As an erratic president imposes his international doctrine, countries are forging more stable alliances. His US will be weaker, not stronger, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik

One of the ways in which Donald Trump’s regime obscures and distracts is by drawing our eyes constantly to the US – its raw power to intimidate and bully other nations, and its vast financial heft in wielding soft power through organisations such as USAid.

But at the same time as Trump projects his agenda on to the world stage, he is withdrawing the US from the world and reducing its role to its bare bones – an imperial power that blatantly picks and chooses how to engage based on its alliances and interests. American taxpayer money is ever so precious on the one hand, but on the other can be profligately spent on proposals to take over an entire territory in Gaza and send billions in aid to Israel. This is not isolationism, it is unilateralism.

In doing so, the US, despite its domination of the headlines, is withdrawing from a world from which it has been receding for a long time as a moral, military and economic force into selective engagement. The arc of that recession is wide. It was “the end of history” in the early 90s, when the end of the cold war was predicted to herald a new world in which liberal capitalist values dominated under globalisation and free trade, and democracy flourished as the Soviet Union and its autocracies across eastern Europe collapsed. But in the three decades since, the US expanded then caved in on itself.

  • themeatbridge
    67•1 day ago

    God, people really need to stop thinking this.

    TRUMP. WILL. NOT. REGRET. ANYTHING!

    He does not have the capacity to reflect on his own actions and recognize the effects of his own incompetence. There will be no cathartic moment of divine justice where he looks at the camera, realizes all his problems are his own fault, moments before being comically obliterated by an ironically appropriate karma.

    Movies and religion have warped our minds, because when we imagine justice, our lizard brains are satiated. The only justice that exists in this world is wrought from dedication, vigilance, and the iron will to stand up for what is right.

    • @pulsewidth
      1•2 hours ago

      I agree with the sentiment that Trump is incapable of self-reflection. But I doubt that the writer of the article wrote the headline - that’s usually the editor’s job I think.

      The writer didn’t mention him regretting or reflecting on anything once in the article. So the anger in your comment seems a bit misplaced.

      The writer is one of those people standing up for what’s right - she’s pointing out some of the lasting damage being done behind the scenes and out of the scope of the average person’s awareness.

    • Bahnd Rollard
      31•1 day ago

      He also likely wont live long enough to see it. This is why old rulers are so short sighted, they know they wont have to live through the consequences of their actions.

      • @[email protected]
        11•1 day ago

        Trump is out for revenge. Whether it’s his or the Soviets.

        He doesn’t want America to exist. He wants us all to suffer just for being born here, the way we’ve done to so many other countries and peoples.

  • @FMT99
    70•1 day ago

    I doubt Trump gives a damn what happens to the US so long as he can profit in the short term.

    • @jimmy90
      1•10 hours ago

      and his partners (Putin, et al) profit too

      • @FMT99
        2•4 hours ago

        Fair, although I don’t think he gives a damn about them either.

    • @[email protected]
      23•1 day ago

      This is the right answer. People think that the people ruling the US now care about the country.

      They don’t.

  • Diplomjodler
    33•1 day ago

    Putin and Xi will like the result very much, though.

    • datendefekt
      15•1 day ago

      This. A weak USA, preoccupied with infighting, can only help them.

  • Tasty SaganakiEnglish
    19•1 day ago

    For those of us who aren’t asleep, we know how bad things are. We know Trump and Musk and their goons are concerned only for amassing more of their own personal wealth and power at the obvious expense of everyone and everything else. News opinion pieces like this both give me a sense of sanity and not feeling alone, but also simultaneously depress/frustrate the hell out of me because it feels somewhat hopeless as the levers of power and information, from branches of government to news media, capitulate in various ways. Personally I think a general strike seems logical, but I have no idea how one would be organized in a country like the US with such an overall weak organized labor movement- though admittedly one that seems very active right now. However, I’ll always remain an optimist and believe a better world is possible.