MAGA foreign policy: So much losing!

[marmar]

MAGA foreign policy: So much losing!
From the Great White North to Down Under and beyond, Trump's chaos is an unexpected boon for normie democracy

By Andrew O'Hehir
Executive Editor
Published May 4, 2025 9:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) Here’s a conspiracy theory for you: Mainstream political parties of the center-right and center-left, across a wide range of self-described democratic nations, were in big trouble as we neared the midpoint of the 2020s. They were beset on all sides by anti-immigrant sentiment, worsening economic inequality and widespread mistrust in government. The proto-fascist (and actually fascist) far right was on the rise; to a lesser extent, so was the socialist left.

But they had a plan! Install a vicious, undisciplined sociopath as would-be dictator of the United States, unleashing a worldwide reaction of anti-American loathing. (Which, if we’re being honest, was not far under the surface anyway.) In effect, the world’s most powerful nation would abruptly subtract itself from the international equation, compelling an entirely new set of global alliances — and the struggling neoliberal centrist parties would look far more appetizing, as the proverbial adults in the room.

No, that isn’t really what happened — or at least I don’t think so. (No rational person would or should discount the civilization-scale Russian roulette factor of the second Trump presidency.) But the global effects of neo-Trumpism, considered in total, have been so uniformly self-destructive that it might as well be true. Do your own research!

Within just the last week, this tendency only gained momentum: The Trump factor was clearly decisive in returning Canada’s Liberal Party to power, under new Prime Minister Mark Carney, in an election that a few months back it appeared certain to lose. As this column was being written, it became clear that Australia’s center-left Labor Party, under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, had won an even more decisive victory “in a remarkable turnaround driven partly by anger over President Donald Trump’s disruptive trade war,” to quote the Washington Post. ...................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/05/04/maga-foreign-policy-so-much-losing/