Dan Nexon

@dhnexon.net

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Professor in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Power Politics | Empires | International Order dhnexon.net | https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com | duckofminerva.com

I won't add alt text to each clip. Three scenes from the AI "trailer." Three obviously different ship designs.
Trump attacked her in response. “Jennifer Griffin should be fired for this kind of reporting,” he tweeted at the time. “Fox News is gone!” The Washington Post subsequently reported that “Trump believed people who served in the Vietnam War must be ‘losers’ because they hadn’t gotten out of it, according to a person familiar with the comments.” (The newspaper also noted that although Trump, in a tweeted response to the Atlantic story, claimed, “I never called John [McCain] a loser. I swear on whatever, or whoever, I was asked to swear on,” he did, in fact, call McCain a loser in a 2015 interview, which you can watch for yourself.) The New York Times similarly reported that its sources verified “that Mr. Trump resisted supporting an official funeral and lowering flags after the death of Senator John McCain of Arizona, a Vietnam War hero whose military service he had disparaged.” (Ultimately, Trump relented, and the flags were lowered.) And the Times reported that “people familiar with Mr. Trump’s private conversations say he has long scorned those who served in Vietnam as being too dumb to have gotten out of it,” as Trump had done. The Times further reported that “some also recalled him asking why the United States should be so interested in finding captured soldiers” who are prisoners of war.
CNNs election map of the January 5, 2021 Senate runoff in Georgia. Ossoff beat Perdue 50.6–49.4% — a margin of around 55,000 votes.
"President Donald Trump has passed up multiple chances to explain to Americans how his latest escalation will win the war in Iran or how he'll alleviate their perpetually high costs for groceries, housing and fuel. Now he's planning to anchor a national address Thursday evening on a personal fixation about the past — his false claim that he won the 2020 election. Critics fear this is all part of a quickening effort to buckle trust in voting systems and to create a pretext to use federal powers to sway November's midterm elections. It would not be the first time that this president — who convention states should seek to bolster American democracy — has instead undermined it." I've circled "convention" in red.
Screencap of part of the article. It reads: The Aestheticization of Politics Famously coined by Walter Benjamin in 1936, the theme of the aestheticization of politics was a key part of wider debates over political modernity, democracy, and liberalism that coursed throughout the interwar period, reaching their most intense and, in many ways, sophisticated forms in Weimar Germany.3 As Benjamin (1936/68, 217-51) noted, engagements with aesthetic politics ranged from anarchist avowals of the virtues of violence to conservative and fascist visions of war as an aesthetic object espoused by Italian Futurists such as Marinetti and German "young conservatives" including Ernst Jünger. Amongst this general intellectual tumult stood also the Weimar jurist and legal thinker Carl Schmitt. Schmitt's vision of aesthetics and images forms part of his analysis of the wider crisis of liberal modernity and democracy that he viewed as the central political issue of the time. At the center of his critique lies the claim that liberalism reduces politics to individualistic calculation and competition and the advancement of purely subjective values. Since the liberal state is subordinate to the interests and values of individuals, he argues, its citizens will support it only so long as it furthers their private ends. Liberal governments thus tended to become paralyzed by entropic competition between factional interests or captured by powerful agents or coalitions who used public power solely for their private benefit. As a result, the idea of a public or national interest became discredited, and the citizenry increasingly disaffected and disillusioned from a government that was either ineffective or mendacious.
If the Georgia statute cannot be enforced as it is written -- if the conduct it seeks to prohibit is a protected form of liberty for the vast majority of Georgia's citizens - the State must assume the burden of justifying a selective application of its law. Either the persons to whom Georgia seeks to apply its statute do not have the same interest in "liberty" that others have, or there must be a reason why the State may be permitted to apply a generally applicable law to certain persons that it does not apply to others. The first possibility is plainly unacceptable. Although the meaning of the principle that "all men are created equal" is not always clear it surely must mean that every free citizen has the same interest in liberty that the members of the majority share. From the standpoint of the individual, the homosexual and the heterosexual have the same interest in deciding how he will live his own life, and, more narrowly, how he will conduct himself in his personal and voluntary associations with his companions. State intrusion into the private conduct of either is equally burdensome.
