consid-
ered a proposal to cease using “ports of entry” as asylum processing
centers. If adopted, refugees could only apply for asylum from abroad,
leaving them in the peril they sought to escape. Moreover, DHS agents
in unmarked vehicles illegally transported migrants in Guatemala heading
to the U.S. back to the border with Honduras.
“The law is clear: People can apply for asylum whether or not they’re
at a port of entry, and regardless of their immigration status,” declared an
American Civil Liberties Union official, adding, “The president doesn’t
get to ignore that law, even if he dislikes it.”50 A federal judge barred
enforcement of Trump’s decision: “Whatever the scope of the President’s
authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condi-
tion that Congress has expressly forbidden.”51 Trump’s action, argued
a migration expert, showed, “The more brazen you get, like Trump,
and the more frequent you get, you can easily imagine a norm being
completely torn down,” adding that the president was “taking an ax” to
“one of the strongest norms we’ve got in international law.”52
Moreover, Trump’s decision to cut aid to Central American countries
as punishment for not stopping migrants heading through Mexico to the
U.S. border actually increased that flow. Trump had announced he was
cutting the $500 million in U.S. aid to increase employment and improve
law enforcement in Central America only a day after Secretary Nielsen had
announced a Memorandum of Cooperation with those countries to use
U.S. aid to overcome the causes of migration. Trump also erroneously
declared that Central American governments were “taking our money”
and “doing absolutely nothing” to prevent the migration of their citizens.
“No money goes there anymore,” declared Trump. “We’re giving them
tremendous aid. We stopped payment.”53
Trump’s decision to cut aid ran counter to the policy advocated by
Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who argued that aid
that improved the lives of Central Americans would keep them at home.
Cutting aid was “shooting yourself in the foot” because it addressed
problems of governance and corruption and provided economic oppor-
tunities for those who stayed. Such aid, for example, had begun to help
poor Guatemalan farmers who were moving northward partly owing to
droughts at home and low coffee prices. Aid to improve conditions in
Central America addressed the causes of migration and cutting it increased
those emigrating. Fortunately, the State Department decided to provide
$432 million in projects and grants that had been previously approved.
The number of asylum-seekers again soared in spring 2019, exceeding
America’s capacity to detain them while awaiting a hearing and forcing
immigration officials to release increasing numbers into U.S. cities.
Owing to insufficient facilities and resources, those detained in Mexico
or America were held in deplorable conditions. The immigration issue
heightened tension between the president and the DHS, which Trump
assailed for not resolving the “problem.”
Trump also threatened to sever trade with Mexico if it failed to reduce
migration within a year. Mexico managed to do so by sending its National
Guard to patrol the Guatemalan border. Owing to this and the inten-
sification of America’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, there was a marked
reduction of Central Americans able to reach the U.S. border. Neverthe-
less, in July 2019, Trump’s DHS and Department of Justice announced
that migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. could not do so unless they had
requested asylum in “third” countries, for example, Mexico, El Salvador,
Honduras, or Guatemala, while moving northward. Although Mexico
resisted U.S. efforts that it call itself a “safe third country,” the Trump
administration continued urging it to do so to deny asylum to those who
had failed to seek Mexican asylum first.
The administration also sought to expedite deportations by eliminating
hearings for those who did not have an asylum-court date pending. In
response, the ACLU filed suit against the government, observing, “it is
long-standing federal law that merely transiting through a so-called ‘safe
third country’ is not a basis to categorically deny asylum to refugees who
arrive at our shores.”54 Nevertheless, in September 2019, the Supreme
Court allowed Trump’s policy of refusing asylum to those who had failed
to request asylum from third countries to continue.
Washington signed “safe-third country” agreements with El Salvador,
Honduras, and Guatemala—none “safe”—to allow America to send
asylum-seekers back if they had failed to apply for asylum in those coun-
tries or Mexico. Such agreements and procedural rules were building a
paper wall on the southern border, that was just as cruel and hard as
brick or metal walls. Many Guatemalans opposed the agreement, and
Guatemala’s Constitutional Court ruled that the agreement required
President Jimmy Morales to get the approval of Guatemala’s congress.
Morales’ successor indicated he would not prevent Guatemalans from
emigrating. Nevertheless, Trump’s “safe-third country” policy success-
fully reduced the numbers of asylum-seekers that were forced to remain in
Mexico until their cases were decided. However, in July 2020, a federal
judge ruled against the “safe-third country” policy, eroding the “paper
wall,” and President Biden was determined to terminate the so-called
‘asylum cooperative agreements’ with these countries.
Refugees could also seek protection called “withholding of removal”
or protection under the Convention Against Torture, but both entailed
a higher burden of proof. Seeking that protection threatened the perma-
nent separation of families because anyone who was granted “withholding
of removal” would have no right to petition to be reunited with their
children under the age of 21. They also left no pathway to permanent resi-
dence, which meant those granted this protection would remain in limbo.
“Under this unlawful plan,” declared the ACLU, “immigrants who have
lived here for years would be deported with less due process than people
get in traffic court.”55
Family Separation
One of the appalling consequences of Trump’s efforts to halt Central
American migrants was separating children from their families. By law,
children of asylum-seekers should be sent to ICE facilities until their cases
could be heard, and the HHS should care for unaccompanied children.
However, Trump argued that traffickers used children as pawns to violate
U.S. laws and gain entry to America. According to exit polls after the
2016 presidential election, 64% of those who believed that immigration
was America’s most important issue had voted for Trump, influencing the
administration to announce a “zero tolerance” policy in June 2018 that
entailed arresting all illegal aliens, including those with children. Then
Attorney General Jeff Sessions was cited as declaring, “We need to take
away children,” and “If care about kids, don’t bring them in.” His deputy
added that it did not matter how young they were.56
Children were separated from parents or relatives, who were impris-
oned while awaiting a decision on their status. “If you’re smuggling a
child,” said Sessions, “then we’re going to prosecute you, and that child
will be separated from you, probably, as required by law.”57 Separation
was necessary because the 1997 settlement of the class-action lawsuit,
Flores v. Reno, limited the detention period for minors to twenty days, and
they could not be held in jails like their parents. Stephen Miller forwarded
a plan to allow ICE agents to collect fingerprints and biometric data from
adults seeking to claim their children. The Trump administration claimed
that some parents employed smugglers to send children into America,
and the ICE could then screen adults for criminal behavior. If adults were
deemed ineligible to take custody of children, the ICE could arrest and
deport them.
The Trump administration’s problem was that Flores did not apply
to parents, leaving immigration officials the unpalatable choice between
releasing the whole family (“catch and release”), after which many disap-
peared, or releasing children while continuing to imprison parents. If
parents remained in prison, children would be supervised at a govern-
ment facility, and the entire family would receive an order of ‘expedited
removal’ and separated. Children would remain in the care of HHS, and
parents would be in a marshal’s custody while the family awaited depor-
tation. This meant children would likely be detained for over 20 days,
violating Flores. However, in June 2020 another judge restored the 20-
day limit that migrant children could be held in one of America’s three
family-detention centers.
Trump claimed he was only carrying out the law by enforcing “zero
tolerance” of asylum-seekers, insisting that only Congress could remedy
the situation. Secretary Nielsen denied that the policy existed at all,
despite video coverage of what was taking place, including weeping
children in ‘baby jails,’ the facilities holding separated children. At an
emotional press briefing, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders falsely
insisted Trump was carrying out the law. One journalist responded,
“There is no law that requires families to be separated at the border,” and
another said, “They come to the border with nothing, and you throw chil-
dren in cages. You’re a parent. You’re a parent of young children. Don’t
you have any empathy for what they go through?”58 The administration
neither knew where all these children were nor their number. In addi-
tion, a federal court blocked the Trump administration from deporting
unaccompanied migrant children with no hearing owing to the pandemic.
Later congressional hearings into the consequences of “zero toler-
ance” revealed how disastrous it had been for separated children. It had
also been used a year before it was announced, and there was no plan
about how to reunite families. House Oversight Committee chair Elijah
E. Cummings (D-Md.) described the policy as “government-sponsored
child abuse” that would traumatize children. Trump had instituted the
policy to deter migration and provide leverage to force Congress to
tighten immigration regulations and approve funding for the wall he
sought to build on the Mexican border. Aleksander Hemon argued that
the zero-tolerance policy revealed Trump and Miller as borderline fascists.
“Witness Stephen Miller and Donald Trump’s ‘zero tolerance for illegal
immigration’ policy. Fascism’s central idea…is that there are classes of
human beings who deserve diminishment and destruction because they’re
for some reason (genetic, cultural, whatever) inherently inferior to ‘us.’
…You know: they are contaminating our nation/race; they are destroying
our culture; we must do something about them or perish.”59
Under intense negative publicity, Trump signed an executive order
a month after Session’s announcement, which he had earlier denied he
could legally do, to end the policy and reunite families awaiting a decision
on asylum. This created chaos, and, over a month after a court deadline
for reuniting families, almost five-hundred children remained separated
from their parents. After family separation had supposedly ceased, U.S.
officials were required to release refugee families until they received a final
hearing.
Despite Trump’s executive order putatively caused by an “infestation”
of migrants, HHS still had 12,800 minors in custody in September 2018,
the highest number to date. As late as November 2020, a parent of
545 children had not been found. As the number of Central Americans
seeking asylum soared in 2019, Trump argued on Fox News that ending
family separation had been a disaster. “Now you don’t get separated, and
while that sounds nice and all, what happens is you have literally you have
ten times as many families coming up because they’re not going to be

separated from their children.”60 Trump also reconsidered re-imposing
“zero intolerance” despite its unpopularity.
A Border Crisis
According to Russ Voight, Acting Director of the Office of Manage-
ment and Budget, emergency action was required to reunite families.
Vought declared, “The migration flow and the resulting humanitarian
crisis is rapidly overwhelming the ability of the Federal Government to
respond.”61 Although Trump denied he was renewing family separation,
the administration was considering a policy of “binary choice” under
which migrant parents would have to choose staying in detention with
their children or allowing them to be separated and placed with alternative
caregivers.
The separation of families continued long after Trump claimed to have
rescinded it. The HHS inspector general claimed that the Trump admin-
istration had separated thousands more children from their parents than
reported. In October 2019, the Justice Department revealed that the
administration had separated 1,556 more children from their parents than
the 2,700 known the previous year. Between September 2018 and 2019,
America detained a record number of minors (76,020), an increase of
over 52% from the previous year, and Mexico detained 40,500 minors
during the same period. Overall, Border and Protections Agents detained
a record 970,000 migrants during this period.
The situation at the border, as Trump noted when asking Congress
for additional funding, was “a crisis.” In early 2019, the number of
asylum-seekers arrested soared to over 100,000 in March and April and
in May to 144,200, the largest number in thirteen years. “Our appre-
hension numbers are off the charts,” Carla Provost, chief of the Border
Patrol, declared. “We cannot address this crisis by shifting more resources.
It’s like holding a bucket under a faucet. It doesn’t matter how many
buckets we have if we can’t turn off the flow.”62 However, the effort
to stem migration from Central America reduced that number for each
of the ensuing six months. Nevertheless, in October 2020 the number
of migrants arrested at the border jumped to 69,237, 21% higher than
September and the highest one-month total since February 2019.
Although previously asylum-seekers, who tried to enter the U.S. ille-
gally, had been released from detention until a final hearing, in April
2019, Attorney General William Barr declared that asylum-seekers could

be imprisoned and denied bail, perhaps for years, to await a final decision
about whether they could remain in America even though they had estab-
lished “a credible fear of persecution or torture” in their initial screening.
This meant that thousands of people might be unlawfully jailed. To
prevent those on bail from disappearing, the administration’s decision
meant that asylum-seekers might be held indefinitely. By August 2019,
U.S. immigration courts had a backlog of over a million cases, and the
administration was giving judges a one-year deadline to decide each and
setting each judge a quota of 700 cases annually, many held in tent courts.
Trump’s harsh rhetoric had actually increased the flow of asylum-seekers,
notably among those whom smugglers warned that Trump was about to
shut down all immigration, and, if they wanted to go to America, they
should leave immediately.
In July 2019, a federal judge ruled that indefinite detention was uncon-
stitutional because seeking asylum was not a crime and “plaintiffs have
established a constitutionally-protected interest in their liberty, a right to
due process, which includes a hearing before a neutral decision maker
to assess the necessity of their detention and a likelihood of success on
the merits of that issue.”63 The judge ordered the Trump administration
to grant individual case reviews to over 1,000 asylum-seekers who had
been jailed for lengthy periods. Thereafter, the administration began to
test a process called Prompt Asylum Claim Review to review and deport
asylum-seekers within 10 days, effectively denying due process.
To deal with the backlog of cases, Attorney General Sessions
announced an increase of immigration judges by fifty percent. Also, a
federal judge ruled in January 2019 against adding a question about citi-
zenship to America’s 2020 census, which would have reduced response
rates in immigrant communities.
Trump’s Wall
Among Trump’s campaign tweets were “I want nothing to do with
Mexico other than to build an impenetrable WALL and stop them from
ripping off U.S. Secure our border now,” and “Build a massive wall &
deduct the costs from Mexican foreign aid!”64 Trump thus argued that
Mexico would pay for the wall. However, a PRRI poll in September
2018 indicated most Americans opposed building such a wall. In 2020,
the Trump administration extended its idea of a wall to include a “Buoy
Barrier System” that would prevent illegal migrants from crossing the Rio
Grande where effective shoreline barriers could not be built.
Trump’s desire for a wall to keep out migrants, his signature issue,
ignored that most Latin Americans seeking entry to the U.S. were legal
asylum-seekers. Nevertheless, he refused to compromise. After the 2018
elections, he was angered when the new Democrat congressional majority
would not provide funding for his wall. “A wall,” declared House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi, “is an immorality,” and “it’s a wall between reality and
his constituents, his supporters.”65 The president was so determined to
get his wall that he announced he would take responsibility for closing
the government unless the House of Representatives appropriated $5.7
billion to begin building it. Democrats in Congress refused to do so,
and Trump ordered a partial government shutdown, which lasted 35 days
(December 22, 2018–January 25, 2019), the longest in U.S. history. One
consequence was a delay in processing the cases of asylum-seekers. In his
effort to end the shutdown, Trump sought to require Central American
refugees under the age of eighteen to apply for asylum in their own coun-
tries, a requirement contrary to refugee norms. By law, anyone whose life
was at risk in their own country can seek asylum elsewhere and their case
must be assessed.
Trying to evade the need for congressional approval, Trump declared
an emergency at the border in early 2019, “I didn’t need to do this,” he
said. “But I’d rather do it much faster,”66 thereby unintentionally admit-
ting there was no emergency. Both houses of Congress voted to rescind
Trump’s declaration of emergency, but by insufficient majorities to over-
turn his veto. Trump demanded that officials ignore environmental issues
and seize necessary land on the border, whether legally or not. He told
them that voters expected him to build a wall, and it had to be completed
by the 2020 election, even using unconstitutional powers.
Trump’s used his declaration of national emergency to remove $3.6
billion in funding from 127 Defense Department projects in America and
overseas in February 2019. Wrote one correspondent acidly that Trump’s
justification of his wall involved national security was “a barrel of bunkum
and balderdash served with generous helpings of hogwash.”67 In July
2019, the Supreme Court approved the reallocation of $2.5 billion in
Department of Defense anti-drug funding for the wall, and, in September,
Trump diverted $3.6 billion from U.S. military construction projects
despite Pentagon concerns about the consequences of delayed funding.
In December, a federal judge ruled that the administration could not
divert the funds for building the wall, but, ten days later, a federal appeals
court granted a stay of the judge’s order, thereby freeing funds for the
wall. In February 2020, Trump sought to divert $3.8 billion from the
defense budget for his wall including $1.6 billion for Overseas Contin-
gency Operations and $2.2 billion from new aircraft, ships, and army
vehicles. However, in June 2020, another appeals court ruled that the
administration needed congressional approval to divert funds from the
Pentagon, sending the issue again to the Supreme Court.
In August 2019, the administration took another step, announcing it
would deprive even legal immigrants of public programs, notably food
stamps and government-subsidized housing, and admit only immigrants
able to support themselves. Thereafter, the administration announced it
would only provide visas or green cards to immigrants who had medical
insurance or sufficient funds to pay for medical care. The Supreme Court
set aside injunctions on the “wealth test,” called the public charge rule,
and allowed it to go forward until a final ruling on its merits, On this
basis, application of the regulation was suspended by a federal court in
November 2020, and the judge cited an earlier ruling by a U.S. Court of
Appeals that found Trump’s interpretation of the public charge statute
did “violence to the English language and the statutory context.”68
Nevertheless, as litigation continued, fear of not getting green cards and
deportation in U.S. immigration communities led thousands of families to
be dropped off the benefit rolls, even if their American-citizen children
could use such programs, thus increasing poverty and hunger. Moreover,
if ultimately upheld, reversing the regulation would prove difficult for the
Biden administration.
During a discussion of this change in regulations the acting director
of USCIS was asked, “Would you also agree that Emma Lazarus’s words
etched on the Statue of Liberty — ‘Give me your tired, your poor’ — are
also part of the American ethos?” He uttered his version: “Give me your
tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will
not become a public charge.”69 Thereafter, Trump issued an executive
order requiring state and local governments to agree in writing before
migrants could enter their jurisdictions, allowing states and cities to ban
one another’s refugees.
Conclusions
“The immediate cause of rising support for authoritarian, xenophobic
movements,” wrote Ronald Ingelhart, “is a reaction against immigration
(and, in the United States rising racial equality)… Cultural and demo-
graphic shifts are making older voters feel as though they no longer live
in a country where they were born.”70 However, stricter rules on migra-
tion in the West increased one modest aspect of globalization, that is,
the purchase by the wealthy of citizenship and passports other than those
of their own country. About a hundred countries, many small with few
resources, offered “residence by investment” that could reduce an individ-
ual’s taxes and provide safe havens. Washington introduced EB-5 visas in
1990, requiring an investment of at least $1million or $500,000 invested
in areas of high unemployment. A lobbying group, the Investment Migra-
tion Council, estimated that about 5,000 wealthy investors gained U.S.
citizenship this way annually.
Although Trump’s wall was not completed during his term, it
metaphorically assailed socio-cultural globalization as well as attacking
norms regarding the treatment of refugees. The president falsely claimed
that this barrier was necessary to maintain U.S. sovereignty. However, the
promise of a wall symbolized Trump’s tacit pledge to his white supporters
to erode America’s multiracial society. As a pro-Trump evangelical leader
explained, “For white evangelicals who see the sun setting on white
Christian dominance in the country, the wall is a powerful metaphor”
because the world is “a dangerous battleground” between “chosen
insiders and threatening outsiders.”71 Trump, Orbȧn, Salvini, and other
populists were cut from the same cloth, refusing to acknowledge asylum as
a human right. Trump epitomized anti-immigration cruelty. His policies
undermined virtually every aspect of immigration—asylum protection,
wealth requirements on immigrants including spouses and relatives of
citizens, separating families, punishing businesses that relied on immi-
grant workers, and threatening mass deportations. Green cards issued
abroad after 2016 plummeted 25%. Although America and Europe
erected impediments to immigration, demography and economic reality
suggested that leaders will have little choice but to use migrant workers,
including those in caregiving for aging populations or meatpacking to
those with skills in technology, science, and medicine.
In April 2020, pointing to the coronavirus, the president signed an
executive order suspending the issuance of green cards for 60 days to
foreigners seeking to live in America. Although Trump agreed to admit-

ting seasonal agricultural workers and professional workers on temporary
visas when confronted by angry employers, Stephen Miller viewed this as
a step in a broader plan to turn off the faucet of migrant labor. Miller also
was involved with the HHS refugee office that began to review whether
to allow undocumented adults to take custody of refugee children. Miller
believed that this rewarded illegal adults and began considering a resump-
tion of fingerprinting adults to whom such children were released, thereby
persuading them not to take custody of the children because it might
facilitate their deportation. Nevertheless, the number of migrants seeking
entry from Mexico more than doubled between April and July 2020
owing to economic woes, and the administration, using a private firm
MVM Inc., resorted to hotel chains to detain children and families,
without safeguards.
In June 2020, despite the opposition of hi-tech companies, Trump
suspended H1B visas and new green cards for highly skilled workers for
the rest of the year, exempting health care professionals and farmworkers.
Many migrants were unable to work in America during this period. Simul-
taneously, USCIS’s contract ended with the company that had printed
green cards. Although USCIS was supposed to do the printing, its “finan-
cial situation” prompted a hiring freeze. Consequently, 50,000 green
cards and 75,000 employment authorization documents promised to legal
immigrants were left unprinted. Legal residents awaiting these documents
were liable to deportation because they could not prove they were legally
in America. Trump also issued a rule, denying asylum-seekers entry to
America if they posed “threats from the spread of pandemics.” Owing
to the need for skilled migrants in a declining economy, in July 2020,
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and trade associations, including the
National Association of Manufacturers, the National Retail Federation
and TechNet, sought an injunction to stop the Departments of State and
Homeland Security from restricting various worker visas.
Trump seemed unaware that America’s 2019 National Intelligence
Strategy described the danger posed by increasing migration as “straining
the capacities of governments” and “further fracturing of societies, poten-
tially creating breeding grounds for radicalization.” The Trump adminis-
tration sought to hide the cruelty of its migration policies and objected
to showing the documentary “Immigration Nation” about ICE before
the 2020 election. It demanded deletions because it had included officers
illegally entering an apartment, mocking those whom it arrested, lying to
gain entry, demanding more arrests, and pulling a weeping three-year-old

