The Precipice: Trump’s Second Term We would be wise to entertain the possibility of a second term of Trump. Thus far, it has proven futile for Trump’s critics to seek refuge in wishful expectations that he would go away, a wish found wanting every time it is updated. Recall that critics have hoped Trump wouldn’t win the nomination; that he would lose the election; that he would be impeached; that he will not stand again for office. The hope for a post-Trump return to political normality is similarly vain. After Trump there will likely be more Trumps, given the force of populist revolt that he has stirred, and the general dissatisfaction with the alleged liberal world order, whose breakdown and failures made Trumpism possible in the first place. There are good reasons to expect Trump to be a strong contender for re-election. Since World War II, incumbency has been a strong force in U.S. presidential politics. It has been rare for one of the two major parties to hold the presidency for only one term. Consider too Trump’s standing. His disapproval ratings are at historic highs, yet he also strongly mobilizes his base. Donations to Trump’s re-election campaign flood in. Trump enjoys near record approval from Republican voters, with no sign of mass defections. As things stand, he can campaign for a second term with a contentious but powerful story: a booming economy, low unemployment, a rising stock market, strictly enforced borders and tariff walls, and making peace through tough confrontation of North Korea and Iran. Each of these claims can be unpicked. But rebutting them takes explanation. In politics, if you’re explaining, you’re failing. Trump may be fortunate that his re-election timetable coincides with the right side of an economic “boom bust” cycle. Were he to win a second term, and especially if the margin was more decisive, the conditions of his presidency would change. If he won big, he would have more political capital to spend. He would feel vindicated by the authority of a second mandate. Term limits would mean that he would no longer need fear election failure. It is possible that Trump “Mark 2” would be more willing to tolerate the costs of introducing major change in American grand strategy. Consider further the possibility of a major strategic shock, with an impact comparable to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor in 1941, or the OPEC oil embargo of 1973. By definition, the shape and outline of the shock is unclear. And we can’t know when it would happen. But if the literature on great power decline is sound, it would likely have military and economic dimensions, featuring some fatal interaction of war and debt. The source of the next financial crisis could lie elsewhere, but Trump’s own policies also make more likely what was an implicit tendency, increasing the debt-deficit load and repeating a familiar pattern, whereby a large deficit-financed military build-up, deficit-financed wars (alongside tax cuts) stimulates demand, creates bubbles of irrational exuberance, overheats the economy, and eventually leads to a loss of confidence in markets. This would be followed by a contraction, but this time without the financial reserves that were available to mitigate the last financial crisis. This process could erupt sooner rather than later. It would take the combination of a strategic shock great enough to discredit the status quo and a determined revisionist president. If so, then these forces might come together, to take the president off the chain, and to create a domestic environment more hospitable to major change. Earlier security shocks, such as the 2008 financial crisis, did not lead in this direction because the Bush administration was averse to retrenching commitments. With Trump or a Trumpian figure in the white house, one response that was once taboo would be on the table: a fundamental retrenchment of overseas commitments, along the lines of Trump’s instincts. It isn’t certain what this will involve, but it would be drastic and imply a different assumption about how to pursue security. It could lead the United States to, for example, withdraw from the Gulf and let Saudi Arabia acquire the bomb, or to acknowledge Russia’s view of its sphere of influence while withdrawing from NATO or decisively repudiating Article 5, or to reduce military expenditure just to the level needed for the United States to deter attacks and defend itself. American “greatness” would still be Trump’s signature tune, but it would be redefined around liberating America from foreign entanglements, investing in and walling off the country, and an industrial renaissance. To be sure, the American foreign policy class would fight back furiously. But like in the era of Vietnam and the oil embargo, its power and confidence would be diminished. Already scarred by the last global financial crisis, stagnating wages and general alienation, the populace would be more receptive. An emboldened and more risk-prone president would be willing to hire outsiders as officials, less experienced and capable but ideologically attuned to the narrower security vision of “America First.” All this might be difficult to imagine. But rapid realignments of grand strategy can happen. As I argued, one example is Great Britain’s postwar abandonment of empire. New conditions were inhospitable to the exhausted country maintaining its colonies. These included the cumulative fiscal pressures of World War II, decolonization resistance, the United States’ dismantling of the economic order of imperial preference and the sterling bloc; and the shock of the Suez crisis of 1956, which revealed Britain’s vulnerability to U.S. coercion. Successive British governments were impelled to bow to these pressures once they became overwhelming. They then redefined Britain’s status around alliances and nuclear weapons, presenting retreat from empire as a graceful management of change and casting the emergence of independent countries as “the crowning achievement of British rule.” If we see a different kind of President Trump unleashed by new conditions, less constrained and more emboldened, in a context where major retrenchment becomes thinkable and attractive, only then will he or his heirs probably try to bring down the priesthood’s temple. If so, as Steve Bannon suggested, the next episode of Trump’s prime-time show will be as “wild as shit.”
We would be wise to entertain the possibility of a second term of Trump it has proven futile for Trump’s critics to seek refuge in wishful expectations that he would go away Consider further the possibility of a major strategic shock, with an impact comparable to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor in 1941, or the OPEC oil embargo of 1973. By definition, the shape and outline of the shock is unclear. And we can’t know when it would happen. But if the literature on great power decline is sound, it would likely have military and economic dimensions, featuring some fatal interaction of war and debt. The source of the next financial crisis could lie elsewhere, but Trump’s own policies also make more likely what was an implicit tendency, increasing the debt-deficit load and repeating a familiar pattern, whereby a large deficit-financed military build-up, deficit-financed wars (alongside tax cuts) stimulates demand, creates bubbles of irrational exuberance, overheats the economy, and eventually leads to a loss of confidence in markets. This would be followed by a contraction, but this time without the financial reserves that were available to mitigate the last financial crisis. This process could erupt sooner rather than later. With Trump or a Trumpian figure in the white house, one response that was once taboo would be on the table: a fundamental retrenchment of overseas commitments, along the lines of Trump’s instincts it would be drastic and imply a different assumption about how to pursue security. It could lead the United States to, for example, withdraw from the Gulf and let Saudi Arabia acquire the bomb or to acknowledge Russia’s view of its sphere of influence while withdrawing from NATO or decisively repudiating Article 5, or to reduce military expenditure just to the level needed for the United States to deter attacks and defend itself. American “greatness” would still be Trump’s signature tune, but it would be redefined around liberating America from foreign entanglements the American foreign policy class would fight back furiously. its power and confidence would be diminished. Already scarred by the last global financial crisis, stagnating wages and general alienation, the populace would be more receptive. An emboldened and more risk-prone president would be willing to hire outsiders as officials, less experienced and capable but ideologically attuned to the narrower security vision of “America First.” But rapid realignments of grand strategy can happen. As I argued, one example is Great Britain’s postwar abandonment of empire If we see a different kind of President Trump unleashed by new conditions, less constrained and more emboldened, in a context where major retrenchment becomes thinkable and attractive, only then will he or his heirs probably try to bring down the priesthood’s temple. the next episode of Trump’s prime-time show will be as “wild as shit.”