This week’s fraught Trump-Zelensky summit, their fourth since Trump took office for the second time in January, had us on tenterhooks once again. Was this to be the moment of betrayal, when Ukraine was forced into the clutches of Vladimir Putin, and “the west” as a transatlantic alliance of democracies was no more?
Or would Trump, for all his shocking admiration of the brutal dictator Putin, his derision of “weak” Europe, and his family’s business ties with Russian oligarchs, nonetheless pause at destroying Ukrainian independence?
Well, it felt like déjà vu. Once again, Trump patronised Zelensky, praised Putin and encouraged big Ukrainian concessions. But faced with Ukraine’s and Europe’s determination not to succumb to Russia, and with the traditional US security and Republican establishments anxious not to destroy Nato, Trump stopped short of obliging a Zelensky capitulation.
As for Nato, Trump’s berating of Europe hasn’t yet led to a US withdrawal from the alliance or to the withdrawal of the 84,000 US troops stationed in some 50 bases across Europe. Ditto with US troop commitments to Japan and South Korea. And ditto US support for Taiwan against China.
A year into Trump’s second term, it is a similar picture across the rest of his administration’s activities: a shocking challenge to traditional American norms, without quite declaring a fully-fledged authoritarian coup.
Earlier this year, the massive initial shock of tariffs was succeeded by negotiations embedding new import duties.
In Canada and Greenland, threats of massive US coercion or even invasion have aroused deep fear in both countries—but as of yet there haven’t been any US incursions.
On the rule of law, strong exertions of executive authority have not gone totally unchecked by the courts. The Supreme Court, with its 6-3 Republican majority, largely backs Trump and granted him partial immunity earlier this year, yet it recently rejected the administration’s bid to deploy National Guard troops in Illinois. It also looks like it may be about to declare his tariffs a step too far without Congressional approval, which would establish red lines to Trumpian presidential power. His attempts to limit birthright citizenship, also pending before the Supreme Court, could soon become another judicial red line.
It is a similar story on universities, where Trump’s shocking assaults on the independence of Harvard, Columbia and other elite colleges ended in financial settlements, disrupting but not (yet) destroying the academic institutions.
As for elections, Republican gerrymandering of congressional seats hasn’t stopped Trump’s Republicans from losing most of the big elections they faced this year. Nor have they been able to stop Democratic states doing their own gerrymandering in response. New York’s socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani, previously dubbed a communist by Trump in a bid to prevent his election, was immediately welcomed to the White House once he had won his race. Perhaps there was too much Trump real estate at stake.
The one unambiguous transformation is the effective closing of the southern border and the apparent virtual elimination of illegal immigration, which was previously running at hundreds of thousands a year. But seeking to close an international border to massive immigration is a democratic choice, not a democratic monstrosity; and doing so successfully with a huge exertion of state power is hardly the end of American liberalism and constitutionalism.
Interpreting the present is hard enough, let alone attempting to predict the future. As the first year of Trump 2.0 draws to a close, much has been shocking.
Maybe 2026 will see a dramatically more radical Trump. But, for now, in terms of democracy and the ties that bind “the west”, it is not yet a revolution.