boy from his father.
Is socio-cultural globalization in retreat? By 2021, Trump’s wall had
not been completed, and, shortly before the 2020 election, soaring
numbers of asylum-seekers on the Mexican border caused the highest
number of arrests in September since 2006. In January 2021, a federal
judged ruled against the Trump administration’s further restricting
asylum applications. The Schengen zone remained intact in Europe.
Trump tried to reinvent his nonsense, declaring the wall need not be
“concrete,” but could be “steel” because America’s steel companies need
business. Moreover, Merkel’s effort to integrate migrants in Germany had
largely succeeded by 2020, indicating that her approach was superior to
Trump’s.
Overall, public opinion in major countries still regarded immigration
as beneficial and destination countries increasingly believed immigrants
strengthened their societies and did not share the fear of migrants
that is the core of populism. Moreover, after assuming office, President
Biden moved quickly to liberalize U.S. immigration policies, seeking to
reverse the ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries, and
end funding Trump’s border wall and cease excluding undocumented
immigrants from the census. He also sought to provide undocumented
aliens with an eight-year path to citizenship, allow “dreamers” to apply
immediately for a green card, substitute technology for migration offi-
cials to manage U.S. borders, and eliminate the “1776 Commission”
that that would “restor[e] patriotic education” about U.S. history, which
many historians had assailed as politically divisive. The new president also
ordered an100-day moratorium on deportations that the courts over-
turned. Despite such reforms, the consequences of global warming are
likely to increase environmental migration dramatically in the coming
decades.
Notes
1. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of
World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998).
2. Cited in Josh Dawsey, “Trump Derides Protections for Immigrants from
‘Shithole’ Countries,” Washington Post, January 12, 2018, https://www.
washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-attacks-protections-for-immigrants-
from-shithole-countries-in-oval-office-meeting/2018/01/11/bfc0725c-
f711-11e7-91af-31ac729add94_story.html?undefined=&utm_term=.de9
420e29346&wpisrc=nl_politics&wpmm=1.
3. Cited in Eugene Scott, “In Reference to ‘Animals,’ Trump Evokes an
Ugly History of Dehumanization,” Washington Post, May 16, 2018,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/05/16/tru
mps-animals-comment-on-undocumented-immigrants-earn-backlash-his
torical-comparisons/?utm_term=.f8477b08e7d4.
4. Cited in Patrice Dupuy, “Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary
Claims She Doesn’t Know If Norway Is Mostly White,” January 16,
2018, http://www.newsweek.com/kirstjen-nielsen-trump-norway-white-
782678.
5. Amy Chua, “Tribal World: Group Identity Is All,” Foreign Affairs 97:4
(July/August 2018), p. 25.
6. Robert Kagan, “’America First’ Has Won,” New York Times, September
23, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/23/opinion/trump-
foreign-policy-america-first.html?emc=edit_th_180924&nl=todaysheadli
nes&nlid=43321680924.
7. Greg Miller, Julie Vitkovskaya, and Reuben Fischer-Baum, “’This
Deal Will Make Me Look Terrible’: Full Transcripts of Trump’s
Calls with Mexico and Australia,” Washington Post, August 3,
2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/politics/austra
lia-mexico-transcripts/?utm_term=.b14856a32ba0.
8. Susan E. Rice, “The Real Trump Foreign Policy: Stoking the G.O.P.
Base,” New York Times, May 5, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/
2019/05/05/opinion/trump-venezuela-cuba.html?wpisrc=nl_daily202&
wpmm=1.
9. Philip Bump, “The Surge in Migrants Seeking Asylum, Explained,”
Washington Post, April 9, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/
politics/2019/04/09/surge-migrants-seeking-asylum-explained/?utm_
term=.991278eec478.
10. Annex Table 1, UNCHR, Global Trends 2019, June 18, 2020, https://
www.unhcr.org/en-us/statistics/unhcrstats/5ee200e37/unhcr-global-tre
nds-2019.html.
11. Cited in ibid.
12. Amy Chua, “Tribal World: Group Identity Is All,” Foreign Affairs 97:4
(July/August 2018), pp. 30, 32.
13. Cited in Michael D. Shear and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “Trump Slashes
Refugee Cap to 18,000, Curtailing U.S. Role as Haven,” New York
Times, September 26, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/
26/us/politics/trump-refugees.html?campaign_id=60&instance_id=0&
regi_id=4332168ing-news.
14. Mckay Coppins, “The Outrage Over Family Separation Is Exactly What
Stephen Miller Wants,” The Atlantic, June 19, 2018, https://www.theatl
antic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/stephen-miller-family-separation/
563132/?wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
15. Cited in Nahal Toosi, “Inside Stephen Miller’s Hostile Takeover If Immi-
gration Policy,” Politico, August 29, 2018, https://www.politico.com/
story/2018/08/29/stephen-miller-immigration-policy-white-house-
trump-799199.
16. Cited in Emily Cochran, “Pushing for Tighter Borders, Trump Asks Jews
for Support,” New York Times, April 6, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/
2019/04/06/us/politics/trump-jews-border-asylum.html.
17. Ariana A. Berengaut and Antony J. Blinken, “Trump’s Hugh Mistake on
Refugees,” New York Times, September 11, 2018, https://www.nytimes.
com/2018/09/11/opinion/syria-trump-refugees-quotas-discrimination.
html?wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
18. Cited in Farhad Manjoo, “Why Silicon Valley Wouldn’t Work Without
Immigrants,” New York Times, February 8, 2017, https://www.nyt
imes.com/2017/02/08/technology/personaltech/why-silicon-valley-
wouldnt-work-without-immigrants.html.
19. Cited in Patrick Kingsley, “Orban Encourages Mothers in Hungary to
Have 4 or More Babies,” New York Times, February 11, 2019, https://
www.nytimes.com/2019/02/11/world/europe/orban-hungary-babies-
mothers-population-immigration.html.
20. Cited in Colum Lynch and Robbie Gramer, “Trump and Allies Seek End
to Refugee Status for Millions of Palestinians,” Foreign Policy, August
3, 2018, https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/03/trump-palestinians-isr
ael-refugees-unrwaand-allies-seek-end-to-refugee-status-for-millions-of-pal
estinians-united-nations-relief-and-works-agency-unrwa-israel-palestine-
peace-plan-jared-kushner-greenb/?wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
21. Cited in Tal Kopan, “Donald Trump: Syrian Refugees a ‘Trojan Horse’,”
CNN , November 16, 2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/11/16/pol
itics/donald-trump-syrian-refugees/index.html.
22. Cited in Em Steck and Andrew Kaczynski, “German Ambassador Pick
Disparaged Immigrants and Refugees, Called fro Martial Law at US-
Mexico Border,” CNN , August 4, 2020, https://edition.cnn.com/
2020/08/04/politics/kfile-douglas-macgregor-german-ambassador-
pick/?utm_campaign=wp_the_daily_202&utm_medium=email&utm_sou
rce=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_daily202.
23. Cited in Alexander Burns, “Revised Travel Ban Is Blocked Nationwide,”
New York Times, March 15, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/
03/15/us/politics/trump-travel-ban.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=
Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region&
region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news.
24. Cited in Nolan D. McCaskill, “Trump: Muslim Ban Would Have

Stopped 9/11,” Politico, August 3, 2016, https://www.politico.com/
story/2016/08/donald-trump-muslim-ban-september11-226637?wpi
src=nl_powerup&wpmm=1.
25. Cited in Scott Shane, Matthew Rosenberg, and Eric Lipton, “Trump
Pushes Dark View of Islam to Center of U.S. Policy-Making,” New York
Times, February 1, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/01/us/
politics/donald-trump-islam.html.
26. Cited in Scott Shane, Matthew Rosenberg, and Eric Lipton, “Trump
Pushes Dark View of Islam to Center of U.S. Policy-Making,” New York
Times, February 1, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/01/us/
politics/donald-trump-islam.html.
27. Robert Zaretsky, “How French Secularism Became Fundamentalist,”
Foreign Policy, April 7, 2016, https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/07/
the-battle-for-the-french-secular-soul-laicite-charlie-hebdo/.
28. Cited in Lorenzo Vidino, “Emmanuel Macron’s War on Islam Is Europe’s
Future,” Foreign Policy, February 24, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/
2020/02/24/emmanuel-macrons-war-on-islamism-is-europes-future/.
29. Cited in Steven Erlanger and Katrin Bennhold, “For Europe, Cutting
the Flow of Migrants Challenges Basic Ideals,” New York Times, July
5, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/world/europe/mig
rants-merkel-kurz-austria.html?emc=edit_th_180706&nl=todaysheadli
nes&nlid=43321680706.
30. Josef Joffe, “The Greatest Miscalculation of Angela’s Merkel’s Career,”
Washington Post, June 21, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opi
nions/the-greatest-miscalculation-of-angela-merkels-career/2018/06/
21/21298284-7572-11e8-805c-4b67019fcfe4_story.html?utm_term=.
89dc2f370676&wpisrc=nl_ideas&wpmm=1.
31. Cited in Griff Witte, “As Merkel Holds on Precariously, Trump Tweets
Germans ‘Are Turning Against Their Leadership’ on Migration,” Wash-
ington Post, June 18, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/
europe/merkels-government-faces-internal-rebellion-over-immigration-
in-germany/2018/06/18/69efe4e6-70bc-11e8-b4d8-eaf78d4c544c_
story.html?utm_term=.22072c737138.
32. Cited in Gaia Pianigiani, Jason Horowitz, and Raphael Minder, “Italy’s
New Populist Government Turns Away Ship With 600 Migrant Aboard,”
New York Times, June 11, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/
06/11/world/europe/italy-migrant-boat-aquarius.html?emc=edit_th_1
33. Cited in Craig Spencer, “What Populists Get Wrong About Migration,”
Politico, June 7, 2018, https://www.politico.eu/article/populists-wrong-
about-migration-matteo-salvini-italy-mediterranean/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=
nl_todayworld.
34. Cited in David Nakamura and Anne Gearan, Washington Post, July
30, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-says-
head-of-europes-lone-fully-populist-government-is-doing-a-fantastic-job/
2018/07/30/09cad232-940d-11e8-80e1-00e80e1fdf43_story.html?
utm_term=.b5ee17848a87&wpisrc=nl_politics-pm&wpmm=1.
35. Cited in Walter Mayr, “The Dangerous New Face of Salvini’s Italy,”
Spiegel, December 12, 2018, http://www.spiegel.de/international/eur
ope/matteo-salvini-has-emboldened-fascists-in-italy-a-1243164.html.
36. Cited in Jason Horowitz, “In Matteo Salvini’s Italy, Good Is Bad
and ‘Do-Gooders’ Are the Worst,” New York Times, April 12, 2019,
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/world/europe/italy-do-goo
ders-buonisti-matteo-salvini.html?emc=edit_th_190415&nl=todaysheadli
nes&nlid=43321680415.
37. Cited in Jim Yardley, “With No Unified Refugee Strategy, Euro-
peans Fall Back on Old Alliances,” New York Times, February 25,
2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/world/europe/with-no-
unified-refugee-strategy-europeans-fall-back-on-old-alliances.html.
38. Henry Porter, “Terrorism, Migrants, and Crippling Debt: Is This the End
of Europe?” Vanity Fair, February 2016, http://www.vanityfair.com/
news/2016/01/europe-terrorism-migrants-debt-crisis.
39. Standard Eurobarometer 89 Spring 2018,
“Public Opinion in the European Union,”
file:///C:/Users/mansbach/Downloads/eb_89_first_en.pdf, p. 6.
40. “READ: Text of the European Union Migration Deal,” CNN , June 29,
2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/29/europe/eu-miggration-deal-
text-intl/index.html.
41. Cited in Philip Rucker, “’A Blowtorch to the Tinder’: Stoking Racial
Tensions Is a Feature of Trump’s Presidency,” Washington Post, June 20,
2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-blowtorch-to-the-tin
der-stoking-racial-tensions-is-a-feature-of-trumps-presidency/2018/06/
20/e95e71dc-73d9-11e8-805c-4b67019fcfe4_story.html?utm_term=.cea
7b39982e7&wpisrc=nl_politics-pm&wpmm=1.
42. Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National
Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), p. 18.
43. Cited in Kevin Sieff and Mary Beth Sheridan, “The U.S. Sent Central
American Asylum Seekers to Guatemala to Seek Refuge. None Were
Granted Asylum, Report Says,” Washington Post, January 16, 2021,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/asylum-mig
rants-trump-guatemala/2021/01/15/aeae4b84-56bc-11eb-a08b-f1381e
f3d207_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&
utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.
washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F2e956af%2F600314e79d2fda0efbb
2a324%2F596b51d8ae7e8a44e7d58086%2F47%2F70%2F600314e79d
2fda0efbb2a324.
44. Cited in Katie Reilly, “Here Are All the Times Donald Trump Insulted
Mexico,” Time, August 31, 2016, https://time.com/4473972/donald-
trump-mexico-meeting-insult/.
45. Cited in “Migrant Caravan: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?”
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46. Cited in Gregory Porte and Alan Gomez, “Trump Ramps Up Rhetoric on
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47. Cited in Joshua Partlow and Nick Miroff, “Deal with Mexico Paves Way
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66. Cited in Aaron Blake, “’I Did Not Need to Do This’: Trump Just
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67. Peter Bergen, “There Is No National Emergency,” CNN , February
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68. Cited in Miriam Jordan, “Trump’s ‘Public Charge’ Immigration
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public-charge.html.
69. Cited in Ron Charles, “Don’t Let the Trump Administration Vandalize
Lady Liberty’s Inspiring Message,” Washington Post, August 14, 2019,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/dont-let-the-
trump-administration-vandalize-lady-libertys-inspiring-message/2019/
08/14/68adba46-bea8-11e9-9b73-fd3c65ef8f9c_story.html?wpisrc=nl_
most&wpmm=1.
70. Inglehart, “The Age of Insecurity,” p. 20.
71. Cited in Greg Sargent, “The Walls Around Trump Are Crumbling.
Evangelicals May Be His Last Resort,” Washington Post, January 2,
2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/02/walls-
around-trump-are-crumbling-evangelicals-may-be-his-last-resort/?utm_
term=.12fd9c320f30&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1.
Questions
Multiple Choice
1. Which of the following are entailed in Socio-Cultural Globaliza-
tion? (choose one)
a. Cross-border personal contacts
b. The size of the resident foreign population
c. Cross-border information flows
d. All the above
2. President Trump’s controversial and unsuccessful attempt to end
the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (known as DACA)
would have removed protections for which of the following?
(Select best answer)
a. Children born in the United States to undocumented
immigrants
b. A group of undocumented immigrants brought illegally
into the United States as children
c. Children currently being brought into the United States
illegally.
d. Families who immigrated to the United States legally.
3. Which choices is False regarding economic immigrants?
a. Countries hold no obligation to accept them
b. They consist of only unskilled and uneducated immi-
grants
c. They often fill needs or jobs that a country’s citizens are
unwilling to take
d. They are likely to increase in numbers in the future due to

overpopulation, environmental stress in poor countries, and
more.
4. What term do people less opposed to migrants who enter a country
without permission call those migrants?
a. Economic Immigrants
b. Illegal Immigrants
c. Undocumented Immigrants
d. Criminals
5. In Article 33 of the Refugee Convention, what does the principle
of “non-refoulement” say countries must do
a. They must accept asylum-seekers if their fears of perse-
cution are found to be legitimate
b. They may turn away refugees of countries without needing
a reason
c. They must accept asylum-seekers that cannot be proven to
be a financial burden.
d. Deny refugees of countries of that harbor terrorist.
6. What has America’s Supreme Court ruled makes refugees fear
“well-founded.”
a. It is more likely than not that they will experience persecu-
tion
b. There is 10 percent chance, they will face persecution
c. They are or have experienced persecution
d. They could in theory experience persecution
7. In 1980, the U.S. resettled more than 200,000 refugees. In 2017,
how many refugees did the U.S. admit?
a. 250,000
b. 175,000
c. 110,000
d. 33,000
8. Globally, what type of migrants play an important economic role
in agriculture?
a. Economic
b. High Skilled
c. Seasonal
d. Legal
9. What country became home to the largest amount of Syrian
refugees?
a. Turkey
b. France
c. Germany
d. U.S.
10. In the Netherlands, migrants who entered for a lengthy period
of time and were between eighteen and state pension age were
obliged to do what?
a. Join the military
b. Learn Dutch
c. Pay an annual fee
d. Own Dutch property
11. In 2015, the largest number of EU asylum applications were made
in what country?
a. Germany
b. U.K.
c. Hungary
d. France
12. How many undocumented immigrants live in the U.S.?
a. 1.5 million
b. 4.8 million
c. 10.7 million
d. 22 million
13. What did the Trump administration cut that according to five
former commanders of U.S. Southern Command was crucial to
addressing the causes of migration?
a. The budget of ICE
b. The EB-5 Visa Program
c. Funding for a southern border wall
d. Aid for Central America
14. Which of these occurred as a consequence of the Trump adminis-

tration’s efforts to stop Central American migrants from entering
the U.S.?
a. Family Separation
b. Better living conditions for migrants seeking asylum
c. Economic Upturn in Central America
d. Construction of a wall across the entirety of the US-Mexico
border
15. What court decision, that limited the detention period for minors
to twenty days and ensured they could not be held in jails like their
parents?
a. Flores v. Terrell County
b. Flores v. Reno
c. United States v. Lopez
d. Shaw v. Reno
16. In August 2019, the Trump administration gave immigration how
long to make a decision on asylum-seekers cases?
a. 6 months
b. One year
c. Two years
d. Five years
17. In July 2019, a federal judge ruled that indefinite detention was
unconstitutional because of what?
a. It was unduly cruel
b. Punishment cannot be indefinite
c. They did not rule it was unconstitutional
d. Seeking asylum was not a crime
18. To deal with the backlog of cases, Attorney General Sessions
announced an increase of immigration judges by how much?
a. Ten percent
b. Thirty-three percent
c. Fifty percent
d. A hundred percent
19. In response to not getting funding for the border wall, Donald
Trump order a partial government shutdown that lasted how long?
a. One week
b. Fifteen days
c. A month
d. Thirty-five days
20. Which of the following is true?
a. Public opinion in major countries regard immigration
as beneficial
b. Donald Trump’s wall has been fully funded, but not built
c. Donald Trump has successfully completed the border wall
d. The Schengen zone no longer exist
True or False
1. True or False? Refugees by definition have already legally or
illegally entered the countries they seek asylum.
True
2. True or False? Only about 50 percent of asylum-seekers succeed in
remaining permanently in America.
False, only 20 percent of asylum-seekers succeed in
remaining permanently
3. True or False? America has the largest number of foreign-born
residents in the world.
True
4. True or False? America’s population now has the highest
percentage of foreign-born residents than at any time since 1910.
True
5. True or False? Soft power is decreased by admitting refugees who
are victims of persecution in their own countries.
False, soft power is increased
6. True or False? There is an incentive to hire undocumented aliens,

especially for low-paying jobs in fruit picking or meatpacking.
True
7. True or False? In 2018, Trump moved the U.S. embassy in Israel
from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.
False, it was moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem
8. True or False? A report by the DHS revealed that citizenship was
a poor indicator of potential terrorism.
True
9. True or False? 2018 Eurobarometer poll found that national debt
was “seen as the most important issue facing the EU in 21 Member
States
False, Immigration.
10. True or False? Over an eighth of the Venezuelan population
left their country between 2016 and November 2019 owing to
human-rights abuses and the collapse of the country’s economy
resulting from the policies of President Nicolás Maduro.
True
11. True or False? White supremacists threaten more terrorism in
America than do refugees.
True
12. True or False? Through the Migrant Protection Protocols
program, also known as the “Remain in Mexico” Program, 2,000
of the roughly 10,000 initially completed cases under the program
resulted in asylum.
False, only 11 did
13. True or False? International and U.S. laws do not require the
government to provide hearings for all asylum-seekers to determine
whether their requests were legitimate.
False, they do
14. True or False? According to exit polls after the 2016 presidential
election, 64 percent of those who believed that immigration was
America’s most important issue had voted for Trump.
True
15. True or False? The “zero tolerance” policy ended when Trump
signed an executive order to end the policy and reunite families
awaiting a decision on asylum.
True
16. True or False? President Trump could not legally sign an executive
order to end the “zero tolerance” policy.
False, Trump falsely claimed he could not legally sign an
executive order
17. True or False? The separation of families continued long after
Trump claimed to have rescinded it.
True
18. True or False? By August 2019, U.S immigration courts had a
backlog of ten thousand cases
False, it was over a million cases
19. True or False? Because of President Trump’s harsh rhetoric in 2019
the flow or asylum seekers decreased.
False, it increased
20. True or False? Most Americans supporting building a wall between
the U.S. and Mexico.
False
Short Answer
What is the distinction between referring to migrants who come
into the country without permission as illegal aliens as opposed to
referring to them as undocumented migrants?
Typically, those who oppose migration referred to them as

illegal aliens, and those less oppose use the term undocumented
migrants
How does admitting refugees fleeing persecution in their own

countries increase a country’s soft power?
Enhances America’s global standing, can send an important
signal to the world, enables the country to attract the best and
brightest from around the world.
How do a countries demographic factors play into a need for

immigration?
A more developed country will have less people willing to work
in low skilled manual labor jobs. Also, immigration is important
for countries where birthrates have fallen and populations are
aging
How might Islamophobic rhetoric from the leaders of the western

world help with recruitment of additional supporters to the extremist
cause?
It is used to prove the claim to Muslims that the West hates
Islam rather than terrorism
Frustrated by the entry of Central Americans, Trump exploded

in October 2018, declaring “Close the whole thing!” What could
have been the consequences if his advisors had not persuaded him
otherwise?
It would have severed U.S.-Mexican trade, travel and, tourism
at an immense cost to both countries owing to stopping trade
between them of $1.7 billion of goods and services that daily
crossed the border. It would also have severed the production
chains of major U.S. corporations
Why might President Trump’s policy of cutting aid to Central

America as punishment for migrants have the opposite of its intended
effect.
Reducing aid to those countries can increase the amount of
people who leave, because it further disenfranchises the people
of those countries potentially increases crimes while taking away

funding that could be used to fight that crime.
Why were immigrant families separated under the Trump adminis-

tration?
The Trump Administration had a policy of “zero tolerance”
which means they would push to deport undocumented immi-
grants regardless of complicating factors. This allowed children
to be separated from their parents or relatives who were impris-
oned while awaiting a decision on their status.
Why would of adding a question about citizenship to the 2020

census reduced response rates in immigrant communities?
Immigrants in those communities who now reside in the country
without permission would be dissuaded from filling them out,
because of fear of being deported.
How does Donald Trump’s rhetoric regarding immigration help him

appeal to voters?
Many of the voters that tend the strongest to President Trump
see immigrants as stealing their jobs. Also for some older voters,
the cultural and demographic shifts are making feel as though
they no longer live in a country where they were born
What does “residence by investment” mean?

It is the purchase of citizenship and passports of another country
by the very wealthy. In America an example would be the EB-5
visa.
PART IV
Conclusions
CHAPTER 11
The Future of Globalization and the Liberal

Global Order
As noted above, the several dimensions of globalization, though linked,

need not move in the same direction although they tended to do so in
the halcyon years after World War II. We conclude that globalization will
advance after Trump, at least in several of its dimensions. Nationalist-
populism itself was globalized, and the technologies that fostered global-
ization also fostered nationalist-populism. Social media like Facebook, for
example, repeatedly spread ideologies and rumors throughout and among
societies, producing anxieties and dangerous conflicts among subnational
and transnational groups.
In his thoughtful volume, A World in Disarray, Richard Haass
concluded that globalization had created such deep interdependence
among sovereign states that “we no longer have the luxury of viewing
of what goes on in another country as off-limits.”1 Haass also concluded
that, for actors to enjoy legitimacy, they had to accept “sovereign
obligations” in policies toward one another (“realism for an era of glob-
alization”2 ), a claim he illustrated by reference to phenomena such as
climate change (“the quintessential manifestation of globalization”3 ),
cyberspace, and spread of infectious diseases. These regimes would be
established by new forms of multilateral consultation.4 Neither Haass nor
we foresaw the emergence of a global pandemic or the globalization of

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72033-9_11
populism in which key actors fell prey to the antitheses of sovereign obli-
gations. The global economy was devastated by the pandemic and made
worse because of economic nationalism and actors were interdependent.
Although most populists assailed globalization, illiberal states such as
China and Russia benefited from a globalized world and were eager
to join the WTO. They will probably support economic globalization
regardless of the erosion of the liberal order. Their corporations and
state funds have an interest in global trade and investment and the
supply chains. Indeed, China’s vast Belt and Road scheme depended on
extending infrastructure, trade, and even tourism that reduced impedi-
ments to the movement of goods and people. Moreover, globalization
increased the size of informal economies in developing countries that
relied on distribution chains and reduced tax receipts and regulatory
enforcement. Illiberal societies have as much of a stake in curbing
climate changes and supported the Paris accord as well as the multilat-
eral Iran nuclear deal and efforts to denuclearize North Korea. Although
Russian and Chinese societies faced domestic opposition to migrants,
both benefited from unskilled and highly educated migrants whom their
governments sought to attract. Even while defending their sovereignty
and increasing geopolitical involvement globally, globalization served
their interests.
Moreover, political crises and resulting political instability in America
and Great Britain reflected the moribund condition of the leading advo-
cates of the liberal order and were perhaps a prelude to the demise of that
order. Referring to America’s political gridlock regarding former Presi-
dent Trump’s demand for funding a wall on Mexico’s border, reports
that Trump had considered leaving NATO, the British Parliament’s rejec-
tion of former Prime Minister May’s compromise proposal regarding
Brexit, and divisiveness of politics in both leading democracies, James
Hohmann wrote: “The two most important beacons of freedom in the
world are dimming. And just as the seas become more dangerous when
lighthouses go dark, the same is true on the increasingly stormy world
stage. Will January 2019 be remembered as the month that the West came
unmoored? Previous generations had Winston Churchill and Franklin
Roosevelt. Harold Macmillan and John Kennedy. Margaret Thatcher and
Ronald Reagan. In 2019, there is Theresa May and Donald Trump.”5
Ellen Barry and Mark Landler concluded: “Rarely have British and
American politics seemed quite so synchronized as they do in the chilly
dawn of 2019, three years after the victories of Brexit and Donald J.
11 THE FUTURE OF GLOBALIZATION AND THE LIBERAL GLOBAL ORDER 461
Trump upended the two nations’ political establishments. The countries

seem subject to a single ideological weather system—one that pits pro-
globalization elites against a left-behind hinterland.”6 Trump, as Thomas
Wright observed, “slowly and steadily chipped away at the pillars of the
free world and used the rubble to lay the foundations of an illiberal alter-
native.”7 Trump believed that “walls” around states were solutions to
problems. His was a realist Westphalian world, consisting of sovereign
and independent states, engaged in realpolitik. He ignored transnational
politics and collective problems such as climate change, pandemics, or
nuclear proliferation except in terms of relative gains or losses. Those
beliefs necessarily introduced misperceptions and thus conflict in global
politics.
The Political Dimension of Globalization