A bookshelf of games. Band of Blades, a single book, and Vaessen (multiple books) are both circles.
A bunch of numbers indicating my “weight” in LLM databases? I don’t understand.
If Trump wants America to remain a dominant power, and wants others to respect American interests around the world, he needs to bolster American credibility. This requires a good measure of predictability, not the attitudes of an unpredictable rogue state.
The regime is also appealing to hard-liners in its messaging. “This memorandum does not mean trusting the enemy; it has been written with active distrust,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi told Iran’s Tasnim News Agency. “We will monitor the implementation of US commitments.”
But the United States, in this scenario, is one of the big kids on the schoolyard. With the limited exception of the other nuclear great powers, Washington can inflict far more damage — economic, diplomatic, or military — on any other state than they can impose on the United States. Some of that outsized power derives directly from America's vast network of allies and strategic partners, which no rival comes close to matching. Thus, for the United States, unpredictability carries enormous risks. That's true for Nixonian calculated irrationality, too, but much more so for Trumpian unpredictability. Rivals and allies can easily interpret mixed signals from different voices in the administration and frequent high-profile policy reversals as evidence that the president does not mean what he says, that he has no idea what he is doing, or that he can change his mind on a whim. Intentionally fostering uncertainty reduces the credibility of existing commitments.
Iran, experts say, has learned to focus on what Trump does and not just what he says. And after two U.S.-Israeli assaults in less than two years since the president's return to office, Iran has seen that depleting stocks of U.S. weaponry "didn't move the needle for Trump," but hiking gas prices by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz did, Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, told NOTUS.
Consider nuclear brinkmanship during the Cold War. A "rational" leader would never risk nuclear oblivion over an issue of minor importance. It is, in fact, difficult to imagine any particular dispute being worth nuclear Armageddon, especially one that does not directly threaten the American homeland. That left some questioning the value of the deterrent at all. So how do you make it credible that the United States will risk a nuclear exchange over West Germany or Japan, let alone, as Nixon toyed with, Vietnam or Israel? Nixon thought that it might help create the impression that he was irrational — but in the sense of being prone to impulsive and disproportionate actions without thinking about the costs. There was nothing unpredictable about his underlying policy preferences or goals.
White House officials have long said Trump's unpredictability is an essential part of his dealmaking — the main reason he's been able to get rivals to concede in ways other presidents haven't. But now Trump has to embrace a framework for talks that overwhelmingly benefit Iran, and his personal volatility is unlikely to tilt the discussions in the U.S.'s favor. Iran, experts say, has learned to focus on what Trump does and not just what he says. And after two U.S.-Israeli assaults in less than two years since the president's return to office, Iran has seen that depleting stocks of U.S. weaponry "didn't move the needle for Trump," but hiking gas prices by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz did, Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, told NOTUS.
Table titled "Trump's support among Hispanic, Black voters higher in 2024 than in 2020, 2016," showing percent of validated voters by candidate and vote margin (Dem minus Rep) across 2016 (Clinton/Trump), 2020 (Biden/Trump), and 2024 (Harris/Trump), broken out by gender within racial groups. Overall gender gap narrowed over time: Men favored Trump by 11 points in 2016, 2 points in 2020, and 12 points in 2024 (41/52, 48/50, 43/55). Women favored the Democratic candidate by 15 points in 2016, 11 points in 2020, and 7 points in 2024 (54/39, 55/44, 53/46). White men: Trump margin was -30 in 2016 (32/62), narrowed to -17 in 2020 (40/57), then widened to -20 in 2024 (39/59). White women: -2 in 2016 (45/47), -8 in 2020 (45/53), -4 in 2024 (47/51) — the only female subgroup favoring Trump in all three years shown. Black men and women not reported for 2016. In 2020, Black men favored Biden +75 (87/12) and Black women +90 (95/5). In 2024, those margins narrowed to +54 for Black men (75/21) and +79 for Black women (89/10). Hispanic men and women not reported for 2016. In 2020, Hispanic men favored Biden +18 (57/39) and Hispanic women +32 (65/33). In 2024, Hispanic men flipped to Trump by 2 points (48/50), and the Hispanic women margin narrowed to +6 (52/46). (generated by LLM, sorry all)
Screenshot of an email. It reads: “Student Support Form Filed - Behavioral & Academic Support OFFICIAL NOTIFICATION: STUDENT SERVICES Case ID: SSN-52532 Greetings, This message is to inform you that a new Student Support Form has been logged for a student currently enrolled in your course. To maintain compliance with district policy and ensure the student receives timely intervention, please review the submission via the link below: [Access Support Form Records] Submission Details: • Date Filed: June 13th, 2026 • Filed By: Parent/Guardian • Category: Behavioral Concern / Academic Support” The rest is outside of the screenshot.
