It’s Trump’s world, and he’s accelerating its chaos

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The world feels like it’s spinning out of control.

The planet’s two major wars, in Iran and Ukraine , are no longer contained . Experts warn of doomsday scenarios in which AI could wipe out humanity. Soaring energy prices rock industrialized economies blighted by inequality. Floods, fires and blistering heat are turning the climate crisis biblical.

Meanwhile, global institutions that bankrolled relative stability crumble. The United Nations , where world leaders gather this week, looks inept as strongmen spurn its core values: democracy, human rights and international aid.

At any other time over the last 80 years, the US would serve to restore stability. But remarkably, the West’s superpower is now an agent of global volatility.

Step forward, Mr. President.

Donald Trump’s annual address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday comes with his popularity plunging ahead of critical midterm elections and as he’s stuck in the kind of war he vowed never to fight.

Yet Trump is expected to argue that the US has never been as mighty or esteemed. Officials say he’ll boast of spreading global peace and tackling crises his predecessors ducked.

“Our country is respected again. We’re respected like never before. I go to meetings and everyone stands up. They didn’t stand up for our last president; they didn’t care about him,” Trump said earlier this month.

Much of the world disagrees.

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Scorned allies like Canada and in Europe are racing to unify , incredibly, to protect themselves from their former security guarantor – the US. Trust in the increasingly feral US is disappearing.

“America has changed,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, the self-styled leader of “middle powers” mobilizing for the post-American era, said last month. “We cannot control the storm blowing in from Washington.”

Trump’s second-term rationale is that the US is playing with a stacked deck and other powers have no cards. “I can do anything I want,” he said in March, referring to Cuba but epitomizing his worldview.

Washington’s foreign policy is now an extension of the commander in chief’s personality, marked by the use of threats and leveraging force in pursuit of material gains. At the weekend, for example, he pondered on Fox News whether to “blow the entire nation” of Iran up.

But while Trump envisages the US as supreme, its power looks newly brittle.

The survival of the Iranian regime, despite everything Trump threw at it, mocks his narrative of dominance. Depleted US missile intercepters and the rusted hull of a long-deployed aircraft carrier symbolize a war Trump said would end in weeks but is exposing limits to American power on the threshold of its eighth month.

Trump’s belief that he’s a global hit ignores the evidence of multiple opinion surveys that show he’s disdained around the world. It’s the international equivalent of his boast that the US is basking in a domestic golden age even as voters hand him rock-bottom approval ratings.

But what is the true state of American power? Are Trump policies that destroyed a near century-old bipartisan consensus worsening a moment of deep global peril? And is he a cause of the splintering, or merely a product of an inevitable moment when the 20th-century world order dissolved amid a new era’s tests?

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In his first address to the UNGA, in 2017, Trump unveiled a foreign policy that would shake the West to its foundations. “As president of the United States, I will always put America first, just like you, as the leaders of your countries, will always, and should always, put your countries first,” he said.

In his second term, he’s completed the transformation.

He attacks allies and befriends tyrants like China’s leader Xi Jinping – whom he welcomes to Washington this week – and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump 2.0 revived imperialism, especially in the Western Hemisphere. Venezuela’s oil is set to fill US reserves in a 100-year concession following Trump’s toppling of dictator Nicolás Maduro and embrace of democracy-denying regime figurehead Delcy Rodríguez, whom he is also expected to meet with this week.

The flush of success in Venezuela bred hubris that convinced Trump he could similarly destroy an anti-US regime in Iran. Now he’s yet another American president mired in a Middle East war he can’t win or leave.

Tehran has provided the same kind of lesson in how modern drone-led warfare can humble a great power that Kyiv has administered to Moscow, despite both Ukraine and Iran sustaining devastating damage.

Trump also learned last year about another new reality of 21st-century geopolitics. His China trade war ended when Beijing throttled exports of rare earth minerals that power US tech and an economy over-reliant on AI.

A traditional president would corral global coalitions to meet common threats. Yet Trump’s tariff wars and sovereignty threats caused what Carney calls a “rupture” in the alliance systems Washington had used as a force multiplier.

Transatlantic and trans-Pacific bonds have been further strained by the duress that Trump has caused for his fellow leaders with a war that has oil, gasoline and diesel prices soaring. In Europe, the mistrust is deepened by the administration’s support for right-wing populists assailing establishment leaders.

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The fracturing of American alliances might have been unthinkable before Trump.

But angering allies is not a blip; it’s a win for a MAGA movement the chafed at allies building expensive welfare states under America’s defensive shield.

There’s also an undeniable strategic victory for the US as Europeans start to get serious on funding their own defense.