Donald Trump was an enemy of multilateralism. Indeed, in his book, The
Room Where it Happened, John Bolton quoted Trump as saying in an
August 2019 videoconference about U.S. assistance to Ukraine, “I don’t
give a shit about NATO,”8 before ordering Vice President Pence to call
NATO’s Secretary-General to tell him that NATO should pay Ukraine
$250 million in assistance because the president did not want to alienate
Russian President Putin by providing direct U.S. aid to Ukraine.
Although multilateralism was under attack by Trump, it remained
significant. Hence, as NATO celebrated its 70th anniversary, France and
Germany proposed an Alliance for Multilateralism “to create a network
of countries ready to support multilateralism and cooperate, including
to fight inequality, tackle climate change and address the consequences
of new technologies.”9 The French foreign minister added that the new
group would “show the world what could be the consequences of unilat-
eralism and isolationism enabling nationalism and extremist speeches to
flourish.”10 However, aspects of the liberal order such as democracy and
free market capitalism that had previously been spread by globalization
were being undermined even in democratic societies.
Nationalist-populism showed signs that it had begun to recede. Most
importantly, Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and a last-minute
compromise was reached between the EU and the UK regarding UK-
EU post-Brexit relations. Also, polls suggested that Americans still had
faith in multilateral institutions and agreements. Despite the coronavirus
pandemic, a Pew poll revealed that most Americans agreed that cooper-
ation is a priority for their country. “About six-in-ten (62%) think many
of the problems facing the U.S. can be solved by working with other
countries. Similarly, 61% think the U.S. should consider the interests of
other countries rather than following its own interests alone.”11 Amer-
icans preferred engagement and shared leadership in world affairs, and
most of those polled thought that the coronavirus pandemic increased
the importance of American collaboration with other countries to solve
global issues.
Most Americans also supported economic and political globalization
despite Trump’s nationalist-populism. Thus, 65 percent believed that
globalization, especially the increasing connections of the U.S. economy
with others around the world and international trade, was largely good for
America. In addition, 73 percent supported U.S. involvement in NATO,
and 71 percent believed that Washington should consult with major allies
before making foreign-policy decisions. Majorities agreed that alliances
in Europe (68%), East Asia (59%), and the Middle East (60%) benefited
both the U.S. and its allies or mostly the United States alone. A majority
continued to support coming to the aid of allies and were willing to send
U.S. troops to defend South Korea if it were attacked and supported using
of U.S. troops if Russia invaded a NATO ally, such as Latvia, Lithuania,
or Estonia.12
Similarly, a late 2018 survey also revealed strong U.S. support for polit-
ical globalization and the multilateralism that was its indicator. Some 91
percent believed that it was “more effective for the United States to work
with allies and other countries to achieve its foreign policy goals.” Two-
thirds of respondents also supported “the United States making decisions
with its allies even if it means the United States will sometimes have to go
along with a policy that is not its first choice (66% agree, 32% disagree),”
and that “the United States should be more willing to make decisions
within the United Nations even if it means that the United States will
sometimes have to go along with a policy that is not its first choice.”13
Similarly, most Americans supported U.S. participation in the multilateral
Iran deal (66 percent) and the Paris climate accord.
Unlike Donald Trump, an overwhelming majority thought “admira-
tion (73%) of the United States is more important is more important
than fear (26%).”14 Finally, in a September 2019 poll “seven in 10 Amer-
icans (69%)” agreed that “it would be best for the future of the country to
take an active part in world affairs.”15 All of these reflected appreciation of
America’s global participation and soft power, which had declined precipi-
tously after Trump became president, especially after America’s inability to
cope with COVID-19 and the riots following the brutal death of George
Floyd, an African-American in Minneapolis. People were “stunned about
the effect of incapable leadership, or of polarizing leadership, of not
being able to unify and get the forces aligned so you can address the
problem [of the coronavirus],” declared a vice president of the German
Marshall Fund. “And that, of course, results in a nosedive in how you
view [the United States]. What you’re seeing is a collapse of soft power
of America.”16
The pandemic, of course, had political implications for populism.
“Three of the four largest democracies run by illiberal populists—the
United States, Brazil, and the U.K.—now rank one, two, and three
in deaths from the coronavirus,” observed James Traub. The populist
leaders of those countries sought to minimize the gravity of the pandemic.
Populist leaders, added Traub, denied COVID-19 for the same reasons
they denied climate change: “first, because acknowledging a force beyond
their control might break the spell of omniscience in which they have
bound their followers; and second, because deference to science and
logic undermines the emotional sources of their appeal.”17 Two of those
leaders, Trump and May, were ousted, and Bolsonaro was subjected to
widespread criticism.
Elsewhere, the election of Ekrem Imamoglu as mayor of Istanbul and
a liberal foe of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the defeat of
Greece’s left-wing populists, and the vibrancy of Taiwan’s democracy
were encouraging signs. The electoral victory of a foe of Viktor Orbȧn
as mayor of Budapest and, in Poland, the Law and Justice (PIS) party’s
loss of a majority in the country’s upper house of parliament suggested
that populism may have begun to ebb in Eastern Europe as well. In addi-
tion, massive demonstrations in Hong Kong in support of democracy
and opposition to Chinese repression in the city, and mass anti-regime
protests in Moscow, all in mid-2019, may be harbingers of a reaction to
authoritarian populism. Thus, Peter Pomersantsev argued, “This ability to
find connections and momentum in a fractured landscape is perhaps the
underlying essence of the current protests. The regimes they fight have no
single ideology, united only in their aim to demotivate people and break
up common efforts.”18
The Economic Dimension of Globalization

The growing economic interdependence between America and China
after China joined the WTO, the institutional core of economic globaliza-
tion, has begun to unravel. According to Neil Irwin, President Trump’s
protectionist pressure on U.S. allies in Europe and North America was
merely a prelude to his principal objective. “The ultimate goal” was “to
reset the economic relationship between China and the rest of the world.
It may take time and cause pain in the interim. But the idea is it’s a
multistep process to attain more leverage with which to force China to
allow American companies to sell their goods and operate freely, without
having their technology stolen,”19 and aided Washington in its geopolit-
ical rivalry with Beijing. According to Trump, “When people or countries
come to raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the
privilege of doing so.”20
By contrast, according to an American financial economist, “Play with
fire and threaten the world with tariffs and sanctions, and someday you’re
going to get burned. The economy is clearly losing here. Not only are
factories not coming back to America, the existing companies in the
country are not churning out new jobs.”21 Perhaps, the most signifi-
cant factor argued Gene Sperling, an experienced economic adviser in
the Clinton and Obama administrations, was Trump himself. “The irony
here is that Trump’s erratic, chaotic approach to the economy is prob-
ably the most significant economic risk factor in the world right now….
It’s economic narcissism. It’s economic policy by whim, pride, ego and
tantrum.”22
Trump’s use of sanctions against China and others, including allies, was
harmful to America in the long run. “Two giant powers that once seemed
to be moving closer together are now tearing themselves away from each
other—propelled by both politics and the impact of the global spread of
the coronavirus,” noted sinologist Orville Schell, adding that, “as each
country tries to blame the other for the coronavirus crisis, as the world
becomes starkly aware of supply chains and their vulnerability, and as the
global order shifts tectonically, China and the United States are moving
further and further apart.”23 As Fareed Zakaria argued, the U.S. dollar is
a major source of American influence, allowing Washington to issue debt
in its own currency, without concern for inflation or depreciation, but the
“more Washington abuses its power, the greater the efforts to find some
alternative to the hegemony of the dollar. The Russians and Chinese have
long been trying to find ways to skirt dollar control. Infuriated by the
Iran sanctions, the Europeans are now doing the same.”24
The demand for economic efficiency has made the global economy
more fragile, a fact shown by the coronavirus. Corporate efforts to
control markets forced states to compete vigorously with one another,
fostering economic nationalism. Moreover, in some areas, in a liberal
economic world, suppliers were geographically concentrated, while in
others, firms were forced to rely on a single supplier for necessary compo-
nents. Consequently, supply chains of transnational corporations, a feature
of economic globalization, were eroding, and global trade declined after
2017. The Economist concluded that “the golden age of globalization
may be over,”25 and it was further undermined by U.S. tariffs. Supply
chains were also changing owing to technology and rivalry in supply
chain security, the growing role of services instead of manufacturing, and
political factors such as Sino-American geopolitical rivalry. Supply chains
were also becoming more regional than global, for example, Southeast
Asia.26 However, a compromise had been reached to reduce the potential
economic catastrophe of Brexit.
Although economic interdependence persisted, it exacerbated polit-
ical tensions as on Sino-American relations. According to The Economist ,
“China’s growing tech prowess is putting new strains on globalization,”
and “supply chains, carrying semiconductors from China to devices in
America, actually raise the political stakes” of their trade war. It added,
“Critical infrastructure may contain components from a dozen nations,
require software updates from a provider on one continent and send
streams of real-time data to another.”27 Cyber-espionage and technology
theft also fostered zero-sum perceptions of global trade. In the mean-
time, Trump’s trade wars proved costly. The WTO prediction for growth
in trade of merchandise in 2019 was the lowest since 2009 at the height
of the Great Recession. “Trade conflicts heighten uncertainty, which is
leading some businesses to delay the productivity-enhancing investments
that are essential to raising living standards,” argued the WTO’s director-
general. “Job creation may also be hampered as firms employ fewer
workers to produce goods and services for export.”28
Although The Economist tended to equate globalization as a whole
with its economic dimension (using the term “slowbalisation,” coined
by a Dutch commentator in 2015), when it concluded that globaliza-
tion “has slowed from light speed to a snail’s pace in the past decade,”29
much of this only encompassed by the globalization’s economic dimen-

sion. Hence, that journal reached its conclusion using indicators ranging
from gross capital flows and flows of direct investment (FDI) to trade
in goods and services as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP)
and stock of cross-border bank loans as a share of GDP. The Economist
gave as reasons for this slowdown factors such as higher costs in moving
goods that increase the costs of trade, thereby increasing the relative
attraction of intra-regional trade, even as global trade slowed, and the
shift from production of goods to the growing role of services, which
are difficult to trade. “A Chinese lawyer,” as it noted “is not qualified to
execute wills in Berlin and Texan dentists cannot drill in Manila.”30 Also,
banks were less willing to finance trade owing to the pain of the Great
Recession in 2008; the rate of return from multinational investments had
plummeted; and local firms were increasingly capable of competing with
transnational corporations. Nevertheless, U.S. “manufacturing is under-
going a revival, especially among agile smaller firms and those using
advanced techniques.”31 However, loose fiscal and monetary policy in
many countries fostered economic globalization and stabilized markets.32
This constituted “the fragile backdrop to Mr. Trump’s trade war” in
which the “principle that investors and firms should be treated equally
regardless of nationality is being ditched.”33 Instead of taking steps to
avoid trade wars, “the Trump administration has charged in. Its signa-
ture policy has been a barrage of tariffs, which cover a huge range of
goods, from tyres to edible offal,” and it has “weaponized” the “dollar-
based payments system.”34 Other countries, not surprisingly, retaliated
with higher tariffs, antitrust actions, and regional arrangements, and the
results have been painful for everyone. If the trade wars continued and
FDI remained low, “exports would fall from 28% of world GDP to 23%
over a decade,” which is “equivalent to a third of the proportionate drop
seen between 1929 and 1946, the previous crisis in globalization.”35
Americans still believed in the importance of trade. In May 2018, a
Pew poll found that 56 percent of respondents thought “free trade” a
good thing for the U.S., while only 30 percent thought it was a “bad
thing.”36 Another poll in August 2018 had found that 82 percent of
Americans thought trade was good for the U.S. economy, and 85 percent
answered that it was beneficial to them personally. In addition, 63 percent
had supported NAFTA and 61 percent had supported the Trans-Pacific
Partnership.37 A May 2019 poll found that “a majority expects that Amer-
ican consumers will bear the brunt of the latest round of tariffs on Chinese
goods and they are not particularly hopeful that this policy will bring the
manufacture of those goods back to U.S. soil.” Only 32 percent thought
that tariffs were good for America, while 37 percent thought they were
bad. A majority thought that free trade was beneficial for the U.S.38
Moreover, although populism had spread across the European Union,
Brexit had been put aside, and the EU had concluded the Comprehen-
sive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada that came
into force in 2017 and had signed a historically significant free trade
agreement with four Mercosur countries—Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay,
and Paraguay—in mid-2019.39 “I measure my words carefully when I
say that this is a historical moment,” declared Jean-Claude Juncker, then
president of the European Commission. “In the midst of international
trade tensions, we are sending today a strong signal with our Mercosur
partners that we stand for rules-based trade.”40 Moreover, despite the
Sino-American trade war, financial links between the two continued to
proliferate. Beijing has allowed foreign investors to acquire a greater share
in local firms, and foreign investment in China’s stock and bond markets
has soared.41
However, the negative aspects of free trade, especially as regards
rising China, were becoming better understood. Economists had failed
to recognize the negative economic consequences of economic global-
ization, especially for the industrial middle class in America and Europe
that could not compete with subsidized Chinese firms. Economic glob-
alization had slowed partly in consequence to violations by major states,
including Trump’s America, of free trade norms and U.S.-Chinese rivalry
in high-tech industries. Moreover, as noted earlier, the U.S.-China and
North American trade agreements actually raised barriers to global trade
and rendered it easier for those states involved to “manage” trade instead
of leaving it to open markets. Even worse for the liberal economic order
was the potential demise of the WTO owing to America’s refusal to
add new personnel for WTO panels. “America is deploying new tactics—
poker-style brinksmanship—and new weapons that exploit its role as the
nerve centre of the global economy to block the free flow of goods, data,
ideas and money across borders…. America is also the central node in
the network that underpins globalization. This mesh of firms, ideas and
standards reflects and magnifies American prowess.”42 However, Trump’s
zero-sum perception of trade was likely to pale with Joe Biden’s election
as America’s president.
The Socio-Cultural Dimension of Globalization

More than the economic and political dimensions of globalization, the
socio-cultural dimension had declined in recent years owing to racism
and xenophobia. Indian essayist Pankaj Mishra graphically described the
perspective of white supporters of populist politicians and political parties
precipitating racial violence. “A century ago, the mere suspicion of being
thrust aside by black and yellow peoples sparked apocalyptic visions of
‘race suicide.’ Today, … the religion of whiteness increasingly resembles
a suicide cult. Mr. Trump’s trade wars, sanctions, border walls, deporta-
tions, denaturalizations and other 11th-hour battles seem to push us all
closer to the ‘terrible probability’.” Mishra then cited James Baldwin’s
cataclysmic description of the rulers of the “higher races,” “struggling to
hold on to what they have stolen from their captives, and unable to look
into their mirror, will precipitate a chaos throughout the world which, if
it does not bring life on this planet to an end, will bring about a racial
war such as the world has never seen.”43 The impact of Trump’s violent
and inflammatory rhetoric was revealed after the arrest of a passionate
pro-Trump supporter, who had sent bombs to Trump’s political foes in
2018, his refusal to criticize the Confederate flag and divisive advocacy of
violence to end protests against racial inequality in 2020, and the repeated
use of Trump’s language by violent white supremacists like the Proud
Boys.
Most, but not all Republicans had surrendered to Trump’s populist
dislike of immigrants. For example, George W. Bush pushed back against
Trump’s nativism in greeting new U.S. citizens. “America’s elected repre-
sentatives have a duty to regulate who comes in and when,” said the
former president. “In meeting this responsibility, it helps to remember
that America’s immigrant history made us who we are. Amid all the
complications of policy, may we never forget that immigration is a blessing
and a strength.”44 However, as Trump’s term ended in 2020, the issue,
which had played a key role in Trump’s 2016 election, had lost much of
its impact on voters in the 2020 presidential campaign.45
After almost four years, the Trump administration remained in day-to-
day chaos, oscillating recklessly between positions on many vital foreign
policy issues. Hence, an unprecedented anonymous op-ed article by an
administration official in September 2018 described Trump as “erratic.”
Meetings with Trump “veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in
repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed
and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.” The

author then asserted, “many of the senior officials in his own adminis-
tration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda
and his worst inclinations.”46
In October 2017, Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn), observed that “Sec-
retary Tillerson, Secretary Mattis and Chief of Staff Kelly are those
people that help separate our country from chaos…”47 With the resig-
nation of Mattis in February 2019, all three had left, leaving Trump in
the hands of fawning and inexperienced advisers and the prospect of even
worse chaos, especially after the Democrats assumed control of the House
of Representatives in 2018.
“Mattis was the last man standing for what had been U.S. foreign
policy since World War II,” said Norbert Röttgen, chairman of the foreign
affairs committee in Germany’s parliament. “With him gone, this really
marks a juncture in the Trump presidency. Now we have an unrestrained
Trump, which is a dangerous signal for the year ahead.”48 In his resig-
nation letter, Mattis made clear his concern that Trump did not fully
recognize the danger posed by Russia and China and the president’s
opposition to the liberal order. “One core belief I have always held is
that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our
unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships,” Mattis
wrote, adding, “we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effec-
tively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those
allies…. We must do everything possible to advance an international order
that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are
strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances.” Mattis also
alluded to his differences with Trump. “Because you have the right to
have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on
these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from
my position.”49
Much of this appeared to be the product of Trump’s own pathetic
ignorance of public affairs coupled with his volatile personality and
“keep ‘em guessing” style. There obviously were also major policy
differences among his immediate advisers, including family, business, mili-
tary, and right-wing ideologues. Conservative Republicans in Congress
and powerful interest groups—including multinational companies, which
generally favored multilateral trade agreements and immigration—were
able to do little more than express “concern” about Trump’s most egre-
gious policies and desperate attempts to stop investigations demanded
by outraged political foes. American politics no longer pitted pro-

Democratic blue-collar workers against wealthy pro-Republican voters.
Instead, Trump had attracted the blue-collar workers while losing
wealthier and more highly educated voters, and his administration focused
on America versus the rest of the world.
President Biden promised to reverse Trump’s anti-immigration poli-
cies. Trump had used executive orders to impose many of these,
and Biden is doing the same to discard many of those. He ended
bans on travel from Muslim and African countries and he halted the
Trump administration’s efforts to strip protections for about 700,000
“dreamers.” Biden also raised significantly America’s cap on refugee
admissions to 125,000 and said he would establish a 100-day morato-
rium on deportations, directing Immigration and Customs Enforcement
to focus on criminals. Such actions will enhance sociocultural global-
ization and enhance transnational groups that will simultaneously foster
political and economic globalization.50
Until Biden’s election, the U.S. hegemon appeared to be flailing, in a
dangerous condition of near-collapse, and American prestige was at low
ebb except among Trump’s counterparts abroad. Stephen Sestanovich
argued that Trump had sensed “that the public wanted relief from the
burdens of global leadership without losing the thrill of nationalist self-
assertion. America could cut back its investment in world order with no
whiff of retreat. It would still boss others around, even bend them to its
will.”51 What we got, however, in Luce’s words was “hard-right pugilism
with the best of postmodern vaudeville.”52 As Anonymous acknowl-
edged, “The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the
presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us.
We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of
civility.”53
A major danger to globalization was the spread of the invisible global
coronavirus. “The coronavirus crisis,” argued Phillippe Legrain, “high-
lighted the downsides of extensive international integration while fanning
fears of foreigners and providing legitimacy for national restrictions on
global trade and flows of people.”54 It disrupted global supply chains,
reduced foreign direct investment, and impeded the movement of people.
The pandemic caused a decline in economic globalization, but this was
temporary and likely to lead to positive changes that may make “existing
systems work better” like “diversifying supply chains away from a single
country and instead throughout a region.”55
The Future of Globalization

and the Liberal Order
After Trump’s defeat and the global pandemic ends, matters may turn
around dialectically as described in Chapter 1. Thomas Friedman was
optimistic. “So what world are we living in? For starters, we’re living in
a world that is becoming so interconnected— thanks to digitization, the
internet, broadband, mobile devices, the cloud and soon-to-be 5G wire-
less transmissions,” and “growth increasingly depends on the ability of
yourself, your community, your town, your factory, your school and your
country to be connected to more and more of the flows of knowledge
and investment — and not just rely on stocks of stuff.”56 In contrast to
Friedman’s optimism, however, is Edward Luce’s pessimism. “We are on
a menacing trajectory brought about by ignorance of our history, indif-
ference towards society’s losers and complacency about the strength of
our democracy.”57 Trump’s MAGA slogan was always an illusion, and in
time its supporters will recognize that Trump’s America and China were
rogue states.
When America’s UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, announced in October
2018 that she would be leaving her post, she declared, “Now the United
States is respected; countries may not like what we do, but they respect
what we do.” “They know that if we say we’re going to do something,
we follow it through. And the president proved that, whether it was with
the chemical weapons in Syria, whether it’s with NATO saying that other
countries have to pay their share.”58 This, of course, was nonsense.
A 2020 Pew poll revealed that globally Trump, unlike his predecessor,
was more unpopular than other leaders of major powers—Germany’s
Angela Merkel, France’s Emmanuel Macron, and even China’s Xi Jinping
and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Respondents, including those in U.S. allies
such as Canada, Sweden, Germany, and France, overwhelmingly declared
that they had no confidence that Trump would do the right thing in
global affairs. Almost 75 percent of respondents in America’s key Euro-
pean allies lacked confidence in Trump. In Europe, only in Poland did a
bare majority (largely right-wingers) have confidence in Trump. Among
America’s allies, Israel, largely Jews but not Arabs, thought highly of
Trump. In the 32 countries surveyed, a median of an overwhelming 64
percent declared they lacked confidence in Trump to do the right thing
in world affairs, while just 29 percent expressed confidence in Ameri-
ca’s president.59 Moreover, a September 2020 poll found that in thirteen
countries, including close allies, a median of only 15 percent said America

