The second Trump administration’s foreign policy has left many, both in the US and outside, reeling. Past decades have accustomed practitioners and observers to certain typical American behaviors. Washington had a policy of global and active promotion of democracy and free trade to maintain and expand the ‘rules-based liberal order.’ The United States often puts liberal norms and ideas above its national interest. As the leader of the free world, it would shoulder the burden of defending like-minded states everywhere, even if it entailed sacrifices for the American people.

On the contrary, Donald Trump has limited bandwidth for normative issues and liberal rules of good behavior. He is allergic to anything imposing additional costs on the United States, preferring a transactional foreign policy backed by the might of America’s formidable economic attraction and military capabilities. This administration’s novelty is also its vocal concern for hemispheric security, seemingly considering seizing direct control of the Panama Canal, Greenland, and even Canada. Joe Biden’s framing of world politics as a struggle between democracy and autocracy is dead and forgotten.

One could find the causes of these changes in the leadership transition and the unique personality and goals of Donald Trump. There is truth to that, and there is no denying that individual leaders matter. Yet, more structural changes are at play, making recent evolutions less surprising to the trained eye.

Indeed, many of Trump’s policies are understandable in the context of the growing U.S. strategic insolvency over the last two decades. After the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States became solidly anchored as the sole remaining great power in the world. During the 1990s, no state could seriously compete with Washington, as China was still a developing economy with a second-rank military, and Russia teetered on the brink of collapse.

Things changed during the 2000s. Step by step, China and Russia rebuilt their economy and military with an eye to challenging U.S. power. Self-inflicted wounds, such as futile wars in the Middle East, contributed to further harming American finances, blunting its military, and eroding the public’s trust in its leadership. Already in the 2010s, the United States was a fatigued great power stretched thin, having to juggle between the rise of China as a peer competitor in Asia, Russian irredentism in Eastern Europe, the Middle Eastern conundrum, North Korean nukes, and a plethora of other troubles all around the globe.

The first president to attempt to grapple with overstretching was Barack Obama. His administration expressed interest in ‘pivoting’ U.S. foreign policy away from the Middle East and towards the Indo-Pacific. Although the US did wind down its presence in Iraq, little was accomplished. Ultimately, flaring crises in Syria and Ukraine and inertia in the foreign policy elite killed the pivot.

The first Trump administration picked up the torch. Its official documents formalized that the United States was now facing great power competitors, China and Russia (in that order), that would absorb U.S. attention and resources for the foreseeable future. Specifically, Washington was to retrench from the Middle East and other secondary theaters to focus on the threat of Chinese hegemony in the Indo-Pacific. Still, Trump 1 failed to accomplish a full pivot toward great power competition. It got stuck in a feud with Iran, and the COVID pandemic distracted the administration from foreign policy.

Joe Biden inherited Trump’s focus on great power competition. He completed the withdrawal from Afghanistan to recenter on the Indo-Pacific, where he launched audacious initiatives such as AUKUS. However, the Biden administration also inherited the 1990s liberal Zeitgeist. Although Biden and some close advisors understood the urgency of refocusing on essential national interests, inertia and ideological fixations led the administration to an unhealthy and simplistic framing of world politics as a struggle against autocratic states. Although the U.S. responded effectively ahead of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States quickly got stuck in a losing proxy attrition war with Russia. Unnecessary entanglement in the Israel-Palestine conundrum further pushed the Indo-Pacific down the priority lists.

Hence, Trump returns to a situation hardly better than when he left office in 2021. To pivot toward the Chinese threat and the ever-growing concerns about a Taiwan contingency, Trump wants to shut down the Ukraine War and delegate NATO security to the Europeans. Trump 2 is even less invested in liberal international norms than before and pays way more attention to key national interests. The administration notably launched pressure campaigns against Panama, Greenland, and Canada. While this took many by surprise, it is, in fact a return to a longstanding U.S. practice of first solidifying its regional hegemony over the Western Hemisphere to allow a laser-like focus on competing with faraway great powers. The United States must enjoy a safe neighborhood to enable it to entirely focus its finite resources on the Chinese challenge in East Asia.

If the Trump administration remains on course, the United States will finally accomplish what it has failed to do since Obama’s time. It would let allies in the Middle East and Europe take ownership of their security, with Washington devoting itself fully to the Chinese challenge. Yet, success is far from guaranteed. The liberal-neoconservative current remains strong inside the Beltway, as it has been relatively adept at pushing the administration toward a showdown with Iran. Ideological inertia and distractions elsewhere might once again prevent a decisive pivot toward the Indo-Pacific, threatening the U.S. position in the region and paving the way to Chinese regional hegemony.

Still, Trump’s disinterest in a liberal international order, renewed concern for hemispheric security, and a focus on China are hardly a personal fixation or a temporary whim. It is the continuation of longstanding structural tendencies here to stay.