by Muhammad Bilal Iftikhar Khan
Donald Trump’s second term increasingly mirrors the erratic, deeply pragmatic
persona of Tuco Benedicto Pacífico Juan María Ramírez, famously played by Eli
Wallach in the Western classic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. He
fiercely competes with China and harbors deep resentment toward it, yet due to
an inescapable convergence of material interests, he remains fundamentally
dependent on it. This time, Trump’s "America First" agenda serves as
the raw operating system for a reimagined Pax Americana. Embracing
hyper-mercantile economic policies, he has enforced what analysts term his
"Donroe Doctrine", a muscular, highly transactional revival of the
Monroe Doctrine. Concurrently, by positioning Washington as the unyielding,
unilateral protector of Israel in the Middle East, he is fighting for the last
Western foothold in West Asia, even as it diminishes the cohesion of the
broader Western alliance.
These unilateral policies have plunged not only the United
States but the entirety of Western civilization into a profound conundrum of
global acceptability. A stark ideological divide has opened within the Western
house of liberalism; Trump is pioneering a hybrid, transactional model of
global governance that is utterly indigestible to European powers. By actively
bypassing and opposing liberal international institutions like the United
Nations, the highly vaunted "rules-based international order" stands
entirely exposed, revealing the raw imperialistic foundations beneath its
normative language. Consequently, Western civilization faces an existential
paradox brought about not by external adversaries, but from within its own
core.
This aggressive posture exposes an unprecedented undercurrent
of fear toward Beijing, a structural anxiety never before witnessed in American
history. The Thucydides Trap, wherein a declining status-quo power desperately
fears being obscured by a rising challenger, is visible in every facet of
current US policy. Washington views China as an existential threat to its
global hegemony, yet paradoxically, the American economy remains inextricably
tethered to Beijing through a bilateral trade relationship worth over $600
billion.
To manage this anxiety, Trump's primary strategic continuity
remains the comprehensive containment of China. Looking at geopolitical
patterns from Latin America to the Middle East, it is apparent that Washington
intends to systematically throttle the flow of global energy to Beijing,
violating the very liberal values the US historically claimed to champion. The
intervention in Caracas and the targeting of President Nicolás Maduro directly
served this objective. Maduro was removed because his regime was funneling
discounted crude to China under long-standing loan-for-energy agreements;
immediately following this shift, Washington moved decisively to cut
Venezuela’s energy corridor to Beijing.
Similarly, the escalations in the Middle East possess a
deliberate anti-China dimension. Iran remains a vital energy lifeline for
Beijing, historically directing the vast majority of its oil exports to the
Chinese market. By enforcing severe secondary sanctions on Chinese firms buying
Iranian crude and projecting military power near the Strait of Hormuz, Trump
simultaneously appeases powerful domestic religious and political lobbies along
with American energy multinationals, who reap massive windfall profits from the
resulting volatility and artificial constriction of global oil supplies.
Trump’s recent state visit to Beijing has laid bare a
significant shift in Chinese diplomatic attitude. Beijing fully understands the
structural trap Washington is setting, as well as the transactional concessions
the US paradoxically expects. During the summit, the Chinese leadership broke
with long-standing diplomatic restraint, openly characterizing the United
States as a declining superpower. This underlying friction materialized in
stark visual and physical protocol dynamics, from seating arrangements designed
to project hierarchy to intense security stand-offs between US personnel and
Chinese officials at the Temple of Heaven.
Trump’s objectives for the trip were purely transactional, seeking
quick economic concessions to boast about ahead of the upcoming US midterm
elections, but he left Beijing empty-handed, underscores the deep structural
paralysis between the two powers. The sheer level of American anxiety regarding
Chinese surveillance capabilities was laid bare by extreme post-visit
protocols, including the immediate disposal of official protocol gifts and the
reliance on temporary, clean communication devices to prevent intelligence
breaches. Furthermore, regarding Washington's multibillion-dollar arms sales to
Taiwan, Beijing delivered its most direct warning yet, drawing an absolute red
line , demanding that Washington decode and respect its core territorial
boundaries.
As these dynamics solidify, the conflict in the Middle East
is poised to linger indefinitely, as the US refuses to cede geopolitical space
in West Asia to Chinese mediation. However, this hyper-aggressive, mercantilist
containment strategy may soon push the international system toward a much
wider, uncontrollable conflict. The global majority has profoundly lost faith
in the liberal West, as the dismantling of the rules-based order exposes the
stark imperialist realities that have long governed global politics.
Writer is Former Journalist and a PhD International Relation’s
Scholar