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Make America … Alone?
Is the free world lost without America, or is America lost without the free world? We are looking for your answers today.
It’s a question no one thought about when Donald Trump assumed office just 38 days ago.
Though he promised to be a transformative, “drain the swamp,” America First leader, Trump 2.0 is exponentially more radical and less restrained than his first term as the 45th president.
In less than five weeks, Trump has upended the postwar world order, forcing America’s longtime allies to redraw their maps, literally in the case of the Gulf of Mexico/America and strategically in every other way. It is a new world.
To Trump supporters, he is simply fulfilling his campaign promise of delivering deep change to the “deep state.” After all, with a clean sweep of the presidency, Congress, and the popular vote, he has a genuine mandate — one that is strengthened by a right-leaning majority on the Supreme Court. Cue Elon Musk’s DOGE chain saw.
But let’s pause for a moment and ask what exactly was included in the promise to make America great again:
- Tax cuts? Those are coming as he just won a big victory in the House of Representatives on that.
- Cutting the size of government? Sure. Finding inefficiencies matters.
- Border security and cutting down on illegal immigration? That has already started, and he has support on that too from a wide array of voters.
- Ending the war in Ukraine? Yes. Who would be against that in principle?
But the details of these things matter. You can treat a broken foot by amputating the whole leg with a chain saw, but then you can’t walk. In less than 40 days of mass policy amputations, you might start getting the sense that the treatment is already worse than the disease.
For example, do Republican voters, who wanted a more isolationist foreign policy, really want the US to take over the Gaza Strip? What part of the MAGA agenda saw that one coming?
Do they want to take over Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal too? Imperial land grabs were never part of Trump’s campaign promises.
What about threatening to destroy Canada’s economy in a trade war? Was that part of the promise? Because that’s a lot different from negotiating better trade deals with friends.
Trump is threatening to slap a 25% tariff on all EU goods because he argues, wrongly, that the EU was created in order to “screw the United States.” It was not. The EU was formed out of a desire for stability on a continent that had bled through two world wars. Do Trump supporters really think Russia is a better ally than the European Union?
What about the war in Afghanistan? Do MAGA supporters genuinely want US troops to go back to Afghanistan and take over the Bagram Air Base as the president promised on Wednesday? “We are going to keep Bagram,” he announced. “We are going to keep a small force on Bagram.” A small force? How small? Trump believes Bagram has strategic importance as a forward operating base near China and its nuclear weapons. He also wants to take back the over $7 billion worth of military equipment that the Biden administration left there in 2021. How will he do all this? With another invasion of Afghanistan?
Maybe Republican voters believed Trump would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, but did that include siding with Russia, blaming Ukraine for starting the conflict, and calling President Volodymyr Zelensky, not Vladimir Putin, a dictator?
This past week at the UN, the US sided with Russia, Belarus, and North Korea against a resolution to mark the third anniversary of the Russian invasion. “This war is far more important to Europe than it is to us,” Trump said as he moved the US further away from its longtime allies. “We have a big, beautiful ocean as separation.”
Separation. That is the watchword of the moment. The Trump revolution that is meant to Make America Great Again is making America Alone and for the very first time.
The costs of reversing 80 years of US foreign and domestic policy are still being calculated, but here is one measure: A recent Leger poll found that more than a quarter of Canadians, 27%, now regard the US as the “enemy.” The enemy. Meanwhile, 56% of Americans view Canada as an ally, while only 30% of Canadians see the US as an ally.
These are remarkable pieces of data, especially for countries that fought side by side in Afghanistan, Korea, and two world wars and worked together on countless peacekeeping missions.
To its closest allies, the US is giving away its reputation as the “indispensable nation” and risks becoming an indefensible nation.
Yesterday, Trump announced his new “gold card” idea targeted at “wealthy people” around the world. “We’re going to be putting a price on that card of about $5 million and that’s going to give you green card privileges, plus it’s going to be a route to citizenship," he said. Would he welcome Russian oligarchs to the program? There was no hesitation. “Yeah, possibly,” he said with a smile. “Hey, I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people.”
If you can afford the $5 million gold card, you are nice enough for America these days, even if you are a Russian thug.
Russia and China are cheering on this new alignment because it comes at a cheap price. Both are poised to test the limits of a world without US guardrails, a world where there is no global cop on the beat to enforce the rule of law. Watch to see how China moves to expand its influence in the South China Sea, around Japan and the Philippines, and, of course, Taiwan. Russia is already clamoring to digest 20% of Ukraine, with Trump’s blessing. Does anyone think that’s enough to satisfy Putin’s imperialist appetite?
What will this mean for global trade, where US enforcement of secure shipping lanes has been the foundational insurance policy of globalization? It is why you can buy such cheap goods from around the world at places like Costco. That backstopping of sea-lane security is now as up for grabs as the Panama Canal. As Ian Bremmer says, this is now the law of the jungle.
All these are deeply polarizing questions, and coming at such a pace that people may take refuge in the certainty of partisanship to avoid the hard work of answering them.
So I want to ask you for your thoughts. Do you think the US is still a trusted ally to its longtime friends in democracies around the world? Do you consider the US an ally to its fellow NATO members, an enemy, or just neutral?
We would love to hear your thoughts on this. Please email us here.