The president was also right to worry about the growing geopolitical challenge as polar ice melts. But his aggressive attitude also shows how he undermines America’s power. He could easily have achieved the new defense deal he’ll sign with Greenland this week, for instance, without threatening to invade a sovereign territory of Denmark, a NATO member.

Such behavior may be squandering US power for years to come.

Greenlandic politician Tillie Martinussen revived an evocative analogy in explaining a loss of faith in Washington. “Even if it’s your best and brightest and strongest sled dog, and it turns around and bites you, you can never trust that dog again,” she told Britain’s Channel 4 News.

But Trump is not alone in eroding America’s competitive edge.

His political ascent was a direct result of draining foreign wars in Afghanistan and Iraq early in the century that cost trillions of dollars and thousands of young lives; showed the limits of US air power; and punctured the US aura of post-Cold War invincibility.

But it’s also clear that Trump has ended the world he inherited.

“I’ve talked to leaders … who just looked at me and said, ‘Look, the first time you guys did this … it was a blip,’” possible 2028 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said at The Atlantic Festival this month. “’Now it’s a pattern and our country has to prepare’ … we’re entering into a world where the old patterns and institutions are not coming back,” he said, paraphrasing those conversations.

Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images/File

Trump is not responsible for the stunning evolution of AI and its potential to change the world. US policies that unwittingly empower China were chosen by previous presidents. Putin’s long-festering hatred of the West can be traced back to Cold War defeat. The climate was changing long before Trump won the White House, even if he still denies it. And the West never really thought about what was next once memories of 1940s unity faded with the greatest generation.

But his volatile temperament is now a mirror of the political era in which he rules. It could make a fierce confluence of global challenges more extreme. And it is fueling long-building questions about the sustainability of American power.

塞缪尔·科鲁姆/西帕/彭博社/盖蒂图片社

世界仿佛正在失控。

伊朗和乌克兰这两场全球性战争已无法控制。专家警告称，人工智能可能导致人类灭绝，世界末日即将到来。能源价格飙升，令本就饱受不平等困扰的工业化经济体雪上加霜。洪水、火灾和酷暑正使气候危机如同圣经中的灾难一般严峻。

与此同时，维系相对稳定的全球机构正在瓦解。本周世界各国领导人齐聚联合国，但联合国却显得无能为力，因为强人政权正在践踏其核心价值观：民主、人权和国际援助。

在过去80年的其他任何时期，美国都会扮演维护稳定的角色。但令人惊讶的是，这个西方超级大国如今却成了全球动荡的根源。

总统先生，请上前一步。

唐纳德·特朗普将于周二在联合国大会上发表年度讲话，此时正值他支持率暴跌之际，距离关键的中期选举仅剩几天，而且他还深陷于他曾誓言永远不会参与的那种战争之中。

然而，预计特朗普会辩称，美国从未像现在这样强大或受人尊敬。官员们表示，他将吹嘘自己为促进全球和平做出了贡献，并解决了他的前任们回避的危机。

“我们的国家再次受到尊重。我们受到的尊重前所未有。我去参加会议，每个人都会起立。他们没有为我们的上一任总统起立；他们根本不在乎他，”特朗普本月早些时候说道。

世界上许多人对此持不同意见。

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像加拿大和欧洲这样被抛弃的盟友，竟然争先恐后地联合起来，以保护自己免受曾经的安全保障者——美国的侵害。人们对日益野蛮的美国的信任正在消失殆尽。

“美国已经变了，”加拿大总理马克·卡尼上个月说道。卡尼自诩为“中等强国”的领袖，正积极动员这些国家迎接后美国时代。“我们无法控制从华盛顿吹来的风暴。”

特朗普连任的理由是，美国手握优势，其他大国则毫无胜算。“我可以为所欲为，”他三月份曾这样说道，当时他指的是古巴，但这番话也体现了他的世界观。

华盛顿的外交政策如今已成为三军统帅个人风格的延伸，其特点是动用威胁和武力以谋取物质利益。例如，上周末，他还在福克斯新闻上考虑是否要“炸毁整个伊朗”。

虽然特朗普将美国视为至高无上的国家，但美国的实力现在看来却十分脆弱。

尽管特朗普使尽浑身解数，伊朗政权依然屹立不倒，这无疑是对他所谓“霸权”论调的莫大讽刺。美国导弹拦截器损耗严重，一艘长期部署的航空母舰锈迹斑斑的船体也暴露出，这场战争——特朗普曾声称几周内就能结束——如今已持续近八个月，却也暴露出美国力量的局限性。

