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.
Look at him salute. He’s an embarrassment and no one has the courage to tell him to stop saluting like a drunkard. Plus it’s a disrespect to the military and I’m not even a military guy.
Designed by the bastard Muscovites and used by the MAGA circus. Throw in Project 2025 too.
America First? America Alone.
You deserve it for by ing an evil empire
I voted blue and donated to contested races as much as I could afford. I am too lazy/socially anxious to canvass or do anything active like that. In my bubble, there was plenty of Kamala hype and even though I didn’t believe it, all I could do was ask anonymous online strangers to vote and hope enough of them voted my way. I shouldn’t have been surprised at the power of racism and sexism in the country but it was still a shock to the system. In my circles supporting him was utterly unthinkable so I have no explanation on how it happened.
In 2000, the Simpson’s episode “Bart to the Future” predicted a Trump presidency that left the economy in shambles for Lisa. It’s funny how mild it’s foreboding prediction when compared to what his actual presidency has become. I realize his support is tanking, but it’s still way too high, specially for a now severely compromised federal system.
Breaking news: humans are carbon based lifeforms
The average American citizen wont understand or care about this, and yet I do imagine there are pretty negative long term implications for them, along with all the other garbage being piled onto them.
I brought up that the cost of diesel has gone up massively (particularly at the start of the Iran conflict) and has started to rapidly balloon again to a co-worker at my 2nd job said he did not care about the price of diesel because he doesn’t use diesel…
I carefully explained to him that everything is shipped over land is using diesel and this will cause the price of everything to go up and he pushed back again saying “Well everything is going up in price anyway.” Its like dude WTF do you even do with people like this? I did not even touch on the expense of using heavy construction and farming machinery also increasing costs of everything…
He described himself once as someone who agrees with democrats on social issues but thinks republicans are better on the economy and I internally was like DUUUUDE THIS IS THE FUCKING REPUBLICAN ECONOMY RIGHT NOW YOU FUCKING TROGLODYTE AAAHAHHAHAHA WE FUCKING DESERVVVVE THIIIIIIIISSSS.
The only “social issue” he cares about is his tax burden.
Well, if your coworker is that braindead, then he probably won’t notice if you start propagandizing to him. Everytime something bad happens, audibly blame Trump and the Republican Party for it. A couple of weeks of that oughta change his opinion of things.
Ask him how will he pay for the stuff becoming more expensive.
And with the current trends of openly weaponizing the dollar, I would expect the BRICS to expand and the petrodollar dominance to wane.
I always knew conservatives (regressives) would destroy America. I just didn’t think it would be so fast and so aggressively stupid.
I don’t get it. This is an article about an article. Why not just link the original article published by the Atlantic?
I first heard about it via AlterNet, and you need a subscription for The Atlantic.
Because people don’t actually read anything anymore, besides the title. You’re a rare breed my friend.
Who knew that building a pattern of attacking your allies could lead to your allies not trusting you any more?
In the end, the world will thank Trump for freeing them from American shackles. I hope that this is the beginning of the end of US dominance.
We should not thanks him for unintentional outcome of his stupidity
Trump is going down in history as the environmental President forcing the world to buy EVs or starve.
forcing the world to buy EVs or starve.
Or possibly “and starve.”
That, to me, is the truly ironic part.
It’s not that anyone is going to thank him. He’s an asshole and let him die in ignominy. But if we can survive his fucking around, there is a better world on the other side of it where one country doesn’t get to lord over anyone else.
When he got elected I thought “maybe he’s the dose of poison that’ll force them to throw up the whole damn mess”.
Not entirely sure the next in line is best, but at least China is trying to work towards better power, transit and socials. world powers need to stand now, or this is our future.
Better… Socials…?
Social systems. Healthcare, eliminating poverty, even family systems for child care and welfare.
The only way we can even begin to fix this is if the entire Trump crime family & their enablers are indicted & incarcerated. The entire cabinet belongs in prison or in RFK Jr’s case, executed for innumerable counts of Depraved Heart Murder.
No. Trump is just a symptom .
We desperately need the US Empire to fall. They lead war all around the world for decades and most conflicts are born from them or our two precedent empires : Russian and English.
They simply have too much power and absolutely 0 ethic.
As an American, won’t the US falling affect us too?
Will affect the whole world and, of course, people living in the US first.
I’m not saying that lightly. I live upstairs (Canada) and we would be highly impacted too.
Yet, I’m persuaded the US empire will and should fall. We need to move away from neo liberalism or we’ll simply all die and/or live miserable lives. AI, ecology, war, choose your poison.
