PRESIDENT DONALD Trump is often accused of destroying the postwar global order, but he may be saving it. Trump is pursuing a nationalist foreign policy that puts America first and downplays the prospects of reforming the world we live in. At the same time, he acts as a realist to preserve a status quo which is radically different from the world of the 1930s. It is largely democratic and open, not revanchist and xenophobic. As a businessman before and president now, Trump exploits this world to cut deals abroad. Rather than dismantling the global order, he is seeking to balance it better in two ways: to get U.S. allies to share more of the burdens of common defense and trade, and to get China to accept the basic rules of a market-oriented world economy. If neither happens, the liberal world order will probably deteriorate anyway—not because Trump has undermined it, but because the American people will never sustain it if allies continue to shirk burdens and China milk markets.

In short, Trump is providing a course correction for the postwar global order that may be the best hope for sustaining it. His approach may be shocking, especially because nations have not seen such openly nationalist policies since 1945. But it is also less damaging because the world is a much better place than in 1945. Trump’s policies may moderate the radical changes of the past seventy-five years, but they are unlikely to reverse them.

WHAT IS Trump’s strategy, and more importantly, what are the results? If one looks only at Trump’s tweets and tactics, there appears to be no strategy. But if one looks at the direction in which events are moving, the picture is quite different. NATO and Asian alliances are spending more, not less, on common defense. Alliance forces sit on the border of Russia for the first time since 1991, supply Ukraine with lethal weapons against Russian invaders, and challenge Chinese naval expansion in the Pacific. Outside of Europe and Asia, America moves back toward a more limited role: toward an offshore strategy that targets terrorism; backs the only real democracies in these regions (Israel and India); and insists that allies and local nations supply the majority of boots on the ground in foreign conflicts. In trade, Trump exploits America’s booming economy to renegotiate trade balances. In immigration, he buys time to let the country absorb an unprecedented influx of migrants.

Overall, Trump’s nationalist/realist policies may be just what the doctor prescribed to sustain the global world order. I say that as an internationalist who would prefer a more value-oriented and less crude approach. Previous presidents talked about sharing burdens and rebalancing trade, yet did little to achieve them. Their internationalist approach reassured allies, and those allies, feeling no pressure, continued to free ride on America’s leadership. Any real change required a root and branch approach. Trump ripped up the ironclad American commitment to global security and world trade—or at least convincingly threatened to do so—and allies and trading partners began paying attention. Now, in a way, the future of globalism depends more on what they do than on what the United States does. After seventy-five years under American tutelage, they will either accept equal global responsibilities in both security and trade, or nationalism will pull them and the United States “back to the future.”

TRUMP CAME into office declaring: “NATO in my opinion is obsolete because it’s not covering terrorism […] and also you have many countries that aren’t paying their fair share.” But once in office, he said NATO was no longer obsolete. He called for reforming, not dismantling, alliances.

Yes, Trump thunders against NATO in words. But he strengthens it in deeds. He increased U.S. NATO spending by 40 percent for troop deployments on Russia’s borders and sharply increased, not decreased, U.S. defense expenditures overall, from $586 billion in 2015 to $716 billion in 2019 (and a projected $750 billion in 2020). Moreover, Trump accelerated the trend toward higher contributions by other NATO members. NATO members agreed in 2014 to increase their defense budgets over the next decade from the then prevailing average of 1.42 to 2 percent of GDP. At the time, only three members met the 2 percent target; by 2019 nine members did, and fifteen are on track to reach that level by 2024.

The United States still accounts for 70 percent of all defense expenditures by NATO members, even though it accounts for only 50 percent of NATO’s GDP. European members like to say that is because America is a world power: U.S. military spending covers operations outside Europe—in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia. True enough, but Europe, too, is now a world power. That is the point Trump is making. Additionally, Africa and the Middle East are much closer to Europe than the United States. Why does America have 5,000 troops in Iraq while Germany has only 120 and France 400? Shouldn’t allies be providing roughly 50 percent of troops and costs? As it stands, Europe accounts for the same percentage of the world economy as the United States, 22–24 percent. When you add Japan in, the allied percentage is higher. The truth is that America’s allies are, by themselves, global powers. Until they acknowledge that they too have corresponding global responsibilities, NATO may indeed fail.

