Donald Trump will be inaugurated as President of the United States for the second time on Monday. As in his first term from 2017 to 2021, he has promised to make America “great again”. This time he can count on Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress. The media discuss what this portends for the US and the rest of the world.
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Turbulent times ahead
Kristi Raik, director of the International Center for Defence and Security, analyses the global security situation in ERR Online:
“The old, liberal, rules-based world order is broken and Trump seems uninterested in fixing it. Instead we’re facing a turbulent period of power struggles between major powers in which might, not right, counts. Old concepts such as spheres of influence are back in fashion. Confrontations will take place over who controls strategically important areas, natural resources and connections. Trump’s main opponent in this fight is China, and it is difficult to see that conflict as anything other than a continuation of the confrontation with Russia.”
Tough but not crazy
Interest-driven power is the defining feature of Trump’s approach, writes wPolityce.pl:
“Much can be said about Trump’s policy: it is certainly brutal, it aims to create new realities, it relies on raw power. It’s also risky because it won’t necessarily achieve the desired result. All this is true, but you can’t say it’s ‘crazy’, chaotic or ill-conceived. Those who say this are misjudging the new reality. We are witnessing a return of state politics in the classical sense, which is primarily about interests and power rather than values.”
Rethink Europe’s stance
The US is returning to its tradition of exceptionalism, historian Ludovic Tournès observes in Le Monde:
“The interests of the US are now very different from those of Europe, geopolitically, economically – just think of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act – as well as environmentally. The US economic and cultural model, which Donald Trump refuses to question, is based on the promise of eternal prosperity fuelled by unlimited natural resources. The Europeans, who are used to seeing the US as an ally, should perhaps reconsider their stance. This is a dizzying proposal, I agree. But the new president is forcing us to face it.”
The rule of the rich
Elon Musk and his crowd will be the real power brokers in Trump’s second term, The Guardian fears:
“Rarely has the marriage of politics and riches been as naked or unashamed as with Mr Trump. The man who rages against elites has assembled a cabinet with 13 billionaires. … Wealth allows its owners to shape reality. The railroads that enriched 19th-century tycoons literally set the time to which the nation ran. Now the ‘tech industrial complex’ highlighted by Mr Biden and run by Mr Trump’s new friends works at an even more intimate level, determining what voters see. At stake may ultimately be the question of who shall rule: the people or America’s new aristocrats.”
A precedent for impunity
Tvnet comments on the recent report by special investigator Jack Smith according to which Trump would have been convicted of attempting to illegally interfere in the 2020 US presidential election had he not won the November election:
“How long will the US democratic system tolerate a framework in which the president is effectively shielded from any legal accountability for his actions, even if they undermine the country’s electoral process? … Could this impunity set a dangerous precedent for other leaders in the future? Ultimately, this case is not just about Trump – it is about the US’s ability to defend its democracy and its belief that no one is above the law.”
Defend our threatened values
From next week on our moral values will be in grave danger, warns De Standaard:
“In Europe, too, enthusiasm among the far right and business leaders about the Trumpian turnaround is growing, and they are stressing that it’s time for realpolitik. Resisting this trend, they say, is nothing but obsolete moral superiority that weakens us and which Europe can no longer afford. But the opposite is the case. The values that Trump will sweep away next Monday are the basis of our greatest strength. It’s time to resist.”