Historians are skittish about predicting the future, and not only because there are too many variables and possibilities. It is also not always easy to grasp the significance of events when you are in the middle of them. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, people grasped at once that a new era had started. But few Europeans foresaw that the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914 would precipitate a terrifying, continent-spanning war in which more than 16 million people would be killed, and even tech experts did not understand the significance of the iPhone when Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, unveiled it in 2007.
Since Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election last November, it has been hard not to think of Isaac Asimov’s classic science fiction trilogy, The Foundation, published just at the end of World War II. In it, humanity’s future has been largely tamed by a brilliant mathematician who uses statistical laws to control human behavior and protect against catastrophic events, ensuring what is supposed to be benevolent and stable rule for centuries. But these assumptions are shattered by the appearance of the Mule, a mutant with extraordinary powers and millions of devoted followers, who threatens to overturn the order and bring back unpredictability.
Is Trump the Mule of our times? He, too, likes to see himself as the destroyer of conventions and rules and the breaker of institutions. And he, too, rose to power on the back of a personal mass following, raising the question of whether he has the potential to change the course of events and create a different United States in a different world. The presidential contest went off calmly, much to the relief of many, but if Trump and his supporters mean what they say, Republican control of the presidency and Congress, along with a pliant Supreme Court, will bring major changes to the way the United States is governed—including to the rule of law. The president-elect has threatened to do away with independent government agencies he doesn’t like, turn others into his own fiefdoms, politicize the military, and bypass Congress with term appointments if it refuses to approve his nominations. He has criticized American allies publicly and, worse, to their adversaries. And he sees no value or benefit to the United States in international law, rules, or institutions such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, or the World Health Organization, and he denigrates even bedrock U.S. alliances such as NATO.
Asimov was a scientist, but he was dealing with one of the central questions about individuals’ capacity to change the course of history—specifically those who have the power and the drive to shatter an existing order. And he was also raising a related question: Was the old order doomed anyway, and if so, are such individuals merely agents of the external forces that shaped them? The answer may lie somewhere in the middle. It is unlikely that the young Napoleon Bonaparte, from a modest background, would have been able to rise to power without the upheavals of the French Revolution of 1789. Russian President Vladimir Putin might not have been able to seize the levers of power had the nascent political system of post-Soviet Russia been more established. Like Chinese President Xi Jinping, he has built a highly personal rule, reshaping his powerful country around himself and bringing about major shifts in the global order.
As observers try to gauge what the second Trump presidency will mean for the United States and the world, a more important question may be how well American democracy, and the international order, can withstand the stress. In the face of the Great Depression, the democratic systems of the United Kingdom and the United States proved resilient, but those of Germany and Japan collapsed, and the world descended into the worst military conflict of the modern era. In the United States today, the roots of its democracy run deep, and the dispersal of power between the federal government and the states limits what any one administration can do.
But the experience of the past is a reminder that the strength of institutions can be very hard to assess before they are directly challenged. That holds true for the international order, as well. Although today’s order appears to be stronger and more resilient than its 1930s counterpart, in recent years, norms that were long considered inviolable have been flouted. As of now, it is unclear whether Trump will be able to achieve his often stated goal of massive change to usher in a new age or will find himself constrained—by existing laws and structures of government, by the political opposition at home, or by others abroad. What ultimately happens is likely to depend as much on the balance of forces around him as on his own use of power.
DELUSIONS OF RUPTURE
Scholars have long been divided on the question of whether leaders shape or are shaped by larger forces. Political scientists are generally wary of studying individual actors, preferring to focus on what can be counted and aggregated. Their literature on leaders and leadership is sparse—surprisingly so perhaps, given how much attention and public debate there is over the motivations and probable actions of those in power today. Historians, by contrast, have found it easier to write about key figures, as, for example, Ian Kershaw did in his masterful biography of Adolf Hitler and Stephen Kotkin in his of Joseph Stalin. Yet historians are constantly aware of the challenge of finding the right balance between individuals and the social and political forces around them. Of course, all leaders are products of their times, whether in their ideas and values or in their assumptions about how the world works. Yet those who possess exceptional power—whether political, ideological, or financial—can use it to take their societies and sometimes larger parts of humanity down one road rather than another.
The experiences leaders bring with them will affect the ways in which they look at the world and the decisions they make. Putin was humiliated at the end of the Cold War when, as a young intelligence officer in East Germany, he went from being a representative of the Soviet empire to someone who barely had enough to live on. He witnessed firsthand the collapse of the Soviet Union, as its subject states such as Ukraine seized the opportunity for independence—traumatic events that doubtless fed his obsession with gaining back what he sees as lost Russian territory and making Russia great again. Personality counts, too. With Putin, one cannot ignore his determination and ruthlessness and his belief that he is a direct heir to past Russian and Soviet leaders such as Peter the Great and Stalin, who built and maintained a huge empire and made Russia respected and feared by its neighbors.
