The Loneliest Apex Predator
A Beleaguered America Turns on the Order it Helped Create
The Realists are winning a 30-year struggle to seize the reins of Republican foreign policy, shaping American conduct in irreversible ways that are uncomfortable for many in Washington to accept.
Trump has struck a mortal blow to the century-long project of neoliberalism. He did not kill it alone. The Iraq war; the Afghanistan withdrawal; the financial crisis; COVID; the free riding of European elites; and above all the incessant cheating, salami-slicing, and hollowing out of its systems and principles at the hands of global spoilers have each contributed to its demise.
This project had many enviable features—multilateral institutions, collective security, and cooperation on the basis of shared threats. But Saturday’s midnight raid in Caracas and escalating threats against Greenland have shattered its most essential foundation: a respect for sovereignty as the organizing principle of world order.
In the pages of The New York Times, The Atlantic, and all along the podcast circuit, proponents of the “rules-based international order” are still in denial it has died, or are bargaining to save it. Former American officials of all stripes are waging a global apology tour. On X, the adults are uniform: “There is no need for this.”
It is time to accept there is no walking back from the brink. No amount of public self-flagellation or private “Can-you-believe-this-guy?” eye-rolling will persuade global publics that the United States can be relied upon to do the right thing in the world. Future administrations cannot credibly promise that America will always exercise its power toward some common good—because America under Trump is proving that it can, and will, exert its power in whatever manner serves its own interests.
For many Republicans, this is reason to rejoice: An unshackled America will more capably defend its interests and deter its enemies. No doubt Trump’s demonstrable setback of Iran’s nuclear program, ouster of one of the world’s worst dictators, and potential acquisition of new territories will advance American power. Such decisive actions—well-defined in scope and awesome in effect—will reverberate through the halls of the Kremlin and Zhongnanhai; and put an end to the fecklessness that has for too long eroded America’s global standing.
Critics point out that the victories unlocked by Trumpism come at great cost. By dispensing with even the pretenses of American hegemony—multilateralism, democracy, and respect for human rights—Trump risks jeopardizing the sources of domestic legitimacy for his own foreign policy agenda. And though we can debate about how sincerely autocracies were ever constrained by such norms, or how effective their propaganda, the fact is that they are already pointing to American hypocrisy to justify their own illegitimate claims.
This debate about Trumpism’s merits misses the bigger picture. The die has already been cast, the boats sit burning in the harbor. By accepting—embracing—the law of the jungle, Trump has permanently reshaped the kinds of grand strategy available to the United States in the 21st century. He has ensured there is only one path forward: to become the apex predator in a hostile world.
A New Doctrine
Trumpism is about picking winnable fights.
It does this through concrete deals or hit-and-run interventions pursued for immediate, compounding advantage; and by squeezing orthogonal interests for leverage at opportune moments.
The President did not invent this playbook; he inherited it from the boardroom. And its basic hallmarks—cynicism about human nature, skepticism of international institutions—are not so dissimilar from the principles of realism that have grounded American foreign policy for generations.
What, then, distinguishes Trumpism from traditional realism?
The first element is so blasé it hardly bears repeating: Trumpism does not pretend to be diplomatic or invested in the well-being of others. It is an outgrowth of a domestic politics that rewards spectacle, vulgarity, and loud-and-proud shows of power. It is this principle that coalesced the “Never Trump” movement during his first term. This week’s strikes against Venezuela and threats against Greenland take the approach to new heights, importing the cold logic of business into statecraft, without any of the trappings of restraint or grace that had made American power palatable to others.
The second element has been harder to grasp: Opponents of Trumpism have wrongly accused it of lacking any strategy, because it has not articulated a desired end state. It does not need to. For Trump, power justifies itself. This has meant that, unlike during his first administration or any modern predecessor, the United States today does not aim to prevail in strategic competition with an ideological or geopolitical rival—nor does it seek to reshape the international system in America’s image or to vindicate any particular set of principles. Rather, Trump’s strategy is exactly what the administration says it is: accumulating tactical victories that make America safer, stronger, or more prosperous. In the long run, these wins may compound into a favorable balance of power, paying dividends to the United States—but they do not promise to accrue toward any specific end.
