America vs. the World

"The Trump administration's National Security Strategy made it official: The American-dominated liberal world order is over. This is not because the United States proved materially incapable of sustaining it. Rather, the American order is over because the United States has decided that it no longer wishes to play its historically unprecedented role of providing global security. The American might that upheld the world order of the past 80 years will now be used instead to destroy it."

"Americans are entering the most dangerous world they have known since World War II, one that will make the Cold War look like child's play and the post-Cold War world like paradise. In fact, this new world will look a lot like the world prior to 1945, with multiple great powers and metastasizing competition and conflict. The U.S. will have no reliable friends or allies and will have to depend entirely on its own strength to survive and prosper."

"Americans are neither materially nor psychologically ready for this future. For eight decades, they have inhabited a liberal international order shaped by America's predominant strength. They have grown accustomed to the world operating in a certain way: Largely agreeable and militarily passive European and Asian allies cooperate with the United States on economic and security issues. Challengers to the order, such as Russia and China, are constrained by the combined wealth and might of the U.S. and its allies."

The United States has decided to stop providing the global security that sustained an American-dominated liberal world order, ending that order without material collapse. The retreat transforms global politics into a multipolar, pre-1945-like era of expanding great-power competition and conflict. The U.S. will lack reliable allies and must rely on its own strength, requiring increased military spending to contest access to overseas resources, markets, and strategic bases. Americans are unprepared both materially and psychologically after eight decades of a stable liberal international order, accustomed to cooperative, largely passive European and Asian partners and constrained challengers like Russia and China.

Read at The Atlantic