Fareed Zakaria Bashes Trump for Potentially Unleashing ‘Forces of Nationalism’ that Would ‘Destroy the World that America Created’

ZAKARIA: “Talking to people from across the world at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, from Europe to the Middle East to India, the reaction to Donald Trump’s second term has been more varied and less panicked than his first term. Most are anxious, but in many countries leaders think they can make deals with him. Others believe that his bark is worse than his bite. All the people I spoke with, however, are puzzled by one core aspect of Trump’s worldview, that America is a patsy.”

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Trump: “We will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer...”
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ZAKARIA: “Trump declared in his inaugural address. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, doing his best to imitate Trump in his confirmation hearings, explained that the United States has in recent decades too often prioritized the global order over its own national interests. This picture of America strikes the rest of the world as bizarre, almost upside down. After all, America has routinely used military force in pursuit of its national interests, no matter what global opinion thought. It invaded Iraq over the objections of other U.N. Security Council members and protests involving millions across the world. It sanctions countries unilaterally, from Iran to Cuba to Venezuela, even when its closest allies disagree. And between 2009 and 2023, it imposed the most protectionist trade measures of any country on the planet. The rest of the world sees the U.S. as a country that knows it is the world’s superpower, and acts like it, extracting special terms for itself on almost every issue that it regards as important to its national interests. As one foreign leader who did not wish to be named explained, ‘We all accommodate American requests and wishes far more than those from any other country.’ It is true, however, that while always protecting its own national prerogatives and freedom of action, America has also tried to help build a better world. Before the U.S. fully entered the international arena in World War II, great power war, nationalism and protectionism were all everyday features of international life. There was little global cooperation and much less financial help from the rich to the poor. After 1945, the world built an open economy that has lifted billions out of poverty and disease. International institutions have tried to tackle common problems. Great power wars have faded into the history books. America has been key to this transformation. After World War II, far from asking for tribute from the defeated powers, it gave them money to rebuild. It opened up its economy to the world, trying to create a system in which everyone could thrive, and peace was more profitable than war. That vision succeeded, and no country has benefited more than the United States of America. America has remained the world’s leading economic, technological, military, and political power 80 years after World War II. In fact, in recent decades, the gap between America and many other rich countries — Germany, Japan — has actually increased. With about 4 percent of the world’s population, America is today over a quarter of global GDP, roughly the same position it was in during Ronald Reagan’s presidency nearly half a century ago. What’s more, the technologies of the future are ones that America leads in and might well dominate. But that is not enough for Donald Trump. He wants to squeeze every foreigner for more. In 2017, during a meeting with the president of Panama, President Trump complained that Panama charged the U.S. Navy too much. Well, the amount Panama charged them to cross the canal at the time was about $1 million a year, which comes out to less than 0.0002 percent of that year’s Pentagon budget. But Trump wanted to shake down a poorer Central American country and get a discount. It’s a way of being that is always about a transaction rather than a relationship. America is so powerful that it’s quite possible that Trump will succeed in getting these discounts, as he threatens other countries, most of them friends, allies, and partners. But in doing so, he will lose the goodwill generated over decades of American foreign policy that made so many countries around the world want to ally with Washington against the Soviet Union or Russia or China. And he might unleash forces of nationalism and protectionism that, over time, will damage, even destroy the world that America created, a world that has been more stable, peaceful, prosperous and free than any we have known before.”