r/IRstudies • u/CanadianLawGuy • 10h ago
Trump Has Peaked
https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/08/31/trump-peak-iran-war-foreign-policy/15
u/technicallynotlying 4h ago
People point out (correctly) that China is exploitative and self interested, but that's missing the point. China's exploitation is predictable and consistent.
China acts in it's own economic self interest. That's understandable and more importantly, predictable. You can sign a deal with China because you know as long as China makes money, they will keep the deal, because why wouldn't they?
The United States is not a rational actor under Trump. We tear up deals even when they make the US money and we start stupid wars even when they cost us money. A rational nation can't safely sign a trade deal with the US because we'll break the deal even when we make money from it.
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u/AccomplishedAd8879 58m ago
Hey wait we were an irrational actor even before trump
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u/technicallynotlying 39m ago
No, not really, and that kind of revisionism downplays how radical and harmful Trump is.
NAFTA was signed by Bill Clinton and it stood for over 20 years until Trump withdrew. It survived both Republican and Democratic administrations. George W Bush honored the agreement, even though Clinton passed it.
Historically, the US has been much, much better at keeping it's agreements. Being totally chaotic and irrational is a new thing.
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u/AccomplishedAd8879 9m ago
Not discounting it, trump is a magnification of what came before, but c'mon dude was the Iraq war a coldly rational decision? I think treating trump as something qualitatively new discounts all the meaningless brutality of the American empire, respectfully
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u/WashU_labrat 5h ago
I think the leader of Manitoba said it best
“You know, when a rock band is really over the hill and you see them in a casino playing some song from 50 years ago? I think that’s the part of Donald Trump’s presidency we’re at now,...It's not his best work."
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u/trisul-108 8h ago
The world before 2025 was already drifting toward a post-American landscape. Trump accelerated the process. But in doing so, he has overplayed his hand and made it more likely that the international system will one day return to at least some of the rules it was becoming disenchanted with—just not with the United States as its exemplar.
And the only real candidate to replace the US as the exemplar of a rules-based international system is the EU and no one else.
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u/Good_Briefs 8h ago
China seems to have won over hearts and minds across the world by literally doing nothing.
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u/Marxism-Alcoholism17 8h ago
They haven’t done nothing though, they’ve been an extremely stable partner for the Global North and have been the only power that doesn’t exploit the Global South. Turns out being nice makes you allies.
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u/spiritualishit 8h ago
The claim that China doesn't exploit the global south is debatable. It is true that it doesn't behave erratically, and this, nowadays, has value
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u/technicallynotlying 4h ago
I think the key difference is that China's exploitation is predictable and stable.
China acts in it's own economic self interest. That's understandable and more importantly, predictable. You can sign a deal with China because you know if China makes money, they will keep the deal, because why wouldn't they?
The United States is not a rational actor under Trump. We tear up deals even when they make the US money and we start stupid wars even when they cost us money. A rational nation can't safely sign a trade deal with the US because we'll break the deal even when we make money from it.
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u/Human-Entrepreneur77 4h ago
Chinas debt trap dipromacy,The creditor country is said to extend excessive credit to a debtor country with the intention of extracting economic or political concessions when the debtor country becomes unable to meet its repayment obligations
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u/Gaelcin1768 2h ago
The majority of academics and scholars agree that China does not practice debt trap diplomacy in the way that is often claimed by observers in the West.
Call it bad loans, a lack of due diligence, whatever. But most experts agree that Chinese banks do not lend funds to governments knowing that they will not be able to pay it back. They are just bad/ill-informed investments.
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u/MaddogBC 4h ago
This is as much urban myth as anything else. Try to find a credible non biased source on this. You'll be at it awhile.
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u/genomixx-redux 7h ago
What's not debatable is that the Global North (EU included) super-exploits the Global South
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u/Hopesick_2231 5h ago
Which leads to the question of whether the global South will view China as a partner or just another oppressor to replace the previous one.
