Trump's Embrace of Authoritarians Is Raising the Risk of War
The US president is steering toward a world in which an unreliable America has no genuine allies.
After years of economic sanctions and military aid to deter Russian aggression, America stopped trying this week in humiliating fashion: President Trump surrendered.
He condemned Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky as a “dictator” and falsely blamed Kyiv for the war while commencing talks with Vladimir Putin on ending the war, with Russia's demand that Ukraine cede territory very much on the table. Secretary of State Marco Rubio pointed beyond sanctions toward economic cooperation with Moscow.
Thus, Trump has begun his second presidency by abandoning allies with whom America has kept the free world free since World War II. Accepting Russia’s territorial conquest in Ukraine can only encourage Communist China’s impulse to seize another traditional US ally, Taiwan.
Such a “chaotic breakdown” of the world order, as Columbia University international affairs professor Edward Fishman puts it, poses a clear and present danger from Trump’s destabilizing leadership. He mouths platitudes about peace, but an imperialist free-for-all “significantly raises the risk of war,” says Fishman.
‘Economic Warfare’
Fishman’s new book, Chokepoints, explores the 21st-century emergence of financial weapons that have provided America an alternative to bloodshed. He spent about six years during President Barack Obama’s administration sharpening them at the Treasury, State Department, and Pentagon. Even before Trump’s return to the White House, he feared the world’s turn away from globalization could end what he calls “The Age of Economic Warfare.”
The more inter-connected national economies get, the more vulnerable nations become to having those connections cut off. As Fishman and other former Obama officials put it, the United States and major allies pressured Iran to halt its nuclear weapons program by constraining its oil sales revenue - without firing a shot.
As Fishman explains with impressive historical sweep, leaders have always sought to “subdue the enemy without fighting,” in the ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu’s words. But new ways to do so opened up following World War II.
Already the world’s pre-eminent military force, America acquired nuclear-level economic power as the dollar became the currency of international commerce. With the dollar involved in 90% of foreign exchange transactions, every country needs access to America’s financial infrastructure.
“Economic weapons have existed for centuries, but in the past two decades, their sophistication and impact have grown by leaps and bounds,” Fishman writes. Through trial and error, would-be generals at Treasury and State learned how to calibrate financial strikes to minimize the risk of friendly fire.