"A great global uncertainty" is how the Times' Roger Cohen describes the vast cacophony and narrow prejudices of Trump's foreign policy legacy. The Post's David Ignatius characterizes the coherence-deprived, twice-impeached and recidivist felon's careenings in foreign policy as a "demolition derby."
Both summations seem inadequate in capturing the multifaceted stench of Trump's unfathomable policies. But, in brief, accurate yet still understated is that "America, to foreign observers, has fallen," notes Cohen. It's become a cliché, nevertheless the 45th president and No. 1 calamity was indeed a one-man wrecking crew in his unschooled bulldozing of the world order and estrangement of long-valued allies.
America's name and "image" — that additionally clichéd warhorse of Madison Avenue public relations — are mud. We can no longer be trusted, say Europeans; they're trapped in a "crisis of American power," says their Council on Foreign Relations; we're a spent partner in essential multilateralism, having violated their trust once too often. The scattered, rubbled foundation of our betrayal sits in the not-unreasonable assessment that the "US political system is broken," says Europe's CFR.
But, as Mr. Cohen further remarks, our "Constitution held. Battered institutions held" against the "traumatization" of National Guard troops deployed and razor wire strung. And, a reminder: "America held when troops were similarly deployed to protect state capitols during the civil rights movement in the 1960s."
Some Americans have perhaps forgotten just how politically broken and domestically violent were the 1960s and early 70s: brutal state power — to the world's utter horror — unleashed on African-American citizens demanding only their constitutional rights; bloody, riotous clashes over "The War"; the National Guard's willingness to actually kill college students attending a peace rally. America, to foreign observers, had fallen.
Four decades earlier, the U.S. abruptly withdrew from its multilateral intervention into European slaughter and subsequent engagement of internationalist order. The deceptive siren of luxurious isolationism lured American politicians and constituents into the complacency of the 1920s and '30s. America, to foreign observers, had fallen.
But it soon staged a noble comeback, and 50 years later, well after the Soviet Union had skillfully exploited the racial and cultural strife of America's 1960s — after totalitarians proved that any nation conceived in democratic representation cannot long endure — it was the USSR that lay in ruins. America would go on to elect a black president; formally honor home groups which had been abused and marginalized; and reestablish itself as a respected world player. America's name and image, once again, gleamed.
I shall give Roger Cohen the final word, which is damn smart — and led me to this here post's title: "Betting against America’s capacity for reinvention and revival was never a good idea, even at the worst of times."