That conviction—that they have been chosen, whether by destiny, fate, or the gods—has motivated and sustained political leaders, great thinkers, generals, and revolutionaries, but it has often made them unwilling or unable to take advice or admit they are wrong. And this has sometimes led to mad policies that have resulted in disaster for their peoples. Hitler destroyed Germany in his quest for Aryan dominance, and Mao Zedong killed tens of millions of his own people in pursuit of his utopian fantasies.
Subtract certain people from the violent history of the twentieth century, and it is not possible to fully explain what happened. If Hitler had been killed in the trenches in World War I, it is unlikely that another German nationalist, with the same combination of ideology and a conviction that he was right, would have had a similar impact. If Winston Churchill had been killed when a car knocked him down in New York City in 1931, it is doubtful that anyone else who might have been in power in London in 1940 would have had the determination to fight on after the fall of France; certainly, it is hard to imagine Neville Chamberlain, who was succeeded by Churchill as prime minister in May of that year, or Chamberlain’s otherwise likely successor, Lord Halifax, doing so. Whereas Stalin and Mao were indifferent to the hideous losses they inflicted on their peoples in their attempts to change the very nature of their societies, their colleagues, who were also ideologues, nevertheless had qualms about the costs. As Kotkin observed of the collective farms in the Soviet Union, “If Stalin had died, the likelihood of forced wholesale collectivization—the only kind—would have been near zero.”
In the case of Trump, he has announced plans to deport 11 million unauthorized immigrants, emasculate the civil service, and impose sky-high tariffs while alienating or abandoning American allies. But it is unclear how much of what he has promised he will actually carry out. Are his threats more provocations and taunts to his enemies than parts of a coherent vision to create a transformed United States in a world divided into transactional power blocks? If many of those close to him have their way, it will be the latter. What is clear is that his attack on the status quo resonates with a large number of Americans and his many supporters elsewhere. Whether or not Trump intends it, his legacy may well be a lasting change in the way the world works.
TRUST BUST
To accept that certain kinds of leaders can divert the course of history does not mean that they do so on their own; they ride the changing currents in societies. Great political and social changes often come as institutions are losing authority because people simply stop believing in their legitimacy. At the start of the sixteenth century, for example, the Catholic Church was a rich and powerful institution that seemed set to dominate Christianity for centuries to come. In practice, however, it was losing its monopoly on learning, thanks to the printing press and the spread of literacy, along with its moral authority, as a result of growing and visible corruption within its hierarchy. When Martin Luther wrote his famous theses in 1517 to condemn the Church’s lucrative practice of selling indulgences, he set in motion the movement that, over the next few decades, transformed the political structures of Europe.
The leaders of the French Revolution faced a failing regime that was burdened by debt and increasingly unpopular—and not just with those who suffered from its inequalities but also among the aristocrats who had benefited from it. In a similar way, even most of those who worked for the Soviet regime had stopped believing in Marxism by the 1980s. Predicting the timing of the end, however, was another matter.
In the United States, Trump’s appeal suggests that this is not just politics as usual but a result of a widespread disillusionment with existing institutions. Under President Joe Biden, the economy was doing well, unemployment was down, and the government was making progress on controlling the southern border, but the perceptions of many voters were different. More important, in much of the country, the federal government was seen as ineffective and corrupt, or even tyrannical. Democracies depend on trust, and that was eroding. Trump was adept at giving voice to Americans’ concerns and resentments.
Building on discontent in troubled times to gain power takes a certain sort of genius and a willingness to ignore conventional wisdom and customs. As the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin was lucky in his times, but he also made his own luck. With his simple but brilliant slogan of “Peace, Bread, Land” and his single-minded fixation on gaining power, his Bolshevik Party was able to win support in key areas of the country. In November 1917, it seized power, with long-lasting consequences for what became the Soviet Union and for the world. Hitler managed to persuade enough influential Germans—including businesspeople, top generals, and those close to the German president and war hero Paul von Hindenburg—that he should be made chancellor in January 1933. A month later, after the Reichstag fire, Hitler was given emergency powers. He rapidly finished off what was left of the Weimar Republic and, as did Napoleon, Lenin, and Lenin’s successor, Stalin, created a new regime with new institutions, new values, and new winners and losers.