had handled the pandemic well, while 85 percent said the country had
responded poorly. In at least seven countries, including allies such as
Britain and Japan, approval ratings for the U.S. fell to record lows.60
Until Trump left office, many Europeans no longer considered
America an ally. German analyst Karl Kaiser declared, “a majority of
French and Germans now trust Russia and China more than the United
States.” A senior German official declared, “No one any longer believes
that Trump cares about the views or interests of the allies. It’s broken”;
and director of a branch of the German Marshall Fund concluded: “If
an alliance becomes unilateral and transactional, then it’s no longer an
alliance.”61 Observers believed that Trump’s unilateralism was dangerous
and weakened the global order. However, they also believed that Biden
would restore multilateralism and foster political globalization, a predic-
tion reinforced by the national security team he assembled.
James Mattis and his colleagues had concluded that, with Trump as
president, the United States was undermining the foundations of an inter-
national order manifestly advantageous to U.S. interests, “reflecting a
basic ignorance of the extent to which both robust alliances and inter-
national institutions provide vital strategic depth.” They insisted that,
“Rather than treating countries as pawns in a great-power competi-
tion, a better approach would emphasize common codes of behavior
and encourage states to publicly promulgate a vision for their coun-
try’s sovereign future and the types of partnerships they need to pursue
it.” “It would also expand the cooperative space in which all countries
supporting a rules-based order can work together to advance shared
interests.”62 Thus, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Biden’s ambassador to
the UN, declared, “multilateralism is back, diplomacy is back,” thereby
committing the new administration to deeper political globalization.63
Despite Trump’s repeated criticisms of allies for not paying their “fair
share,” one poll found that 83 percent of Americans supported NATO,
including large majorities of both Republicans and Democrats. “The idea
is that you’re putting the respondent in the shoes of the policymaker so
they’ve really heard the essential side of the issue,” noted the director
of the survey.64 Finally, two-thirds of Americans supported maintaining
or increasing U.S. commitments to NATO and providing U.S. troops to
defend allies such as South Korea and Japan.65 As Admiral James Stavridis,
former NATO military commander, wrote, “They were built not on the
ambitions of cold-eyed leaders but something more noble. NATO is a
pool of partners who, despite some egregious outliers, by and large share
fundamental values.”66 President Biden has begun to repair relations with
America’s allies in Europe and Asia, thereby restoring these indispensable
partnerships and the liberal order in the face of illiberal China and Russia.
The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs,
Josep Borrell, was optimistic, writing, “After a rocky four years, it is time
for a fresh start. The election of Joe Biden as U.S. president gives us the
chance to make it happen.”67
Regarding economic globalization, almost two-thirds of American
respondents supported NAFTA, considerably more than in 2017, and 61
percent believed “the United States should participate in the Comprehen-
sive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.” Moreover,
70 percent were “very” (31 percent) or “somewhat” (41 percent)
concerned that a trade war with China would harm their local economies.
In addition, a “new” NAFTA—USMCA—was negotiated and is relatively
similar to what it replaced.
The authors of the poll concluded, “The Trump administration’s
bold attempts to reshape US foreign policy have not convinced many
Americans to join the bandwagon.” “Instead, most Americans are more
convinced about the benefits of active US engagement and the need
to work with allies.”68 Scott Clement and Dan Balz suggested that the
poll showed that Americans rejected “key elements of President Trump’s
‘America First’ agenda, expressing near-record support for global engage-
ment amid widespread worries that the United States is losing allies
around the world.”69 After Trump’s four years, large majorities of the
foreign-policy elite and public supported multilateralism in trade, immi-
gration, and security. Large majorities of both groups also subscribed “to
the belief that the United States should play an active global role.”70
The future of the liberal global order was darker than the future
of globalization. The world no longer had a benevolent hegemon. It
had become increasingly multipolar, and hegemonic war with China
and/or Russia remained a possibility. Indeed, National Security Adviser
Robert O’Brien called Washington’s miscalculation of China’s political
trajectory the “greatest failure of American foreign policy since the
1930s.”71 Neither of America’s rivals would defend the liberal order.
Both would support an illiberal global order and some of the elements
of globalization.
Alexander Cooley and Daniel Nexon argued that there is a “growing
sense that the international order sits at an inflection point, driven by
the conspicuous lack of leadership by the Trump administration; China’s

aggressive efforts to showcase its domestic political model and its status as
a provider of international club and private goods; and the possibility
that the pandemic may fuel a growing populist backlash against political,
economic, and cultural liberalism.” To avoid their depending on a single
great power, populists sought a multipolar world that included alternative
patrons such as Russia and China and enabled them “to increase their
freedom of action by playing alternative suppliers of international club
and private goods against one another.”72
Conclusion
The challenges to the liberal order reflected the erosion of Western lead-
ership in general and especially that of America. Trump’s willingness to
break the rules—notably, in trade—his refusal to follow America’s Consti-
tution—for example, his baseless insistence that the 2020 U.S. election be
delayed or be rerun by the military, his admission that he sought to limit
the U.S. Postal Service to reduce write-in ballots, and his refusal to say
in advance that he would accept the outcome of the election, along with
Trump’s lies and authoritarianism, accelerated the decline of the liberal
order. Moreover, after having accused the Democrats of having stolen the
2020 election, Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, admitted in court, “This
is not a fraud case.” Then, as his term came to end, Trump encouraged
violence by his supporters to come to Washington in January 2021 to
prevent the Congress from confirming Biden’s election. The result was
the violent occupation of the Capitol by right-wing extremists, authori-
tarian populists, white supremacists, and demands by Republicans as well
as Democrats that Trump resigned only two weeks before Biden was to
take the oath of office. In effect, Trump had threatened American democ-
racy with a violent coup and consequently became the first U.S. president
to be impeached a second time.
“The Trump presidency has brought American democracy to the
breaking point,” concluded Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. “The
president has encouraged violent extremists; deployed law enforcement
and other public institutions as weapons against rivals; and undermined
the integrity of elections through false claims of fraud, attacks on mail-in
voting and an apparent unwillingness to accept defeat.”73 Finally, Amer-
ica’s courts, more than ninety state and federal judges, including the
Supreme Court (December 2020), unanimously turned down about fifty
lawsuits in President Trump’s bizarre efforts to overturn the presiden-

tial election. The judicial system, in effect, prevented former President
Donald Trump, “a buffoonish one-term wannabe autocrat,”74 from
undermining America’s constitutional democracy.
Following Trump’s lead, however, other governments were increas-
ingly led or challenged by authoritarian populists. Even in Europe,
notably France and Germany, where there remained leaders who advo-
cated a rule-based world, populist politicians remained popular in Italy,
Hungary, Poland, and elsewhere. Like Trump, they opposed immigra-
tion, were wary about multinationalism, and favored economic protec-
tionism. Great Britain, too, had nationalist-populists, especially among
those who had supported Brexit.
Democracy had waned and democratic institutions such as free media,
a law-based judiciary, and genuinely elected legislatures were under attack
in countries ranging from the Philippines, the Maldives, and Thailand
to Brazil and Venezuela. Human rights abuses were increasing glob-
ally, and international institutions that fostered human rights and liberal
norms including the ICC, the UN, and its agencies such as UNRWA,
the WTO, the WHO, and even NATO and the EU were targets of
populists like Trump, Orbȧn, and Salvini. In July 2020, the UN Human
Rights Committee assailed the brutality of federal agents dispersing Blacks
Lives Matter protesters in Portland, Oregon, and elsewhere. By contrast,
Britain’s Prime Minister Johnson planned to invite the leaders of India,
Australia, and South Korea to the 2021 G-7 summit, which Britain is
hosting with an eye to add them to G-7 and establish a group of democ-
racies, the G-10, to coordinate policies to restore the liberal order and,
with the Biden administration, deepen democracy throughout the world
after four years in which former President Trump had curried favor with
authoritarian leaders.
During 2018, populist enthusiasm had waned, but hardly disappeared
except in countries like New Zealand in which liberal Prime Minister
Jacinda Ardern controlled the country’s parliament and its pandemic, and
appointed the most diverse cabinet in the country’s history, including
a Maori as foreign minister. However, as Max Fisher warned, “Many
Western populists,” including Trump, were “falling back to their message
of besiegement and threat, as much out of the paranoid worldview that
is central to populism as out of any conscious strategy.”75 The Biden
administration seeks to restore elements of the liberal order but will find
it difficult to do, especially given the popularity of nationalist-populism in
the Republican Party. Moreover, Washington will be increasingly unable

to do so globally owing to “rising” China and Putin’s Russia.
Nothing more clearly reflected declining U.S. hegemony than its
incompetent response to the novel coronavirus pandemic. “When people
see these pictures of New York City they say, ‘How can this happen?
How is this possible?’” said Henrik Enderlein, president of a univer-
sity focused on public policy. “I feel a desperate sadness,” said British
historian Timothy Garton Ash, and French political scientist Dominique
Moïsi summed it up, “America has not done badly, it has done excep-
tionally badly.”76 Trump made matters worse by tweeting falsely that
America’s Food and Drug Administration was impeding vaccines and
treatment research and blaming everyone but himself for America’s
dolorous performance.
“Globalization, with its vast, fast flows of just about anything and
everything real and imaginable across borders, is a reality that govern-
ments often cannot monitor, much less manage” wrote Haass, noting,
“The gap between the challenges generated by globalization and the
ability of a world to cope with them appears to be widening in a number
of critical domains.”77 Sebastian Buckup used the metaphor of “architec-
ture” to describe changing globalization, and he cited Hillary Clinton’s
speech when she stepped down as U.S. secretary of state to make his
point. “I’ve come to think of it like this: Truman and Acheson were
building the Parthenon with classical geometry and clear lines,” Clinton
had declared. “The pillars were a handful of big institutions and alliances
dominated by major powers. And that structure delivered unprecedented
peace and prosperity. But time takes its toll, even on the greatest edifice….
Where once a few strong columns could hold up the weight of the world,
today we need a dynamic mix of materials and structures.”78
Globalization, wrote Buckup, “is often associated with the dismantling
of walls,” but the world of Donald Trump, as expressed by his secre-
tary of state at the 2019 Davos meeting, “asserted the primacy of the
nation-state’s sovereignty and its right to build walls and fortresses.”79
Nevertheless, “the era of globalization will continue to evolve,” Haass
reminded us, “and existing arrangements will be increasingly inadequate
in dealing with contemporary challenges” like climate change. “Glob-
alization,” he concluded, “is here to stay, and the inadequacies of the
traditional approach to order, based on sovereignty, will only become
more obvious over time.”80
Unlike Haass, Buckup exuded despair. “From Trump’s wall with

Mexico to UK prime ministers Theresa May’s and Boris Johnson’s red
line on immigration to Xi Jinping’s artificial islands in the South China
Sea, politicians seem to be refurbishing medieval fortresses.”81 There
are still optimists like Fareed Zacharia, notwithstanding the bleak “view
of modern life–seen as a dysfunctional global order, producing stagnant
incomes, rising insecurity and environmental degradation.” Zacharia takes
a long view of globalization and, despite growing inequality, pointed out
how a globalized and liberal world continued to make progress. “Even in
the West, it is easy to take for granted the astounding progress. We live
longer, the air and water are cleaner, crime has plunged, and information
and communication are virtually free.”82
As Anne Applebaum concluded, the future will not be like the past.
“Non-Americans reading this, especially in allied countries, are now
warned: There will be no automatic return to the status quo ante. Amer-
icans are now reminded: The Trump presidency may turn out to be not
a blip we can ignore, but the beginning of a long period of disengage-
ment that will not end in 2020 or 2024.”83 Finally, after it had become
clear that Trump had tried to force Ukraine to smear Biden and aid his
reelection in 2020, the House impeached him. In his reelection campaign,
Trump shifted his divisive hatred from immigrants to antiracist protesters
and liberals whom he called responsible for “American carnage.”
Despite his impeachment, Trump’s populism persisted, and, during the
2020 campaign, he described the election as an opportunity to finally
“dethrone the failed political class.”84 Thus, as the 2020 U.S. presiden-
tial election neared, America’s intelligence community concluded that
Russia again sought to aid Trump and defeat Biden by smearing him and
spreading misinformation using bots and social media to reach American
voters and manipulate voting results.85 The community’s Key Judgment 2
in a 2019 National Intelligence Estimate concluded that in the 2020 elec-
tion, Russia favored Donald Trump, a conclusion later confirmed by FBI
Director Christopher Wray. A watered-down version to avoid angering
Trump but which was the same conclusion read, “Russian leaders prob-
ably assess that chances to improve relations with the U.S. will diminish
under a different U.S. president.”86
In sum, as Friedman concluded, “If America starts to behave as a
selfish, shameless, lying grifter like Trump, you simply cannot imagine
how unstable — how disruptive —world markets and geopolitics may
become.”87 However, with the election of Joe Biden, an experienced
pragmatist, U.S. foreign policy will change significantly. His foreign-policy

advisers include numerous veterans of the Obama administration, indi-
cating a preference for continuity with pre-Trump presidents. Biden will
reduce organizational chaos while restoring stability and morale among
those in the State and Defense Departments, intelligence agencies, and,
especially, the National Security Council. Consequently, he will cease
(mis)using “national security” as a bizarre excuse for policies ranging from
banning visitors from Muslim societies, weakening environmental protec-
tion, and imposing tariffs on Canada to immigration, diverting money
from the military budget to fund his wall on the Mexican border, and
excluding New York from a program to facilitate security inspections for
airline travel. Biden’s first phone call was to Justin Trudeau, a reminder of
how important U.S.-Canadian relations were, and he undertook to renew
the START II arms control treaty with Russia.
The election was greeted warmly overseas. “Welcome back America!”
tweeted the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo. Canada’s Prime Minister
Trudeau declared, “I’m really looking forward to working together.”
French President Macron noted happily, “We have a lot to do to over-
come today’s challenges. Let’s work together!” Germany’s Chancellor
Merkel concluded, “Our trans-Atlantic friendship is irreplaceable, if we
want to overcome the great challenges of our time.”88 At one time or
another, Trump had insulted and/or denounced all of these leaders of
America’s allies.
Biden is renewing the advance of political globalization by rejoining
organizations like WHO, restoring U.S. support for alliances like NATO
and institutions like the WTO. He is trying to restore U.S. support for
multinational agreements such as the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris
climate accord, which he declared America would rejoin. He is also
reversing many other of Trump’s executive orders like the travel ban on
Muslim countries and other anti-immigrant actions and the global “gag
rules” that prohibit federal aid to all organizations that provide or discuss
abortions or birth control. He will probably be a hawk as regards U.S.
relations with China and Russia but will try to avoid a new cold war
with either, but he may seek to reduce Sino-American tensions. He will
also be less biased toward Israel and favor a two-state solution to the
Palestinian issue and will be less supportive than Trump of authoritarian
leaders such as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, North Korea’s Kim Jong-
un, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, and, perhaps most
important, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping .
Biden’s approach to economic globalization is more problematic.

Democrats in general are frequently cautious about multilateral trade
agreements unless they have worker and environmental protections.
However, Biden is a centrist who is unlikely to pursue Trump’s antag-
onistic attitude to such agreements that both harm Americans, violate
international rules, or are based on inaccurate economic knowledge like
Trump’s view of trade deficits. Biden may also seek to enter Asia’s
Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the successor to the
failed TPP, that has the potential to become Asia’s equivalent to the EU.
Biden’s long record suggests he will reverse Trump’s racist attacks on
sociocultural globalization. He will likely support multicultural immigra-
tion in general for personal, political, and economic reasons, will restore
DACA for “dreamers,” and will do away with harsh rules regarding
refugees and their families requesting asylum.
Although these changes may meet vigorous opposition by Republi-
cans in Congress who supported Trump and despite his “tough” rhetoric
about foreign policy, Biden, who was inspired by President Truman, seeks
to return America’s pre-Trump support for a liberal global order. In sum,
James Traub heard Biden say, “Foreign policy is like human relations, only
people know less about each other.” Traub concluded that the new pres-
ident, “pledges to restore ‘the soul of a nation’—to make America noble
again. He believes that America has both the right and the obligation
to lead. That belief includes the patriotic premise that America’s national
interests are not inimical to the interests of the world.”89
Notes
1. Haass, A World in Disarray, p. 226.
2. Ibid, pp. 227, 289.
3. Ibid, p. 244.
4. Ibid, pp. 253–255.
5. James Hohmann, “The Daily 202: From Brexit to NATO and the
shutdown, Putin is winning so much he might get tired of winning,”
Washington Post, January 16, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/
news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2019/01/16/daily-202-from-bre
xit-to-nato-and-the-shutdown-putin-is-winning-so-much-he-might-get-
tired-of-winning/5c3eb0a71b326b3b88fef0a0/?utm_term=.fd111071b
3a6&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1.
6. Ellen Barry and Mark Landler, “Brexit and the U.S. Shut-
down: Two Governments in Paralysis,” New York Times, January
12, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/12/us/politics/brexit-

shutdown-us-britain-trump.html.
7. Thomas Wright, “Trump Couldn’t Ignore the Contradictions of His
Foreign Policy Any Longer,” The Atlantic, July 5, 2019, https://www.
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/trump-tries-to-fix-his-foreign-
policy-without-bolton/593284/.
8. Cited in Jim Townsend, “Bolton’s Book Is a Terrifying Warning About
What Trump Could Still Do,” Foreign Policy, June 23, 2020, https://
foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/23/bolton-book-trump-nato-ukraine-ele
ction/.
9. Edith M. Lederer, “France and Germany launch alliance to back multilat-
eralism,” Washington Post, April 3, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.
com/world/europe/france-and-germany-launch-alliance-to-back-mul
tilateralism/2019/04/03/79493974-5621-11e9-aa83-504f086bf5d6_
story.html?utm_term=.43c4f4286719&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
10. Cited in ibid.
11. Mara Mordecai, “How Americans envision a post-pandemic world
order,” Pew Research Center, June 2, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.
org/fact-tank/2020/06/02/how-americans-envision-a-post-pandemic-
world-order/.
12. Dina Smeltz, et al., “Divided We Stand,” Chicago Council on
Global Affairs, 2020, https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/sites/default/
files/report_2020ccs_americadivided.pdf.
13. Dina Smeltz, et al., “America Engaged,” Chicago Council on Global
Affairs, October 2, 2018, https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/public
ation/america-engaged?utm_source=wapo&utm_campaign=rpt&utm_
medium=partner&utm_term=ccs2018-america-engaged&utm_content=
text.
14. Ibid.
15. Dina Smeltz, et al., “Rejecting Retreat,” Chicago Council on Global
Affairs, September 6, 2019, https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/public
ation/rejecting-retreat..
16. Cited in Dan Balz, “America’s global standing is at a low point. The
pandemic made it worse,” Washington Post, July 25, 2020, https://
www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/politics/reckoning-america-
world-standing-low-point/?utm_campaign=wp_todays_worldview&utm_
medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_todayworld.
17. James Traub, “The Pandemic Is the World’s Long Overdue Reality
Check,” Foreign Policy, July 1, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/
07/01/trump-boris-johnson-bolsonaro-the-pandemic-is-the-worlds-long-
overdue-reality-check/?utm_source=PostUp&utm_medium=email&utm_
campaign=22789&utm_term=Editors%20Picks%20OC&?tpcc=22789.
18. Peter Pomerantsev, “The Counteroffensive Against Conspiracy Theories

Has Begun,” The Atlantic, August 7, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.
com/international/archive/2019/08/evolution-protests-conspiracy-the
ories-disinformation/595639/?wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
19. Neil Irwin, “The Trump Trade Strategy Is Coming Into Focus. That
Doesn’t Necessarily Mean It Will Work,” New York Times, October 6,
2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/06/upshot/trump-trade-
strategy-coming-into-focus.html?emc=edit_th_181007&nl=todaysheadli
nes&nlid=43321681007.
20. Cited in “A new kind of cold war,” The Economist, May 16, 2019, p. 14.
21. Cited in Heather Long, “Trump probably has the upper hand in trade
war – until September,” Washington Post, June 6, 2019, https://www.
washingtonpost.com/business/2019/06/06/trump-probably-has-upper-
hand-trade-war-until-september/?utm_term=.fd8658aa36c3&wpisrc=nl_
daily202&wpmm=1.
22. Cited in Damian Paletta, Robert Costa, Josh Dawsey, and Philip Rucker,
“The month a shadow fell on Trump’s economy,” Washington Post,
August 22, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/
08/22/trump-economy-month-chaotic-response/?wpisrc=nl_most&
wpmm=1.
23. Orville Schell, “The Ugly End of Chimerica,” Foreign Policy, April
3, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/03/chimerica-ugly-end-
coronavirus-china-us-trade-relations/.
24. Cited in Fareed Zakaria, “America’s excessive reliance on sanctions will
come back to haunt it,” Washington Post, August 27, 2020, https://
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/americas-excess
ive-reliance-on-sanctions-will-come-back-to-haunt-it/2020/08/27/e73
a9004-e89c-11ea-970a-64c73a1c2392_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_
week_in_ideas&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_
ideas.
25. “Global supply chains,” Special Report, The Economist, July 13, 2019,
p. 3.
26. Ibid, pp.4-7.
27. “A new kind of cold war,” p. 4.
28. Cited in Peter S. Goodman, “Global Trade Is Deteriorating Fast, Sapping
the World’s Economy,” New York Times, October 1, 2019, https://www.
nytimes.com/2019/10/01/business/wto-global-trade.html?nl=todays
headlines&emc=edit_th_191002?campaign_id=2&instance_id=12641&
regi_id=43321681002.
29. “Slowbalisation,” The Economist, January 26, 2019, p. 9.
30. “The global list,” The Economist, January 26, 2019, p. 20.
31. “Making it in America,” The Economist, February 9, 2019, p. 53.
32. Alan Beattie, “Britain’s annual Brexit capitulation draws nigh,” Financial
Times, December 17, 2020.
33. “Slowbalisation,” The Economist, January 26, 2019, p. 9.
34. “The global list,” p. 20.
35. Ibid, p. 21.
36. Bradley Jones, “Americans are generally positive about free trade agree-
ments, more critical of tariff increases,” Pew Research Center, May 10,
2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/10/americans-
are-generally-positive-about-free-trade-agreements-more-critical-of-tariff-
increases/?wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1.
37. Dina Smeltz and Craig Kafura, “Record Number of Americans Endorse
Benefits of Trade,” The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, August
27, 2018, https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/publication/record-num
ber-americans-endorse-benefits-trade?wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1.
38. “American Consumers Expect to Bear Costs of China Tariffs,” Monmouth
University Polling Institute, May 28, 2019, https://www.monmouth.
edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_us_052819/.
39. Bello, “The benefits of equidistance,” The Economist, July 27, 2019, p. 30.
40. Cited in Shasta Darlington, “E.U. and Four Latin American Nations
Reach a Trade Deal,” New York Times, June 28, 2019, https://www.nyt
imes.com/2019/06/28/world/americas/eu-four-latin-american-nations-
trade-deal.html.
41. “Counter-flow,” The Economist, July 6, 2019, p. 10. The agreement was
endangered by a spat between Germany and Norway, on the one hand,
and Brazil regarding President Jair Bolsonaro’s unwillingness to prove
funding to protect Brazil’s rainforest.
42. “Weapons of mass disruption,” The Economist, June 8, 2019, p. 13.
43. Pankaj Mishra, “The Religion of Whiteness Becomes a Suicide Cult,”
New York Times, August 30, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/
08/30/opinion/race-politics-whiteness.html?emc=edit_th_180831&nl=
todaysheadlines&nlid=43321680831.
44. Cited in Felicia Sonmez, “George W. Bush: ‘May we never forget
that immigration is a blessing and strength’,” Washington Post, March
18, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/george-w-bush-
may-we-never-forget-that-immigration-is-a-blessing-and-a-strength/
2019/03/18/9b5aaf6a-49b1-11e9-93d0-64dbcf38ba41_story.html?
utm_term=.774d8bf270c7&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1.
45. Ganan Ganesh, “Donald Trump lacks appeal in a low-immigration world,”
Financial Times, October 14, 2020, https://app.ft.com/content/07d
9509c-e284-44e8-b397-38428f9a9030.
46. Anonymous, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Adminis-
tration,” New York Times, September 5, 2018. “Anonymous” turned out
to be Miles Taylor, a lifelong Republican and a former top official at the

