The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 83, January 2026 Page 12 From the series Chronicles of the new American nationalism The American establishment faces a truly difficult conundrum. On the one hand, it is confronted with Donald Trump, who has been gripped by show politics to the point of delirium: a recent tragic example was the president’s comments on social media about the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife, which he blamed on the director’s anti-Trump hatred. On the other hand, there is the attempt to uncover a rationale behind the policies of the Trump presidency, insofar as the measures aimed at countering American decline partially represent continuity with the lines of previous administrations, or with certain currents within them. In recent months, this second approach has been taken by Michael Froman, president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and several Biden administration officials, including Kurt Campbell. In their view, there a...

Internationalism No. 81, November 2025 Page 11 Ursula von der Leyen justified the concessions made to Donald Trump in the Turnberry agreement at the end of July with two main arguments: it was a necessary move to avoid worse tariffs, and the EU has other cards to play. While the United States is the primary destination for European trade , wrote the president of the Brussels Commission in Le Figaro , it accounts for only about 20% of our exports of goods. That is why Europe will continue to strengthen and diversify its trade links with countries around the world . America and Asia This attempt is underway. On September 3 rd , the von der Leyen Commission proposed to the European Council, the intergovernmental body of the 27 States, to ratify both the trade agreement with the Latin American bloc, Mercosur, and a modernisation of the existing agreement with Mexico. In the EU, the Commission has centralised trade policy in a federal power that negotiates ...

From the series News from the Silk Road The international tensions which China will face on the seas in the next fifteen years could find a buffer in the expansion of China’s influence on land in Central, Southern and Western Asia. Wang Jisi is the dean of the School of International Studies at the University of Beijing and a major figure of the American party in China. His unexpected foray into ‘geopolitics’ has reignited the old clash between different American currents — a phenomenon we analysed more than twenty years ago. At the time, Robert Manning, the author of The Asian Energy Factor and adviser to the State Department in 1991, viewed Asia’s growing dependence on the Persian Gulf for its energy requirements in the light of geoeconomics and geostrategy and foresaw a possible convergence between the USA and China. From a geoeconomic standpoint, both trade and the funding and development of the infrastructure necessary for Asia’s energy needs were more important than terri...