What is President Trump up to? This is arguably the most important question in the world right now — and perhaps the toughest to answer.
Mr. Trump’s words and actions seem to revolve around a central idea: The world is a zero-sum game. Whoever pays the most into the pot is the loser; whoever gets the most is the winner.
That may sound like a mere difference of perspective or negotiation style. But most of the postwar international order is based on the idea that the world is a positive-sum game: a collection of overlapping systems that benefit all who participate in them, even if the costs and benefits of participation aren’t distributed equally.
This positive-sum concept is a foundation of the international trade, international law, and international alliances that have been engines of prosperity and peace for decades — and indeed of democracy itself.
Since World War II, the United States has been a powerful anchor of that system. But Mr. Trump has signaled he is playing a very different game.
Since the 1980s, his words and actions have suggested that he places little value on positive-sum dynamics. Where others see positive-sum games generating gains for all, he seems to see only zero-sum winners and losers. And now, in his second term, that worldview appears to be a primary driver of his foreign policy.