Department of Homeland Security.
47. Cited in Aaron Blake, “One GOP senator’s extraordinarily dim assess-
ment of the Trump administration,” Washington Post, October 4, 2017,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/10/04/sen-
bob-corkers-extraordinarily-dim-portrayal-of-the-trump-administration/?
utm_term=.395d06809704.
48. Cited in Griff Witte and Isaac Stanley-Becker, “’A morning of alarm’:
Mattis departure sends shock waves abroad,” Washington Post, December
21, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/12/21/mat
tis-departure-sends-shock-waves-abroad-allies-question-us-approach-glo
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20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/us/politics/letter-
jim-mattis-trump.html.
50. Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “Biden Faces Early Test With Immigrations
and Homeland Security After Trump,” New York Times, November
15, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/15/us/politics/biden-
immigration-homeland-security.html.,
51. Stephen Sestanovich, “The Brilliant Incoherence of Trump’s Foreign
Policy,” The Atlantic, May 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/mag
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icy/521430/.
53. Anonymous, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administra-
tion.”
54. Philippe Legrain, “The Coronavirus Is Killing Globalization as We
Know It,” Foreign Policy, March 12, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.
com/2020/03/12/coronavirus-killing-globalization-nationalism-protec
tionism-trump/?utm_source=PostUp&utm_medium=email&utm_cam
paign=20224&utm_term=Editor#39;s%20Picks%20OC&?tpcc=20224.
55. “Down but not out? Globalisation and the threat of Covid-19,” A report
by The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2020, https://pages.eiu.com/
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20and%20Globalisation%20V2.pdf?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTWpabE5tSmtaV
0kxTUdNeiIsInQiOiI2RDRHN0psd0pidEtTcStxUkI0NWJqa21sODN
oSnhUS1ZpOHRaVkNmZFpnYW43UFVaM3dIUk1nK3QrbG9VWUc
4cVNuVVkwV2M3RlhGOUg3d3g0am9UamtPbW41S1wvT3RIK2Y
4cGNWbGMzRzNtb1NadmprSVh1QkQ3c3lWRzNWbVMifQ%3D%3D,
p. 4.
56. Friedman, “The United Kingdom Has Gone Mad.” Italics in original.
58. Cited in Philip Bump, “Nikki Haley says the U.S. is now respected.’ Is
it?” Washington Post, October 9, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.
com/politics/2018/10/09/nikki-haley-says-us-is-now-respected-is-it/?
noredirect=on&utm_term=.b73d86673b36.
59. Richard Wike, Jacob Poushter, Janell Fetterole and Shannon Schu-
macher, “Trump Ratings Remain Low Around Globe, While Views of
U.S. Stay Mostly Favorable,” Pew Research Center, January 8, 2020,
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/01/08/trump-ratings-rem
ain-low-around-globe-while-views-of-u-s-stay-mostly-favorable/. See also
Adam Taylor, “Global confidence in Trump lower than for China’s
Xi, poll shows,” Washington Post, October 1, 2018, https://www.was
hingtonpost.com/world/2018/10/01/global-confidence-trump-lower-
than-chinas-xi-poll-shows/?utm_term=.90cbcdb29dber 68&wpisrc =
nl_todayworld&wpmm = 1, and “U.S. Image Slides As Trump Rated
Lower Than Putin, Xi In Global Poll,” RFE/RL, October 2, 2018,
https://www.rferl.org/a/us-image-slides-trump-rated-lower-than-putin-
xi-global-poll-pew-research/29520545.html.
60. Adam Taylor, “Global views of U.S. plunge to new lows amid pandemic,
poll finds,” Washington Post, September 15, 2920, https://www.washin
gtonpost.com/world/2020/09/15/global-views-united-states-trump-
coronavirus-pew-poll/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=
email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most.
61. Cited in Steven Erlanger and Katrin Bennhold, “Rift Between
Trump and Europe Is Now Open and Angry,” New York Times,
February 17, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/world/eur
ope/trump-international-relations-munich.html.
62. Kori Schake, Jim Mattis, Jim Ellis, and Joe Felter, “Defense in Depth,”
Foreign Affairs, November 23, 2020, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/
articles/united-states/2020-11-23/defense-depth?utm_campaign=wp_
the_daily_202&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_
daily202.
63. Cited in Matt Viser, “After long, bitter delay, Biden transition kicks
into gear,” Washington Post, November 24, 2020, https://www.washin
gtonpost.com/politics/biden-transition-trump/2020/11/24/26b8e4ba-
2e7a-11eb-bae0-50bb17126614_story.html.
64. Emily Tamkin, “More than 8 in10 Americans support NATO, study
finds,” Washington Post, April 3, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.
com/world/2019/04/03/more-than-americans-support-nato-study-
finds/?utm_term=.a9d92ca859e7&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1.
65. Smeltz, et al., “America Engaged.”
66. James Stavridis, “Why NATO Is Essential for World Peace, According to
Its Former Commander,” Time. April 4, 2019, https://time.com/556
4171/why-nato-is-essential-world-peace/.
67. Josep Borrell, “How to Kick-Start a New Trans-Atlantic Era,” Foreign

Policy, December 10, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/10/
how-to-kick-start-a-new-trans-atlantic-era/?utm_source=PostUp&utm_
20OC&?tpcc=28306.
68. Smeltz, et al., “America Engaged,”
69. Scott Clement and Dan Balz, “Poll: AmeriTrumpcans worry U.S. is losing
allies, support for global engagement rises,” Washington Pose, October 2,
2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-americans-worry-
us-is-losing-allies-support-for-global-engagement-rises/2018/10/01/e87
b3f22-c571-11e8-b2b5-79270f9cce17_story.html?utm_term=.f91a27edc
2d4&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1.
70. Jonathan Monten, et al., “Americans Want to Engage the World,” Foreign
Affairs, November 3, 2020, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/uni
ted-states/2020-11-03/americans-want-engage-world.
71. Cited in Bill Gertz, “Trump’s national security adviser lays out stinging
critique of threat posed by China,” The Washington Times, June
24, 2020, https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jun/24/rob
ert-obrien-lays-out-stinging-critique-of-threat/.
72. Alexander Cooley and Daniel Nexon, “Why Populists Want a Multipolar
World,” Foreign Policy, April 25, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/
2020/04/25/populists-multipolar-world-russia-china/?utm_source=Pos
tUp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=21202&utm_term=Editors%
20Picks%20OC&.
73. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, “End minority rule,” New York
Times, October 23, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/
opinion/sunday/disenfranchisement-democracy-minority-rule.html?utm_
campaign=wp_todays_worldview&utm_medium=email&utm_source=new
sletter&wpisrc=nl_todayworld.
74. Colbert I. King, “Fourteen days that will test our democracy,” Washington
Post, January 1, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fou
rteen-days-that-will-test-our-democracy/2020/12/31/7a59d6d6-4b96-
11eb-a9f4-0e668b9772ba_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&
utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-
url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F2e0ce33%
2F5ff0a45e9d2fda0efb9c5b3f%2F596b51d8ae7e8a44e7d58086%2F17%
2F66%2F5ff0a45e9d2fda0efb9c5b3f.
75. Max Fisher, “After a Rocky 2018, Populism Is Down but Far From Out
in the West,” New York Times, January 5, 2019, https://www.nytimes.
com/2019/01/05/world/europe/populism-voters-global.html?emc=
edit_th_190106&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=43321680106.
76. Cited in Katrin Bennhold, “’Sadness’ and Disbelief From a World Missing
American Leadership,” New York Times, April 23, 2020, https://www.
nytimes.com/2020/04/23/world/europe/coronavirus-american-except
ionalism.html?smid=em-share.
77. Haass, A World in Disarray, p.11.
78. Hillary Clinton, “Hillary’s Farewell Speech: Read the Transcript,” Daily
Beast, updated July 12, 2017, https://www.thedailybeast.com/hillarys-far
ewell-speech-read-the-transcript.
79. Sebastian Buckup, “Shaping global architecture in an era of fortresses and
walls,” Quartz, January 21, 2019, https://qz.com/1527582/shaping-
global-architecture-in-an-era-of-fortresses-and-walls/.
80. Richard Haass, “World Order 2.0,” Foreign Affairs 96:1
(January/February 2017), pp. 7, 9.
81. Buckup, “Shaping global architecture in an era of fortresses and walls.”
82. Fareed Zacharia, “We have a bleak view of modern life. But the world is
making real progress,” Washington Post, January 31, 2019, https://www.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-have-a-bleak-view-of-modern-life-but-
the-world-is-making-real-progress/2019/01/31/6ee30432-25a8-11e9-
ad53-824486280311_story.html?utm_term=.5824923b311b&wpisrc=nl_
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83. Anne Applebaum, “Non-Americans, be warned: There will be no return
to normal after Trump,” Washington Post, August 2, 2019, https://www.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/non-americans-be-war
ned-there-will-be-no-return-to-normal-after-trump/2019/08/02/a3b
83784-b551-11e9-8f6c-7828e68cb15f_story.html?utm_term=.b49385
0180dd&wpisrc=nl_ideas&wpmm=1.
84. Cited in James Hohmann. “Election pits Trump versus the experts,”
Washington Post, November 3, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/
politics/2020/11/03/daily-202-election-pits-trump-vs-experts/.
85. Julian E. Barnes, “Russia Continues Interfering in Election to Try to Help
Trump, Intelligence Says,” New York Times, August 8, 2020, https://
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Intelligence Agencies.”
87. Thomas Friedman, “Time for G.O.P. to Threaten to Fire Trump,” New
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campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20201108&instance_id=23920&nl=todays
headlines&regi_id=4332168&segment_id=43950&user_id=318a8b2e1
97d8de30abd1bb02c4382ea.
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14, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/14/joe-biden-diplom
acy-skepticism-actually-listening/. Italics added.
Questions
Multiple Choice
1. Richard Haass concluded that globalization had created which of
the following among sovereign states?
a. Animosity
b.Deep interdependence
c. Independence
d. Unstructured chaos
2. How did a globalized world impact the illiberal states such as China
and Russia that were eager to join the WTO?
a. Ravaged their economy
b. Increased unemployment
c. Stagnated their economy
d. Benefitted them
3. Which of the following is a Chinese initiative that depends on
extending infrastructure, trade, and even tourism that reduce
impediments to the movement of goods and people?
a. Belt and Road
b. Free Trade
c. NAFTA
d. Trade Surpluses Initiative
4. Generally, illiberal societies have _______ a stake in curbing climate
changes as liberal societies and have _______ the Paris accords as
well as the multilateral Iran nuclear deal and efforts to denuclearize
North Korea?
a. Less of, opposed
b. More of, supported
c. As much of, supported
d. Less of, supported

5. Donald Trump is which of the following?
a. Realist
b. Liberalist
c. Constructionist
6. John Bolton claimed he persuaded Trump not to leave which
organization?
a. United Nations
b. North Atlantic Treaty Organization
c. World Trade Organization
d. World Health Organization
7. France and Germany undertook an initiative “to create a network
of countries ready to support multilateralism and cooperate,
including to fight inequality, tackle climate change and address the
consequences of new technologies” called what?
a. Europe Alone
b. Bilateralism Union
c. Alliance for Multilateralism
d. League for Trade
8. The pandemic, of course, had political implications for populism.
Which of these is not one of three of the four largest democracies
run by illiberal populists that rank one, two, and three in deaths
from the coronavirus.?
a. German
b. United States
c. Brazil
d. U.K.
9. The growing economic interdependence between America and
China began to unravel after China joined which institutional core
of economic globalization?
a. WHO
b. NATO
c. WTO

10. The demand for economic efficiency has made the global economy
more what?
a. Fragile
b. Flexible
c. Rigid
d. Inefficient
11. U.S. manufacturing is undergoing a revival, especially among firms
using advanced techniques of what other types of firms?
a. Large firms
b. Inflexible firms
c. Agile and smaller
d. Large and porous
12. Although populism has spread across the European Union, the EU
concluded the which major free trade agreement with Canada that
came into force in 2017?
b. Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement
(CETA)
c. Europe Canada Trade Agreement (ECTA)
d. Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
13. Which of the following has slowed partly in consequence to
violations by major states, including Trump’s America, of free-
trade norms and U.S.-Chinese geopolitical rivalry in high-tech
industries?
a. Political Globalization
b. Internet usage
c. Spread of Nationalist-populism
d. Economic Globalization
14. The socio-cultural dimension of globalization is declining owing
to which of the following?
a. Racism
b. Xenophobia
c. Social Media
d. Both a and b
15. In Europe, only in what country did a bare majority of 51 percent
(largely right-wingers) have confidence in Trump?
a. Poland
b. Italy
c. Germany
d. Austria
16. To avoid their depending on a single great power, populists seek a
a. Unipolar World
b. Bipolar World
c. Multipolar World
17. A future U.S. administration might seek to restore elements of the
liberal order but would find it difficult to do, especially given the
popularity of nationalist-populism in which U.S. Party?
a. Green Party
b. Libertarian Party
c. Republican Party
d. Democratic Party
18. President Trump tweeted falsely that which American institu-
tion was impeding vaccines and treatment research and blaming
everyone but himself for America’s dolorous performance?
a. Federal Bureau for Invetigations
b. Food and Drug Administration
c. Department of Homeland Security
d. Department of the Interior
19. After it had become clear that President Trump had tried to force
Ukraine to smear former Vice President Joe Biden to aid his
reelection in 2020, which of the following happened?
a. President Trump promised not to run for reelection
b. President Trump was removed from office
c. President Trump resigned from office
d. The U.S. house impeached President Trump
20. In his reelection campaign, Trump shifted his divisive hatred from
immigrants to which of the following which he called responsible
for “American carnage.”
a. White supremacist
b. Antiracist protesters and liberals
c. Working Class
d. Republicans
True or False
1. True or False? The several dimensions of globalization are all
linked, and therefore must move in the same direction.
False, though linked, the several dimensions of globaliza-
tion need not move in the same direction
2. True or False? Nationalist-populism itself has been globalized, and
the technologies that foster globalization also foster nationalist-
populism.
True
3. True or False? The coronavirus dramatically decreased the demand
for some goods at the same time supply remained unimpacted.
False, it dramatically increased the demand for some
goods at the same time as it damaged supply.
4. True or False? Globalization has increased the size of informal
economies in developing countries that rely on distribution chains
and reduced tax receipts and regulatory enforcement.
True
5. True or False? Polls suggest that Americans have lost faith in
multilateral institutions and agreements.
False, polls suggest the opposite. For example, a survey by
the Chicago Council on Global Affairs said most Amer-
icans prefer engagement and shared leadership in world
affairs.
6. True or False? The WTO prediction for growth in trade of

merchandise in 2019 was the highest since 2009 at the height of
the Great Recession.
False, it was the lowest.
7. True or False? Banks were less willing to finance trade owing to
the pain of the Great Recession in 2008; the rate of return from
multinational investment plummeted; and local firms were increas-
ingly capable of competing with transnational corporations.True or
False? Banks were less willing to finance trade owing to the pain of
the Great Recession in 2008; the rate of return from multinational
investment plummeted; and local firms were increasingly capable
of competing with transnational corporations.
True
8. True or False? In May 2018, a Pew poll found that 56 percent of
respondents thought “free trade” a good thing for the U.S.
True
9. True or False? Beijing has allowed foreign investors to acquire a
greater share in local firms, and foreign investment in China’s stock
and bond markets has fallen.
False, foreign investment has soared.
10. True or False? In his resignation letter, now former Secretary of
Defense James Mattis made clear his concern that Trump did not
fully recognize the danger posed by Russia and China and the
president’s opposition to the liberal global order.
True
11. True or False? A major danger to globalization was the spread of
the invisible global coronavirus.
True
12. True or False? Also, a 2020 Pew poll revealed that globally Trump,
unlike his predecessor, was more popular than other leaders of
major powers – Germany’s Angela Merkel, France’s Emmanuel
Macron, and even China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
False, unlike his predecessor he was more unpopular

13. True or False? Despite Trump’s repeated criticisms of allies for
not paying their “fair share,” one poll found that 83 percent of
Americans supported NATO, including large majorities of both
Republicans and Democrats.
True
14. True or False? National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien called
Washington’s miscalculation of China’s political trajectory the
“greatest failure of American foreign policy since the 1930s.”
True
15. True or False? Populist politicians who opposed immigration, were
wary about multinationalism, and favored economic protectionism
fell in popularity places like Italy, Hungary, Poland, and elsewhere.
False, they remained popular
16. True or False? Great Britain, too, had nationalist-populists, espe-
cially among those who support Brexit.
True
17. True or False? As the 2020 U.S. presidential election neared, Amer-
ica’s intelligence community concluded that Russia would not be
inferring in the U.S. presidential election.
False, they concluded that Russia sought to aid Trump
and defeat Joe Biden by smearing Biden and spreading
misinformation using bots and social media to reach
American voters
18. True or False? China, though less of a threat, appeared to meddle
against President Trump in the lead up to the 2020 presidential
election.
True
19. True or False? Two-thirds of Americans opposed maintaining or
increasing U.S. commitments to NATO and providing U.S. troops
to defend allies such as South Korea and Japan.
False, two-thirds supported it
20. True or False? Supply chains of transnational corporations, a

feature of economic globalization, were eroding, and global trade
declined after 2017.
True
Short Answer
What were the political crises and resulting political instability in
America and Great Britain a reflection of?
They reflected the moribund condition of the leading advocates
of the liberal order and perhaps a prelude to the demise of that
order?
What did James Traub claim populist leaders deny COVID-19 and
similarly climate change?
First, because acknowledging a force beyond their control might
break the spell of omniscience in which they have bound their
followers; and second, because deference to science and logic
undermines the emotional sources of their appeal.
Give an example of a counter-reaction to populist-authoritarianism?

The election of Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and
a liberal foe of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the
defeat of Greece’s left-wing populists, the vibrancy of Taiwan’s
democracy was encouraging. In eastern Europe, the electoral
victory of a foe of Viktor Orbȧn as mayor of Budapest, and,
in Poland, the Law and Justice (PIS) party’s loss of a majority
in the country’s upper house of parliament suggested that
populism may have begun to ebb. In addition, the massive
demonstrations in Hong Kong in support of democracy and
opposition to Chinese interference in the city, and mass pro-
democracy protests in Moscow, all in mid-2019, may be
harbingers of a reaction to authoritarianism and populism.
Why and how have global supply chains changed?

Supply chains changed owing to technology and rivalry in
supply-chain security, the growing role of services instead
of manufacturing, and political factors such as the Sino-

American geopolitical rivalry and Brexit. Supply chains were
also becoming more regional than global, for example, Southeast
Asia.
Provide a case in which the impact of Trump’s violent and inflam-

matory rhetoric was revealed.
It was revealed after the arrest of a passionate pro-Trump
supporter who had sent bombs to Trump’s political foes in
2018, his refusal to criticize the Confederate flag and divisive
advocacy of violence to end protests against racial inequality
in 2020, and the repeated use of Trump’s language by violent
white supremacists.
How did the coronavirus impact the state of globalization?

It disrupted global supply chains, reduced foreign direct invest-
ment, and impeded the movement of people. Focusing on the
economic dimension of globalization, The Economist concluded
that the pandemic caused a decline in globalization but viewed
this as temporary and likely to lead to positive changes that may
make “existing systems work better” like “diversifying supply
chains away from a single country and instead throughout a
region.
Why is future of the liberal global order is darker than the future of
globalization?
The world no longer has a benevolent U.S. hegemon. The world
has become increasingly multipolar, and hegemonic war with
China and/or Russia is a possibility. Neither of America’s rivals
would defend the liberal order. However, both would support
an illiberal global order and some of the elements of globaliza-
tion, and it is difficult to imagine a peaceful resumption of U.S.
hegemony.
In what ways has President Trump showed a willingness to break the

rules regarding the U.S. election?
Suggesting that the 2020 U.S. election be delayed, admitting

that he sought to limit the U.S. Postal Service to reduce write-
in ballots, and refusing to say that he would accept the outcome
of the election, along with his lies in general.
Fareed Zacharia takes a long view of globalization, and, despite

growing inequality, pointed out what?
He pointed out how a globalized and liberal world continued to
make progress. “Even in the West, it is easy to take for granted
the astounding progress. We live longer, the air and water are
cleaner, crime has plunged, and information and communication
are virtually free.
Why did Russia meddle to get Trump elected?

Russian leaders probably assess that chances to improve relations
with the U.S. will diminish under a different U.S. president.
Essay Questions
1. How has social media like Facebook and Twitter changed the way
information is spread and its impact?
2. What implication has the coronavirus pandemic had for globaliza-
tion and populism?
3. How and why has the growing economic interdependence between
the U.S. and China begun to unravel?
4. Will the global liberal order remain strong in the near future?
5. Will support nationalist-populism continue to increase globally?
Index
A Agricultural exports, 387

Abbas, Mahmoud, 161, 296 Agricultural Midwest, 382
Abe, Shinzo, 319 Agricultural trade, 382
Abhazia, 120 Airbus, 67
Abraham Accords, 296 Alaska, 327
Abrams, Elliot, 65 al-Assad, Bashar, 65, 118, 119, 418
Absolute decline, 93 Al-Assad regime (Syria), 294
Acheson, Dean, 476 Alawite Muslims, 418
Advanced Persistent Threat 10, 110 Alba, 284
Affirmative Globals, 52 Al-Bagdadi, Abu Bakr, 118
Affirmative Locals, 52 Alibaba, 96
Afghanistan, 115, 117, 154, 420, 422 Alien cultures, 420
in a “good” war, 118 Ali Khamenei, 122
wars in, 90 Allegations of genocide, 291
Africa, 370, 422 Allen, John R., 69
Africans, 10 Alliance for American Manufacturing,
African Union, 366 162
Age of entropy, 91 All-India National Register of Citizens,
Age of order, 91 292
Age of the elected despot, 60 Allison, Graham, 30, 93
Aging populations, 416 Al-Qaddafi, Muammar, 118
Agnew, John, x, 6, 47 Al-Qaeda, 118, 119
Agreement in principle, 374 Alternative for Germany (AfD), 236,
Agreements, 4 421, 422
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 497
license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72033-9
498 INDEX
Aluminum imports, tariffs on, 385 American hegemon, 17

Amal, 294 American Party, 408
Amazon, 51, 364 American revolution, 17
America, 416 American Soybean Association, 386,
Chinese exports to, 98 387
Chinese investment in, 386 Anarchic world, 94
defense authorization bill, 147 Annex settlements, 295
Defense Department, 106 Annual Conservative conference, 199
Domestic Economic Consequences, Annual patent applications, 97
384 Anti-American, 281
“first island chain”, 108 Anti-dumping rules, 377
Indo-Pacific Command, 105 Anti-elitist “Jacksonians”, 49
intelligence community, 150 Antiestablishment politicians, 54
Midwest “rust belt”, 104 Antifa, 50
national interests, 479 Anti-globalization sentiments, 21, 56
National Security Council, 99 Anti-immigration sentiment, 408
Pacific Command, 106 Anti-populists, 237
relations between Israel, 119 Anti-populist sentiment, 258
“rust belt”, 190 Anti-Sandinista Contras, 284
trade deficit with China, 98 Anti-Semitic, 62
“unwelcoming”, 411. See also Anti-Semitism, 193, 198, 242
United States (U.S.) Antitrust actions, 466
‘America First’ agenda, 473 Appeals Court, 410
“America first” trade policy, 364 Apple, 112, 365, 385, 386, 415
America’s election Applebaum, Anne, 28, 68, 191, 201,
Mueller’s investigation of Russian 202, 477
meddling in, 189 Arab-Israeli hostility, 417
America’s International Trade Arab Spring, 6, 119, 295
Commission, 377 Arab world
America’s Justice Department, 283 export democracy to, 420
America first, 65 Araud, Gérard, 154
American carnage, 477 Arctic Council, 326
American century, 94 Arctic Ocean, 100
American Chamber of Commerce Ardern, Jacinda, 475
(Beijing), 368 Argentina, 20, 277, 380, 467
American Civil Liberties Union, 50, Argentine labor confederation, 278
429 Armenia, 246, 251
American consumers, 370 Armenian-Azeri conflict, 120
American diplomacy, 28 Arms races, 92
American era Arms sales, 105
passing of, 92 Arpaio, Joe, 147
American exceptionalism, 64 Arreaza, Jorge, 282
INDEX 499
Arron Banks, 191 B

Article 50, of the EU treaty, 195 Babis, Andrej, 240
Article 5 of the NATO treaty, 251, Backstop provision, 192
321 Baer, Daniel, 64
Article 7 of the EU Treaty, 244 Bagehot, 190
Artificial intelligence (AI), 8, 365 Bahrain, 161, 296
ASEAN, 12 Balance of power, 94
Ash, Timothy Garton, 143, 476 Baldwin, James, 468
Balkans, 425
Asia, x, 117, 288
Baltimore, 58
Regional Comprehensive Economic
Balz, Dan, 473
Partnership, 479
Banaji, Shakuntala, 293
Asian Development Bank, 101
Bangladesh, 104, 291, 386
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
Bank of America, 195
(AIIB), 13, 99, 101
Bannon, Stephen K., 24, 95, 153,
Assange, Julian, 63, 189, 284 156, 165, 232, 243, 287
Association Agreement, 252 Barnier, Michel, 195
Association of Southeast Asian Nations Barr, William P., 165, 283, 435
(ASEAN), 325 Barry, Ellen, 460
Asylum-seekers, 410–413, 418, Batista, Fulgencio, 280
423–426, 430, 432, 434 Bavaria, 421
Athens, 93 Bayanihan Act (Republic Act No.
port of, 99 11469), 290
Atlanta, 327 “Beggar-thy-neighbor” policies, 325
Australia, vi, 12, 102, 106, 409, 411, Beinart, Peter, 366
475 Belarus, 166, 251
Australian dollar, 19 Belgium, 319, 423
Austria, 190, 234, 420, 422, 425 Belief in decline, 94
Authoritarian, vi Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), 13, 98
Authoritarianism, vii, x, 22, 59, 123, Benelux countries, 232
474 Benghazi, 118
spread of, v Bergsten, C. Fred, 96
Beschloss, Michael, 148
Authoritarian leaders, 59, 144, 318
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 291,
Authoritarian populism, x, 143, 233
292
Authoritarian populists, 474
Biden, Joe, vi, 10, 99, 122, 148, 161,
Automation, 8, 66 206, 246, 322, 334, 341, 380,
Avian influenza, 3 431, 440, 470, 472–474, 478,
Aviation Industry Corporation, 384 479
Axis of Adults, 164 administration, 475
Aymara ethnicity, 281 Big Pharma, 378
Ayodhya, 292 Bilateral deals vs. multilateral deals, 67
500 INDEX
Bilateralism, 10, 341 Border walls, 148, 468

