Trump and the Future of Geopolitical Alliances

The debate surrounding Donald Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency has sharpened an underlying structural question in global politics: whether alliances can remain effective when their principal anchor increasingly approaches them as transactional arrangements rather than strategic commitments. For investors, policymakers, and multilateral actors, this is less a question of leadership style than of systemic resilience.

Recent remarks by Finnish President Alexander Stubb, in conversation with Foreign Affairs, offer a useful framework for assessing this moment. Stubb’s analysis rests on a clear distinction between multipolarity and multilateralism—one that carries material implications for alliance behaviour. Multipolarity, he argues, privileges power competition among major states; multilateralism pools sovereignty to reduce volatility. While large powers may tolerate the former, smaller and mid-sized states depend on the latter for strategic stability.

This distinction becomes critical when applied to U.S. foreign policy cycles. The United States has historically oscillated between engagement and isolation, but Trump's approach compresses this oscillation by embedding it into alliance management itself. MAGA's ideological skepticism toward institutions, combined with the policy logic of "America First," reframes alliances as contingent arrangements, assessed primarily through immediate burden-sharing and political alignment. From a systems perspective, this introduces uncertainty into structures designed to reduce it.

Finnish President, Alexander Stubb

The war in Ukraine illustrates the consequences of such uncertainty. Stubb's assessment aligns with a growing view among European security planners: Russia’s objective extends beyond territorial gains to the gradual erosion of Western cohesion. Strategic ambiguity, particularly regarding long-term U.S. commitment, functions as a force multiplier for Moscow. Partial engagement sustains conflict while degrading alliance credibility, raising both military and economic risk across Eastern Europe and adjacent regions.

China's posture further compounds these dynamics. Beijing's support for Russia remains calibrated and asymmetric, aimed at weakening Western alignment without direct escalation. Trump's historically inconsistent approach to China—alternating between confrontation and disengagement—adds volatility to an already complex strategic environment. European efforts to pursue de-risking rather than decoupling reflect an acknowledgment of interdependence, but their effectiveness depends on coordinated alliance behaviour. Fragmentation, whether transatlantic or intra-European, benefits China by default.

A similar logic applies to emerging strategic theatres such as the Arctic. Climate-driven accessibility has transformed the region from peripheral concern to operational domain. Stubb's emphasis on integrating Arctic defence into NATO planning reflects an understanding that geographic proximity compresses response times and limits strategic depth. Russian militarisation and growing Chinese interest have elevated the Arctic's relevance, lending retrospective coherence to earlier U.S. attention on Greenland that was widely dismissed as erratic.

These positions contrast in important ways with remarks delivered by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Where Stubb frames the current moment as a transition requiring institutional adaptation, Carney characterised it as a rupture in the global order. His emphasis on values-based realism foregrounds the need to reconcile liberal norms with power realities, particularly in economic governance and financial stability. While both perspectives converge on the necessity of reform, Stubb places greater weight on institutional continuity, whereas Carney underscores systemic disruption.

This divergence is instructive. For alliance-dependent states, continuity mitigates risk; for globally integrated economies, rupture may necessitate faster recalibration. The challenge lies in reconciling these approaches within multilateral frameworks that increasingly struggle to accommodate both security and economic imperatives.

Engagement with the Global South further tests alliance adaptability. Stubb's call for a dignified, values-based realism reflects an awareness that future legitimacy depends on agency and inclusion. Middle powers are no longer peripheral actors but active shapers of the emerging order. Without reform that expands representation and influence, multilateral institutions risk narrowing into exclusive blocs with declining global reach.

Trump's relevance in this context is not primarily disruptive but revelatory. His approach exposes a structural vulnerability within the alliance system: reliance on assumed leadership rather than institutional resilience. As the global order moves toward 2030, alliances will endure only if they adapt to a less predictable U.S. posture, sustained pressure from revisionist states, and the growing influence of non-aligned actors. Stability, under these conditions, will be determined not by rhetoric, but by the capacity of alliances to function without illusions.