Picking better next time won't be enough unless a lot of work is done to put in place safeguards to make it impossible for a future government to act the same way.
I think people should realize that, in a democracy, it is virtually impossible to put these safeguards in place if people at large don't want them.
The reason Trump is able to get away with so much right now is because Congress is letting him. They could easily constrain his tariff powers, or his warmongering powers (they actually were close to doing that WRT Venezuela before some Republican Senators caved like a bunch of wet blankets), but they don't, because this is what people voted for. Trump is so much more powerful in his second term because at this point everyone knew he was a convicted felon, they knew he fomented the attack on the Capitol, and still a majority of voters voted for him.
Safeguards only work of someone is willing to enforce them.
It may not be possible to do perfectly, but here are many things that can be done to make it harder.
E.g.:
- no direct elections of a president with such broad powers.
- Separating the head of state and head of government, and split their powers.
- Proportional representation to reduce the chance of the largest party obtaining so much power alone.
- Not letting the president appoint supreme court justices.
- No presidential pardons; basically removing the chance of getting out of protections against legal sanctions after leaving office, and removing one of the strongest means of protecting loyalists.
The US isn't uniquely vulnerable, but it is a whole lot more vulnerable than governments in countries where the head of government is easier to replace and have fewer powers vested in their own personal mandate.
A direct election of a single powerful leader is also fundamentally creating a less democratic system - it reduces the influence of a huge minority of the electorate far below what their numbers justify.
Indeed, but it might be many decades - once this lesson is first learned, it will take a long time to unlearn because it tends to become self-reinforcing.
To give an illustration of how long institutional memory over things like this can be:
As of when I went to primary school in Norway in the 1980's, we were still taught at length about the British blockade of Norway during the Napoleonic wars due to Denmark-Norway's entry into the war on Napoleons side and its impact on Norway (an enduring memory for many Norwegian school-children is having to learn the Norwegian epic poem "Terje Vigen" about a man evading the blockade).
Norwegian agricultural policy to this day has had a costly cross-party support for subsidies intended to provide at least a minimum of food idependence as a consequence of learning the hard way first during the Napoleonic wars with a reinforcement (though less serious) during WW2 of how important it can be.
A large part of the Norwegian negotiations for EEA entry, and Norways rejection of EU membership was centered around agricultural policy in part because of this history.
The importance of regional development and keeping agriculture alive even in regions that are really not suited to it is "baked in" to Norwegian politics in part because the subsidies means that on top of those who are about the food idependence a lot of people are financially benefiting from the continuation of those policies, or have lived shaped by it (e.g. local communities that would likely not exist if the farms had not been financially viable thanks to subsidies), so structures have been created around it that have a life of their own.
Conversely, a lot of support for the US in Europe rests on institutional memory of the Marshall Plan, with most of the generations with first hand experience of the impact now dead.
Create a replacement memory of the US becoming a hostile force, and that can easily embed itself for the same 3+ generations after the situation itself has been resolved.
Interesting; as a British person myself, we don't get taught any of that about Norway or Denmark, not even knowing that they were once joint together in a union.
I'm not surprised. From a British POV it was a relatively minor part of a much larger conflict that Britain was done with when Napoleon defeated, and Denmark-Norway was for most practical purposes treated as "just" Denmark, since Denmark was the more powerful part of the union by far.
From the Danish and Norwegian side, Britain annihilated or captured most of the Danish-Norwegian fleet because Britain expected Denmark-Norway to enter the war on Napoleons side (as a consequence, Denmark-Norway of course entered, but severely weakened), and Norway was blockaded and faced famine from 1808-1814.
After the war ended, the Norwegian mainland was handed over to Sweden (Iceland and Greenland were also Norwegian at that point, but stayed with Denmark), but Norway took advantage of the process and passed a constitution and briefly went to war against Sweden to force a better settlement, resulting in a relatively loose union. So this whole affair had a very significant effect on the formation of the Norwegian state.
Trump's passing and his admin getting tossed won't erase the memory that a good third of America was always happy with him and wanted what he actually did. America is now branded with MAGA in a way that will take generations to fade.
At this point, I'd say terms rather than generations.
I mean, I'm old enough to remember people saying "Never Forget" about 9/11, but it's barely in any discourse at this point, and that was a single generation ago and had two major wars a bunch of PoW scandals, war crime scandals that led to Manning, and domestic surveillance that led to Snowden. And yet, despite all that, I've only heard 9/11 mentioned exactly once since visiting NYC in 2017, and that was Steve Bannon and Giuliani refusing to believe that Mamdani was legitimate.
So, yeah, if Trump fades away this could be forgotten in 8 years or so; if this escalates to a war (I'm not confident, but if I had to guess I'd say 10% or so?), then I see it rising to the level of generations.
It's different. 9/11 was an outside foe, which was dismantled by US forces, and its leader was executed. America "won" against the perpetrators of 9/11 in the conventional sense.
You cannot defeat MAGA the same way: the "enemies" are among us, and they aren't going anywhere.
From my point of view as a European asking if myself if or when I will be able to trust the USA in the future, the Taliban is to Afghanistan as MAGA is to the USA.
You're the outsider, to me. The pre-9/11 Taliban were seen as "kinda weird but we can do deals, oh dear aren't they awful, never mind", the post-9/11 were not even worthy of talking to. The USA is currently in a similar "pre" state, an invasion would make it a "post" state.
There's how the people in general remember, and then there's how the politicians and the institutions remember. If nothing else, the changes in institutions will have effects reverberating for decades, with the most obvious institution being the military in each country that expected to fight a war under a NATO umbrella with an American general in charge.
If I'm a German or French or Swedish officer, especially if I'm suddenly in Greenland, I'm going to be thinking hard about the changes to come in the next few years so that they're not all dependent upon a friendly America. If nothing else, they're all getting ready now to operate without any Americans in the loop, since it might be Americans they're fighting. That means the entire NATO command structure, which presumes American dominance of it, is now an obstacle to avoid rather than a resource to share. Every PM is asking the head of their air force if they can fly their F-35s without the Americans knowing about it and possibly shutting them down remotely.
There's a story going around today in French newspapers about how French and Ukrainian intelligence fed US intelligence some false strategic info to see if it ended up in Russian hands, which it did within days. Now Ukraine is consciously breaking its relationship with US intelligence because it can't be trusted, while getting closer to French and German intelligence. I suspect that the UK is also carefully looking at what's shared via the Five Eyes and decided what it can/needs to withhold.
I'm saying "never forget" fades. That's a human condition we all share.
I mean, I live in Germany these days, and this country absolutely got the multi-generational thing, and I'm from the UK whose empire ditto, but… the UK doesn't spend much time thinking about the Falklands War and even less about the Cod Wars.
Nobody disagreed with that it eventually fades, they were all saying it is going to take decades. The consequence of 9/11 of was mostly TSAs, following the USA into wars and the erosion of privacy at the mention of terrorism. The first and the last are still ongoing and I think the current US admin is still using the latter as a narrative, the second one may come at an end currently, because the USA is trying to use it against its (former) allies.
What you describe is called "to historicize an event". The WW1 has been historicized by WW2 (some argue it's the same war). But not even WW2 has been historicized yet (at least in Europe) and it already ended 80 years in the past, so I doubt an atlantic conflict is going to be forgotten in the next few decades.
Edit: I originally linked to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicization, but this does not describes what I mean. It is weird, because the supposed German equivalent does. The German article is about a concept from the science of history, while the English article is about a literature concept.
Aye, and thanks for the link, will read the german version as per your edit.
> so I doubt an atlantic conflict is going to be forgotten in the next few decades.
If it gets to one, yes. Was writing late at night, so sloppily, sorry about that.
Right now, I think we're not that far gone yet. Absolutely agree it becomes as you say if it becomes hot war. Not sure about which step between will be the drop that overflows the bucket.
If we don't reduce conflict to mean military conflict, then I think there is definitely some diplomatic issue ongoing.
> Not sure about which step between will be the drop that overflows the bucket.
True, this is kind of the open question, because the EU both needs to be the adult in the room and deescalate, but also can't do compromises with territorial integrity otherwise it has already lost. This will of course have an impact on the "time to forget".
But I don't think if there is a uprising today in the US, Trump and the whole admin is gone next week and they improve their constitution, that the whole issue will just be forgotten. The whole pro-, neutral- or even contra USA debate has been ongoing for decades know. For example the trade deals aren't exactly concordant with EU law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems#Schrems_I) and the USA has been boycotting multilateral institutions, that the EU wants to have authority. I mean it is new that they openly sabotage the ICJ, but that they have the capability to do that is not.
Yeah, one thing the EU could do that wouldn't hurt them/us (much) would be to stop bringing up fake replacements for the data sharing agreements that get shot down.
The damage would mostly hit the top performers of the US stock market (amongst others) while not damaging the EU as much.
It'll probably be tariffs first though, followed by the ACI if things get really bad.
Sort of. Those of us outside the US are aware his support hasn’t cratered. There’s going to be the concern the US will just swap him out for someone similar.
If past history is anything to go by, the US will elect the current opposition, who won't be nearly strong enough to enact the reforms that would prevent an extremist party from returning to power in 4 years' time.
You have to be incredibly naive to give that much credibility to the US system. A lot more than just a switch of parties would be needed.
Personally I highly doubt a possible democratic would return a conquered Greenland. And even if it did, it would have to ensure that kind of derailment doesn't happen again. The opposition so far seems to be about as ineffectual as centrist parties across Europe at dealing with the far right.
For Americans, many foreigners use the word “government” where we would say “administration”. So, a “new government” or “the government falls”, would be a “new administration” or “the administration’s party loses the next election”.
Exactly. The fixes that would go some way to restore my trust are changed to the mechanisms surrounding the democratic process. Things like no more gerrymander, get rid of allowing corporations influencing the voting by flooding the system with money, somehow fix social media every ad is seen by everyone rather than allowing personalised lies be shown to specific voters, fix your electronic voting systems to a maintenance man with a screwdriver can't make new votes pop into existence (as happened once), stop disenfranchising voters - even to the extend of implementing compulsory voting. The distortions the USA allows now to the democratic process are beyond belief.
Oh, and a system that allows a politician to incite a mob to attack the sitting parliament, and get away without punishment, then pardon the perps is a joke.
And the opposition party has proven itself to be unable to take actions necessary to prevent this sort of thing. The democrats could have used the Biden administration as an opportunity to try Trump for his crimes and establish new boundaries on the power of the president. Instead they just hoped he would vanish into the night and left space for his return.
If the dems win in 2026 and 2028, what is there to stop a return to fascism and further collapse in 2032?
You're going to pick better next time, right?