There are various reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but there is one important factor that has not been sufficiently explored.  The Soviet Union in the 1980s had become increasingly irrelevant.  The irrelevance was particularly obvious in international economics, where the Soviet ruble was not a convertible currency; in international diplomacy, where the Soviet Union played no major role in the Middle East or the Global South; and in international ideology, where the Soviet model was a non-factor.  Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze understood that one of the major tasks of the Soviet Union was to restore Soviet relevance in all of these areas.  They had to grapple with the troglodytes in the Soviet leadership to reach this goal.  They tried, but they never achieved their goal.

We have our own troglodytes, although the United States is not facing the threat of dissolution.  Donald Trump’s executive actions are clearly weakening the international standing of the United States and begging the question of U.S. relevance in terms of its political, diplomatic, and even economic standing.  A strong case can be made that the U.S. role in international diplomacy is already weakening.  The United States is no longer a major factor in  the diplomacy of arms control and disarmament.  In fact, the U.S. emphasis on a national missile defense (the so-called Golden Dome) will worsen the strategic environment, and encourage many others to enhance their strategic offensive arsenals to overwhelm a Golden Dome or simply pursue their own nuclear weapons.  The Golden Dome will never be able to achieve its objective of providing strategic stability..  I will address the flaws of the system in a future article.

The Trump administration has made many mistakes in the past several months, but picking a fight with China is certainly the worst of them.  The Trump national security team is dominated by China Hawks who can’t tolerate the increased power and influence of China.  But China controls the global supply of many important rare earth metals and magnets.  The United States has limited exports of software for making semiconductors, gases such as ethane and butane, and components for nuclear and aerospace systems.  The Chinese have responded to Trump’s challenge  by placing limits on their export to the United States of the rare minerals needed for U.S. fighter aircraft, aircraft carriers, and strategic missiles.  Ford Motors has already had to close a factory in China because of a lack of magnets from Chinese producers.

Trump’s plans for a $175 billion antimissile shield, designed to shoot down ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, wouldn’t protect the United States from drone technology, which has already changed the nature of war between Ukraine and Russia.  The Pentagon is overly wedded to piloted fighter aircraft, and has not invested in the types of small drones used so effectively by both Russia and Ukraine.  America’s adversaries will not try to emulate the United States regarding a national missile defense, assuming that a less costlier investment in offensive weaponry will be sufficient.  The United States will be a loser on all of these fronts as arms control becomes irrelevant.

China holds leverage in every aspect of Trump’s trade war.  Tariffs, moreover, lead to higher prices at home for businesses and consumers, and reduced economic growth.  Trump’s xenophobia and his campaign against U.S. elite universities and research institutions will encourage the best of our international students to return home, We will suffer from lost technological innovation as we lose the “best and the brightest” of our international students.  This happened in the Soviet Union in the 1980s and 1990s, and it happened in Russia in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Trump’s tariff war not only marks the decline of U.S. global influence, but it will weaken the value and influence of the American dollar. There are already indications that U.S. tariffs are hurting our relations with Southeast Asian nations, and that China is gaining from U.S. losses.  This is true in the global south as well.  There are signs that global investors are avoiding U.S. treasury bonds and pursuing alternatives to the American dollar,

Trump’s campaign of America First, which resembles the isolationism of Charles Lindburgh’s campaign against Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 is creating setbacks on the international front.  While Trump ignores the genocidal military campaign that Israel is fighting against Palestinians, Europeans and others are stepping up their protests of the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu.  The foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom have announced sanctions and “other measures” against two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, for “inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.  New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman warned that their “ugly, nihilistic policy in Gaza” will endanger Jews everywhere.

China is also gaining from U.S. withdrawal from full participation in the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization, which the United States did so much to create in the first place.  China immediately announced that it would compensate for any losses that occur due to the reduced role of the United States.

Since the end of World War II, the United States has been a global leader, but has spent too many resources and too much energy in pursuing global supremacy.  The depressing state of our domestic political system can’t be addressed because the Republican-led Congress will not challenge the authoritarianism of the Trump administration.  The absence of a seasoned national security adviser and a fully-staffed National Security Council have ensured the absence of diplomacy needed to address international problems.

Our efforts to divide Russia and China have only driven Moscow and Beijing closer together.  But neither Russia nor China represents the threat or challenge that Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once represented.  It’s time for diplomacy to find a way to open talks with both Moscow and Beijing instead of pursuing a feckless dual containment that is only worsening tensions.  Both President Putin and Xi Jinping have signaled an interest in opening bilateral talks.  We have neither a plan nor a process for doing so, and the absence of a serious national security team guarantees a missed opportunity.

U.S. military supremacy has wasted resources and achieved nothing internationally and promises to create havoc at home in the wake of National Guard and Marine deployments that only serve the interests of the president.  Trump’s contempt for constitutional democracy represents the existential threat that demands the serious political opposition that is lacking.

---