“Acting like a king because he’s too weak to govern like a President!”
When journalist Ezra Klein assessed the first week of Donald Trump’s second presidential term, he was not merely describing a leaders’s governing style but also capturing a profound transformation in American politics.
Trump’s chaotic and populist approach to governance has strained the fundamental institutional structures of American democracy, deepening polarisation in domestic politics, unsettling relations with traditional allies in foreign policy, and forcing a structural transformation in the United States’ global leadership capacity.
Washington’s global leadership has historically been shaped not only by military and economic superiority but also by constructing an order based on ideological and institutional hegemony. In the post-World War II era, the Bretton Woods system, the founding of NATO, the establishment of international institutions such as the United Nations, and the mechanisms of cultural influence through Hollywood and the media made the U.S. the cornerstone of the global order. However, according to Gramsci, the sustainability of hegemonic power depends not merely on material capacity but also on the ideological consent it garners at the global level. Yet Trump’s “America First” policy—marked by withdrawal from multilateral partnerships, a threatening rhetoric towards allies, and the use of trade wars as a tool of global diplomacy—has made the fragility of American hegemony increasingly visible.