Be careful what you wish for.
We desperately need the US Empire to fall.
I dunno, like I see where this is coming from, and partially even would agree, but the power vacuum would also be disastrous.
…and personally I’d just like to know what the hell to do about it in the grand scheme of things, so me and the rest of my peasant family and the rest of us aren’t stuck suffering and holding the entire bill on account of a handful of monsters bent on ruining the world.
A reminder to study how people pushed through the collapse of their homelands in the past…
Edit: lmao at the downvote like “you aren’t people, USAmerican, get fked 🖕” LOL
Yeah, I feel you.
If there is ONE thing I can give to Trump, it’s that he’s preparing the world for it.
He’s destroying NATO as it exists, ruining the petrol dollar, destroying the US soft power world-wide. I don’t think anyone did more for EV and solar than him the last year…
But yeah, it will be a mess. From my pov, the natural filler would be China. It as pros, it has cons. EU could gain a lot too but I really fear they won’t have the wisdom to move away enough to net get caught by the blast.
We’ll see I guess ^^
At least from my perspective there is a big party that said they are on board with it so there need to happen a lot of things but going back to have America so deeply integrated should never be done.
After WW2 the us wanted Germany to not be armed and now they complain. America wanted eu not be armed. Now to say we are abusing usa? NA there is a lot of stuff you guys need to change but I’m the meantime we need to get rid of our dependence and cut some ties.
No argument here. I think the EU was stupid for allowing any of this to continue this long. Those ties should have been cut in 2016.
At the same time, you’re very much about to have your own set of fash between Ruzzia, the AfD, Meloni & LePen. Good luck.
As an American I have no doubt that our relationship with our allies will improve once we restore some sanity to the White House, but we’ve forced our allies to diversify their trade to brunt the impact of our tariffs and now that they’ve done so I don’t see any sane reason why they would undo that.
As an American I have no doubt that our relationship with our allies will improve once we restore some sanity to the White House
As a Canadian, let me assure you that it will not.
I hope we as a country cut ties with you forever. Because the fact you let this happen at all, means no countgry should ever trust you from not letting it happen again.
Until you fix the foundation of your issues, I speak for a LOT of people that say “You’re completely dead to us”.
I can assure you that it will. Your country will absolutely positively not cut ties with America forever. I’m sure you speak for yourself, but let us not forget that nearly a quarter of Canadians support Trump. Don’t think for a second we forgot about the Freedom Convoy either lol.
If you look at what America is going through and your first thought is “they’re crazy, that can’t happen here”, I have some bad news for you.
Who knows we may get our own trump
I hope you are wrong I don’t want a terrorist state as an ally
lol don’t be so emotional
Being responsible of millions of death make you a terrorist state
Which millions of deaths are you referring to
Vietnam victims
Libya victims
Syria victims
Iran victims
Afghanistan victims
Cuba victims
Palestine victimsYou’re talking about deaths from war? In that case all your allies are terrorists buddy you’re screwed.
Also you’re Canadian which means your country too
I am talking about imperialism wars and intervention that led to millions of deaths. No other country did that level of evilness
White House? You are blind to the gravity of the problem. The supreme courts will still be stuffed. The federal agencies will still be full and led by his cronies. Congress will still be gerrymandered to hell. Voting is now on its way to be directly compromised as well on every level. There are more lobbyists with deeper pockets willing to feed the DINOs, and the protections against their corruption has eroded. Even public sentiment is too stupid to survive the amount of time and administrations it would take to fix the whole system, they will accept that both parties are the same on a dime even when the specifics are on radically different scales.
To be fair, the US isn’t the only country that is having a corruption problem. We are living through a time where corruption continues to get easier and the ultra rich think they have an out with AI and robotics for the future apocalypse.
our relationship with our allies will improve once we restore some sanity to the White House
This is not enough unfortunately. Your checks and balances need to be checked and balanced. If they are not working now, why would they work in the future?
They are working currently. Though admittedly many cracks in the armor have been revealed, and the complacency America had in its expectations of presidential tradition and precedent has clearly done damage of its own.
They are working currently.
You elected a 34 time felon to the white house. If they’re currently working, then your country is more fucked than any of us could have forseen.
I don’t think you understand what checks and balances are, or what they’re for
Working? You are hilarious. Congress and Senate or Supreme Court should have put the brakes on Trump a year ago. They are still siding and abetting him instead. Even the military is happy to ignore the Constitution to do Trump’s bidding. It’s less than given that the Nov elections will be honoured. Doesn’t look like checks and balances to the outside world.
