So much for the end of history. Twenty-seven years to the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall heralded the collapse of communism in Europe, Donald Trump’s election as US president endangers the liberal international order that his wiser, broader-minded predecessors crafted.

Trump’s “America First,” anti-“globalist” agenda threatens protectionist trade wars, a worldwide ‘clash of civilizations,’ the peace in Europe and East Asia, and further violence in the Middle East. His nativist and authoritarian views also undermine the shared values, faith in liberal democracy, and assumption of benign American hegemony on which the rules-based international system depends. Already in relative decline, the United States is now poised for an angry retreat from the world.

Optimists hope that Trump didn’t mean what he said during the election campaign; that he will surround himself with seasoned internationalist advisers; and that his wilder instincts will be tempered by the checks and balances of the US political system. Let’s hope so. But nothing in his temperament suggests as much. And with Republicans retaining control over both the Senate and the House of Representatives, Trump will have a freer rein than most presidents. That is especially true in trade and foreign policy, where US presidents enjoy much greater discretion—and where the damage he could do is potentially huge and enduring.

Start with trade. Globalisation had already stalled in recent years. Now Trump threatens to throw it into reverse. At the very least, his victory kills off the faint hopes of concluding the two jumbo trade deals that Barack Obama’s administration had been negotiating: the completed but unratified Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with 11 Pacific countries, and the stalled Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the European Union.

Trump has also pledged to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico. Worse, he wants to slap tariffs on Chinese imports, which would doubtless provoke a trade war. He has even spoken of pulling out of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the multilateral rules-based trading system.

Such an agenda would not only threaten a global recession. It would also tempt regions to split into rival trading blocs—a worrying prospect for a post-Brexit Britain seemingly intent on tearing itself away from the European Union to go it alone. In Asia, the collapse of the TPP, from which the Obama administration unwisely excluded China, paves the way for the Chinese to build their own trading bloc.

Trump’s victory threatens East Asia’s security as well as its economy. By retreating from free trade and casting doubt on US security guarantees for its allies, he could prompt Japan, South Korea, and others to race to acquire nuclear weapons to protect themselves against a rising China. The Philippines is unlikely to be the last country in the region to conclude that cozying up to China is a better bet than relying on an increasingly isolationist America.

Trump’s victory also undermines Europe’s security. His admiration for Vladimir Putin, Russia’s authoritarian leader, is alarming. Putin laments the break-up of the Soviet Union, wants to recreate a Russian sphere of influence in the country’s neighborhood and has already invaded Georgia and Ukraine. Trump’s suggestion that his commitment to defending NATO allies is conditional invites Putin to go further.

The Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, NATO members that were once part of the Soviet empire and have substantial Russian minorities, are most at risk. While a common external threat ought to drive the EU to increase defense spending and deepen its security cooperation, EU-skeptic, austerity-hit European voters may have little appetite for this. Indeed, many European governments seem tempted to seek to appease Putin, rather than stand up to him.

Trump’s outright racism, hostility to Hispanic immigrants, and Islamophobic rhetoric threatens a culture clash—and even violence—within America. It could also set the stage for the ‘clash of civilizations’ of which the late Samuel Huntington warned. Bullying Mexico to try to force it to pay for the huge border wall that Trump wants to erect would be an act of hostility against all Latinos. Casting Muslims as enemies—and denying them entry to America, as he vowed during his campaign—would be a powerful recruiting sergeant for the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, as is suggesting that the US ought to seize Iraq’s oilfields for itself.

Perhaps the most enduring damage will be to America’s soft power and the appeal of its liberal democracy. The election of a racist president with fascist tendencies is an indictment of America’s political system. Trump himself has shown himself to be contemptuous of democracy, saying he would not accept the election result if he lost and threatening to jail his opponent. Chinese officials will not be alone in thinking that a system where lies, hatred, and ignorance trump sober deliberation is defective. America is no longer the ‘shining city upon the hill’ that successive presidents have proclaimed it to be.

Anti-establishment insurgents now have the wind in their sails. In the wake of the financial crisis and wrenching economic change, many voters have understandably lost faith in Western elites, who seem incompetent, corrupt, and out of touch. They also, wrongly, blame immigrants for their problems and feel threatened by social liberalism. In the absence of positive alternatives to a deeply flawed status quo, the risk of an even greater backlash is high. Unlikely as polls now suggest it is, Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front may well win France’s presidential election next May. That would deal a hammer blow to the euro, the EU, and the West.

