Trump’s second presidency and the return of global turbulence |
If the world manages to navigate the coming decade without catastrophic collapse, historians may look back on the second Trump administration with a mixture of disbelief and relief. Relief that the international system endured, and disbelief that such strain was placed upon it by the actions of a single leader wielding unparalleled military, economic, and political power. Donald Trump’s return to the White House has already produced a pattern of behavior that signals a deeply unstable period ahead-one marked by aggressive foreign policy, domestic repression, and a willingness to challenge long-standing norms among allies and adversaries alike.
At the center of global anxiety lies a question that would once have seemed absurd: how did the United States come to be led again by a man openly threatening to invade or occupy territory belonging to a NATO ally? Trump’s renewed fixation on Greenland-a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark-has resurfaced with startling intensity. He has publicly reiterated his belief that the United States should have “complete and total control” of the island, framing the issue not merely as a strategic necessity but as a personal grievance. In his telling, the refusal of Norway to award him the Nobel Peace Prize stands as evidence of international duplicity, despite the elementary fact that the Norwegian government does not decide the prize’s recipients.
This conflation of personal slights with matters of state power is not incidental; it is foundational to Trump’s worldview. He has been described by critics and analysts as narcissistic and solipsistic, but another, less common term may better capture his behavior: pronoia. Unlike paranoia, which assumes the world is conspiring against the individual, pronoia assumes the opposite-that events, people, and institutions are naturally aligned in one’s favor. Trump appears to believe, often irrationally, that others see the world exactly as he does, and that resistance to his ideas must therefore stem from malice, treachery, or corruption.
The danger arises when this belief is paired with immense power. Anyone who challenges Trump’s authority or questions his judgment is quickly reclassified as an existential threat, not only to his presidency but to the nation itself. This worldview produces a........