The free world teeters on the edge of a knife

If Trump is elected, there will be no liberal great powers left in the world.

This is not a post that I ever wanted — or, to be honest, expected — to write. I am an optimist by nature, and I am also not an expert on geopolitics. And yet the trends are so obviously dire, and so few people seem to recognize the danger, that I feel like I have to keep sounding the alarm and hoping that someone out there is listening.

The partnership of authoritarian states that I’ve been calling the New Axis is very real, and it is making moves. A large number of North Korean soldiers — reports put them at 10,000 to 12,000 — have been dispatched to fight on Russia’s behalf in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Chinese companies have now been found manufacturing weapons for Russia’s war effort, adding to Iranian and North Korean supplies. Military ties between China and Russia seem to be increasing, with Russia’s defense minister saying the two countries have “a common understanding of what needs to be done”.

Meanwhile, China just carried out its most aggressive and extensive military exercises around Taiwan yet, surrounding the island with what looks to most observers like practice for a blockade or invasion:

Source: ISW

If this looks like the foothills of World War 3, well, that’s because it very well might be.

That prospect is scary enough. But what’s even scarier is that in just a little over two weeks, Donald Trump might be elected President of the U.S. Although it’s not possible to know for certain what the consequences of a second Trump presidency would be, it’s very possible that it would result in the U.S. essentially surrendering its European allies to Russia and its Asian allies to China — thus dramatically weakening America’s own ability to resist those enemies in the future.

The free world is teetering on the edge of a knife.

To explain why a Trump victory is so dangerous, I should first go over the basic geopolitical situation. In the past few years, the U.S. has finally gotten serious about standing up to the emerging China-led coalition of authoritarian powers. But because of its domestic politics, that nascent resistance is now in danger of collapse.

The Chinese ascendance and the U.S. fightback

Ever since World War 2, the U.S. has been the free world’s indispensable nation — the arsenal of democracy, an economic and demographic bulwark that anchored defensive alliances in Europe and Asia. During the entirety of the Cold War, that bulwark held — politics didn’t really stop at the water’s edge, but dogged resistance to Soviet power and steadfast support for U.S. allies was a constant thread in both Republican and Democratic administrations all the way up through 1991. And so the free world prevailed.

But the U.S.’ importance to the democratic alliance system always represented a single point of failure. If America’s political will ever collapsed, it would leave Europe and Asia abruptly vulnerable to the might of a rising China or a resurgent Russia. During the 2000s and 2010s, there were ominous signs that such a collapse might happen. Political polarization increased alarmingly, the legislature became increasingly dysfunctional, government shutdowns and debt ceiling fights became routine, and progressives and conservatives developed their own largely disconnected media bubbles. Then Donald Trump was elected, and the nation descended into four years of nonstop culture wars and political shouting.

During all of this time, China’s industrial might grew relentlessly, as America’s stagnated and fell more and more behind:

Source: World Bank

Industrial might, of course, is the fundamental source of military might, and it also allowed China to onshore and secure most of its critical supply chains. Meanwhile, China also began to wield its economy as a weapon to silence its critics all over the globe, even as it ramped up espionage to almost incomprehensible levels.

Donald Trump’s policies did absolutely nothing to reverse this trend or revive American industrial strength. But his aggressive rhetoric toward China, and his rhetorical focus on U.S. manufacturing and trade imbalances, changed the country’s attitudes in important and needed ways. It destroyed the old free trade consensus, and paved the way for a new era of industrial policy — even if those policies were enacted by Biden rather than Trump. Meanwhile, Trump’s export controls, inbound investment restrictions, and hunt for Chinese spies were not always effective, but they represented the first glimmers of U.S. resistance to Chinese power.

Trump changed attitudes, but Biden changed policies — in the years since 2020, America’s fightback against China’s growing dominance got truly underway:

Biden did stuff, and it looks like it's working so far

Biden unleashed major export controls on China’s semiconductor industry that went far, far beyond anything Trump had done. Those export controls have been highly effective so far, slowing down China’s cutting-edge chipmaking efforts dramatically.

