Alex Snowdon on Trumpism’s latest phase and its global implications  

Donald Trump’s pivot on Ukraine – essentially withdrawing US military support for Ukraine in its war with Russia – has caused a collective nervous breakdown among political elites in European capitals. It has profound implications.

Donald Trump’s rhetoric – mocking Ukraine’s president Zelensky, announcing an end to US funding of the war effort, goading European leaders – demonstrates what some of us have always said. Ukraine’s war depends upon the US: withdraw American involvement and money and it crumbles.

Talking of Ukraine as a proxy war has now become mainstream among politicians, media and pundits. That is because Trump’s declarations have made it unambiguously clear that the war depends absolutely on the US. Trump will pursue ruthless asset stripping of Ukraine as part of any peace deal, exploiting its vast natural resources including minerals, oli and gas. Russia, meanwhile, has gained significant territory that it will be able to retain.

NATO’s eastwards expansion, starting after the end of the Cold War, was always a major factor in war in Ukraine. Successive US administrations ignored those sections of the foreign policy establishment that warned about provoking Russia. By 2022, 13 states in eastern Europe had been added to Nato. This infuriated Russian leaders.

Since 2022, there has been a massive transfer of weaponry to Ukraine from the US and European powers, Britain foremost among them. The UK has directed £8 billion in military aid to Ukraine. Last July’s change of government, from Tory to Labour, made no discernible difference to the country’s priorities.

British political leaders have played a key role in blocking possible negotiations, prolonging the war needlessly. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost in an unwinnable war.

We are now seeing European leaders ramping up the calls for rearmament. That means much higher levels of military spending. It also means cuts to public services. In this country, there are reports that unprotected departments (ie not health and education) will be forced to make cuts of up to 11% in order to pay for arms and military increases.

Although Europe’s leaders profess their unhappiness at Trump, this is paradoxically what Trump wants. He wants the ‘burden’ of military spending shared more across the Nato countries.

Trump has talked of European countries increasing their military budget to 5% of GDP – something that would entail a massive assault on working class living standards. UK military spending is currently 2.3% of GDP. Keir Starmer is determined to get it to 2.5%, but ideally much higher.

Cuts on this kind of scale would, of course, have political ramifications. A number of European governments of centre-left and centre-right varieties are already losing support to stridently racist and radical right formations. What a gift it would be to the radical right, including Nigel Farage’s Reform in this country, if working class people were forced to pay a massive price for hiking up military expenditure.

Starmer floated the idea of sending UK troops to Ukraine. Unsurprisingly for someone who loves to pose for photographs in khaki, this is mere posturing by Starmer – designed to create a tough image, but with little substance. Beneath the belligerent rhetoric, the prime minister quietly grasps that a peace process in Ukraine is – in the wake of President Trump’s pivot – necessary and inevitable.

The hyperbole about Russia threatening Europe would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious. Germany, France, the UK and Italy each have a bigger economy than Russia.

If Russia has experienced such massive losses in Ukraine, it is hardly likely to invade Poland – or anywhere else. Russia’s imperialist aggression in Ukraine has caused terrible devastation, but the notion that Vladimir Putin has wider designs on acquiring European territory is absurd.

Wider shifts in the global architecture

Trump’s radical shift in position has thrown European (including UK) foreign policy into turmoil. It  undermines the entire post-1945 settlement. This has involved the US being the dominant Western (since 1991 global) power, with European states playing a subordinate role where they back US foreign policy while allowing the US to pick up the lion’s share of military spending.  This old Atlanticist agreement is being shredded by Trump.

The US pivot is not because it seeks peace or because it is retreating from military aggression. Trump’s recent calls for depopulating Gaza – a plea for ethnic cleansing – should make this abundantly clear. His administration is conscious of the massive financial costs to the US of arming Ukraine and of the diminishing returns.

The US is challenged by an increasingly multipolar world. China in particular is perceived as a threat – above all economically, but potentially militarily too. Russia has increasingly asserted itself as a regional power, but it does not have the same global standing or reach as either the US or China.

If Washington is pivoting away from Moscow, then it is pivoting towards Beijing. This ‘pivot to the Pacific’ was made explicit by Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of Defense, in a recent speech: ‘The US is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity’. 

There is currently a ‘cold war’ in the South China Sea between a US-led alliance and China, with the build-up of military presence on both sides threatening to turn it into a hot war. That is likely to be a major fault line in the years ahead.

From a US perspective, the prospective peace deal with Russia (over Ukraine) is to some extent about driving a wedge between Russia and China. It pulls Russia closer to the US – and therefore widens the gap, so the logic runs, between Russia and China.

These changes in the imperialist architecture are closely linked to economic policy changes. There is a shift from the era of neoliberal globalisation, pioneered by Reagan and Thatcher from the 1980s onwards, to one characterised by greater protectionism. Trump’s new trade tariffs are part of this process, but there has been an increase in tariffs – from a number of countries, not just the US – in recent years.

These policies fuel trade wars and destabilise the global economy. The OECD recently warned:

Rising trade tensions and further moves towards protectionism might disrupt supply chains, raise consumer prices, and negatively impact growth.

Such economic dislocations, of course, also make direct military conflicts more likely. We live in a very dangerous world.