Liberal internationalists cannot afford to be complacent. Trump’s victory is a disaster—and it can get much worse than this. We need to defend our open, liberal societies and offer positive changes to win back anxious voters.

Regardless of who wins today’s US presidential election, migration and border security will continue to be central policy issues for America and Americans. The border security policy dialogue in the US, like that in Australia, is deeply polarised. Worse still, finding compromises—let alone solutions to those polarised perspectives—is challenged by irreconcilable ideological perspectives on border security.

Those who hold such deep-set ideological perspectives—on both the secure and humanist ends of the paradigm—often selectively interpret specific incidents as universal truths. One migrant committing a murder certainly doesn’t make all migrants murders or criminals. Such flawed arguments serve to further complicate the challenge of US border and homeland security.

In the face of this polarised debate, ASPI’s Border Security program is today releasing its Strategy report, ‘America’s ‘Maginot Line: a study of static border security in an age of agile and innovative threats’, which critically explores the US contemporary border security experience.

While the paper provides a detailed analysis of the US border construct and its post-modern political challenges, in substance it tells a story of simplistic responses to complexity. Rather than just being a tale of a particularly complex homeland or national security context, the story can serve countries from Europe to Asia as an exemplar of the evolution of border security.

For the most part, US border security remains an operational activity, focused on creating a physical control barrier: a geographical barrier between a nation and those who might do it ill. The physical barrier is selectively permeable, based on, at best, flawed risk assumptions, and at worst, on xenophobic judgements.

The selective permeability of borders needn’t be a controversial challenge if the logic that underpins it engages with the changing nature of threat and risk. By way of example, assumptions about risk involving travellers with European passports need to be revisited in the light of recent attacks in France, Belgium and Germany.

What’s clear is that despite the organisational integration of border security under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security, US border security isn’t being managed strategically. Even when facing a range of post-9/11 challenges, the integration of border security was never going to be an easy task, given America’s federal model of government and governance. For starters, solving the strategic challenge involves entities far from the national capital.

While the federal government and its agencies must play a major role in protecting the border from major incursions, the day-to-day management of the border is also an issue for the states that lie on those borders. This requires a great deal of political will and effort.

The key assumption underpinning the operational management of border security in the US is that all harms can somehow be stopped or controlled through the control of individual border crossings or transactions. Unfortunately, the globalised nature of contemporary Western economies means that this operational approach no longer delivers consistent, effective or efficient border security. A change in US border security strategy is desperately needed but seems unlikely to materialise for the time being.

The US and Canada have enjoyed great success in creating a joint border continuum to the north, and that has brought economic benefits on both sides of the border. Unfortunately, the US concept of a border continuum that creates new policy options and defence in depth hasn’t materialised elsewhere.

We argue that border of the future should be a strategically-managed continuum in which disruption capabilities are focused upon by concise intelligence-based risk assessments. That doesn’t mean that all of the existing operational activities and border control measures are redundant. However, this US case study reveals that simplistic border processes are no longer sufficient in the face of amorphous threats. Put simply, neither a regulatory nor a literal wall will provide border security if it isn’t integrated with a number of other mechanisms and measures.

US border security is a story of complexity, but the answer to complexity isn’t strategic or operational isolationism. Rather, it’s strategically managing borders through a focus on disrupting threats while facilitating trade.

In both the US and Australian border security environments, there’s no shortage of new ideas and technology. Unfortunately, for the US there’s a dearth of cohesive overarching border security strategy and architecture. Such a strategy—risk based and intelligence led—is desperately needed to avoid unnecessary, inefficient and ineffective spending of public funds. One area that requires significant and timely intervention is land, air and sea domain awareness that’s integrated into a strategic border security lens.

In times of economic, international and domestic security uncertainty, immigration and border security are likely to continue to be headline issues for many national governments. Governments need to provide security and create a sense of confidence and trust in border security among their citizens. Unfortunately, the measures that provide populations with assurances often don’t have a substantive impact on security, but on perceptions.

For those on both sides of US politics, working out what policy success looks like in the coming months will be central to any meaningful change in meeting both border security and migration challenges.

The Asia–Pacific’s digital potential offers enormous development and trade opportunities that, if effectively harnessed, will benefit the economies of Australia and the United States. Indeed, the region’s increasing importance to the economic and strategic interests of both countries meant that examining the region’s cybersecurity was an obvious choice for the opening session of the inaugural Australia–US Cyber Security Dialogue in Washington DC last month.

Connectivity rates in the Asia–Pacific are soaring, growing at 12% last year. But about half the region still isn’t connected to the internet, providing a huge reservoir of people who are yet to take advantage of the benefits of digital commerce and development. The region’s economies continue to grow, with an average GDP growth rate of 5.4% in 2016, which is driving the region’s connectivity to broader international economic security. However, in some cases, the rapid proliferation of networks isn’t being matched by the necessary regulatory frameworks, governance structures and individual and corporate savviness to adequately meet cybersecurity challenges.

As a result, there are regional disparities between digital tigers such as South Korea, Japan and Singapore, and less developed states such as Laos and Bangladesh. That unevenness has created cybercrime hotspots in permissible regulatory environments, such as the Philippines, and protectionist barriers to trade in over-regulated economies, such as China. So while regional connectivity promises prosperity, it can also complicate security and trade flows.

That unevenness also reflects the geopolitical realities of the Asia–Pacific. The region’s power struggles are evident in cyberspace, as major powers compete to exploit the domain’s benefits, and jostle to influence emerging countries as they come online. China is making waves in cyberspace. Its government is investing heavily in baseline ICT infrastructure across the region, condoning or overlooking cybercrime operations from within its borders, and leveraging cyberspace as a tool for information operations, such as those conducted in July at Vietnamese airports in relation to the South China Sea disputes.

As China pursues its strategic interests through cyberspace, so too does the US. At the recent ASEAN Summit in Laos, President Obama and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter reinforced the US commitment to the rebalance towards Asia and its central security role in the Asia–Pacific. The US views cyberspace as an important mechanism by which to maintain its regional influence, and it’s investing in both the defensive and offensive capabilities of US Cyber Command, accordingly. The ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership by the US will also serve to strengthen trade and supporting regional economic growth in this area. The US and China have demonstrated some promising moves towards compromise with the September agreement on state-sponsored intellectual property theft. However, their visions for the future of cyberspace remain incompatible.

With the US as its central security partner and China as its top two-way trading partner, Australia has an interest in stabilising the region’s digital landscape. The historic alliance relationship, underpinned by shared values and a mutual interest in Asia–Pacific stability, make Canberra and Washington natural partners in ensuring that the online world is governed my appropriate rules and norms.

In this complex strategic environment, Australia and the US must develop a nuanced and coordinated approach to regional cybersecurity.  There’s value in standing shoulder-to-shoulder to defend the future of a free, secure and reliable cyberspace. However, the inherently unstable nature of contemporary cybersecurity means that unnecessary confrontation is best avoided in favour of strategic nudges and moderate moves to influence the online behaviour of revisionist states such as China and Russia.

While military cooperation between Australia and the US is an important element of the bilateral relationship, cybersecurity is a whole-of-government issue and must be addressed holistically. To avoid a narrow and reactive military approach to cybersecurity issues and to facilitate more preventative and proactive cyber diplomacy, Australia and the US should move beyond focusing on incident response measures. We need to work together to build capacity, develop international norms of online behaviour and establish confidence building methods in the Asia–Pacific. Australia and the US should also strive to be role models for the region, exemplifying best practice in cybersecurity policy and awareness at home.

Australia–US cyber cooperation in the region must also include partnerships with the private sector. In many cases, private sector companies have established links to government-owned enterprises in the region that can serve to increase cyber maturity. There’s also scope to improve and further capitalise on the intelligence sharing capacity of companies, modernising international and cross-sectoral threat sharing mechanisms to foster a detailed conversation.

The first session of the US–Australia Cyber Dialogue cemented the importance of bilateral cyber cooperation in the Asia–Pacific, highlighted the significant benefits and risks on the table as we pursue regional cyber stability, and underscored the key role of public-private partnership in this effort. The fast-changing and dynamic nature of cybersecurity in the Asia–Pacific will ensure that these issues remain a focus of the Australia-US Cyber Security Dialogue for years to come.

