President Donald Trump’s pre-inauguration musings and post-inauguration actions on the world stage have been jarring, even by his standards. Among other things, he suggested raising tariffs by 25 percent on Canada and Mexico and promised “tariffs all the way” for the EU. He renamed the Gulf of Mexico (an international body of water known by that name for 400+ years) and threatened to “get rid of that artificially drawn line” known as the U.S.-Canada border. He raised the prospect of annexing Greenland and followed up that threat with a “fiery” and “aggressive” phone call to the prime minister of NATO ally Denmark (which controls the territory of Greenland). Rounding out his 19th-century imperialist-style wish list, he revealed that the future of the Panama Canal Zone is “under discussion” and refused to rule out “military or economic coercion” to take it back.
These alarming declarations and actions, it pays to recall, come on the heels of Trump’s summertime boast that when his NATO counterparts asked, “If we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, would you protect us?” he answered, “No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.”
All of this underscores that the best descriptor for Trump’s approach to foreign policy is “transactional confrontation”: Canada, Mexico, Panama, Denmark, NATO members in Moscow’s crosshairs and the EU have to give Trump something in order to defuse the confrontation and deflect his ire. To keep his confrontations from further fracturing the free world—and to keep Cold War II from exploding into something worse—the free world must, quite literally, deal with America’s president.
Arguments
First things first: While Trump’s tactics and tone are unreasonable, the premises of some of his arguments are worth considering.
For instance, the security of the Panama Canal Zone and indeed the entire Western Hemisphere is important to America’s security. Likewise, the security of Greenland—an Artic territory strategically situated, rich in mineral resources and home to a key U.S. missile-tracking base—is worthy of discussion. President Harry Truman proposed purchasing the territory in 1946. However, Truman never publicly mulled the use of military force or economic threat to seize Greenland. Likewise, President Ronald Reagan—who opposed the transfer of the Panama Canal Zone—didn’t threaten war to reverse what his predecessor had negotiated. Instead, he recognized that the Torrijos-Carter Treaty was the law of the land.
Importantly, in both Greenland and Panama, the outcomes desired by America are also desired by Greenland, Denmark and Panama—security, stability, the free flow of commerce, the free exploration and extraction of critical minerals—and those outcomes can be achieved through cooperation rather than coercion.
Finally, there’s an argument to be made for proper use of tariffs. Adam Smith concluded that “when some particular sort of industry is necessary for the defense of the country,” it is appropriate “to lay some burden upon foreign for the encouragement of domestic industry.” However, weaponizing tariffs against allies such as Canada, Mexico and Europe is misguided: None of them has manipulated the supply of vital materials in the postwar era. Moreover, trade deficits are a function of choices made by U.S. consumers. Piling tariffs onto allies also is self-defeating: It would make more sense to partner with them in creating a common front against China than to threaten them—thus triggering retaliatory actions and dividing the free world.
As Reagan observed, “Trade helps strengthen the free world.” Tariffs divide it.
Orders
That brings us to what some call the “free world order,” others the “rules-based democratic order,” still others the “liberal international order.”
There are costs that come with sustaining the liberal international order—costs that Trump is quick to recite. But he and other advocates of disengagement never tally the costs of a world that’s out of order. Before America and its allies began building the liberal international order, “Major powers frequently engaged in direct warfare on a massive scale,” as the Atlantic Council explains. “Armed conflict killed an average of 1 to 2 percent of the human population from 1600 to 1945.” Hundreds of thousands of Americans were among that number: 116,500 erased during World War I, 405,399 during World War II. But, as the Atlantic Council adds, after the liberal international order took root, there was a dramatic drop in lives lost: “During the Cold War, an average of 0.4 percent of the world’s population perished due to war. Since the year 2000, less than one one-hundredth of 1 percent of people have died this way.”
Related, the economic costs of great-power war are far higher than the economic costs of maintaining some semblance of order and great-power peace: During World War I, the U.S. spent an average of 16 percent of GDP waging war. During World War II, the U.S. spent an average of 27 percent of GDP waging war. During the Cold War, by contrast, Americans invested an average of 7 percent of GDP on defense. Those investments didn’t end all wars. But they did deter Moscow, prevent World War III and promote what Providence’s contributors, in their statement on faith and foreign policy, call “ordered liberty.”