Yes they are objectively and inarguably working. Even with several members of the Supreme Court compromised it has still been a regular obstacle to his plans. The panic the administration has for and the effort put into the upcoming elections are further proof that they’re working. The fact that the upcoming midterms happen only half way through his presidency is not an accident either. The American system was designed to minimize the amount of damage a president or any other branch of government can do.
Nobody promised the system of checks and balances we have could prevent the president from doing any harm. It only provides the people with the power to put a stop to it.
These “barely hanging together” checks and balances are the reason I favour the parliamentary system. Obviously I only speak for myself.
When you have a lower house designed around real and regular debate with the leaders and real opposition who are expected to form their own “govt in waiting”, there are more opportunities to hold the govt to account and challenge them before it gets to the judiciary.
The spiderman standoff between three institutions supposedly watching each other but vulnerable to being manipulated by the same malevolent forces and vested interests seems weak these days.
You can elect someone who is extremely hard to eject if they’re bad for the country. A US president is in for 4 years precisely, and the supreme Court has made them legally immune to acts taken as president. We are seeing the impacts of this guarantee and they won’t stop at least until the term is over.
several members of the Supreme Court compromised
effort put into [rigging] the upcoming elections
Emoluments clause not triggered
$5000 bribery of voters
6 months into a war that requires Congressional approval within 60 days
Etc.
That these even exist are proof that the checks and balances are NOT working. This is why the world is turning away. Trump is the symptom of a bigger underlying cause.
None of those are proof that the checks and balances have failed.
several members of the Supreme Court compromised
This is why the Supreme Court is a panel. This check has succeeded.
effort put into [rigging] the upcoming elections
The balance of the judicial branch has successfully thwarted several illegal attempts at rigging the election.
Emoluments clause not triggered
The emoluments clause is unclear in how it should be interpreted today. Trump hasn’t directly violated it in any way. There is ongoing debate about whether or not some indirect forms of compensation violate it or not, and something may yet come of this.
$5000 bribery of voters
There is too much legal precedent supporting this being considered a campaign promise and not a bribe. Because it’s offered to all citizens as a benefit of the outcome of an election, it’s functionally no difference from saying “Elect me and I’ll lower taxes”
6 months into a war that requires Congressional approval within 60 days
Technically speaking, a full ceasefire agreed to by both sides resets this clock. No rules have technically been broken. Congress retains the ability to shut the war down, the republicans in power just don’t want to. The upcoming mid term elections are the remedy for that.
Its going to take at least 50 years of good faith, and I wish you good fucking luck with the insane 4 year flip flop political bias your country has.
We Canadians have been scratching our heads over the course of your increasing instability for 20 years, and we aren’t going to forget that over night.
Trump is a sign that the political landscape in the US is so unstable that nothing promised by any political figure can be trusted by your allies.
Only a foolish nation forgets that overnight. We won’t.
Nobody will forget anything overnight, but the world keeps spinning and we all move on eventually.
Well then you haven’t been paying attention.
We have committed some of the worst war crimes of the modern era
We threatened to INVADE MULTIPLE ALLIES
We have constantly lied and broken multiple signed agreements
Our allies have permanently changed large scale trade operations to China for stability
The dollar has decreased in value
Allies have removed bonds and gold reserves from our country.
Allowed a bloated and swollen pedophilic rapist to go on tv and threaten to nuke a civilization at the UN
Ostracized ourselves by launching state run media and threatening to dismantle the ICC (which is investigating us for warcrimes)
Allowed the president’s family to invade and steal islands from sovereign nations (we all know what they want islands for)
And more!
No. There is no going back. The country was couped and is dead. Take a look at who is running every agency within government and you go ahead and tell yourself in the mirror that when trump doesn’t accept the election results, he won’t, that Kash Patel and Tom Homan will send DHS and the FBI to arrest trump. Maybe the Military run by kegsbreath and the businessman secretaries will come get him? Maybe the US Marshals will come get him- oh wait, they gave Trump a marshal badge and said he is the “highest law enforcement officer in the land”
A country of delusional peasants.
Trump is just a symptom of a rot that goes so much deeper. Nixon was forced to resign because he was caught spying on his political rivals. Trump tried to overthrow the government, faced no consequences, ran for president again, and won.
That’s what I am saying.
If anyone in the government wanted to keep him out of office,because they absolutely knew what Trump was before he was in the political spotlight, they could have…
If they ever wanted to arrest him, they could have.
They could all stop him at any point right now, but they won’t.
None of that is going to change when he says, “the election wasn’t fair” or “it was rigged” or some lame fake AI attack.
