Weeks into Donald Trump’s second term as U.S. President, his vision of American foreign policy appears even more transactional and unilateral than during his first administration. His recent promises to develop Gaza’s coastline into luxury real estate, threats of massive tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and plans to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development reflect a stark departure from decades of U.S. foreign policy orthodoxy. Yet rather than represent an aberration, Michael Beckley argued in a prescient 2020 essay, Trump’s approach might preview the future of American power—a future in which the United States is both stronger and less invested in the liberal international order.
“The era of liberal U.S. hegemony is an artifact of the Cold War’s immediate afterglow,” Beckley wrote. In the years ahead, the United States would likely return to its historical norm of pursuing national interests with “little regard for the effects on the rest of the world.” By 2040, he noted, “the United States will be the only country with a large, growing market and the fiscal capacity to sustain a global military presence.” Whereas China and other U.S. rivals face rapidly aging populations and mounting welfare costs, the United States’ demographic vitality and technological edge could make it more powerful—and more independent—than ever before.
These advantages, however, could push the United States into becoming what Beckley termed “a rogue superpower—an economic and military colossus lacking moral commitments, neither isolationist nor internationalist, but aggressive, heavily armed, and entirely out for itself.” The best hope for preserving elements of the liberal order, he suggested, would be finding ways to “channel growing nationalist impulses in internationalist directions,” linking “liberal ideas to vital U.S. interests.” The alternative, Beckley warned, could mark “the dawn of an illiberal American century.”
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