特朗普自认为在全球范围内广受欢迎，却无视多项民意调查显示他在世界各地都备受鄙视的事实。这就像他吹嘘美国正处于国内的黄金时代，而选民却给他压倒性的支持率一样。

但美国的真实实力究竟如何？特朗普的政策是否破坏了近百年的两党共识，加剧了当前全球面临的巨大危机？他是造成这种分裂的原因，还是仅仅是20世纪世界秩序在新时代考验中瓦解的必然产物？

Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images//文件

2017年，特朗普在联合国大会上首次发表讲话，公布了一项将动摇西方根基的外交政策。他说：“作为美国总统，我将永远把美国放在第一位，就像你们作为各自国家的领导人，将永远而且应该永远把你们的国家放在第一位一样。”

在他的第二个任期内，他完成了转型。

他攻击盟友，却与中国领导人习近平（本周他将在华盛顿接待习近平）和俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京等独裁者交好。

特朗普2.0复兴了帝国主义，尤其是在西半球。在特朗普推翻独裁者尼古拉斯·马杜罗并拥抱否认民主的政权傀儡德尔西·罗德里格斯之后，委内瑞拉的石油将根据一项为期100年的特许权协议注入美国储备。预计特朗普本周还将与罗德里格斯会面。

在委内瑞拉取得的成功滋生了傲慢，使特朗普误以为自己也能以同样的方式摧毁伊朗的反美政权。如今，他又成了另一位深陷中东战争泥潭的美国总统，既无法取胜也无法脱身。

德黑兰给莫斯科上了一课，说明现代无人机战争如何能使大国屈服，尽管乌克兰和伊朗都遭受了毁灭性的打击。

去年，特朗普也体会到了21世纪地缘政治的另一个新现实。他发起的中美贸易战以北京限制稀土矿物出口而告终，而稀土矿物正是美国科技和过度依赖人工智能的经济的支柱。

传统总统会协调全球联盟应对共同威胁。然而，特朗普的关税战和主权威胁却造成了卡尼所说的华盛顿赖以成名的联盟体系的“破裂”。

特朗普发动的战争导致石油、汽油和柴油价格飙升，给其他国家领导人造成了巨大压力，进一步加剧了跨大西洋和跨太平洋关系的紧张。在欧洲，特朗普政府支持攻击建制派领导人的右翼民粹主义者，也加深了各方之间的不信任。

迈克·西格尔/路透社/档案照片

在特朗普上台之前，美国联盟的瓦解或许是不可想象的。

但激怒盟友并非小事；对于一直不满盟友在美国的防御保护下建立昂贵的福利国家的“让美国再次伟大”运动来说，这是一次胜利。

随着欧洲国家开始认真考虑为自身国防提供资金，美国也取得了一项无可否认的战略胜利。

总统担忧极地冰川融化带来的日益严峻的地缘政治挑战，这不无道理。但他咄咄逼人的态度也暴露出他正在削弱美国的实力。例如，他完全可以不威胁入侵北约成员国丹麦的主权领土，就与格陵兰岛达成本周即将签署的新防务协议。

这种行为可能会在未来几年内持续削弱美国的实力。

格陵兰政治家蒂莉·马丁努森在解释人们对华盛顿失去信心时，再次引用了一个引人深思的比喻。“即使它是你最好、最聪明、最强壮的雪橇犬，如果它转身咬了你，你也永远不会再信任它了，”她告诉英国第四频道新闻。

但削弱美国竞争力的并非只有特朗普一人。

他的政治崛起直接源于本世纪初在阿富汗和伊拉克发动的旷日持久的战争，这些战争耗费了数万亿美元，夺去了成千上万年轻人的生命；暴露了美国空中力量的局限性；并打破了美国在冷战后所拥有的不可战胜的光环。

但同样显而易见的是，特朗普终结了他所继承的世界。

“我曾与一些领导人交谈过……他们看着我说，‘听着，你们第一次这么做的时候……只是个小插曲，’” 2028年民主党总统候选人皮特·布蒂吉格本月在大西洋节上说道。“‘现在这已经成为一种模式，我们的国家必须做好准备’……我们正在进入一个旧模式和旧制度一去不复返的世界，” 他转述了这些对话的内容。

Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images/文件

人工智能的惊人发展及其改变世界的潜力并非特朗普的过错。那些无意中助长中国实力的美国政策，是由前几任总统制定的。普京对西方由来已久的仇恨可以追溯到冷战的失败。即便特朗普至今仍否认，但早在他入主白宫之前，世界格局就已经开始发生变化。随着“最伟大的一代”的逝去，人们对上世纪40年代团结的记忆逐渐消退，西方也从未真正思考过未来该何去何从。

但他反复无常的性格如今恰恰反映了他所处的政治时代。这可能会使本已严峻的全球挑战更加复杂化，并加剧人们对美国实力可持续性的长期质疑。