US global leadership has never been plain sailing

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The writer is an exclusive editor in FT and writes the newsletter for the scheme

The ambush of Ukrainian President Folodimir Zellinsky at the Oval Office last week leads a feverish search for historical trend.

It was clear that it was more shocking than anything that happened during the first period of Donald Trump. But is he, in his consequences, worse than pushing for the world war on terrorism during the reign of George W. Bush? Worse than Richard Nixon’s disorder of the Bretton Woods system? Or bombing the obscene American of Kambodia and Laos? More terrible than many cold war coups or brutal negotiation that occurred, is it Muslim that behind closed doors, during World War II?

There was just over 100 years of American globalization and was not a normal sailing. The first bump was disastrous. In 1919, the Republican Conference refused to ratify the Versailles Treaty and with President Woodro Wilson’s plan for the Association of Nations. To accompany “Red Scare”, race riots, and the trial of Monkey Scopes, and the birth in Ku Klux Klan, American diplomacy has declined from the world.

In the thirties of the twentieth century, British and French governments on the right and left faced the threat of Mussolini, Hitler and the imperial Japan alone. They put their hopes in democratic procedures, long-term social balance, reasonable budgets, managed currencies, new technology-Maginot and Radar. Meanwhile, the motive behind the relatives was hoping that the reasonable conservatives in Berlin, Rome and Tokyo would encourage the men of violence. Was the United States ready to help? It was not. The best that Congress has provided is criticism and pregnancy. The European strategy failed to contain Hitler and in the despair that followed the United States turned, and the exchange of a group used for the rules. America’s interest in Greenland is due to this period.

It was the moment of strength that determines what we mean today by global domination is very short – it lasts from 1941 to the early 1960s. This was driven by enlightened technocratic and the American external business community. In Washington, he was based on a new liberal deal and the Democratic Party control over Jim Crow, racist South. What he detonated is the completion of American democracy with the 1964 civil rights law. This is alienated the south of progressive Democrats and sent the white vote sliding towards the Republicans.

Trump is the legitimate heir to a popular reactionary strain that depth in American democracy. However, what is also clear is that it is the most obvious, unpleasant, unprepared, ever to encourage the White House. What is the mistake that happened?

The decisive thing is that elite tests and balances have failed in the Republican Party. Without any strong popular movement, the result of the weak elite in the United States is that democracy is sliding towards the slim people. A large part of the American voters will vote for anyone other than the liberal elite member. A smaller part, but is still essential, Trump loves positively. The added dynamic comes from the fact that, unlike his first term, Trump opens the door for a new guardian of the younger men, represented by Vice Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk.

Anyone who tracked the Republican Party’s extremism since the 1990s remembers Newt Gingrich and Sarah Balin and has felt the arrest of the satisfaction of the merit of America, you can see this disaster awaits to happen.

It was clear for some time that the United States needed a new and more restricted formula for foreign policy. Bernie Sanders, in the expression of the ancient United States, called for the end of American imperialism. Barack Obama called for restraint, although Hillary Clinton, his foreign minister, preferred a more expansionist line.

Joe Biden Ashraf Ashraf is a very unlimited revival of American demands for global leadership. The result was the administration of the United States to defend Ukraine, supported the Israeli escalation in the Middle East and participated in the brink of the abyss with China. This is satisfied with Washington “Blob”, which revived the lives of the Atlantic Ocean and satisfied with them in Europe. But despite the Biden administration claiming to pursue an foreign -class foreign policy, popular support for its approach was fragile.

Of course, Trump is the sabotage. But when the current situation is demolished, it does not do more than confirming what is clear – that the elite alliance that preferred the American global leadership has lost its political grip. If Europe wants something you like to call it a “standing arrangement”, it will have to make it for itself.

At least in the compass of its own relationships with the rest of the world, Europe has a way to do this and a strong political culture to maintain it. In Berlin this week, we have finally heard enough answer, with Friedrich Mirz, adviser to the coalition program that will witness huge increases in defensive spending. This is not an end and will not save Ukraine from terrible options. But it provides the possibility that Europe is finally capable of overcoming its humiliating fear of Russia and relying on unreliable America once.