US Pesident Donald Trump. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
On 20 January 2025, Donald Trump entered the White House for the second time. Traditional and social media have been abuzz for months, first speculating about the outcome of the November election, and since the announcement of Trump’s spectacular win, about what this might mean for the US and the world at large.
As many polls reveal, elections are almost always about the economy. The 2024 US presidential election was no different. High-level inflation under president Joe Biden left voters reeling from soaring prices for basic goods and services, as well as stressed over the mass influx of immigrants crossing the country’s southern border.
As The Wall Street Journal reported in the run-up to the election, these concerns overrode by far liberal social issues such as gender identity and abortion rights, prompting voters to cast their ballot for change.
Yet, it is hard to imagine how the desired change can be brought about by a billionaire president, a prominent member of the minute class of individuals who hold unprecedented levels of wealth and are given to conspicuous consumption of redundant goods, while the majority of citizens try to make ends meet.
In May 2024, The New York Times polled several states, testing voters’ preferences. The poll revealed that 40% of respondents would vote for a president who “promises to fundamentally change America”. In answer to a question about whether the political and economic system in America needed to change, 55% of those polled thought “the system needs major changes”, 27% backed “minor changes” but concerningly, from the point of view of democracy, 14% of respondents said that “the system needs to be torn down entirely”.
To what extent President Trump will bring about the “change” the American people expect, remains to be seen. But the larger question is what the expected change might mean for democracy in the US and across the shifting geopolitical landscape.
One need not gaze into a crystal ball to see that the change of direction is highly unlikely to favour liberal democracy in the US. We have seen what has happened in some democratic European countries where right-wing protectionist populist leaders have assumed power and where the ethno-nationalist parties they represent have progressively whittled away democratic checks and balances.
Trump shows a similar contempt for checks on executive power, along with a tendency to politicise the controlling role of regime-level institutions, as his first term in office clearly demonstrated.
What makes the American case different and more concerning is that, this time round, Trump pulls most of the strings of power. He has control of Congress, the Republican Party and a half of the Supreme Court. Given his hand-picked administration of loyalists, US domestic and foreign policy decisions could be taken by one man and his inner circle, bypassing constitutional checks and balances.
Foreign policy promises to be chaotic and totally unpredictable. On the one hand, there is the oft-repeated promise by Trump to “make America great again” by turning its back on the rest of the world, including its traditional ally, Western Europe. If implemented, the policy would come at a bad time.
With China expanding its influence worldwide, with Russia fighting an internecine war in Ukraine, with Iran remaining determined to destroy Israel and dominate the Middle East and with North Korea thrown into the bargain, America’s adversaries are now working together.
Even if China’s economy is shrinking, Russia’s fortunes declining due to the war and Iran has had its terrorist proxies decimated by Israel, these autocracies still pose a formidable threat to the US-led democratic order that has underpinned Western peace and prosperity since the World War II, while Nato might prove a toothless tiger without US backing. The gradual erosion of the democratic order is likely to accelerate, leaving the international system more vulnerable and more prone to crises.
On the other hand, there is Trump’s bluster to consider, what with his proclaimed intention to buy Greenland, seize the Panama Canal and annex Canada.
These outrageous claims are unlikely to be acted upon, but they fit perfectly Trump’s destabilising political game plan, which is to extract lucrative concessions by means of intimidation. It is unthinkable, for example, that the US would acquire or invade Greenland. And yet Trump’s rhetoric alone has already brought to the fore the thorny issue of the territory’s independence from Denmark, as well as raising the spectre of greater US involvement in the affairs of the resource-rich island.
The threat of military takeover of the Panama Canal is equally empty but it could force concessions, such as limiting Chinese investments or reducing transit fees.
The laughable prospect of making Canada the 51st US state by annexation, and the threat of imposing 25% tariffs on the country, pose problems for its two major political parties before the next general election with neither willing to be seen as weak and giving in to pressure.
But here Trump’s intimidation tactics might actually backfire. If aggressive countermeasures were to be taken instead, or the threat evoked a rise in nationalism, Canada might change from a friendly neighbour into a resentful one.
Whether countries will choose to accommodate Trump to avoid confrontation, or stand up to the bully, the world should brace itself for turbulence.
But, as the Chinese proverb has it, a crisis is an opportunity riding a dangerous wind. This might, therefore, be a good time to critically re-evaluate some basic assumptions, not just as an intellectual exercise, but as a crucial step forward.
One such assumption is that the democracy-autocracy divide is still a valid point of reference. Two facts mitigate against such a conception of today’s world.
First, in the past, “democracy” was understood as a liberal system of rule in which individual rights and freedoms were officially recognised and protected and where political power was limited by the rule of law. Today, democracy is a continuum stretching from liberal to illiberal versions with several variations in between.
The second fact is the coming into being of groupings such as Brics, which bring together countries from across the traditional binary divide. India and Brazil have traversed the boundary, mapping a route towards a world where states might follow a multilateral policy. While both these countries are in partnership with China and Russia, they are also open to cooperation with the West.
There is no reason why another member of Brics, the constitutional democracy that is South Africa, should not follow suit — regardless of the historical debt the ANC feels it owes Russia for supporting its erstwhile anti-apartheid liberation struggle.
The key strategic challenge facing the incoming US administration will be to manage major power competition by steering it towards creating a world order that is able and willing to tackle such shared global threats as climate change, food insecurity, inflation and terrorism.
Will Donald Trump be up to the task? Historical record makes this highly doubtful. In his first term in office, Trump showed vulgar contempt for Africa, condemned multilateral institutions and withdrew the US from the Paris climate accord and other organisations forming the backbone of the liberal international order.
Yet the world survived and it will also survive Trump 2.0 — if other countries work together.
Professor Ursula van Beek is the director of the Centre for Research on Democracy at Stellenbosch University.