{"id":129728,"date":"2025-03-12T22:43:04","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T22:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/power-money-territory-how-trump-shook-the-world-in-50-days-the-new-york-times\/"},"modified":"2025-03-12T22:43:04","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T22:43:04","slug":"power-money-territory-how-trump-shook-the-world-in-50-days-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/power-money-territory-how-trump-shook-the-world-in-50-days-the-new-york-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Power, Money, Territory: How Trump Shook the World in 50 Days – The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia-Ukraine<\/span> War<\/span><\/span><\/a>
News Analysis
The system America took 80 years to assemble proved surprisingly fragile in the face of Trump\u2019s assault, a revolution in how the country exercises power across the globe.
News Analysis
The system America took 80 years to assemble proved surprisingly fragile in the face of Trump\u2019s assault, a revolution in how the country exercises power across the globe.
<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Doug Mills\/The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span>
Supported by
By <\/span>David E. Sanger<\/a>
David E. Sanger has covered six American presidencies and writes often on the revival of superpower competition, the subject of his latest book.
In a span of only 50 days, President Trump has done more than any of his modern predecessors to hollow out the foundations of an international system that the United States painstakingly erected in the 80 years since it emerged victorious from World War II.
Without formally declaring a reversal of course or offering a strategic rationale, he has pushed the United States to switch sides in the Ukraine war, abandoning all talk about helping a nascent, flawed democracy defend its borders against a larger invader. He did not hesitate when he ordered the United States to vote with Russia and North Korea \u2014 and against virtually all of America\u2019s traditional allies \u2014 to defeat a U.N. resolution that identified Moscow as the aggressor. His threats to take control of the Panama Canal, Greenland, Gaza and, most incredibly, Canada, sound predatory, including his claim Tuesday that the border with America\u2019s northern ally is an \u201cartificial line of separation.\u201d
He cut Ukraine off from arms and even American commercial satellite imagery, partly out of pique over his blowup in the Oval Office with President Volodymyr Zelensky, but largely because the Ukrainian president insists on a guarantee that the West would come to his country\u2019s aid if Russia rebuilds and reinvades.
Mr. Trump has imposed tariffs on his allies after describing them as leeches on the American economy. And he has so damaged trust among the NATO allies that France is discussing extending its country\u2019s small nuclear umbrella over Europe, and Poland is thinking of building its own atomic weapon. Both fear the United States can no longer be counted on to act as the alliance\u2019s ultimate defender, a core role it created for itself when the NATO treaty was written.
No one knows how successful Mr. Trump will be in ripping asunder what every American president since Harry Truman has built \u2014 an era of institution-building that Mr. Truman\u2019s secretary of state memorialized in a book entitled \u201cPresent At the Creation.\u201d To live in Washington these days is to feel as if one is present at the destruction.
It could be four years or more before we know whether these changes are permanent or whether the guardians of the old system will hunker down, like soldiers seeking to survive in the trenches of Donbas. By then, the Western allies may have moved on from an America-centric system.
Or, as Joseph S. Nye Jr., the political scientist known for his work on the nature of soft power, said of Mr. Trump recently, \u201cHe is so obsessed with the problem of free riders that he forgets that it has been in America\u2019s interest to drive the bus.\u201d
But perhaps the more remarkable thing is that Mr. Trump is eroding the old order without ever describing the system he envisions replacing it with. His actions suggest he is most comfortable in the 19th-century world of great-power politics, where he, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Xi Jinping of China negotiate among themselves, and let lesser powers fall in line.
Mr. Trump is already claiming successes. To his advocates, Ukraine\u2019s agreement on Tuesday to a proposal for a temporary cease-fire, one Russia has yet to accept, appears to demonstrate that Mr. Trump\u2019s use of his leverage over Mr. Zelensky was worth the uproar. But historians may determine these 50 days were critical for reasons that had little to do with Ukraine.
