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Intensionally, the USA is going to lose its status as a hyperpower. Europe is going to decouple from American defense policy to the point where I can see American military bases close in Europe. An anti-Chinese military alliance will function with or without the USA anchored by India and Japan, but I see that force yielding some territory to China in the near term. There will probably be an increase in the number of wars in general as regions go into conflict without an American threat to maintain borders. Nothing the USA does is likely going to fix this.
Domestically, the administration is the greatest threat to the republic since the Civil War. If Trump is able to be pushed out in the future, there is going to need to be a major re-evaluation of how the American federal government works. This is going to require constitutional changes and the removal of major powers that the President has collected as the federal government grew.
The US Constitution had plenty of ways to control someone like Trump. Not the least of which is the absolutely clear barring from public office for life of anyone participating in an insurrection. It's just that the people in charge of enforcing these statutes lacked the courage to enforce those statutes. Legal statutes and so forth are useless if they aren't enforced.
American here. Maybe I'm going through the five stages of grief and now I'm at acceptance.
Everything in your first paragraph sounds accurate and maybe something that probably needed to happen. America as the World Police is/has been a problem. There were some positives, but a lot of negatives.
The sooner America gets off the stage, the better. We don't deserve the recognition. We can't even feed our own people and yet wield tremendous influence internationally, and maybe it's a positive thing that it ends soon.
My only concern is that I expect an increase in international conflict as the American security guarantee is gone. The only remaining countries capable of projecting power internationally can't do it on nearly the scale of the USA. I expect a lot of wars until new spheres of influence get established.
My global political history isn't great, and maybe others can correct me here, but it doesn't feel like the US has had much of a stabilising effect in the last 30 years.
There's plenty of conflicts that just don't make the news that the US just isn't interested in. Poor places with no oil or other resources. Presently Burma comes to mind. There always seems to be somewhere in Africa, last decade there was genocide in Congo IIRC.
Also it's not really clear whether their involvement in the middle east over the last few decades was positive or negative.
It's nice to have them hovering around South China Sea to keep China in check I guess.
People in the Middle East are really not seen as people.
This is including the Middle East.
No it isn't
Yes it is.
Nope.
I think it's going to require a new constitution. The American constitution was pretty good for a first try at modern democracy, but it has weaknesses. Look to European constitutions for inspiration regarding balance of power, parliamentary systems, electoral systems, basic rights. A less powerful president and a voting system that doesn't lead to two parties might be prudent for example.
Orwell just got the year wrong.
China is focusing on itself, maybe that's what the US and Europe should do for a while.
With Belt and Road, and all the colonialist projects China is doing in Africa, I would absolutely not say that "China is focusing on itself". Or, at least: Even if it's mainly focusing on itself, there is a very noteworthy imperial and colonial project going on.
What’s wrong with building infrastructure? Nothing stopping the West from offering an alternative development plan. Countries go with China’s because it is a better deal with fewer strings attached.
Instead when the US invaded Iraq it destroyed its infrastructure and opposed any plan to rebuild Iraq. China now is helping rebuild Iraq. Just one example of plenty.
Then again given the crumbling state of US infrastructure, it should really focus on itself. It brought a lot destruction (see: Gaza) and very little building to the rest of the world even when they broke it (see: Iraq).
Nothing's wrong with building infrastructure. Why would it be?
What's wrong is the financing scheme that makes the infrastructure effectively Chinese national property. And when China can decide how and when a country's infrastructure can be used, China gets a lot of influence in that country's domestic politics. And it does use that influence.
USA destroying Iraq doesn't make China any less colonial. China helping rebuild Iraq in a way that will make Iraq a vassal of China... That does make China more colonial.
USA should absolutely focus on itself. And it will do it much more than before, because now that it has decided to cut its international soft power, it does not really have other options, does it? :)
Source: The American Burger-freedom foundation for advanced jingoism research. That $1,600,000,000 the US government earmarked for anti-China propaganda definition getting returns.
No, but it demonstrates there's a vast, vast difference between actual colonial violence, and the bullshit that American chauvinists try to describe as colonialism.
"Yes, America destroying an entire country and killing hundreds of thousands of people is bad, but have you considered that China helping to rebuild that country is actually just as bad?"
Ghoul. You are a ghoul.
And thank God for that: the world doesn't need amoral monsters who think that building infrastructure is the same thing as mass bombing and murder fucking with the rest of the world.
I'm sorry but you sound like the people who call DOGE "auditors" who "look for corruption and end it".
China has been trying to get into big infrastructure projects in Finland as well, with the precisely same kind of loan arrangements. And it's very good that we declined the offer. We were a colony of Sweden for 600 years. We don't need to become one of China's now.
What the fuck kind of argument is that? "Oh you sound like the people who say [completely unrelated thing with no resemblence]." OK then, well you sound like the people who say that black people should be sterilized.
Infrastructure projects? Oh GOD NO! THE HUMANITY! THEY MIGHT AS WELL BE CARPET BOMBING HELSINKI!
Yeah, building infrastructure is exactly like invading a country, massacring the natives, and forcibly taking control, definitely.
You're fucking disgusting, colonialism apologist.
You, my friend, are defending colonialism and I am opposing your view that colonialism is okay as long as it's done by a country on a list of "countries allowed to behave in a colonialist manner" that you are curating. And somehow that makes me a colonialism apologist?
Oh, you're literally reduced to "no u!" now?
Well I wouldn't expect a colonialism apologist to be honest. Oh wait, is me calling you dishonest also colonialism? Is it colonialism when I stub my toe too?
You're a ghoul.
You calling me dishonest is not colonialism. You stubbing your toe is not colonialism.
Westerners love changing the meaning of words like "colonialism" so that they can use it to attack their enemies, as if their new definition still holds all the moral wait that it did when it was properly applied. Honestly, calling China's relationship with Africa a "colonialist project" is a fucking disgusting insult to all the people who suffered under actual, real colonialism perpetrated by Western nations.
No, there isn't, you absolute ghoul.
What you're saying suggests that France's current behaviour is not colonialist. What are your thoughts on that?
France still has literal, actual colonies, you dumb fascist.
Haha, everyone is a fascist now?
Yeah, the French colonies, such as French Guyana, are not okay. But neither are the things France is doing to many of the countries that used to be France's formal colonies. Even though those countries are not colonies of France, what France is doing to them is colonialism all the same. Or do you disagree?
Also, calling me "dumb" was impolite of you, even though factually correct. Calling me a fascist was outright weird.
No, just colonialism defending ultranationalist white chauvinists like you.
Great, conversation over, not reading the rest of your comment now that you've admitted your previous one was spurious.