Bilateral strategy, 315 Borrell, Josep, 473
Bilateral trade deal, 316 Bots, 6
Bildt, Carl, 329 “Boundary-eroding” trends and
Bilton, Nick, 149 events, 5
Bin Laden, Osama, 190 “Boundary-strengthening” trends and
death of, 118 events, 5
Bin Salman, Mohammed, 145, 294, Brazil, 17, 20, 277, 380, 411, 426,
330 467, 475
Birrell, Ian, 200 Superior Electoral Court, 285
Birth rates, 410 Supreme Court, 285
Birth tourism, 409 Brennan, John, 335
Black Death, 16 Bretton Woods institutions, 18
Blackmon, Douglas A., 51 Brexit, x, 13, 212, 241, 315, 380,
Black people, 468 460, 465, 467, 475
Black September terrorists, 198 debate, 187
Blacks Lives Matter, 475 Leavers’ arguments for, 196
Blair, Dennis, 111 political divisions, 190
Blair, Tony, 53, 66, 70 political turmoil and, 197
Blinken, Anthony, 155 Brexiteers, 10, 189, 190
Bloomberg, Michael, 327 criticisms of the EU, 196
Blue-collar workers, 54, 470 Brexit means Brexit, 197
Blumental, Dan, 113 Brexit Party, 188
BMW, 386 Brexit referendum, 189, 196
Boeing, 67 Britain, 366
Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas Britain’s Tories, 53
(ALBA), 280 British democracy, 211
Bolivarianism, 280, 284 British hegemony, 17
Bolivarianism Elsewhere, 283 British Parliament, 460
Bolivarian Revolution, 280 British politics, 192
Bolívar, Simón, 280 British pound sterling, 19
Bolivia, 280, 282 British waters
Bolsonaro’s Bannon, 287 fishing in, 210
Bolsonaro, Flávio, 287 Broadband, 471
Bolsonaro, Jair, x, 54, 277, 285–287, Brookings Institution, 333
463, 478 Brooks, Arthur C., 56
Bolton, John R., 145, 154, 160, 163, Brooks, David, 256
164, 318, 338 Brose, Christian, 105
Booth, William, 191 Browder, Bill, 159
Border and Protections Agents, 434 Brown, Jerry, 327
Border checkpoints, 411 Brussels, 423
Border Patrol Tactical Unit, 414 Buckup, Sebastian, 476, 477
INDEX 501
Budapest, 463 Carlson, Tucker, 148

Buddhist, 59, 289 Carnegie Endowment, 105
majority, 291 Carney, Jay, 110
Bulgaria, 120 Carousel retaliation, 382
Bulgarians, 425 Carvalho, Olavo de, 287
Bullshitter, 149 Casino capitalism, 57
Bump, Philip, 411 Castro, Fidel, 280
Buoy Barrier System, 436 Catholic Church, 278
Burden-sharing, 322 Catholic nationalists, 192
Bureaucratic harassment, 367 Catholics, 408
Burleigh, 113 Cato Institute, 370
Burleigh, Michael, 27, 50, 113 Caucasian migrants, 408
Burns, William J., 117, 156 CDU-CSU alliance, 237
Buruma, Ian, 55 Cellphones, 385
Bush, George W., 27, 49, 116, 117, Center for a New American Security,
468 232, 378
administration, 114 Centers for Disease Control (CDC),
administration’s unilateralism, 90 152
Buzan, Barry, 94 Central America
caravans from, 413
Central American migrants, 413
C Central Asia, 100
Cable television, 6 Central European University, 241,
California, 327, 416, 427, 429 242
Cambodia, 104 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
Cameron, David, 187, 191 48, 145, 149, 152–154, 158, 336
Cámpora, Héctor José, 279 Centre for European Reform, 332
Canada, 8, 255, 376, 377, 384, Chain migration, 409
410–412, 467, 471 Chain of command, 154
Meng Wanzhou, arrest of, 366 Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Canadian dairy industry, 377 (JCS), 154
Canadian dollar, 19 Channel Tunnel, 197
Capabilities, 94, 95 Chaotic decision-making style, 376
Capital controls, 103 Charlottesville, Virginia, 63, 159
Capital flows, 56 march in, 51
Capital-intensive industries, 380 Chávez, Hugh, 280–283
Capital investment, 57 Cheap capital, 367
Capital markets, 103 Cheney, Dick, 146, 319
Caracas, 282 Chequers, 199, 200
Carbon emissions, 326 Chernyshev, Boris, 159
Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, 286 Chicago, 58
Career Ministers, 156 Chimerica, 103, 375
502 INDEX
China, vi, 4, 66, 67, 105, 117, 122, Chinese spying and undermine
283, 288, 289, 316, 380, 385, national security, 366
410, 416, 460, 469, 478 Chinese state banks, 367
as world’s largest foreign investor, Chinese students overseas, 98
102 Christian Democratic Union (CDU),
consumerism in, 363 236, 257, 421
economic rise, 96 Christian Europe, 420, 425
first aircraft carrier, 108 Christian refugees, 407
growing middle class, 369 Christian Social Union (CSU), 421,
INF missiles, 121 422
intellectual property, theft of, 365 Christie, Chris, 29
military Equipment Development Chua, Amy, 408, 412
Department, 368 Churchill, Winston, 188, 460
military rise, 104 Church World Service, 412
rise of, x, 16 Citgo Petroleum Corp, 283
rising, 95, 476 Citizenship, 409, 419
rural, 98 Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA),
silk road, 16 292
state subsidies, 367 Citizenship and Immigration Services
submarine technology, 108 (USCIS), 411, 439
ten-dash-line claims, 109 Civility, 470
trade war, reaction to, 368 Civil War, 60
trade war with, 109, 162, 364, 365 Clapper, James, 111, 159, 335
transfer technology to, 374 Clash of civilizations, 407
U.S. exports to, 98 Clean energy, 326
“wolf warrior” behavior, 113 Clement, Scott, 473
China Development Bank, 99 Climate change, 147, 326, 459, 476
China National Offshore Oil Clinton, Bill, 91, 116, 339, 364
Corporation’s (CNOOC), 102 administration, 336
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Clinton, Hillary, 24, 63, 66, 158, 476
101 Coats, Dan, 61, 153, 157, 159
Chinese government Coats, Daniel, 153, 335, 336
subsidies for state enterprises, 375 Coca-Cola, 385
subsidies to home industries, 371 Cohen, Eliot A., 25, 49, 150
Chinese hackers, 110 Cohen, Michael, 156
Chinese investment, 99 Cohn, Gary, 375
Chinese-manufactured infrastructure, Cold War, v, 120
366 in Norway, 323
Chinese Ministry of State Security, liberal order, creating, 30
110 Colgan, Jeff D., 53
Chinese minorities, 59 Collective goods, 55
Chinese renminbi, 19 Collective security, 4
INDEX 503
Colmenares Gutiérrez, Leopoldo E., Constitutional restraints, 60

281 Conte, Giuseppe, 238, 422
Colombia, 426 Continental Europe, x
Comey, James, 152 Convention Against Torture, 431
Comment Crew, 110 Convention on the Prevention and
Commercial aircraft, 97 Punishment of Genocide, 19
Commercial espionage-for-profit theft, Cooley, Alexander, 473
111 Corbyn, Jeremy, 193, 194, 197, 198,
Commercial interest rates, 100 207
Commission on the Theft of American Corker, Bob, 469
Intellectual Property, 111 Coronabonds, 258
“Common sense”, usage of, 47 Coronavirus, 148, 371, 375, 415,
Common thread, of all movements, 438, 465, 470
47 “recovery fund”, 258
Communism, v Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic,
Communist rule, 97 8
Communists, 280 Coronavirus epidemic, 290
Communitarian socialism, 281 Corporate cross-border investment,
Comparative advantage, 363 389
Compounding complexity, 91 Corporate executives
Comprehensive Agreement for Trans- compensation for, 57
Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), Corporate health, 104
325 Corporatism, 278
Comprehensive Economic and Trade Correa, Rafael, 280, 284
Agreement (CETA), 467 Cosmopolitan globalization, 5
Computer microchips, 97 Cosmopolitism, 52
Concert of Europe, 71 “Cost Plus 50” idea, 319
Confucius Institutes, 98 Costa Rica, 426
Congress, 67, 152, 322, 324, 376, Council, 334
377, 479 Council for International Business,
Congress of Vienna, 71 371
Connelly, Tony, 202 Countervailing duties, 377
ConocoPhilips, 281 Covax, 318
Conservative Party, 48, 188, 193, COVID-19, 151, 152, 155, 463
197, 200 Creator of the Ten Commandments,
Conservatives, 197, 199 144
Conspiracy theories, 148 Credible fear, 413
Constantinople, 16 Creeping extraterritoriality, 329
Constitution, vi, 144, 154, 335, 429 Crimea
preserve, protect, and defend, 149 annexation of, 93, 120, 251
Constitutional crisis, 204 Crime of aggression, 20
Constitutional democracy, 475 Crimson Contagion, 152
504 INDEX
Critical infrastructure, 465 Decentered globalism, 94

Critical testers, 59 Declaration of Independence, 71
Criticism of alliances, 146 Declining unions, 57
Croatia, 422 Deepfakes, 6
Cross-border personal contacts, 407 Deep state, 60, 155, 157, 211
Crusius, Patrick, 68 Defense budgets, 320
Cuba, 280, 282, 283 Defense expenditures, 319
Cultural dilution, 424 Defense spending, 104, 320
Cultural diversity, 61 Deferred Action for Childhood
Cultural entity, 407 Arrivals (DACA), 410
Cultural genocide, 289 Dell, 385
Cultural liberalism, 474 Demagoguery, 278, 408, 412
Cultural proximity, 407 Demagogues, 28, 60
Cultural purity, 407 Democracy, v, vii, 5, 17, 30, 59, 92,
Culture, 59 461, 475
Cummings, Elijah E., 433 majoritarian view of, 60
Currency manipulation, 103, 362 nationalist-populism’s threat, 59
Currency manipulator, 373
promotion, 122
Customs partnership, 201
threats to, 24, 59
Customs union, 191, 192, 197, 198,
threat to, 156
201
Democratic deficit, 60
Cyber-capabilities, 110
Democratic norms, 92
Cyber countermeasures, 112
Democratic Party
Cyber-espionage, 6, 110, 112, 367,
370, 375, 465 protectionists and labor unions, 12
Cyber-revolution, 6 Democratic reformism, 290
Cyberspace, 459 Democratic Unionist Party (DUP),
Cyber-technologies, 5 197, 200
Cyber working group, 112 Democratic values, 23
Cyprus, 99, 247 Democrats, 378, 408, 469, 472, 479
Czech Republic, 99, 120, 239, 240, Demographic change, 408
424 Demographic factors, 416
Demographic transformation, 412
Demolition man, 146
D Demonstrators, 143
Daalder, Ivo H., 28, 29, 123, 315, Denaturalization, 468
369 Deng Xiaoping, 95–97
da Silva, Luiz Inácio Lula, 284 Denmark, 424
Data exchanges, 389 Denuclearization, 339, 340, 460
Davidson, Philip, 109 Department of Defense, 105
Davis, David, 199 Department of Health and Human
Debt-trap diplomacy, 100 Services (DHHS), 147, 152, 416
INDEX 505
Department of Homeland Security, Duhalde, Eduardo, 279

50, 68 Duke, David, 63
Department of Justice, 48 Dumping, 18, 67
Deportations, 468 Dutch, 420
moratorium on, 470 Dutch Trump, 235
Detained refugees, 409 Duterte, Rodrigo, 145, 166, 290
Dialectical perspective, 3, 4 Duterte, Rodrigo (Philippines), 59
Diamond, Larry, 23
Different currencies, 362
Digitalization, 19, 361 E
Digital Silk Road, 100 East and Southeast Asia, 362
Digital technology, 389 East Asia, 115
Digitization, 471 Eastern Europe, 120
Dignity deficit, 56 Eastern Partnership program, 252
Di Maio, Luigi, 238 Eastern Ukraine elections
Diplomacy, 65, 146 meddling in, 13
Diplomatic and security dialogue, 368 East India Company, 341
Director of Homeland Security EB-5 visa, 438
(DHS), 419 EBay, 415
Director of National Intelligence Economic “G-2”, 96
(DNI), 153, 154 Economic dimension, 465
Direct payments, 387 Economic dimension, of globalization,
Dirty War, 279 11
Distribution chains, 460 Economic efficiency, 465
Distribution of power, 95 Economic equality, 361
Doha Amendment, 4 Economic globalization, 8, 57, 341,
Doha Round, 11, 324 362, 387, 388, 470, 479
Dollar to “float”, 18 decline in, 470
Domestic consumption, 97 Economic growth, 98
Dominican Republic, 334 Economic independence, 279
Donbas, 120 Economic inequality, 144
Donohue, Thomas, 380 Economic interdependence, 30, 92,
Doria, João, 288 465
Dozier, Kimberly, 164 Economic liberalism, 474
Drezner, Daniel, 64 Economic migrants, 410
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 65 Economic narcissism, 464
Drone strikes, 118 Economic nationalism, 58, 66, 465
Drug prices, 148 Economic networks, 55
Dublin, 195 Economic roots, of populism, 361
Dublin Convention (1990), 421 Economies of scale, 362
Duda, Andrzej, 240 Economist, The, 197, 465
Due process, 429 Ecuador, 100, 280, 282
506 INDEX
Eduardo, Duhalde, 288 EU’s freedoms

Educational, Scientific and Cultural free movement of goods, services,
Organization (UNESCO), 19 capital, and people, 201
Egalitarian philosophy, 48 EU Parliament, 188
Egypt, 119, 145, 161, 294, 296 EU quota, of refugees, 69
1807 Insurrection Act, 409 Eurasia Group, 200
Elections, 408 Eurasian Economic Union, 251
Electoral outcomes, 412 EU regulations, 189, 198, 201
Electoral votes, 58 Eurodeterrent, 322
Elites, vii, ix Europe, 117, 380
Ellsberg, Daniel, 63 Muslim migration to, 420
El Paso, 69 populist opposition to immigration
El Salvador, 431 in, 14
El-Sisi, Abdel Fatah, 145 trade wars with, 162
E-mail, 389 European Alliance for People and
Empire, managing, 28 Nations, 244
Enderlein, Henrik, 476 European Central Bank, 57, 239, 248,
English nationalism, 13 249, 332
Enhanced Community Quarantine, European Coal and Steel Community,
290 232
En Marche! (Onward!), 235 European Commission, 195, 249,
Environmental migration, 440 258, 381, 467
Environmental protection, 478 European Council, 231
Environmental Protection Agency European Council on Foreign
(EPA), 326 Relations, 232
Environmental stress, 410 European Court of Justice, 189, 201,
Epistemic communities, 60 424
Erasmus exchange program, 210 European elections
Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip, 150, 166, meddling in, 13
240, 246, 418, 424, 463, 478 European Enlightenment, 17
Esper, Mark, 155 European External Action Service,
Espionage 332
of military technologies, 107 European intervention initiative, 254
Estonia, 120, 319, 462 European missile defense, 121
Ethics and Public Policy Center, 426 European Parliament, 244, 382
Ethnic and religious strife, 92 2019 elections to, 257
Ethnic exclusionism, 92 elections to, 194
Ethnicity, v European Research Group (ERG),
EU association agreement, 251 200
EU-British compromise agreement, European Union (EU), x, 114, 390,
209 467
EU euro, 18 budget oversight, 249
INDEX 507
Permanent Structured Cooperation, First impeachment, 24

254 Fisher, Max, 69, 163, 189, 475
trade deal with, 286 5G mobile phone communications, 97
West-East fracture, 239 5G networks, 366
Europe of nations, 244 5G wireless transmissions, 471
Euroskeptics, 188, 193, 231, 238, 5+1 group, 315
257 Five-Star, 248
Eurozone, 14, 114, 233, 238 Five-Star Movement (M5S), 238
EU-U.S. trade frictions, 258 Five-year plan, 279
Evangelical Christians, 144 Florida, 416
Executive order, 419, 470, 478 Flows of direct investment (FDI), 466
Executive time, 150 Floyd, George, 143, 148, 409, 463
Experts, 48 Flynn, Michael, 29, 156, 158, 419
Export-oriented firms, 362 Foa, Marcello, 63
Extended deterrence, 94 Foa, Roberto Stefan, 21
ExxonMobil corporation, 157 Focus Active, 386
Foer, Franklin, 242
Fontaine, Richard, 378
F Food and Drug Administration, 476
Facebook, 6, 48, 51, 415, 422, 459 Forced technology transfers, 371
Failed ruling class, 55 Ford, 386, 389
Fake news, 61, 62, 148 Ford, Douglas, 59
Fake News Media, 335 Ford F-150, 376
False and misleading claims, 148 Foreign bonds and equities, 389
Family separation, 431 Foreign-born residents, 411
Farage, Nigel, 188, 189, 243 Foreign direct investment (FDI), 389,
Farm bankruptcies, 387 470
Farmers, 379 Foreign investors, 374
Farron, Tim, 194 Foreign Service, 156
Fascism, v, x, 278 Fortune Global 500 list, 104
“Fast track” authority, 12 Foxconn, 362
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Fox News, 7, 148, 388
48, 152, 189 Fragile states, 92, 93
Federalization, 121 Fragmegration, 3
Federal Reserve Bank, 48, 366, 372 Fragmentation, 9
Ferguson, Niall, 103 Framework Convention for Climate
Fernández, Alberto, 279 Change, 4
Fertility rates, 417 France, 232, 258, 316, 420, 423,
Fidesz, 241 471, 475
Fillmore, Millard, 408 France’s National Front (renamed
Financial crisis, 21 National Rally), 235
Financial flows, 389 Frankfurt, Harry, 149
508 INDEX
Franzi, Alessandro, 238 Geneva Conventions, 19

Freedland, Jonathan, 23 Genoa, 99
Freedom House, 48, 241 Genocide, 20, 414
Freedom of navigation operations, Gentrification, 56
109 Geographical exception, 411
Freedom Party (Austria), 243 Geopolitical challenges
Free market capitalism, 5, 461 multiple and simultaneous, 116
Free markets, 371 Geopolitical conflict, v
Free media, 475 Geopolitical interests, 92
Free trade, vii, 13, 17, 363, 387, 466 Geopolitics, x, 121–123, 477
French goods, tariffs on, 383 Georgia, 120, 416
Frenchness, 420 German Democratic Republic, 237
French revolution, 17 German Marshall Fund, 463
Frexit, 196 Germany, v, 17, 60, 120, 232, 236,
Frey, William H., 412 239, 253, 258, 366, 381, 411,
Friedberg, Aaron, 369 420, 421, 423, 425, 471, 475
Friedman, Thomas, 166, 211, 234, Council on Foreign Relations, 239
297, 335, 471, 477 “transit centers”, 425
Frozen conflicts, 13, 120 Gilpin, Robert, 93
Fukuyama, Francis, xi, 61 Giuliani, Rudy, 165, 474
Gladstone, William, 203
Glasser, Susan, 231
G Global civil society, 90
Gabriel, Sigmar, 254 Global economy, 5, 19, 460
Gaddis, John Lewis, 28, 89 Global financial system, 18
Galli, Mark, 144 Global governance, 10, 90
Games of chicken, 109 Global investment, 460
Gantz, Benny, 295, 296 Globalization, v, ix, 3, 4, 389, 459,
Gates, Rick, 156 465, 467, 476
Gauke, David, 205 cosmopolitan, 5
Gauland, Alexander, 236 danger to, 470
Gaza, 117, 417 earlier conclusions regarding, 8
Geisler, Sybille, 243 economic, 8, 57, 466, 468
Gender, v economic dimension of, x, 11, 196
General Agreement on Tariffs and political, 4, 468
Trade (GATT), 11, 18, 324 political dimension of, x, 11, 196
General Assembly, 19 political, slowing, 212
Generalized System of Preferences, socio-cultural, 468
364 socio-cultural dimension of, x, 14,
General Motors, 381, 384, 386, 389 196, 212
Generation Identity, 237 Globalization: The Return of Borders
Genetic genocide, 107, 289 to a Borderless World?, ix
INDEX 509
Global liberal order, v, x Group of 7 (G-7), 99

Global Pact on Migration, 147 Growth Acceleration Program, 285
Global pandemic, 459 Growth rates, 97
Global participation, 463 G-7 (Group of Seven), 315
Global production chains, 58 G-20 2019 summit meeting, 371
Global South, The, x G-20 conference in Buenos Aires
Global trade, 460, 466 (2018), 370
Global warming, 90, 326, 440 Guaidó, Juan Gerardo, 282
Golan Heights, 295 Guam, 106
Gold standard, 18 Guantánamo Bay, 428
Good Friday Agreement, 192, 206 Guardian, The, 61
Goods deficit, 365 Guatemala, 416, 427, 429, 431
Google, 51, 385, 414, 415 Guerrilla warfare, 283
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 121 Gujarat, 291
Gordon, Philip, 26, 66 Gulen, Fethullah, 246
Gove, Michael, 209, 211 Gulf of Mexico, 102
Government, vi Gun rights, 7
Government bureaucracies, 60 Guterres, António, 419
Grand strategy, 91
Great Britain, x, 48, 475
Great Depression, v, 325, 363, 364, H
366 Haass, Richard N., x, 15, 117, 122,
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, 153, 388, 459, 476, 477
96 Habeck, Robert, 237
Great Recession, 8, 21, 114, 212, Hacking, 6
248, 389, 465, 466 Haddad, Fernando, 285
“Great Replacement” theory, 68 Hadley, Stephen, 70
Greece, 99, 247, 258, 421–425 “Haircut” on loans, 20
bankruptcy of, 14 Haitians, 147, 407
Greek-owned ships, 334 Haley, Nikki, 321, 471
Green cards, 416, 437, 438, 440 Hall, Peter, 190
Greenhouse gas emissions, 327 Hammes, T.X., 8
Greenhouse gases, 326 Hammond, Philip, 205
Green Party (Austria), 243 Hampson, Fen, 255
Greens, 188, 189, 257 Han Chinese, 289
Grenell, Richard, 329 Hannity, Sean, 148
Grexit, 196 Hard border, 192, 194, 208
Gross capital flows, 466 Hard exit, 198, 199
Gross domestic product (GDP), 96, Hard power, 95
466 Hard-right pugilism, 470
Gross national product (GNP), 96 Harley-Davidson, 386, 389
Group of 20 (G-20) summit, 236 Harmony Center, 233
510 INDEX
Hatch, Orrin, 365 Home-schooling, 420

