Emperor Trump’s New Map

Franklin Foer: “During his first term, Trump set about dismantling the architecture of postwar internationalism by trash-talking and bullying the institutional implements of global cooperation, the likes of NATO and the World Health Organization. This assault on the old order was waged in the name of populism, an attack on elites in foreign capitals who siphoned off taxpayers’ dollars. But what Trump hoped to achieve with these rhetorical fusillades was sometimes unclear, other than pleasing his political base, which adored them.”

“As Trump enters his second term, those attacks now seem more purposeful. In retrospect, he may have been laying tracks for a more ambitious plan, weakening those institutions so that he could eventually exploit their weakness.”

“Over the past weeks, he’s declared himself the tribune of a new era of American imperialism, which abandons any pretext of promoting liberal values to the world. In Trump’s newly hatched vision of empire, America stands poised to expand—not just into Panama but into Greenland and outer space—simply because its raw power entitles it to expand.”