Michael Brenes
The post–World War II order is dead. In its place, countries are fast adopting a values-neutral, transactional approach toward foreign policy. China was the progenitor of this approach to international relations: for over a decade, Beijing has pursued quid pro quo arrangements with countries around the world to create new markets and enhance its economic reach, generating diplomatic ties with both autocratic and democratic states. It has established itself as a great power through a model of state-capitalist economic development that eschews universal human rights or concerns about its trading partners’ system of government. Its lending practices may be predatory, but the recipients of Chinese loans and infrastructure projects have willingly, if sometimes begrudgingly, participated in its model.
The United States has, in recent months, pursued its own version of a transactional foreign policy. During his second term, President Donald Trump has rejected the framework of great-power competition. Washington has punished allies, partners, and enemies alike with exorbitant tariffs in order to gain diplomatic leverage, extract resources, and win concessions on trade. And he has pursued deals with countries as varied as Argentina, China, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea, without regard to those countries’ regime form, and relentlessly attacked the institutions (such as NATO) that undergirded the rules-based order. Most recently, after capturing and extraditing the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, he appears eager to secure deals with Maduro’s successor to benefit U.S. oil companies.