FOREIGN POLICY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/UN: “The liberal world order is taking a beating these days, and not just at the hands of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. In recent months a bevy of American political scientists from the progressive left to the libertarian right has launched attacks on the very idea of the liberal order, as well as on the conduct of American foreign policy over the past seven decades. These critics argue that the liberal order was a ‘myth,’ a cover for American hegemony and ‘imperialism.’ To the degree there was an order, it was characterized by ‘coercion, violence, and instability,’ and also by hypocrisy. The United States did not always support democracy, but often backed dictatorships, and in the name of shaping a ‘putatively liberal order,’ it often ‘upended, stretched, or broke liberal rules’… Trump calls himself a ‘realist,’ and the critics also insist on a new ‘realism,’ a Trumpian pulling back from decades-old alliances that they believe have outlived their usefulness. They might not strike quite the same ‘America First’ themes Trump struck during this week’s address to the U.N. General Assembly. But the realism they have in mind is much the same. They would have us abandon what they regard as the utopian ambitions of remaking the world in America’s image and instead urge us to accept the world ‘as it is,’ to use the Obama administration’s favorite mantra.”
–Robert Kagan, “The World America Made—and Trump Wants to Unmake,” Politico, September 28, 2018