Trump signals he will start pushing for a new world order in first 100 days

Donald Trump’s return to the White House on January 20 2025 is widely seen as ushering in a period of significant upheaval for US foreign policy, and a change in the way diplomacy is done.

Trump’s favoured style of bluster and threats against foreign leaders already seems to have paid off in helping to craft a peace deal, however shaky, in Gaza. The deal was negotiated by Joe Biden and his team, in co-ordination with Trump’s incoming administration.

But analysts suggest Trump’s fierce comments on January 7 that “all hell would break lose” if the hostages weren’t soon released were actually a threat to Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to get something done quickly. And this forced the Israeli government to commit to a deal.

Trump used this abrasive style in his first term. And his recent threats to buy Greenland, annex Canada and resume control of the Panama Canal suggest this will happen again. This may not bode well, especially for traditional allies of the US.

Not only that but Elon Musk, one of Trump’s close confidants, is openly bragging about his attempts to change governments in the UK and Germany – in an apparent move to shore up a global alliance of populist leaders.

Add to that a promised deal with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, a renewal of the maximum-pressure campaign against Iran and doubling down on confrontation with China, and you have all the ingredients of a fundamental remaking of US foreign policy.

Three particular aspects stand out and give an early indication of what the Trump doctrine of foreign policy might look like. First is the focus on the western hemisphere. Trump’s focus here appears to be simultaneously asserting US dominance in the affairs of the Americas and eliminating any perceived strategic vulnerabilities.

While Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal have dominated the headlines, there are also implications for US relations with Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, with Trump’s pick as secretary of state, Marco Rubio, being known for his hawkish approach.

Trump may inaccurately hype up China’s role in the Panama Canal, but Beijing has unquestionably increased its (mostly economic) footprint in Latin America. A Chinese-funded deep-water port in Peru has raised US security concerns. Chinese investment in Mexico has created an important backdoor into the US market, and contributed to the fact that Mexico is now the largest trade partner for the US. In 2024, Mexican exports of goods to the US stood at just under US$467 billion, compared with China’s US$401 billion.

Trump is likely to dial up the pressure in the western hemisphere using a mixture of threatening rhetoric, tariffs and political pressure. In an early demonstration of how serious the incoming administration takes the issue, his allies in Congress have already introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to “authorize the President to seek to enter into negotiations with the Kingdom of Denmark to secure the acquisition of Greenland by the United States”.

The second feature of the emerging Trump foreign policy doctrine is the scaling back of US involvement in regions the administration considers of secondary importance. The two main areas in this context are Europe and the Middle East.

Ukraine war deal

Trump’s promised deal with Russia to end the war in Ukraine is one key component of his strategy to free up US resources to focus on China and “un-unite” Russia and China.

His simultaneous insistence that US allies in Nato step up their defence spending, however, is an indication that the incoming administration continues to place value in transatlantic security. It just does not want to be the one mostly paying for it. And Trump has a point: Washington currently shoulders 68% of all Nato expenditure, compared with European members’ 28%.

Trump’s approach to the Middle East is underpinned by the same calculation of US-brokered deal-making that protects US interests while enabling a scaling down of commitments. With a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas now in place that will facilitate a release of Israeli hostages, a much clearer path to normalising relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia exists. This is still contingent upon an Israeli nod towards Palestinian statehood, but when this materialises, Israel’s relations with the rest of the Arab world will also improve.

This will then shift the burden of containing Iran to a probably more effective and capable coalition of US allies in the region, and allow Washington to resume its maximum-pressure campaign against Tehran.

What next for China?

While Trump’s approach to the western hemisphere and to Washington’s future relations with Europe and the Middle East is reasonably clear, there is an abundance of questions over his China strategy. His national security team is generally considered hawkish on Beijing – with the exception of Musk, who has significant business interests in China.

Trump himself oscillates between aggressive and conciliatory rhetoric. Alleged Chinese control of the Panama Canal is one of his justifications for seeking to reassert US control of the strategic waterway. But he also name-checked Chinese president Xi Jinping as being able to help with a Ukraine deal, and even invited him to his inauguration.

Trump may be open to a deal with China – and China, in turn, has signalled interest in this as well. While Xi will not attend the inauguration, his vice-president, Han Zheng, will.

Trump and Xi also have a track record of deal-making, even though their 2020 agreement did little more than stop an escalating trade war. That deal took two years to negotiate and left many of the tariffs imposed by Trump early in his first term in place, albeit in some cases at a reduced rate. Something similar could happen again now, with Trump fulfilling one of his campaign pledges for higher tariffs on Chinese goods while simultaneously starting negotiations on a new deal with Beijing.

In all likelihood, this is Trump’s last term as president. For the next two years, at least, he controls both the Senate and the House of Representatives. He has every incentive to make good on his promises – and faces few, if any, restraints. He sees himself as a disrupter, and his Maga base expects him to be just that. Instability is all but guaranteed.

What is not clear, though, is whether Trump’s vision of an ultimately more stable international order with clearly defined spheres of influence for the great powers of the day – the US, China and possibly Russia – will emerge, let alone whether such an outcome would be desirable.

Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU's Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.