With the government of the United States currently in the care of a vulnerable adult, open to manipulation by those around him, we need to consider what happens when he is allowed to die.
Throughout the current Trump presidency, we are seeing many of the signs displayed in Brezhnev’s final years as leader of the Soviet Union. Essentially, he was kept as a figurehead, as no obvious successor emerged and until his death was unavoidable. In Trump’s case, he is kept on the golf course for much of the time but, when he does appear, he rambles and is unable to retain a coherent train of thought. Any normal family would have ensured that he no longer had the car keys and that his affairs were managed by someone with power of attorney, but nobody seems able to remove his mobile phone and prevent government by social media – in this case Truth Social.
There are far too many advantages in keeping him as figurehead – the opportunities for family members and associates to make money, the opportunities for foreign leaders to exploit the relationship and the need for his support for the Republican party to retain its stranglehold on the Legislature all contribute to maintaining the protection racket school of government.
When he dies, the question is whether the US will have passed the point of no return in losing its democracy. Trump has already mused about the possibility of sparing American voters the need to vote again. If there are future elections, will they have been gerrymandered, voter rolls ‘purged’/reduced and with ICE-supervised polling stations so that the US is a democracy in name only? Will the press have been neutered by a combination of censorship and compliant owners? Given that about a third of the US population seems still to support Trump, despite all his obvious failings, it does not require much more of the electorate to be persuaded to retain the current regime – with or without Trump.
Put another way, the current behaviours and view of the world may be the future attitude of the United States, rather than just an isolated aberration. And, even if a more benign regime takes over, it will take a considerable time to rebuild trust as long as a sufficiently large proportion of the remaining voters in America actually believe that the US has a future in diplomatic, financial, commercial and military isolation from its former friends.
If you genuinely believe that America is the most powerful country in the world, why would you need to worry about the opinions of allies? The implications of the US addiction to loans from overseas and to cheap foreign manufactures will take a little time to register.
As Mark Carney has suggested, former friends and allies, in all parts of the world, who now find themselves in an abusive relationship, need to realign. Potentially, we must assume that the longer-term future relationship may be hostile and that we may need to confront the United States in one way or another.
First, we must wean ourselves off reliance on US military leadership. NATO was set up when the UK and the US were the dominant military forces in Europe; NATO has been described as being built on a US operating system, to use software terminology. Language, tactics and doctrine all have a very strong American bias. In the future, will we look to Ukraine for the model of how to fight a peer-to-peer European war? Why will the US need to operate from a dozen UK bases and why should it continue to operate its national military command headquarters from locations in Europe (EUCOM, AFRICOM and AFAFRICA)?
Equipment relies heavily on US manufacture. For years, there has been a trade-off between supporting domestic industry (with benefits in employment, technology development, local logistic support and autonomy) against “buying American” to gain the benefits of the US’ investment in technology and to enhance interoperability with our main ally.
The decisions around development and production of the Eurofighter Typhoon in the 1990s (and currently the next generation Global Combat Air programme and Future Combat Air systems) highlight these issues. The cost, complexity and technological challenges make it difficult for any single nation to support projects of this magnitude, which in turn creates the need for collaborative programmes with complex decision making and additional cost overheads. To date, for fast jets, UK has hedged its bets by maintaining a half fleet of European Typhoons and a half fleet of US F-35 aircraft. The same dilemma exists in many examples in defence acquisition.
If you have a pension fund, perhaps have a look at the breakdown of investments in your portfolio. How much is committed to US equities and government bonds? How long will investors be prepared to fund a ballooning US government debt ($39 trillion at time of writing – that is 39 followed by twelve zeros, but accelerating with the Iran war)? This is no doubt manageable with the strength of the US economy, but, in turn, how long can that survive the economic isolation induced by tariff walls and resulting retaliation, or the gradual withdrawal from use of the Dollar as the preferred reserve currency, or the loss of low-cost labour by strangling immigration? Hopefully the bubble can be allowed to deflate slowly rather than bursting suddenly.
How many of you are reading this using Microsoft or Apple software? If we are seriously concerned that the influence of US “big tech” may be increasingly malign, what alternatives will we have? Do we have the restrictions in place to prevent the big brother collection of data that seems to have happened in the US under DOGE? Should we be concerned about the access to UK government and NHS data bases that is being given to PALANTIR?
As soon as you begin to think through the consequences of disconnecting the US from our lives, the implications are fundamental. It is a possibility that we need to face.
Special Relationship RIP.
