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Isn’t Just Trump. America’s Whole Reputation Is Shot.

It Isn’t Just Trump. America’s Whole Reputation Is Shot.
March 13, 2025 /DNYUZ

Many years ago, I asked a friend who had been hired as a senior foreign policy official what he’d learned in government that he didn’t know beforehand. He replied: “I used to think policy-making was 75 percent about relationships. Now I realize it’s 95 percent about relationships.”

It’s very hard to do big things alone. So competent leaders and nations rely on relationships built on shared values, shared history and shared trust. They construct coalitions to take on the big challenges of the age, including the biggest: whether the 21st century is going to be a Chinese century or another American century.

In that contest the Chinese have many advantages, but until recently America had the decisive one — we had more friends around the world. Unfortunately, over the last month and a half, America has smashed a lot of those relationships to smithereens.

President Trump does not seem to notice or care that if you betray people, or jerk them around, they will revile you. Over the last few weeks, the Europeans have gone from shock to bewilderment to revulsion. This period was for them what 9/11 was for us — the stripping away of illusions, the exposure of an existential threat. The Europeans have realized that America, the nation they thought was their friend, is actually a rogue superpower.

In Canada and Mexico you now win popularity by treating America as your foe. Over the next few years, I predict, Trump will cut a deal with China, doing to Taiwan some version of what he has already done to Ukraine — betray the little guy to suck up to the big guy. Nations across Asia will come to the same conclusion the Europeans have already reached: America is a Judas.

This is not just a Trump problem; America’s whole reputation is shot. I don’t care if Abraham Lincoln himself walked into the White House in 2029, no foreign leader can responsibly trust a nation that is perpetually four years away from electing another authoritarian nihilist.

So what’s going to happen?

NATO is over. Joe Biden spent four years defending the postwar liberal order. That order grew out of a specific historical experience: Isolationism after World War I led to the horrors of World War II; internationalism after World War II led to 80 years of superpower peace. You tell that narrative to the younger generations and many look at you as if you’re talking about the 14th century. The postwar order was a historic accomplishment, but it was a product of its time, and we are not going back to it. It does no good to try to revive the ghost of Dean Acheson; we have to think of a new global architecture.

The West is (temporarily) over. What we call “the West” is a centuries-long conversation — Socrates searching for truth, Rembrandt embodying compassion, Locke developing enlightenment liberalism, Francis Bacon pioneering the scientific method. This is our heritage. For all of our history America understood itself as the culmination of the great Western project. The idea of the West was reified in all the alliances and exchanges between Europe and North America.

But the category “the West” does not seem to be in Donald Trump’s head. Trump is cutting America off from its spiritual and intellectual roots. He has completed the project that Jesse Jackson started in 1987 when he and a bunch of progressive activists at Stanford chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go.”

The new civilizational struggle is between hard and soft. Don’t overthink this. Trump is not playing four-dimensional chess and trying to pry Russia from its alliance with China. American foreign policy is now oriented to whatever gets Trump’s hormones surging. He has a lifelong thing for manly virility. In the MAGA mind, Vladimir Putin codes as hard; Western Europe codes as soft. Elon Musk codes as hard; U.S.A.I.D. codes as soft. WWE is hard; universities are soft. Struggles for dominance are hard; alliances are soft.

Europe will either revive or become a museum. It’s possible Europe will become a low-fertility, low-innovation, slow-growth vacation destination for the world. But Europeans know that this is their moment to cut the security cord with America and revive their own might. Germany is increasing its borrowing capacity so it can build weapons. The former Italian prime minister Mario Draghi jolted the continent by arguing that market fragmentation was killing innovation in tech. Many conservatives are convinced that Europe is too secular and decadent to ever recover. Maybe. But Germany is a serious nation. France has an unsurpassed Civil Service. History has shown that the British people can be trusted when times are hard.

A new age of nuclear proliferation. As America withdraws its security umbrella, nations around the world, from Poland to even Japan, will conclude that they need nuclear weapons. What could go wrong?

