United States and Crisis of Global Governance under Donald Trump

Abstract

The article deals with the influence of Donald Trump’s foreign policy attitudes and practices on the institutions and arrangements of world order regulation which developed after World War II. The actual rejection of the liberal globalist paradigm by the 45th president is manifested in his approaches to trade and economic relations with leading US partners, in the commercialization of politics towards the US security allies, in subverting the key agreements and regimes underlying the strategic stability, in his destructive approach to mechanisms of resolution of some grave international conflicts. Yet the author does not consider those trends in the US foreign policy under the Trump presidency something fundamentally new. The crisis of the global governance system and its key institutions (the United Nations, GATT / WTO, IMF, the World Bank, regional integration associations, in particular the European Union, G7, OPEC, etc.) has long been brewing due to their inherent internal contradictions. Simultaneously, Washington’s discontent was growing over its key rivals (particularly China) increasingly benefiting from globalization. The novelty of Donald Trump’s attitudes towards globalism and multilateral institutions lies in his desire to ensure not selective, but all-­embracing priority of the interests of the national state (the United States) over maintaining the liberal world order and its institutions. However, Trump’ radically new interpretation of the ‘globalism — nationalism’ dichotomy by no means presupposes any fundamental revision of the American foreign policy priorities. The issues raised by the author are closely connected with the interests of Russia, which has to formulate more clearly its approaches to modern trends in the world order. Those trends have become more prominent than earlier with Donald Trump’s advent, presenting both new opportunities and new challenges for Russia.