President Trump has emphasized how peaceful the world was during his first administration compared with the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East that characterized Biden’s presidency. Trump aspires to end the ongoing wars and restore international peace.
We should also distinguish between two kinds of war and peace – liberal and illiberal. It’s possible that the world may move from a period of wars fought for liberal goals to a peace that enshrines illiberal political systems.
Liberal Wars
They are fought to promote or defend liberal values. While the liberal impulse has always been relevant to US foreign policy, the period of peak US hegemony from 1990 to about 2010 was especially propitious for promoting liberal values and extending liberalism in the world.
Overall there have been three types of liberal wars fought under US hegemony in the post-Cold War era.
The first type began in the 1990s and focused on limited humanitarian interventions in Somalia (1992-1994) and later in Libya (2011). A second bolder type focused on nation-building for democracy promotion in Bosnia (1995), Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001-2021) and Iraq (2003-2011). The third type is taking place now by supporting fellow liberal states in Ukraine and Israel against their authoritarian opponents.
Illiberal Peace
An illiberal peace is based on giving priority to war avoidance over national aspirations and individual civil liberties. Two historical examples come to mind.
After the traumatic experience of the Napoleonic wars, the five great European powers – under the Concert of Europe – cooperated in order to prevent the return of a great-power war. While avoiding such a war among themselves, they jointly suppressed national and liberal aspirations.
During the Cold War, the US was compelled to accept a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Thus, the US didn’t intervene to support liberal revolutions in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
One type of illiberal peace refers to spheres of influence established by great powers, in which the freedom of action and the autonomy of the smaller states is limited. The high costs and the glaring failures of many liberal wars have inadvertently contributed to the rise of nationalist-populist forces that support the advancement of illiberal peace rather than fighting liberal wars.
What should we expect in Trump’s second term? Trump may follow through on his election promises to stop wars and establish peace in several regions. First, in Ukraine, a democratic country might be compelled to make painful territorial concessions to a more powerful authoritarian power. This policy might leave other democratic states in Eastern Europe vulnerable to future authoritarian aggression. Such an illiberal peace arrangement might create the conditions for a Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. At the same time, Trump’s initial talk about Panama, Canada and Greenland could signal an American sphere in the Western Hemisphere.
In East Asia, an illiberal peace might emerge if Trump is not committed to protecting Taiwan and potentially also the Philippines. These democracies will have then to make painful concessions to China. Somewhat similar to Eastern Europe, a Chinese sphere of influence might emerge then in East Asia.
In sum, peace that results in spheres of influence for authoritarian powers could come at the expense of key liberal and human values. And then the question might be asked: will such peace be stable and last for an extended period or might it generate powerful resistance and strong motivations to challenge it, including by violent means?
Thus, the costs of illiberal peace might in the long-term outweigh its benefits.
