Donald Trump will radically change 80 years of American foreign policy; In fact, the entire North American strategy is about to take a very dangerous turn. Beyond his buffoonery and tendency toward isolationism, Trump’s second term in power will be more disruptive than the first and will undoubtedly replace a vision of foreign policy that the United States has maintained since World War II.
For a significant majority of analysts in the northern country, Trump will literally throw overboard that vision of maintaining balances of power in Europe and the Middle East to concentrate on accumulating and exploiting power for his very personal purposes. Only Richard Nixon, they claim, chose to behave like a “madman” and try to take some advantage from that attitude.
The very serious problem is that when the use of power is not linked to values, or at least to a minimum of principles, the result can be chaos and if it is the United States, it can be on a global scale.
If we leave aside illusions and hopes, the harsh reality will be that in the United States a very clear path has been opened towards a dictatorship. And it seems to me that in the face of Trump we should not live in a world of self-deception, full of imaginary possibilities. But, rather, read his actions as those of a potential petty dictator.
What is clear is that a winner is a winner. And the reality that wielding all the power there is in the world will attract support no matter who it is and where it comes from, will be a fact. That is the nature of power, at any time and in any society.
That is why it is proposed that the United States is heading towards its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a – reasonable – probability that in the next three or four years there will be incidents of mass violence, a collapse of federal authority and the path towards an increasingly deep division of the country.
The New York Times editorial goes much further by maintaining that it was the use of fear, Trump’s favorite tool, to attack everything and everyone. The main media maintains that he has abused this resource to intimidate all his opponents, critics and allies so that they surrender, bow down or, outright, leave and do not bother him. He maintains that he built his real estate empire by dint of lawsuits and threats against his competitors and his partners alike.
He cowed and demolished his political opponents through humiliation and insult; He consolidated his control over the Republican Party and silenced his internal detractors with pressure tactics and threats to end their political careers. And as president, he used the power of his office and social networks to ruin the lives of whoever he wanted. That is the face of this character who enters the White House for the second time to, from there, kick the table and spill the soup on all the diners.
The issue is so clear that the CEOs (top company executives) of technology companies such as Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos “learned” the lesson and not only bowed their heads but with white faces of fear, they appear in the photo of the shot. Trump’s inauguration. Many other business leaders showered him with praise and public squeamishness, along with millionaire contributions for his inauguration. Companies like Ford, GM, Boeing, among others, sent everything from money to fleets of cars and transportation to attend the inauguration ceremony, hoping to come out clearly on Trump’s side before he follows through on his threatening trade wars. .
Trump, then, wants dissent to cost his opponents so dearly that they find it unbearable. Does it sound familiar to you? Evo Morales and García Linera and their distorted and revanchist social and political vision; Chávez, Maduro, Diaz Canel and Ortega and their corrupt dictatorships. It is the time of tyrants and anti-democrats. It is the time of chaos.