Such forceful agents of change are often welcomed. In Germany in the early 1930s, many people were tired of violence, uncertainty, and a failing economy and hoped that a strong leader would heed their concerns and come up with new and effective solutions to bring better and calmer days. Western countries such as France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, which might otherwise have supported the democratic forces in Germany or tried to contain the Nazis once they were in power, were struggling with the impact of the Great Depression on their own societies and fearful of the spread of communism and the rise of Japanese militarism. As with Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime in Italy, the new Nazi government, reviving the German economy and boldly pushing its interests internationally, was viewed with envy by many. Even leading Western democracies produced their own fascists and would-be autocrats, such as Sir Oswald Mosley in Britain or Huey Long or Father Coughlin in the United States.
A pressing question today is whether Trump will observe certain boundaries at home and abroad or, confident in his own power, disregard them. As wartime prime minister, Churchill had exceptional powers, but he always respected Parliament. As soon as the war ended in Europe, he agreed to dissolve the House of Commons so that a general election could be held. After years of the Supreme Court ruling against his New Deal legislation, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt contemplated a measure to enlarge the court with his own supporters, but when there was an outcry against what was seen as an unconstitutional act, he backed off. He did not attempt to challenge the democratic system again. Still, other leaders, in their pursuit of power and glory, have paid little attention to the costs of their chosen paths or the wishes of their people. Russians are paying a heavy price for Putin’s ill-judged decision to invade Ukraine, with casualties now estimated to number more than 700,000, but so far he shows little sign of changing course.
ALL IS PERMITTED
How Trump chooses to deal with unwritten rules and unspoken assumptions may be crucial in determining the future of the international order. In 1804, Napoleon ignored accepted norms when he had a leading Royalist, the Duc d’Enghien, kidnapped from the German state of Baden and executed in France after a hasty court-martial. Much of Europe was shocked, but the deed helped consolidate Napoleon’s control over France. Under Lenin, the new Soviet Union promoted world revolution and rejected normal diplomacy. Hitler famously denounced Germany’s endorsement of the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I, and one by one broke what he called its “chains”—for example, by remilitarizing the Rhineland and unveiling a German air force. That he got away with these moves encouraged others, including Japan’s military leaders, who continued their unprovoked aggression in China, and Mussolini, who seized Ethiopia.
The international order today appears stronger and more resilient. After World War II, the victorious allies set up new institutions—including the United Nations and the international monetary system created at Bretton Woods—to prevent what the UN Charter called the “scourge of war” and address the forces, such as poverty, that make nations resort to armed conflict. Although the Cold War prevented the full establishment of the new order, over time the two competing alliances of NATO and the Warsaw Pact found ways to deal with each other and avoid all-out nuclear war. They signed formal treaties to limit arms, for example, and worked out informal rules and agreements to minimize the risk of misunderstandings that could lead to war. And in spite of the rhetoric, neither side tried to roll back the forces of the other on the ground.
Much of that order disappeared with the end of the Cold War, but parts of it have lived on, from institutions such as the United Nations to the treaties that govern everything from civil aviation to international trade. Crucially, a post-1945 unspoken agreement that the seizure of territory by force anywhere in the world was not the basis for sovereignty lasted until the early twenty-first century. But that understanding has now been breached, with the seizure by Russia of parts of Ukraine and the recognition by the U.S. government of Israel’s claims to sovereignty over the Golan Heights taken from Syria. As in domestic politics, leaders who break the rules and pay no price for doing so can cause others to attempt the same. Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s illiberal democracy in Hungary has inspired many Trump supporters in the United States, including the political strategist Steve Bannon and the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. Putin’s unprovoked attacks on a sovereign neighbor have provided a precedent—especially if they succeed in winning him territory—for other leaders such as Xi, who has long expressed the goal of bringing Taiwan back under China’s rule. Norms that have held for decades can sometimes, in this way, crumble.
Americans are said to be tired of being the world’s policeman, and who can blame them. But the prospect of an isolationist policy under Trump, even the possibility of a U.S. withdrawal from NATO and the further weakening of the Western alliance, confrontation with China, and a tariff war with much of the world, is unlikely to make the United States, or other countries, safer. Moreover, the continued rise of right-wing nationalist movements in Europe may well lead to the further erosion of support for an international order that the United States has often benefited from.
It is also unclear whether the world knows how to deal with a leader who is likely to prove still more erratic and more inclined to ignore the rules than he was in his first term. In international relations, the danger that mistakes and misunderstandings can lead to confrontations, as they did in 1914, is always present, but today that risk appears to be growing. Even as the U.S. election was unfolding, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un tested a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile and drew closer to Putin, internationalizing the conflict in Ukraine by providing Russia with North Korean troops. For his part, Putin has announced a lower threshold for using nuclear weapons and has used a new kind of hypersonic missile against Kyiv. As Trump assumes office, it is difficult to guess whether his actions will lower the international temperature or raise it. In Asimov’s trilogy, the Mule is eventually brought under control, stripped of his powers, and sent back to his own minor planet with the galactic order restored. But that is science fiction.