By JOSÉ LUÍS FIORI*
If there is a peace agreement in Ukraine, it will most likely be the starting point for a new arms race within Europe itself and between the US and Russia.
Most analysts agree that the international failure of Joe Biden's government played an important role in Donald Trump's victory in the elections on November 5, 2024. Highlights include the humiliating American withdrawal from Afghanistan; NATO's failure in the Ukraine War; and finally, the US's ambiguity in the face of the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, divided between its humanitarian appeals and the direct supply of weapons, money and information used by the Israeli government in the bombing of the Palestinian population.
At this point, it is not yet known whether Donald Trump’s re-election will be just another round of the American political “seesaw”. This time, however, Donald Trump cannot be reelected and will have a term of office of only four years, but at the same time he will have a conservative majority in Congress, the Senate and the Supreme Court, and will have at his disposal a homogeneous team of assistants. This will allow him, in principle, to quickly and immediately advance his “national agenda”. However, in the international arena, the horizon is less clear.
In this field, Donald Trump’s basic slogan has always been the same: “peace through strength”, not through war. But, in addition, Donald Trump’s international project gives up the “moral exceptionalism” of the United States, and adopts the “American national interest” as the sole reference for all its choices, decisions and alliances that may vary over time. This is followed by Donald Trump’s attack on all multilateral institutions, and on all trade agreements and regimes, or those associated with the “climate issue” and the “energy transition”.
Donald Trump’s “domestic policies” involve sovereign and autonomous decisions, and can be taken without further consultation with other countries and governments. But in the case of the new government’s international agenda, the problem is much more complex, because it involves past US agreements, and clashes with the sovereign will of other countries, and other Great Powers, such as China, Iran, Russia, or even its NATO allies.
With regard to China, it is very likely that Donald Trump will be able to negotiate specific trade and technology agreements. However, competition and friction between the two countries are likely to continue and increase in intensity in the coming years. This is because China has long been defined by American strategists as the main competitor and the main threat to the United States in the 21st century. In this area, one can even speak of a bipartisan consensus between Democrats and Republicans, with differences only in gradation and intensity. In fact, Joe Biden's government has maintained the same protectionist policy against China as Donald Trump's first government.
The difference is that China is now better prepared and will not be caught by surprise as it was during the first Trump administration. Furthermore, in recent years China has deepened its economic relations with its Asian neighbors, and with African and Latin American countries. And since the start of the Ukrainian War in 2021, the Chinese have strengthened their economic ties and strategic alliance with Russia, closing the door to any attempt to repeat Henry Kissinger's strategy from the last century, only now reversing the roles of China and Russia.
For all these reasons, it is most likely that during Donald Trump's second term, relations between the two powers will continue to be governed by the "Thucydides trap", with an unprecedented acceleration of their technological and military competition, with the universalization of their "trade war", including the possibility announced by Donald Trump of punishing countries that do not use the dollar in their international transactions, particularly in the case of the BRICS group.
In the case of the Middle East, too, the differences between the positions of the Democrats and the Republicans are very small. Donald Trump is even expected to increase the US government’s support for Israel and its wars in Gaza and Lebanon. And he is expected to increase the policy of “maximum pressure” against Iran. However, in his second term, Donald Trump is likely to find a very different military and political reality in the Middle East than in his first term, especially after the success of Iran’s two direct military attacks on Israeli territory, Turkey’s radical break with Israel, and the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, promoted by China and blessed by Russia.
Therefore, any immediate ceasefire agreement that may be reached will not mean that Israel and Iran will suspend their long-term, zero-sum dispute. The “two-state” scenario seems completely out of the question, and Palestinian resistance is likely to continue, as is the ongoing threat of a Persian-Jewish war that could escalate into a full-blown conflict within the Middle East.
In Europe, however, the panorama is completely different, and there is a radical opposition between the positions of the Democrats and that of the Republicans. In this case, the simple electoral victory of Donald Trump, together with the implosion of the German government of Olaf Scholz, immediately caused a profound shock and a first division within the warmongering bloc led by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and by her new Chief of Foreign Policy, Kaja Kallas, and supported by the Biden government, the French Emmanuel Macron, and the government of the British Prime Minister, Keir Stramer.
The possibility that this “Russophobic coalition” will launch a suicidal attack on Russia before Donald Trump takes office is not yet ruled out. But the most likely scenario now is that peace negotiations will begin immediately, with the implicit recognition by the US of Russia’s military victory. But here too, there is no need to have illusions. After their military and economic victory, the Russians will no longer accept the unipolar world under US tutelage. And it is most likely that the US and England, together with their European allies, will continue to arm themselves against Russia, the great “external enemy” that served as a kind of “strategic organizing principle” for the Western powers, and in particular for England throughout the 19th century, and for the US in the 20th century.
If this “necessary enemy” were to disappear, the US and England would have to scrap a significant part of their global military infrastructure, built with the aim of containing “Russian expansionism”, involving a gigantic investment in weapons and all types of material and human resources, civilian, military and paramilitary. And NATO, in particular, would lose its reason for being, taking with it the current power structure of the European Union.
Therefore, if there is a peace agreement in Ukraine, it is most likely that it will also be the starting point for a new, increasingly intense arms race within Europe itself, and obviously, between the US and Russia, with chain repercussions in all directions and latitudes of the world system.
Finally, the peripheral countries of Latin America and Africa are of no importance whatsoever within Donald Trump's international project, which presupposes their pure and simple submission to the monetary and economic power of the United States. And in this case, it is very likely that what happened in the 80s will be repeated, when the capitalist periphery was subjected and/or defeated by the American economic policy of the “strong dollar” and Ronald Reagan's “military Keynesianism”, and was later “rescued” by the neoliberal policies and reforms imposed by the IMF's “adjustment programs”.
But now the framing and submission of the indebted states and economies of Latin America and Africa will probably happen as a derivative or indirect consequence of the new “economic protectionism” announced by Donald Trump. Its immediate effect will be an increase in inflation and interest rates within the US, and this increase in interest rates will cause a generalized devaluation of other national currencies, with an increase in the external debt of countries indebted in dollars, along with an increase in their inflation rates, fiscal paralysis of their states and stagnation of their economies. And in the end, the return and probable submission to the IMF, as in the pathetic case of Javier Milei’s Argentina.
In short, what we should expect in the international arena for the next four years of the Trump administration: the United States will abandon the project of the messianic universalization of its national values, and will cease to be the “Knights Templar” of a “world order governed by rules.” And it will propose to act within the World System based exclusively on its “national interests,” using its brute force, financial, technological and military force to impose its will wherever it deems necessary. With an appeal, only as a last resort, to the use of war.
* Jose Luis Fiori He is professor emeritus at UFRJ. Author of, among other books, A Theory of Global Power (Vozes) [https://amzn.to/3YBLfHb]
Originally published in the Economic Bulletin no. 8 of the International Observatory of the XNUMXst Century — NUBEA/UFRJ.
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