Trump Returns to UN Amid Collapse of Old Order

New Yorker: “Among Washington’s think tankers and its ranks of retired diplomats, it has become commonplace to talk of the ‘interregnum.’ The old world of the Pax Americana may be dying… but the new ‘post-American’ order is in fitful gestation, yet to be born. After a decade of Trumpism, the United States’ closest allies know that they need to stop counting on American leadership and to start hedging their bets—and to say as much in public.”

“Still, there’s no alternative to the status quo that was once authored and secured by the United States; China, for all its great-power designs, envisions its rise on its own terms, and it is neither equipped to fill nor interested in filling an American void. Donald Trump is at the heart of this geopolitical moment, catalytic in his alliance-fraying bullying, unprovoked warmongering, and protectionist demagoguery…”

“Next week, Trump will bring all this animus and baggage to the United Nations—an institution, which, as the embodiment of the post-Second World War order, is in the grips of an existential reckoning.”