Has the United States gone rogue? The stories coming out of the shining city on the hill are alarming. Every morning, there is news that makes the heart skip a beat.
The “Make America Great Again” movement and its leader, US President Donald Trump, have started a highly unstable international order. This new order sees the US at loggerheads with its old ally, western Europe.
The old order based on the international rule of law and international agreements is ending. The world of a liberal order based on the cocktail round, tea with the king, and affluent forums of global organisations is over. The new international order may be settled on the fields of war and not the conference hall. Mr. Trump is offering encouragement to despots and dictators everywhere.
He and his MAGA culture are only interested in what benefits the US, not the world. The politics of transaction are the new international culture. For MAGA, every move on the chessboard of world politics has a price: “What is in it for me?”
The decades of a diplomacy based on the notion of justice may no longer exist. “America first” views the world in terms of transactions and US interests, singularly. The Caribbean is learning this lesson. There is nervousness in the region’s corridors of power. The US projects raw power over the Western Hemisphere. It has always had this ability. It simply has been subtle in harnessing that power. Mr. Trump is “in your face” with the enormous power the US possesses over the West.
Today, we are back in the early 1900s. A Caribbean nation going against the US can expect the worst: visa restrictions, economic blockades, dollar sanctions, isolation, and even invasion by the US military.
Most ominous is the fact that Mr. Trump is demolishing the guardrails that hold the executive to account in the US. The judiciary is ignored, and the president is going after his “enemies” with impunity. The US is becoming a dictatorship.
In the VI
For the Virgin Islands, the best approach is to keep a low profile and stay off the radar. With an autocrat in the White House, the Caribbean environment has become stormy and unpredictable.
Will internal politics in the US return to normalcy? The only way that would happen is by the hands of US citizens themselves. Protest and other action are the way to make the oligarchs who rule the US pay attention. It will take riots — and maybe even civil war — to return the US to constitutional normalcy.
The only way the US can escape the dictator is if US citizens rescue themselves. It takes an aggressive movement to defeat a system hijacked by another aggressive movement.
A violent militia alone will defeat a violent militia. And MAGA is a violent militia in charge of the US.
