UNDOUBTEDLY, the United States’ President Donald Trump does not appear to be a man of peace. He does not even care to be seen as such. Trump is cast in the mould of someone who loves a fight and is always in the mood to engage in one. Where there is no fight, he instigates one. Where there is no single opponent in sight, he manufactures many. His tariffs threaten to up-end the world economy; the signals are already there but rather than back down, he forges ahead with more of the same. This, then, is the proverbial coconut leaf; the more you boil it, the harder it gets. The world groans but Trump gloats! Assailed on all fronts by foes and allies alike, all reeling from the negative effects of his tariffs war, Trump struts rather than let off steam. This, then, is the proverbial palm frond that rejoices in the midst of thorns; the proverbial “awodi” that waxes strong, diving in and out of raging fires while the victims bemoan their losses. Orderliness, law and order, and due process do not seem to recommend themselves to Trump. Nigeria’s Ojuelegba, where the iconic Afrobeat king, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, says confusion breaks bones, for sure will delight the United States’ number one citizen.

Trump is an enigma. He makes history even as he stands in the way of history being made. He is the only American president to have had no previous political or military service before his election as president. These two critical indices usually determine success or failure in US presidential elections but Trump skipped them both. He then went on to beat Hilary Clinton, wife of former President Bill Clinton and the woman many had thought would make history as the United States’ first woman president. Trump lost the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election by a whopping 2.87 million votes but won the electoral college with a commanding 304 votes against Hillary’s 227. He thus became the fifth US president that lost the popular vote but won the electoral college; after John Quincy Adams (1824), Rutherford B. Hayes (1876), Benjamin Harrison (1888), and George W. Bush (2000).   

 When Trump lost his bid for re-election in 2020, he was not the first US president to have been so denied but he was the first to seek to bring the roof down on the head of everyone and trump democracy in the world’s largest and longest-running modern democracy. His refusal to accept the outcome of the election, concede defeat, and move on was the first of its kind in the history of the United States. How his armed supporters stormed the hallowed chambers of Congress to try to forcibly prevent the process of bringing the election to conclusion and announce the next president has gone down in history as one of its kind in the history of the United States. But for the refusal of Vice-president Mike Pence to buy into the plot, Trump might have succeeded in his bid to trump democracy in the United States.

 Trump alleged that the 2020 presidential election was rigged in favour of his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. His failure to prove the allegation beyond all reasonable doubt apart, it was not the first time American elections had been tainted with allegations of rigging. To the outside world, the US is the bastion and beacon of democracy but in reality it also has had its frailties and faults and elections there have not always been seen to be free and fair. A recent example is the Al Gore vs George Bush election of 2000 but in none of the cases has anyone gone to Trump’s extent to subvert the democratic process, bringing the US and its democracy to ridicule and disrepute as well as lowering the country in the estimation of the international community.

 Four years after losing re-election, Trump entered the presidential race again. While many had thought his party members, the Republicans, would be ashamed of his antecedents and distance themselves from him, they handed him the party presidential ticket again; this time, in style! The party primaries were a virtual “no contest” between Trump and his half-hearted challengers and it took no time before he dusted all of them and coasted home to victory. Even at that, no one gave Trump the chance of a come-back, what with the tons of sundry allegations of corruption and moral deficiency hauled at him at every turn! He spent more time in court answering to one allegation after another than he spent on the hustings. Close allies and associates, former staff and friends broke ranks and testified against him in court; he was found guilty and convicted by courts of competent jurisdiction. Yet, Trump, undeterred, forged ahead! His, then, was the proverbial case of the vulture that feeds fat on accursed commodities and luxuriates in the midst of adversity.

 Trump made another history when he forced the sitting president and candidate of the Democratic Party, Joe Biden, to “step aside”, Babangida style, in the middle of the 2024 US presidential election. Enter Kamala Harris! At first the sitting US vice-president (to Biden) was the rave of the moment and led consistently at the opinion polls for weeks; especially so after she resoundingly defeated Trump in the televised debate both of them had. Gradually, however, Trump clawed his way back, one Lie Muhammed lies after another, until he ran neck-to-neck with Harris as Americans went to the polls. When the results were announced, it was to the chagrin of those who had wished for Harris to become the United States’ first woman president!

 Trump won both the electoral college and the popular vote. For the second time, he made history as the candidate that twice denied Americans the opportunity to produce a woman president. I am not sure that record will be easy for anyone to break. Governing the US has also been made very easy for Trump with his party controlling the majority in Congress. Few presidents before him had been so blessed.

