Trumpâs progressive abandonment of the Western alliance means that the worldâs liberal democracies are coming to the realization that they will have to defend themselves.
If Putin strikes Ukraine with a nuclear weapon, or Kim Jong-Un detonates a warhead on Daeyeonpyeongdo Island, or Xi Jinping fires a hypersonic missile, detected by NORAD, at a Canadian city, will Donald Trump retaliate or abandon Americaâs allies? This is the world Trump and his primarily isolationist political base are brazenly provoking into realization. It is a collective action problem because nuclear proliferation will produce a net loss of collective security for even those countries with the best-equipped nuclear arsenals. Trump has forgotten that the essential crisis of the post-1945 period is to spread liberal democracy, which is an antidote to poverty and war, faster than nuclear proliferation.
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