Trump and the Global Post-Universalist Shift
05.02.2025
By Valikhan Tuleshov
It seems increasingly evident to me that Donald Trump, by virtue of his background and temperament, emerged as a key initiator of the active phase of global deconstruction. This phase has primarily affected religious, ethical, and political-ideological dimensions, along with the value systems built upon them. More than a political disruption, Trump’s rise marked a deeper, structural unraveling of the global order. In many ways, he acted as a *catalyst* for a far-reaching reconfiguration of established global coordinates.
Trump’s ascent to power in 2016 can be viewed as a historical *bifurcation point*—a moment when several foundational pillars began to fragment:
- Religious Consensus: His administration amplified Christian fundamentalist rhetoric within the United States, undermining the globalist vision of interfaith tolerance and weakening the universality of liberal religious ethics.
- Ethical Standards: In public policy and discourse, conventional norms—decency, honesty, and principled leadership—gave way to a “post-ethical” ethos, where loyalty and efficiency were elevated above values.
- The Political-Ideological Core of Pax Americana: International alliances and liberal institutions, long considered the backbone of global stability, were increasingly portrayed as burdens rather than assets.
In Trump, we witnessed a convergence of political neo-realism, populism, and digital affective politics, which enabled a direct and visible delegitimization of liberal universalism and the Western civilizational narrative. His presidency did not merely disturb the architecture of the liberal world order—it activated latent processes of civilizational self-definition that had long been suppressed under the weight of globalist assumptions.
What followed was a profound transformation in the global structure:
1. The End of Universalism:
By emphasizing the exceptionalism and greatness of America, Trump shattered the postmodern myth of a single, universal global order based on democracy, human rights, and free markets. In doing so, he opened space for the *normalization of difference*—the idea that civilizations could define their own paths without adhering to a dominant universal paradigm.
2. The Rise of Civilizational Multi-Vectorality:
- The West is gravitating back toward forms of "sovereign realism," as Europe balances uneasily between U.S. leadership and Eastern alternatives.
- The East—with China, India, and Türkiye—advances its own projects of historical subjectivity and geopolitical agency.
- The Global South—Africa and Latin America—has begun to step out of its passive role, asserting alternative values and development models.
- The Turkic world, or what may be called the Trans-Caspian or “Middle” Civilization, is increasingly acting as an inter-civilizational project in its own right.
3. The Emergence of Geo-Ontology:
A new philosophical structure is forming—what I call *Geo-ontology*. In this paradigm, the world is not merely a geopolitical battleground, but a mosaic of civilizational projects, each of which defines itself through its own ontological narratives: its conceptions of humanity, the state, time, and the future.
4. From Unipolarity to Poly-Civilizationality:
The world is no longer unipolar or merely multipolar. We are entering an age of poly-civilizationality—a plurality of autonomous civilizational projects that compete not necessarily through military or economic confrontation, but through their distinct developmental logics and philosophical visions.
In essence, Donald Trump’s presidency marked the beginning of a post-universalist turn in global history. The liberal-hegemonic world order is giving way to a decentralized, networked architecture of civilizational self-determination. The implications of this transformation are profound—and in upcoming writings, I will explore these emerging civilizational trajectories in greater detail.
