Now we know

What happens when America breaks nationalist? Plus: another school shooting.

I’ll be short today. No, really, I’m not tall, but I make up for it in girth. If the joke fell flat, that’s okay because it’s not really a mirthful day, despite the season. In the last few weeks, a big chunk of the western world fell into a deep pit of political acid. I don’t know another way to describe it, but if you Google one of the following countries followed by the word “government,” you’ll likely get “collapse” in the autocomplete: France, Germany, South Korea, and (!) Canada.

Image: DALL-e

Of course, each of these government collapses, or imminent collapses, have their own specific reasons. South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol briefly declared martial law and attempted to use the military to prevent the National Assembly from doing its job. The body has (rightly) impeached him for misusing his authority, and he will likely be removed. Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a vote of confidence by his parliament: the vote was 394 to 207, with 116 abstentions, and the government is dissolved.

France has a new prime minister, Francois Bayrou, who was appointed by President Emmanuel Macron last Friday. Bayrou replaces the last prime minister Macron appointed, Michel Barnier, who barely outlasted a head of lettuce. The big argument in France is over budgets and taxes. That was the problem in South Korea also, the one that sparked Yoon’s extreme authoritarian action.

And budgets were the reason, at least one of them, that Canada’s finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, quit Justin Trudeau’s government. Freeland was one of Trudeau’s most stalwart supporters for a decade, and she left in acrimony. She posted her resignation letter on X/Twitter. Trudeau may have no choice but to resign.

Freeland made no bones about her big sticking point: “America First” economic nationalism. Meaning President-elect Donald J. Trump.

You may see things differently than I do, and yes, it’s not always easy to make a causal connection between disparate western democracies in turmoil and what is happening politically in the U.S. After all, America is not an empire like Rome. But what happens in the U.S. does have a large effect on what should be our core allies.

Coming into the White House, we have a president who, in his last term, made clear that he wanted America to break its historical commitments to support NATO, South Korea, and our North American partners, unless those countries do “their share”—meaning “what’s in it for me?” And those nations, specifically, are the ones now breaking their waves on sharp rocks trying to figure out what the hell to do for the next four years.

If we were to look for the answer to the question: what happens when America breaks toward nationalism, you have it. The western nations in Europe and Asia that depend on American leadership cast about in crisis. You can say that the individual crises that brought down the French, German, South Korean and (probably) the Canadian government were disparate and not any fault of Donald Trump. The Ukraine war, China’s militarism, millions of refugees from the Syrian civil war did not happen because of anything Trump did.

But it’s not the events themselves, but America’s reaction to them that brought division and chaos to the west. I am no fan of how President Joe Biden handled any of these crises. I think he deepened the problems, and let Ukraine suffer while not giving them the ability to achieve their war goals. I think Biden botched our exit from Afghanistan. I think Biden’s mushy Middle East policy did no favors to Israel, the Palestinians, or any of the regional players there.

I also believe that Trump’s team might find a way to help end the Ukraine war, to nobody’s particular happy ending (except perhaps Vladimir Putin). I think the Gaza war will end, simply because Israel needs it to end, but Trump will take credit for that—as will Biden. I think Syria has a chance to work things out for a good outcome, if Turkey doesn’t get too greedy. I think Iran is a wildcard and Trump’s policy toward that nation is better than Biden’s.

All of that is overshadowed by the belief—backed by historical evidence—that the United States will not help anyone who doesn’t pay the required toll. That means South Korea, France, Germany, Canada, along with Mexico, the U.K., Latin- and South American countries, Japan, and the free world are going to be treated as rivals where “America First” literally means America must come out on top in every “deal.” There is no “win-win” in Trump’s calculus viz our allies. This presents an amazing opportunity for our real rivals, mostly China. If China can give the U.S. a better “deal,” then it can better align with our traditional allies by paying us off.

That might mean China deals in tariffs, or special trade agreements, or manipulation of its currency, or even pumping dollars. America can be played like a violin by our rivals, while our allies have to figure it out themselves. That might not be how Trump wants to “MAGA” or how his supporters think things will work out. But it it how the rest of the world sees things, looking in from outside.

This is why the voters and governments in Germany, France, South Korea (which admittedly, suffers from occasional crises of leadership), and Canada are very nervous and divided. It’s why Justin Trudeau, an unpopular technocrat, is getting a face full of rebuke: “Inevitably, our time in government will come to an end. But how we deal with the threat our country currently faces will define us for a generation, and perhaps longer. Canada will win if we are strong, smart, and united.”

What threat is Freeland talking about? The one to her south. The same threat the people of France, the people of Germany, and across the Pacific, the people of South Korea, see rising in a nationalist fever. This is not necessarily how at least half of Americans actually feel, but that’s not how the world is seeing us.

When America goes nationalist, what happens? Now we know.

ANOTHER SCHOOL SHOOTING. A fifteen-year-old girl killed a teacher and another student at a Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin. Now, Madison is a very secular and academic town. It’s a nice place—I’ve been there. And they are grieving hard. I don’t know the one thing that would solve our school shooting problem. But I do know that if we don’t decide as a nation that we need to solve the problem, it will never get solved. Please, for the love of God, everyone get off your own high horse and put down your idols—whether that’s gun control or gun rights. We have to work together to fix this. I refuse to be the generation that let our kids grow up to have to solve school shootings.

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