Biden implemented two major industrial policies to revive U.S. manufacturing. These were the CHIPS Act for semiconductors — the most strategic product of all — and the Inflation Reduction Act for batteries and other green tech. (Note that batteries are the essential component of FPV drones, which have become the essential weapon of the modern battlefield.) Those efforts are now bearing fruit, in the form of soaring factory construction in America:

Source: Joey Politano

The U.S. is now forecast to produce a growing share of the world’s chips over the next decade — the first time in a long time that American manufacturing has wrested back some global market share. Chips are already rolling off the lines at the new TSMC fab that Biden’s policies attracted to Arizona. Meanwhile, battery production is rising in the U.S.:

Source: Joey Politano

Finally, Biden kept Trump’s tariffs on China and added some of his own, which — along with companies’ desire to de-risk from China — is beginning to reduce America’s economic dependence on its rival. And Biden has at least started the process of onshoring America’s own supply chains for critical minerals.

But Biden did much more than begin America’s industrial revival. On the military and diplomatic front, he bloodied the New Axis’ nose and began to set up a coalition capable of resisting the New Axis.

By rushing weapons to Ukraine, Biden prevented Russia from conquering the country wholesale, and helped the Ukrainians decimate much of Russia’s legacy Soviet equipment. His strong stand against Russia united the fractious Europeans (somewhat), while his exports of LNG saved the region’s economy. Meanwhile, in Asia, Biden built up key alliances (the Quad and AUKUS), built new military bases in the Philippines (close to Taiwan), and enhanced the U.S.’ partnership with India.

Finally, Biden has very slowly begun to resuscitate the U.S.’ defense-industrial base, increasing artillery shell production in order to deliver supplies to the embattled Ukrainians. This effort has created a new seriousness and sense of alarm about the U.S.’ need to manufacture more missiles, ships, and drones — decisive action on this front has not yet been taken, but thanks to the Ukraine lend-lease effort, we’re painfully aware of the scale of the problem.

And finally, Biden signed a bipartisan bill to force TikTok to sell itself to a non-Chinese company — the first real sign that America’s government takes the information war seriously.

Taken together, Biden’s policies — industrial policy, export controls, tariffs, strengthened alliances, military bases, arms to Ukraine, increased defense production, etc. — constitute the beginnings of a concrete strategy for standing up to the New Axis. They’re not enough — not by a long shot — but they’re enough that we can see the contours of a successful American approach begin to emerge.

But Donald Trump could end up cancelling most of these nascent efforts.

Trump is likely to capitulate to the New Axis

At this point, Trump supporters will howl that I have “Trump Derangement Syndrome”, and remind me that it was Trump himself who first took the China problem seriously. In fact, I am not deranged in the slightest, and I give Trump full credit for changing America’s attitudes toward China. The problem is that a second Trump administration is likely to be very different from the first one.

First, we should look at Trump’s own rhetoric. Trump has declared his intent to place a higher priority on fighting his own internal enemies than on resisting America’s external foes:

Former President Trump explained how he would guard against bureaucrats undermining him as the potential next commander-in-chief if elected back to the White House.

"We have two enemies: We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries," Trump said in an exclusive interview on "Sunday Morning Futures."

At a recent rally, Trump declared that “all the scum we have to deal with [are] a bigger enemy than China and Russia.”

Trump’s actions are also telling. After trying to force TikTok to divest in his first administration, Trump has now turned against that effort, declaring that the U.S. media is “the one we really have to straighten out.”

In Europe, Trump is even more likely to capitulate, since he’s an inveterate and dedicated opponent of Ukraine aid. He blames Ukraine’s President Zelensky (and Biden) for starting the war, and frequently calls for cutting off aid to the embattled country. And he has threatened to leave NATO many times. (Note: Trump’s former Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, has said that he believes Putin is personally blackmailing Trump. I have no position on whether that’s true or not, but it’s notable given the source.)

Both Trump’s rhetoric and his record in office indicate that he’s likely to cancel many of the policies Biden has been using to stand up to China. He’ll keep or increase Biden’s tariffs, of course. But he could cancel export controls, as he canceled the controls on ZTE in his first term, in exchange for empty Chinese promises or personal favors. He won’t make TikTok divest. He shows little interest in industrial policy, believing (wrongly) that tariffs are the main tool of reindustrialization. He has declared his intent to scrap the IRA, leaving America with little battery manufacturing capacity (and thus little drone manufacturing capacity).

