Thomas Barnett writes for Politico Jan. 16, 2025:
Three key trends animate the globe right now: (a) an East-West decoupling dynamic, (b) a re-regionalization imperative along North-South lines that brings “near-shoring” production close to home markets, and (c) a growing superpower clash animating all these “races” — namely, adapting to climate change, winning the energy transition, achieving AI supremacy, etc.
Trump, love him or loath him, sees just enough of this world and the fear it generates to know the right plan of attack.
Trump’s approach to international affairs reflects Americans’ judgment that we are done building a world order — which we’ve overseen from 1954 to 2008 —and now must vigorously embrace an aggressively competitive approach to this multipolar world; in other words, be less the generous market-maker and more the selfish market-player.
The world’s superpowers (U.S., Europe, Russia, India, China) fear one another more and more. We sense an imperative in this re-regionalization/decoupling era — one that screams get yours now before somebody else does!
Russia evinces that ambition in the nastiest ways (see Georgia, Ukraine). China, presently globalization’s premier integrating power, does so systematically with its Belt and Road Initiative, securing long and critical supply chains across the world through that multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure building scheme. India is just beginning to think and act along such lines, for now instinctively pushing back against China’s efforts to integrate South Asia into its global value chains — in effect, boxing in New Delhi’s ongoing “rise.”
Europe and the U.S., with Trump’s return, seem destined to complete their conscious uncoupling like two self-absorbed celebrities whose career needs no longer jibe. And just as Russia has sought to put the pieces back together of its empire, we now spot the same acquisitive rumblings within Western ranks.
Trump has long argued that Europe and Canada both “owe” America vast sums of money for defending them for decades against the Soviet/Russian threat. He now implies that America deserves Greenland as compensation for that strategic debt, arguing that we’ll do a better job of developing and defending Greenland than tiny Denmark has ever managed.
