Eighteen months of the Trump administration: an organic crisis and the end of the era of appearances.

Having begun exactly eighteen months ago, the government of Donald Trump is already showing signs that, in the future, it could be pointed to as a turning point in American politics. It seems that the superpower is moving towards abandoning the principles upon which the post-war international order was organized. Sensitive issues such as human rights, the guarantee of peace, and “democratic” values—which, for the past 70 years, have justified the existence of international organizations and, more specifically, the United Nations system—are being challenged by the new orientation of the president and his team.

An analysis, however brief, of this year and a half of Trump's administration must begin with the reasons that led him to office. It is known that part of his electoral performance is due to the rejection, by almost half of the American electorate, of the results of so-called "globalization." Financial expansion came combined with industrial decentralization, leading industries to locate in regions where labor is less expensive. The result is the transformation of cities that were once large and thriving industrial centers into ghost towns. The financialization of the US economy, while immensely expanding the wealth of the richest 1%, has thrown a considerable portion of the country's population into poverty, precarious employment, or even despair. Add to that the immense contempt of the average American citizen for science, human rights, and the rest of the world, and the result could only be the election of a figure like Donald Trump, armed with a simplistic and xenophobic discourse, in which the slogan "America First" goes beyond mere rhetoric and takes on programmatic contours.

However, in just a year and a half, not even the most audacious of governments could achieve Trump's "success" in redirecting US policy toward isolation. The truth is that, under the polished Democratic governments, with their intellectual brilliance and good manners – reserved, incidentally, for G7 meetings, never in front of weaker nations – the US strategy of opening multiple fronts of conflict had already been put into practice. Trump took the helm of the aircraft carrier already on a full collision course with the world. The US was already mired in the quagmire – which they themselves created – of the wars in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya. The State Department was already funding destabilizations on the Russian borders and the rise of Nazis in Ukraine. The Obama administration itself was already maneuvering destabilization strategies in Latin America and making threats against Venezuela. Hillary Clinton, the candidate who even presented herself as a "feminist" (to the astonishment of feminists worldwide), was already outlining a war plan with Russia, presenting herself with explicit war rhetoric.

Trump, however, does not have the finesse The Democrats have managed to accumulate adversaries within their own group of allies. Their less-than-friendly attitudes towards the most loyal allies of American capitalism – post-war European capitalism – jeopardize the alliance that sustained their rise as the leading power in the contemporary world. The "triad," as Samir Amin aptly characterized it, encompassing the US, Japan, and Europe, controlled the expansion of financial capital until recently, maintaining control over most of the world's assets. In the last two decades, with the accelerated shift of the axis to Asia under Chinese leadership, the strength of the triad has diminished. Trade agreements and cooperation treaties with China had guaranteed Europe and the US advantages, even in the face of the exponential growth of the Asian giant. The Democrats' ambiguous policy has, until now, sought to reduce potential friction with China and secure financial advantages for the center of the system. At the same time, a strategy of encircling and isolating Russia was being outlined, in order to weaken its relative position and hinder the formation of a strong Eurasian geostrategic arc.

But Trump managed, this week, to start a trade war with China. At the same time, he brought the G7 meeting to a standstill, seemingly wanting to push Europe out of the orbit of US allies. The "siege of Russia" ended up favoring an alliance between this power and China, something the US had been successfully trying to avoid since the 1970s. The dynamism of Asia today contrasts with the Euro-American economic crisis, and the shift of the dynamic axis of the world economy towards Asia is becoming increasingly evident.

In the collection of potentially explosive measures of the "Trump era," in addition to the recently initiated trade war with China, the US government's attacks against general human rights principles stand out. This is reflected in the intensification of xenophobic rhetoric directed at immigrants, clearly aimed at the white and conservative "electorate." Threats to build a "wall" on the border with Mexico, dating back to the campaign, and now, the "zero tolerance" measures, which include the imprisonment of illegal immigrants and, as seen in shocking images in recent days, the creation of concentration camps for children separated from their parents, who are being sent to federal prisons. In the wake of the indignant global reaction to this explicit cruelty, Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN and a "star" of Christian neoconservatism, announced, along with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the country's withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). In their statement, the pair criticized the council's positions regarding Israel's war crimes. Haley stated, verbatim, that the US cannot "continue to be part of a hypocritical organization that is solely concerned with its own interests and shies away from human rights." According to the US representative, the Human Rights Council makes unfair criticisms of Israel.