Marc Lynch’s International Relations syllabus from 2000
Top-down photo of a male orange tabby. He is curled up on his side, twisting such that the top of his belly is showing, his paws are raised, and his face is pointed toward the camera.
Sheets of water falling between the camera and a small park with trees, waterway, and building.
A picture through a car window distorted by rain, taken in the morning in Hong Kong.
A photo of a concert. Blue saturated. Darnielle is partially obscured by people who are taller than me. Which is pretty much anybody.
A post that reads: "It's weird that Helen of Troy being played by a black actress is a problem, but most of the rest of the Mediterranean, Greek and Turkish characters being played by incredibly fair and blond haired people of British, Irish and Scandinavian descent isn't. And by weird, I mean entirely predictable." I've highlighted "Turkish characters."
LLM-generated alt-text: Wikipedia infobox for the 7 May 2026 United Kingdom local elections, covering 5,066 council seats across 136 unitary, metropolitan, county, district, and London councils in England, plus 6 directly elected mayors in England and 2 council by-elections in Wales. Results are 98.53% declared as of 9 May 2026 at 16:45 BST. A table presents five party leaders with headshots and the following data: Reform UK, leader Nigel Farage (since 3 June 2024): 986 seats before (78 up for election); projected vote share 26%, down 4pp; 1,453 councillors, 14 councils; gains of +1,451 councillors, +14 councils. Labour, leader Keir Starmer (since 4 April 2020): 5,830 seats before (2,196 up for election); projected vote share 17%, down 3pp; 1,049 councillors, 28 councils; losses of −1,446 councillors, −37 councils. Liberal Democrats, leader Ed Davey (since 27 August 2020): 3,180 seats before (663 up for election); projected vote share 16%, down 1pp; 843 councillors, 15 councils; gains of +154 councillors, +1 council. Conservative, leader Kemi Badenoch (since 2 November 2024): 4,180 seats before (1,134 up for election); projected vote share 17%, up 2pp; 797 councillors, 9 councils; losses of −563 councillors, −6 councils. Green, leader Zack Polanski (since 2 September 2025): 914 seats before (170 up for election); projected vote share 18%, up 7pp; 550 councillors, 4 councils; gains of +404 councillors (councils figure partially cut off in image).
A medium-distance shot of an orange tabby sitting inside of a box. The box is standing on the floor, as if it were a freestanding doorway or window in the middle of a room. The cat can barely fit himself inside. He looks out and to his left. Objects line the wall behind him: boots, a standing space heater, a free-standing fan, a partially folded table with various items on top, and a bookcase — only a corner of which is in the frame.
A black cat lies in a small (2" high) box, stacked on another identical box, stacked on another identical box. The three boxes are on a marble countertop. The photo is close up of the cat's face. She has green eyes, and her head is resting on the edge of the top box. Only her head and shoulders are visible.
"GOP unity over the Iran war started to crack Thursday when Sen. Susan Collins of Maine voted with Democrats to halt the conflict, marking the first time a Republican has changed their vote on the military campaign in the Middle East. While the vote failed, the shift signaled President Donald Trump could soon face far more resistance over the conflict. That’s especially true as he blows past a legal deadline this week for the U.S. to exit the war without congressional authorization."