But if it does, it will not be because of Trump. The German cabinet decided in March 2019 to keep defense spending as low as 1.25 percent of GDP for the next five years. As Walter Russell Mead concluded in a 2019 Wall Street Journal article, “Berlin is thumbing its nose not only at Donald Trump but at the U.S.” In the short term, Trump is giving America’s NATO allies the benefit of the doubt. He is encouraging them to do more while the United States is still providing much. In the longer run, he is sending the Europeans a clear message: either contribute more or recognize that America may not be there the next time you need it.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Trump’s NATO policy has benefitted Russia. Quite the contrary: while President Barack Obama bent over backwards to reset relations with Moscow—scuttling NATO missile defense systems in Eastern Europe and famously promising Putin he would be more flexible after the 2012 elections—Trump has managed both competitive and constructive relations with Russia despite preposterous charges that he is an agent of Moscow. He has been tough—much tougher than Obama. Trump endorsed the emplacement of NATO, including American, forces on the borders of Russia for the first time since the end of the Cold War (four battalions in Poland and the Baltic states). Obama initiated that step but only after Russia invaded Ukraine. A year before that invasion, he withdrew the last of America’s armored combat units from NATO. Trump subsequently authorized the sale of lethal weapons to the Ukraine government, something Obama repeatedly refused to do so.

Ironically, Trump was then impeached for weakening Ukraine (and aiding Russia) by temporarily suspending that aid to pressure Kiev to crack down on corruption—corruption that happened to involve a company whose board included Hunter Biden, son of Obama’s vice president, Joseph Biden. Yet despite this charge, U.S. troops under Trump confronted Russian mercenary forces in Syria, killing several hundred of them, while the United States under Obama invited Russia into Syria unchecked, purportedly to remove chemical weapons (which continued to be used). Furthermore, Trump threatened sanctions on European firms if they went ahead with the Nord Stream II gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea to supply Russian gas to European markets—a step which Obama never seriously considered. Isn’t it reasonable to argue that Obama, rather than Trump, was more lenient on Russia?

Even under the pressure of Moscow collusion charges, Trump has kept open the possibility of cooperating with Russia. The two countries share interests in managing ground and air conflicts in Syria and Iraq, updating or mutually abandoning Cold War arms control agreements in Europe (inf, start  and potentially New start), and negotiating logistical arrangements in central Asia for NATO forces in Afghanistan.

TRUMP IS also strengthening alliances in the Pacific. His first meeting with a foreign leader after his election was with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. Over the next two years, the two leaders met personally ten times and spoke thirty other times. Trump also reinforced the alliance with South Korea, coaxed Seoul to complete the deployment of theater missile defenses, and then cultivated an unprecedented, not to say unorthodox, pas de deux with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, respecting South Korea’s right to play a lead role in this duet and urging China not to let Pyongyang endanger wider global stability. True, there has been no progress on denuclearization. But North Korea has suspended nuclear and long-range missile tests for three years. Even if these activities resume in 2020, that counts for something.

The key target in Trump’s approach is China. Beijing aspires to great power status, which Trump is ready to concede, but does not want to play by great power rules, which Trump is unwilling to ignore. China’s power, unlike that of the former Soviet Union, depends heavily on ties with Western markets and technology. Trump leverages those ties to force China to make a choice: go your own way—in which case Western investors will find alternatives in other markets, such as Vietnam, India, and Indonesia—or accept balanced and binding commitments in the global trading system and continue to prosper as a friendly economic and political rival.

WHAT ABOUT the Middle East and Afghanistan? Didn’t Trump’s impetuous demands to withdraw from Syria alienate allies like the Kurds and enable adversaries such as Russia? Doesn’t the recent agreement with the Taliban throw the Kabul government under the bus?

Well, yes, his style can be abrasive. But he gets results in line with his objectives. As his national strategy document argued, the Middle East is no longer as important strategically as it was during the Cold War. Russia is not the Soviet Union; Syria is not as significant for the future of free governments as Ukraine; and Middle East oil—thanks to advances in fracking—no longer has a chokehold on the world economy.  For Trump, U.S. objectives in the Middle East are quite lean—keep terrorism at bay, work with weak and divided Arab states to push back against Iranian hegemony, and remain a stalwart supporter of Israel. U.S. goals in Afghanistan are even leaner—prevent terrorism that might again strike the United States. Most importantly—and this is key—do all of this without putting large numbers of U.S. troops on the ground again in the fashion of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Recall that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS ) was by no means wrapped up when Trump took office. He changed the rules of engagement by which Obama had micromanaged the conflict. In May 2017, Secretary of Defense James Mattis praised Trump’s decision: “No longer will we have slowed decision cycles because Washington, D.C. has to authorize tactical movements on the ground.” Under relentless assault thereafter, ISIS fell. Through targeted assassinations—ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and his close adviser, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, and most recently Qassim Suleimani—Trump kept his focus on terrorists and refused to be diverted by Iranian strikes against a U.S. surveillance aircraft, Saudi Arabian oil fields, and Iraqi military bases. Yes, with the Suleimani strike, he raised the stakes to include state-sponsored terrorism. But Trump’s first tweet after the deed was an invitation to Tehran to negotiate: “Iran has never won a war but never lost a negotiation.”