 Trump’s ways are unorthodox – in both his internal and external policies. Complaints and protests trail him everywhere. Staunch allies and traditional friends have turned foes and opponents. Mercurial and controversial Trump is the talk-of-town everywhere. Oh, his theatrics! If you squirm at his (mis)treatment of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, consider the bitter pills he shoved down the throat of traditional ally, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu! Not just what he does but the way he does them! The louder the outcry, the more he tightens the screws!

 Since Trump will not relent, those at the receiving end of his tariffs war are also slamming their own tariffs on the US. Trump, rather than give up or moderate, responds with higher tariffs. In this all-out war, no one is spared. Even little Davids like Nigeria, not spared by Trump, have thrown their own feeble punches at the Goliath of our time! Where will this spat lead our world?

 The existing international order which came into existence at the end of the Second World War in 1945 has become obsolete and anachronistic. It can no longer carry the weight, as it were, of our world as presently constituted and configured. International relations or relations between state- and non-state actors alike are a function of power relations. What these power relations were in 1945 are not what they are today. Some states have dropped on the pecking order while others have climbed up the ladder. This must be reflected in a new world order that will put everyone in their rightful places. What, for instance, qualifies Britain or France as permanent members of the UN Security Council that does not qualify Germany and India?

The two levers of power in international world order are military and economic. Both resided in the United States and its Western allies in the aftermath of the 2nd World War. As the victorious powers, they presided over the fashioning of a new world order, making sure they cast it in their own image. The Soviet Union and China that played a limited role in the defeat of Adolf Hitler were allowed into the sitting room but not the inner room of the new power house. The US became the metropolitan power and Western Europe its satellites. Together, both dished out orders to the rest of the world. A restraining factor, however, has been the veto power wielded by both the Soviet Union (now Russia) and China in the UN Security Council.

 Our world is changing rapidly! It is not what it used to be 80 years ago. Power relations amongst states have undergone drastic and dramatic transformation. The US is no longer the sole nuclear power nation. We can count countries with nuclear capabilities to include the other four members of the UN Security Council, in addition to India and Pakistan. There are “rogue” nations like Israel, Iran and South Africa and others possessing the nuke or the (near)capability to join the elite club at short notice.

From time immemorial power relations have never been static; rather, they have been dynamic. Economic relations have also seen the rise and fall of nations. The nations that controlled the commerce of the world during the tenure of the League of Nations (1918 – 1939) are not the same that did in post-1945. The end of that war confirmed the US as the new powerhouse of the world. Western Europe that hitherto colonised the world, the US itself inclusive, declined in both military and economic power, took the back seat and played second fiddle to the US, becoming its most glorified cheerleaders!

 But nothing lasts forever!  History teaches that nations get to their apogee, stay there for a while, and then begin to decline. That is one. Another is that other nations make improvements, catch up and overtake the leaders. The struggle to word off competition and perpetually remain on top versus the determination to catch up and upturn the apple cart is what is unfolding before our very eyes between the United States on the one hand and the rest of the world on the other. What is amazing to many is that the US, fighting tooth and nail to maintain its hegemony, has made no distinction between age-old allies and foes alike. The reason is simple: Trump sees those allies and their feeding bottle mentality as the major cause of the decline that the US has suffered. The resources the US has poured into protecting and providing for them could have better been investing in developing the US itself.

 Trump wants to call in such investments. He wants to cut and run on international engagements that drain the US of resources needed for investment at home. The US wants to prioritize looking after its own interests now and reduce, if not totally eliminate, its self-imposed obligations of policeman of the world or the defender of so-called democratic values worldwide. It is an “America first” policy aimed at Making America Great Again! MAGA! To achieve this, Trump also wants to throw spanners in the works for the countries threatening to do the catching-up with the US, especially China, if not to completely stop them in their tracts but to at least slow them down while the US extricates itself from its self-imposed quagmire and forges ahead again.

 The rot in the US system runs deep. The inherent contradictions in its capitalist system. Decades of complacency and arrogance. Pig-headed policies that gifted its competitors the weapons they now masterfully deploy. It is debatable whether Trump is going about the fight the right way or whether he can stop or delay the meteoric rise of China and India, and, to some extent, Russia, as they position themselves individually and collectively to challenge for the leadership position of the world. Whatever is the case, a new world order beckons! Whether it will be achieved peacefully or after another war remains to be seen.      

 LAST WORD: It is instructive that in the face of Trump’s raging and rampaging tariffs war, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has been missing in action! Headed by a Nigerian, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (she bagged a second term of office recently), Google says the WTO “is primarily responsible for administering global trade rules, providing a forum for trade negotiations, settling trade disputes, and supporting developing countries in benefitting from the global trading system”. “Market forces” and “free trade”, the well-advertised fulcrum of the capitalist system often wielded to extort and exploit developing countries, have also taken the back seat! Capitalism is a scam!