The Blob Gazes into the Abyss

Nils Gilman reviews Mathew Burrows and Joseph Braml’s “World to Come: The Return of Trump and the End of the Old Order.”

By Nils GilmanMay 15, 2025

• Politics

SINCE 1997, timed for the start of each new US presidential term, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) has produced its Global Trends report. Designed to serve as a foundational analytic framework for incoming administrations, these unclassified quadrennial surveys aim to offer panoramic assessments of long-term technological, economic, and geopolitical forces; identify key uncertainties; and sketch potential future scenarios for the next 15 to 25 years.

These reports are peculiar artifacts of the American national security state. Rarely containing novel insights, their production involves tens of thousands of hours of painstaking global open-source data collection and synthesis. (Full disclosure: I have participated as a so-called subject matter expert in several of these efforts.) The final product represents a “consensus view”—a lowest common denominator—of the sprawling US intelligence apparatus. Shaped by bureaucratic imperatives and interagency sign-off, they thereby cannot, by nature, contain anything truly surprising. They embody the conventional wisdom, the baseline assumptions, the “Official Future” sanctioned by the mandarins of Langley and Foggy Bottom. (In every previous administration, the Global Trends report was issued within two months of the new administration’s inauguration, but as of early May 2025, the NIC has yet to issue its anticipated Global Trends 2050 report. If it is not released, this will in itself reflect the Trump administration’s repudiation of the postwar national security establishment.)

Yet, somewhat ironically, this very conventionality lends the Global Trends reports unique value. The conditions of their production produce a public baseline, a glimpse into the collective mind, or groupthink, of the American intelligence community. Tracing the evolution of these assessments across editions—the waxing and waning concerns over terrorism, recurrent unheeded warnings about technological risks, the steady rise of China and climate change as central anxieties—offers a fascinating window into the shifting priorities within the American deep state. During an era of effectively unparalleled US power following the Cold War (what Charles Krauthammer famously called the “unipolar moment”), these reports were often seen as rigorous, widely read representations of how Washington viewed the world. Unsurprisingly, some avid “customers” have been other countries’ intelligence agencies.

For much of their existence, the guiding hand behind these reports was Mathew Burrows, a Cambridge-trained historian who, under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, rose through the NIC ranks as a leading practitioner of “strategic foresight.” Now working outside government at the Stimson Center and the Atlantic Council, Burrows has teamed up with Josef Braml, a German political scientist and public intellectual steeped in the transatlantic policy world via his positions at the German Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, to produce World to Come: The Return of Trump and the End of the Old Order.

In form and ambition, World to Come strikingly resembles the NIC reports Burrows once oversaw. It surveys the global landscape, identifies major trends (great power rivalry, technological disruption, environmental stress), and assesses regional dynamics. Here, however, all of this is filtered through the lens of a hypothetical second Donald Trump presidency commencing in January 2025, two months before the book’s publication. (Whether it succeeds in accurately anticipating the significance and impact of that presidency is an inevitable litmus test for the value of such an exercise in the first place.)

Burrows and Braml are archetypal figures of the transatlantic foreign policy establishment—the networked elite sometimes derisively called “the Blob.” Indeed, they are typical apparatchiks within that ecosystem: individuals whose careers have involved prowling corridors of power and shaping discourse among diplomats, spooks, think tankers, military officials, national security journalists, and Georgetown hostesses. Their orientation faithfully reflects that elite community’s assumptions: internationalist, institutionalist, incrementalist. When such figures penned official documents like Global Trends reports, their pronouncements carried weight due to their bureaucratic perch. The NIC reports mattered not necessarily for predictive accuracy (often hit-or-miss) but because they represented the official apparatus’s considered judgment.

Without institutional imprimatur, however, a book of this nature must stand on different criteria: cogency of analysis, plausibility of scenarios, fundamental accuracy in assessing forces reshaping the global order. Unfortunately, World to Come is, like the reports from which it descends, short on genuine insight. Mainly, the book rehearses the assumptions and anxieties of a professional-managerial class that hasn’t grasped the death of its cherished liberal internationalist precepts.

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Composed just before and after the November 2024 US presidential election, World to Come paints a picture of a global order teetering, pushed towards fragmentation by Trump’s return. The authors posit Trump’s reelection more as a symbolic than an operational end point for the post–World War II liberal order. They correctly note this order’s erosion predated Trump, yet they frame him as the “final blow to liberal economic principles and the rules-based world order,” whose “unconventional worldview will influence global dynamics.” (Given such mild language, it’s unsurprising that the broader book fails to properly anticipate the scale or nature of the present rupture.)

