Guest Essay: Western Civilization Will Never Be the Same After Trump. Leonard A. Schuette, a fellow in the Europe Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and John Guida, an editor in Times Opinion, discuss the foreign policy shifts of Trump 2.0. Schuette argues that President Trump and "New Right" intellectuals have transformed America's global role, guided by a strategy he calls "civilizationism." This approach structures the world into spheres of influence defined by civilizations, with hegemons like the United States and China dominating their regions and pursuing peaceful coexistence rather than global leadership.

In a conversation, Schuette explains that civilizationism rejects traditional schools of primacy and liberal internationalism, and differs from restraint by advocating military dominance over the Western Hemisphere. It envisions a multipolar order run by great powers—the U.S., China, Russia, India, perhaps Turkey—that claim to represent ancient civilizations and should dominate their respective spaces.

Schuette notes that while both major U.S. parties long shared a consensus on global leadership, the New Right defines Western civilization not by creedal ideas like democracy or human rights, but by inherited characteristics such as ancestry, religion, language, and territory. This marks a striking departure from postwar foreign policy.