As part of the Foreign Policy Rethink series, Geoff Raby examines how Trump’s shift to great power politics is reshaping the global order and forcing middle powers to rethink their strategy.

With the inauguration of President Trump in January 2025, US foreign and strategic policy shifted abruptly. It was not just a return to the policies of Trump 1.0 of treating the US’s traditional allies and alliances casually, sometimes disdainfully, and tolerating some of the world’s despots. Instead, it was a profound shift which absolutely prioritised great power relations over alliances, emphasised homeland security over external threats to US interests, although these still matter, and returned the western hemisphere to the centre of US foreign policy concerns. At the same time, the long-standing priority previously given to Europe was downgraded together with a reallocation of strategic attention and resources towards the Indo-Pacific.

The US intervention in Venezuela on 3 January 2026, the extraordinary rendition of President Maduro to the US, and subsequent more assertive demands on Denmark to concede the territory of Greenland to the US are most recent manifestations of this profound shift in world affairs. Understanding the implications for middle powers has become even more urgent.

Trump is now signalling a clearer, at times more brutal, definition of ‘America First’. This should come as no surprise for Trump has largely done what he said he would do. Through the twists and turns of his policies, and the so-called TACO (‘Trump always chickens out’), a clear and consistent direction emerges: relationships are transactional. It is a zero-sum world in which the ‘art of the deal’ must always be to the benefit of the US. This is the agenda of Trump’s political base, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.

The sentiments driving this movement have a number of dimensions: globalisation is treated suspiciously and autarchy favoured; multilateral institutions are disregarded, ignored, de-emphasised, undermined and disrupted; tariffs and financial policies are instruments for forcing certain behaviour on other countries; bilateral deals are pressed on others, such as the US-Russia proposed peace plan for Ukraine or in Gaza, with the EU effectively relegated to the role of bystanders; and the ‘art of the deal’ crowds out traditional liberal concerns in international relations, such as human rights, freedom of belief and religion, just treatment of minorities, and respect for territorial integrity.

How middle powers position themselves in the new multipolar order has become a pressing issue for foreign and security policy. The diplomatic challenges for middle power diplomacy are substantial and differ between countries and regions.

I argue that middle powers now find themselves having to balance between a stridently unilateralist US, which places much less weight on alliances, and a revisionist China that is well advanced in shaping an international order that reflects its own priorities as the ascendency of Trump 2.0 has accelerated changes to the global order, and hence the need for middle powers to position themselves in ways which protect and advance their interests.

This series outlines an agenda for activist middle power diplomacy in a multipolar world, while recognising the constraints.

Is MAGA here to stay? Some analysts, still hankering after the fast-receding international liberal order, nurture hopes that it will return when Trump is no longer in power.

In view of the disruption to the world order in Trump’s first year in office, one can hardly imagine what changes will occur in the next three years. Absent Trump, it is most unlikely that the international order will simply default back to Trump ex-ante. Trump’s disruption arises from deep, socio-economic stresses in the US, and as such are structural. In any event, with China’s continued rise and growing weight in global affairs, the world system, with or without Trump, would have looked very different in 2029 than it did in 2025.

The three drivers of the MAGA movement are: Trump himself, immigration, and America First in every domain, but especially the economic. While Trump is indeed a dominating, and the dominant force, others, such as Vice President JD Vance or Trump family members, could perpetuate his influence beyond his personal leadership.

Concerns over immigration may abate if the current administration’s policies are successful, but fear of ‘the other’ is always at hand to channel the politics of grievance. A consequence of this deeply-rooted America First movement prevailing over US domestic politics is a return to an international order based on great power relations.

G2 World Early signs of Trump’s reordering of US security and foreign policy priorities towards the western hemisphere and great power relations were dramatically displayed when, having flown across the Pacific to South Korea to have a bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping, he flew back to Washington immediately after that meeting, turning his back on all the other regional leaders gathered there to attend the APEC Leader’s Summit.

And in case there was any doubt about the change in the world order after Trump turned his back on APEC, Trump declared on his social media post that he had a ‘G2’ meeting with Xi Jinping. Before the meeting, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform ‘the G2-meeting was convening shortly’ with President Xi. Afterwards he posted, ‘My G2-meeting with President Xi of China was a great one for both countries’.

