Rebooting American Hegemony: A Chinese Perspective on Trump's Foreign Policy Transformation

What Comes Next After Trump's Restructuring of US Hegemony?

Recently, Trump officially initiated the process of shutting down the US Department of Education, reflecting a shift in American politics. From claiming Greenland and even Canada, interfering in European elections, to easing US-Russia relations, dismantling the US Agency for International Development, and now closing the Department of Education—the United States, under Trump's leadership, appears to be abandoning the order it created.

However, Chinese scholar Kang Jie believes that the overall logic behind all these decisions is more than simply returning to isolationism. This series of actions may appear to be a "dismantling" of hegemony, but in reality, they represent a reset of the hegemonic "operating system."

Dr. Kang is an Associate Researcher at the Department for American Studies, China Institute of International Studies. His perspective represents the views of many Chinese scholars regarding US hegemony and its trajectory under Trump 2.0.

Dr.Kang Jie

In this piece, he argues that American hegemony is transforming profoundly from the liberal elite community established after World War II to the New Right logic of the Trump 2.0 era that emphasizes physical power and spheres of influence. American hegemony relies on the coordinated operation of hardware (military and economic assets), software (international organizations and mechanisms), and an operating system (the ideological doctrine of the elite community). The Trump administration is abandoning the Cold War-style liberal elite community in favor of a New Right elite network that champions territory, spheres of influence, and great power deals—aiming to replace a networked global hegemony with a block-based regional hegemony. The US shifted from pursuing order construction to pursuing territorial expansion and spheres of influence.

Even though his reset stemmed from the "rightward turn" in American domestic politics, this transformation also brought risks of international upheaval. Europe is now facing the challenge of becoming once again an autonomous power in terms of strategy and security. Medium-sized powers, disillusioned with the collective security promises made by hegemonic nations, are turning to developing their own nuclear weapons to ensure their security.

In this transitional gap of hegemonic reset, the "Global South" will play a greater role in shaping the multipolar world order. China must also reflect on issues of stability and rules in a multipolar world.

This piece was first published on

Beijing Cultural Review

文化纵横, I am presenting the article with the kind permission of both the editor and the author.

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Below is the full article:

Rebooting the Hegemonic “Operating System”: Understanding Foreign Policy in the Trump 2.0 Era

Since Trump began his second term, American foreign policy has undergone major shifts: demanding territory from allies like Canada and Denmark, openly interfering in European allies' elections, significantly easing US-Russia relations, threatening to cut off military aid to Ukraine unless it surrenders key mineral rights, dismantling important political and social infiltration tools like USAID, and more. American academic circles are alarmed, claiming that America is destroying its own hegemonic order and "abandoning the world it created." Trump is indeed "dismantling," but with the purpose of "rebooting." The maintenance and operation of American hegemony relies on an "operating system"—a community of elites who identify with its core hegemonic concepts and logic. The liberal elite community established by the United States after World War II has been both a vital support for its global hegemony and, through bidirectional interaction, has constrained America's foreign policy agenda. The Trump 2.0 administration, operating from current great power strategic competition needs, is abandoning the Cold War-style liberal elite community to establish a new right-wing elite community, aiming to reset the hegemony's "operating system" and shape a new form of hegemony. This new hegemony's core concepts celebrate physical power, "spheres of influence," and "great power deals," disregarding conceptual order-building, and aiming to replace the web-like global hegemony based on soft ideology with a block-like regional hegemony based on hard spheres of influence.

Resetting the Hegemonic "Operating System"

The operation of hegemony is similar to a computer: it requires "hardware" based on military force projection networks, currency settlement systems, oil pricing rights, and global geopolitical nodes; "software" consisting of comprehensive, regional, and domain-specific international organizations and mechanisms; and an "operating system" to adapt and control both hardware and software. This "operating system" is the core conceptual logic of how hegemony is constructed and operated, as well as the elite community shaped through cognitive implantation, value inculcation, and interest association that identifies with and maintains these core concepts and logic.

For example, the maintenance of the transatlantic alliance depends not only on material foundations represented by 80,000 American troops and 31 permanent military bases, but even more on a community network woven and reinforced by common ideological tenets, mutually penetrating political processes, dense financial transactions, and even family ties among elites in political, business, intelligence, academic, and media circles. Only when this elite community network holds power across the geographical space from Alaska to the Black Sea can the "operating system" of the transatlantic alliance be established, allowing the massive NATO military asset "hardware" and various ideological foundations and NGO "software" to operate normally.