As Burrows and Braml start getting into details, however, most of their analysis foresees a second Trump administration that more or less doubles down on his first term’s unilateralism. They anticipate aggressive protectionism (they expect tariffs of 10–20 percent on all imports, 50 percent on Chinese goods—but not the chaos that Trump in fact unleashed in April 2025), a “transactional approach” to alliances, scorn for international norms, and continued climate change rejectionism. They expect Trump will attempt to force an end to the Ukraine war, potentially leveraging Republican aid opposition and cutting a deal with Putin involving concessions on NATO membership and neutrality for Kyiv. While acknowledging Trump’s aversion to new wars, they worry that his actions could ignite broader conflict, perhaps via confrontation with Iran or through escalating economic pressure on China leading to a Taiwan crisis. More of the same from the first term, in short.

Beyond Trump’s actions, the authors sketch a world continuing a slow-and-steady slide toward multipolarity, with China, Russia, and India “rising” and “challenging the Western-centric global governance system established after the Second World War.” They highlight the growing West–Global South disconnect, exacerbated by declining Western aid, developing nations’ debt burdens, and the perceived hypocrisy of Western sanctions. Trump, they argue, is “unprepared for [this] multipolarity,” as he views the world in starkly binary terms (“for or against the United States”) and remains largely ignorant of or indifferent to the concerns of the Global South. While the balance of power may be shifting, no massive realignment appears on Burrows and Braml’s horizon. To them, “the West” (a term they use dozens of times) remains a category with coherent strategic and ethical meaning—a unified “pole” within an increasingly multipolar world.

In sum, although Burrows and Braml accurately catalog some of the disruptive elements associated with Trump’s approach to international affairs—the challenge to alliances, the embrace of protectionism, and the potential to destabilize geopolitics—they still hold on to the hope that Trump might be an anomaly, an admittedly dangerous maverick disrupting what remains a salvageable liberal order. “True leadership in our multipolar world,” they aver at the end,

involves addressing global issues, not just self-interest. The West must show it considers broader interests beyond its own to maintain influence. Isolating behind its own “democracy wall” and ignoring the wider world will hinder the spread of Western values and undermine our economic foundations.

They close with the dream that, after Trump, a new leader may emerge to reunify the United States and the West, implicitly suggesting the possibility of a return to a familiar, pre-Trumpian, Blob-friendly status quo ante.

What Burrows and Braml miss in describing the “shift to multipolarity” as gradual is that Trump isn’t merely a symptom of the old order’s decay, nor is he an incompetent steward of enduring American interests. He is a harbinger of a United States that sees its interests in terms radically different from those of institutionalists of the old regime—like Burrows and Braml themselves. Perhaps because they cannot imagine their own repudiation, they fail to see how Trump embodies a world-historical break from the norms, values, and assumptions that for decades have underpinned US leadership of “the West” and the global system more broadly. Their analysis details the potential damage Trump might inflict within the existing institutional framework yet never grasps that his renewed presidency signifies the collapse of that framework. They perceive Trump as an aberration, not the face of a new, harsher, post-liberal American reality. They see storm clouds but seem unable to conceive that the hurricane making landfall will permanently reshape the coastline.

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Foresight practitioners cannot afford sentimentality. Burrows and Braml admit that “Trump wants to break the old order,” but because they retain hope that the order they represent might be reparable, they remain gun-shy about facing the full implications of such a break. Failure to acknowledge hard truths about a leader’s intentions or unwillingness to think through implications is catastrophic for anticipation.

It is crucial, therefore, to speak directly to what Trump is and is not. An accurate assessment must begin, first, by recognizing Trumpism not merely as a temporary policy deviation but a fundamental, permanent repudiation of the entire postwar liberal project, domestically and internationally. Domestically, Trump harnessed and amplified a deep-seated populist revolt against decades of neoliberal and internationalist consensus. This consensus produced soaring inequality, hollowed out the US’s industrial base, and fostered a widespread sense that access to the American dream was rigged or out of reach for vast swaths of Americans. Trump’s feral genius lay in recognizing this widespread disillusionment and in appealing directly to those feeling left behind by globalization, whose plight they believed was ignored or mocked by “coastal elites.” His crude rhetoric and institutional vandalism appear to resonate with his political base because it channels their resentment toward a political and economic system they view as corrupt and unresponsive, and thus worthy only of being razed. As Nick Cohen has argued, “Trump’s true enemy isn’t China or Russia but liberal democracy.” While Burrows and Braml acknowledge Trump’s appeal to the disaffected, they frame it largely as skillful exploitation—when, in fact, it reflects a legitimate crisis of the liberal democratic model itself.