Badly painted, cheap resin minis (some missing face details). Two female elf warriors dual-wielding swords and five goblin-ish figures: two with bows, two with swords, one with a spear. Painting supplies are in the background.
top-down view of a dry-erase grid board with cardboard props (five long tables arranged in an open-at-the-bottom rectangle), with a fifth, narrower "head table" on a raised platform. Various PC, NPC, and monster minis are on "the floor" or "on tables" on the mat. A drawn firepit sits at the center of the map. At the head table is a mini of Lich and a sorceress — an NPC held captive — and five orange plastic cubes representing seated, unconscious, undead "lords." Five plastic blocks in front of the table represent a magic barrier. Various mins, pens, and accruement are scattered around the map.
top-down view of a dry-erase grid board with cardboard props (five long tables arranged in an open-at-the-bottom rectangle), with a fifth, narrower "head table" on a raised platform. Various PC, NPC, and monster minis are on "the floor" or "on tables" on the mat. A drawn firepit sits at the center of the map. At the head table is a mini of Lich and a sorceress — an NPC held captive — and five orange plastic cubes representing seated, unconscious, undead "lords." Five plastic blocks in front of the table represent a magic barrier.
Two social sites A and B, depicted as network nodes. They are connected by a line representing their social (military, economic, whatever) ties. The figure depicts A "cutting" or "eroding" its ties with B, with an thick arrow extending out from A to the center of the tie and a "lighting" icon cutting through the tie. The thick arrow is labelled "power-political action taken by 'A'." The lighting bolt is labelled "Cutting or Eroding Ties."
A black cat leans on top of a pizza box, head resting on her right paw. Her left paw extends forward, pushing slight against a glass seasoning bottle of Za'atar. A bookcase and cat tree are visible in the background. To the right of the cat tree is a casual couch, above which hang two ukiyo-e woodblock prints.
A black cat lying on the top of a cat tree. A larger orange cat lies on the next rung down, next to a soft carrot-shaped toy. A window is to the left, wine cabinets behind (with bottles of liquor and spirits standing on their tops). A framed Ukiyo-e is on the wall above the wine cabinets.
Two orange cats — a smaller female and larger male — squeezed together on a cat tree.
Tom Brady, the seven-time Super Bowl champion, and John Kerry, former secretary of state, are among the 13 speakers who will address the Class of 2026 at Georgetown’s commencement this year. Brady will speak to undergraduates in the School of Business on May 16. The former football player won the most Super Bowl titles of any quarterback in NFL history: six with the New England Patriots and one with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He is now the lead analyst for Fox Sports’ NFL coverage. Brady also co-owns the Las Vegas Raiders and Birmingham City Football Club and has founded several wellness, athletic clothing and media companies. Later that day, John Kerry will speak to undergraduates at the School of Foreign Service’s ceremony. Kerry served as a U.S. senator for 28 years and the 68th secretary of state under the Obama Administration. In 2021, he was nominated as the first special presidential envoy for climate in the Biden Administration.
"Earlier consolidation strategies came to similar forks in the road. Hadrian faced a crisis in the Levant that required the dispatch of several legions and could have become a multifront problem. In Fisher's time, the British faced crises in Asia, North Africa, and the Balkans that could have derailed his plans for naval concentration. The Nixon administration faced an escalatory spiral in Vietnam that could have prevented it from reprioritizing Europe. In all these cases, leaders managed the crises without allowing them to subvert the 'entral logic of their strategy. For the United States now, management will mean using any successes in Iran to truly deprioritize the Middle East going forward."
Georgia secession, excerpt: "The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people, and has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil war."
