Donald Trump’s bruising return to the White House has sent many longtime foreign allies scrambling to get their distance, and according to a new piece from The Atlantic, that distance will last long after Trump is gone.
Trump’s second term as president has been marked by notable and widespread disrespect toward nations once seen as close U.S. allies. Between his attempts to level massive tariffs against nearly every nation in the world and his frequent breaches of diplomatic norms, Trump has created a hostile global environment in which allies no longer feel safe trusting in the stability of the U.S.
In a new piece for The Atlantic on Tuesday, staff writer Vivian Salama argued that this new dynamic, in which the nations of the world are working to establish a safe distance from the U.S., is bound to become the new normal for years to come, even after Trump leaves office and is potentially replaced by a more traditional, dependable administration.
This is permanent. Trump has shown that the idea the US is stable and orderly is a lie. Instead, he got away with an attempted coup (albeit the coup itself didn’t succeed), and has upended US foreign policy and relations without any restraint by congress and minimal restraint by the clearly partisan supreme court. He has shown that the US governmental system and constitution is far weaker than anyone could have believed.
Trump will be gone in a couple of years, but he has revealed that the US is always just one vote away from another capricious lunatic as president who can do a lot of damage in a short amount of time. There is also no guarantee that there won’t be another attempted coup in 2 years time without legal consequence should the republicans not like losing the White House. Countries can’t rely on the word of the US now. Even if the next president is reasonable and tries to restore the old order, the damage is done and countries are going to be hedging their bets, always thinking “but what happens when the next Trump comes along?”.
The big loser is the US - countries deferred to US wishes in many things and allowed US businesses access to their markets, in no small part because it was seen as an exchange for the peace and security the US hegemony provided.
The only fix to restore confidence would be serious reform in the US and it is very clear that is not going to happen. Congress is permanently divided between 2 parties that hold up the status quo in the US. There is no realistic prospect of constitutional reform, with no party likely to get a 2/3rds majority, and even if they did get a majority it is clear there is no real political understanding in the US about the actual problems it is facing.
That is assuming Republicans lose the White House.
I’m pretty sure social media is going to rig the election for Vance. Not illegally, but just by tipping the algorithms everyone is now addicted to, and by flooding the zone with LLM spam.