More than 100 days on Donald Trump as US President have yielded shocking decisions that undermine peace, destroy trade, and alienate US allies and friends. His “America first” slogan transpired into “America alone”.
Mr Trump appears to be in denial of the disastrous outcome of his decisions, quite the contrary, he is delighted and proud of them. He turns a blind eye to the political, military and economic blocs of friends, allies or even foes now forming around the world with the purpose of cooperating to face hostile US policies. They work to find common ground among them and build bridges to compensate for the lost confidence and security that once tied them to the US but have now been jeopardised by Mr Trump.
Political and economic experts offer numerous analyses of the global situation and indicators of the decline of the US and the American “empire”. Today I present excerpts from three such analyses voiced in interviews with the experts.
On 3 April 2025, on Democracy Now, Amy Gordon hosted renown economist Richard Wolff, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who said: “Mr Trump is right, it is a changing moment in American history and world history. But I think his representation of what’s going on is completely fantastical and has only to do with the self-promotion that he is engaged in most of the time. It was never foreigners who did it to us. This notion of the US is a victim; we have been one of the greatest beneficiaries in the last 50 years of economic wealth, particularly for people at the top just like him. It has nothing to do with foreigners taking advantage of us… And there’s the most important point: The American economy is in trouble, the American empire is in decline. We don’t want to discuss it in this country, we engage in denial, and instead we are striking out at other people, a sad way of handling a decline… We had a great 20th century; 21st century is different, you have to face those problems. That’s not being done; [Trump claims] it’s somebody else’s fault, and we’re going to solve it by punishing them.
“But here’s the irony that may in the end come back to haunt us: Europe has been unable to unify under the umbrella of American alliances. The enmity of the US is bringing Europe together better than the alliance was able to do… China, Japan and South Korea with long histories of animosity and tension are getting together to cope with this. Wow! We are unifying the whole world… We are becoming contained, we are isolating ourselves.
“Here’s a single best statistic: If you add up the GDP you know the total output of goods and services in a year for a country; of the US and its major allies the G7 it’s about 28 per cent of global output. If you do the same thing for China and the BRICS it’s about 35 per cent. They’re already a bigger bloc of economic power than we are.”
On political issues concerning Israel, Iran, Palestine and China, I quote Jeffrey Sacks, economic expert and Professor with Columbia University, in an interview with Andrew Napolitano’s podcast Judging Freedom which was aired on 21 April under the title “If Trump says no to war and Netanyahu says yes”. Professor Sachs said: “The hold of the Israeli lobby on American politics is so frightening, so terrifying that anything is possible to drag the US into yet another war. Our politicians have sold themselves to the Israel lobby… This is a lobby that wants to turn American policy over to Israel, and it has effectively done that for 30 years; the US has gotten dragged into one war after another because Israel has said so, and by Israel I mean the Netanyahu era because Netanyahu has dominated Israeli politics basically since 1996, and he’s pulled the US into one war after another. Now in the last week, it was made explicit by President Trump and others that Netanyahu is trying to pull the US into an attack on Iran, the kind of attack that could start World War III. We should always remember Iran has a strategic alliance with Russia for example and Iran itself is despite the rhetoric a powerful country with a powerful ability to respond to an attack. Israel under Netanyahu is an extremist rogue nation but it has so much power in Washington… He [Netanyahu] may yet succeed in pulling the US into war, I think Trump is trying to resist it.
“The good news: There have actually been now meetings, negotiations between the US and Iran, that by the announcement of both sides, are making some progress. Netanyahu is having a fit over this, no doubt the Israel lobby is working overtime to try to destroy these negotiations. So this is a perilous time because Israel’s on a rampage; it is of course committing mass murder in Gaza, it is trying to engage in ethnic cleansing in both Gaza and the West Bank, it is expropriating violently lands also in the West Bank, it has invaded Lebanon, it has invaded Syria and it’s aiming for war with Iran. So given Netanyahu’s out-of-control recklessness within Israel, firing the head of intelligence, absolutely dividing his own country but controlling our politicians, this is an extraordinarily dangerous moment.
“There’s one vote only that separates us today from peace, and that is the US veto in the UN Security Council that blocked Palestine becoming the 194th UN member State… Israel has no veto over a State of Palestine. The International Court of Justice ruled last year that Israel’s boundaries are the boundaries of the 4th of June 1967 period; the United Nations by an overwhelming majority, 95 per cent of the world’s population has called for there to be a State of Palestine… More than 180 countries support this in fact. Israel does not okay, that’s Israel’s Zionism’s this extreme Zionism’s radicalism… All President Trump needs to do is change one vote and then what he does is recognise that the whole world other than the Israel lobby has called for two States: The International Court of Justice, the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly… So too has the Arab League, all the Arab countries of the Middle East, so too have the 57 Islamic majority countries in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation… We [the US] are the only blockade of this now.
“[Regarding China], the US may back down because we see every day the incredible self-harm that it has caused itself by the tariff fiasco. We see in the financial markets day after day a bloodbath, in the interest rates going up, in the fall of the dollar… Is China going to come begging? Of course it’s not going to do so… President Xi Jinping was all across Southeast Asia in recent days firming up relations, hearing from other countries ‘Yes we stand together, you’re our major trading partner, we invest together’, and so forth. No, the rest of the world’s not going to fall into this kind of self-destructive behaviour; this is an American specialty.”
Journalist, author, and blogger Max Blumenthal was hosted by Judge Napolitano on Judging Freedom on 23 April. Editor of the Grayzone website, Mr Blumenthal discussed with Judge Napolitano the political issue between Israel and Iran. He said:
“Amy Ayalon the former head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret service said last weekend in the Financial Times that the war was basically over by last May or June, and ever since then Netanyahu has just been delaying it, which means playing with the lives of the Israelis that are left in Gaza which is causing again a substantial slice of the Israeli public to demand his ouster. Dan Halutz former Israeli army chief of staff said Netanyahu needs to be grabbed and taken physically out of the prime minister’s office.
“The logic behind the Houthis or Ansarullah’s attempt to impose a blockade in the Red Sea, why are they doing it partly for ideological reasons, because they believe that the oppressed in the world should be defended… It’s being done in defense of the most betrayed oppressed abandoned people on the planet in Gaza. This shows the failure of the US: they have not been able to suppress Ansarullah’s missiles, they have not been able to restore freedom of movement to the Red Sea, they have had to send a second aircraft carrier the USS Carl Vincent into southeastern Yemen in preparation for a ground invasion, which is a sign of desperation. The United States with the most powerful air force and navy in human history is unable to defeat a local armed force from one of the poorest countries in the world.”
Watani International
9 May 2025
