New Forces

July 27, 2025

Luis Rubio

“Trump has no idea what forces he has unleashed,” says Edward Luce, describing the series of erratic moves that have characterized the American president in his first months in office, generating brutal reactions, both politically and in the financial markets. I believe there are two ways to interpret this statement: one is that Trump imagined that merely by threatening he could bend the world to get what he was looking for. The other is that he unleashed forces that can no longer be contained. The first is obvious: there is practically no country in the world that hasn’t responded, with greater or lesser speed and with its own internal logic; all want to reestablish a viable commercial relationship. Ongoing negotiations will surely follow, which, hopefully, will conclude with some sustainable and functional arrangement for all parties. However, if the second interpretation is also true — that he has unleashed uncontrollable forces — then the world will be very different in the future.

The first thing to assess is the cost of what he has caused or unleashed to speculate about potential consequences. One way to measure the cost is through the gains and losses experienced by financial markets around the globe. However, a more useful (and undoubtedly more significant) way to measure the cost is in terms of the United States’ prestige in the rest of the world and what that could mean for the future.

Trump’s indiscriminate actions —striking both friends and enemies alike— have had a very negative impact on public opinion, especially in Europe and Canada. Polls taken before the recent barrage showed that, outside of nations governed by autocrats, positive perceptions of Americans were significantly higher than those of China on every continent except Africa, where they were tied. This is highly likely to change in future surveys, but the point is crucial: the aggressive way Trump has conducted himself has destroyed decades of relationship-building —cultural ties and alliances both emotional and political, friendly and military. By acting similarly in trade matters (tariffs) and in alliances (like NATO), Trump has shaken the entire power structure that emerged after the end of World War II —what has been pompously referred to as the “world order.”

Regardless of what Trump envisions as the ideal framework he wants to create, some scholars suggest that what is happening is the result of uncontrollable tensions that were already simmering beneath the surface and that he is merely a messenger of the process. In other words, it would have happened with whoever became U.S. president, although clearly the style, the “engineering” of the process, would have been different. This topic has been on the table for some time, as exemplified by two recent books: The New World Disorder by Peter Newman and The World on the Brink by Dmitri Alperovitch. Fareed Zakaria wrote a book in 2008 titled The Post-American World in which he warned of fundamental changes in the foundations of the old-world order that did not match the political reality of the time, including the rise of China, the fiscal deficit, and new ways of producing that were emerging globally. The point is that the tensions were already there; what has been extraordinary is the violent and chaotic way in which Trump has responded to them.

Trump has acted on so many fronts simultaneously that it is hard to find coherence between his drive to boost manufacturing and exports in his country and his ambition to establish a new order in the Middle East, end the war in Ukraine, and — lest one forgets — eradicate the sources of fentanyl (and disorder) within Mexico, all at once. It’s worth appreciating the scope and depth of ambition that this activism reveals.

Beyond his specific actions on each of these fronts, one is left stunned observing his inclination to blow up the entire structure (and strategy) of values, rules, norms, and alliances that produced the longest period of peace and prosperity in world history —of which the main beneficiary, though Trump fails to see it, has been his own country. Trump is incapable of appreciating that, even if others gained along the way (even without contributing as much), the outcome has been especially favorable for the United States. Joseph Nye recently wrote that Trump “is so obsessed with the problem of free riders that he forgets that it has been in America’s interest to drive the bus.”

The big question is: where is all this leading? It’s too early to draw meaningful conclusions, but one thing is certain —the future will include new spheres of influence, new payment systems, and new rules of the game. As Thucydides wrote 2,500 years ago, “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” The only way to suffer less is to achieve greater internal strength. There is no other way.