The New York Times bestselling author of Trumpocracy makes frighteningly clear how Trump’s idiocy, corruption, and belligerence are leading to a historical global breakdown.
“He’s like Heath Ledger’s Joker—but without the operational excellence.” That was the grim assessment of one senior G7 official David Frum spoke with in the shocked aftermath of Donald Trump’s savage post-summit tweets in mid-2018. In Trumpocracy, Frum outlined the dangers Trump posed to American democracy. Now, he examines the damage he is inflicting on the world.
Trump bullies our traditional friends; he expresses his admiration and capitulates to adversaries, authoritarians, and potential funding sources for Trump enterprises. Breaking decades of tradition, Trump has condoned political violence, insulted our allies, denigrated the basic foundational institutions of western liberal democracy, pulled out of international agreements, and praised dictators. In Trump’s worldview, America has been played as a sucker. Peace is a pipe dream, and cooperation is for losers.
As Frum explains, Trump has proven increasingly hostile to everyone except Vladimir Putin. Trump fired missiles into Syria in 2017, exactly as he said he would not do, and in December 2018, announced that the U.S. would withdraw its troops. He threatened to rain “fire and fury” upon North Korea and tweeted that he wielded a bigger nuclear button than Kim Jong Un. He has mused about military intervention in Venezuela. He refused to condemn the Saudi murder of a Washington Post columnist. He’s waging a harmful trade war with China. It now seems clear that what Trump rejected in Bush’s foreign policy was not the use of force, but the application of force in service to democratic ideals.
Trump’s actions over the past two years have emboldened and justified autocratic popular leaders around the world. He has undermined the guardians of democracy, free markets, transparency and human rights. His capricious actions may leave NATO, the UN, and the global stability of the post-Cold War in ruins.
A sobering tour of the conflicts Trump is stoking and their increasingly destabilizing effect on the international order, World War Trump paints a portrait of a world that may take longer to recover from his presidency than America.
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