The US Empire is Going SUPERNOVA
When stars become exhausted, they go supercritical; we are learning, so do empires.
President Trump has set off a truly extraordinary string of global-order-destabilizing campaigns that have left the world reeling. From his attacks on Venezuela and promises of “action” against Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Iran, to his threats against allies in “securing” Greenland, it feels like one of those weeks Lenin had promised long ago: There are decades where nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen.
In a mere week, it feels like Trump has turned the world upside down and flushed international law down with it.
Spoiler alert: This may not altogether be a bad thing.
Many world leaders and global figures have reacted to this unprecedented turn of events. Germany’s president Steinmeier:
Arnaud Bertrand summarizes:
Truly extraordinary language by German President Steinmeier:
He says the US's values are "broken", that they're changing the world "into a den of thieves in which the most unscrupulous take what they want," and treat "whole countries" as their "property".
Pretty hypocritical too, Germany has a lot of self-reflecting to when it comes to breaking "values" given their stance on Gaza, and their general enabling of the US. In a very real way, it's also very much Europeans' fault.
Even the Pope was aghast at the degradation of the post-bellum “comity of nations” which has at various times been codified as the ‘rules based order’ or ‘international law’:
Trump further outlined his vision of this restructuring by stating that international law does not apply to him, and he is guided only by the rubric of his own lofty moral compass:
His personal advisor Stephen Miller fleshed it out even further:
“You can say whatever you want about international niceties and stuff like that. But we live in a real world that is governed by force, coercion, and authority. This is the iron law of the world” — Stephen Miller, Adviser to the President of the United States on Homeland Security.
Whispers from Europa’s interior tell us that the apparatchiks are panicking behind the scenes—the upending of their sacred order means a total reorganization of power balances at a time when European countries have no clout to demand a ‘place at the table’ for the ensuing negotiations over the leftover scraps. They now appear to be gravely rethinking their foolhardy choice in placing all their eggs in ‘daddy’ US’s patchy basket:
But the truth is, this is not the same old whinging about Trump’s upending of international paradigms which you can find saturating every corner of the infospace. Rather, I wanted to peer more closely at one very specific aspect of ongoing developments: the mechanism by which US presidents seem to devolve into the worst caricatures of neocon archetypes soon after becoming elected.
Why is it that Trump so quickly back-pedaled into a seeming warmonger after promising no foreign entanglements and wasting of American resources on endless and fruitless geopolitical adventures? In short, why has Trump descended into a parody of Caligula to the point where many are questioning his mental sanity? And most importantly, what implications does this plunge into chaotic amorality have for the future of America as a whole?
Let us begin:
