The world is on a nonstop news cycle. United States President Donald Trump and his actions are on the front pages daily. A related saga has hit home in the Virgin Islands with the recent threat of 25 percent tariffs from USVI Governor Albert Bryan Jr. Also of concern for the VI are aggressive migration policies and rising racial prejudice and discrimination in Mr. Trump’s US.

Mr. Trump has usurped power from Congress and the Senate, using executive presidential orders and various devices through his “Make America Great Again” movement to institute a regime of fear and impunity in the US. Republican senators dare not go against Mr. Trump, who is essentially a democratically elected dictator.

 

‘Might is right’

The post-World War II world order established at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference is over. Mr. Trump is tearing it up. Instead, the world is in a new might-is-right paradigm. The return of great power spheres of interest has divided the world between the US and its vassals in the West and China and its friends in Eurasia, Asia, Africa, Latin America and dispersed jurisdictions elsewhere. Today, small states must decide where their interests lie.

The Monroe Doctrine is back. The US rules the western hemisphere, and Mr. Trump appears to be deliberately dismantling the world order created by the US after World War II. Europe, Canada and the United Kingdom were once close allies of the US. But recent developments show the US president has nothing but contempt for Europe and prefers to work with global autocrats and strongmen such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, he threatens former allies such as Mexico and Canada.

 

Global dangers

As a result, the world is in a dangerous place today. Mr. Trump prefers the world of 1914, when autocrats and strongmen ruled. However, that world led to two world wars and a cold war nuclear standoff that assured mutual destruction if any superpower pushed the nuclear button.

In any event, it is important to look at Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and actions from the narrative of western decline. Indeed, his slogan “Make America Great Again” is actually a statement of that decline.

The rise of China and the global south is a direct threat to Group of Seven hegemony. The old neo-colonial order is over. The United Nations is an anachronism. The UN Security Council fails to reflect a new multipolar world with new powers such as India, Indonesia and Turkey.

Meanwhile, the recent saga with the Chinese artificial-intelligence company DeepSeek is a conundrum for Silicon Valley, America’s tech powerhouse. It is also a warning that China will spring a surprise without warning — and that containment will fail amid China’s inevitable rise to parity with the US.