The transatlantic elite community was America's tool for winning the Cold War. After World War II, the United States comprehensively reformed the intelligence agencies of defeated and occupied countries including Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Greece, and fully penetrated and controlled Western European media, academia, labor unions, and artistic circles, aiming to control each country's political processes, suppress and eliminate Soviet bloc influence, and cultivate the hegemonic position of liberal values. For Eastern European countries, the US actively supported Poland's Solidarity, Hungary's Charter 77 movement, and anti-government organizations in Czechoslovakia, Romania, and other countries, using Radio Free Europe and student exchange programs to implement social penetration. After the Cold War, the United States continued to promote "democratic transition" in Eastern European countries through the 1989 Support for East European Democracy Act (SEED), USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy, and its affiliated organizations. To this day, nearly 50 Eastern European NGOs openly receive funding from the National Endowment for Democracy and its affiliated organizations.

On the other hand, this penetration, interference, and control were not one-sided. The elite community was an important tool for America to control Europe and win the Cold War; conversely, it allowed European elites to infiltrate American political processes through America's sponge-like, loose, and porous pluralistic political structure. They used the liberal ideology exported by America to feed back into America's political and social ecosystem, used universal value narratives to set and bind America's foreign policy agenda, and shaped their own national interests and concerns into American national interests and policies. In transatlantic interactions, although America has always been the controlling and dominant party, it had to maintain a relatively respectful and affectionate approach, using self-restraint and international institutional regulation to enhance the legitimacy of its hegemony, "embedding" power in international institutions and "socializing" it into international norms. This constitutes the basic characteristics of the so-called "rules-based international order."

The most famous example of bidirectional influence came after the Cold War, when some American strategists, represented by George Kennan, opposed NATO's eastward expansion. However, under the advocacy of Eastern European-American political elites like former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and senior Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, and enticed by Eastern European voters and lobbying groups with crucial influence on elections, the United States ultimately set in motion the domino effect of NATO's eastward expansion. The transatlantic elite community also jointly funded and engineered a series of "color revolutions" in the post-Soviet space. The new Ukraine crisis, which has dragged on for three years, is merely the culmination of this series of geopolitical and ideological processes. In a sense, the period from the fall of the Berlin Wall to February 24, 2022, could be viewed as the final phase of the Cold War.

When the new right-wing ideology took power in the United States through the Trump administration in January 2025, the transatlantic liberal elite community lost its backbone. In the view of Trump and his supporters, first, this elite community had become a network of cronyism and a slush fund for the "Democratic left's" misappropriation of public resources, with the cost of making America pay for Europe's security and inexplicable anti-Russian sentiment, even exposing America to the risk of direct conflict with another nuclear power. Compared to the liberal ideology skilled at creating vain illusions, Trump clearly prefers "real interests" like territory, spheres of influence, critical minerals, and tariffs. For strategists in the Trump 2.0 team who inherited the realist tradition, America's primary strategic goal is "to promote the prosperity and economic security of the American people, rather than continuing to fund wars around the world."

Second, this operating system's Cold War genes have made it unsuitable for current great power strategic competition needs. The ideological combination of liberal individualism, abundant market economy, and universal democratic values was only applicable to the Soviet-Eastern European bloc suffering from material scarcity under planned economies in the 1980s and had little impact on China, the biggest beneficiary of globalization and the largest engine of global growth.

Finally, Trump and his core team members are unwilling to accept the "institutional regulation" and "self-restraint" of "liberal hegemony," and even less willing to please the liberal elite community. Thus, we have seen the Trump administration completely dismantle USAID and 83% of its aid programs, pulling the rug out from under institutions and organizations that carry liberal elite values; simultaneously, they have almost abandoned diplomatic language, treating allied relationships as one would treat vassals and servants.