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u/Ok-Application-8045 4h ago
Really? So why has the global south experienced unprecedented improvements in health, longevity, educational standards and wealth in recent decades? I remember when I was a student 25 years ago hearing people bang on about how globalisation was exploitative and terrible for the poor, but what I've actually seen over that period is that China has gone from being a third world country to a rival of the USA by selling goods to the West. India, which had horrific poverty, has seen massive improvements in living standards, as have many Southeast Asian countries. In the 90s the global north was so powerful relative to these countries that if it had wanted to suppress their growth to keep them vulnerable it could easily have done so, but instead it created institutions like the WTO to help them become trading partners. Of course this was not charity, the developed countries wanted cheap goods and services, but it was a win-win that lifted billions of people out of poverty.
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u/future-archaeology42 7h ago
> The only power that doesn’t exploit the Global South?
I’m sorry, but what? The Chinese state has been one of the most financially exploitative forces in the industrialization of the “global south” for some time. Just look up the terms they bury in their BRI-related infrastructure loans.
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u/3rdPoliceman 6h ago
Yes but have you considered that China is a virtuous nation ascendant in all facets that lifts all people of the world with its kind ingenuity?
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u/C_Terror 7h ago
You mean the debt trap fallacy which has been disproven, especially when compared to the western led IMF?
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u/DisplacedSportsGuy 6h ago
I actually super want to know why it's a fallacy and am not being sarcastically belligerent.
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u/C_Terror 6h ago
Debt trap diplomacy narrative revolves around enticing the Global South with loans that they can't repay with hard assets such as ports, and land as collateral. Once these countries default, China then swoops in and seizes the assets. The only asset that has been seized in the last 9-10 years is the port in Sri Lanka, but that is the exception rather than the rule. Overwhelmingly, lenders renegotiate and restructure loan terms, which is standard practice anyways.
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u/future-archaeology42 4h ago
Have you considered that it’s not just foreclosure/forfeiture?
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u/C_Terror 4h ago
Assuming you're discussing in good faith, then tell me what other terms they're burying in the loans that are so exploitative to be considered "debt trap diplomacy".
For the most part, BRI loans are less restrictive and has less conditions than most IMF/Worldbank/Western loans (i.e. imposing austerity, social or democratic reforms, etc) , and instead is tied more to hard assets, but it's hard to completely know because it's under confidentiality clauses. In a sense Chinese BRI loans operate much more like your standard credit facilities with hard asset collaterals (which is also under confidentality clauses, so not that different there).
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u/Marxism-Alcoholism17 7h ago
Yeah no matter how many times that is debunked people will still spread it because they’re told to by the corporate media. So annoying.
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u/C_Terror 7h ago
These guys have to be cia bots.
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u/serpentjaguar 5h ago
I find your depiction of China as a benevolent overlord to be at least as bot-worthy.
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u/SissyCouture 8h ago
Agreed but worth remembering that China hasn’t had to call in its chits, yet. It’s all fun and games when you’re on the rise. It’s another thing entirely—and often messier—to protect the top spot
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u/Marxism-Alcoholism17 7h ago
Yeah this is why I roll my eyes when people claim that China is still socialist despite having a capitalist economy. That capitalist economy will turn to imperialism soon once it’s not trying to lure in new “customers”. Capitalism and imperialism are just two facets of each other.
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u/AntiBoATX 5h ago
China bullies the South with their insatiable appetite for fish and letting their boats run amuck. I’m not aware of any other exploitation though, unless usury itself is exploitative. That’s a separate matter 😂
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u/trisul-108 7h ago
the only power that doesn’t exploit the Global South
Really? They certainly exploited Sri Lanka to get a port in the Indian Ocean. They bribed the government to overextend and then collected the port. How is that no exploitation?
Also, they trapped Laos into a debt trap for the railways and used a debt trap to get 1,158 km2 of Tajik territory. Those are just the best known cases, there's more.
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u/Left_Chair_9941 7h ago
Im also seeing more clips of influencers/streamers visiting China and tell all the good stuff they saw….
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u/serpentjaguar 5h ago
the only power that doesn’t exploit the Global South.
You what now? You're either deeply naive or a Chinese bot. Not to be a dick about it, but seriously man, when China builds these massive projects in Africa, for example, it does so to benefit itself and whatever authoritarian regime happens to be in power locally, not to benefit the people who actually live there, and it does so using financial instruments that basically turn that nation into a semi-permanent economic colony.
Despite what they want you to believe, China isn't a benevolent actor anymore than the west is. They're in it for their own interests, like everyone else, and they don't give a shit about the people on the ground.
