Photo: iStock
28/02/2025 18:13
Levente Horváth
Editor-in-chief of Eurasia
As of 20 January, Donald Trump is the 47th President of the United States of America, and he has already announced in his pre-inauguration press conferences that a new era, a new world order and a new system of international relations are emerging.
Already during his first term (2017-2020), the businessman-turned-politician has shown that he wants to do great things to go down in the history books, such as becoming the first US president to meet the North Korean leader in Singapore in 2018 - but apart from being a historic event, it did not have much impact.
Similar thinking is expected in his next term, i.e. he wants to bring change in this changing, fragmented and turbulent world order: war and peace.
He applied for Canada, Greenland and Panama, and has placed high bets from which the bargaining will begin. At the same time, such a geopolitical bid for territory in fact legitimises Russia's territorial claims to Ukraine or even the former Soviet Union. Moreover, it has not minced its bargaining position on tariffs.
And he has already announced that he will negotiate with the Russian and Chinese presidents, which means that the dialogue between the great powers, which has been broken or stalled in recent years, is being revived. So the bidding between the great powers will also start soon. Already three days before the inauguration, Trump initiated a telephone conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping, with whom he agreed to establish a strategic hotline. The Vice President of the People's Republic of China, Han Zheng, also attended Trump's inauguration in person.
Trump also plans to hold talks with Russia and to settle the Russia-Ukraine war.
Could it be that Trump is a Nobel Peace Prize candidate and wants to settle relations with China and Russia to jointly bring world peace?
Or does he want to repeat the photo from the Yalta conference, where American leader Roosevelt, British leader Churchill and Soviet leader Stalin agreed to divide the world? US President Trump, Russian President Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping sitting around a table to lay the foundations for a new world order?
However, looking at the members of the Trump administration, they have not necessarily been pro-China or pro-Russia in their communications so far, even if many of them have significant business interests in those countries. However, a new phenomenon among the so-called China-hawks and Russia-opponents is the emergence of tech guru Elon Musk, who set up one of the largest Tesla factories in Shanghai with the support of then Shanghai Party Secretary Li Qiang, now Premier of the People's Republic of China. Some Chinese experts already see Musk as the new Kissinger, whose advice could ease the US-China rift.
In any case, there is one certainty about the Trump cycle, and that is uncertainty and perpetual change.
For all these reasons, Trump's next presidential term will be called War and Peace.