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski's life experience is the best footnote to the fate of the transatlantic liberal elite community. Sikorski led a school strike in his hometown high school in 1981, went to study in the UK the same year, applied for political asylum the following year, and later became a British citizen. After graduating from Oxford University, he became a journalist reporting from Afghanistan, Angola, and East Germany. After 1989, he returned to Poland, becoming Deputy Minister of Defense in 1992 (at just 29 years old) and Deputy Foreign Minister in 1998, actively working for Poland's accession to NATO. From 2002 to 2005, he was a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative, during which he actively supported Ukraine's "Orange Revolution." In 2005, he became Poland's Defense Minister, and from 2007 to 2014, he again served as Foreign Minister, signing an agreement with the United States in 2008 to establish a missile defense base in Poland. From 2015 to 2018, he was a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Harvard University's Center for European Studies. On September 27, 2022, after the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, Sikorski posted a photo of gas leaking after the pipeline explosion on Twitter with the caption, "Thank you, USA." In 2023, he again became Poland's Foreign Minister. Sikorski married American journalist Anne Applebaum in 1992, who later became a renowned scholar on Soviet famine and concentration camp history and is now a member of the National Endowment for Democracy board. The careers of the Sikorski couple almost represent the development history of the transatlantic liberal elite community since the late Cold War.

On March 9, 2025, after Sikorski questioned on X (formerly Twitter) Musk's threats to cut off Ukraine's Starlink service, Musk called him a "little man" who should "shut up," while Secretary of State Rubio accused him "making things up" and ordered him to "say thank you." This public humiliation and contempt demonstrates the impending abandonment of liberal elites.

Core Logic of the New Hegemonic "Operating System"

The Trump 2.0 administration is indeed dismantling the core conceptual logic of America's global hegemony since World War II and reshaping the "operating system," but this does not equate to abandoning American hegemony itself. Abandoning old goals, old methods, and old institutions does not mean abandoning penetration, interference, and control over allies and other countries. Although the United States will inevitably adjust its global military deployment, it will not abandon the military bases, stationed troops, and alliance systems that serve as the material foundation and fulcrum of hegemony, but instead will reinstall the "operating system" to make the "hardware" serve new goals. At the same time, reinstalling the "operating system" can also match new tools and "software" for external control and interference.

Diplomacy is an extension of domestic politics. The system reset of the American hegemonic system stems from major changes in the political climate of the United States and Western countries. Trump's 2024 election victory and the surprising rise of new right-wing parties in the European Parliament elections mark the entry of both sides of the Atlantic into a new right-wing political cycle. American new right-wing forces represented by Musk have financed right-wing political movements in at least 18 countries in various ways, forming a multi-layered transnational interference network covering government officials, ruling parties, opposition parties, media, and non-governmental organizations. On one hand, they support incumbent new right-wing leaders and ruling parties to consolidate power and suppress political opponents; on the other hand, they actively support new right-wing opposition parties in multiple countries to gain power.

The essence of this regime interference is consistent with Cold War-style liberal penetration and interference. Ultimately, both aim to install compliant and easily controllable people, replace the liberal elite community with a new right-wing elite community, and refresh and reset the hegemonic "operating system." Only after completing this "system reset" in the core regions of Europe and the Western Hemisphere can the United States gradually push this new hegemonic system globally.

What are the core conceptual logics of the new hegemonic "operating system"?

The new hegemonic "operating system" celebrates actual physical power and disregards conceptual order-building. Trump's remarks on territorial expansion, critical minerals, and important seaports reflect his 19th-century view of power: only physical assets like territory, military power, resources, colonies, and ports are the sources of national power and prestige. In contrast, investments in so-called institutional power, soft power, structural power, and global governance are wasteful or even self-harming. This explains why Trump aims to consolidate regional hegemony through direct control of key geopolitical nodes rather than relying on traditional ally networks, and why he insists on "withdrawing from groups," quickly exiting the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization. From this most basic, most primitive physical power view, one can also infer that his understanding of international order is likely social Darwinian, inevitably leaning toward "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" (Thucydides). This view of power and order indicates that the United States is beginning to completely abandon its post-World War II foreign strategy, shifting from pursuing order construction to pursuing territorial expansion and spheres of influence.

