The International System After Trump and the Pandemic

Abstract

B oth as a candidate and as an elected leader, US President Donald Trump repeatedly asserted that his main foreign policy goals were to shrink the United States’ role abroad and to put “America first.” These goals should be understood as part of a much broader aim to dismantle the liberal international order that the United States has helped build and maintain since World War II. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump accused the United Nations of not only being incompetent, but also acting as an impediment to sovereignty and democracy. Since his inauguration, he has made repeated attacks on longstanding international institutions designed to promote global cooperation in areas as crucial and diverse as peacekeeping, trade, and public health. He continued these attacks even as the COVID-19 pandemic posed an increasing threat to all three core elements of the liberal international order: security, economics, and human rights. The post–World War II liberal international order has been defined notably by political scientist John Ikenberry as an “open and rule-based international order” that is “enshrined in institutions such as the United Nations and norms such as multilateralism.” It has endured and evolved since its origins in 1945, but not without controversy over the nature and scope of its mission. These fissures became even greater after the end of the Cold War, with the expansion of the system to include nations in transition to democratic regimes and market economies. In other words, the global system was already showing signs of strain and weakness before the dual shocks of Trump’s ascent to the US presidency and COVID-19’s emergence. Both Trump and the pandemic have served as critical stress tests for the liberal international order. They also suggest three important lessons for its future. First, global cooperation is a necessity in which we must invest consistently, rather than a luxury we cannot afford. The pandemic has demonstrated how essential it is to preserve the norms, rules, and institutions that make international cooperation possible. Mitigating the effects of a pandemic requires, at a minimum, cross-border coordination on travel, and at a maximum, collaboration in the development and distribution of an effective vaccine. Second, global cooperation has broad popular support. This is crucial because public backing for multilateralism is key to sustaining the political will necessary to maintain it. Trump repeatedly accused the World Health Organization (WHO) of mishandling the COVID-19 crisis; at the height of the pandemic, he moved to suspend US funding for the WHO. Yet public opinion surveys indicate that support for multilateral institutions in general, and global confidence in the WHO in particular, have remained high in the face of COVID-19. Meanwhile, global confidence in Trump—which was already the lowest among the most prominent world leaders—has remained low during this period. Third, the United States remains crucial to global cooperation, albeit not in its current role. The dual shocks of Trump and COVID-19 provide an opportunity to reimagine the liberal international order. For many decades, the United States has played a hegemonic role and used its ALLEN HICKEN and PAULINE JONES are professors of political science at the University of Michigan, where ANIL MENON is a doctoral candidate in political science.