Now we've all see what one bad POTUS can do to the world, and I don't know if/how/why the world would trulyove past that.
It reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode "The Shelter" [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shelter_(The_Twilight_Zone...
But despite that, Bush's presidency was generally continuous with American presidencies since World War II. He still, at root, steered the ship as though he were a believer in the narrative of America as a leader of the free world, rather than as a selfish actor who needs to get one over on everyone else in order to get ahead. Regardless of the world's judgement of Bush, I don't think it sowed much doubt in many minds about their overall relationship with America, and not just because of 9/11 or because he was just one president. The US could have continued electing Bush's forever and not much would have changed.
Whereas: Trump's presidency - especially this second term - is utterly destabilizing. He's single-handedly destroyed America's soft power and place in the world.
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article%3Fid%3D10.137...
Certainly no Europe after tarrifs, NATO, Ukraine, and this war..
Certainly not GCC after this war
Certainly not Asia after this war
Certainly not Japan after the awful "nuke" jokes and abuses .. like really? Who is on US aside?
Dems can try all they want, but the US trust is gone imo.
What will change, however, is no country will build anything new that is entirely dependent on a U.S. entity, and every country will now try to find alternatives to existing dependencies.
It will be a slow, multi-decade process, but it’s probably irreversible at this point.
The problem, from a U.S. perspective, is that 2 decades from now, these decisions might have cost the U.S. economy trillions of dollars, but it will largely be impossible to tell because the nature of losses will be in billions of dollars of economic activity that could have been created but were never even conceived, so the alternate path will be impossible to know.
the one thing that the US still has is money. countries want to trade with countries that have money, whether they're trustworthy or untrustworthy, moral or immoral. as long as the US continues to be rich, they'll continue to have good trading relationships. we've all just got to hope that this current trend reverses before the us stops being a rich country.
> It will be a slow, multi-decade process, but it’s probably irreversible at this point.
I don't think any Western democracy can keep up such a project for that long, after the immediate political irritant has disappeared. I mean, FFS, pretty much everything "new" that's people build is dependent on China. Trump is an stupid old man, China is a bigger long-term threat to democracy and is smarter and more strategic.
What I'm saying is: is once Trump leaves office (and especially once he's dead), the process you talk about will almost certainly reverse. It may seem hard to believe in this moment, but people will move on from Trump.
> It will be a slow, multi-decade process, but it’s probably irreversible at this point.
I think it is important to distinguish talk intended to appease the public, that currently is very anti-US, from real policies. For example there is lot of talk about sovereignty in the EU, you can even see lot of that here, but so far no real steps were taken. Globalism cannot be reversed, not without some external factor like global cataclysm. And the public opinion on anything, in the age of Twitter et al, change as often as Trump's proclaimed policies.
Truth is, EU countries have not other potential ally that could replace US, especially among themselves. In Poland some groups dream about European army and French nuclear sharing, when first is pure fantasy, and second is even less reliable that the US one.
You can balance however much you want between US and China, but there may be time when you need to choose. As bad as current state of US is, China is an antithesis to everything EU and its democracies say they stand for.
It's pretty clear that governments engage in such two-sided talk at their peril going forward. This is exactly how you get populism - usually of the far-right variety, with its specific blend of parochialism, jingoism and nihilism.
Two decades ago: "in 2006, NATO Defence Ministers agreed to commit a minimum of 2% of their GDP to defence spending."
Canada has not remotely upheld this agreement.
[0]: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/history-canada-nato-mil...
[1]: "That five per cent figure is somewhat deceptive, since just 3.5 per cent of that will go to core defence needs, while 1.5 per cent is to cover spending loosely related to national security — such as funding for maritime ports, airports and other infrastructure." - https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/pm-carney-declares-u...
The Trump administration has treated Canada and Canadians appallingly. It will take many years and another President, but I hope the U.S. can repair relations. The onus is on us.
Canada honored its commitments. The U.S. started this stupid trade war.