Over the first year and a half of Donald Trump’s second presidency, national leaders have adopted a number of different strategies to mitigate the damage Trump has caused internationally. Those strategies have changed significantly over time. During the first year, most foreign leaders tried to keep their relationship with the United States on track by choosing what they saw as the path of least resistance – knuckling under to Trump’s threats, pandering to his vision of reality, and not challenging even his most outrageous behaviour.
That changed at the beginning of 2026, as leaders began to realise the limitations of appeasement. Canadian prime minister Mark Carney has repeatedly led the world in standing up to Trump – a strategy that is as potentially costly as it is popular at home. That approach is not universal.
By contrast, Nato secretary general Mark Rutte, possibly because of the unique nature of his role, still feels the best course of action is a fixed grin and unctuous grovelling in response to every insult and attack from Trump and his officials. But even though coping strategies for dealing with Trump may be evolving, there are some underlying assumptions about the nature of the new normal in global affairs that in some cases remain unchanged, with potentially dangerous consequences. That includes in particular the belief, lingering in some communities, that Trump is a temporary aberration, that his time in power will soon be over, and as soon as he departs things will start to return to “normal”.
Even though the UK’s National Security Strategy doesn’t refer directly to Trump, it looks forward touchingly to a time “when we come out of this period of turbulence” – as though all we have to do is wait and things will get better. And politicians in democratic countries around the world have expressed similar hopes for waiting out the Trump administration, due to come to an end in 2028. Democracies around the world have to be ready for the process of authoritarian state capture in the United States not to be reversed in the near future But there are a number of reasons why hope of this kind does not amount to a strategy.
In a new book published this week entitled American Overthrow, I lay out why we should instead be preparing for the “period of turbulence” to extend well beyond that time. First, Trump may not necessarily depart on schedule. His team are working hard to ensure that forthcoming elections, if they happen at all, deliver a result that does not mean a change of power.
Voter suppression and seizing control of democratic processes are just two ways the administration hopes to skew the outcome of the upcoming midterms in November 2026 and the presidential election in 2028. And Trump has repeatedly stated his intent to serve for a third term. That’s expressly prohibited by the US constitution, but Trump and his team have already shown conclusively how easy it is to disregard laws and the Constitution itself with the backing of a compliant Supreme Court.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
