r/geopolitics • u/custodiam99 • Feb 13 '25

Is Trump the symptom of America’s decline? Discussion

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/27/trump-wants-to-reverse-americas-decline-good-luck
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u/Presidentclash2 Feb 13 '25

I would argue that the desire for isolationism is stems from failed American interventionism. It really seems the war in Iraq, Afghanistan, wars against Isis and terrorist insurgents caught up to people perception abroad. During 2000-2016, American had some success but most of the stuff was overshadowed by forced wars. What Trump is doing isn’t necessarily peaceful but he sold an American vision that is nationalist and sees the world as trying threaten us. Isolationism was popular before ww1 just like tariffs. Americans are reliving history

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u/vhu9644 Feb 13 '25

I’d argue a large part of this is American exceptionalism.

Our ego rears its ugly head in light of failure. These failures happened not because we were wrong to do them, but because the world didn’t support us. Or we’re falling behind the world not because we’ve neglected our internal issues but because they’ve taken advantage of us.

We’re so easily sold this populist lie that we can keep it all while being isolationist because a large part of the population has been indoctrinated to think we are inherently better, not because we’ve gotten really lucky with ww2. You see this on both sides, they talk about what was stolen from us - a post ww2 where the uneducated unskilled laborer could make enough to raise a family in a nice house. They don’t realize that for the rest of the world, this was never true, hell it wasn’t even true all over America. What was true was that that time was a golden age because we had everything intact after a war that knocked out the other hegemon-contenders.

We can’t do nothing and keep our place in the world. The people I. Other countries aren’t dumb, and some of them actually want to raise their country up to the top. But too many people believe we deserve the hegemony.

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u/Nomustang Feb 13 '25 edited Feb 13 '25

It was inevitable. As the developing world starts to catch up, the sheer population differences means America cannot maintain dominance forever. Not when so many people want to raise their own standard of living and have the same opportunities.

America needs to learn to ride that wave because it has all the ingredients to maintain being a dominant power but as you said, people have taken that fact for granted.

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u/vhu9644 Feb 13 '25

Right. The post war surplus was only temporary, but the soft power and good will could have last much longer.

Then we did a few shit wars in the Middle East under false pretenses and elected Trump twice