Staggering Towards Anarchy
What will replace U.S. global leadership after the Trump-accelerated American decline is not a rising China, but multipolar chaos.
President Donald Trump visited China, prompting thoughts of a global transition of power. The trip comes amidst America’s ongoing hegemonic suicide, as Trump is creating chaos at home, alienating allies abroad, damaging domestic and international institutions, egregiously violating U.S. and international law, breaking the U.S.-led system of open trade, and trashing U.S. credibility in ways that will be difficult, perhaps impossible to reverse. Trump is throwing away many of the things that made America the world’s premier power, and as the United States declines, China has the most to gain.
The biggest factor is Trump’s horribly misguided Iran war, an unnecessary act of aggression that casts today’s America as more akin to Putin’s Russia than to Eisenhower, Reagan, or Obama’s United States. In prompting Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz—through which over 100 ships a day carrying oil, natural gas, fertilizer, and other essential commodities flowed freely before the war—and apparently having no idea how to fix the situation, Trump forfeited America’s position as the guarantor of freedom of navigation and global commerce.
Meanwhile, China has been rising—economically, technologically, militarily—and looking to many countries like a more attractive option merely by being consistent compared to the now volatile, unreliable, and combative United States. …
Continue reading this article by Nicholas Grossman, “Staggering Towards Anarchy,” here: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/staggering-towards-anarchy/