Is this about America, or about Russia?
Paul Krugman on Trump and America. But this could 100% apply to Putin and Russia!
Der Untergang
America became a country that could not be trusted to honor agreements. It was a country that constantly tried to bully other countries. Our word was worth nothing. Our sanity was not to be taken for granted. And then, of course, along comes Iran, where in addition to showing that we’re not to be trusted, that we’re not going to be relied upon, we also showed that we were far weaker than people imagined.
If there’s one thing people thought it was, well, America has a powerful military. It turns out, well, not as powerful and not nearly as competent as people thought. How much of that is the result of Trump and Hegseth degrading it and how much of it was there to begin with is an interesting question. But anyway, at this point, we are not loved, we are not respected, and we aren’t even feared.
And we’re not getting that back. Even if Trump is succeeded by someone decent — God help us if he isn’t — but even if we have a more or less rational, well-intentioned government that follows, the world now knows that we are capable of putting someone like Trump in a position of unprecedented, almost absolute power and that it can happen again.
And the world also knows that we’re just not as fearsome as we seem to be. That we can be defied much more successfully even by smallish countries than anyone really imagined.