Witkoff's deals similarly appear to blend national and personal interests. He shepherded an agreement to lift U.S. restrictions on the export of high-end semiconductors to a technology firm chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE's national security adviser. U.S. officials had previously blocked such a sale, believing it would help China get its hands on the technology. At around the same time, MGX, an investment firm chaired by Tahnoon, bought $2 billion worth of stablecoin, a form of cryptocurrency, from World Liberty Financial, whose co-founders include Witkoff, his two sons, Trump, and Trump's three sons. (The White House said that Witkoff did not directly participate in brokering the chips deal. "Steve Witkoff has never used his government position to benefit World Liberty Financial," the company said in a statement.) This arrangement formed part of a three-way deal in which MGX invested the stablecoin in Binance, a cryptocurrency firm whose founder, Changpeng Zhao, was serving a prison sentence in the United States for violating U.S. anti-money-laundering regulations.
The United States nonetheless remained an outlier among other consolidated democracies: American presidents routinely appointed wealthy political donors to ambassadorial posts and staffed more leadership positions with political appointees. Still, for decades before Trump's second term, Washington relied on a highly institutionalized foreign policy apparatus, in part to try to ensure that U.S. strategy abroad reflected national interests. Although the president enjoyed wide latitude to define those interests, he could not simply dictate them. Presidents exceeded the limits of their authority, of course, but both Republican and Democratic lawmakers considered it their duty to guard congressional prerogatives against the encroachments of an imperial presidency.
One of the best reasons to staff bureaucracies with professionals— and to choose knowledgeable people to hammer out peace agreements —is to ensure precise language with actionable implications and to build the kind of intergovernmental infrastructure that is necessary for successful implementation. Rushed and vague agreements tend to fail. Indeed, the June 2025 cease-fire agreement in Congo that left Trump gloating did not halt advances by the M23 rebel forces, which continued to seize key Congolese cities. In October, Trump was eager to take credit for the "peace accord" inked by Cambodia and Thailand. But this agreement was merely a joint declaration that left important border demarcation issues unresolved and monitoring mechanisms underspecified; unsurprisingly, a few weeks later, cross-border clashes resumed.
A Substack piece, detailing a lot of absolutely correct criticisms of the attack on Iran, entitled "Last Ride of the Neoconservatives?"
"Commodification is clearly a process. What makes it a mechanism is that triggers it a change in the dispositional properties of implicated social relations, including the repertoires associated with them. The scripts, expectations, and actions associated with romantic relationships either are different or carry different meanings than those associated with a commodified one. The same holds for one of the most influential concepts in modern security studies, securitization. It describes a process in which a "reterent object gets transformed into an existential threat. In the classic formulation. securitization is a "speech act" that creates a "state of exception," a suspension of "normal" or "routine" constraints on political action. The securitization of illegal narcotics, terrorism, or migration makes it much easier for the state to violate individual rights and civil liberties —and perhaps even engage in summary executions — in order to "protect" the political community.!" But, as Guzzini argues, the classic formulation of the theory describes only one potential process that may securitize a referent object. If one looks at many efforts to apply the theory, securitization functions as a causal mechanism that explains states of exception: "one could see securitization either as a processed triggered by something else or as itself a trigger of certain effects?" Put differently, a securitized relationship entails not a determinate outcome, but rather alters the range of scripts, actions, instruments, and meanings. It entails a different set of repertoires than a de-securitized one, particularly with respect to the use of force."
Someone X-Twitter with 1.1M views posting that "Iran has not attacked a country unprovoked in it's 5000 year old history. Israel has attacked six in one year. Who is the threat here?"
