What Happens Now That the World Can't Trust America Anymore? Or, Geopolitics, Credibility, Wealth, and Power

Let’s go through the tragicomedy of the last week or so in geopolitics to ask and answer a question. What happens when the world can’t trust America anymore?

Now, you might say, “It already can’t!” That’s true, perhaps, but not quite in the sense I mean. The hard stuff of trust. So far, the world is sort-of-dancing-at-the-edge of the abyss. It’s bewildered by what’s happened to America, and it’s unsure. Trust it, or not? 

Hence, the last week. Here’s what happened. Trump, in a classic spiral of fascist-narcissist obsession, decided to erupt at Europe over Greenland. He threatened a whole new trade war, this time, with the explicit intent to seize a territory.

Europe was double crossed, because it’s spent the last year trying to please and placate Trump. Appease might be too strong a word, but Europe’s leaders, being unaccustomed to the kind of brutality and rage that permeates America these days, sort of nervously bit their fingernails, and hoped that Trump would calm down, if they played along, smiling, reducing tariffs on their end, not retaliating. But of course, Trump is Trump, and more to the point, authoritarians are authoritarians. 

So after Trump—LOL—got? Stole? Demanded? A Nobel Peace Prize, and who the hell even knows what to call this ridiculous act, which was swiftly derided by the Nobel Committee itself, he proceeded to blow his top over Greenland in some bizarre combination of teenage temper tantrum by way of 21st century Hitler. But the really funny part is what happened next, in this sort of escalating geopolitical comedy hour. At Davos, Trump proceeded to double cross Europe again.

He declared that a “framework” for a “deal” had been arrived at, which was to include land and mineral rights, and therefore, since he’d won, he was “cancelling” the tariffs. The only problem was that no such deal had remotely been reached, or even discussed. Trump had met with the head of NATO, which isn’t a country, that can cede sovereignty, and politicians who actually led said countries were quick to point all this out.

Meanwhile, markets reacted as if what Trump had said was real. Because of course in the upside-down fantasy world we now live in, who the hell knows? And does anyone even care? Ah, but this is the part where we all should.

So. There’s Trump. Double-crossing America’s oldest friends and allies, not just once or twice, but just over and over again, like the mafia rolling into a bar, before they burn it down. Just lying through his teeth, so he doesn’t look like an idiot and an incompetent. Declaring “deals” have been done, when of course they haven’t.

And there’s the world asking: can we still trust America? Remember, it hasn’t quite arrived at an answer yet. It’s sort of stunned. It can’t quite comprehend this weird authoritarian fascist technofeudal expansionist explosion-implosion, which is like if all of history’s bleakest chapters decided to have diarrhea all at once (sorry, someone needed to say it.)

Now. Meanwhile, there’s Trump, just double-crossing and lying, and lying and double-crossing, over and over and over again. We should all understand given the pattern above what happens next. Trump double crosses everyone again, and the non-deal is angrily said to be not good enough, and bang, here comes another trade war, more expansionism, more insanity, more lunacy, more stupidity, as if we’re not all drowning in it already. But do enough of us understand that? What are a million double crosses even called? 

This is Trump’s game. The abuser’s game. The inducement of the act of holding out hope. The “reprieve.” The double cross. The doubling down. This is the pattern. We can all see it by now. Aren’t we all—pardon my Vichy French—weary of it by now?

So what happens when the world finally cottons onto the fact that Trump is history’s high priest of bad faith? That none of this is ever going to work, the negotiations, the deals, the diplomacy, the nice-guy-smiles, the handshakes, all of it? And just concludes, in fact, that America can’t be trusted?

You might say, “of course the world can’t trust America now!,” but that’s not. quite the point. The point is that it wants to.Because of course it has a great deal invested in America. Capital, assets, people, time, energy, history, the list goes on. And so it’s in disbelief, precisely because disbelief is a thing that happens when we first want to believe. But at some point, and it’s coming soon, America will finally lose all credibility.

That means: nobody will bother even attempting to “deal” with Trump, because if all that’s going to happen is that you’ll be double-crossed, and lied to, then lied to, and double-crossed…then who’d bother? And that’s when the fireworks will really begin.

Right now, the world is still making a feeble attempt to deal with Trump in good faith. It’s playing out this sort of spectacle which we all know is a charade. OK, maybe if we just…maybe if we just…try to give this maniac a little bit of what he wants, he’ll go away. But it doesn’t work. It never has. You can’t appease a fascist, what is this, third grade?

