What impact will Donald Trump’s second coming have upon the world? The world is unpredictable. Trump is also unpredictable. His first presidency transformed the United States and the world. His second is likely to have a deeper impact.
“From this day on,” Trump said in his inaugural address, “the United States of America will be a free, sovereign and independent nation.” We are so used to such expressions of self-pity from him and those around him that they have (almost) ceased to startle. Yet he is speaking of the world’s most powerful country, which has been at the forefront of innovation for one and a half centuries, and has shaped the world we live in. What on earth has prevented the US from being a free, sovereign and independent nation? The answer, it seems, is self-imposed obligations and voluntarily accepted constraints on its own power. Now, he suggests, the US will do whatever it wants. The US ceases to have pretensions to moral leadership: it proclaims itself another great power under the old motto: “might makes right”.
How does the world view this event? In “Alone in a Trumpian World”, the European Council on Foreign Relations has just published the results of surveys of public opinion across the world. They are fascinating.
The people most disturbed...
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