Trump’s new choice of allies also points toward appeasement of China and Russia. These include Vivek Ramaswamy, who has proposed letting China conquer Taiwan after America achieves “semiconductor independence”; RFK Jr., who repeats pro-Putin talking points regularly; and Elon Musk, a strong opponent of Ukraine aid who has deep business ties to China and has called Taiwan an “integral part of China”; and Tucker Carlson. Many China hawks from Trump’s first term, such as his former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, are no longer with him.

Finally, Trump is simply an agent of chaos, whose primary goal is to destroy any American institution that opposes him. He has threatened to execute a former general of his who denounced him as a fascist. He has declared his intent to use a 1798 law, last used to authorize the WW2 Japanese internment, to conduct mass deportations. He has threatened to use the military to go after “radical left lunatics”, and his ally Michael Flynn has called for military tribunals and executions for Trump’s political enemies.

That kind of internal chaos would make it basically impossible for the U.S. to mount an effective resistance to the New Axis.

If you think I’m being alarmist here, consider the words of Rush Doshi, a national security expert who teaches at Georgetown and works at the Council on Foreign Relations:

The 2020s [will] be…the “decisive decade” in U.S. competition with China…The good news is that despite deep divisions in American politics, Democrats and Republicans now broadly agree on the need to outcompete China…

That united front will be undermined if Donald Trump is elected again. Ironically, although he helped catalyze the current bipartisan approach as president by upending the long-term U.S. policy toward China that emphasized engagement over competition, he has never fully embraced the new consensus and now stands outside it. On China, he is often at odds with his former staff members, current advisers, the nationalist wing of his party and even his own vice-presidential pick — all of whom see the challenge posed by Beijing more clearly than he does. Left to his own unpredictable impulses, Mr. Trump could very well lose this decisive decade for America…

China’s leaders…saw his term as an accelerant of…American decline…Mr. Trump focused on U.S. commodity exports instead of long-term manufacturing strength. He alienated allies and partners…On China policy, he routinely put personal gain over America’s interests and undermined important steps his staff members took to compete with Beijing…There is no reason to believe that in a second term Mr. Trump would deviate from the approach that weakened America’s position during his presidency…

Mr. Trump once praised China’s response to the Tiananmen Square massacre and threatened to veto nearly unanimous legislation condemning China’s crackdown on Hong Kong by declaring, “We have to stand with Hong Kong, but I’m also standing with President Xi.”…

[L]eaders in Beijing…believe China is rising and America is declining. Electing Mr. Trump next month risks proving them right.

In fact, Trump’s reputation as a China hawk might ultimately make it much easier for him to be China’s greatest appeaser. Just like “only Nixon could go to China”, perhaps only Trump can get away with capitulation. But that won’t make the consequences any less dire.

Consequences of a U.S. capitulation

If the U.S. abandons resistance to China and Russia, it will go very badly for America’s allies. Europe will probably fracture again, with some states (probably including Germany) falling all over themselves to appease the Russians. Russia will then become a sort of de facto hegemon in Europe. In Asia, China would probably conquer Taiwan, cutting off U.S. semiconductor supplies and establishing Chinese hegemony in East Asia. Japan and South Korea would then be forced to choose between either becoming nuclear powers or becoming de facto satrapies of the new Chinese empire. Essentially, America’s major allies would fall to America’s enemies.

Americans — or, at least, Trump supporters — might yawn at these developments. But if Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, and America’s other allies fall, it will dramatically weaken America’s ability to defend itself. Remember that China is four times the size of America, and manufactures well over twice as much. Without its coalition of allies, the U.S. just doesn’t have the size to stand up to China.

And even if they de facto conquered Asia and Europe, China and Russia would not simply ignore America and let it go on its merry way. The specter of a U.S. revival would haunt them. They would therefore do everything they could to weaken America. Obvious steps would include 1) economically strangling America by cutting it off from trading routes and natural resources, and 2) sowing continued internal dissent in America in the hopes of causing it to collapse into a civil war.

Bereft of its coalition of allies, America would be far less able to resist those efforts. Americans would suffer economically even as China and Russia stoked their hatreds and divisions. The worst ideologies of Trump’s first term — alt-right fascism, leftism, radical identitarianism, and so on — would all come back with a vengeance, encouraged by diligent Chinese and Russian online propagandists. Only now they’d also have a bad economy to fuel their anger.

The election of Trump in just over two weeks could thus set in motion a rapid chain of events that results in America very rapidly becoming a much weaker, more vulnerable country. And the consequences for the rest of the free world would be even greater.

It’s a very dangerous time.

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