A G2 was first proposed by US economist Fred Bergsten in 2005, as a way of managing the international economy. At the time, China rejected the concept. As a developing country, it did not want to assume responsibility for providing global public goods, preferring to work through multilateral agencies, such as the WTO or UN. Moreover, it felt that it would be locked into an unequal relationship with the US as a junior partner, when it sought equality, if not pre-eminence. It was also concerned about attracting negative reactions, especially among the developing world, or Global South.

Although China has still not officially endorsed Trump’s G2, following the Trump-Xi meeting the official position has been to stress Beijing’s willingness to work cooperatively and constructively together on a range of issues affecting their bilateral relations without formally distancing itself from the G2 concept. Analysts in China tend to point to Trump’s statement as being significant for shifting the relationship with China from one of competition and possible conflict to one of cooperation and treating China as an equal in global affairs.

International relations expert, Muktedar Khan wrote:

“The Trump-Xi meeting in Busan is laden with structural consequences . . . By casting this meeting as a G2-Summit, Trump has effectively re-defined the global order”.

While this may well overstate the longer-term significance of Trump’s resurrection of the G2 concept, its immediate and enduring significance is that China is being recognised as an equal with the United States in leading the global order.

The ‘Donroe’ Doctrine Reflecting this shift in US strategic thinking, the US National Security Strategy (NSS) published in November 2025 provided a comprehensive statement of US security priorities and how the Administration viewed the world. It was a sharp break from that of previous US Administrations, including Trump 2017.

At its core, it elevates the western hemisphere to the US’ top security priority. This so-called ‘Donroe’ Doctrine channels the early nineteenth century Monroe Doctrine. Essentially, it seeks to exclude other powers from the western hemisphere and demands that states within the region do whatever they can to roll back foreign influence, as has happened with the pressure for China-linked investors to divest in the Panama Canal and related port infrastructure.

However, large regional powers, particularly Brazil, can be expected to continue to push back against US economic and political pressures to restrict Chinese economic and strategic influence. Still, Trump did not hesitate to interfere in Brazil’s internal affairs when he (unsuccessfully) sought to prevent former Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro, from being imprisoned.

In early January 2026, US actions in Venezuela taken against the basic precepts of international law will have put all countries in the region on notice that the rules of the game have been changed in the US’ favour. At the same time, it has sharply divided the region. Argentina’s President, Javier Milei, has strongly backed Trump’s actions while Brazil’s President, Lula da Silva, has condemned them in equally strong terms.

The NSS also states that the US will remain ‘engaged with Asia’, saying it will seek to maintain a favourable balance of power over China, rebalance trade, and support Taiwan given that its geographical location is important for maintaining open shipping lanes and access to the South China Sea. Gone, however, are the usual US concerns about defending democracy in Taiwan, and no mention is made of human rights or minorities such as those in Xinjiang and Tibet.

The NSS sets out clearly the philosophy that will guide US foreign and security policies – ‘flexible realism’. In a break with the past century of US foreign policy thinking, the paper states that the US seeks good relations with others and does not intend to ‘impose on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.’

In the starkest statement yet that the US has given up its long-standing belief in US exceptionalism and its mission to remake the world in its own image, the NSS states that ‘the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.’ Moreover, the paper clearly prioritises the nation state ‘against the sovereignty-sapping incursions of the most intrusive transnational organisations’.

For middle powers, especially US allies, the demands are now unmistakable. They are expected to do more to defend themselves and their regions. European states are said to be at risk of becoming ‘unreliable allies’. The US wants to settle the Ukraine conflict without the involvement of Europe and seeks to end ‘perceptions of NATO as a continually expanding alliance’.

The Kremlin will be delighted with all of this. It seems there is also a convergence between the White House and the Kremlin’s view that Europe is in ‘civilisation decline’, although for Trump and his advisers this is predominantly an issue of immigration. The European populist right could have hardly wished for more encouragement from the White House. The strategy sums up the choice for middle and small powers in the bluntest of terms:

“. . . all countries should [decide] whether they want to live in an American-led world . . . or in a parallel one in which they are influenced by countries on the other side of the world”.

This demonstrates clearly that the US now regards the world order as being bipolar.

Part 1 of this 4-Part series is republished from Global Neighbours.org, 13 February, 2026