Trump and the end of an era

Trump is restructuring the democratic world, though in ways not congruent with his intentions, and the changes will go deeper the longer he remains in office.  He evidently believes that the power of the US enables it (well, him) to simply make demands on other countries and compel them to obey.  Combined with his ignorance about the world, this belief produces a pattern of erratic and alarming behavior which is eroding the leadership role the US has held since the end of World War II.

His early comments calling into question the US defense commitments to the democracies of Europe and East Asia must have set off alarm bells for the governments of those countries, and no doubt quite a few very sober high-level meetings took place in Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, etc. around that time.  The "axis of adults" in Washington eventually persuaded Trump to back down from some of his stupidest remarks, but his true attitude had been revealed, and other governments knew that they couldn't count on the "adults" to remain in place (indeed, all are now gone except Mattis).

Since then Trump has further damaged the US leadership role with such moves as withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, after which other countries (and even some US states and cities) simply went on following the accord without him.  His threats of trade war prompted Europe, not to submit, but to announce plans for retaliation.  No other major country has emulated his pointless and inflammatory gesture of moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.  His abandonment of the Iran nuclear deal reeked of arrogance, with his new ambassador to Germany imperiously ordering the world's fourth-largest economic power to slavishly fall into line.  The German people are already more fed up with Trump and the US than the diplomatic stance of Merkel's government would suggest.

The acid test of leadership, of course, is the ability and willingness to deter and contain the two giant mafia states, Russia and China, which pose an ongoing military threat to the democratic world.  US military power has traditionally filled that role -- but Trump has not only undermined the US commitment to its allies, but also has adopted a stance of appeasement toward Russia and recently, to some extent, China as well.  By now the other democracies realize that they can no longer rely on the US to protect them, or that at best that protection may come at a price in humiliating submission to bullying which they are not willing to pay.  The question is what to do about it -- and that question will soon become even more urgent, because Trump's foreign policy is about to become even worse.

Japan is already strengthening its military and becoming more assertive, building closer defense relations with other democracies such as Australia and nuclear-armed India.  North Korean belligerence has led to growing support in Japan for building its own nuclear deterrent, even though this would mean revising Japan's Constitution.  If Japan decides that it needs the ability to deter and contain China without US help -- and rationally, it may already have reached that conclusion -- expect to see more and stronger moves along these lines.

As for Europe, immediately after Trump abandoned the Iran deal, Germany, the UK, and France issued a joint statement committing themselves to upholding the agreement.  European nations recognize that it's now up to them to take the lead on the issue.  Note that the acrimony over the UK's decision to leave the European Union, deep as it is, has not at all damaged the Europeans' ability to cooperate closely in defying Trump.  Keep an eye on those three leading states in particular.  Germany, the UK, and France combined have over 200 million people; they're the world's fourth, fifth, and sixth largest economies; they are (like Japan and South Korea) technological and industrial powerhouses in various fields; and the UK and France have powerful military forces and nuclear arsenals of their own.  A close alliance of these three, within NATO, would be a very plausible claimant for the leading role in the Western world which Trump is abdicating.  It could even evolve into a power capable of deterring Russian threats against Europe, especially if a complete breach with the US puts the option of a nuclear Germany on the table.

But what about after Trump leaves office?  Won't things "get back to normal" then?  That depends on how long he remains in power.  If he were impeached and removed tomorrow, the global system would probably revert to something close to the pre-2017 status quo, though other nations will still be warier and less trusting of the US since they will fear the possibility of another Trump-like figure being elected in the future -- if it happened once, it could happen again.  But the longer he stays in place -- especially if he serves a full term -- the more damage he will do, and the more time the global system will have to reshape itself as the US becomes an obstacle to be worked around rather than a leader.  If Japan and Germany have built their own nuclear arsenals and alliance systems to contain the gangster states, and developed into independent and self-assertive world powers in their own right, they will not simply reverse all those developments when Trump leaves office.  Things will not "get back to normal".  There will be a new "normal".

In some ways, the free world might be better off with Japan and Germany in leading roles.  Despite their horrific crimes during World War II, those countries have now been stable democracies for generations, with populations more pacifist than most.  Being smaller than the US, they would be more dependent on allies, unable to assert the kind of overbearing go-it-alone stance that the US often did even before Trump.  And they lack any equivalent of the ignorant, deranged Christian Right demographic bloc which has played such a dangerous and reactionary role in US politics for decades and forms the core of Trump's support.

But Donald Trump, so far from "making America great again", will be remembered as the man who hastened the end of the era of American global dominance.