I recently listened to an interview with former President of the UN Security Council, Dr Kishore Mahbubani of Singapore. A comment struck a chord with me. He said 2025 could be described with two words: rupture and resilience. Quoting our PM, he agreed with Mark Carney that we were ling through a rupture in the world order, which had served us well for almost a century. Just as importantly, many The chaos created by the American imposition of tariffs on over 100 countries, demonstrated what many did not expect: International trade stuttered, but soon recovered. In other words, The world trading order is resilient. Perhaps more so than many feared.

At the beginning of 2025, the US was the world’s number one trading economy. It has now slipped to number two, and continues to slip. The reasons for this seems obvious to me, but I‘m not an economist, so leave that as an interesting aside.

Beyond economics, what’s clear to me is that loss of trust caused directly by the American president is beginning to come back to haunt America. As an academic, I knew that for decades the Peloponnesian War had always been a touchstone for America. Seeing echoes in the epic struggle between the naval hegemon Athens and the land hegemon Sparta, Americans drew upon that war to guide it in policy creation in facing down both the belligerent USSR and a rapidly resurgent China. But intense study does not always bring lasting knowledge, and I fear that has been the case for America.

Anyone who has lived in the U.S. or who has close ties with American society knows that the average American holds several key concepts as absolute truths. America has the best educational system. (False) America has the best health care. (False) Only in America can someone rise from nothing to be wealthy and powerful (False). Some of these are completely acceptable love of country and can be found in most if not all cultures. Humans are tribal by nature and so such beliefs are both widespread and predictable. But in the case of the U.S. this love of country has grown to be a shibboleth and the knock on effects of this belief is the further belief that the world cannot live without America. (See my recent post “The Indispensable Nation”).

At the Munich Security Conference, German Chancellor Merz reiterated that Germany plans to have the strongest military in Europe going further and claiming that the US may no longer be the world’s leading power and stunned some observers by announcing that he had begun talks with the French President on how Germany might join France’s nuclear program. For his part, French President Emmanuel Macron also reiterated his declaration that “Europe can no longer rely on the United States …” and that Europe has reached a “crisis moment.”

The “unimaginable” seems to be becoming imaginable. Neither leader threw these statements out as challenges to America. These were reminders that NATO remained important, and vibrant for ALL of its members and that included the U.S.

Will the American president listen? In the week when the U.S. ordered more coal and oil to be burned to produce electricity while simultaneously working actively to reduce domestic EV, we are left to wonder.

In the 6^th century B.C., the Greek moralist Aesop wrote several stories that had the same theme (“The Old Man and Death”, “The Frogs Desire a King” and “The Bee and Jupiter”): Be careful what you wish. America wished aloud for Europe to spend more on defence, assuming they would “naturally” buy American weapons. Europe is indeed spending MUCH more, but NOT by buying American.

The strategic risks are clear for everyone to see. America is in the process of self-immolation socially, economically, and perhaps even militarily. As I have said elsewhere and often, I do not count America out. The resilience of American culture — whatever its flaws — combined with the deep strength of its economy will allow the U.S to recover after this shambolic period in its history is swept away.

The question left unanswered is “How long will it take for the America that we trusted to return?”