He will just do it. Dems will feign outrage and then we will be mad about something else. Why is everyone ok with this?
I hate it but you’re right. No two ways about it.
I think the only thing that could POSSIBLY put us on a positive path again would be if we were to wrest control back to the People again, and quite publicly show the world we’re locking away all these nazis forever on some forgotten rock in the middle of the Pacific, and throwing away the key.
But yeah, something like that would be truly incredible and unexpected…
Unfortunately I’m with you, we proved to the world that our country as a whole is morally bankrupt. The best way forward could be splitting the county in two and letting the lunatics drown in their own stupidity.
Unfortunately they’d never give up their nukes and they’re stupid enough to use them so WTF do you even do?
Honestly, I’m not sure yet. In a perfect world, we take back the government and rebuild it in an actual way that democracy can be enforced (like the Scandinavian countries)
I would personally prefer that blue states join Canada and the EU because the red states will fall into poverty and debt and they will blame us and invade.
But the true root of all of the issues we have always had are generational wealth (extreme wealth) and corporations. So idk how we can stop this cycle with those
I’ve laid all this out in another comment of mine but nearly all of these things we’ve done before (and worse) but diplomatically recovered from, or were done (and far worse) by our allies, which they’ve diplomatically recovered from in less than 50 years.
If you’ve only been alive since 1990 and never learned anything about US or global history and 1990-2016 is your only frame of reference for global politics, all of these things would certainly seem so extreme and unprecedented. But the reality is America’s reliability and dependability were always an illusion, and thinking that the rest of the world is somehow enlightened enough to hold America to account for its failings of the last 10 years forever is a very sophomoric idea of global politics
I disagree and you will never find this many inprecedented actions in history that worked
What we witnessed was a second “Business Plot”. The first one didn’t work out because we had principled leaders and Veterans wouldn’t betray the nation.
The oligarchs that failed (mostly the same companies as today) lost principled Republicans and were universally hated while FDRs popularity soared. Republicans learned from this and systematically dismantled education in this country and courted the racist south.
What we have just witnessed, is a business plot that succeeded. We were couped by a coalition of extreme generational wealth, christian nationalists, and the tech facsists.
We have witnessed the dismantling and conquering of every agency and institution that could hold them responsible (to include putting a dictators face on them). Every agency that was investigating this group was taken over and is still being dismantled. The heads of these agencies are cult members.
We witnessed an unelected businessman with open conflicts of interest invade our government and sabotage every investigation against him and STEAL OUR MOST SENSITIVE DATA. they stole OPM records, social security information, etc and put it on an unknown server. They also installed their AI into every agency and the Pentagon. There is no recovering from that.
-this would be all of the actions that I previously listed
-the Epstein files and lack of response from our government has shattered the entire IDEA of justice in this country and unmasked the hidden depravity of extreme wealth.
No. Your snyde comment shows a lack of sophomoric comprehension of history and current events.
Please show me a comparable time in our history equal to this?
And no, the Gilded Age was not this bad as far as everything mentioned
What allies?
North Korea and Russia are still buddies with them.
America used to be dependable to its allies. Treacherous, but in predictable ways. Now the seal is broken, and it’s been proved that any norm can be ignored. So that’s never going to return to how it was. Its now firmly in the category of erratic unstable partners and that will not change with any successor.
Was it? I mean America went through a relatively short period of a several decades of stability during its golden age for sure, but the time scale we’re talking about is so short it means little to nothing. The European mindset of some kind of “before and after” due to trump is a level of historical blindness that defies belief.
America has been in open war with most of its modern allies throughout its short 250 year existence, several of which were in this past century. For gods sake America dropped two nukes on civilian population centers in one of its closest modern day allies.
And on the flip side of that, you have to step back and consider the fact that there are people alive today who remember their homes being carpet bombed by German planes during that period where Germany elected a fascist dictator, the likes of which all others to this day are compared against, and proceeded to slaughter half of Europe while simultaneously committing the largest genocide ever recorded in human history. And yet Germany’s reputation among European nations appears to have completely recovered in a shorter time span than America’s “dependable ally” era lasted.
In fairness to Germany we had the Nuremberg trials where the top Nazis were held accountable for their crimes and hanged. You could argue that the current American administrations crimes are not on a par with Nazi Germany’s, which I would agree with but accountability is not in the Americans vocabulary. Trump and his team have suffered no consequences from the Jan 6th insurrection, I don’t think anyone will face any consequences for supporting Israel’s genocide both at the UN and in supplying the weapons to keep it going. I can’t see anyone being punished for the war crimes committed in Iran, worst of all bombing a little girls school killing 120 children.