Second, it’s crucial to understand that despite its “America First” self-advertisement, Trump’s MAGA movement isn’t “nationalist” in the traditional understanding of the word. Much of its agenda transparently harms most US residents’ material interests: tariffs raise prices, slashed government services degrade the quality of life, and alienated allies make the world more dangerous. Rather, MAGA must be understood as the epicenter of a transnational far-right anti-liberalism that rejects the “Western values” Burrows and Braml presume do and should define statecraft on both sides of the Atlantic. The MAGA-fied GOP is deeply illiberal: it sees the other half of the country as an existential threat serious enough to warrant suspending habeas corpus and the rule of law, and even voting to prevent their return to power. It follows naturally that when the Trump administration looks abroad, it does not view the nation’s “traditional allies” as unitary actors. Instead, it sees them as countries riven by the same sort of factional politics as the United States: feckless multiculturalists versus manly reactionaries. This global movement sees its primary enemies in liberalism and progressivism wherever they appear, and allies not in countries with long-standing shared interests but in kindred political factions elsewhere, such as France’s National Rally or Hungary’s Fidesz. This is why the Trump administration makes no bones about injecting itself into these countries’ politics by explicitly supporting far-right parties, including Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD). What bonds these far-right parties is a reactionary hatred of liberalism and modernity. It is a counterglobalism of the Right.

Third, this movement is in no way “conservative”; it is reactionary and revisionist. Just as FDR’s statist liberalism bore little resemblance to pre-1930s laissez-faire liberalism, so are Trump’s destructive ambitions radically different from the commitment to institutional continuity and stability that is usually a cornerstone of conservatism. The Blob reacts with horror at Trump’s decapitation strike against long-standing liberal foreign policy institutions (USAID, Voice of America, Wilson Center, etc.), wondering how Washington will eventually restore the interests and commitments those institutions represent. But Trump isn’t incrementally shifting consensus within the liberal internationalist foreign policy elite; he aims to tear out the old elite root and branch, and to replace it with an entirely different group of illiberal elites. For Trump, destroying these institutions ensures that the old liberal international order can never be reinstated, regardless of who eventually occupies the White House. He is succeeding.

Finally, it is also crucial to understand that Trump is far less animated by ideas or ideology than he is by interests and instincts. This explains both the on-again-off-again policy choices and why the playbook Trump has followed for his entire career is to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt. He knows that almost everybody else craves stability, clarity, and marginal change around the status quo. He knows that if he creates absolute chaos, it will be more uncomfortable and painful for everyone else than it is for him. And he knows that those people will pay an exorbitant price to restore even a modicum of coherence. It’s the most ruthless bargaining tactic available, and while it would be accurate to call it irresponsible and stupid from the point of view of traditional policymaking goals, it works according to its own axioms. And so he arbitrages that game again and again.

Only by grasping these fundamental truths about Trumpism’s political commitments can we accurately perceive that the geopolitical break he represents is far more severe than simply a “more transactional” foreign policy style. It’s not just that Trump threatens to incrementally lessen American contributions to international institutions or the provisioning of “public goods for everyone’s benefit,” as Burrows and Braml sententiously put it. For Trump, the very idea of “the public good” is namby-pamby liberal claptrap that serves as an excuse for giving stuff away for free. His hostility toward alliances like NATO, questioning of security commitments, and preference for bilateral deals over multilateral frameworks aren’t simply about adjusting burdens or renegotiating terms; they signify a fundamentally new value proposition for the United States’ global leadership. No deal will be honored unless Trump perceives immediate value. Ultimately, Trump sees the world as a global ghetto made up of freeloading “shithole” countries—and as its slumlord, he’ll be damned if he’s not going to collect the rent.

Where Burrows and Braml see Trump potentially forcing “concessions” through tariffs and threats, a more accurate view of Trump suggests far more permanent transformational effects. The idea that the United States under Trump might be the leading revisionist power, facially repudiating liberal democratic values while actively aligning the United States with other anti-liberal countries like Russia, seems scarcely to occur to Burrows and Braml. The result is a collection of observations that are tendentially correct but expressed with painful lack of urgency: “Europe should be prepared for a de-globalized world economy, and work towards being able to defend itself. […] Under commander-in-chief Trump, NATO and the US promise of protection to Europe can no longer be taken for granted.” When Burrows and Braml speak of a “relative decline of US dominance” or a gradual “shift from a unipolar, US-dominated world order to a multipolar one,” they fail to anticipate how Trump is triggering a far more rapid, disorderly dissolution of the postwar era’s entire normative and institutional order.

Burrow’s and Braml’s oft-cited “West” is now at an end: former allies now perceive the United States as fundamentally untrustworthy and unreliable. But even if Trump were replaced tomorrow by Dwight D. Eisenhower’s ghost, Western Europeans are extremely unlikely to revert to relying on the US security umbrella. As France’s Europe minister Benjamin Haddad told Politico just before the November election, “We cannot let the voters in Wisconsin decide on European security.” For the Europeans, this isn’t just about managing a more complex multipolar world; it’s also about navigating one where the sometime hegemon has gone rogue, and where they are menaced by both Russia and the US. If the security integration that for so long has eluded Europe finally does arrive, it will be spurred by the credible, enduring threat of a hostile United States.

