MAGA isn’t dying, it’s going global | Imran Khalid

It is tempting to treat the debate as exclusively domestic. But that misses half the story, because MAGA's foreign-policy legacy is reverberating across capitals from Brussels to Beijing.

With Trump’s second entry into the Oval Office, MAGA transformed overnight from insurgent political rhetoric to the operative architecture of American policymaking. So  the question is not whether MAGA survives, but how deeply its practices will reshape global diplomacy.

Even before his second term, MAGA-style populism had struck U.S. foreign policy as political trauma. Its critics judged Trump’s blunt nationalism and transactional instincts as irresponsible, immature and destabilizing.

But the underlying critique went deeper. It was about legitimacy. A populist challenged the structures underpinning the post-World War II international order.

In response, some in the foreign-policy establishment rallied around “normalization." They sought to re-anchor the U.S. in traditional alliances and restore it as a reliable hegemon. That framing cast MAGA as a temporary rupture.

Treating populism purely as a glitch overlooks that MAGA’s foreign policy orientation follows a coherent logic rooted in nationalism. The “America first” doctrine embodies a broader rejection of multilateralism.

Trump has repeatedly questioned core assumptions such as the relevance of NATO and the value of collective burdens. He has demanded that allies shoulder more of the military burden, and they are listening.

At this year's NATO summit in The Hague, member states committed to ramping up defense and security-related spending to 5% of their gross national product by 2035, a sharp increase from the long-held 2% defense benchmark.

Across geographies, Trump’s diplomacy remains deeply personalistic. He frequently bypasses bureaucracies and treats bilateral relations as relationships between individuals, from world leaders to business tycoons, rather than institutional engagements. That style, often referred to as “champion diplomacy,” has weakened intra-alliance coordination and signaled to adversaries that American commitments could shift dramatically with each new administration.

Trans-Atlantic trust remains, but allies are bolstering their capabilities, modernizing arsenals and preparing contingency strategies not as backup but as independent pillars of security.

In Asia, especially in the Indo-Pacific, MAGA’s nationalist, transactional approach to diplomacy has fueled hedging strategies. Countries such as Australia, India, Japan and South Korea, once confident in long-term U.S. commitment, are now stress-testing every American promise, from extended deterrence to military cooperation frameworks.

Even if a post-MAGA administration later restores rhetorical warmth, the perception of alliances as burdens rather than guarantees has shifted strategic calculations.

This is not just a U.S. story. MAGA did not emerge in a vacuum. It is part of a larger wave of populism reshaping global governance. Recent scholarship on populist nationalism and global cooperation warns that the worldwide surge of such politics is weakening multilateral frameworks, recalibrating alliances and injecting volatility into the norms of international cooperation.

Looking forward, the evolution of MAGA-style populism might take several paths, each with profound global implications.

First, even if Trump recedes, his brand of populism could be inherited by others, either domestically or abroad, in a more disciplined or ideologically broader form. In that scenario, the underlying commitment to national interest over multilateralism could remain, especially in trade, security and alliances.

Second, foreign-policy elites may succeed in re-anchoring U.S. engagement in traditional alliances -- not a full rollback to pre-populist norms, but a recalibrated and transactional multilateralism where cooperation remains but only when aligned with national interest.

Third, MAGA’s model could become embedded more deeply in global governance as other countries adopt similar leadership styles: populist nationalism, personalist leadership and transactional diplomacy. That would pose serious risks to international cooperation across areas such as climate change and collective security.

What matters now is not the fate of a U.S. political brand. It is whether the structural legacy of MAGA endures through policies, institutions, habits of governance and global alliances. If that view persists, the post-MAGA world may be less about retrenchment and more about reordering.