Yes, American neoconservatives consider the criticism leveled at Israel for killing unarmed protesters, arresting children and teenagers, and destroying Palestinian homes to be unfair. The US has always defended Israel's disproportionate actions, but now, with the curious political phenomenon of Christian-Zionism occupying the center of American power, it seems that its old good manners and traditional cynicism have become unnecessary. The departure from the Human Rights Council comes shortly after another measure of clear confrontation with the... status quo of the international order: the relocation of the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

It had been a settled point, since the debate on a negotiated solution for the region began, that a two-state solution would be defended, where Jerusalem, as the holy city of the three major monotheistic religions, would be respected as such. This was the majority position within the United Nations and, despite unconditionally supporting Israel, the US respected it as part of its effort to maintain appearances and legitimize democratic discourse. The moment Trump yielded to pressure from the Christian-Zionists entrenched in his government and moved the US embassy to Israel, he took a dangerous path: that of not recognizing the two-state solution. The protests that followed, by the Palestinians, the violent reaction from Israel, including several assassinations and arrests, and the subsequent US withdrawal from the Human Rights Council, characterize a true U-turn in the orientation of US foreign policy.

In the list of "inflections" in Trump's foreign policy, the denunciation of the nuclear agreement with Iran cannot be omitted, a clear signal to the world of his little or no willingness to move towards a détente in relations with the Persian nation. On the contrary, Christian-Zionist neoconservatism seems to be betting on escalating tensions, to which its recent action in Syria (bombings after false reports of chemical weapons attacks), its indiscriminate support for terrorist groups operating in the region and for the terrorist state of Saudi Arabia, which leads a "coalition" seeking to subdue the Shiite uprising in Yemen (with refinements of cruelty, as we have already explored on another occasion), and its support for the policy of intensifying threats from Israel to Lebanon and Hezbollah contribute.

At the beginning of his administration, Trump made several statements criticizing NATO, pointing out that it consumed excessive US resources and few from other allies. However, a few months into his inauguration, the US president forgot his criticisms. On the contrary, military exercises intensified, especially in Libya, a region devastated by NATO troops, and efforts were made to expand its list of allies. As we have already pointed out in another article, Colombia announced its accession process to NATO, while Argentina, a "partner" of the organization since 1997, resumed the practice of joint military exercises.

For Latin America, the "America First" policy translates, beyond the expansion of NATO into this territory, into the deepening of hybrid warfare, already practiced by Democratic Party governments, with support for destabilizing groups in Venezuela and Nicaragua, economic sanctions and threats against Venezuela; the resumption of control of the OAS, once again imprinting on it the old profile of a "transmission line" for US directives; the revision of previous agreements with Cuba; the pursuit of agreements for the establishment of new military bases (including in Brazil) and attacks on Latin American state-owned companies, such as Petrobras in Brazil and, in the medium term, as is already taking shape, Bolivian gas and fresh water, present in abundance in much of South America. It is clear that the rise of Asia has rekindled, for the US, the need to control the closest territory from which it projects its influence over the world.

Concurrently, unable to deny the rise of power emanating from China, Trump is pursuing a policy of détente with North Korea, interpreted by many analysts as a victory for Chinese diplomacy, and not exactly for American diplomacy. In any case, Trump has so far reaped the rewards of being the first president to effectively reach an agreement with the DPRK since the 1953 ceasefire. Apparently contradictory – given the recent withdrawal from the nuclear agreements signed with Iran – the US policy of détente with the DPRK is much more related to the power of the Asian power and the need, for the US government, to appease tensions in the region. In any case, the US has not ceased provoking China on other issues, such as the question of the rights claimed by the Chinese in the South China Sea, where the US continues to conduct maneuvers, and also, as we have already highlighted above, the recent intensification of the trade war.

Even in the face of Europe, his greatest ally, Trump's policy is apparently heading towards a radical change. The G7 summit showed the world the US president's disdain for his wealthiest allies, casting doubt on the durability of the alliance that has endured since the post-World War II era and opening the Sino-Russian alliance the possibility of competing for European space in the wake of the "Belt and Road Initiative," launched by the Chinese and which aims to reach the Old World. Although the ties between European capitalism and the US are strong, and so far the European Union has accepted the conditions imposed by the Americans, it is a fact that the old European "Atlanticism" has lost strength with the departure of England (the main US ally) from the bloc. Things have become even more complicated with the recent episode of product tariffs, which directly affects European economies, particularly Germany, the region's largest economy, and seems to be shaping a stalemate that could lead to a rupture. On the other hand, Trump is obeying the stronger interests of US-based military, industrial, and financial corporations, and it is very likely that he will soon be compelled to "fix" his most clumsy measures, as has already happened with NATO.

As the representation of US power attacks the very international system that has hitherto served as the mainstay of Western control over the global order, it is possible that the post-Trump era will inaugurate a new stage in which the UN will no longer be able to play the role it was given in 1945, and military alliances, such as NATO, will take precedence. While it is true that the organic crisis is deepening in the US – an economic crisis coupled with a profound political crisis in which no political group enjoys majority support among the population – it is also true that, given its size and power in the world, there will be no "soft fall" or isolated decline. If the demonstrated trends are confirmed, the weakening of US power and the ruin of the post-war international system will drag us all (and especially peripheral nations) into a situation of insecurity and instability that could last for many more decades.