Hate crimes, 51 Honda, 195
Hate-mongering, 412 Honda Odyssey, 386
Hayden, Michael, 149, 335 Honduran Supreme Court, 284
Head & Shoulders, 150 Honduras, 284, 429, 431
Hebdo, Charlie, 423 H-1B visa, 415, 439
Hegemon, 70, 71, 316 Hong Kong, 103, 107, 375
Hegemonic hubris, 31 demonstrations in, 110
Hegemonic rivalry, 366 Horror stories, 413
Hegemonic stability, 93 House Armed Services Committee,
Hegemonic-stability theory, 92 322
Hegemonic wars, 93 House Freedom Caucus, 165
Hegemony, x, 92, 114 House of Representatives, 469
Heinz, 384 House Oversight Committee, 433
Heisbourg, François, 123 Houston, 427
Helsinki, 158–160, 335 Hoyer, Steny, 338
Helsinki summit, 337 H-2A visa, 416
Hemon, Aleksander, 433 Huawei, 102, 365, 366, 370
Henniges, 384 Hu Jintao, 108
Hermitage Capital Management, 159 Hukou (required household
Hezbollah, 118, 294 registration), 98
Hidalgo, Anne, 478 Humanity
Hiftar, Khalifa, 145 crimes against, 20
“High wage” factory, 377 Human rights, v, vii, 5, 92, 113, 413,
High-intensity, 105 475
Highly-skilled workers, 415 Human smugglers, 410
High-tech export industries, 363 Human traffickers, 410
Hungarians, 425
High-tech industries, 416
Hungary, x, 17, 61, 99, 120, 190,
High-tech professions, 410
234, 239, 244, 416, 417, 420,
High-tech start-ups, 365
424, 425, 475
Hijabs/headscarves, 420
Huntington’s nationalists, 52
Hindu extremists, 291
Huntington, Samuel, 51, 407, 427
Hindu nationalist, 291
Hunt, Jeremy, 199
Hispanic immigrants, 147
Huntsman, Jon, 111
Hitler, Adolf, 60, 91
Hussein, Saddam, 24
Hohmann, James, 460
Hutchison, Kay Bailey, 320
Hokenos, Paul, 237
Hybrid war, 121
Hollande, François, 235
Hyperglobalist path, 55
Holocaust, 23, 69
Holocaust Remembrance Day, 63
Homan, Thomas D., 414 I
Homeland Security, 410 Ibrahim, Saadedine, 294
INDEX 511
Identitarians, 68 Information Technology Agreement

Identity, 59 (ITA-II), 12
politics, 50, 408 Information up and down, 154
Identity theft, 6 Informatization, 105
Ideology, 52 Infrastructure funding, 58
Idlib, 418 Ingelhart, Ronald, 438
Iglesias, Pablo, 284 Inglehart, Ronald, 59
Ikenberry, G. John, 25, 90, 92 Instagram, 6, 415
Illegal aliens, 410 Instrument in Support of Trade
Illiberal democracy, 60, 241 Exchanges (INSTEX), 332
Illiberal powers, 70 Integrated Network Electronic
Illiberal states, 460 Warfare
Illiberal values, 10 cyber-strategy of, 110
Imagined community, 53 Integration, 3
Imamoglu, Ekrem, 463 Intel, 385
Immigrants, 54, 389, 413, 415, 417, Intellectual property, 371, 374, 375
427 Intelligence agency, 152, 158
barriers to, 58 Intelligence community, 148, 341
dislike of, 468 Interdependence, 55
raised fears about, 189 Interest rates, 57
skilled, 415 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces
Immigration, 7, 390, 413, 416, 417, Treaty (INF), 106, 121
419, 469, 473, 475 Internally displaced persons (IDPs),
policies, 408 412
Immigration and Customs Internal Market Bill, 206
Enforcement (ICE), 414, International Atomic Energy Agency
470 (IAEA), 19, 294, 328
Impeachment, 148, 157 International Bank for Reconstruction
Independent Group, 193 and Development (IBRD), 18
India, 9, 17, 283, 288, 289, 291, International Court of Justice, 19,
364, 415, 475 333
Indian Ocean, 100, 101 International Criminal Court (ICC),
Indigenous peoples, 286 19, 143, 318
Indispensable nation, 91 International Development
Indonesia, 59, 386 Association, 18
Inequality, 361, 388 International Holocaust Remembrance
Inflation Alliance, 198
cycles of, 93 International Institute for Strategic
Informal economies, 460 Studies, 27
Information-centric regional military International institutions, 92, 472
operations, 105 International Labor Organization
Information flows, 407 (ILO), 19
512 INDEX
International lending, 389 Irwin, Douglas, 365, 380, 381

International Monetary Fund (IMF), Irwin, Neil, 464
9, 18, 248, 341 Ischinge, Wolfgang, 253
International organizations, 30, 315 Islam, 419
International regimes, 93, 146, 315 Islamic migration, 420
International students, 415 Islamic minorities, 289
International Trade Organization Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,
(ITO), 18 154
Internet, 385, 471 Islamic State (IS), 69, 150
Intra-regional trade, 466 Islamic terrorism, 251, 418
Investment Migration Council, 438 Islamist separatism, 420
Iowa’s Pork Producers Association, Islamophobia, 242, 291, 417–420,
387 425
iPads, 362 Isolationism, 408
iPhones, 362 Israel, 17, 117, 295, 471, 478
Iran, 66, 116, 117, 119, 122, 123, Arab minority, 295
153, 154, 418 Jerusalem as capital, 295
1979 revolution, 333 Supreme Court, 295
Arab minority, 294 Israeli Olympic team, 198
nuclear agreement with, 120 Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 161, 295
nuclear ambitions, 117 Israeli settlements, 161, 295, 417
nuclear deal, 164, 478 Istanbul, 330, 463
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, Italian, 408
330 Italy, v, vi, x, 8, 190, 232, 258,
Iranian hardliners, 328 421–423, 475
Iranian nuclear talks, 114 “Italy first” policies, 239
Iran Nuclear Agreement, 327
Iran nuclear deal, 25
Iraq, 24, 115–119, 418, 422 J
2003 intervention in, 119 Jackson, Andrew, 50
army, collapse of, 115 Jae-in, Moon, 337, 338
“bad” war in, 118 Jai Shri Ram, 292
invasion of, 92 Jamaat, Tablighi, 293
keeping troops in, 150 Jammu, 292
Shia militias in, 119 Japan, v, 12, 17, 94, 102, 106, 112,
wars in, 90 115, 316, 380, 381, 416
Iraq syndrome, 115 Japanese, 108
Ireland, 195 Japanese yen, 19
Irish backstop, 194 Jewish worshipers, 62
Irish migrants, 408 Jews, 62
Irish Republic, 192, 194–197 Johnson, Boris, 188, 190, 198–200,
Irish Taoiseach, 195 204, 205, 475, 477
INDEX 513
Johnson, Lyndon, 56 Kirchner, Cristina, 279

Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Kirchner, Néstor, 279
(JCPOA), 4, 250, 327, 328, 333 Kissinger, Henry, 95
Joint ventures, 380 “Know Nothing” movement, 408
Jordan, 296, 418 KOF index, 361
Journalists Korea
an “enemy of the people”, 62 Demilitarized Zone, 160
Judiciary(ies), 53, 60 denuclearize, 153
Juncker, Jean-Claude, 195, 201, 382, Kosovars, 414
383, 426, 467 Kotin, Stephen, 92
Junta of National Reconstruction, 283 Kotkin, Stephen, 123
Jurecic, Quinta, 149 Kramp-Karrenbauer, Annegret, 257
Justicialist Party, 279 Krasner, Stephen D., 11, 55
Krastev, Ivan, 240, 423
Kristol, Irving, 62
K Krugman, Paul, 234, 389
Kaczyński, Jarosław, 54, 240 Kudlow, Larry, 162, 372
Kagan, Robert, x, 115, 117, 237, 323 Kurdish, 123
Kaiser, Karl, 472 Kurdish-occupied Syria, 150
Kaliningrad, 252 Kurdish terrorists, 150
Kant, Immanuel, 30 Kurds, 150, 418
Kashmir, 292 Kurz, Sebastian, 243, 421, 424
Kassam, Raheem, 243 Kushner, Jared, 145, 156, 158, 164,
Katainen, Jyrki, 381 295, 330, 417
Kazakhs, 289 Kyenge, Cecile, 238
Kazakhstan, 17, 251 Kyoto Protocol, 4
Kellner, Peter, 194 Kyrgyzstan, 251
Kelly, John F., 29, 164, 165, 419, 469
Kennan, George F., 121
Kennedy, John, 460 L
Kent access permit, 209 Labour MPs, 198
Kenya, 63 Labour Party, 48, 70, 188, 193,
Keohane, Robert O., 53, 93 197–199
Kerch, Crimea Ladakh, 115
shooting in a school, 10 Landfill (“island building”), 108
Kerry, John, 112, 119 Landler, Mark, 460
Kettle, Martin, 195 Languages diversity, 407
Khamenei, Ali, 328 Laschet, Armin, 257
Khan, Sadiq Aman, 200 Latin America, x, 412, 416
Khashoggi, Jamal, 145, 160, 330 refugees in, 426
Kim Jong-un, vi, 64, 122, 253, 478 Latin American “dependency”
King, Stephen, x, 16 theorists, 20
514 INDEX
Latin Americans, 416 Liberal world order, 323

Latino immigrants, 407 Libertarianism, x
Latvia, 120, 233, 462 Libya, 24, 118, 338, 339, 421
Lauder, Ronald S., 161 Libyan, 145
Law and Justice, 234 Libyan Coastguard, 425
Law-enforcement agency, 152 Lighthizer, Robert E., 160, 163, 363,
Law enforcement authorities, 69 371, 380
Lawson, George, 94 Li Keqiang, 364
Lazarus, Emma, 437 Limbaugh, Rush, 148
LCD screens, 362 Lindsay, James M., 28, 29, 123
League of Nations, 17 Lipner, Shalom, 297
Leave Means Leave, 188 Lissner, Rebecca Friedman, 30
Leavers, 58, 190, 196, 197 Lithuania, 120, 462
Lebanon, 63, 418 Liu He, 371
Left-leaning supporters, 53 Localization, 3, 4
Legal migration Lofven, Stefan, 322
of Muslims and Latinos, 69 London, 423
Legislatures, 53 Long peace, The, 89
Legitimacy, 459 López Obrador, Andrés Manuel, 277,
Legrain, Phillippe, 470 430
Le Maire, Bruno, 332 Los Angeles, 327, 427
Leo Varadkar, 195 Losers, 65
Le Pen, Jean-Marie, 235 Low-paying jobs, 416
Le Pen, Marine, 196, 235, 244 Low-skilled workers, 412
Leslie, Chris, 193 Loyalty lists, 152
Less developed country (LDC), 67, Luce, Edward, 54, 71, 148, 471
410 Lukashenko, Alexander, 166
Level playing field, 209 Lula, 284
Levin, Brian, 63 Lund, Susan, 389
Levitsky, Steven, 54, 474 Lysol, 152
Lew, Jacob, 110
Liberal democracies, 23, 408
Liberal Democrats, 188, 189, 197 M
Liberal economic system, 361 Maas, Heiko, 26
Liberal global order, 479 Macedonia, 321, 422, 425
Liberal hegemony, 31 Macho populists, 55
Liberal norms, 10 Macmillan, Harold, 460
Liberal order, 474 Macron, Emmanuel, 99, 165, 232,
Liberals, 55 235, 249, 250, 257, 316, 320,
Liberal Sardines, 258 322, 420, 471, 478
Liberal universalism, 30 “Made in China 2025”, 365
Liberal values, 16 Maduro, Nicolás, 282, 283, 426
INDEX 515
Maelstrom, Cecilia, 382 McCabe, Andrew, 48, 148, 152

MAGA agenda, 390 McCain, John, 22, 70, 89
MAGA slogan, 408 McCarty, Nolan, 57
Magna Carta, 71 McConnell, Mitch, 123, 150, 151
Magnitsky Act, 159, 387 McCormick & Co, 384
Magnitsky, Sergei L., 159 McDonnell, John, 193
Maguire, Joseph, 157 McFaul, Michael, 159
Mainstream political parties, 48 McGahn, Don, 165
Maiquetia airport, 282 McGuire, James W., 278
“Make America Great Again”, 27 McGurk, Brett, 69
“Make America Great Again” slogan, McMaster, H.R., 164, 334
62, 66, 147, 363 McTague, Tom, 212
Malacca dilemma, 108 Meadows, Mark, 165
Malaysia, 59, 100 Mead, Walter Russell, 49, 50
Maldives, 475 Mearsheimer, John, 94
Manafort, Paul, 156, 158 Media, 60, 61
Mandarin, 98 Members of Parliament (MPs), 197
Mandatory resettlement quotas, 426 Memorandum of Cooperation, 430
Mandetta, Luiz Henrique, 287 Menem, Carlos Saúl, 279, 287
Mandiant, 110 Merchandise trade, 365
Manjoo, Farhad, 414 Mercosur, 382
Manufacturing Merkel, Angela, 14, 231, 253, 257,
decline in, 66 259, 421, 422, 471, 478
Manus Island, 409 Mexican border
Mao Zedong, 96, 106, 372 wall on, vi, 478
Marine Corps, 429 Mexican tomato imports, 378
Maritime Silk Road, 99 Mexico, 20, 376, 380, 382, 386, 416,
Market capitalism, 93 427, 430
Market exchange rates, 97 bilateral negotiations with, 376
Marshall Fund, 472 buiding of border, 58
Marshall Plan, 231, 232 migrants from, 409
Martel, William, 91 Michigan, 104, 384–386
Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces Microsoft, 51, 415
of Colombia (FARC), 282, 283 Mid-Continent Nail Company, 379
Mattis, James N., 29, 108, 150, 156, ‘Middle democracy’ trap, 293
164, 469, 472 Middle democracy, 293
Max Boot, 335 Middle East, x, 6, 114, 117, 122,
Mayo Clinic, 9 294, 417
May, Theresa, 191–194, 197, 200, Middle-income trap, 367
201, 204, 460, 463, 477 Migrant children, 414
Mazaar, Michael, 30 Migrant Protection Protocols, 427
McAleenan, Kevin, 414, 428 Migrant recipients, 423
516 INDEX
Migrants, 411, 416, 420 Mubarak, Hosni, 119

categories of, 410 Mueller III, Robert S., 152, 158, 159
in agriculture, 416 report of, 7
Migration, 8 Mueller investigation, 24
flows, 407 Mueller, John, 115
Militarism, v Mulroney, Brian, 375
Military dimension, 10 Multiculturalism, 407, 412
Military sovereignty, 323 Multilateral agreements, 325
Miller-Idriss, Cynthia, 68 Multilateral consultation, 459
Miller, Stephen, 412, 413, 433, 439 Multilateral institutions, 4
Minister Counselors, 156 Multilateral institutions and
Minneapolis, 463 agreements
Minority(ies), 58 opposition to, 58
groups, 56 Multilateralism, 26, 164, 316, 341,
Mishra, Pankaj, 211, 468 461, 462, 472
Misogyny, 7 dislike of, 146
Mitra, Subrata K., 293 Multilateral trade agreements, 469,
Mnuchin, Steven, 66, 101, 162, 163, 479
368, 370 Multilateral trading system, 380
Mobile devices, 471 Multinational agreements, 478
Mobil, Exxon, 281 Multinational companies, 469
Modernity, 59 Multinational corporations, 389
Modi, Narendra, vii, x, 54, 166, Multinational corporations and banks,
291–293 19
Mogherini, Federica, 240, 331, 332 Multinational institutions, 5
Moïsi, Dominique, 476 Multinationalism, 475
Molenbeek, 423 Multipolarity, 90, 92
Montenegro, 20, 99, 321 Multiracial society, 438
Montoneros, 279 Mulvaney, Mick, 165
Moore, James, 190 Munich, 198
Morales, Evo, 280, 281 Murphy, Chris (Senator), 26
Morales, Jimmy, 431 Musgrave, Paul, 383
Morocco, 296 Muslim Bengalis, 292
Moros, 290 Muslim Brotherhood, 119, 295
Moro, Sergio, 288 Muslim-majority countries, 419
Morsi, Mohamed, 295 Muslim migrants, 417
Moscow Muslim Rohingyas, 291
anti-regime protests in, 463 Muslims, 10, 54
Mother of All Messes, The, 193 Muslim terrorists, 425
Motyl, Alexander, 121 Muslim Uighurs, 107, 289
Mounk, Yasha, 21, 206, 243 Muslim visitors, ban on, 148
MS-13 gang, 28 Mussolini, Benito, 91
INDEX 517
fascism, 278 Nativism, 407, 427

MVM Inc., 439 Nativists, 418
Myanmar, 59, 102, 288, 289, 291 Nauru, 409
Navalny, Alexei, 166
Navarro, Peter, 163, 318, 363, 364,
N 371, 381
Nagorno-Karabakh, 246 Nazis, 62
Napoleon, 71 Nazism, v
Narcissist, vi Negotiations, 198
Narcissistic personality disorder, 9 Neller, Robert, 429
Nasser, Gamel Abdel, 294 Neo-conservative, 114
Nathaniel Banks, 408 Neo-mercantilism, 103
National Bureau of Asian Research, Neo-Nazis, 51, 63, 159
101 Neo-Nazi violence, 236
National Counterterrorism Center, Nepal, 100
157 Netanyahu, Binyamin, x, 54, 119,
National Guard units, 427 161, 295, 296
National Health Service, 190 Netherlands, 319
National homogeneity/heterogeneity, Newkirk, Vann R., 57
407 New Mexico, 427
National Indian Foundation, 286 New START treaty, 122
National Intelligence Estimate, 477 New York, 58, 327, 414, 427, 476,
National interests, vi, 4, 94 478
Nationalism, x, 4, 5, 52, 60, 122, New York Times , 63
280, 407 New Zealand, 12, 69, 106, 325, 380,
Nationalist exclusionism, 92 475
Nationalist-populism, v, x, 66, 68, fifty Muslims massacred in, 51
238, 277, 278, 459, 461 New Zealand-initiated effort, 51
Nationalist-populists, v, 362 Nexen, 102
Nationality, 410 Nexit, 196
National Judiciary Office, 242 Nexon, Daniel, 473
National Retail Federation, 373 Niblett, Robin, 23
National security, 363, 364, 366, 381, Nicaragua, 283, 426
414 Nielsen, Kirstjen, 408, 414, 430, 432
National Security Adviser, 419 Nigeria, 410, 419
National Security Agency (NSA), 102, Nigerians, 147
149 1934 Long March, 372
National Security Council, 153, 413, 1951 Refugee Convention, 410
478 1967 Six-Day War, 417
National Security Strategy, 116 1972 Shanghai Communiqué, 106
National self-determination, 17 1974 Trade Act
Native American Party, 408 sections 201 and 301 of, 67
518 INDEX
1980 Refugee Act, 412 Northern Ireland, 187, 192, 194,

9/11, 7, 114 195, 197, 200, 205, 208, 210
Nissan, 195 Northern League, 238, 248
Nixon, Richard, 106 North Korea, vi, 24, 66, 91, 113,
Nixon shock, 18 115, 116, 154, 160, 337, 369
“No deal”, 200 bilateralism with, 316
parliamentary defeat of, 194 denuclearization, 316
Nobel Peace Prize, 116 easing sanctions on, 370
No deal, 199 horrendous human rights record,
“Noncore” jobs, outsourcing, 66 64
Nongovernmental groups (NGOs), 90 nuclear weapons, acquisition of, 93
Non-Han ethnicities, 289 North Macedonia, 20
North Vietnam, 95
Nonliberal order-building projects
Norway, 69, 191, 408
rival, rise of, 92
Nostalgia, 425
Nonpolarity, 91
Nuclear modernization programs, 95
Nonproliferation Treaty, 327
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty
Non-refoulement, 411
(NPT), 294
Non-tariff barriers, 369, 371, 372 Nuclear proliferation, 94
Nord Stream pipeline, 253, 255, 320 Nuclear weapons, 95
North Africa, 421, 425 Nucor, 384
migrant centers in, 421 Nye, Joseph, 26, 94, 114
North American Free Trade Agree-
ment (NAFTA), 66, 162, 375,
466, 473 O
tariff dispute settlement system, 377 Obama administration, 112
North American Free Trade Area Obama, Barack, 10, 27, 111, 114,
(NAFTA), 19 116, 117, 410, 412
North Atlantic Treaty Organization administration, 478
(NATO), 20, 120, 198, 232, belief in U.S. decline, 122
315, 341, 460, 461, 471, 472, Obamacare, 58
475, 478 Obamagate, 148
America withdraw from, 322 O’Brien, Robert C., 154, 473
Article 5 of, 20 Obsolete industries, 363
biggest threat to, 323 Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria, 147
collective budget, 319 Office of Personnel Management, 165
enlargement of, 91 Offshore balancing
July 2018 summit, 320, 321 strategy of, 31
May 2017 summit, 320 Offshore destination, 104
U.S. commitments to, 472 Ohio, 104
U.S. involvement in, 462 Oil
North Carolina, 416 price of, 13
INDEX 519
Oman, 105 refugee status of, 417

Omar, Ilhan, 147 Pandemic, 152
“One-China” policy, 109 Papadopoulos, George, 156
One China, one Taiwan, 106 Papua New Guinea, 409
Online extremism, 51 Paracel Islands, 108
Online purchases, 389 Paraguay, 467
On-shoring, 8 Paris
Ontario, 59 Périphérique, 423
Open financial services, 374 terrorist attacks in, 423
Open markets, 23 Paris Accord, 4
Open Skies treaty, 121 Paris climate accord, 25, 325, 462,
Orbán, Viktor, vii, 10, 54, 240–242, 478
244, 259, 416, 417, 424, 425, Paris climate agreement, 250
438, 463, 475, 478 Parker, Kathleen, 63
Organization for Economic Coop- Parliament, 191, 193, 194, 196, 197,
eration and Development, 200
287 Partial ceasefire, 374
Organization of American States Partial power, 113
(OAS), 19 Patrick, Stewart, 212
Orinoco Belt, 281 Patriotism, 49
Orlando, 327 Paulson, John, 67
Ortega, Daniel, 283, 426 “Peace to Prosperity” plan, 296
Orwellian-sounding System of Peer-reviewed research articles, 97
National Cooperation, 61 Peloponnesian War, 93
Osaka G-20 summit (2019), 61, 62 Pelosi, Nancy, 147, 149, 436
Oslo Accords, 295 Pence, Mike, 29, 319, 461
Ottoman Turkish occupation, 425 Pension obligations, 104
Outsourced (subcontracted), 104 Pentagon, 150, 370
Outsourcing, 8, 363 Pentagon Papers, 63
Overpopulation, 410 People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 104
Overt favoritism, 367 Information Engineering University
Owens, Candace, 60 (Zhengzhou), 111
Oxfam, 21 People’s Party (Austria), 243
People, The, ix
Permanent Court of Arbitration, 109
P Peronism, 277, 278
Pacific Silk Road, 100 Peronistas, 278
Pakistan, 17, 101, 113, 118, 292, 327 Peronists, 277
Palestine Liberation Organization, Perón, Juan, 277, 278
295 Persecution, 411
Palestinian refugees, 417 fear of, 410, 411, 429
Palestinians, 417, 418 victims of, 414
520 INDEX
Persian Gulf, 331 Pompeo, Mike, 101, 151, 164, 282,

Peru, 282, 411, 426 316
Petrobras, 285 Poole, Keith T., 57
PetroCaribe, 282 Poonam, Snigda, 292
“Phase 1” of an agreement, 374, 387 Poor white males, 57
“Phase 2” of an agreement, 375 Populism, ix, 61, 463
Philippine drug offenders, 290 Populist authoritarianism, 50
Philippines, 106, 108, 288–290, 475 Populist leaders, 463
Piketty, Thomas, 57 Porter, Henry, 423
Pilling, David, 96 Ports of entry, 411, 429
Pillsbury, Michael, 109 Portugal, 99
Pink tide, 284 austerity imposed in, 14
Piraeus, 99 Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, 428
Pittsburgh, 62 Post-Cold War World, x
Pittsburgh synagogue Postwar trading norms, 388
massacre at, 50 Poujade, Pierre, 235
shooting, 68 Power factors, 94
“Pivot” to Asia, 115 Presidential Records Act, 336
PLO, 119 Press, 53
Poe, Edgar Allan, 164 Pressley, Ayanna, 147
Points of entry, 411 Prince Mohammad, 160
Poland, x, 17, 99, 120, 190, 239, Principals Committee, 153, 154
244, 424, 463, 471, 475 Pritchett, Lant, 97
Poles, 425 Private firms, 371
Police brutality, 143 Private investment, 97
Polish, 408 Pro-Brexit organization, 188
Political appointees, 156 Pro-Brexit voters, 190
Political correctness, 53 Production chains, 362, 370, 385
Political dimension, of globalization, Professional economists and
11 technocrats, 58
Political globalization, 4, 189, 388, Pro-globalist liberal elites, 52
470, 472, 478 Prompt Asylum Claim Review, 435
U.S. support for, 462 Pro-Russian populist party, 233
Political instability, 460 Protectionism, 58, 362, 388, 408
Political Islam, 420 economic costs of, 362
Political liberalism, 474 Protectionist societies, 362
Political sovereignty, 279 Protestant, 192
Political tribalism, 412 Prudence of leaders, 94
Political vandalism, 205 Psychological genocide, 107
Politicization, 24 Purchasing power parity (PPP), 96, 98
Politics of paranoia, 60 Purchasing power per capita, 96
Pomersantsev, Peter, 463 Putinism, 61
INDEX 521
Putin, Vladimir, vi, 10, 232, 253, influx of, 425