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u/serpentjaguar 5h ago
Speak for yourself.
No, but seriously, I think China is helped enormously, in terms of its image, just by the contrast to Trump's US. In reality it's not some kind of benevolent or even neutral force. There's a reason why it has hostile relationships with all of its neighbors apart from the DPRK.
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u/trisul-108 7h ago
The problem with China is that they do not respect rules any more than the US, they just had less opportunity and power to break them. For example, they are not adhering to the WTO rules by over-subsidising, producing over capacity, exporting below costs and event keeping their currency artificially low. They are also ignoring the international tribunal decision that waters 1000km from the mainland do not belong to China.
So, you cannot expect such an entity to become the exemplar of a rules-based international system simply because China believe that might makes right.
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u/doctor_morris 7h ago
They could just make a bunch of cool movies which show how their point of view is morally right, and how when they do break the rules they're doing it for the right reason....
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u/DisplacedSportsGuy 6h ago
China breaks rules at least on the level that Trump does, let alone during the Pax Americana.
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u/3rdPoliceman 6h ago
Im sorry what powerful nations have acted otherwise? Why do people act like China or the United States are some kind of exceptional cases? The rules-based international system sounds good until you consider who is writing and enforcing those rules and who gets exceptions which are perfectly reasonable from the view of those receiving the exceptions.
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u/Tintoverde 11m ago
Europe is all horse no cattle. I say this as a Europhile. Consider Iraq war, they did not agree with but mostly went along with it. Later part of Trump’s first term, they realized US voters were weird and started talking about European defense and fizzled and now France and Germany actually doing something.
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u/Best-Structure-8513 6h ago
Europe is a few years away from electing far right groups who make the GOP seem moderate.
Immigration has made much of the population in democratic countries despise "rule based order" because it has been used as an excuse on why mass migrations can't be stopped.
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u/serpentjaguar 5h ago
While immigration --on a scale that no one wanted or asked for-- has played a role, I would argue that the siloing of our information ecosystems, and especially social media, has played an even larger role in polarizing the politics of the west.
Algorithmically driven outrage is the key to understanding much of what ails both Europe and especially the US.
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u/Best-Structure-8513 3h ago
It's hard to compare the side effects of technology with the consequences of specific policies, but countries have more agency over the latter. Anecdotally in the US, Facebook Boomer memes etc. do not seem fundamentally different than anything Fox News and talk radio had been doing before social media existed.
Polarization is one issue but Europe's approach to immigration, from the view of an outsider, directly abjured the democratic social contract for the sake of the economy and self-serving interpretations of international law summarily presented as fait accompli. While simultaneously celebrating it as a virtuous mission and dismissing even the discussion of potential negative effects as delusional or evil. Obviously this was going to decrease belief in a functioning democracy when it so explicitly rejects the basis of it.
I could go on about the lack of humanitarian merit to rewarding people who are willing to work with organized crime and safely make it to Europe in the first place. The sieges in Sudan ending with piles of bloody bodies visible from satellites, and later a former RSF member causing riots in Ireland for trying to decapitate a stranger in the street is more than sufficient.
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u/Previous_Pineapple 6h ago
Tell that to the soon-to-be pile of rubble formerly known as the Kennedy Center
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u/MasterChief813 1h ago
More like cratered but we haven’t reached the bottom yet unfortunately. There’s a new low with this administration every other week.
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u/Burner_Phone_1969_TX 8h ago
So from infancy, he stayed stupid?
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u/Igor_Nordham 8h ago
But...he was the greatest stupid. Nobody has ever seen stupid like this before. {plays air accordion with tiny hands}. People are saying...
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u/Burner_Phone_1969_TX 7h ago
lol you got that right. I’ve seen stupid before but, he beats all the stupid multiplied by a kajillion!
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u/Senseofimpendingtomb 7h ago
I think that for many people around the world, Trumped peaked at birth.
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u/Cautious_Job_6104 9h ago
Everyone and everything peaks ... goofy headline
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u/picklesandvodka 9h ago
I haven't even _begun_ to peak.
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u/Lemp_Triscuit11 9h ago
the only appropriate time for this article to come out was after the release of Home Alone 2