Exceptional No More
The world moves on, and America is no longer the Indispensable Nation.
We were traveling for a couple of weeks. Any vacation is refreshing (or should be); and it’s particularly good to “get away from it all” in an almost literal sense. With our smartphones it’s impossible not to see at least a glimpse of the headlines, to get a sense of what is going on (mostly: more of the same); but we can (probably) exercise a bit of self control and avoid any in-depth look.
There are the obvious benefits of travel, especially foreign travel: it exposes us to other cultures, to history, to art, to things we’d otherwise encounter only in books if at all. In Marrakesh we saw the palaces of viziers, the villages of Berbers, the bazaars and souks that sustain thousands of shopkeepers and artisans. In Malaga, eighth century hilltop fortresses and ancient cities; museums of wine, of glassware and crystal, of art; and two museums dedicated to the city’s most famous son that gave us new ways to think about art, about Cubism, and about Picasso and his art.
Foreign travel reminds us that we are part of a larger world; that there are people and cultures much more ancient than our own; that there are many ways to approach the world’s problems, and that screaming angrily at the top of your lungs is far less likely to result in any kind of success or submission; surfacing latent suspicion and contempt is a far more likely outcome. This is a lesson that most parents learn quickly: bad behavior, of any form or kind, should not be rewarded.
For the better part of a century the United States has been the indispensable nation, a leader of the world’s democracies, a stable and dependable ally. Since January 20, 2017 those credentials were on shaky ground; since January 20, 2021 they have been all but shattered. Traveling in other nations is a much-needed reminder that the world is moving on without us — and while this might ultimately be a net positive for both the international order and the United States, it’s a painful and overdue reckoning. Since the end of World War II the US policy establishment, successive administrations, and the Congress have all understood that foreign aid is neither an altruistic gift nor a loan, it is a self-interested investment in stable international relations.
The stench and rot emanating from Washington cast a long shadow; the specter haunting Europe today is not communism: it is America. Among the things confirmed: European nations are indeed — as Trump demanded — spending more on their own defenses. They are building new facilities, both in-nation and off-shore (as it were): the French, for example, are building a new facility in the British Isles: the Americans can no longer be trusted to guarantee their security, and so our allies are proceeding without us.
In the eyes of Donald Trump and his useless economic advisers, the United States Treasury is their own piggy bank. It is the Suckers — that is, taxpayers — who feed it, and it is for them to enjoy the proceeds. “Smart people” — that is, the very wealthy — need not pay taxes. While we don’t know what individuals paid no taxes for 2025, we do know that at least 88 major corporations paid not one cent in federal income tax. Among them: 3M, United Airlines, Citibank, Tesla. Palantir, a corporation you might not know whose business centers on security, surveillance, and the use of AI, claimed to owe $0 on income of over $1.5 billion, much of that from government contracts. It’s a fair bet that Trump himself paid nothing; we’ll know as soon as he releases his tax returns — as every other president and presidential candidate since Richard Nixon has done. He promised to do so as soon as the audit is complete. (Just kidding: he’s never going to release his tax returns. The next Democratic congress will have to demand them from the IRS, as authorized under statute.)
So when Trump demands that our NATO allies “contribute” more, I suspect the first syllable is mentally elided (if he’s capable of such subtlety): what he wants is tribute. Not to the US, though he claims to do “everything" for his country; to him, personally. Indeed, as I noted above, our allies are proceeding to make their own intramural alliances, to beef up their own defenses. This result is not, I expect, what Trump anticipated: the man sees everything in terms of shakedown and grift, what will benefit him personally. He views NATO not as a strategic alliance among nations, but as a kind of protection racket.
“Nice little country you’ve got here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.” Yes, it would. And it has. What took 250 years to build, Trump and his minions destroyed in less than fifteen months. It will take another century or more to put Humpty Dumpty back together.