An important recent article titled “Trump’s Augustan Moment” by the German politician Maximilian Krah has captured the attention of pundits and commentators. The author analyzes the new global restructuring — a Trumpian Pax Americana. The article suggests an implicit comparison with Pax Romana and Emperor Augustus’ takeover of Rome’s republican institutions and his momentous reorganization of the existing world order.
While I agree with Krah that Trump is redefining global politics along realistic lines and shifting away from the Western European over-reliance on transnational organizations and “international law,” I believe there is much more to Trump’s vision than Realpolitik. Trump’s doctrine is not a mere return to a balancing act between several Great Powers, which would divide the world into their respective spheres of influence.
The new doctrine employs the “art-of-the-deal” as a masterful strategy on the global chessboard and acknowledges the importance of honest realism in politics. But it is also a moral philosophy of principled realism. It does not simply revive the maxim “Might is Right,” but rather, it affirms “the Might of the Right,” with the United States as a global hegemon and a tough but just player.
Trump’s doctrine acknowledges the futility of trying to export democracy or woke ideology around the world at the expense of U.S. taxpayers, especially in places where such efforts are unwanted and would never succeed. It capitalizes on the effectiveness of interest-based negotiations. It realizes that the tyrannical powers of the world respond only to the language of strength and defer to sheer power and raw military and economic might.
However, this new world order does not mean that the United States would abandon its strategic allies outside the Western Hemisphere. The vision for the new Board of Peace promises that America will remain the decisive force in global conflict resolution and will be consulted and respected by the other major actors on the world stage. American dominance would be the most reliable guarantee for the survival of Western civilization.
The biggest problem with the post-national and transnational utopian vision of the globalist leftist elites is not their nominal attachment to liberal values. It is their abandonment and betrayal of Western civilization. It is the military, economic, and cultural suicide the West has been committing, both wittingly and unwittingly, over the past several decades. This civilizational suicide accelerated rapidly in the present century and affected multiple areas of life, from ruining flourishing economies with deindustrialization and destructive net-zero policies to extinguishing any smoldering scintillas of civilizational or national pride by promoting a hopelessly biased and pernicious historical narrative.
Trump’s vision for the new world order is based on realism and geopolitics, but also on U.S. foundational ideals and goodwill in defending the West. This is the exceptionality of the new Pax Americana. Trump remarked at the recent Davos gathering that he liked the potential of the U.N. but not what the organization has become. As early as 1946, in his unforgettable Iron Curtain speech, Churchill warned about the danger of turning the U.N. into a feckless and corrupt institution:
A world organisation has already been erected for the prime purpose of preventing war, UNO, the successor of the League of Nations, with the decisive addition of the United States and all that that means, is already at work. We must make sure that its work is fruitful, that it is a reality and not a sham, that it is a force for action, and not merely a frothing of words, that it is a true temple of peace in which the shields of many nations can some day be hung up, and not merely a cockpit in a Tower of Babel.
In a fascinating recent essay, Ayaan Hirsi Ali warned against the subversion of the West by the “twin forces of cultural Marxism and an expansionist political Islam:”
The question, of course, is who is doing the subverting. Who is trying to unravel America and the West? … The first [force is]: American Marxists. This category includes old card-carrying communists, red-diaper baby socialists, antifa anarchists, and many of whom we now call woke…. The second force is the radical Islamists, who are riding the coattails of the communists to power…. The third force is the Chinese Communist Party…. The[se forces] have wisely chosen the same common enemy: the West.
Trump’s Pax Americana is the most viable effort to withstand these attacks and preserve the West. Negotiating from the position of unapologetic strength keeps our enemies at bay while defending our allies and encouraging their own empowerment. Churchill’s remarks in his “Iron Curtain” speech 80 years ago about America’s unique role and responsibility as the primary global leader are even more relevant today:
The United States stands at this time at the pinnacle of world power. It is a solemn moment…. For with primacy in power is also joined an awe-inspiring accountability to the future.
Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.
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