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Civilisations are not murdered, said the historian Arnold Toynbee. They die from suicide. Though military clout and geographic fortune will sustain America, its republic is flirting with Toynbee’s script. No external threat or domestic cost benefit appraisal would lead a Martian to believe Earth’s greatest power should be in meltdown by its own hand. Whether in China or Canada, or indeed the US, human observers are in disbelief. The speed of America’s turn on itself is historic.
Donald Trump was sworn in ten weeks ago. He inherited an economy with stable inflation and dropping interest rates but with growth still projected to outstrip any big competitor this year. With each fresh Trump salvo on the global economy, US growth forecasts are cut. Assuming he will supply more fuel for downward revisions — most likely with his “liberation day” of reciprocal tariffs on the rest of the world — America seems bound for recession later this year. This would be a recession of choice; Trump’s choice.
But that is the trivial part. Negative growth would be a mere offshoot of a more troubling assault on the US experiment. What differentiates it from earlier emergencies is the lack of serious resistance. The 1861-1865 civil war was a bloody fight to the death. But the anti-slavery union cause was righteously impassioned. America’s 1941 response to Pearl Harbor awoke an isolationist nation. The US made up in single-mindedness what it had missed in foresight.
Each of America’s domestic convulsions since then — the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, the divisions caused by the Vietnam war, Richard Nixon’s Watergate, and even the backlash to the 2003 Iraq war — led to bitterly fought resolutions, sometimes positive ones. What is missing now is any sense of the scale of what is at stake. Ironically, foreigners are all too aware. Every time a scientist is denied entry, or a tourist vanishes into detention, it makes headlines back home. Overseas students live in fear of being arbitrarily deported, or even snatched off the street by masked agents. Prospective visitors are making other plans.
And what will the world make of America’s 250th anniversary next year? The US declaration of independence paid “decent respect to the opinions of mankind”. Trump presents a scowl to humanity, which is either ripping his country off, or growing fat on US largesse. The brutality is the point. When Kristi Noem, Trump’s secretary of homeland security, parades in front of kneeling shaven-headed detainees, the sadism is intentional. When JD Vance, the vice-president, invites himself to Greenland to tell its people they will one way or another become American, his threat is sincere.
On many fronts, and with deliberate haste, America is vaporising its soft power. It takes less than a quarter to besmirch a brand that took a quarter of a millennium to build. How long would it take to repair? Last week, Myanmar was hit by its worst earthquake in decades. Chinese and even Russian aid teams were on the ground within days. Having dismantled USAID, American assistance has yet to arrive. At home, Trump plans to deport more than 300,000 Venezuelan refugees into the maw of the brutal regime they fled.
None of the world’s huddled masses are welcome in America with one exception — white South Africans. As Trump shuts down agencies and consulates around the world, his administration is establishing processing centres for white Afrikaner “refugees” in Pretoria, whom he claims are victims of racial discrimination by South Africa’s Black majority government. In case anyone misses the point, his administration is erasing the contributions of non-white Americans from Pentagon websites, the Arlington cemetery and the Smithsonian museum. Martin Luther King Jr is out. The names of defeated confederate generals are back. Science research projects are being scoured for banned words, such as “equity” and even “women”.
All of this is being done in the name of meritocracy. America’s new guard are almost all white, all male, and mostly unqualified to lead the great departments they are vandalising. It is not just foreigners who are remaking their plans. American scientists are looking for jobs abroad. Trump has presented the rest of the world with a giant poaching opportunity. Should there be any doubt that the US has embraced brutalism, witness last month’s extrication of the Tate brothers, Andrew and Tristan, from Romania, where they are now back awaiting trial on charges of human trafficking and sexual exploitation. As others are intimidated into self-deporting, the brothers were given the red carpet. Such portents are graver than any self-inflicted recession.
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