One hundred years ago, in October 1916, the German submarine U 53 made an unannounced visit to Newport, Rhode Island. After sailing, the U-Boat proceeded into international waters to intercept and sink a number of merchant ships in sight of the coast. Conducted according to the ‘stop and search’ requirements of customary international law, there was no loss of life, as passengers and crew were allowed to leave before their ships were sunk. Nevertheless, the attacks were a stark demonstration to both the Americans and the Allies of the oceanic reach of Germany’s new submarines.

That seemed at the time to have been a propaganda victory for the Germans but, in both frightening and alerting the United States, may have been a misguided initiative. The decision to attack merchant shipping without warning may have been Germany’s most significant error during the World War I, as arguably nothing but the deaths of its nationals in torpedoed ships could have brought the United States into the war.

There were other effects of the unrestricted campaigns of 1915 and 1917 that had profound consequences on Germany’s ability to wage war. The initial effort, which began in February 1915 was conceived fundamentally as a campaign of terror, in the hope that neutral merchant ships and Allied merchant seaman would be too frightened to enter the declared war zone around the British Isles. The only economic motive was the concern of German shipping interests that their share of the global carriage trade was being captured by the British, prospectively shutting them out from the revival of commerce that would follow a negotiated peace.

Despite the Allies’ deficiencies in anti-submarine warfare and shipping management, the German Navy didn’t have the numbers to make the first campaign work—there were only two U-Boats at sea in the ‘sink at sight’ area on the day it was declared. This reflected the lack of rational calculation that marked so much of the German effort. Terror was no more effective at sea than it proved to be from the air with the Zeppelin raids.

What the German Navy—and German shipowners—also missed was that global trade with Germany had been reviving rapidly by the end of 1914 and the Allied blockade proved less than effective. The British always feared that the Netherlands would be the likely conduit for illicit business with Germany and, while that country remained an important entrepôt, Scandinavia had begun to play an important role. American commercial interests were active as they sought to exploit the windfall profits that could be made. The truth was, however, that British businesses were also deeply involved. That had several causes. One was certainly the placement of profit before patriotism, occasionally to the point of outright treason, but there were other reasons. A healthy national economy, partly financed by the adversary’s hard currency, would have a better ability to sustain the expenses of war than one that didn’t have the stimulus of the additional trade. That was the reason why Napoleon created the ‘Continental System’—specifically to prevent British commerce with Europe. It took bitter internal debate before authorities such as the Board of Trade recognised that industrial war in the twentieth century required a different approach.

The U-Boat campaign had three effects, which combined to undermine the German position. First and directly, it was an ‘own goal’ in that the German submarines unknowingly sank cargoes whose final destination would otherwise have been Germany. Second, the German initiative allowed the Allies to go much further in the imposition of a blockade than international law allowed (or the Americans wanted) with the justification of reprisal. The reality that ‘the British are thieves but the Germans are murderers’ kept the US from reacting too strongly to such limitations on its commerce. Third, and perhaps most important, although it’s a point rarely made by historians, the submarine attacks and the Allied reprisals first restricted and then removed the Germans from the business world of the US. The Allies would always be better positioned to exploit the Americans’ industrial strength and their increasing ability to provide financial support, but the indirect trade with Germany that was being developed through neutral nations was on a scale—and could have become even larger—that would have ensured that significant elements in Wall Street had an interest in supporting the Germans. That would have created an obstacle to US entry to the war on the Allied side.

It’s true that the German campaign of 1917 had more economic calculations behind it than 1915, with the idea that a sustained effort by the U-Boats could sink sufficient tonnage in six months to make it impossible for an import-dependent Britain to feed itself. But those calculations were gravely flawed, as was demonstrated when the Allies were able to compensate for their staggering losses by much more effective management of their remaining tonnage, their repair and shipbuilding effort and their ports and storage ashore. The introduction of convoy was an important operational contribution, but only a part of a national and allied effort that showed how the democracies were much more effective than the ramshackle Imperial German state.

We spend much time thinking of the ‘war of territory’ that was waged on the Western and Eastern Fronts. The fact is, as U 53’s visit to Newport provided an uncomfortable reminder, the ‘war of supply’ mattered just as much between 1914 and 1918.

Last month, 50 former national security officials who had served at high levels in Republican administrations from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush published a letter saying they wouldn’t vote for their party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump. In their words, ‘a President must be disciplined, control emotions, and act only after reflection and careful deliberation.’ Simply put, ‘Trump lacks the temperament to be President.’

