As Trump seeks to play the role of action figure statesman, his Sharpie politics evoke a time in which outside “great powers” unroll maps and use pens to draw borders and create realities that would have significant human consequence
As if there were any more need for evidence that the second Trump administration aims to throw the international liberal order game board off the table, taking the money and game pieces with them as they leave the wreckage, we are again seeing examples of what this could mean. Trump’s transactional, bullying, mafia politics on the international stage, combined with his zero-sum real estate mentality, brings a dangerous mix to complicated and sensitive regions around the world that have existed in a sort of geopolitical suspended animation for decades or in some cases generations.
We are seeing him seek credit for a “peace deal” between Armenia and Azerbaijan that is less a peace deal and more of a framework primarily aimed at securing a US role in a regional energy hub; an economic transaction taking advantage of Armenia’s weakened posture following Azerbaijan’s autumn 2023 offensive to remove Armenians who had lived in what was known as Nagorno-Karabakh for centuries. It also fully ignores the work Armenia and Azerbaijan have done themselves to get to this point. Yet this in many ways neatly encapsulated his view of geopolitics, and it’s difficult to avoid visions of Sharpie-fueled fever dreams inspired by the likes of Mountbatten and Radcliffe and the mapmaking prior to the India – Pakistan partition; or talks between Slobodan Milošević and Franjo Tudjman at Karadjordjevo in 1991 as they sketched options for carving up Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Trump has been gearing up for a Friday meeting with Putin in Alaska and has already used the phrase “land swap,” with regard to the war in Ukraine, which must be music to Putin’s ears. (His erratic performance at the August 11 press conference where he noted his plans to deploy National Guard troops and federal law enforcement to Washington, DC, as well as referencing his upcoming plan to go to “Russia,” by which he presumably meant Alaska, must have also delighted the Kremlin.) It is worth noting that the phrase “land swap” was heard during the first Trump administration when it was used to refer to the conflict between Serbia and Kosovo, and the notion of “solving” it by trading pieces of land. While the notion of a “swap” generally means some sort of like for like exchange, on Ukraine it is clear that Putin has not retreated from his aims to internationalize Russia’s territorial claims to occupied territory, deny Kyiv security guarantees, and ensure an open playing field for ongoing interference in and control over Ukraine’s destiny.
However, whether or not Trump is fully aware of the meaning and symbolism of this phrase, this language fits in with the image he holds of himself as a “dealmaker”. At the same time, it feeds into his preference for big-man politics, and short-term decision-making and pronouncements without regard for the long-term impact or consequence. From the perspective of a real estate agent, property has clear ownership. It’s mine; it’s yours. There is little patience for ambiguity. However, there are many places around the world that have occupied a sort of grey zone aimed at enabling a limbo status quo in the interest of avoiding heightened or even violent conflict.
Right now, Nagorno-Karabakh is on his mind, as is Ukraine and the current Thailand-Cambodia border conflict. While Trump’s views of maps may lead him to see these as real estate disputes, this kind of simplification ignores cultural, demographic and human experience. It also favors the appetites of the big man politics to which he is attracted.
Simplistic nationalist and irredentist ideologies sell the false narrative that some group of people cannot be secure and thrive unless they are the sole occupiers of some bit of land. Places that complicate simple lines and maps, and that challenge this mindset, need to be destroyed or oppressed. It is in the pursuit of this simplistic vision that we see yet another attack on the notion of the liberal international order.
Following decades of horrifying human tragedy in which people have been killed or forcibly moved in the pursuit of geopolitical sorting (the 1915 Armenian genocide; the swapping of millions between Greece and Turkey in 1922; the wars in the former Yugoslavia, Lebanon; the generational tragedy of Israel/Palestine), for a now seemingly short period of time there was the imperfect ideal that places of diversity and political “ambiguity” could be differently managed. The idea was that people living in places with a history of political and demographic contestation should not need to fear being forcibly moved, killed or subjugated, but should be able to enjoy rights as a minority or a majority in that space under the umbrella of the basket of human rights ushered into the post-World War II and post-Cold War orders that would guarantee minority rights and participation, and the basic right to exist.
This led to a number of ambiguous situations. Some were termed “frozen conflicts,” particularly in the former Soviet Union in places such as Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, and Transnistria in Moldova – places that have often been a part of Moscow’s irredentist appetites. (The Baltic countries with significant Russian populations, were lucky to solidify their relationships with the EU and NATO during the period of what could be considered from today’s vantage point “peak liberal democracy”.) Beyond the former USSR, this phenomenon has been seen in other places where the political status is somehow contested or believed by some polities to be up for grabs, such as Kosovo, Kashmir and Taiwan.
While realpolitik geopolitics increasingly seems to be ascendent, it’s worth remembering that practical ambiguity served multiple purposes. Perhaps most importantly it enabled human beings to stay in their homes and communities, turning the page on a history in which population expulsions were acceptable. It created political space for a process of political and economic normalization that, ideally over time (though imperfectly pursued), would eclipse narrow self-interest focused on bits of land. And it helped to minimize big power appetites for their own irredentist territorial expansion and renewed empire building that could potentially set off new geopolitical competition.
Were these ambiguous arrangements ideal? No. Critics will claim that these political conflicts were not definitively settled, arguing that that proves that this theory was flawed. What they fail to appreciate is the historically short period of time in which the liberal approach as even tried – decades of experience in which human rights were at least aspirationally a priority, compared to centuries and millennia of brute force regardless of the consequences.
The language that we are hearing now from the Trump administration is in line with his apparent agenda of wanting to erase (“cancel”) all liberalizing trends of the 20th century, whether domestic or global. And his singular psychological framing capacity as a real estate agent means that he has no cognitive space to understand the benefits of ambiguous solutions for diverse and complex places. In his worldview, only one person can control a plot or a building; while this may make sense in real estate sales, this creates a basis for complete zero-sum geopolitics.
These issues need to be kept in mind as there will be a very disruptive period ahead. Talk of land swaps impacts people, leads to a radicalized political environment and can lead to resistance and violence. While the people of Ukraine are certainly following this news with a sense of forboding, people in places including Kosovo, Taiwan, Palestine, Bosnia, Burma and beyond have reason to worry.
At a time in which the illiberals and far-right seem ever more ascendant and confident, it can be easy to lose hope and perspective. It has been in particular disappointing to see that the European Union has been unable to reorient itself in a way that reaffirms their values such as those outlined in both founding and enlargement documents, norms and policies; it is rare to hear mention let alone embrace of the Copenhagen criteria.
Decision makers in the member states and Brussels have been ready to shift their own centers to the right rather than to recognize that their competitive advantage is in fact the support for open societies and the rule of law rather than the rule by law. As in the US, this shift has been accompanied by a narrative focused on the issue of migration. However, the perceived risks of migration and people on the move seeking safety would only increase in a renewed era of population transfers, expulsion, or endemic oppression. And people are not seeking to migrate to Russia, China or other autocratic states.
In the short term the EU and its democratic allies around the world (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea etc.) need to recognize that they will never thrive in a world with a new geopolitical map in which illiberal autocracy is the dominant business model. Appreciating the extent of the threat and doubling down on the attraction of the liberal model to people who have lived under and fled from the alternatives needs to be at the heart of their reorientation to the world Trump is enabling.