How to squander an empire
It is easy to look rich if you raid the family silver.
The best thing I have read so far about the shocking scenes at the White House Zelenskiy meeting today comes from David Frum at The Atlantic:
"We’re witnessing the self-sabotage of the United States.... The American people need to reckon with the mess Trump and Vance are making of this country’s once-good name"
I have been struck how Imperial Trump's ambitions are; the pronouncements of claiming territory in Greenland, Gaza, Canada and Panama; his inauguration address claiming the US could "once again consider itself a growing nation, one that.. expands our territory... and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons".
And what is his attempt to split the spoils of Ukraine - territory to Putin, natural resources to himself - if not the actions of a man who sees the world through the lens of competing and extractive fiefdoms?
And yet, what we saw today was a man squandering an Empire, not building one.
The US has extraordinary and very real economic, military and financial power. This has been built over generations, and to a very substantial degree it has been built on a foundation of soft power. The past 70-80 years produced a very modern kind of Superpower, one to whom other countries ceded a large amount of power not by force, but with consent. Other NATO countries have freely allowed their militaries to be entirely dependent on US systems. What would the emperors of old have given for such reach?
Yet Trump is cashing it all in.
For now the Starmers and Macrons of the world are visiting on bended knee. But Trump is not "growing" a nation, he is spending down its most vital resource; its trust and reputation. The rest of the world will not let itself get into this position again.
It is easy to look rich if you raid the family silver.
ICYMI
I was on Newstalk earlier this week talking with Joe Lynam about the Musk - listen back here:
And I had a feature in The Business Post's Connected Magazine at the weekend on the end of factchecking (question mark) and the misinformation crisis:
