In an intriguing guest essay in The Times this week, Rutgers University historian Jennifer Mittelstadt made the case that Trump was a “sovereigntist,” a tradition she dated to 1919 and the Republican rejection, led by Henry Cabot Lodge, of U.S. membership in the League of Nations. Sovereigntists, she noted, also looked askance at U.S. membership in NATO, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act and especially the Carter administration’s decision to relinquish the Panama Canal.
Why Does Trump Threaten America’s Allies? Hint: It Starts in 1919.
Feb. 2, 2025
Editor: The final paragraphs of Jennifer Mittelstadt’s essay is to say the least bleak, that hallowed ‘Post-War Liberal Order’ is at its end?
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There is little to be won predicting foreign policy in a second Trump administration. The influence of the sovereigntist movement may recede in the face of a president who is changeable and distracted. And some members of Mr. Trump’s coalition do not subscribe to a purely sovereigntist standpoint, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio. But sovereigntists will surely double down. “International organizations and agreements that erode our Constitution, rule of law or popular sovereignty should not be reformed,” Project 2025 explains. “They should be abandoned.”
The most vigorous sovereigntists openly say they will seek withdrawal from the U.N. if necessary. They already oppose many proposed pacts and conventions, including the U.N.’s Pact for the Future, which addresses climate change and inequality. The Trump administration has said it intends to withdraw from the World Health Organization and has taken steps toward a near ban on immigration. It’s likely to weaken the European Union, enfeeble NATO and oppose multicountry trade agreements like the revamped NAFTA. And it will seek to regain a kind of Monroe Doctrine-era control of the Western Hemisphere, no matter what happens with the canal.
Mr. Trump’s embrace of sovereignty politics will only embolden similar regimes around the world. Brexit was a harbinger of other potential E.U. exits. Nearly every right-wing party across Europe would consider one if they came to power.
Look for other countries, buoyed by Mr. Trump’s scorn, to put the brakes on internationalism and instead build new, separate relationships with one another. What we would be left with is an unruly period for international relations, one that is less centralized and less governed by the shared principles and operating modes that lasted from the end of World War II until just a few years ago.
Rootless cosmopolitan,down at heels intellectual;would be writer.
'Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.'
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n20/perry-anderson/diary
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