For Foreign Policy Nerds

fitch® · 2025-06-25T03:25:37.723Z

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/dispensable-nation-schake Message was edited by: fitch®

Re: For Foreign Policy Nerds

gosmitty

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Re: For Foreign Policy Nerds

Jun 25, 2025, 1:01 AM

Good article. I like how it ended. I especially like the quote where he says America under Trump will become too brutal to love but too irrelevant to fear.

The self-destruction of American power in the Trump years is likely to puzzle future historians. During the post–Cold War era, the United States achieved unprecedented dominance, and maintaining it was relatively easy and inexpensive. All of Trump’s predecessors in that period made errors, some of which significantly reduced U.S. influence, aided the country’s adversaries, and limited Washington’s ability to induce cooperation or compliance on the part of other countries. But none of those predecessors intended such outcomes. Trump, on the other hand, wants a world in which the United States, although still rich and powerful, no longer actively shapes the global order to its advantage. He would prefer to lead a country that is feared rather than loved. But his approach is unlikely to foster either emotion. If it stays on the path Trump has started down, the United States risks becoming too brutal to love but too irrelevant to fear.

In the years to come, the alliances it took decades to foster will begin to wither, and U.S. rivals will waste no time in leaping to exploit the resulting vacuum. Some of Washington’s partners may wait for a while, hoping that their American friends will come to their senses and try to reestablish something akin to the traditional U.S. leadership role. But there is no going all the way back; their faith and trust have been irreparably damaged. And they won’t wait long, even for an American return to form that would amount to less than a full restoration. Soon, they will move on—and so will the rest of the world.

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I havent read the article but that clip reads true.

There may be a course correction but never a return to what was. I would suspect that Trump’s foreign policy approach would have previously been considered unthinkable by a U.S. President. Now our long term allies can’t delude themselves. Yes, Trump isn’t America, but we see every day millions of Americans high fiving each other when Trump mocks European leaders to their faces, belittles Ukraine, cozies up to Russia, talks about his good relationship with Lukashanko or Un.

Europe knows it can’t ALWAYS trust America now, so they have to do something else. We mock them as an administration. We chat about how we loath them on private Signal chats at the highest level of government. And those people are celebrated for this rhetoric by a segment of our country.