The free world naturally recoils from order without liberty, which is known as tyranny. But we sometimes forget that liberty without order is just as bad—it’s known as chaos—and that God is deeply interested in order. Genesis tells us God brought order out of chaos. Jeremiah says God “made the earth…and gave it order.” Paul writes, “God is not a God of disorder.”
In the international system they built after World War II, America and its allies offered a happy and healthy medium between a world of micromanaged tyranny and a world of savage chaos. America, as a responsible power and the co-designer of this liberal order, should strive to promote order rather than encourage chaos.
Adversaries
The U.S. sustains the liberal international order, which deeply bothers the transactional Trump. What he fails to grasp is that the liberal international order sustains the U.S.; that the global trading system, financial system and alliance system serve America’s interests; that, as General James Mattis tried to impress upon Trump, the liberal international order “is the greatest gift of the greatest generation”; that America benefits from this transaction.
The isolationist sentiment permeating our politics—“America is too good for the world,” “America can do no good in the world,” “time for nation-building at home,” “time to put America first”—may be appealing. But the hard truth is that a world without American leadership is a world out of order: Nations which share our values don’t have the strength to promote international order—and nations with the strength to promote international order don’t share our values.
If America doesn’t do its part to sustain—and, yes, reform—the existing order, countries like China and Russia will dramatically transform it. To get a sense of what an international order shaped by Xi’s China and Putin’s Russia would look like, just look at Xi’s China and Putin’s Russia.
At home, Putin jails, poisons and murders political opponents; muzzles independent media; and has replaced the rule of law with the law of one-man rule. Abroad, Putin has launched wars of aggression against Ukraine and Georgia; committed war crimes across Ukraine and Syria; and propped up regimes that gas (Syria) and starve (Venezuela) their own people.
At home, Xi maintains an Orwellian surveillance state; engages in genocide against Uighur Muslims; and imprisons bishops and Nobel Peace Prize laureates. Abroad, Xi has erased Hong Kong’s independence; taken aim at Taiwan; conducted a relentless cyber-siege of the free world; unleashed through incompetence a crippling pandemic; and built militarized islands to back up illegal claims in the South China Sea.
In short, the current order is holding back something far worse.
Allies
If Trump thinks it’s expensive to deter Moscow and Beijing, protect U.S. interests, and promote U.S. prosperity today—all with our alliances intact— just wait until those alliances are gone. There’s a reason Putin has attacked Georgia and Ukraine but not Poland and Estonia. There’s a reason Xi is circling Taiwan but not Japan. There’s a reason the Kim dynasty has blustered for 72 years about unifying Korea by force but never tried to do so.
That reason is the U.S.-led alliance system. Our alliances serve as outer rings of our security, fuel and sustain our prosperity, and promote our interests—the most important of which is deterring great-power war.
Signaling Beijing, Japan is doubling defense spending and vows to “closely cooperate” with America in the event of a PRC attack on Taiwan. Likewise, Australian officials say it would be “inconceivable that we wouldn’t support the U.S.” in defending Taiwan. Australia unveiled a record defense budget in 2024. Australia, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Netherlands have sent warships through the Taiwan Strait to defend the liberal international order.
Signaling Moscow, defense spending among NATO’s European members jumped 19 percent last year. Poland is pouring 5 percent of GDP into defense this year. Germany has almost doubled defense spending since 2022. France will increase defense spending 40 percent by 2030. Britain is deploying 20,000 troops to defend NATO’s northern flank. European nations have sent more aid to Ukraine than has the U.S.
Ukraine has ground down Putin’s military. To cut Ukraine loose would be a moral failure and a costly blunder: AEI concludes that “maintaining security in a strategic environment in which Russia is victorious over Ukraine could cost the United States an additional $808 billion in defense spending over five years…on top of the currently planned defense budget.”
Self Help
Importantly, Trump’s transactionalism is geared toward helping Trump.
Shrewd foreign leaders are keen to this. Thus, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine very publicly notes, “The end of the war should be a victory for Trump, not Putin.”
Likewise, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson explains, “You have to make the argument to Trump, ‘Do you want this on your legacy?’” Ukraine supporters have to tell him, “It’s going to be worse than Vietnam or Afghanistan…End up with a Russian slave state, and you’ll never come back from that.” Such an outcome would be “a massive reverse for America…a humiliation…Whatever happens the rest of your presidency, you’re never going to get over it.”
That’s the art of dealing with the transactional Trump: helping him see how a policy, plan, institution or organization helps him.