Trump's Campaign Is Already Shaping Global Affairs
America’s friends and rivals are hedging their foreign policies in case the ex-president is reelected.
He has everything up in the air.
Photographer: Yuri Kadobnov/AFP/Getty Images
The shadow of the future hangs heavy: What people do today is influenced by the bets they make about what tomorrow may hold. The same is true for global affairs. Foreign policy officials make judgments that involve the highest stakes in an atmosphere of extreme uncertainty. And because the US is so influential, countries almost everywhere must base their policies in part on educated guesses about its future reliability and power.
So it’s only natural that something as potentially disruptive as a second Donald Trump presidency is entering their calculus. Trump may be in prison come January 2025, or he may be in the Oval Office — rarely has more uncertainty attended the fate, personal and political, of a major candidate. Yet the mere possibility of Trump’s return is already shaping international affairs.