America can no longer carry the world on its shoulders

By Janan Ganesh

To become a “normal country” is the dream of more than one republic. The world is familiar enough with the German case. Having atoned for the war and put Europe first, its next step as a common-or-garden nation is to pursue its narrow interests without embarrassment.
Because he is so peculiar, we cannot credit that Donald Trump’s project is the normalisation of his own country. For all their shock value, that is what his foreign policies amount to: the restoration of the US as a selfish state among selfish states, not an over-worked governess with the entire free world as her mewling wards.
This realpolitik can be self-defeating. It misses the national interests that are served through such nominally high-minded works as the Paris climate accord. But it is still more coherent than its critics. Liberals chafed at American power until its threatened retreat, at which point Nato and the Washington Consensus on trade became sacraments to be saved from populist menaces. As for mainstream Republicans, at least Mr Trump does not go in for mystical hokum about the US as a special nation ordained to uphold freedom.
Realism has more going for it, though, than internal coherence. It also fits the external conditions. To lead a world order takes a nation in the full plumage of its powers. That is a better description of the US in 1948 than 2018, much less 2048. Mr Trump’s infidelity to the postwar system is disquieting, but perhaps he is doing through choice what future presidents will have to do through necessity.