China will fill the gap. As America betrays its friends, China will seek to make them. China’s special representative for European affairs to the E.U. recently called the Trump administration’s treatment of Europe “appalling.” He continued: “I believe European friends should reflect on this and compare the Trump administration’s policies with those of the Chinese government. In doing so, they will see that China’s diplomatic approach emphasizes peace, friendship, good will and win-win cooperation.”

This kind of plea will fall on skeptical ears, but the reality is that when they are faced with two rogue superpowers — China and America — nations across Europe, Asia and Africa will have to hedge their bets and play both sides.

A global culture war. For years, the World Values Survey has shown that Western Europe and the blue parts of American are drifting toward a hyper-individualistic, postmodern culture that is farther and farther away from the more traditional communal cultures in other parts of the globe. That was bound eventually to produce political rifts. One of the reasons MAGA conservatives admire Putin is that they see him as an ally against their ultimate enemy — the ethnic studies program at Columbia.

A return to national greatness. History is not over. As the historian Robert Kagan points out, America oscillates between periods of isolationism and interventionism. We also oscillate between individualism and communitarianism, cynicism and idealism, secularism and religiosity, irrational pessimism and irrational optimism. We are now on the extreme edge of the former of all those polarities.

Trumpian incompetence will provoke a counterreaction, which will prove to be an opportunity and rebirth. When that happens people will be ready to hear the truth that Trump will never understand — that when you turn America into a vast extortion machine, you will get some short-term wins as weaker powers bend to your gangsterism, but you will burn the relationships, at home and abroad, that are actually the source of America’s long-term might.

The post It Isn’t Just Trump. America’s Whole Reputation Is Shot. appeared first on New York Times.
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WalksWith · 56-60, F
Did you write this? Very well written!

The worst betrayal, (in my life anyway) Is when a long, long friendship is betrayed by one of the parties in it, is a betrayal worse than death. Personally, I will always side with the innocent party. In this case Canada, Mexico, Europe...

What America used to be, this 'super power' is over, there is no ifs, ands, or buts about it. We are not a beacon of Democracy, (if we ever were), it feel as if we lured people from around the world to live here only to betray them when it was convenient and politically used them as props.

When the US was attacked on 9/11, most of the other countries came to our aid. Hell, they even fought with us in a useless, unwindable war against a country that wasn't even involved in the attack, because that is what loyalty is. that's what friendship is. Now, well...this country has taken on the persona of a bully, stupid, hateful country with nothing to offer.

This post is so accurate, so well written that (maybe) the stupids will learn something!

Thank you,

Walks
@WalksWith The wider the audience the better!
@OldBrit Your last paragraph—especially your last sentence sums up my thoughts as well.

And that scares me—that the narcissistic ego of one wannabe tyrant could be the end of the human race.
walabby · M
@OldBrit NATO minus the US should definitely be able to hold the current Russia. Russia plus Ukraine would be a different story. People should be under no illusions about whether Ukrainians would join Russia should they lose. The propaganda of the evil West abandoning Ukraine plus the gun to the heads of family would do it for most people...
We live in interesting times...
ArishMell · 70-79, M
A very well reasoned and written essay painting a very stark view of what is happening.

For much of the 20C, but especially after WW2 and throughout the Cold War with the USSR, the USA was seen as the foundation-stone of resistance to the aim the Communist bloc proudly touted, of world domination.

At the same time the Communists powers' propaganda departments wittered about American "hegemony" and "imperialism" - but despite their sheer hypocrisy those allegations had a whiff of truth. The US was very much determined to push its culture onto everyone else in return for taking over their industries and even traditions.


Recent events, although marred by appallingly low standards of diplomacy by some senior US politicians, have showed the European nations - nearly thirty of them - had perhaps become rather complacent about NATO and the US military umbrella.

I think that complacency understandable for these reasons in roughly chronological order:

- The end of the Vietnam War, and after Chairman Mao Tse-Tung's death the apparently-friendly new-look People's Republic of China under Chou En-Lai's Presidency. A nice warm dragon with whom we could trade.

