cial to its military readiness. In October, Trump put a price tag on the continued US deployment on the Korean peninsula: $10 billion.
List Step to do
1️⃣ Install SSL Certificate
A new nuclear arms race?
Military commanders and diplomats in Europe and Asia tell me they fear a particularly dangerous byproduct of Trump’s potential withdrawal from US commitments abroad: Fearing for their own security, nations in Asia and Europe may decide to develop nuclear weapons to replace the security of the US nuclear umbrella.
Such a move would in turn lead US adversaries Russia and China (and North Korea and, potentially, Iran if it were to build a bomb) to expand their own arsenals to maintain deterrence. Other countries in each region – from Saudi Arabia to Egypt to India, to name a few – might reasonably do the same. And, so, Trump, who has often expressed his deep and rightful fear of nuclear war, might inadvertently spark a new nuclear arms race.
Does this matter to Americans at home? The costs of America’s long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have understandably whittled away public support for military interventions abroad. And the price tag of US military assistance to Ukraine – while a fraction of the US defense budget overall – has been seen as politically untenable to many during an affordability crisis at home.
However, Americans would have to be willing to make accommodations to the ambitions of the world’s new and increasingly powerful alliance of autocrats. That would come with costs. National security veterans emphasize that the US-led international order, as dry as the name sounds, provides benefits to Americans they may not realize: respect for the borders of sovereign nations, a legacy of the carnage wrought by World War II and now so deeply challenged by the Russian invasion of Ukraine; free shipping lanes in Asia and Europe; rule of law to enable business deals and international markets for US goods; global air travel; international study abroad programs; relatively cheap imports; mobile phones that work around the world, to name just a few examples. They are things that would fade in a dog-eat-dog world.
“This rule set…is one of the fundamental contributing factors to not having a breakout of a great power war,” former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley told me. “It’s not the only reason, but it’s one of the fundamental reasons why there hasn’t been a great power war in eight decades. So if that rule set goes away … then you’ll be doubling your defense budgets because the world will return to Hobbesian nature where it’s going to be only the strong survive and it’s going to be a dog eat-dog-world. And there won’t be any rules.”
The art of the deal
What used to be the bipartisan approach has proven far from perfect. The US and its allies have not figured out how to win in Ukraine and likely have quietly pushed for some territorial concessions to end the war and pulled back from a commitment for Ukraine to join NATO
“In order to have a successful negotiation, you have to somehow address both sets of national security insecurities or anxieties. So, you have to somehow convince the Russians that NATO is not going to invade, Ukraine is not going to be part of NATO, and that they shouldn’t fear invasion from the West, that sort of thing,” Milley told me.
What was something of a dirty little secret under Biden – Ukraine may have to cede both territory and compromise on security assurances – is now public as the Trump administration takes shape.
US allies will now have to adjust, and many European diplomats told me they were already making preparations to do so before the election. At a minimum, they expect US leadership in Europe to fade, necessitating a more urgent move toward larger military expenditures and a broad military expansion.
In Asia, US treaties with South Korea, Japan and Australia may no longer be the same counterweight to China. Both Trump and Democratic rival Kamala Harris would have sought some diplomatic contact with Moscow and Beijing, but Harris would have done so on the basis of the US’ current alliance structure. For Trump, it seems, everything is on the table. It doesn’t mean he’ll definitely make deals. He walked away from Kim Jong Un during his first term when the North Korean leader didn’t give enough ground on his nuclear weapons program. But, again, everything, it appears, is negotiable.
I often remind audiences when I discuss my book that we, as a nation, are still congratulating ourselves for standing up to despots during World War II, with a new movie and streaming series seemingly every year. For the past eight decades or so, that view hasn’t just been emotional. By and large, and with exceptions certainly, it has been established US policy, in part as an expression of US values but also as central to the pursuit of US strategic interests. This election presented the country with a choice as to whether it wants to stay that course or take a new direction.
Again, the status quo is full of dangers. The direction of competition among the great powers was already frightening. However, current and former US commanders and the leaders of America’s closest allies believe the “America First” approach has its own dangers. It is not, in fact, a new approach. Today’s rhetoric mimics the country’s isolationists pre-World War II. America decided then that retreating behind the ramparts of the home front was impossible.
One final note: With the new technologies of today, from expanding nuclear arsenals to cyberattacks to space weapons to drones to AI, and global challenges such as climate change and refugee flows, ignoring the world beyond America’s shores is even less possible than it was in 1939. President-elect Trump’s early personnel moves demonstrate he is ready to test that assumption.