\u201cThe big debate now is whether this is a tactical move to reshape our foreign policy or a revolution?\u201d said R. Nicholas Burns, the American ambassador to China under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and to NATO under President George W. Bush.
\u201cI\u2019ve come to think it\u2019s a revolution,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen you are voting with North Korea and Iran against NATO allies, when you are failing to stand up to Russian aggression, when you are threatening to take the territory of your allies, something has fundamentally changed. There is a breaking of the trust with allies we may never be able to repair.\u201d
In retrospect, the first sign that Mr. Trump\u2019s approach to the world would be dramatically different from the one he pursued in the first term came on a chilly morning early in January at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
For weeks he had sounded increasingly martial about the need for the United States to control Greenland, because of its mineral wealth and its strategic location near Arctic waters used by Russia and China. He accelerated his demands for access to the Panama Canal and kept repeating the need for Canada to become a 51st state, until it became clear that he was not joking.
At a news conference on Jan. 7, two weeks before his inauguration, he was asked whether he would rule out using military or economic coercion<\/a> to achieve his goals in Greenland or Canada. \u201cI\u2019m not going to commit to that,\u201d he said. \u201cYou might have to do something.\u201d
It was a stunning threat. An incoming president had threatened to use the world\u2019s largest military against a NATO ally. Some brushed it off as Trump bravado. But in his inauguration, he doubled down. He said the world would no longer exploit America\u2019s generosity and the security it offered to allies. He spoke of an America that would \u201cpursue our manifest destiny,\u201d a rallying call from the 1890s, and praised William McKinley, the tariff-loving president who took the Philippines in the Spanish-American War. And he spoke of creating an \u201cExternal Revenue Service\u201d to \u201ctariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.\u201d
\u201cNothing will stand in our way,\u201d he declared. And nothing has.
The effort to rip apart the U.S. Agency for International Development, created by President John F. Kennedy as part of the vanguard of American soft power, took just a few weeks; the primary argument playing out in the courts is whether the government has to pay contractors $2 billion for work already completed. Mr. Trump and Elon Musk, who is leading the charge in remaking the government, recognized that foreign aid is so derided by the MAGA movement as a hotbed of liberal values and corruption that the agency was an easy first mark.
Dismantling it, they knew, would also strike fear into the hearts of government employees who realized they could be next. Groups that do similar work and were once lauded by Republicans \u2014 like the United States Institute for Peace and the National Endowment for Democracy \u2014 are on life support.
The biggest shift was still to come: Ukraine.
For three years, Democrats and most Republicans had largely viewed the war through the lens of traditional American foreign policy. It was incumbent on the United States to defend a struggling democracy that had been illegally invaded by a larger power seeking its territory.
But now, as president, Mr. Trump called Mr. Zelensky a \u201cdictator,\u201d while refusing to say the same of Mr. Putin. He justified his refusal to call Russia the aggressor in the war as a necessary measure to act as a neutral mediator. Then, on his first trip to Europe, his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, declared that the United States would never agree to Ukraine\u2019s admission to the NATO alliance, and said it would have to give up the territory it had lost to Russian aggression.
With Mr. Trump\u2019s blessing, they had given Mr. Putin two of his upfront demands, while making it clear that if Ukraine wanted a security guarantee, he should talk to his European neighbors \u2014 but the United States would not participate. The other day Mr. Trump said he found dealing with Russia easier than dealing with Ukraine.
\u201cHe has turned U.S. policy on the Russo-Ukraine war 180 degrees,\u201d said John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump\u2019s third, and perhaps most embittered, national security adviser. \u201cTrump now sides with the invader.\u201d
But Europe has dug in deeper with the Ukrainians, essentially dividing NATO\u2019s largest power from all but a few of its 31 other members. Not since the Suez crisis in 1956 \u2014 when France, Britain and Israel invaded Egypt \u2014 has the United States found itself on other side of a conflict from its closest allies. But this breach has been deeper, and more fundamental.