- The collapse of the USSR and consequent release of its erstwhile E. European captive-countries back to their own people.

- The initial years of the Russian Federation suggesting a new, cuddlier Russian bear; before Vladimir Putin could really stamp his growing stranglehold on his own citizenry and try to regain something of the old order. Although under different ideology, at heart Mr. Putin is still the KGB Liaison Officer to the Stasi.

- Focus moving from the Communist threat to a much looser, ill-defined collection of dictatorships, groups and movements under an unholy mess of personal power and hard-line Islamism. The threat of warfare changed, from formal military units slugging it out across Europe (unfortuately with many civilians caught between them) to essentially the formal military fighting guerillas, and in rather remote countries and societies difficult for most Europeans and Americans to comprehend. Guerillas and terrorists are basically armed civilians who do not greatly care about their fellow-civilians among whom they reside and hide.

- For many Europeans, a seemingly unstoppable drift of immigrants fleeing tyrannies and internecine wars; as well as droughts and famines. This has led to a widespread rise in the appeal of hard-line political ideologies, mainly Right but some Left wing as well, encouraged by an accompanying feeling that democracy is all very well but not addressing the peoples' problems.

...

What of the Dragon?

The United States of America had become the world's richest nation, and still is.

The People's Republic of China is now second-richest (The EU as a bloc is probably third, but it is not a "nation") and wants top be Number One.

Can it be? Frankly, yes!

China and Russia are somewhat uneasy allies but both, plus Iran, North Korea and one or two others, have a vested interest in demoralising, dividing and diminishing "The West"; and physically, Russia and North Korea have already been waging war on Europe and the USA by Internet-based subversion, interference and sabotage. Russia is also known for by sabotaging property in or between some European countries, such as breaking undersea electricity and telecommunications cables.

Even when acting legally (if rather shadily), China has been slowly gaining more and more economic power both at home and around the world: buying ports, mines and whole manufacturing companies; by its "Belt Road" iniative - though that may have slowed.

China has considerable skill and patience but also an advantage not enjoyed by democratic nations, of stable governments running a ruthless, calculated system, so it can plan years ahead. Democratic, multi-Party nations wobble from general-election to general-election, often changing ideology each time or forming wooly coalitions; so coupled with a natural desire not to control everyone too much, long-term planning is very difficult.


Though I for one would far rather live in the latter atmosphere than under the sort of ruthless regime espoused by China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and their tyrannical ilk!


Essentially, the world is not in good shape. Tyranny riding high. Democracy undermined even from within; divisions marked by rancour that is often depressingly childish; authoritarianism seen by many people as good even in lands where you'd expect a very real fear of it.

All this even before we consider such matters as increasing resources-depletion, climate-change (which Trump denies for reasons that are really quite obvious), increasing population and the ever-present hazard of epidemics and pandemics.

A very unsettling outlook indeed, maybe not in my life but for the latter half of the 21C.




.
@ArishMell Yes—remember what we are fighting for isn’t only our future but the future of our children and grandchildren.
TheShanachie · 61-69, M
A lot of permanent damages done
This comment is hidden. Show Comment
EXACTLY WHAT I HAVE BEEN SAYING
Or tRUMP first = America betrayed
This truth will upset his brainwashed cult. Of them, the few that can read at the level this was written, will instigate a backlash of hate—and that, in fact, is confirmation of it’s “TRUTH
FreddieUK · 70-79, M
@KunsanVeteran Indeed it will upset them...in fact as you pointed out elsewhere, this will be declared an illegal opinion very soon.
World dominance is like your second amendment right - and everyone hates the dominator, but pretends to serve it!
Penny · 46-50, F
oh yeah, friends who take all your jobs. take your gifts and squander them... pit you against their foes.. nice try. and better than having a reputation as a pushover country with concealed leadership.
WalksWith · 56-60, F
@WalksWith is that why you support funding the Azov Battalion?
@sunsporter1649
sunsporter1649 · 70-79, M
oldguy73 · 70-79, M

 
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