China, explained.

President Trump on 4 January 2026, the day after US forces captured former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Trump has swapped “productive hypocrisy” for crude exercises of power

Washington hasn’t changed its behaviour towards allies and adversaries – only its honesty about it.

Sophie Wushuang Yi

21 January 20265 min read

The most destabilising aspect of the second Trump administration may not be its policies, but its candour. For decades, American hegemony operated through what might be called productive hypocrisy: the gap between professed ideals and actual conduct was wide, but the pretence itself performed crucial work. It provided allies cover for alignment, adversaries predictable frameworks for engagement, and the international order a normative vocabulary that – however imperfectly applied – constrained the crudest exercises of power. That pretence has now been abandoned.

Consider the contrast. When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, it constructed elaborate justifications involving weapons of mass destruction, UN resolutions, and the liberation of an oppressed people. The justifications were contested, and often false, but their very existence acknowledged that American power required legitimation beyond raw capability. In January 2026, when American forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, President Trump’s explanation was disarmingly simple: the United States “wanted him”. When asked about potential military action against Greenland – the territory of a NATO ally – Trump’s response was equally unvarnished: “We need it for defence”.

This is not a departure from American strategic behaviour; it is its distillation. The United States has long pursued interests through coercion, regime change, and selective application of international law. What has changed is the refusal to dress these actions in universalist garb. The implications extend far beyond rhetorical aesthetics.

Here lies the paradox: Trump’s abandonment of pretence may ultimately prove clarifying.

For traditional allies, the removal of normative pretence creates an impossible position. European states now deploy troops to Greenland under Operation Arctic Endurance – not against a rival power, but to deter their own alliance leader. Denmark has warned that American military action against Greenland would trigger Article 5 of NATO’s charter on collective defence against the United States itself. This is not alliance management; it is alliance contradiction made explicit.

Australia faces particularly acute dissonance. Canberra has invested heavily in AUKUS, predicated on assumptions of American reliability that Washington’s recent conduct undermines daily. When a senior Trump official told Congress the United States should be “running up the score” on Australia – an ally with a trade deficit favouring America – the transactional nature of the relationship became unmistakable. Former Australian Defence Force head Admiral Chris Barrie has called the United States “an unreliable ally”. Yet Australia’s options remain constrained: neither Europe nor China offers a viable security alternative, leaving Canberra to navigate an alliance whose foundational assumptions have eroded while its strategic necessity persists. The question is no longer whether American commitment can be assumed, but what Australia must provide to purchase it.

For allies in contested regions – the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan – the calculations grow more complex still. These states are balanced between great powers partly because American security guarantees came wrapped in institutional commitments and multilateral frameworks. Strip away those frameworks, and the arrangement reduces to transactional protection: useful perhaps, but neither stable nor morally distinguishing. Manila’s continued hedging between deepening defence ties with Washington and diplomatic de-escalation with Beijing reflects not fickleness but rational adaptation to revealed circumstances.

Here lies the paradox: Trump’s abandonment of pretence may ultimately prove clarifying. For decades, debates about American power were clouded by disagreement over whether Washington’s liberal rhetoric reflected genuine commitment or convenient cover. That ambiguity is largely resolved. States worldwide now possess clearer information about what American partnership entails.

This clarity benefits no one in particular but changes calculations for everyone. Middle powers increasingly pursue strategic diversification not from anti-American sentiment but from prudent risk management. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Beijing visit on the weekend – the first by a Canadian leader in nearly a decade – with his pointed reference to a “new world order” reflects this recalibration. States are not choosing China over America; they are choosing optionality over dependence.

What should middle powers do? The answer is neither alignment nor equidistance, but investment in the diplomatic infrastructure that Washington is dismantling.

Some will argue Beijing stands ready to fill the vacuum. This overstates Chinese appetite for systemic leadership. Beijing benefited enormously from the existing order and shows limited interest in bearing the costs that hegemony requires – the security guarantees, institutional maintenance, and crisis management that underwrote American primacy. China’s preference appears to be selective revision rather than wholesale replacement: a sensible strategy that nonetheless offers no coherent alternative architecture. Those anticipating a Chinese-led order may wait indefinitely.

The more probable trajectory is prolonged interregnum: an order that functions poorly but persists for lack of alternatives, with major powers pursuing interests through increasingly unmediated competition. The United States has not withdrawn from global engagement – indeed, American forces are now operationally committed across more theatres than under Biden. But engagement without a legitimating framework is merely intervention.

What should middle powers do? The answer is neither alignment nor equidistance, but investment in the diplomatic infrastructure that Washington is dismantling. Regional institutions, bilateral frameworks, and diversified partnerships matter more, not less, when hegemonic management fails. Australia’s challenge is to maintain security cooperation with an unpredictable ally while building the independent capabilities and regional relationships that reduce vulnerability to American caprice. This requires difficult conversations about defence spending, strategic autonomy, and the limits of alliance dependence – conversations Australian politics has long deferred.

The previous order’s stability depended substantially on fictions that can no longer be sustained. American hegemony always involved coercion dressed as leadership. Trump’s contribution has been to remove the costume, revealing what was underneath all along. The question for 2026 is whether states can construct alternatives before the absence of hegemonic management fragments the system into something far more dangerous.

About the author

Sophie Wushuang Yi

Dr Sophie Wushuang Yi is a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University. She is also a Non-Resident Research Fellow at the Grandview Institution in Beijing and the Wang Gungwu Visiting Fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.

Topics

China Australia AUKUS Diplomacy United States