No one has been more consistent in condemning globalists and globalism than Donald Trump. Fair is perhaps his favorite word, but globalist is his favorite insult. The irony, though, is that both Trump and his second administration – ultra-globalist monster.
Of course, Trump's MAGA movement (Let's Make America Great Again) – seemingly wants to turn its back on the rest of the world. Mimicking the isolationist movement America first (America First) in the 1930s, led by aviator Charles Lindbergh, the MAGA movement aims to dismantle cross-border ties that have been the basis of economic relations for decades.
Before the MAGA movement, free and open trade was the norm. Countries like China and Russia were admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the assumption that integration into the global economy would also encourage political liberalization. Large numbers of migrants, both skilled and unskilled, crossed into the United States each year in search of economic opportunities they could not find at home.
The liberal world order has now been replaced by a bewildering avalanche of Trump tariffs – mostly targeting America’s longtime friends and allies – and brutal deportations of migrants. While the US was once the bulwark of a global system of open capital markets, Trump’s advisers are now proposing interventionist measures to impose a new regime. Among other things, they want to replace short-term government bonds with bonds with very long maturities. It’s a highly disruptive move that most bondholders would consider a kind of bankruptcy.
In each of these cases, the Trump administration's goal is to dismantle pillars of a system that many MAGA supporters no longer consider useful.
But in reality, Donald Trump is still fully engaged in the globalization game. His key advisor and financial backer, Elon Musk, has a vast international portfolio of business interests – particularly in China – while Trump himself owns real estate around the world. Such global interests are at the heart of the new American policy.
The only real trump card Trump could use to bring Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table is the promise of a massive influx of American investment in Russia's energy and minerals sectors. Trump's "transactional" approach (international deal-making) is just globalism by another name.
The term itself globalism originates from Ernst Jäckh, a German émigré scientist who worked at Columbia University. In 1943, he wrote in his book The War for Man's Soul used this word to describe nature Hitlerism. The Nazi leader, wrote Jeck, “set out on a ‘holy war’ as the God-sent leader of a ‘chosen people,’ raised not for imperialism but for globalism – his world without end.”
Hitler and Stalin were globalists because they saw conquest and expansion of spheres of influence as key ways to advance the interests of their regimes. Both even kept globes on their desks – a detail that was effectively parodied by Charlie Chaplin in the film The great dictator.
This label soon appeared in discussions about America's place in the world. After World War II, opponents of American internationalism used the term globalist as a derogatory label (sometimes rightly so), directed against the United Nations system or against American interventions in Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East. In these cases, the label carried a certain rhetorical weight, as it was still understood to refer to a global seizure of power that had no ethical basis.
True, some MAGA proponents argue that they are actually pursuing a deeper principle in their attempt to reshape the world order. They call this principle sovereignism—the idea that a state has sole responsibility to its citizens.
As Vice President J.D. Vance told me earlier this year, Fox News: “Love your family, then love your neighbor, then your community, then your fellow countrymen. And only after that can you focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”
Then, on the X platform he runs, Elon Musk explained it: “Just Google it.” order of love. "
Although J.D. Vance's supporters probably didn't understand the reference, it sparked a heated debate among intellectuals. Order amoris ("order of love") refers to St. Augustine's account of divine love. How can Christians remain faithful to their duty to love all people, when such love inevitably involves choices—or what modern political theorists would call compromises?
Vance's answer is that mercy (caritas) should be directed first towards those closest to us. However, nowhere in the Augustinian or Christian tradition is it actually said that family has priority, then the geographically closest neighbors, and so on. On the contrary, caritas has always referred primarily to obligations towards strangers and foreigners, and globalization has long implied that such interactions can take place over great distances.
In an unexpected and highly significant move, Pope Francis – who has far more credibility to speak on Catholic doctrine than Vance, who only recently converted to Catholicism – pointed out just that in a letter to bishops in the United States.
"True order of love that we must promote,” Francis explains, “is the one we discover through constant reflection on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan.’”
Similarly, John Paul II – a Polish pope once celebrated by many conservatives – always emphasized that solidarity, or brotherly love, is at the heart of any Christian understanding of a properly ordered moral universe...
Globalism, as an ethically unfounded pursuit of profit on an international scale, is at the very core of the MAGA movement. It promotes a vision that will ultimately produce disorder, not order. Ernst Jek was right about the battle for the soul of the world.
Salvation for the United States today could lie in the slogan: "Make America Principled Again."
The author is a professor of history and international affairs at Princeton University
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2025. (translation: NR)
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