Stolen entire from Belmont Club: The Newer World Order by Richard Fernandez
Back in the bipolar world, it was easy for the public to take policy sides: it was their team versus our team. Later, when unipolarity was in vogue, things were even simpler. All a member of the public had to do was take cues from the international community. But things are harder to understand now. Are the EU and US even on the same side? What is the game? Who is on first? The average guy is confused.
In trying to make sense of international affairs, let's consider — without necessarily endorsing — what the declared goals of the Trump administration are. The obvious place to begin is the National Security Strategy document itself. Based on the Trump administration's official 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) and related policy statements as of early 2026, the principal geopolitical goal can be summarized as restoring and securing American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere under an "America First" framework.
The plan is to use the Western Hemisphere as a foundation, enabling the U.S. to project power globally from a position of domestic strength and regional dominance, while reducing overcommitments elsewhere through transactional diplomacy, economic nationalism, and peace through strength. This approach marks a deliberate shift away from post-Cold War multilateralism and global primacy, toward a more restrained, interest-based posture that emphasizes spheres of influence, burden-sharing with allies, and countering great-power rivals such as China primarily through economic competition rather than ideological confrontation.
The most radical implication of "America First" is that it necessarily implies a Britain First, France First, Germany First over the UN or EU First. The Trump administration asserts the primacy and fundamental importance of the nation-state as a universal principle. But it is not universally accepted. Other people believe a global world is a better world. None of the big multilateral agencies wants to go away; nor do the ambitious international big shots really want to go back to just being president, prime minister or taoiseach of their relatively small national stages. They want to be in the big leagues with the POTUS and the emperor of China.
This puts America First and its ideological allies (mainly the European populists) at daggers drawn with the internationalists who seek a 'balanced interdependence, green deals, and autonomy in tech/finance to avoid over-reliance on the U.S. or China, but most especially to remain relevant in a world that the giants otherwise dominate. In an America-First world, the internationalists would cease to be a world influence on par with China or the U.S. They would simply be second-rank nations, and that would be wrong in principle.
The MAGA critique of multilateralism as articulated in the National Security Strategy is worth exploring, whether you believe it or not. It has two parts. First, it asserts that Europe has declined to less than half of what it used to be in the 1990s. "Continental Europe has been losing share of global GDP—down from 25 percent in 1990 to 14 percent today—partly owing to national and transnational regulations that undermine creativity and industriousness." The second, more serious charge is that multilateralism is promoting civilizational suicide, deliberately dissolving its constituent nation states using the solvent of mass immigration in order to produce some Frankenstein multicultural monster. The European Union and other transnational bodies have undermined political liberty and sovereignty; migration policies are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and the loss of national identities and self-confidence.
Whatever the merits of multilateralism in principle, it is suicide in fact. Should present trends continue, the NSS argues, the continent will be unrecognizable in twenty years or less. Few European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies. "Many of these nations are currently doubling down on their present path. We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation.This lack of self-confidence is most evident in Europe’s relationship with Russia. European allies enjoy a significant hard power advantage over Russia by almost every measure, save nuclear weapons."
Thus a line is drawn across the Western world. The nationals versus the internationals. The MAGA ideology has resonated, at least in part, with populist parties across Europe, as manifested by their considerable electoral gains. Even Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky has articulated it, saying at Davos: “Instead of becoming a truly global power, Europe remains a beautiful but fragmented kaleidoscope of small and middle powers. Instead of taking the lead in defending freedom worldwide, especially when America’s focus shifts elsewhere, Europe looks lost, trying to convince the U.S. president to change. But he will not change.” In response, the media responded with gimmicks. It noted that Emmanuel Macron stole the show by wearing sunglasses. “When French President Emmanuel Macron strode to the stage in Davos wearing a pair of reflective aviator sunglasses, many thought he was sending a message: It was time for someone in Europe to stand up to President Trump.”
Was Macron evoking Tom Cruise’s cocky fighter pilot Maverick in “Top Gun,” signaling that he wouldn’t back down against Trump’s demands for control of Greenland? Others thought he might be throwing shade by wearing aviator-style sunglasses favored by former President Biden, the object of Trump’s constant derision.
But the hard reality is that if the internationalists want to emulate “Top Gun,” they must buy their own jet; they can't continue on the U.S. taxpayer dime. Painful as it is, they must ante up. Friedrich Merz, the chancellor of Germany, urged European leaders in Davos to strengthen their militaries and shed bureaucracy to survive in an international order whose “very foundations have been shaken” by Russia, China and the United States.
“This new world of great powers is being built on power, on strength, and when it comes to it, on force. It’s not a cozy place,” Mr. Merz said. “We do not have to accept this new reality as fate. We are not at the mercy of this new world order. We do have a choice. We can shape the future. To succeed, we must face harsh realities and chart our course with cleareyed realism.”
The America Firsters understand, perhaps cynically, the human urge of the twilight leaders to keep wearing sunglasses, and so, to gratify this longing, Trump created these bizarre sinecures such as the Gaza Board of Peace, and probably something similar for a Ukraine peace settlement. This performs the dual role of outflanking the UN — which honestly has disqualified itself by its inutility — and co-option, providing a pasture where the old internationalist bulls can graze.
That is the state of the geopolitical argument. Only history can tell whether Washington is right or committing a monumental mistake. But there is no question that it is the Trump administration, not the men in the sunglasses, who have made the big play. Time alone can determine the result, but Washington has made its move, Will it inaugurate disaster or a better world? Theodore Roosevelt once observed there's no way to know but find out. He wrote:
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
