A Strategy For Democratic Survival--And Fightback

Hi All,

Certain articles are tragically well-timed, and this is one of them. A few hours ago, Foreign Affairs released my piece, How to Build a Post-American Liberal Order: The World’s Democracies Must Work Together—and Constrain Washington (for now this link is giving free access if you want to take a look)

This week showed in a number of ways how the premise of the piece, that the US is moving away from its traditional democratic allies to establish closer relations with the world’s leading dictatorships, is sadly correct. As such I thought I would put this brief piece together on what we are seeing and whether there are any real signs of democratic fight-back as of yet. And for subscribers, I will include the first draft of this piece in toto (it was actually written in late February, 2025). That way you can see how the thinking has evolved.

The US Continues To Move Away From Its Democratic Allies

When I first started writing this piece more than 6 months ago, some people were extremely skeptical. Yes, I was told, the US will now be unreliable and mercurial under Trump, but it would never be a real threat to its long-standing democratic allies in Europe and the Pacific. Sadly, this optimism has been shown to be wishful thinking of a dangerous kind (as optimism about Trump always is). In fact, events of the last few days show more and more that the US is breaking with its democratic allies in both regions.