The events of the past few days have shaken up the US presidential election. By bowing out of the contest, Joe Biden has made way for Vice President Kamala Harris who, if elected, would be expected to continue with the broad thrust of his foreign policy.
She has already given the Democrats hope that they can make a race that was all but lost competitive again. Although on balance he remains favourite, Donald Trump now must reorient his campaign.
While the failed assassination attempt has encouraged his supporters to believe that he possesses special powers of survival, he now sees the charge levelled against Biden that he was an old man with declining capacity being directed at him.
Harris is generally not well known in Western capitals although they will be generally content if she follows the same path as Biden. The prospect of another Trump presidency remains the most alarming.
After the shambolic nature of his last administration and the way he tried to cling to power despite a lost election, they hoped to have seen the back of him. Over the past few months they have been getting used to the idea that he could well be back for more. While America’s allies have little choice but to promise a constructive relationship with whoever is in the White House, the prospect of Trump 2.0 fills them with foreboding. They worry about his impact on US democracy and how to cope with a natural disrupter with an instinct for the dramatic.
Trump’s actual policies are hard to predict because they are the product of his prejudices, grudges and hyper-sensitive ego as much as reasoned analysis.
How things will work out in practice will depend on many factors: whether the Republicans also control the House and the Senate, and how much those in Congress with more traditional internationalist views would follow his lead; what role if any he would give to his vice president, JD Vance, who has expressed even more isolationist views; who he appoints to the key State Department, Pentagon and National Security positions, and the extent to which he is receptive to their advice; the state of the world at the time, including the war in Ukraine, and so on.
We do know that the previous Trump administration was chaotic. Many of those he appointed left early, despairing of his judgement and his impetuosity, his admiration for “strong men” and his belief that he could do a deal with anyone. We also know that although his rhetoric is belligerent and he likes the idea of powerful armed forces, he is wary about being drawn into wars. He was the one who set in motion the departure from Afghanistan. This fits in with his distrust of alliances which he sees as organisations that enable other countries to take advantage of the US. They don’t pay their way and still expect the US to bail them out when they get into trouble.
Because of past comments the biggest worry is that he will abandon Nato. In practice that would be difficult, so the real issue is whether he would take alliance obligations seriously. When countries looked to the US to come to their aid, would it be there?
This will be as much a problem for US allies in the Pacific as in the Atlantic. Many American conservatives believe that while Europeans should deal with their own neighbourhood threat – that is, Russia – the US should make the China threat its priority.
Unlike President Biden, Trump has shown no interest in going to war on behalf of Taiwan, which is the most likely scenario for an all-out confrontation with China. In his most recent comment Trump accused Taiwan of being undeserving because it had stolen the microchip industry from the US. With China, Trump largely sees the challenge as one of unfair trade – currently aggravated as China is unable to find markets for manufactured goods at home and so sells them at cheap prices abroad. This is going to lead to hefty tariffs mainly directed against China. During his previous term, Trump was also inclined to impose tariffs on allies.
In the Middle East he will be strongly pro-Israel and expect to pick up on the Abraham Accords, the various deals to normalise relations between Israel and Arab states, one of the few achievements of his previous term. The Biden administration has been trying to complete a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, with the effort complicated by events in Gaza and the Saudi desire for an arms deal with the US. Trump will pick up on this but he may find it harder this time round to ignore the Palestinian issue.
The big issue is Ukraine. The consensus assumption is that Trump would veto any further assistance to Ukraine. Senator Vance has denied that the fate of Ukraine is of any interest to the US, and certainly not to him personally. If Trump also took this view then Ukraine would struggle on, as it struggled on during the first months of this year when US aid was held up in the House of Representatives. It will rely on the Europeans to do its best to fill the gaps, although there are some gaps the Europeans simply could not fill.
Trump would expect the Europeans to carry a greater part of the burden of supporting Ukraine and of European security more generally. Whether he would go further and abandon Ukraine completely is less certain. He would face the issue that House Speaker Mike Johnson faced last spring, as it dawned on him when he was briefed on the intelligence that his legacy might be the fall of Ukraine to Russian aggression. So he shifted his position. Trump will have seen the damage done to Biden’s standing by the abrupt departure from Afghanistan.
So rather than just abandon Ukraine he will be looking to find a way to negotiate the end of the war. He has not been fully clear about how this is to be achieved, but the closest to a reported plan envisages that he gets Zelensky to the negotiating table by threatening to cut aid to Ukraine if he refuses, and gets Putin there by threatening to increase aid if he refuses.
If he succeeds, the best assumption is that Trump will urge Zelensky to give up on any idea of joining Nato while still expecting Putin to withdraw from occupied Russian territory. This will satisfy neither man. Without predicting, because this effort could end in many ways, one outcome could still be more rather than less support to Ukraine.
Many countries are bracing themselves for a return of Trump. Not only allies that fear that they will be abandoned, but also Mexicans who expect more arguments over flows of migrants and drugs. An international security and economic system has developed over the past eight decades in which the US plays an outsize role. Trump does not care for that role, especially if he sees it crossing US national interests, often narrowly defined.
This system is already under stress, especially in the security sphere. Under Trump the additional stresses are likely to come in the economic sphere as much as the security sphere.
Lawrence Freedman is emeritus professor of war studies, King’s College London. With his son Sam he publishes the Substack Comment is Freed