Indirect Rule. A great deal of imperial historiography defines systems of "indirect rule" as those in which empires recruit intermediaries from peripheral populations, such as local chieftains or princes. "Direct rule," in this terminology, means administration by officials recruited from the imperial core (Mamdani 1996). In our usage, both systems are variations in indirect rule, i.e., rule through autonomous and quasi-autonomous intermediaries (Lieven 2000, 28; Tilly 1997, 3). The scope of indirect rule varies across empires. In some, local intermediaries are granted very little discretion over a wide range of policy formulation and implementation. In others, local intermediaries merely have to guarantee a regular flow of resources, access to markets, or minimal compliance with general imperial rules (Newbury 2003). During much of the eighteenth century, for example, the North American colonies of the British empire were essentially self-governing (Lenman 2001). Under the Golden Horde (a typical tribute-taking empire), the princes of the former Rus' could do pretty much what they pleased as long as they supplied regular tribute (however burdensome) to their imperial rulers, did not unduly interfere with the trade routes that provided a crucial source of revenue to the horde, and so forth (Halperin 1983, 242, 250). During the northeast expansion of Muscovy, central authorities would often issue orders of astounding specificity concerning the movements of populations, livestock, and resources. Muscovite agents often replaced local elites (Keenan 1986, 131). In Korea, Japanese "governors-general . . . functioned as imperial pro-consuls, rather than as mere agents of civil government." In Taiwan, they were "semiautonomous and
Cover of the March/April 2026 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, titled "The New American Hegemony"
“Ms. Prejean Boller converted to Catholicism in April but lectured witnesses, including a priest, as well as fellow Catholic commissioners on their faith,” the editorial continued. “One commissioner, Ryan Anderson, read her excerpts from the Second Vatican Council’s Nostra aetate and Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI in rebuttal. But what do they know?”
Moreover, Moyn and Priestland have a strangely static view of the next 4-8 years. Yes, federal courts whittled down much of the travel ban. But three members of the Supreme Court were ready to approve the full ban, including Trump's own appointment, Neil Gorsuch. It is entirely possible that, within a single term, Trump could select a replacement for Kennedy and at least one of the center-left justices. That would, in all likelihood, create a majority willing to sign off on policies like the travel ban. Keep in mind that the Supreme Court already has a majority willing to roll back minority voting rights, empower plutocrats in the electoral process, and otherwise tilt the playing field toward the GOP. Now factor in the one area where the Trump administration has seen enormous success: lower-court judicial appointments. This is starting to look an awful lot like the recipe for hybrid regimes, no?
Moreover, Trump-style foreign policy might actually stimulate the development of alternative ordering infrastructure that bypasses the United States altogether, thus further eroding American influence. Recall how the US withdrawal from the JCPOA (the Iran nuclear deal) and its use of its financial power to make other parties comply with the re-imposition of US sanctions, has prompted other states to propose creating new payment systems to settle trade accounts that will bypass US sanctions. The ultimate result might take a form that we could no longer really term “liberal intergovernmentalism” but would more accurately describe as “authoritarian intergovernmentalism,” with the United States shifted to the periphery of ordering infrastructure. To make matters worse for Washington, the transition to bilateral transactionalism would likely prove quite painful—potentially collapsing relationships and ordering infrastructure the United States would prefer to maintain in a multipolar world.
Recall that Trump’s case against international institutions is about more than the incompatibility of its liberal political values with his “nationalist” agenda. It is also a bet that weakening or even dismembering multilateral institutions will give the United States greater international leverage when negotiating international agreements. European states, for example, enjoy much greater market power when combined into the EU than as individual countries negotiating on a bilateral basis. Such thinking also likely informs the continuing attempts to cut the budget of the State Department—including entire governance-related initiatives like combating AIDS or addressing climate change—while continuing to boost the Pentagon’s budget. In this world of naked material competition, the use of selective incentives and reciprocity takes the place of universal principles and global compliance, thereby advantaging the most militarily powerful. China and Russia do not support important aspects of American-led international order and certainly are not fans of US hegemony, but they are keenly aware of the power-political dividends that accrue from generating architectures and controlling infrastructures of order. China and Russia will continue to pursue liberal intergovernmentalism as the US retreats to bilateral transactionalism. If anything, by withdrawing from existing multilateral institutions the Trump administration makes it easier for Russia and China to get their way, thus making intergovernmentalism more, not less, attractive to illiberal states. Thus, rather than rendering international organizations and institutional arrangements irrelevant, Trump foreign policy only accelerates the process of transferring their control and leadership to geopolitical challengers. As we noted in the prior section, we are already seeing this dynamic play out.
