, Columnist
America Deserves Donald Trump. The World Doesn’t.
The president-elect has no philosophy or policy, and his incoherence about global relations is not feigned.
It’s his world now.
Photographer: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg
Every country gets the government it deserves, it has been said, and America now gets a second administration led by Donald Trump. But the rest of the world did not vote in the US election. Does it deserve what comes next?
And what exactly is that? The planet’s most important relationship is arguably that between the world as a whole and its most powerful nation, even if it’s no longer a superpower, hyperpower or “hegemon.” That relationship, much more so than in Trump’s first term, is now in flux, adrift, undefined.