America Has Become a Dangerous Nation

[Coventina]

We had a good run — some eight decades or so — but it is clear by now that the United States has ceased to be the leader of the free world. A successor for that post has not been named, and it appears unlikely that the European Union, or NATO, or whatever constitutes “the West” these days will promote from within. The job might even be eliminated, one more reduction in force courtesy of President Trump.

Rather than leading the free world, the United States is striding across the globe seemingly free of restraint, forethought or strategy, exerting its power because it can. In a matter of months, the Trump administration has captured Venezuela’s president and tossed him into jail in Brooklyn and has pummeled Iran’s theocratic leadership in a war that is ricocheting across the Middle East and upending the global economy; now the president says he will have “the honor of taking Cuba” next. Trump in his second term is like Michael Corleone in “The Godfather,” settling all the family business.

Nearly two decades ago, Fareed Zakaria, the international affairs columnist, published a best-selling book called “The Post-American World,” which predicted the United States’ relative decline versus other economically ascendant countries, what he called the “rise of the rest.” (Senator Barack Obama was seen carrying the book around during his first presidential campaign, affirming the volume’s elite sway.) The United States would remain militarily and economically pre-eminent, Zakaria argued, but it could take on a new political role, a sort of chairman of the board for the planet, relying on “consultation, cooperation and even compromise.”

Under Trump, the idea of U.S. leadership has indeed been remade — but from authority to domination, from persuasion to bullying, from nurturing alliances to wrecking them. (Consultation, cooperation and compromise have yet to join the MAGA coalition.) “We don’t need anybody,” a peeved Trump said last week when European leaders initially declined to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. “We’re the strongest nation in the world. We have the strongest military by far in the world. We don’t need them.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/opinion/trump-iran-world-america-first.html

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So tired of winning.....

[ananda]

1. It's always been dangerous, so now maybe more dangerous.

...

[leftstreet]

2. To the global south, America always has been n/t

[Spazito]

3. There is no need for a 'leader of the free world', imo...

in fact, it is dangerous to give any one country that degree of power as we are now seeing what can and has gone wrong.

I do, however believe in organizations like the UN and, in a different way, NATO depending on it's structure.

[BlueTsunami2018]

4. Always have been, this dope is just blatant about it.

America has always been an imperialist, capitalist monster that plundered other nations for their resources, overthrew their governments and enslaved their people one way or another.

No one is ever allowed to determine their own fate or control their own resources. Unless they have nukes of course, then there’s no action and they have to deal somewhat fairly.

The only thing new about any of this is that we’ve never had such an incredibly stupid, vainglorious douche in charge who doesn’t possess an ounce of subtlety or grace.

Not since the last time anyway.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

5. "striding across the globe seemingly free of restraint, forethought or strategy, exerting its power because it can"

Yes..well phrased