I doubt that the history, institutions, and principles of any other country in the world are as well-known as those of the US. Literature, cinema, satellites, scholastic missions, and the English language have made the country an open book. Who does not know the Statue of Liberty, the gateway offering the “tired, poor and huddled masses” opportunities unavailable elsewhere? The American Revolution, the American constitution, the Federal system, the Civil War, and the presidential elections are iconic chapter headings in a book not so readily accessible with other great powers. Waves of migration into what grew to fifty states gave rise to accents, customs, temperaments, and cuisines that vary from north to the south and from the Atlantic to Pacific seaboards.
As the most powerful state, the US dictates the beginning and “arrow” of history in the words of Yuval Noah Harari. Even this professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his book, Sapiens, only gained recognition when a US president – Barack Obama – mentioned having read it. The US is also the country that declared the End of History, as Francis Fukuyama’s famous work told us just after the Cold War ended in the 1990s. In the same decade, the US dictated the paradigm that would define and govern the historical direction of our planet: The Clash of Civilizations became the main explanation for the global war on terror. Meanwhile, the globalising world grew familiar with the “silicon valleys” that brought about digital, IT and AI revolutions. Ultimately, emerging powers and their progress can only be recognised and measured through comparison with the US.
Donald Trump’s comeback to the White House has generated uncertainty. The return of a former president to power without being the incumbent occurred only once before in US history. Yet, that very precedent forces us to consider it in an institutional framework. Trump’s return has ushered in a wave of confusion, uncertainty and perplexity that has been summed up in the term “disruptions.” As soon as he stepped into the Oval Office, he began acting like a raging bull in a china shop, smashing all that is sacred in US institutions from the constitution and judiciary to the security and foreign relations agencies. His administration is stripping the federal government of resources, cutting a third of its share in the $2 trillion national budget. Government departments are being gutted rapidly, sparing none. Some of the measures are evidently motivated by revenge for how Trump was treated in his first term. In fact, he hides nothing. That applied during his election campaign and still does.
When I visited the US last week, one of the most frequent comments I heard was that Trump “threw Ukraine under the bus” and then blackmailed it to extort rare and precious minerals. The narrative has flipped. Ukraine, which received $300 billion in civil and military aid to stand as a barrier between democracy and tyranny, turned out to be a waste of money, and its President Volodymyr Zelensky, is no longer the “Churchill of our times”, standing firm against the Russian invasion of a sovereign country. Referring to the about-face in policy, Gamal Abdel-Gawad, in Al-Ahram, remarked, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?”
An American friend of mine attempted to explain the sharp contradiction between what we knew and the reality we see today as follows: Trump is shaking the tree to see what fruits will fall in areas where US efforts have failed to yield fruits before, whether in solving the intractable conflicts of the Middle East and Ukraine or weaning the US, Latin America and Asia-Pacific off of their heavy reliance on US capacities and generosity to solve their problems, which might be better solved by their direct stakeholders. My friend may have a point. Would the Arabs have offered to undertake the reconstruction of Gaza or propose a peace plan had Trump not called for the forced migration of Palestinians? Would Kyiv had signalled a willingness to negotiate and compromise had Trump not waved the Putin sword, saying that Russia was the wronged party in the European game of nations?
Perhaps a wiser explanation for the current confusion is that we do not understand the US as well as we think we do. Perhaps we have been too captivated by its shiny coasts, home to ivory tower ivy leagues, liberalism, and leftism, while the Midwest and the South remain mired in backwardness, traditionalism, and xenophobia. These areas are still dependent on agriculture and mining. Their only experience with globalisation was the destruction of their livelihoods as factories shutdown and operations moved to distant lands. Still, we need to think deeper and more carefully about how to deal with the bull as it rages at home and abroad.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 6 March, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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