But Washington needs to recognize that its two decades as a global hegemon are likely over. Certainly, no amount of military spending will bring those back—because, in no small part, the most important sources of hegemonic unraveling are non-military in character, driven by alternative order building and contention over liberal norms and governance. Regimes from around the world are unlikely, for better or for worse, to simply accept the kind of liberal ordering that the United States promoted in the 1990s and 2000s. The existence of alternative patrons brings with it new economic opportunities and sources of political leverage. Perhaps the prospect of turning to Beijing as a developmental model and provider of foreign aid will become less appealing if China buckles under economic or political shocks, and if the United States and the European Union recover from their current crises of governance. But even then, we do not expect to see states abandon the pursuit of goods substitution and to cease their efforts to hedge against geopolitical change.
Thus, while the Trump administration national-security policy prepares for a future of great-power competition, especially with China, its policies toward both the international and domestic infrastructure of the American system undermine key sources of Washington’s power and influence. As international-relations scholars Brian Blankenship and Benjamin Denison keenly observe, “With an American economy more focused on tax cuts than investment in physical and human infrastructure,” “alienation of core American allies,” and “distrust of U.S. leadership growing among America’s strategic partners,” current American policy looks exactly the opposite of what the United States should be pursuing if it wishes to prepare for great-power challengers. 8 Put differently, Trump is continuing policies that hasten hegemonic decline at home while adding ones that hasten it abroad.
Trump and Trumpism are accelerants and symptoms of broader processes. 2 It is not unheard of for the leadership of great powers, including hegemonic ones, to adopt policies of retrenchment; 3 reformers, such as Gorbachev, sometimes—usually without intending to—pursue a course that collapses their systems. 4 However, few expected that American politics would produce a president with as thoroughly revisionist an outlook as Donald Trump. 5But it did.
Crucially, and in keeping with the focus of this chapter, subnational and transnational counter-order units are not merely instruments of great powers. They are often actors in their own right, and they deploy some of the same repertoires when it comes to weakening the existing international order. One of the possible ironies of focusing on Russian efforts to exacerbate partisan divides in Western countries is that they're often superfluous. There's nothing IRA employees can do that, say, partisan media in the United States isn't already doing-and usually with greater success, Put differently, if counter-order movements within the core are, indeed, a major way that hegemonic systems collapse or international orders change, then even without Moscow's attempts at orchestration, other efforts at brokerage are already linking up illiberal, right-wing movements and helping them gain strength across the West. These movements also benefit from highly polarized societies, and they piggyback on media ecosystem that cultivate that polarization. There are also some signs of growing mobilization by left-wing counter-order elements. We know these kinds of conditions are dangerous for international order and hegemonic systems, because we've seen the movie before.
We expect that many readers will have noticed how different aspects of the same periods, such as that of the Habsburgs or of the 1920s and 1930s, appear across all three of the pathways we identify: great-power challengers, bottom-up pressures, and transnational contention. This is no accident. It reflects a crucial way that power transitions exacerbate all three pathways— by making it more likely that they will start bootstrapping on, or mutually reinforcing, one another. Figure 3.4 illustrates the dynamics that obtain when all three pathways converge in patterns of positive feedback. For example, because rising powers often provide alternative models of successful political orders, they encourage the emergence of counter-order movements. Rising powers so, especially if they wish to challenge the order, have incentives to develop ideological connections with and provide support to counter-order movements-especially within incumbent powers and their allies.
The central analytical question posed by the Trump administration is whether it is possible to decouple the maintenance of American power from key, and particularly liberal, elements of the American hegemonic system. The usual purpose of hegemonic orders is to lock in a system of benefits that accrue to the leading power. Thus, hegemons generally turn revisionist against the order that they’ve helped construct at their own peril. Yet this is where Trump’s dispositions lie. Trump and some of his advisors openly regard supporting the infrastructure that helps maintain this system—multilateral alliances, international organizations, and at least some commitment to liberal values—as a threat to American power.
Broadly speaking, I propose that much of human conflict occurs when relations involving rank are ambiguous or under challenge. Such conditions arise in encounters between people whose relative rank has not been established, in existing ranked relations in which one party wants to alter the status quo, or in situations in which some exogenous event (including changes in adjacent social relations) alters the prospects for continued precedence of one person over another.