No. of Recommendations: 65
I agree, Jim. Today’s geopolitical picture, brought on by U.S. tariffs, (currently noise)
will (could) lead to no country trusting the U.S. for many, many years.
Reminds me of times past…
The Interwar Period (1919-1939): Post World War I, the U.S. retreated into a policy of isolationism. Rejection of Versailles Treaty, League of Nations which created European distrust.
Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930: Distrust caused when the U.S. raised tariffs on imported goods, which triggered international retaliatory tariffs which deepened global economic depression.
Vietnam War Era (kinda 1960s-1970s): Extraordinary European and Developing Nation’s condemnation.
Iraq War (early 2000s): Again, U.S. causing rift with traditional European Allies as the U.S. used questionable “intel” to act outside int’l norms/process. Euro polls absolutely car killed U.S. foreign policy and created a huge drop in favor to the U.S. during this period.
While no country trusting the U.S. for “many, many years” may be a debatable point
Let me suggest a different perspective. First, when Jim speaks of the loss of trust he's primarily not speaking of the tariff brouhaha. That's more of a symptom. He has explained that it's about geopolitics - America receding from its alliances, abandoning its principles of support for democracy, the rule of law, threatening allies, no longer valuing mutual trust and long term mutually beneficial relationships, abandoning international institution of which it was the primary architect, abandoning all of its soft power around the globe. Replacing those with a purely transactional and extortional zero-sum view of geopolitics, and showing a tendency to get along with foreign dictators more than with former allies.
Looking at the history of the last century, there were two major eras until 2025. In the pre-WWII era the U.S. was not a significant player on the world stage. The British Empire ruled the world and the seas and international commerce (what relatively little of it there was), and the Pound Sterling was the reserve currency of the world. America was an emerging power but not quite there yet, much like today's China. It all changed after WWII when America became the dominant power and established a vast empire, not through conquest but through the creation of strong alliances and international institutions. America dictated a new world order that held for 80 years (79 years and 8 months to be precise). The empire grew stronger with time, and dramatically more so when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The Vietnam and Iraq wars were brief and insignificant setbacks that did not break America's hegemony or the trust of its allies.
On January 20, 2025 the world entered a new era in which America made a unilateral unprovoked and monstrously stupid choice to abandon the world order it had built and painstakingly maintained, and replaced it with chaos. That kind of shattering of trust will, IMHO, never be repaired.
Elan
