Trumps europäische Drohungen könnten dem Ansehen der USA in der Welt dauerhaften Schaden zufügen

They already have. It’s not just Trump, his rhetoric is popular in the USA. That confirms what most Europeans always thought.

They already have. NATO members used to be our greatest ally and now….not so much.

Russia invaded Ukraine because Europe looked weak, underarmed, and unprepared to respond….over a million lives have been freaking wrecked and we’re still pretending harsh talk is the real ‚damage.‘ Saying US standing is endangered because Trump came out hard is laughable compared to what actual weakness invites. If blunt pressure gets allies to rearm and deter the next war, that strengthens the West, not weakens it.

This was always going to happen after the fall of the Soviet Union.  There is no enemy to unite around anymore. The world is going back to testing which system works the best again. 

How could anyone think that threatening friends will make them do what you want want?
When has this ever worked as a long term strategy?

I’m posting a comment I posted elsewhere because I think it fits here.

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I am reminded rather forcefully of something Paul Kennedy wrote in his The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (written in the late 1980s) which I found amazingly prescient.

He noted that the relative decline of the US, and transition into a multipolar world, was inevitable. The reason: what raised the US into a new kind of great power was a set of temporary conditions: the inferno of WW2, which had either crushed or beggared literally all of the other great powers. Moreover, China in particular was hit with a triple whammy: it never had a chance to recover from its century of humiliation before it was massacred by the Japanese, followed by civil war and Mao’s incompetence.

Of the great powers, the US alone emerged unscathed, its economy energized after the Great Depression, its territory unscarred by war. So it was uniquely situated.

However, barring a repeat, this uniqueness could not last forever. It could be extended (by the use of alliances and soft power) but eventually the other natural great powers – particularly China, and potentially Western Europe and Japan – were bound to catch up.

The only real issue was how the US was going to manage the transition, from unique and singular power to “mere” “great power, one of a handful”. Would it transition in a way that left it better or worse off?

Kennedy’s concept, if I remember correctly, was that the best outcome would be for the US to support international institutions that benefitted its trade and productivity in such a manner as to convince the other rising great powers and middleweight powers to “buy in” to the system – in other words, to use its current advantages to ensure future benefit for itself in a world in which it is no longer a unique power.

The problem Kennedy foresaw was that US leaders may be tempted, in an era of relative decline, to grab for as much immediate benefit and power as they can, using its temporary advantages while they still can.

The reason why this approach may be preferred is the usual one of short term planning because of their political system (Presidents may rather see hard benefits right now then establish long-term systems that build future success, where that success will be realized by future Presidents; likewise, current Presidents may not care that seizing current advantages create problems for future presidents).

Another reason is psychological: Americans are heavily invested in their uniqueness, and appearance of relative decline makes them annoyed, quite willing to blame it on “unfairness”.

The problem of this situation is that using current systemic advantages to nakedly grab for gains ensures that the other powers will be annoyed and resentful, and is not sustainable. Inevitably it provokes a reaction.

This, unfortunately, is what we are seeing right now. A significant number of Americans, in part annoyed by a sense of relative decline, have become susceptible to the politics of grievance and unfairness; they support a President who is all about grabbing current gains without the slightest concern for reactions to this.