Does the United States Stand Alone?

This topic is timed for just after the 250th anniversary fourth of July celebrations. Many people are worried that the festivities will be largely a paean to the greatness of Donald Trump, a pledge to return to our country's past glories, and/or rhetorical assaults on Trump's enemies - and barely a 4th of July celebration. That the USA has survived and matured and flourished for 250 years is a historically unique and incredible achievement for a republic. Hopefully that will not be lost in an orgy of sycophancy and stage-managed hagiography to one man and one version of Americanism.

Even if the Trump Administration restrains itself (?), our topic question is understandable. In less than a year and a half, the United States has:

• Alienated or lost most of its allies and openly sided with its adversaries, mostly authoritarian regimes around the world.
• Abandoned Ukraine (and *MAYBE* Taiwan).
• Attacked Venezuela and made war on Cuba, a throwback to how we treated Latin America during our brief imperial age.
• Attacked Iran, which threatens to cause a global recession.
• Taken no steps to stop or even restrain Israel's war on Gaza.
• Started multiple trade wars for no clear reasons except to get payback for all the past "harm" trade has inflicted on the USA.
• Stopped all global cooperation on climate change and weakened our cooperation on global public health.
• Abolished USAID and basically all of our foreign economic aid.
• Tried to discourage legal immigration, even of highly skilled labor.

A full list would be vastly longer.

Why? What was the strategy? What was the goal, even? Whatever it was/is, does America now stand alone in the world? To be sure, the 80-year-old post WWII world order was creaking anyway. Stasis was not a viable strategy for any U.S. president at this point. Yet, it seems we have forfeited any role we could have played (we were playing a central one under Biden and Obama) in designing the next global architecture and set of rules. One that would have placed collective security, openness to trade and commerce and (some/many) immigration, energy transition, and human rights at its core.

YMMV, of course. The U.S. elite consensus on foreign policy was evaporating, too, and the mass public was seldom consulted in such matters.

So, let's meet eight days after the July 4th...festivities (fingers crossed) to discuss what any foreign affairs group must discuss at this point: Does America now stand alone in the world, untrusted and in the process of being written out of global leadership? If so, how could this be repaired, either now or later?

Check back here for optional background readings the week before our mtg.

Background Readings (optional) -

• TBA.