From Newsgroup: soc.culture.china

"Even as Trump has correctly identified the way in which the United
States is strong, he is using that strength in fundamentally
counterproductive ways. By assailing interdependence, he undercuts the
very foundation of American power. The power associated with trade is
hard power, based on material capabilities. But over the past 80 years,
the United States has accumulated soft power, based on attraction rather
than coercion or the imposition of costs. Wise American policy would
maintain, rather than disrupt, patterns of interdependence that
strengthen American power, both the hard power derived from trade
relationships and the soft power of attraction. The continuation of
TrumprCOs current foreign policy would weaken the United States and
accelerate the erosion of the international order that since World War
II has served so many countries wellrComost of all, the United States.

Order rests on a stable distribution of power among states, norms that influence and legitimize the conduct of states and other actors, and institutions that help underpin it. The Trump administration has rocked
all these pillars. The world may be entering a period of disorder, one
that settles only after the White House changes course or once a new dispensation takes hold in Washington. But the decline underway may not
be a mere temporary dip; it may be a plunge into murky waters. In his
erratic and misguided effort to make the United States even more
powerful, Trump may bring its period of dominancerCowhat the American
publisher Henry Luce first called rCLthe American centuryrCYrCoto an unceremonious end."

(Foregin Affiars: The End of the Long American Century: Trump and the
Sources of U.S. Power by Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr)
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From Newsgroup: soc.culture.china

The Foreign Affairs authors blame Trump for the potential end of the
American Century. French historian/anthropologist Emmenual Todd has also predicted the defeat of the West, including the US. For him, Trump is
leading a revolution.

"I come to my latest book on geopolitics, which I think will be my last,
The Defeat of the West . It is to talk about this book that I am here in Moscow. It predicts that, in the geopolitical confrontation opened by
the entry of the Russian army into Ukraine, the West will suffer a
defeat. I appear again in opposition to the general opinion of my
country, or of my camp since I am a Westerner.
..
We are at a turning point: we are moving from defeat to disintegration.
What makes me cautious is my past experience of the collapse of the
Soviet system. I predicted this collapse, but I must admit that when the
Soviet system actually collapsed, I was unable to foresee the extent of
the disintegration and the level of suffering this disintegration would
bring to Russia.
..

I also had my usual indicators, which are more about social stability
than economic stability. I continued to monitor the infant mortality
rate, the statistical indicator I use most. Children under one year of
age are the most fragile beings in a society, and their chances of
survival are the most sensitive indicator of social cohesion and
efficiency. Over the past 20 years, the Russian infant mortality rate
has declined at an accelerating pace, even though overall Russian
mortality, particularly among men, is unsatis-factory. For several
years, the Russian infant mortality rate had fallen below the American
infant mortality rate.

The American infant mortality rate is one of the indicators that allows
us to see that America is not doing well. Unfortunately, I believe that
at this moment, the French infant mortality rate, which is rising, is
passing above that of Russia. This is painful for me, as a Frenchman,
but I must be able, as a historian, to see and analyze things that do
not please me. The history that is unfolding is not there to please me.
It is there to be studied."
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From Newsgroup: soc.culture.china

Link for Emmanuel Todd substack article:

https://emmanueltodd.substack.com/p/bons-baisers-de-russie
[Originally in French. All quotes from by Googletranslated English
version.]

Potential results of Trump's Revolution:

"Unfortunately, I now find only one additional negative factor, which
appeared to me while reading a book by Amy Chua, a Yale academic who was
a mentor to JD Vance. Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of
Nations (2018) underlines, after many other texts, the unique character
of the American nation: a civic nation, founded by the adherence of all successive immigrants to political values rCirCithat transcend ethnicity. Certainly. This was the official theory very early on. But there was
also in the United States a dominant white Protestant group, which came
from a fairly long history and was fundamentally ethnic.

Since the pulverization of the Protestant group, this American nation
has become truly post-ethnic, a purely "civic" nation, theoretically
united by its attachment to its constitution and its values. Amy Chua's
fear is that America is reverting to what she calls tribalism. A
regressive pulverization.

Each European nation is, at its core, regardless of its family
structure, religious tradition, or self-image, an ethnic nation, in the
sense of a people attached to a land, with its own language, culture,
and steeped in history. Each has a stable foundation. The Russians have
that, the Germans have that, the French have that, even if they're a
little weird about these concepts these days. America no longer has
that. A civic nation? Beyond the idea, the reality of a civic American
nation deprived of morality by the zero state of religion is
mind-blowing. It's even chilling."
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2