But at some point, this fools’ dance will stop. Nobody will want to deal with an America that the world has rightly concluded can’t be trusted. Everybody’s tired of this goddamned game. It’s draining, playing out this three act play over and over again, every day, like we’re trapped in Kafka’s fucking high school notebook, or a 90s B-movie thriller: you threaten me, I placate you, then you double cross me and stab me in the back, hello, this is history’s dumbest and most cliched plot line, too, just ask Caesar. It’s all so tiring and so painful and so stupid the blood is pouring out of my toenails trying to find a new body to inhabit, or maybe just a less idiotic future.

We’re all too tired of it now. So what happens when the world’s like, thanks but no thanks, please, find someone else to star in this dimwits’ play? Then a lot of things happen, and none of them are good. The world just shakes its head and walks away when Trump announces he wants to “make a deal,” which is like the mafia asking if you want them to “invest” in your restaurant. The world walks away, from American business, assets, capital, investment, dollars. It’s not that it doesn’t want them, and whatnot, but…who knows what’s going to happen? If the idea is that you deal in good faith, but you’ll still get double crossed…and you know it…what does that make you?

This is a step beyond “uncertainty.” It’s a very different place. Uncertainty was one of the buzzwords of pundits of the last year. It was sort of accurate, in a tepid way. But this isn’t that anymore. This is certainty. Uncertainty is where the world’s been. Can we trust America? Should we? How much? Maybe 50%? That’s pretty good, right? Sort of mafia-investing-in-the-bar odds, actually, but I digress. Now we’re crossing the threshold into certainty. America can’t be trusted.

It can’t be trusted with money, with capital, with wealth. With ideas, with creativity, with time and energy. It can’t be trusted to be a goddamned responsible member of civilization, and maintain even what semblance of democracy it had, which wasn’t exactly a shining example, what with the endless wars and school shootings and so on, but at least it wasn’t a full on fascism orgasm (sorry number two.)

When the world decides that America can’t be trusted, then the consequences will be severe. The final loss of credibility is what we’re talking about now. What happens when something, someone, loses credibility? You don’t even listen to the threats anymore. You just walk away, and get on with your life. This way lies becoming a pariah state, and all that entails

Now. Would you want to hold stuff that didn’t have much credibility in the world’s eyes? Why would you? How much would it be worth? Credibility is everything, in the end.

Why don’t we invest as much as we probably should as a world in poor countries? It’s not just that they’re poor, it’s that they’re not credible. Their institutions are too weak for them to carry through on their promises, often, as noble as they may be. Their leaders are…a lot like Trump. They’re riven by malfeasance and corruption. And so that lack of credibility exacts a steep, steep price. In the end, it is what keeps so many poor countries poor.

Credibility is…everything. For a currency. For bonds, for stocks, for property. It’s everything for everything. Do you tend to do much business with those you know you can’t trust? Not just wonder if you can. Know you can’t. How about be friends with? Have relationships with? 

Maybe you see my point. Let me now make it crystal clear.

We’re reaching a turning point now. Not just the place where the world wonders if it can trust America. But where it knows it can’t. 

This will be the principle by which geopolitics will be ordered for probably the rest of our lives. If you doubt me, by the way, you’re probably American, so go ahead and ask a European or Canadian if they’ll trust America again just because it elects someone nicer. They’ll tell you: so what? Now the problem is that you just might do it all over again, at any point, and how do we know you won’t?

America now has a serious credibility problem on its hands. The consequences will be disastrous. For it. Geopolitically, this opens a great deal of room, for nations who wish to emerge now as leaders, like Canada, like Europe, who can serve as credible stewards of global institutions, order, and the future itself.

Big opportunity. They’re already seizing it. America blew it. This kind of credibility doesn’t come back, at least not in the rest of our lifetimes. The world really has changed dramatically now. 

For a world, for a civilization, the question is always: who or what can, should, will we believe in? One answer is abstract, about ideals. Another is harder, about promises made and kept, investment, cooperation, prosperity, about who can be trusted to care even for what doesn’t belong to them. Credibility is power, in this way, my friends, the truest kind of all. The rest is just details.

And as America loses its credibility, so too goes everything it has built over decades and centuries.

Love,

Umair (and Snowy!)

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