Episode Details

There is nothing in the mere fact of having a dominantly powerful country in the world that says that it would be expected to act as an out-and-out bully. Indeed, before President Donald Trump, it was considered to be in the US strategic interest not to do that, for all that the US would certainly flex its muscles in specific instances reasonably often. The fact is that Trump had a completely different frame to any that came before - one based on the power dynamics of the playground and often profound misunderstandings of reality. Now, increasingly countries are reasserting the basic logic of geopolitics-as-usual, and rejecting Trump's frame. It is pushing him to the heights of fury as the techniques he assumed would always work, fail him over and over again. Let's discuss.