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One might be tempted to let Burrows and Braml off the hook for failing to anticipate the degree of Trump’s disruptive force. This would be too forgiving. In the first place, these authors have enjoyed long and illustrious careers as prognosticators and strategists, so getting assessments like this correct is—ostensibly—their primary skill set. One might argue that their oversight was characteristic of many establishment liberals when it came to the threat posed by Trump’s illiberal and anti-democratic tendencies. True, concerning the Atlanticist liberal establishment. But hardly exculpatory for Burrows and Braml as analysts. Purporting to be in the anticipation business, they either couldn’t see or failed to properly assess the most game-changing transnational political transformation since the Cold War’s end. Any book titled World to Come should get, at the very least, its short-term anticipations right.

Moreover, Burrows and Braml aren’t merely suffering from a failure of imagination; they are guilty of not being able to see what was right in front of their noses. Sketching the shape of things to come shouldn’t have been hard, because almost everything the Trump administration has done so far was easily predictable, given that Trump and his surrogates openly proclaimed and published their plans. Again and again on the campaign trail, Trump signaled that his second term would be very different from his first. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, published in April 2023, telegraphed detailed policy plans, even as Trump’s campaign disavowal was in transparent bad faith, given that scores of former (and future) Trump administration officials helped to draft it. No one following world events has any excuse for being surprised by what Trump is doing (though many were), least of all two whose vocation is preventing strategic surprise.

What’s particularly odd about this failure of foresight is that, in other venues, Braml at least seems to have understood what Trump would mean. In 2016, Braml, one of Germany’s leading America-watchers (though little of his work has been translated into English), published Trump’s Amerika—auf Kosten der Freiheit (“Trump’s America—at the Cost of Freedom”), in which he warned that Trump was an “authoritarian” who posed a significant threat to American democratic norms, institutions, the rule of law, and potentially civil liberties. More recently, he has regularly described Trump as a “radical.” In one February 2024 interview with Munich’s Abendzeitung, Braml commented, “Trump sees Europe as the enemy […] He wants to divide Europe in order to better control its individual parts.” In another, that same month, he anticipated that, “under a possible Trump as Commander-in-Chief, NATO and the US promise of protection to Europe would no longer be worth much.” By February 2025, he was observing that Trump would “not only change law and order in America, but also the international world order. In the future, the rule of law will no longer prevail, but rather the power of the economically and militarily stronger.” He warned that Europeans “are militarily and economically dependent on the US and vulnerable to blackmail.”

Indeed, in 2023 Braml published a book urging Europe (and Germany in particular) to shed its “illusions” about the old transatlantic relationship. Given such observations, it’s a bit surprising that he and Burrows didn’t take the evidence available to them to carve out at least one scenario unpacking the kinds of worst-case possibilities that are now beginning to unfold.

Had Burrows and Braml taken more seriously the “radical” nature of the Trumpian break, they might also have been better able to consider how other countries are likely to react and reposition themselves—to name just how destabilizing the ideological collapse of the “West” is likely to be for the global order. Trump’s indifference to truth makes him utterly untrustworthy, and former allies that once criticized the United States for liberal hypocrisies now actively expect betrayal by an unashamed, rapacious far-right bully. But others aren’t likely to simply surrender. If erstwhile allies can no longer count on the US security umbrella, initiatives toward greater strategic autonomy become likely, including Europeans revisiting dormant joint nuclear deterrent plans, and Japan choosing to bring its strategic weapons capacity up from “the basement.” If the US Federal Reserve is seen as potentially weaponizing the dollar or destabilizing global finance for narrow domestic gain, the push for reserve currency alternatives will accelerate dramatically. If the United States maintains massive tariffs on countries all over the world, those countries will sooner or later decide to form new economic alliances that route around the US. If the Trumpian United States drops any pretense of working toward an energy transition, Europe and China may well come into closer alignment to create a “Green Entente.”

Burrows and Braml wishfully cling to the hope that a post-Trump course correction may return the United States, and thus “the West,” to Atlanticist values and the internationalist institutional commitments they represented. Unfortunately, the changes rapidly erupting from Trump’s second term—normalized illiberal politics, dismantled institutions, and, above all, eviscerated trust—are irreversible. Once trust disappears, it is fiendishly difficult to restore. Once a relatively impersonal, rules-based system is destroyed, it may be nearly impossible to rebuild. The world Burrows and Braml pray will be reborn after the “time of monsters” is, instead, being devoured by them. There’s no going back.