Now the trick is to hold territory that ISIS once held and safeguard oil resources that might fund an ISIS resurgence without significant U.S. forces becoming involved. In that light, Trump opted to let Russia patrol the Turkish-Syrian border. Turkey is a NATO ally, and the real disaster for the United States would have been to become involved in a fight with Turkey. The United States stands with the Kurds against ISIS but not against Turkey. And it stands with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Russia against ISIS but not with either in the civil war involving the Assad government. The alignments in the Middle East are crosscutting and confusing, not contiguous as in Europe or Asia. 

The bottom line for the United States in the Middle East is the continued existence of Israel. That does not mean going to war on behalf of that country. But it does mean preventing Iran from gaining regional hegemony and fomenting a ring of terrorist fire surrounding Israel—Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen. Obama based his strategy on accommodating Iran’s regional power ambitions, asking the Saudis to share the region with the Iranians, and anticipating that Iran would moderate its support of terrorism in the region once the Western powers came to terms with Tehran’s nuclear program. By contrast, Trump pushed back against Iranian hegemony, withdrew from a nuclear agreement that did little to moderate Iran’s aggressiveness, and then sought to piece together a coalition of local Arab powers to prevent Iran from building land bridges to supply missiles (already supplied by air) and encircle Israel.

His first foreign visit was to Riyadh, where he urged Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman to stop private Saudi funding of jihadists and work with other moderate Arab countries to stabilize eastern Syria and western Iraq. He rejected pressure to break with the Saudi regime over the murder of a Saudi journalist and resumed a “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign against Iran to weaken, not overturn, the regime (a difference between him and his hawkish former National Security Adviser John Bolton). He armed his diplomacy, not expecting, like Obama, that diplomacy would moderate arms.

Most importantly, he reaffirmed support for Israel—a relationship that Obama had significantly weakened under the Netanyahu government. His second stop after Riyadh in 2017 was Jerusalem, to which he subsequently moved the U.S. embassy. He endorsed Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights and unveiled a Palestinian peace plan focusing on economic development in the region. Predictably, in the current environment, the plan was a non-starter.

Terrorist problems in Afghanistan persist even after the recent agreement between the Taliban and the United States. That agreement calls for the Taliban to prevent terrorist groups from using Afghan territory as a base to strike against the United States or its allies. In return, the United States will withdraw U.S. forces, within fourteen months if all goes well. A smooth implementation of the agreement seems unlikely though. The Taliban and other groups on the Pakistani border (such as the Haqqani network) control roughly a third to one-half of the Afghan countryside. They remain a formidable force against the Kabul government. As of this writing, negotiations between the Taliban and Kabul have yet to begin. By excluding Kabul from early discussions, however, Trump signaled that the composition of the Afghan government is less important for U.S. interests than the prevention of terrorism. The days of nation-building are over; Trump instead relies on targeted strikes against individual terrorists and the threat of offshore intervention to ensure the Taliban keeps its promise. The strategy is fraught with peril, but Trump should be given some credit for trying a reasonably coherent alternative. Obama’s strategy was not working either.

In sum, Trump’s strategy in the Middle East and Afghanistan is offshore balancing. While U.S. troops remain forward deployed in priority areas such as Europe and Asia, they are no longer necessary in the Middle East. Small numbers may remain to facilitate intelligence and rapid reentry if necessary. But no trip wire alliances exist in the Middle East; and Israel, the only mature democracy in the region, is capable of putting up a formidable defense on its own without direct support of American forces.

FOR TRUMP, globalization of world affairs went too far too fast. Not only did America become the world’s policeman, but trade and immigration spun out of control. He returned the focus to the U.S. economy, expanding employment and growth beyond historical levels and exploiting the boom to drive hard bargains on trade and immigration.

China’s entry into the World Trade Organization was the major disrupter. In the late 1990s, China sent a negligible share of its exports to the United States. By 2018, that share burgeoned to $540 billion, or 20 percent of China’s total exports. This dramatic and sudden escalation of China’s presence in U.S. and global markets jackhammered America’s labor markets and created the impression that China was overtaking the United States.

Immigration added to trade shocks. From 1965 to 2015, the United States absorbed fifty-nine million immigrants, legal and illegal. In 2019, despite Trump’s crackdown, immigrant flows were on track to top two million legal and illegal immigrants. These include not only Central American economic migrants, but also some Middle Eastern refugees that fled to the Americas and attempted to cross the U.S.-Mexican border.

