Is Trump changing international geopolitics for good?

BEFORE Trump, European Union and NATO allies had found a reliable trade and military partner in the American geopolitical comportment. Trump had pursued some steep foreign-relations stratagem, that in their unorthodoxies many world leaders and academics are puzzled to decipher — method or madness.
His campaign slogan of Make America Great Again (MAGA), which became the cultic nomenclature around which a parallel stream of political adherents emerged to threaten the very foundation and support base of the traditional Republican Party.
This slogan assumes that both domestic and foreign policies will put “America first.” This posture casts Trump as a unique local and international personality. Many academics have defined him in populist terms; he is able to do and say things that would’ve otherwise instantly ended the career of any other political figure. Trump says what many may think, but dare not utter; what many may wish but dare not attempt.
There are things that Trump has done that will be irreversible in the practical application of local and geopolitical policies. I have three examples. Firstly, Trump has effectively closed the porous US-Mexican border; any other president following Trump will court a short political career if the border is reverted to caravan-styled undocumented migration.
Next, Trump moved the US diplomatic Head of Mission in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a diplomatic abomination prior to Trump. Any American politician uttering a single phrase against this move will be out of the political establishment of both parties within weeks. Then, Trump demanded that NATO members increase their contributions to the military alliance and other international formations. It is unthinkable that under some future US president NATO members can renege on their payment commitments.
In practical terms, there are other policies that are reversable, but would’ve done so much to shift the shape of international trade and diplomatic relations, that walking them back will be a long road.
For example, the nature of tariffs the US has applied on Canada and the war of words which ensued has pushed Canada into the arms of China. Ottawa has carved out new trade deals with Beijing that positions China (now) at the Most Favoured Nation level. Strong statements out of Ottawa has said that Canada intends to grow its non-US trade by 50% within a decade.
Once set in motion this cannot be easily walked back. Trump has asserted American dominance over the Panama Canal which links trade routes between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. China has since commenced advanced negotiations with Nicaragua to cut a new waterway to link the two oceans, employing terms that will give China almost perpetual dominance of a rival canalled trade route.
Trump’s arrest of Maduro and direct verbal threats to Cuba is a resurrection and redefinition of a more aggressive form of the Munroe Doctrine; now realigned as the Donroe Doctrine. The old adage, “when America Sneezes the world catches a cold” is now more real in the Americas than it has ever been at any time in recent memory.
The invasion of Venezuela, along with other diplomatic manoeuvres and visa-processing adjustments, is shifting countries of the Americas to be more responsive and compliant with US security stimuli, much of which will not be easily reversible in the post-Trump era.
While Trump is in the midst of military meandering to extract economic benefit from the world’s vastest proven oil reserves, there is a contradiction happening right under his chin. Europe, which held its nose and did not retaliate against the slew of tariffs unleashed by Trump, is now exhaling.
The EU is fighting back. It is pursuing trade deals with Brazil and the bigger Latin American economies which will effectively establish the largest free-trade area in the world, and one of the largest north-south trade agreements in recent memory.
The bizarre tensions with Greenland come over as though Trump is finding it difficult to separate US economic interests from its security alliances. This has forced Europe into conversations that seeks to carve its own security arrangements despite the presence of NATO, thereby de-risking its dependency on US security commitments in the region. This cannot be wished away once set in motion.
For nearly a century, the global order was built on an American foundation, fuelled by US-designed global institutions and monetary instruments, contoured by US-designated trade routes, fashioned by US-styled economic models and protected by US security hardware. There was no global agenda without direct input or engineering from Washington.
The global system still rests on a US-driven foundation but in the era of Trump, with influence from the rest of the global north, the world is no longer building on that foundation, they are breaking new grounds. At a recent Asian-Pacific business conference, former Singaporean Foreign Minister George Yeo said, “Trump is fast-forwarding the inevitable future of a multipolar world.”