Martin Wolf: On August 16th, Donald Trump announced a substantial reduction in joint military exercises with South Korea. On August 19th, he announced what came, five days later, to be called “Operation Economic Outcast” against Iran, defined as an effort to “sever the economic lifelines that sustain the Iranian regime”. On August 21st, US trade talks with Canada collapsed, after the Americans made new demands that would limit Canada’s freedom to make trade deals with other countries and keep its rules protecting the French language. On August 28th, Trump announced “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!” which would give the US 55 per cent control of the output of a new Venezuelan company that would develop 17 fields with a “proven potential” of 65 billion barrels.
That is an astonishing effort in just two weeks. The behaviour itself is not surprising. But it does reveal the sort of world Trump believes in. It is a world in which the US does not have allies but satellites; one in which the US can do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, to whomever it wants; one in which power alone matters; and, above all, one in which the US thinks that it alone has the power, with that power concentrated in the hands of one man, who is, not coincidentally, a bully.
Financial Times: The wheels are coming off the US world order