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June 6, 2017
Heather Hurlburt wrote for New York magazine about how other countries are adjusting to the post-U.S. leadership era:
It’s time to stop asking whether the Trump administration believes in U.S. global leadership as we’ve known it since World War II. The answer is clear now. It doesn’t.
It’s also time to stop hoping that the officials around Trump can prop up international institutions as fast as he assaults them. Cabinet secretaries and career diplomats may be soothing Americans, but they aren’t fooling foreigners.
No, President Trump and his enablers are ushering us into a new, post-American stage of global relations, at the speed of Twitter. Increasingly, Washington is viewed by other nations a problem to be managed rather than a leader to be sought. World leaders are building new relationships – and jockeying for the space we’ve left behind – as fast as they can, while the U.S. trashes its relations and fights over the last election at home. On security, politics, and economics, no one is waiting for the grown-ups, the midterms, or Vice-President Pence.