One senior European official, speaking shortly after the Munich Security Conference last month, said that it was clear that Mr. Trump\u2019s real agenda was to simply get a cease-fire \u2014 any cease-fire \u2014 and then \u201cnormalize the relationship with the Russians.\u201d
The prospect so concerned European officials, who believe they could be next in Russia\u2019s sights, that Friedrich Merz, the longtime promoter of the trans-Atlantic alliance who is poised to be the next chancellor of Germany, declared on the night of the German elections that his \u201cabsolute priority\u201d would be to \u201cachieve independence from the U.S.A.\u201d
\u201cI never thought I would have to say something like this,\u201d he said, but he had concluded that the new administration was \u201clargely indifferent to the fate of Europe.\u201d
Perhaps one reason that the Trump revolution has taken the world by such surprise is that many Americans, and American allies, thought that Mr. Trump\u2019s behavior in the second term would roughly mirror what he did in the first.
He would largely hew to the national security strategy issued in his first term, they thought, which lumped China and Russia together as \u201crevisionist\u201d powers \u201cdetermined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.\u201d
Read today, that document appears to come from a different era. Mr. Bolton contends that Mr. Trump \u201cdoes not have a philosophy or a national security grand strategy.\u201d
\u201cHe does not do \u2018policy,\u2019 but a series of personal relationships.\u201d
Now his aides are scrambling, with little success, to impose a logic to it all.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a classic Russia hard-liner before he took his current post, suggested that Mr. Trump was trying to tear Russia away from its growing partnership with China. There is no evidence that this is working.
Other members of Mr. Trump\u2019s national security team have talked about a \u201cMonroe Doctrine 2.0.\u201d That suggests a world in which the United States, China, Russia and perhaps Saudi Arabia take responsibility for their distinct spheres of influence. Sir Alex Younger, the former head of MI6, the British spy agency, said in a BBC interview that it reminded him of the Yalta Conference<\/a> \u2014 the meeting of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin in 1945 \u2014 where \u201cthe strong countries decided the fate of small countries.\u201d
\u201cThat\u2019s the world we\u2019re going into,\u201d he predicted, adding \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re going back to the one we had before.\u201d
Of course, such an arrangement has long been a dream of Mr. Putin\u2019s, because it would elevate the power of his economically declining state. But as Dmitri Medvedev, the former Russian president, said on social media the other day, \u201cIf you\u2019d told me just three months ago that these were the words of the US president, I would have laughed out loud.\u201d
David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges. More about David E. Sanger<\/a><\/span>
U.S.-Backed Cease-Fire Offer<\/strong>:<\/strong>\u00a0Ukrainian<\/a>\u00a0and European<\/a>\u00a0leaders welcomed a 30-day cease-fire proposal and the resumption of U.S. aid<\/a>. The proposal poses a dilemma for President Vladimir Putin of Russia<\/a>.
The Eastern Front:<\/strong>\u00a0Ukrainian forces have stalled the Russian offensive in the eastern Donetsk region<\/a>\u00a0in recent months, even as Russia regains ground in Kursk.
Risk of Espionage:<\/strong>\u00a0The Trump administration is negotiating the return of more Russian diplomats to the United States. Some are likely to be spies<\/a>.
Every Funeral Is the Most Important: <\/strong>As Ukrainian casualties spiral after years of war, a military band has the melancholy but key task of bidding farewell to troops and raising morale<\/a>.
How We Verify Our Reporting<\/strong>
Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs<\/a>, videos and radio transmissions<\/a>\u00a0to independently confirm troop movements and other details.
We monitor and authenticate reports on social media, corroborating these with eyewitness accounts and interviews. Read more about our reporting efforts<\/a>.
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Russia-Ukraine WarNews AnalysisThe system America took 80 years to assemble proved surprisingly fragile in the face of Trump\u2019s assault, a revolution in how the country exercises power across the globe.News AnalysisThe system America took 80 years to assemble proved surprisingly fragile in the face of Trump\u2019s assault, a revolution in how the country exercises power […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":129729,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}