Trump addressed these shocks. He dismissed new trade initiatives such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, for which there was little popular support, and unleashed a cannonade of tariff bombshells to renegotiate existing trade agreements. By early 2020, he had rewritten the South Korean-United States Free Trade Agreement (KORUS), replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), and signed a phase 1 trade deal with China. By most accounts, these agreements are helpful updates of their predecessors. Among other things, the new KORUS improves access for U.S. autos in South Korea, the USMCA requires 75 percent of a product’s components to be produced inside the three countries to qualify for zero tariffs (while also expanding U.S. access to dairy markets in Canada and strengthening labor laws in Mexico), and the phase 1 China deal massively increases U.S. exports to China ($200 billion over two years) while increasing transparency on forced technology contracts and dispute settlement procedures. Some provisions restrict rather than open markets (such as local content requirements), but overall Trump’s trade initiatives preserve—and do not destroy—the large markets created under earlier free trade pacts.

Trump has also attacked immigration with stubborn tenacity. “A nation without borders,” he blusters, “is not a nation at all.” He touts the wall (and some 250 miles of it is under construction), aggressively deports illegal immigrants, and reduces as well as reforms the legal immigration system. Despite vitriolic domestic divisions, Trump is making progress. He convinced Mexico, under threat of tariffs, to tighten control of its southern border with Guatemala. Similar agreements with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador followed. Caravan traffic and border crossings have gone down substantially, and immigration authorities have accelerated deportation activities.

TRUMP OPERATES from a fundamental nationalist premise. He is deal-oriented or transactional, to be sure, but his transactions reflect two central premises: national self-interest and a realist commitment to rebalancing the postwar global system. 

While he rants against globalization, Trump makes deals to strengthen alliances, recalibrate global capitalist markets, and reduce the uncontrolled flow of refugees and immigrants. So far, his realist instincts keep him engaged in the world. If he succeeds in rebalancing trade and security commitments, his nationalist policies might offer a valuable course correction and sustain globalization far into the future, boosting growth and safeguarding the prospects for freedom where it counts the most, such as in Ukraine, Taiwan, and on the Korean Peninsula. 

Trump’s approach depends on the realization of two big expectations. The first is that democratic allies in Europe and Asia step up and share greater leadership and burdens. If they don’t, Trump may bring American forces home, a move which many realists now support. The second is that China must accept more transparent rules for world trade. If it doesn’t, there may be a decoupling, and global markets will once again divide between statist and free market economies.

To avoid this outcome, however, as much depends on American allies and China as on the United States. America’s allies today are powerful and wealthy democracies—they are no longer semi-sovereign or middle powers that cannot be trusted with military responsibilities or have only regional not global interests. And China has to face a bracing reality: it has enjoyed enormous economic success because it has been engaged in global markets. The profitable sectors in China are all export-oriented. If China decouples, it can still exploit a large state-sponsored domestic market and stoke nationalist fervor. But that path can take it only so far. As Matthew Kroenig argues in a new book, The Return of Great Power Rivalry, autarchic powers do not prevail over democratic ones in the long term.

Trump’s nationalist approach, which accepts and seeks to strengthen an existing world of democratic alliances and open markets, does not satisfy many proponents of the liberal world order. The internationalists are angry and blame Trump for destroying the postwar status quo. But not every effort to slow down and recalibrate globalization is an attack on free trade and democratic peace. And not every populist movement in Europe, Asia, and the United States is anti-democratic. The populist backlash is, in fact, a democratic check on cosmopolitan elites at home and abroad who value their own self-touted expertise more than their accountability to democratic citizens. It is stunning that, after seventy-five years, not one international institution, including the European Union, elects its top officials. Why doesn’t it occur to these cosmopolitan elites that this may be the principal threat to the liberal order, not populist parties pushing back against endless wars, unfair trade, and uncontrolled immigration?

Trump is hard to decipher, and his bombastic style makes it even harder. But on the basis of what he does and achieves, he is acting not only in an understandable manner but in a way that may salvage the liberal international order and conserve the democratic peace for decades to come. The covid-19 crisis, to be sure, adds a new chapter to Trump’s legacy. But keep your eye on the results, not the rhetoric. Sometimes, appearances deceive, and Trump’s foreign policy thus far is much better than it may appear.

Henry R. Nau is a professor emeritus at George Washington University. From January 1981 to July 1983, he served on President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council. This essay is drawn from Renshon and Suedfeld eds., The Trump Doctrine and the Emerging International System, Palgrave, forthcoming.