The new hegemonic "operating system" aims to replace the web-like global hegemony based on ideology with a block-like regional hegemony based on spheres of influence. Trump has torn away the veil of formal equality between the hegemon and its allies, openly abandoning the post-WWII principle of inviolability of sovereign territory, denying the autonomy and independence of small and medium-sized countries, viewing global governance as transactions of interests between great powers, and seeing the international pattern as divided among major powers and their spheres of influence. In other words, countries are either great powers or within a great power's sphere of influence—middle grounds and autonomous actors, even if they exist, are irrelevant. The Trump administration does not recognize that Ukraine and Europe have equal voice with the US and Russia in negotiations, hoping that through pressure, Europe will bear the main burden of peacekeeping and collective defense, and Ukraine will accept peace terms offered by the US and cede enormous mineral interests to America. To some extent, he views the resolution of the Ukraine crisis and even the reconstruction of the European security order as a grand bargain between the US and Russia to redraw "spheres of influence."

An important goal of the new hegemonic "operating system" is to strengthen absolute control and exploitation of the ally system. To enhance strategic competition, the Trump team will further strengthen integration and control over allies. They will force allies to increase defense spending to relieve the US burden in collective security, while extorting and squeezing allies to cede more practical interests, forcing them to submit to the US on manufacturing supply chain layout, tariffs, and border control issues—not only serving as America's backyard economically and technologically but also aligning ideologically with America's new right wing.

In the short term, the main targets of the Trump administration's regime change and ideological penetration will be allies. Trump and his core advisors lack the messianic complex to transform non-Western civilizations and ideologies, and the Kantian illusion that "democratic countries are eternally peaceful." Ideology is merely a tool to facilitate control over other countries, not the goal itself. Therefore, establishing NGOs in non-Western countries and promoting "color revolutions" is clearly not the main objective during the Trump 2.0 period. Even if Trump needs to interfere with regimes in small non-Western countries, he is likely to rely more on right-wing and populist forces.

Hegemonic Transformation and International Changes

The reset of America's hegemonic "operating system" will have various impacts on the international order. For example, based on the core logic of great power spheres of influence, will Trump exchange accepting Russia's sphere of influence in Ukraine and Eastern Europe for Russia's acceptance of his expansion in the Arctic, Greenland, Canada, or even the entire Western Hemisphere? Will historical territorial recovery movements, pan-nationalism, and neo-Nazi ideological trends resurge as historical countercurrents? If the Ukraine crisis ends with a "peace arranged by great powers," will this disillusion some medium-sized powers about the collective security promises made by hegemonic powers, causing them to develop their own nuclear weapons for security? Polish President Tusk has already publicly stated, "We must pursue the most advanced capabilities, including nuclear weapons and modern unconventional weapons." Poland is likely not the only country with such calculations.

For Europe, the biggest challenge is how to truly become a strategically and security-autonomous power again, rather than a "normative power" that defines its interests and actions through values under the security umbrella provided by the hegemon. The EU should leave the warm "post-Cold War amniotic fluid" that initially nurtured it, moving toward independence shakily but firmly, no longer fantasizing about returning to being an ally in the US-led "rules-based international order" four years later, but seriously considering how to counter US interference in European internal affairs and avoid becoming a complete vassal under the new right-wing hegemonic system.

America's shift toward regional expansion and integration, setting aside the goal of transforming non-Western civilizations, is beneficial for the stable development of non-Western countries in Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and other regions, and for the revival of non-Western civilizational paths. As the world's multipolarization and de-Westernization trends become increasingly clear, besides observing the evolution of the US and its alliance system, we must consider the stability and rules of a multipolar world. As Director Wang Yi pointed out: "A multipolar pattern cannot be a state of disorder. Without rules, someone who was at the dining table yesterday might be on the menu tomorrow. Great powers must resolutely abandon inconsistency between words and actions and zero-sum games." Reality is not a simple return to history; today's world is not 19th-century Europe. The future multipolar order will certainly not be a replay of the 19th-century European great power multipolar hegemonic pattern. This new multipolarity no longer consists of only traditional Western powers; multiple emerging non-Western economies and the rising "Global South" will play greater roles. The rules of this multipolar order certainly cannot be "great powers dividing spheres of influence," "jungle states," and "survival of the fittest." Humanity stands at a historical crossroads. Only by transcending selfishness and protectionism, breaking the hegemonic thinking of certain countries that consider themselves supreme, and building a world of lasting peace, universal security, common prosperity, openness and inclusiveness, and cleanliness and beauty, can we find the right path to guide the development direction of major global changes.