256, 282, 471, 478 Regimes, 93
Regional and Comprehensive
Economic Partnership, 325
Q Regional arrangements, 466
Qatar, 161 Regional Comprehensive Economic
Qualcomm, 369 Partnership (RCEP), 12
Quantum computing, 365 Relative decline, 93
Queen Elizbeth II, 205 Relative gains and losses, 64
Queiroz, Fabrício, 287 Religion, v, 407, 410
Religious diversity, 407
Religious pluralism, 420
R
Religious schools, 420
Race, v, 410
Re-localization, 8
Racial biases, 412
Reluctant sheriff, 117
Racial diversity, 407
“Remain in Mexico” program, 427,
Racial violence, 468
428, 430
Racism, 7, 425, 468
Rackete, Carola, 423 Remainers, 58, 190
Rakhine State (Myanmar), 291 Renationalization, 8
Rapp-Hooper, Mira, 30 Renminbi, 103, 372
Rare-earth, 370, 372 as reserve or hard currency, 103
company, 370 Repeat referendum, 191
metals, 370 Reproductive health, 143
Rasmussen, Lokke, 203 Republican convention, 148
Ratcliffe, John, 157 Republican Party, 48, 364, 408, 476
Reagan, Ronald, 121, 146, 460 Republicans, 53, 68, 123, 408, 468,
administration, 284 472, 479
Reagan-Thatcher governments, 20 Republican senators, 119
Realism, 64 Republic of Ireland, 192, 200, 210
Realists, 94 “Reserve” currencies, 18
Realist thought, 94 Residence by investment, 438
Realpolitik world, 93 Resident foreign population, 407
Real-time data, 465 Resistant Globals, 52, 53
Recession, 93 Resistant Locals, 52
Rees-Mogg, Jacob, 200, 201 Retaliatory tariffs, 362
Reeves, Carlton, 60 Returns on education, 57
Referenda, 278 Reunification, 107
Referendum, 60, 187 Revisionist states, 71
Refugee asylum, 258 Rhodes, Ben, 53
Refugee Convention, 411 Rice, Susan, 409
Refugees, 147, 410–412, 414, 418, Right to due process, 435
422 Right-wing extremists, 474
522 INDEX
Right-wing populists, 54 Russian peacekeepers, 247

Riley, Russell, 374 Ryukyu Islands, 108
Rising powers, 94
Risky investments
bundling and sale of, 57 S
Robinson, Peter, 371 Saá, Adolfo Rodríguez, 279
Robotics, 8, 97 Sadat, Anwar, 294
Rodrik, Dani, 55, 212 “Safe-third country” policy, 430, 431
Rogue regimes, 26 Saharan tribes, 421
Rogue states, 91 Sahel region, 425
Roman Empire, The, 89 Salman, Mohammed bin, 26
Romania, 120 Salt Lake City, 327
Romanians, 425 Salvadoran rebels, 284
Roosevelt, Franklin D., v, 460 Salvini, Matteo, vii, 54, 232, 238,
Rosenau, James N., 3 243, 248, 422–424, 475
“local worlds”, 52 Samsung, 67
Rosenthal, Howard, 57 Sanctions, 468
Rosneft, 283 Sanctuary cities, 413, 414
Ross, Wilbur, 364 Sanders, Sarah Huckabee, 432
Röttgen, Norbert, 469 Sandistas, 283
Rouhani, Hassan, 328, 333 San Francisco, 58, 413
Rousseff, Dilma, 285 São Paulo, 288
Royal United Services Institute, 151 Sardesai, Rajdeep, 293
Rudd, Amber, 205 Sasse, Ben, 363
Rudd, Kevin, 10, 112, 369 Saudi Arabia, 13, 105, 145, 161, 294
Rule of law, vi, vii, 48 rivalry with Iran, 146
Rules-based order, 25 U.S. arms sales to, 26, 146
Runciman, David, 59 Saudi wealth, 26
Rural support, 54 Schake, Kori, 31
Russia, 5, 117, 120, 122, 123, 251, Schell, Orville, 464
416, 418, 460, 469, 473, 474, Schengen Agreement, 233
477, 478 Schengen zone, 258, 425, 440
resurgence of, x Schularick, Moritz, 103
sanctions against, 14 Schuman, Michael, 367
seizure of Crimea, 89 Schumer, Chuck, 339
Russian aggression, 93 Science
Russian aggression, in Ukraine, 251 contempt for, 146
Russian- and Iranian-supported army, Science and experts, 47
259 Science and technological superpower,
Russian meddling, in American 97
politics, 7 Science evidence, 326
Russian military pressure, 151 Scientific evidence, 147, 325, 326
INDEX 523
Scientific research Shinawatra, Thaksin (Thailand), 59

funding of, 147 Shin, Michael, x, 6, 47
Scobell, Andrew, 104 Shithole countries, 147, 407
Scotland, 187, 195, 206, 208 Shuanhui International, 102
Scottish National Party (SNP), 197 Sicily, 242, 422
Sea of Japan, 93, 108 Siemens, 67
Second impeachment, 409 Significant reduction exceptions
Second referendum, 193, 199 (SREs), 328
Sectarian exclusionism, 92 Sikh turbans, 420
Sectarianism, 5 Silicon Valley, 415
Secularism, 5, 420 Silk Road Economic Belt, 99
Security agency, 152 Silk Road Fund, 99
Security clearance, 335 Silk Road on Ice, 100
Security Council, 19, 333 Simon Wiesenthal Center, 7
Resolution 2231, 334 Singapore, 291, 382
Seehofer, Horst, 422 Single market, 191, 192, 197, 199,
Self-interested “elites”, 53 201, 209, 258
Self-sufficiency, 67 Sino-American economic
Semiconductors, 362 interdependence, 364, 387
Senate Finance Committee, 365 Sino-American geopolitical rivalry,
Senate Intelligence Committee, 153, 465
158 Sino-American relations, 465
Senkaku Islands, 95 Sino-American trade war, 162, 316
Separation of powers, in government, negotiations to end, 371
60 Sisi, Abdel Fattah, 119
Serbia, 14, 422 Sittwe, 291
Serwer, Adam, 51 Skyping, 389
Sessions, Jeff, 432 Slobodian, Quinn, 16
Sestanovich, Stephen, 470 Sloterdijk, Peter, vi
Shambaugh, David, 113 Slovakia, 120, 190, 239
Shanahan, Patrick, 105, 319, 429 Slovenia, 120
Shanghai Slowbalisation, 465
server farm in, 366 Smartphones, 6
Shanghai Group, 110 Smithfield, 103
Shanghai Unit 61398, 110, 111 Smithfield Foods, 102
Shared leadership, 462 Snowden, Edward, 111
Sharia law, 420 Soames, Nicholas, 205
“Shia” bombs and/or missiles, 294 Social Democrats, 233, 236, 257
Shia militia, 154 Socialist Party (France), 235
Shia Muslims, 155, 294 Socialism, x
Shias in Bahrain, 294 Social justice, 279
Shifting alliances, 95 Social media, 5, 459
524 INDEX
Social networks, 55 Sperling, Gene, 464

Society for Worldwide Interbank Sri Lanka, 101
Financial Telecommunication Stability Mechanism, 249
(SWIFT), 332 Stalin, Joseph, 91
Socio-cultural dimension, of Stanley, Jason, 244
globalization, 14 State Administration for Foreign
Socio-cultural globalization, 68, 407, Exchange, 102
438, 440, 470, 479 State autonomy, 9
Socio-cultural homogeneity, 409 State capacity, 9
Soft Brexit, 199, 200 State capitalism, 96, 371
prime minister’s proposal for, 201 State capitalist, 97
Soft deal, 198 State-controlled economy, 280
Soft power, 95, 113, 147, 414, 415, State Department, 25, 152, 153, 156,
463 157, 409, 430
Solá, Felipe, 279 State-owned and highly subsidized
Soleimani, Qasem, 154, 155, 330 industries, 367
Somalia, 92, 118 State sovereignty, 92
Somoza, Anastasio, 283 Statue of Liberty, 437
Soros, George, 50, 241–243, 259, Stavridis, James, 472
426 Stealth drone, 107
South and Japan Seas, 113 Steger, 61
South Carolina, 69, 381 Steger, Manfred, x, 14
South China Sea, 95, 108, 163, 370 Stephens, Michael, 151
U-shaped “nine-dash-line” map of, Stoltenberg, Jens, 319, 323
108 Stone Panda, 110
South China Sea islands, 107 Stone, Roger, 156
Southeast Asia, 58, 465 “Stop Soros” bill, 426
South Korea, 12, 65, 102, 106, 115, Strache, Heinz-Christian, 243
316, 462, 475 Strait of Hormuz, 331
National Assembly, 337 Strange, Susan, 57
nuclear weapons, acquiring, 316 Strategic dialogue, 323
South Ossetia, 120 Strategic Support Force, 105
South Sudan, 102 “Structural changes” in Chinese
Sovereign obligations, 459 activities, 370
Sovereignty, 476 Structural Funds, 240
Soviet Jews, 414 Structural transformation, 373
Soviet Union, v Sturgeon, Nicola, 206
Spain, 258, 425 Sudan, 296
austerity imposed in, 14 Suicide rates, 57
Special Forces, 118 Sullivan, Jake, 71
Special Investigation Team, 292 Sulzberger, A.G., 63
Specialized Globals, 52 Summers, Lawrence, 16, 97
INDEX 525
“Sunni” bombs and missiles, 294 Tempel, Sylke, 65

Supply chains, 8, 19, 362, 385, 389, Temporary Protected Status (TPS),
460, 464, 465, 470 409, 411
Supreme Court, 205, 410, 411, 419, Tennessee, 382
428, 431, 436, 437, 474 Terminal dues, 318
decision banning segregation, 60 Terrible probability, 468
Supreme Electoral Court, 281 Territorial “caliphate”, 118
Surrendering technology, 367 Territorial Globals, 52
Suu Kyi, Aung San, 291 Terrorism, 10, 92, 419, 420, 424
Sweden, 420, 471 suspects, torturing, 143
Sweden Democrats, 233 Terrorists, 419, 425
Swedish nativism, 7 THAAD anti-ballistic missile system,
Swiss franc, 19 66
Switzerland, 191 Thailand, 475
Syria, 100, 116, 118, 119, 123, 150, Thatcher, Margaret, 460
418, 422 Theocrats, 122
chemical weapons in, 471 3D Printing, 8
intervention in, 93 Thomas-Greenfield, Linda, 472
poison gas against civilians, 65 Thornberry, Mac, 322
Turkey’s intervention in, 259 Thucydides trap, 93, 95
Syrian civil war, 418 Tibet, 113
Syrian refugees, 418 Tibetans, 289
Tillerson, Rex, 29, 157, 158, 160,
469
T Tlaib, Rashida, 147
Taiwan, 106, 108, 113, 115, 316, Today’s populism, 47
370 Trade, 8
Taiwanese computer chips, 362 Trade deficits, 341, 363, 479
Taiwan Relations Act, 106 Trade Expansion Act
Taiwan Strait, 95, 107 Section 232 of 1962, 363
Take back control, 189 Trade multilateralism, 473
Taliban, 118 Trade Partnership Worldwide, 372
Tariffs, 10 Trade surplus, 363, 389
on imports, 364 Trade war, 58, 365, 465, 466, 468
Tarrant, Brenton, 51, 68 Transactional advantages, 26
Tatmadaw, 291 Transactional basis, 26
Tax cuts, 365 Transactional policies, 157
Tax reduction, 58 Transactional strategy, 315
Technocrats, 48 Transactional view, 55
Technological change, v Trans-Atlantic friendship, 478
Technological rivalry, 365 Transatlantic Trade and Investment
Technology transfer, 370 Partnership (TTIP), 12
526 INDEX
Transdniestria, 120 bilateralism, preference for, 361

Transnational corporations, 465 Britain’s Trump, 207
Transnational corporations and banks, decision-making style, 65
362 democratic support for USMCA,
Transnational customers, 389 378
Transnational groups, 470 globalization, rejection of, 49
Transnational investment, 11, 389 hispanic asylum-seekers, comments
Transnational management, 389 about, 427
Transnational networks, 19 July 2018 Helsinki summit, 253
Transnational nongovernmental MAGA slogan, 471
organizations, 315 mainstream media, assailment of, 48
Transnational organizations, 315 opponents, 144
Transnational politics, 461 properties in Florida and New York,
Transnational production, 389 416
Transnational production and sales, Putin, loyalty to, 323
362 Russia’s support in presidential
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), 12, election, 49
316, 325, 466, 479 state visit to the UK (2019), 200
Traub, James, 463, 479
“the swamp”, 50
Tribalism, 408, 412
Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi, 153
Tribal loyalties, 50
Trump of the Tropics, 285
Trieste, 99
Trump-Putin summit, 336
Trinidad, 426
Trusted Traveler Program, 413
Trojan horses, 418, 425
Tsai Ing-wen, 109
Troubles, The, 192
Tu-160 Russian strategic bombers,
Trudeau, Justin, 253, 255, 377, 384,
282
478
Truman, Harry S., v, 476, 479 Tunis, 198
Trumbull, Malcolm, 409 Turkey, 17, 123, 246, 364, 411, 418,
Trump Doctrine, 383 421, 423, 424
Trump, Donald, v–vii, x, xi, 24, 68, incursion into Syria, 424
69, 122, 190–192, 200, 232, Turkmenistan, 102
438, 460, 463, 468, 475 Turks, 190
a “nationalist,” declared himself, 49 Tusk, Donald, 26, 70, 194, 195, 199,
administration, 362, 412, 413 231, 232
administration to list of threats to “Tweet storm”, 149
EU, 26 Tweets, 152, 408
America’s trade deficit, view of, 65 2008 Beijing Olympics, 96
American base, 369 2016 Brexit referendum, 58
and Chaos in Government, 151 2017 EU summit, 233
and immigration, 408, 409 2017 G-20 summit, 388
“base”, 27 2019 G-7 summit in Biarritz, 373
INDEX 527
2019 National Intelligence Strategy, System, 19

61, 439 United Nations Relief and Works
2019 NATO summit, 383 Agency (UNRWA), 417, 475
2020 Pew poll, 471 United Officer’s Group, 277
2020 presidential election, 24 United States–Mexico–Canada
Twitter, 6, 27, 48, 51, 415 Agreement (USMCA), 377, 473
Two-state solution, 117, 478 United States Fair and Reciprocal
Tyson, Laura, 389 Trade Act, 324
United States (U.S.), 9, 282
2016 presidential election, 9
U decline, perceptions of, 15
UAE-Israeli agreement, 296 elections, meddling in, 13
Uighurs, 388 foreign policy, successful, 71
UK-EU post-Brexit relations, 461 influx of Latinos into, 10
UK Independence Party (UKIP), 188, intelligence agencies, 29
191 intelligence community, 49
Ukraine, vi, 14, 93, 114, 120, 158, judiciary, 60
477 populist opposition to immigration
imposing sanctions on Russia over, in, 14
116 relative decline, 15
Ukraine crisis, 251 Republicans, 53
Ultraviolet lights, 152 trade deficit, 66
Undocumented aliens, 414, 416 war games against China, 105. See
Undocumented migrants, 5, 410, 413 also America
Unemployment, 363 United Steel Workers, 379
“Unfair” trade, 363 Universal Declaration of Human
UN General Assembly, 64 Rights, 11, 19, 410
UN Human Rights Committee, 475 Universal Postal Union, 19, 318
Unilateralism, 472 UNOCOL, 102
Unionist community, 192 UN Protocol Relating to the Status of
Unipolar moment, 90 Refugees, 410
United Arab Emirates (UAE), 105, U.N. Security Council, 143, 333
161 Uranium enrichment, 330, 334
United Fighting Championship Urban support, 54
(U.F.C), 413 Urban voters vs.rural voters, 58
United Kingdom (UK) Uruguay, 467
nationalist-populism in, 188 Uruguay Round (1986–1994), 324
negotiations between EU and, 196 U.S. Aluminum Association, 379
United Nations (UN), 19, 316, 462 U.S. border
Charter, 11, 19 migrant flow of Latinos to, 378
General Assembly in 2018, speech U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 380
to, 48 U.S.-China trade war, 362
528 INDEX
U.S. consumers and farmers, 372 Venezuelan refugees, 426

U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, Venezuela, Petròleos de, 283
370 Venture-capital firm, 415
U.S. dollar, 18 Video streaming, 389
U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, 417 Vietnam, 104, 106, 108, 382, 386
U.S. farmers, 67, 387 Vietnamese, 414
U.S. firms Vietnamese “hearts and minds”, 95
imposing tariffs, 67 Vietnam War, 63, 95
U.S. foreign debt, 369 Virus, The, 425
U.S. goods, boycott of, 372 Visegrad, 239
U.S. government securities Vitiello, Ronald D., 414
Chinese purchases of, 103 Voight, Russ, 434
U.S. hegemony, v Volkswagen, 384
declining, 90 von der Leyen, Ursula, 209, 258
U.S. intelligence community, 366 Vote Leave group, 190
U.S.-Iranian Treaty of Amity (1955), Voter fraud, 62
333 Vulnerability, 464
U.S. Iran sanctions, 329
U.S-North Korea relationship, 153
U.S. Office of Personnel Management, W
111 Walesa, Lech, 54
U.S. Postal Service, 474 Wallace, George, 60
U.S.-Russian relations Wallander, Celeste A., 323
“reset” in, 120 Walmart, 364
U.S. Senate, 4 Walt, Stephen, 31, 156, 166
USSR, 28, 62 War crimes, 20
U.S. Steel, 384 Warmbier, Otto, 64
U.S. tariffs War on multilateralism, 315
on steel and aluminum imports, 255 War on Poverty, 56
U.S. tax code, regressive, 57 War on Terror, 114, 118
U.S. trade deficit with Mexico, 67 Warsaw, 330
U.S. treasury securities, 372 Washington, 416
U.S. troops Washington Consensus, 20
in Germany, reduction of, 322 Weber, Manfred, 242
Wehner, Peter, 57, 163, 426
Welfare programs, 57
V West Bank, 295, 417
Validation, 59 Western Pacific, 105, 106
Values, 64, 65 Western Sahara, 296
Venezuela, 20, 277, 280, 334, 426, WhatsApp, 415
475 Whigs, 408
Venezuela’s National Assembly, 282 White evangelicals, 66, 438
INDEX 529
White genocide, 57 Wuhan virus, 151

White nationalism, 62
Whiteness, 468
White supporters, 468 X
White supremacism, 51, 69 Xenophobia, 7, 390, 407, 408, 468
White supremacists, 50, 63, 68, 159, Xi Jinping, 27, 95, 122, 289, 316,
286, 408, 427, 468, 474 364, 477, 478
mentality, 51 Xinjiang, 113
WikiLeaks, 63, 189, 284
Wilders, Geert, 196, 235
Y
Will, George, 59, 163, 188
Yahoo, 415
Wilson, Woodrow, 17
Yanukovich, Viktor, 252
Window of strategic opportunity, 105
Yellow people, 468
Winnebago, 385
Yeltsin, Boris, 91, 120
Wolf, Chad, 428
Yemen, 100, 118, 161
Wolfenden, Katherine J., 279
YouTube, 6
Wolf, Martin, 47, 60, 96, 152
Workers’ Party (Brazil), 284, 285
Working-class communities, 53 Z
World’s “lungs”, 286 Zacharia, Fareed, 477
World Bank, 11, 18, 341 Zaidi-Shia Houthi movement (Yemen),
World Economic Forum, 364 294
World Health Organization (WHO), Zakaria, Fareed, 90, 188, 464
19, 315, 316, 475, 478 Zaretsky, Robert, 420
World markets, 477 Zelaya, Manuel, 284
World Trade Center, 419 Zeman, Milos, 425
World Trade Organization (WTO), 5, Zero non-tariff barriers, 382
18, 316, 324, 341, 362, 367, Zero subsidies, 382
369, 374, 380, 382, 460, 464, Zero-sum perception, 467
465, 478 Zero-sum relationships, 4
dispute resolution system, 11 Zero-sum views, 25
dispute-settlement system, 364 Zero tariffs, 382
rules-based trading system, 369 “Zero tolerance” policy, 432, 433
treaty, 363 Zhengfei, Ren, 366
World War I, 17, 71 Ziblatt, Daniel, 54, 474
World War II, v, 16, 17, 71 Zimbabwe, 100
effect of, 94 Zimmerman, James, 368
Wray, Christopher, 51, 159, 477 Zombie government, 193
Wright, Thomas, 461 ZTE electronics maker, 162

Populism and Globalization The Return of Nationalism and The Global Liberal Order

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Populism

ISBN 978-3-030-72032-2 ISBN 978-3-030-72033-9 (eBook)

Cover image: © titoOnz/Alamy Stock Photo

reinforcing the rule of law, or even fostering America’s national interest, is

Ames, IA, USA Richard W. Mansbach

This book reviews some of the generally optimistic conclusions that we

are normal parts of the process. Forward advance frequently encourages

Former President Donald Trump has decried such media as consisting

Part I The Sources and Evolution of

Part II The Spread of Nationalist-Populism

Part III Three Dimensions of Globalization: Present and

10 The Socio-Cultural Dimension of Globalization 407

The Sources and Evolution

Globalization and the Global Liberal Order

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 3

direction, pressures will emerge to move in the opposite direction. “Glob-

those forces that impel individuals, groups, societies, governments, insti-

Cyber-Technologies, Globalization, and Populism

population was online by mid-2019. Along with container shipping and

potentially explosive implications for politics.… Deepfakes will also exac-

“This is an existential moment for global power structures, turned

Our Earlier Conclusions About Globalization

Perhaps, the single greatest misjudgment in our earlier volume was

Brexiteers would believe that bilateralism would afford them advantages

re-embrace its responsibilities to the liberal international order it painstak-

Three Key Dimensions of Globalization

The Economic Dimension

(ITA-II). The fifty-four countries involved agreed to eliminate import

was essentially over the reacquiring of the economic authority previously

The Socio-Cultural Dimension

and identities because it undermines the linkages that connect culture

The Evolution of the Global Liberal Order

authoritarian societies. “The result was the opposite of a virtuous cycle:

The Liberal Order: Another

Japanese yen (5.25%), British pound sterling (4.24%), Chinese renminbi

ICC’s jurisdiction included crimes of genocide and other crimes against

The Erosion of the Global Liberal Order

Even as economic globalization accelerated in the 1990s, so did anti-

Donald Trump: Enemy of the Liberal Order

Other threats to democracy that became apparent under Trump

isolationist and unilateralist themes. He spoke of increases in military

foes or “giving the finger” to allies in pursuit of transactional advantages

worst—a future in which Trump’s erratic style and confrontational poli-

Instead, as Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay noted, “As Trump

previous operations.”68 Trump, owing to his violent rhetoric and dislike

37. Sam Fleming and Lauren Leathersby, “Millions Mired in Poverty as US

65. Anne Appelbaum, “The Dark History Behind Trump’s Inflammatory

2. According to Rosenau, localization is __________

3. Which of These is an example of a Multinational Institution?

5. What did Rosenau call the combination where fragmentation of

6. Which one of these has resulted in the slowing of economic

a. Post-World War II free trade norms

7. Which of these is an example of a “boundary-eroding” trend?

8. Which of these is a manifestation of “boundary-strengthening”

a. Intrusive governance by international and transnational

9. Which of these politicians or types of politician believe that bilat-

10. Which country prospered as a result of the U.S.-China Trade war?

a. Russia does not trade internationally

12. The bankruptcy of what EU member lead to talks of it being

a. The ratings rose

19. What did greater global trade produce?

a. Maintaining a stable global financial system

False, populist do not like globalization