President-elect Donald Trump will have to lead a fractured America through a fractured world. These two challenges go hand in hand. If the United States wants to succeed abroad, it must first get its own house in order. The stable and effective model of American statecraft that much of the world hopes Washington can offer will emerge only if the nation can overcome its current division and dysfunction. Good politics requires good politics; Effective governance at home is the foundation of purposeful statecraft abroad. Washington should direct that statecraft toward ending conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, safeguarding the global trading system, and adapting the international order to the current diffusion of power.

Strength begins at home

Trump’s top priority should be domestic economic and political renewal. America’s comeback begins with rebuilding the country’s middle class, which in turn will improve the polarization and division that weakens the country. In fact, both Republicans and Democrats have pledged to get American workers back on their feet, using tariffs and industrial policies to revive the country’s manufacturing base. During the campaign, Trump promised to make the country a “manufacturing powerhouse.”

But in an era of digitalization and automation, the scale of manufacturing change orchestrated by tariffs and industrial policy will not come close to what would be required to return a broad swath of American workers to the middle class. Instead, the U.S. government needs to work with the private sector to chart a course that allows Americans to enjoy gainful employment even as automated production, artificial intelligence (AI), and other technologies evolve. Education reforms and better retraining programs can help ensure that Americans are prepared for the jobs of the future. The public sector should work with the private sector to create an education and employment ecosystem fit for the digital age. Much of this effort should focus on creating and filling high-paying jobs in the service sector, where most Americans will work.

Trump will also have to be frank with the American people about the nation’s dangerously high debt. The costs of financing this growing debt will increasingly crowd out resources available for education, infrastructure, defense, research and other important expenditures. The Social Security system is on the path to insolvency in about ten years.

If the United States wants to get its fiscal house in order, there is no alternative but to close the structural gap between spending and revenue. With spending poised to increase, the road ahead involves finding new sources of revenue, such as imposing tariffs, raising taxes, reducing tax loopholes and fraud, and raising the retirement age. Failure to do so would leave the nation in fiscal distress and irresponsibly place the burden of growing debt on future generations.

Finally, Trump needs to work with Congress to reform the country’s broken immigration system. The influx of immigrants across the country’s southern border has been a major source of both polarization and electoral discontent. It is time to pass legislation that secures the border, establishes an orderly and streamlined system for processing legal immigration, and establishes a humane path to resolving the status of millions of undocumented immigrants.

A world of challenges

Efforts to shore up the economic and political foundations of American democracy must begin now, but will take years to bear fruit. In the meantime, Trump should focus on four foreign policy priorities.

Stimulate diplomacy to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. Washington should orchestrate diplomatic efforts to stop Russia’s war against Ukraine. Neither Russia nor Ukraine have the means to achieve military victory; This war will inevitably end at the negotiating table. To stop the death and destruction and avoid what could become a broader war, allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) should seek to mediate a ceasefire. An end to the fighting would allow the remaining 80 percent of Ukraine, which is under kyiv’s control, to focus on becoming a stable, prosperous democracy capable of defending itself in the long term. Given that Ukraine has faced nearly three years of relentless aggression from a much larger neighbor, that outcome would be considered a success by any reasonable standard. When the fighting ends, the United States and its allies should continue to provide military and economic support to Ukraine, giving it the ability to deter and defeat any further attacks of Russian aggression. The West should also work to restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity using economic, diplomatic and political tools, including by making the Kremlin pay a price for its occupation, however long it lasts.

To be sure, Russia’s own willingness to negotiate and adhere to a ceasefire is highly uncertain. But it’s worth testing the waters. Whatever Russian President Vladimir Putin’s delusions were when this brutal invasion began, after almost three years of limited battlefield gains at exceptionally high cost, even he now has to understand that negotiations are a matter of when, not of itself. If Moscow rejects an offer to reduce tension, at least then it would be clear that Russia has no interest in peace. Such clarity would help maintain the current international coalition in support of Ukraine and could win Ukraine the support of more countries in the Global South, many of which have so far refused to take sides.

Galvanize peace and humanitarian efforts in the Middle East. Even as fighting continues between Israel and the “axis of resistance,” Washington should work with Israel, the Palestinian Authority, willing partners in the Middle East, and European allies to end the violence and prepare for the “day after.” An immediate priority is to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip and devise a plan to rebuild and govern the territory. Trump should also appreciate that crises provide opportunities; The new strategic and political realities in the region open the possibility of advancing the cause of stable peace. Washington should press the parties to generate a road map that will eventually lead to Palestinian self-determination and normalization of relations between Israel and its neighbors.

Safeguard the global trading system. The United States and its allies must continue to take steps to improve their economic security, including “friending” supply chains and safeguarding critical technologies. However, Washington should not allow risk reduction to turn into decoupling and fragmentation of the global economy. Protective tariffs play well politically, but too much economic nationalism risks triggering trade wars that could dismantle a globalized international market, with disastrous effects around the world. Trump should not repeat the mistake the United States made in 1930, when the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act triggered the fracture of the global economy and the collapse of international trade.

Forge a new international order. Trump needs to start moving toward a new global order that is fit for purpose in the changing world of the 21st century. Power is shifting from West to East and North to South, sparking geopolitical ferment as competition for position, status and influence intensifies. However, a globalized and interdependent world cannot afford to slide towards growing rivalry and fracture. Avoiding great power war, averting a climate crisis, preventing nuclear proliferation, regulating artificial intelligence and other new technologies, and promoting global health: these and other challenges will require sustained cooperation across ideological and geopolitical fault lines.

Washington should start by partnering with its traditional allies to build a vision of a new international order, but ultimately will have to work with a wide range of countries to achieve global acceptance. That acceptance is essential to ensuring one of Trump’s main foreign policy goals: getting other countries to shoulder their fair share of the burden of providing public goods. The UN Security Council and other international institutions need to be reformed to give more influence to the Global South. The United States and China will need to complement competition with a significant degree of collaboration if they are to avoid fracturing the international system into competing blocs. As power diffuses around the world in the coming decades, no power or region will enjoy ideological or material dominance. The next order, if it emerges, will necessarily be based on political pluralism and ideological diversity. Managing that world will require a level of collective leadership that is currently in dangerously short supply.

While in prison in 1930, the beginning of a fateful decade, the Italian political theorist and activist Antonio Gramsci wrote: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; “In this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” The world is now in a Gramscian interregnum: the old order is eroding and a variety of morbid symptoms are appearing.

It is time to begin generating a new order, one capable of promoting peace and prosperity in a world of multiple power centers and competing ideologies. Liberal democracy may prevail as history progresses, but the world’s democracies must first put their houses in order if they are to anchor the transition to a new order and ensure they can overcome the illiberal and autocratic alternatives currently on offer. .