Trump still wants a summit with Kim Jong Un, the White House insisted on Thursday. As Trump headed to his helicopter on Friday morning, he told reporters that discussions between Washington and Pyongyang had resumed. He even held out hope for the June 12th date in Singapore. But his words were the latest unsettling prospect in a tumultuous time of all-or-nothing diplomacy that intrinsically increases the dangers of conflict. In the sixteen months of Trump’s Presidency, the United State has witnessed a stunning undoing of long-standing norms—of the U.S.-led world order, core alliances, trade pacts, principles of nonproliferation, patterns of globalization, world institutions, and, most of all, U.S. influence. A lot of it began in 2003, with the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But it has accelerated with breathtaking speed since Trump took office. [...]
The litany is long: a rising China; Russia’s interference in several democratic elections and its forcible challenge of sovereign borders; North Korea’s unprecedented nuclear arsenal; Syria’s catastrophic civil war; Iran’s destabilizing interventions and the collapse of the nuclear deal; new turmoil along the Israeli-Palestinian border; the unravelling of global trade pacts; the dismemberment of the European Union; Venezuela’s breakdown; and America’s longest war, in Afghanistan. [...]
Trump has disrupted the global order far more than the domestic order, Ian Bremmer, the president of the Eurasia Group, told me. “Domestically, the President has not had a huge impact on policy. Everything has been resisted by the ‘swamp,’ the bureaucracy, and Congress,” he said. “Internationally, the world was already moving away from the U.S.-led order when Trump took office. But he is pushing a rock that was already rolling down the hill much faster.” In a commencement speech at the Naval Academy on Friday, Trump touted the success of an agenda that rejects past policies and promotes stand-alone U.S. supremacy in the world. “We are not going to apologize for America—we are going to stand up for America. No more apologies,” Trump said. “They are respecting us again. Yes, America is back.” He told cadets at the Annapolis stadium, “Winning is such a great feeling, isn’t it? Nothing like winning. You got to win.” [...]
Trump has even challenged the notion of a united Europe, suggesting that other nations may want to follow suit after Britain’s decision to exit the European Union. Since the nineteen-fifties, merging Europe into a common whole has been a central U.S. principle to foster peace on a continent rife with conflict for centuries. The cracks in America’s core alliances are weakening the West—and its ability to forge peace through joint policies. In turn, challengers, notably China, are gaining ground.
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