Accepting this reality is important. It shapes which policy options are attractive to the President; which policy options his political allies are likely to advance as they wield American power toward their own strategic objectives; and what realities opposition Democrats, middle powers, and longstanding U.S. adversaries are likely to inherit as they reckon with a world permanently transfigured by Trump.
Predicting American Behavior
Within a single January 4 press gaggle aboard Air Force One, Trump launched verbal threats against Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland, Iran, Mexico, and Venezuela. His supporters maintain the President is bluffing: Obviously, we will not attempt to capture every one of these countries’ leaders. But the scattershot intimidation campaign illuminates a basic reality of Trump’s thinking: the United States will not hesitate to pick fights—any fight—it thinks it can win.
What constitutes a winnable fight? On this the administration has been remarkably clear.
As they relate to China, winnable fights include tech competition in third markets—places like Southeast Asia, the Gulf, and parts of Africa where American AI and semiconductor offerings can still outcompete Chinese alternatives. They include aid, influence, and infrastructure across the developing world, where the United States can leverage its financial system and technological edge to build durable sources of compounding power. And they include confronting Chinese influence and interests where they intersect with other fights that look winnable—particularly ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, stopping Iran’s nuclear program, reclaiming oil assets in Venezuela, and possibly seizing Greenland.
What are not winnable fights? On this, the administration has no incentive to clarify—and it would be counterproductive to admit publicly that there are any. But reading between the lines of its policy reversals, the answers are self-evident:
The administration’s track record has made it difficult to say that maintaining stability across the Taiwan Strait, ending coercion in the South China Sea, and broader security interests in Asia are the vaunted priorities Trump set out to enforce. The Hudson Institute’s Rebeccah Heinrichs put it bluntly: There is no pivot to Asia. Trump has been conspicuously reluctant to confront China’s growing military power, blue-water naval ambitions, and threats against U.S. allies. The administration seems to have calculated that the sum value of its winnable fights with Australia, India, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and others are worth more to the United States than the promise of their aid in an unwinnable strategic competition with China for geostrategic primacy in Asia.
Cutting China’s technology entirely out of the American market—except in specific cases where it threatens entrenched U.S. economic interests—is also not a winnable fight. The administration has calculated that it is too painful for Americans to bear the brunt of technological decoupling. The TikTok deal, the reversal on AI chip exports, the willingness to negotiate away export controls for rare earth access—all signal that the United States is simply not powerful enough to maintain the “go for the throat” posture advocated by previous administrations. The National Security Strategy’s stated aim has settled for “a mutually beneficial economic relationship with Beijing.”
To Trump’s critics, these retreats are evidence of TACO. To his supporters, they are a sensible redefinition of American interests that matches the reality of its declining strength in a multipolar world.
The Great Reassortment
The emerging American foreign policy doctrine—hunting the weak while leaving the strong to fight another day—is uncomfortable for several reasons.
First, the Trump doctrine stops short of the strategic competition with China that has animated U.S. policy for a decade. This has allowed his coalition to enjoy a bizarre range of support from both traditional hawks bent on holding China to account, alongside balance-of-power realists who insist Beijing is too powerful or dangerous to contest. The implications run deeper than coalition management. The entire architecture of great power competition—the think tank papers on Taiwan contingencies and Eastern European flashpoints, the wargames and force posture reviews and defense budget line items—all of it is orphaned if the Commander in Chief has concluded those fights are not, in the final analysis, winnable. Up and down Massachusetts Avenue, in the bowels of the Pentagon, and dotted across Capitol Hill, holdouts of the bipartisan China consensus wage a noble rearguard action. Many have devoted their lives to these missions and have not yet accepted defeat. But without White House support, their efforts will remain symbolic and their successes episodic—subordinated to the President’s judgment that their fights are not worth winning.
Second, the Trump doctrine’s return to power politics appears coherent and attractive enough to fracture the fragile alliance of neoliberals and neoconservatives that have long rallied against him. Never-Trump hawks—many of whom spent years criticizing Biden’s efforts to negotiate with Iran, his withdrawal from Afghanistan, and his tolerance of Maduro—now find themselves in an awkward position. The strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, the capture of Maduro, the promise of more strategic positioning from which to deter Russia and China have all provided results that are difficult to disclaim. Trump is doing what Republicans have long said they wanted. The question is whether they can stomach how he’s doing it—and for many, the answer is yes.
