Trump and the unravelling of the US-led order

As Biden's 'latticework' frays, what would replace it is still unclear, in part because of the different views within the Trump camp.

- Denny Roy

Although the top-level US-North Korea talks fell apart after the 2018 Hanoi meeting between then US President Donald Trump and North Korean paramount leader Kim Jong Un, it's possible that Trump could hold yet another summit with Mr. Kim. Pyongyang still wants to talk to Washington, and the American President-elect continues to say he has a friendly relationship with Mr. Kim. A Trump-Kim agreement, however, would likely throw US allies Japan and South Korea under the bus.

This is one of several ways the return of Trump to the White House could shake up the existing international order. When Mr. Joe Biden took over as president in 2017, he sought to repair the damage done by Trump to US relationships with allies around the world. Notably, his team constructed a "latticework" of security partnerships, including Aukus in 2021.

Borrowing that metaphor, under Trump II, we might see a great unravelling, not just of US security partnerships but also the broader architecture of institutions and agreements that are already fraying prior to Trump taking office in January. An early casualty will be the upcoming climate conference in Azerbaijan on Nov 11. A major task of the delegates will be to convince rich countries to put up money for climate change mitigation in poor ones. The ascendancy of Trump, who calls climate change a "hoax", to the US presidency will profoundly undercut that effort.

Reduced US support for other important international agreements and institutions will likely follow. The threat stems from Trump's basic foreign policy orientation, which has several clear features.

Trump is disdainful of America playing an international leadership role and rejects the traditional Christianity-informed idea of America as a "city upon the hill" (a metaphor invoked by previous US presidents from Kennedy to Obama), with a duty to promote democracy, human rights and international law.