The US-led recidivism in geopolitics – where is this going?

Relations between countries are seldom formulated in isolation, being subject to pressure and even change by prevailing geopolitical winds. No country can afford to ignore these forces, especially when winds change direction. This reality amid the current turbulence in global affairs begs the question for both Australia and Singapore and, in fact, all countries – where do political winds propel us in our shared future for Asia?

Over the past decade or so, we have witnessed a reversion to past policies and practices, old unhealthy habits, and recidivism in geopolitics. As celebrated American author Mark Twain famously intuited: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

The world has seen tremendous gains in the last 80 years after World War II. Global gross domestic product grew 10 times. Over the past four decades, 1.5 billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty. As a broad marker of country-to-country engagement, the global trade openness index, measuring trade as a percentage of global GDP, is now at its highest at 60 per cent, a steady rise over the last six decades, up from 20 per cent. It would be difficult to find a similar period to match this record historically, at least in terms of the sustained growth of the global economy. 

Despite this, the pillars which supported that global growth are being weakened, even systematically dismantled, by new geopolitical headwinds. On trade, there is a reversion towards protecting local industries and markets or securitising key resources and supply chains. There, the rhyme is unmistakable. Previously, battles for “strategic resources” were over oil and petroleum, seabird droppings (guano) or rubber. Today, it’s chips, minerals and rare earths. 

The Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 to apply import duties on 20,000 items aimed to protect local US industries soon after the Great Depression. It didn’t work and, in fact, made things worse. President Franklin D. Roosevelt acknowledged this and sought to undo the damage. In 1934, in moving the Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act, he said to the US Congress that “a resumption of international trade cannot but improve the general situation of other countries and thus increase their purchasing power. Let us well remember that this in turn spells increased opportunity for American sales”. 

Harry Truman, who succeeded FDR, pushed for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the forerunner of the World Trade Organization (WTO), in 1946 echoed FDR’s turnaround. He said: “Their success or failure (in these negotiations) will largely determine whether the world will move towards a system of liberal international trade, free from arbitrary barriers, excessive tariffs and discriminations, or will pay the heavy costs of narrow economic nationalism.”

These pivotal and enlightened beliefs before and after World War II set the world on a positive and energised trajectory – one that recognised that growing the global pie benefits not only most countries but, more importantly, also oneself. In part, they resulted in the Marshall Plan to restore Europe and Douglas MacArthur’s similar efforts to rebuild Japan post-World War II.

These sets of inclusive beliefs carried through one full generation thereafter. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan said: “Our goal must be the free flow of trade, from the tip of Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic Circle... throughout the world, there is a growing realisation that the way to prosperity is rejecting protectionistic legislation and promoting free and fair competition.” Those same beliefs motivated President Bill Clinton to push for China’s entry into the WTO in 2001, to convince both Houses that economic inclusion and liberalisation would be the more productive path in dealing with China. 

A system upended

Where do trade winds blow today? They are best captured by the remarks from current US leaders: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, at his Senate confirmation and the Munich Security Conference, said that “the post-war global order was not just obsolete, it is now a weapon being used against us” and that the liberal world order was not just a fantasy but “a dangerous delusion”. 

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent asserted at the Reagan National Economic Forum this year that “a series of bipartisan policy mistakes, including allowing China into the WTO and putting too much faith in the rules-based trading system... led to the erosion of the US industrial base and foreign suppliers”.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with their assertions, the effect is that the erstwhile spirit and rules governing free and fair trade, however defined, are now upended. Instead, as a global hegemon, new US trade policies threaten to undermine or even supplant the current system.

Trade and security are two faces of the same coin of geopolitics, and inevitably therefore changes to the latter have followed. US President Woodrow Wilson has been credited with laying the seeds of foreign and security policy in 1919 that successive US administrations continued till recently. Having emerged from the horrors of World War I, Wilson sought a better world influenced and shaped by the US’ growing hegemon might. His Senate rejected the US joining the League of Nations, which Wilson championed, but the core of his desire for US exceptionalism prevailed despite that setback. 

Without that abiding belief that the US should use its influence to make the “world safer for democracy”, the world we enjoy today would not exist. Not least because of the US’ leading roles in World War II and the fight against communism. As with trade, US foreign and security policies were based on the belief that shaping, nurturing and protecting the global commons were essential for the US’ own growth and place in the world.

Repudiated fundamentals

What of current security beliefs? “For decades... nations have been taking advantage of the United States. Why are these nations not paying the US for the human lives and billions of dollars we are losing to protect their interests? It is time to end our vast deficits by making others who can afford it pay. Our protection is worth hundreds of billions of dollars to these countries. End our huge deficits, reduce our taxes.” 

Who said this? Donald Trump. When did he say this? In 1987, nearly 40 years ago. Then, his diatribe was sparked by Japan, but his core sentiment that the US has been taken advantage of by far too many countries remains to this day. It is a deep and abiding bete noire for the current US President.

I find it hard to believe that when core fundamentals championed by the US then are now being repudiated – fundamentals that have underpinned global growth and stability in the past 80 years – the world at large can maintain its status quo ante. 

If you are a realist like me, then the topmost questions are not if but when the great disruptions will be upon us, if not already begun. And how they would manifest in real time and geographical space in different regions. 

For the US, the world’s largest economy and strongest military, change has already begun with new directions openly declared and stated unequivocally. I don’t know if the National Security Strategy has enjoyed wide readership, but it should. Plainly – that the overarching goal of US policies “is motivated above all by what works for America or, in two words, America First. The US will put our own interests first. Previous administrations placed huge misguided and destructive bets on globalism and free trade that hollowed out the very middle class and industrial base on which American economic and military pre-eminence depend”.

“We will no longer tolerate and can no longer afford free riding, trade imbalances, predatory economic practices and other impositions of our nation’s historic goodwill that disadvantage our interests.” In essence, the US will henceforth only protect the global commons, if its own interests are protected first. This shift is not subtle but pivotal and one that must have consequences for all countries.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s 2026 National Defence Strategy echoed these declarations for defence policy. “Previous administrations squandered our military advantages and the lives, goodwill and resources of our people in grandiose nation-building projects and self-congratulatory pledges to uphold cloud-castle abstractions like the rules-based international order.” 

Since my retirement from politics, I speak from time to time to international audiences, including the political literati. I quote these declarations and speeches from public documents and it surprises me that listeners are surprised. Perhaps it’s because the public finds it hard to accept this pivotal change by the US. 

For us, who are friends, partners and allies of the US, we can understand, even empathise with, the reasons that have shifted the US positions radically today. But political veterans also recognise that the realm of geopolitics is similar to tectonic plates. When one plate moves sharply and in a different direction, surrounding plates will either buckle or transfer those pressures onto others. The largest and most powerful geo-tectonic plate, the US, has altered course and the world as we know it will change, willy-nilly. All leaders and those in positions of power or influence must surely grapple with these disruptions as a top concern in the decades ahead. 

For our own equanimity and poise for the troubled days ahead, let me end with an ancient quote. From King Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”