America’s biggest loss under trump has been in the soft power they have spent the last 100 years building. The mask has fully slipped with no plausible deniability about what America is and where they are headed. We in Europe will still cynically do business with you, the USA remains the global military and financial hegemon but the public support is gone for a generation at least.
The Nuremberg trials were not conducted by Germany and aren’t an example of the nation holding their own leaders accountable, so in fairness it doesn’t really compare to America failing to hold its own leaders accountable for Jan 6th. And in fact despite the Nuremberg trials being conducted by the Allied powers, those same allied powers (USA included) absolutely committed subversions of justice for the Nazis by recruiting many into government research programs.
So Germany failed to hold the Nazis to account, and unfortunately the rest of the world did to some degree too.
I think this whole thread is full of rose-tinted glasses and vague ideas of international justice and American Moral Exceptionalism that didn’t really exist
Germany as a nation teaches its children about all their dark history and acknowledges the atrocities committed. Their leaders were held to account at Nuremberg while the country was under allied occupation, I accept your point that it was not Germany themselves holding them to account but the country as a whole accepts responsibility for their crimes in a way the USA couldn’t even imagine.
The USA on the other hand has never accepted formal responsibility for the genocide of the native American population.
The subversions of justice you mentioned by the allied powers, I fail to see the point you are making mentioning this.
Your view that it will be business as usual after the current American regime is what I think is rose tinted. The USA used to get away with the atrocities they committed using a combination of plausible deniability and soft power. This is no longer an option post the current trump regime, this is the point. This loss of soft power with their former allies will only hasten the USA’s downfall and it is hard to see them maintaining their current dominant position going forward. The USA’s current prosperity is borrowed not earned and is in part financed by their allies. The current bond market is an indicator of what is to come.
Germany as a nation teaches its children about their dark history now many years after the fact (it appears to not be working). The U.S. isn’t in the “after the fact” period yet so it’s hard to predict what they could imagine at this point.
The subversions of justice you mentioned by the allied powers, I fail to see the point you are making mentioning this.
The allied European nations didn’t fully hold the Nazis to account for their crimes against humanity, so there’s no historical precedent to suggest that they will fully hold America to account with what’s going on now.
Your view that it will be business as usual after the current American regime is what I think is rose tinted
My point is if Germany can be back to business as usual mere decades after the events of WW2, there’s no reason to think the U.S. won’t be back to business as usual in the same timeframe if not even less.
I could not even begin to imagine defending the idea of America replicating the early stages of Nazi Germany and thinking that is why the US is going to be okay.
You cannot be helped.
The problem is one of who comes next for America and after that.
Now the world knows America is willing to vote people like Trump into office, it has to act accordingly.
Trump Is what you expect from Argentina or some country already in trouble trying to find a way out.
Not the biggest economy in the world! Now everyone has to plan accordingly that this can and probably will happen again.
Not the biggest economy in the world!
Why would you not expect that of the U.S. because they’re the biggest economy in the world?
Germany is the third biggest economy in the world and they’re currently dealing with a Huge surge in far-right extremism in their government.
Japan is the fourth largest economy and they’ve seen a Rise in nationalist conservative government
The UK is like the fifth or so largest economy in the world and let us not forget what happenened when they Elected their discount Trump
Italy is the 8th largest and they’ve been Governed by the far right for the last four years
Like the majority of the worlds top 10 economies have seen a far-right shift on some significant level in the last 5 years, so I’m not really sure how you came upon those expectations
restore some sanity
Didn’t you guys promise that in 2010 with Jon Stewart?
I was there actually. Unfortunately the rally was to restore sanity AND OR fear :/
I was supposed to be, and chose to stay in NYC and get drunk with my friend instead. Much better use of time it turns out.
It was actually a pretty good time
The big problem with this is that the promise was secretly “forign policy is uniparty. Whether it’s an” R" or a “D” our forign policy will be relatively consistent" and Trump broke that promise. Now every nation has to prepare for the eventuality that different presidents might have different policy toward their allies (and adversaries. No president before Trump would have canceled drills with South Korea on North Korea’s behalf). That will take decades of consistency to repair, and as a fellow American, I’m not certain they will get that consistency going forward with the state of politics in the US.
Yeah eventually maybe, but the problem is we’ve shown TWICE now that we’ll elect someone erratic and petulant. Nobody should trust the US because even with a sane leader, you can’t be guaranteed you’ll be greeted with sanity 4 years later. Every deal struck may or may-not be shredded with the next admin.
Uh we’ve done it a lot more than twice.
Goodbye Washington.
