A New “Golden Age” For Global Chaos
President Donald J. Trump with US military cadets. Trump’s year in office has seen the US flexing its hard power both domestically, against immigrants, and internationally (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead/Public Domain)
One year since the inauguration of his second administration on 20 January 2025, when he promised to usher in a new “golden age” for America, there are few signs that President Donald Trump is fulfilling his campaign promise to “Make America Great Again”. However, this has not stopped the White House from claiming, on the first anniversary of his second term, that a golden age is “just getting started”.
The evidence to support this claim is scant.
Before his inauguration, Trump repeatedly claimed that if he was elected President, he would end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of assuming office or even before that. One year on, he has not only failed to put an end to Russian aggression in Ukraine but has also threatened the long-term sustainability of NATO in the process and alienated European allies. His recent efforts to take over Greenland have aggravated the split to the point of rupture. The greatest ‘achievement’ of American foreign policy in 2025 may be this transatlantic divide.
The United States economy is also in the doldrums. It grew by 2.1 per cent in 2025, far below the world average of 3.2 per cent estimated by the International Monetary Fund, or even the rate under Joe Biden in 2024, which was 2.8 per cent. Even though the US trade deficit has fallen in recent months with the imposition of sweeping trade tariffs on partner countries, the deficit for 2025 was actually higher than that for 2024. Meanwhile, its participation in global trade has backpedalled in a year in which, for the first time, global trade in goods and services surpassed $US 35 trillion.
In a bigger world, America looks even smaller.
Latin America watched bemused as a new incarnation of the Monroe Doctrine, updated in Trump’s National Security Strategy, played out in Venezuela, where dictator Nicolás Maduro was removed overnight by special forces and then brought to trial in New York by sea and air. Nevertheless, Chavismo, the left-wing political ideology championed by former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, remains the country’s dominant ideology, and the Chavista regime minus Maduro is still in power.
Trump’s unprecedented intervention in South America did little to promote US interests. A region whose economic fortunes became entangled with China after the Pink Tide receded received a rude awakening from the cornered northern giant — which, incidentally, also threatened its traditionally friendly neighbours Canada with annexation and Mexico with military intervention.
If American leadership was nowhere to be seen in the western hemisphere, it left ambivalent footprints elsewhere — especially in Asia, where the US secured trade deals with Japan and South Korea that will see investments of $US 550 billion by Japan in the US, and $350 billion by South Korea.
A trail of destruction
The “Board of Peace” in Gaza, comprising a motley cast of characters including Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, is Trump’s latest and most controversial move. While several Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia, have accepted Trump’s invitation to join this board, the collective “West”, including the UK, Germany, France and Canada, is absent. Russia, China and India have also not joined at the time of writing.
The Board of Peace is being viewed as a challenge to the United Nations, an organisation Trump has repeatedly attacked.
He has withdrawn the US from 66 international organisations and multilateral institutions. Of these, 31 are UN entities, including the World Health Organization, of which the US ceased to be a member on 22 January.
Trump’s assault on multilateral institutions did not make America suddenly great again. On the contrary, this “diffuse unilateralism” highlights the US’s shortcomings in the complex world of 21st-century globalisation and fragmentation. This superpower can no longer intervene in and occupy faraway countries at will, in contrast to previous imperial inroads in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Instead, a beleaguered America now resorts to bombing allies and foes alike with trade tariffs, attempting to pull a thriving global economy away from the global south.
The anxieties of a challenged Leviathan are visible at home as well. Trump remained at war with local administrations and the rule of law, even though Republican control of both houses of the US Congress remains ironclad. His assault on immigrants shut the borders and brought the National Guard and immigration police onto the streets of America’s metropolises, reviving post-September 11 surveillance and paranoia in everyday life. By rejecting politics in favour of strong-arm policing, Trump shut the door on bipartisan policymaking.
This was preceded by his attack on civil servants through the Department of Government Efficiency, run by his former friend, billionaire Elon Musk, which led to a prolonged government shutdown and an unprecedented collapse of public services.
Leaving a trail of uncreative destruction before baffled global audiences, the first year of Trump’s second administration has delivered few answers and many dramas. With midterm elections in the US due in November 2026, Trump needs to move beyond his reality-star role and posts on social media and begin delivering tangible results — including peace — in the real world, for which he has been loudly demanding a Nobel Prize.