Does U.S. foreign policy have a path back from Trumpism? By all accounts, the boats have burned. Whatever a future administration may promise, no ally or adversary will soon forget the image of an America unshackled. The world is already witnessing a permanent reassortment to accommodate American predation.
Republicans are getting on board. The last bastions of Reaganism have been systematically excommunicated from the party. The GOP’s foreign policy bench continues to absorb hawks who have made their peace with Trump’s balance-of-power approach to geopolitics. Much of the GOP today is no longer debating whether to accept the law of the jungle; it is debating only how aggressively to hunt.
Democrats are trapped. They will resist and criticize “process,” demanding congressional authorization, invoking international law, lamenting the death of norms. But they cannot criticize Trump’s moves against Iran or Venezuela without appearing to be critics of American power itself—because that is all Trumpism claims to stand for. And even if they are right about the precedents being set, they will find limited political space for alternative policy architectures. Forward Defense, Allied Scale, FOIP, Integrated Deterrence—the great menu of think tank slogans designed to entrench and extend American hegemony depends on cooperation with partners who no longer trust the United States, and for whom America no longer articulates any higher purpose.
Allies are in shock. The overnight realization that Washington could threaten the territorial integrity of its own protectorates has triggered a full-scale race for self-strengthening. European capitals are dusting off plans for strategic autonomy that were dismissed as French fantasies a few short years ago; while Asian allies are hedging, caught between a neighbor they fear and a patron they can’t trust.
Middle powers are preparing to enter an extraordinary game of musical chairs, alternately balancing with and bandwagoning against the United States. On the one hand, true American client states—El Salvador, for instance—will find it harder to fence-sit or leverage Sino-U.S. rivalry to extract concessions. On the other hand, America’s exit from a zero-sum hegemonic contest with China could open up transactional opportunities with a much wider range of potential partners. The Gulf states have become model battlegrounds: wealthy enough to buy influence, and flexible enough to accommodate varying degrees of business with both Washington and Beijing.
More than anything else, history will judge Trumpism on the behavior of America’s adversaries. On the one hand, Moscow and Beijing welcome America blowing up its own alliance architecture. The suicide of the West has created new opportunities for arbitrage and forum-shopping. Beijing will likely take some solace in the fact that the United States appears to be rescinding its claim to hegemony in Asia, while redoubling its own influence in regional fora like ASEAN. The key question is how coercive China can afford to act, even as it raises the specter of a strident and imperial United States to rally partners from the global periphery. On the other hand, in battlegrounds where the United States does elect to compete (for now, the Western Hemisphere), an unshackled America will deter its adversaries from encroaching on its core interests.
Welcome to the Jungle
For those who believe in the American Idea—the conviction that this country, for all its failures, ought be a force for some greater good—the Maduro raid and threats against Greenland are a clarifying moment. They force a reckoning with what we have lost and what, if anything, can be salvaged in a world after Trump.
The optimistic case goes something like this: American power has always been exercised with a mixture of idealism and self-interest. The Roosevelt Corollary, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama—the United States has never been shy about using force in its neighborhood when it suited our purposes. What’s different now is only the pretense. Gone are the multilateral coalitions and manufactured concern for human rights. Perhaps this honesty about American power, stripped of the sanctimony that made liberal internationalism so grating to the rest of the world (albeit endearing to its elites), will prove more sustainable than the alternative.
The pessimistic case is much darker. Power without legitimacy is unstable. The rules-based order, for all its flaws, provided a framework that allowed American hegemony to at least appear beneficial rather than merely coercive. In a post-liberal world, what remains is naked domination—which invites resistance both at home and abroad, and requires ever-escalating force to maintain. The law of the jungle does not select for the most principled predator; it selects for the most ruthless.
The realistic case lies somewhere between these extremes. The United States will remain the most powerful nation on Earth for the foreseeable future. It will continue to have interests that require defending and capabilities that others fear. And it will have leaders—including those in Trump’s orbit—interested in wielding American power toward discernible principles beyond immediate returns on itself.
I do not know which future awaits us. But I do know that the old debates—primacy versus restraint, realism versus idealism, engagement versus containment—are no longer fit for purpose. Trumpism has collapsed these questions. There is no longer a strategic competition to be won or lost.
There is only the jungle, and America’s place within it.
It is here that we will find out whether we truly are the strongest after all.
God, I hope so.