In the terminology of modern leadership theory, Trump is deficient in emotional intelligence—the self-mastery, discipline, and empathic capacity that allows leaders to channel their personal passions and attract others. Contrary to the view that feelings interfere with thinking, emotional intelligence—which includes two major components, mastery of the self and outreach to others—suggests that the ability to understand and regulate emotions can make overall thinking more effective.

While the concept is modern, the idea isn’t new. Practical people have long understood its importance in leadership. In the 1930s, former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a crusty old veteran of the American Civil War, was taken to meet Franklin D. Roosevelt, a fellow Harvard graduate but one who hadn’t been a distinguished student. Asked later about his impressions of the new president, Holmes famously quipped: ‘second-class intellect; first-class temperament.’ Most historians would agree that Roosevelt’s success as a leader rested more on his emotional than his analytical IQ.

Psychologists have tried to measure intelligence for more than a century. General IQ tests measure such dimensions of intelligence as verbal comprehension and perceptual reasoning, but IQ scores predict only about 10 to 20% of variation in life success. The 80% that remains unexplained is the product of hundreds of factors playing out over time. Emotional intelligence is one of them.

Some experts argue that emotional intelligence is twice as important as technical or cognitive skills. Others suggest it plays a more modest role. Moreover, psychologists differ about how the two dimensions of emotional intelligence—self-control and empathy—relate to each other. Bill Clinton, for example, scored low on the first but high on the second. Nonetheless, they agree that emotional intelligence is an important component of leadership. Richard Nixon probably had a higher IQ than Roosevelt, but much lower emotional intelligence.

Leaders use emotional intelligence to manage their ‘charisma’ or personal magnetism across changing contexts. We all present ourselves to others in a variety of ways in order to manage the impressions we make: for example, we ‘dress for success.’ Politicians, too, ‘dress’ differently for different audiences. Ronald Reagan’s staff was famous for its effectiveness in managing impressions. Even a tough general like George Patton used to practice his scowl in front of a mirror.

Successful management of personal impressions requires some of the same emotional discipline and skill possessed by good actors. Acting and leadership have a great deal in common. Both combine self-control with the ability to project. Reagan’s prior experience as a Hollywood actor served him well in this regard, and Roosevelt was a consummate actor as well. Despite his pain and difficulty in moving on his polio-crippled legs, FDR maintained a smiling exterior, and was careful to avoid being photographed in the wheelchair he used.

Humans, like other primate groups, focus their attention on the leader. Whether CEOs and presidents realise it or not, the signals they convey are always closely watched. Emotional intelligence involves awareness and control of such signals, and the self-discipline that prevents personal psychological needs from distorting policy. Nixon, for example, could strategise effectively on foreign policy; but he was less able to manage the personal insecurities that caused him to create an ‘enemies list’ and eventually led to his downfall.

Trump has some of the skills of emotional intelligence. He’s an actor whose experience hosting a reality-television show enabled him to dominate the crowded Republican primary field and attract considerable media attention. Dressing for the occasion in his signature red baseball cap with the slogan ‘Make America Great Again,’ he appeared to have gamed the system with a winning strategy of using ‘politically incorrect’ statements to focus attention on himself and gain enormous free publicity.

But Trump has proven deficient in terms of self-control, leaving him unable to move toward the centre for the general election. Likewise, he’s failed to display the discipline needed to master the details of foreign policy, with the result that, unlike Nixon, he comes across as naive about world affairs.

Trump has a reputation as a bully in interactions with peers, but that isn’t bad per se. As the Stanford psychologist Roderick Kramer has pointed out, President Lyndon Johnson was a bully, and many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have a bullying style. But Kramer calls such figures bullies with a vision that inspires others to want to follow them.

And Trump’s narcissism has led him to overreact, often counter-productively, to criticism and affronts. For example, he became embroiled in a dispute with an American Muslim couple whose son, a US soldier, was killed in Iraq, and in a petty feud with Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, after Trump felt slighted. In such cases, Trump stepped on his own message.

It is this deficiency in his emotional intelligence that has cost Trump the support of some of the most distinguished foreign policy experts in his party and in the country. In their words, ‘he is unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood. He does not encourage conflicting views. He lacks self-control and acts impetuously. He cannot tolerate criticism.’ Or, as Holmes might say, Trump has been disqualified by his second-class temperament.