The World, as It IsThe Foreign Desk Adapts to Trump — Plus, Your Weekly Recs and the Great Gene Hackman
Dear Wags, Maybe your head is still spinning after the Trump-Vance-Zelensky Real Housewives of the Oval Office episode. Or perhaps that outrage has been shoved aside by the President's 90-minute beat-down of the usual suspects (Wokies, Dems, Biden, Little Marco) before Congress Tuesday night. You've seen this show many times before, so what do you need to take away from this mishegas? For a dodgy character, Trump is remarkably consistent. He's had a 1980s Rust Belt Democrat's view of the world since... the 1980s. In addition to being driven by colorful personal grievances, he believes Western Europe and Asia (this being the 1980s, Japan) are screwing America over on various "deals." Trump is bad at geography, but unfortunately for Ukraine, it appears to be located at the corner of "you screwed me personally” and “it's a bad deal.” There are all kinds of reasons this is a really bad deal for America's global interests, but let's stick with Trump. According to former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, the President has a three-pronged approach to every dilemma:
The problem for the opposition (and a dwindling number of national security Republicans) is that these are questions most everyday Americans ask about our commitments abroad. The blunt truth is that it was the job of the political, foreign policy, and media classes to explain the stakes to the general public, and they failed. For decades, bipartisan assumptions were made about the network of alliances and the monetary system that made the U.S. globally dominant. Upsides outweighed downsides, but the cost—in blood and treasure—fell on ordinary Americans. After two grueling wars, many are now indulging in isolationism and a transactional view of the world. Enter Trump. Let's circle back to Ukraine. Trump always says the quiet part out loud, and he blurted it in that press pool: he’s still pissed about the Russiagate scandals of his first term, and he's deeply afraid of being drawn into a war overseas (World War III, as he likes to say). On point 2, he’s not the first U.S. president whose fear of foreign conflict may wind up making it inevitable. Refer to the three questions above—this isn't about loving peace as much as it is about being saddled with a political legacy no slick marketer can wriggle out of. That, plus Trump’s affinity for strongmen, gives Putin all the leverage. The enemy of my enemy is my friend…except in this case, he keeps telling you he’s still the enemy. Trump, who knows good TV, arranged the ghastly scene in the Oval to try and move those in his base closer to his view of the conflict. The Republican base is with Trump on most everything, but on Russia, he's out over his skis. There's still enough muscle memory among old-line conservatives to be suspicious of Putin. Trump needs to move them—or make it politically impossible for them to speak out against his pivot to Russia, whether that means cutting off aid, normalizing pro-Putin rhetoric, or imploding NATO. Judging by the toadying of old Russia hawks Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio, it seems to be working. Trump designated Rubio—never littler than as Secretary of State—as “to blame if anything goes wrong” during his speech to Congress. Somebody will always try to jam incoherence into a doctrine, but it is lethal to the old view of America as Madeleine Albright’s Indispensable Nation. Everybody knows Trump’s impulse is to treat this country’s allies as patsies and leeches and its enemies as fellow tough guys who know the score. This is the world as it is now: big regional powers jockeying for position and putting the squeeze on the small fry in their zones of influence. In Trump’s game of Risk, the U.S. talks tough on China but inexorably retreats from Asia, talks nice to Russia, leaves Europe to cobble together its defense, and takes what it wants in its hemisphere, in a rerun of a late 19th-century race for empires. “We’ll get it one way or another,” he said of Greenland. It's hard to spin this as a rational pro-Western policy. Trump’s determination to renege on alliances, his obdurate attachment to tariffs, and his attraction to the Ponzi realm of cryptocurrency are weirdly anti-American. Still, he has a long run of distracting a big chunk of the public by picking good domestic enemies. It’s going to take more than geriatric Democrats waving little auction paddles to curb his worst impulses. The president’s speech before Congress—another interminable barrage of cheap shots—underscores that the rules-based international order was just another set of norms to be tossed. But nobody can doubt he’s remaking the world—and hoping to shift the paradigm so drastically that the consequences may never touch him. In Ukraine, this is already happening. Zelensky sounded a conciliatory note within days of being berated by Trump and Vance. Trump noted that in his speech and will take credit for any "deal" that's made because of his tough talk. Whether that arrangement is good for the Ukrainians is a different question. Putin promised to conquer Ukraine in three days; Russia has been mired in its neighbor for three years. To succeed, the Kremlin needs to split Kyiv from its most powerful backer. Mission accomplished. Long-term, the bigger challenge is persuading the American public that, however difficult or onerous the burden, there is no retreat from the world, no abandonment of our allies, that will make us safer. If Trump is right about one thing, it's that his three questions really matter. The problem is that nobody on the other side has figured out how to answer them in a way that truly resonates. Yours Ever, Alden Pyle
 Masked VigilanteDaredevil: Born Again (Disney+) – The Marvel Empire—that sprawling web of superheroes played by Hollywood’s biggest stars, woven together in interlocking mythologies—feels like it’s in decline. Oh, new installments will keep rolling off the assembly line, but they’re increasingly forgettable. Netflix’s Daredevil, starring Charlie Cox as a blind avenger—who is not one of the Avengers—was a cut above the usual comic book fare. Now, Cox returns in this new Disney+ series, once again squaring off against the imposing mob boss Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio), who wants to dominate New York City. The result is a solidly diverting adventure—if one that leans heavily on noir aesthetics and rumbly voices that might remind you of another crime fighter from a rival comic book company who has a thing for bats.—Alejandro Montoya  Vroom, VroomFormula 1: Drive to Survive (Netflix) – In seven seasons, Netflix has transformed North American interest in Formula 1 racing—so European, so expensive, so catty—into a gripping reality soap opera. The latest installment, the first since 2021, promises plenty of drama, as last season was packed with high-profile firings and spectacular meltdowns... Continue reading this post for free in the Substack app
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The World, as It Is
March 06, 2025
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