Unless Donald Trump takes a major U turn, this is possibly the beginning of the end for Trumpian politics, argues Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
On July 9, 2025, French President Macron on a State visit to the UK declared that Europe must strengthen itself to keep its independence from both China and the US.
Giving concrete shape to these ideas, the UK and France entered into an agreement to virtually merge their nuclear weapons arsenal to combat a 'common' threat. Most interestingly, Russia was never mentioned. It is obvious that the threat was from the USA.
For France that has since the 1960s steadfastly kept its independent nuclear force 'force de frappe' (a legacy of then French president General Charles De Gaulle) this was a major step.
For the UK, with its 'special relationship' with the US in tatters, this was uncharted territory. So what is happening in this topsy-turvy world?
There are no easy answers and one must go back in time to understand how and why the world has reached this stage.
Samuel Huntington, famous for his theory of 'Clash of Civilizations', had written a seminal article in Foreign Affairs (March/April 1999) nearly 25 years ago predicting a decline in the US -- from sole superpower to lonely superpower.
Huntington's basic thesis was that with the rise of regional powers, the US no longer could impose its will in regional conflicts without the help/support of the regional great power.
This was a major change from the 1990s when the world was unipolar for a brief period.
Huntington had postulated the world system was a hybrid 'uni-multipolar' system with one superpower and several major powers.
His argument was that the US was in need of alliances to tackle issues of war and peace.
This was in 1999 and much water has flowed down the Potomac since then. The evidence is there for everyone to see.
A unilateralist USA failed to rein in conflicts in the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine. The only success claimed has been in the conflict between India and Pakistan (May 7 to 10, 2025).
Despite strenuous efforts to claim credit for the 'pause', one side in the conflict, India, does not agree with the US.
The defining factor in leading to a pause in the India-Pakistan conflict was the danger, recognised by both New Delhi and Rawalpindi, that the nuclear threshold may get crossed.
The other major reason for this conflict to come under control was that India had a limited strategic aim of imposing costs on Pakistan for terrorist support.
Once that objective was achieved, India saw no logical reason to continue with the fighting.
Trump's boast that he stopped the fighting by threatening disruption of 'trade' is in the realm of loony logic that seems to have overtaken the US since Trump's second coming.
The irony of the current world power balance is that just as China's rise as an economic superpower is becoming consequential the US is behaving as if it is in the 1950s and 1960s when it was an economic and military superpower.
In some sense, even during the Cold War period of a dupolar world balance, the US was the only complete superpower.
Between 1945 and 1995, the US was not only strong economically but also in military strength.
It was the only country capable of projecting power all over the world.
The then USSR, its competitor, was a European land power and the United States' equal only in nuclear weapons. The US also had another major attribute -- soft power.
Aspirational youth were enthralled by the American dream and flocked to the Land of Opportunity and contributed to knowledge and technology creation.
Trumpian anti migrant policy has already made the US a no go country for higher education for talented students from all over the world.
With this single move, the US has jeopardised its future prosperity that was always based on innovation and knowledge creation.
Post 1992, the Soviet Union disintegrated and so did the Russian empire that pre-dated Soviet rule.
The loss of Central Asian republics, its manpower and economic resources reduced Russia to a mid-level European power.
Its military limitations became apparent with its inability to overcome Ukraine even after three years of fighting. Today Russia is only a 'nuclear superpower'.
In the current world power balance, the US is still the numero uno military power. Its closest competitor China is still nowhere near it in terms of global reach.
Thus, the world finds itself in a peculiar situation, here is a superpower that has conventional superiority that no country can counter.
It is this that gives the US ability to intervene in areas from Ukraine to South Asia. On the flip side, the US is a declining economic power. Its prosperity is less dependent on its products and more on the position of the dollar in international transactions.
It is today a classic 'rentier' State, more a money lender with military muscle.
As the US declines economically, more and more countries will move out of the dollar zone as reserve currency and means of transaction.
By printing dollars at will and running up a huge deficit, the US itself has undermined the dollar.
Trump is currently threatening high tariffs on countries moving out of dollar trade.
In the theatre of the absurd, one cannot rule out a situation where the US threatens military action against such countries.
The US seems to be oblivious to the fact that nations shifted to the dollar from pound sterling due to economic benefits as well as because of the US' position as a great industrial power.
Since the 1980s, the US shifted production to China (with its low labour costs) and has been virtually de-industrialised.
Its greatest exports were Hollywood and its high tech products. Currently the only area it is (temporarily) at the top is military technology and weapons.
But China is catching up swiftly and Europe is building its own arms as the US becomes an unreliable ally.
Historically, the US is possibly looking at becoming an ex colonial 'mercantile' State that is reduced to being a trader.
In this case, not a trader of commodities, as the ex-colonial powers were (the Belgium in diamonds, the UK in tea) but a moneylender who prints its own currency!
One is reminded of Winston Churchill's comment after the Battle of El Alamein during the Second World War.
That 1942 battle was a turning point in the conflict in North Africa when under General Bernard Montgomery, the British won a famous victory over the German army led by the legendary Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.
Churchill had then remarked that it was not the end but the beginning of the end for the Nazis. The European push back against the US is just that -- the beginning of the end of Trumpism.
Unless Trump takes a major U turn, this is possibly the beginning of the end for Trumpian politics.
Colonel Anil A Athale (retd) is a military historian and author of Let the Jhelum Smile Again (1997) and Nuclear Menace The Satyagraha Approach (1998).
His earlier columns can be read here.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff
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