Whoever occupies the U.S. presidency at any given time can make a tremendous difference in the outcome of major global crises. For a clear sense of this, one need only think about President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s response to the Great Depression, his deft and determined maneuvering of the isolationist-leaning United States into supporting Britain, and then his full entry into World War II after the Pearl Harbor attack.
Transition periods between U.S. presidents have long been fraught moments in international affairs. The lines of power and responsibility begin to blur as old policies expire before authority changes hands and new ones can be fully defined. This made the recent crisis of democracy in South Korea especially fascinating.
Whoever occupies the U.S. presidency at any given time can make a tremendous difference in the outcome of major global crises. For a clear sense of this, one need only think about President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s response to the Great Depression, his deft and determined maneuvering of the isolationist-leaning United States into supporting Britain, and then his full entry into World War II after the Pearl Harbor attack.
Transition periods between U.S. presidents have long been fraught moments in international affairs. The lines of power and responsibility begin to blur as old policies expire before authority changes hands and new ones can be fully defined. This made the recent crisis of democracy in South Korea especially fascinating.
The now-impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol surprised not just his own country, but also the world—including the White House—when he declared martial law seemingly out of the blue in early December. Yoon unconvincingly sought to justify this move by speaking darkly about enemies lurking within his nation’s political class. To juice these claims, he added that North Korean infiltrators were manipulating South Korea’s political system.
Most of this was ridiculous on its face, but there should be no illusions: Yoon’s moves produced a full-blown crisis for one of the United States’ most important allies. In response, President Joe Biden’s administration played its hand quietly. It used discreet diplomatic messaging in support of democratic legitimacy in South Korea, including by stating that it was “seriously concerned” by the political developments. It seems likely that the White House also privately conveyed the message that it would not support Yoon if he persisted in his power grab.
It is the nature of most historical counterfactuals that they can never been tested; one cannot turn back the clock to see how the fates of nations might have differed if a few key variables were altered. That doesn’t stop the following thought experiment from being interesting, though. If Yoon’s gambit—which many South Koreans consider an attempted coup—had taken place only a few weeks later, after Donald Trump’s inauguration as U.S. president, how might things have unfolded differently?
What is certain is that Trump himself has long fulminated against what he calls “enemies from within”—in other words, elements of the alleged “deep state” that he has often denounced. Like Yoon, Trump has thrown around terms such as “traitor” and “treason” in decrying his perceived political enemies, whom he has frequently vowed to punish. And Trump has flirted with extra-constitutional and extra-legal solutions to problems that bedevil him. Think of his encouragement to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, his call to electoral officials in Georgia urging them to “find” more votes for him, and his repeated public flirtation with the idea of serving as president beyond two terms.
Trump has a well-established record of warmth and even admiration for authoritarians and strongmen around the world, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Russian President Vladimir Putin. This seems to obey no ideology beyond concentrated power, as Trump’s unusual invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping to his upcoming inauguration suggests. (There is also speculation that he may invite Orban.)
Trump also has a record of seeming ambivalence about the value of Washington’s long-standing alliance with East Asian democracies and has suggested that the United States pays too much to protect South Korea and Japan’s security.
How, therefore, might he have reacted to political developments in South Korea, given his own ambivalent relationship with democratic convention? Given his past actions, it seems very possible that he might not have pressured Yoon to change course.
We cannot, of course, resolve this question in any definitive way, but South Korea could prove a useful paradigm for anticipatory thinking about the international crises that will inevitably arise during Trump’s second term. Will he stand for anything resembling U.S. convention in support of democracy and human rights—however inconsistent—or will his standoffishness or even encouragement enable lawlessness around the world?
Think of Israel and its seemingly endless offensives in neighboring territories and states. Biden has shown little enthusiasm or resolve to rein in Israel’s behavior, but Trump could take this to the next level by giving implicit or explicit support to Israel dismantling what’s left of Lebanese and Syrian statehood and staking permanent effective control over Gaza.
If so, how might such disregard for the Westphalian system of respect for territorial sovereignty influence China’s behavior toward Taiwan, which Beijing has long claimed as its territory? Does Trump care? Answers to both these questions are unknown. The same issues are bound up in Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
How might the United States react if members of a larger rogues’ gallery of states begin to muscle in on their neighbors? Would it respond, as Trump did to Syria’s crisis after the recent fall of President Bashar al-Assad, that it’s simply not Washington’s business? Again, unknown.
What happens when other democracies fall into trouble? In recent decades, this kind of question has most often involved places that Washington sees as peripheral, namely countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. But with the resurgence of strong far-right movements across the North Atlantic, it is time to wonder: What about Europe?
These questions have become more urgent in the weeks since the U.S. presidential election, as Trump has nominated a cast of characters to staff his administration whose most notable qualifications are often the lack of conventional ones, along with their fealty to the president-elect. One recent example of this is his intention to make Kari Lake, who lost Arizona’s Senate race this year, the head of Voice of America, an international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government that Trump has long sought personal control over.
Trump seems to relish dominating the Republican Party, as he has reduced it to near subservience. It is in this light that one should fear most of Trump’s picks for important cabinet positions and their loyalty to him.
Americans have a naive and forgetful attitude toward failures of checks and balances on the executive branch in U.S. history. On numerous occasions, past administrations have used agencies such as the CIA and FBI to harass their perceived enemies, spy illegally on U.S. citizens, and mount assassination attempts against foreign leaders and invasions of their countries without public knowledge or congressional approval.
This is not a prediction that Trump will commit any of these actions, but unlike past U.S. leaders, the country’s next president has publicly declared his own enemies and demanded personal loyalty from those he associates with.
As the United States drifts into a kind of personality-driven neo-authoritarianism under a second Trump administration, the country may not use its influence in many traditional ways, such as by supporting democracy and human rights abroad, but that does not mean it will lose its sway. In fact, the influence of the world’s most powerful nation may only grow, albeit in an unwelcome direction: lighting the way and lending encouragement to authoritarians around the world.
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