Liberation Day for the world, not the USA

As Claire Sparks said, "The long memory is the most radical idea in America.” Trump is the crescendo of our forgetfulness, preparing tariffs for a “Liberation Day” while tearing through government and burning international bridges, all because too few Americans remember how we got here and why our world presence mattered.

History matters

Americans do not understand how shattered Europe was after World War II. While we had our casualties, the country was untouched. Factories and technology flourished under wartime spending. Meanwhile, substantial parts of mainland Europe were rubble, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural mountains. Infrastructure was obliterated. Dams destroyed. Bridges gone. Tens of millions dead and millions more displaced people seeking a place to live.

The world war led quickly to the Cold War. With the Iron Curtain, the west faced a Soviet bloc contending with PTSD on a sociological scale and vivid memories of what western Europe did to them in the war. They isolated and recovered more slowly than the rest of Europe, with a command economy focused on matching America’s capacity for nuclear and conventional war.

To see all this history and consider Europe as freeloading betrays a profound and selfish stupidity.

Americans forget the decades we lived with the specter of nuclear war. From “duck and cover” to “The Day After,” American policies were driven by Armageddon. Our Cold War planning led to a vast increase in presidential power. The world might end in 30 minutes, so no time for Congress, a President needs to act fast. So, on top World War II’s legacy, the Cold War era Congress passed laws giving vast additional powers to a president to act unilaterally in a dangerous world—like the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, passed in 1977, that Trump is using to raise tariffs today.

Post-war world building

After the first World War, the United States left Europe and abandoned its position in the world by refusing the League of Nations. A two decades later, world war returned. This was the lesson Americans followed recovering from World War II.

The United States had everything the world needed. European countries used us as a life raft and United States used its affluence to secure a particular world vision post-war. We then hit the Cold War and the United States was the only country able to engage the Soviet Union. We used this security need as well to build a world that worked for the United States. Post-war, our dollar and treasury notes greased the skids for the world economy. NATO allied countries who historically warred against each other with tidal regularity. From the end of World War II to Russia’s Ukraine invasion, Europe has not had so prolonged a peace. And no single country had the power and standing of the United States in modern times.

The United States bought peace when the price of peace was at an all time low, with our Marshall Plan and Cold War defense spending.

The United States bought peace when the price of peace was at an all time low. Through our Marshall Plan and Cold War defense spending, we committed to Europe for nearly eight decades to preserve peace in the same way our government (until Trump) paid for overseas vaccination programs—to keep war and disease away from our shores. To see all this history and consider Europe as freeloading betrays a profound and selfish stupidity. Arms races in Europe never end well. World wars are bad for business. Nuclear wars are worse. The United States used our position to build a world we wanted and benefited from. Deriding and revoking our historic investments in a stable, less militarized Europe is, at best, criminally negligent. At worst, it is a call for war.

The post-war system held through to Joe Biden, a president who understood how to use it for the greater good. Then came Donald Trump, who somehow passed into the 21st century as a mercantilist who never heard of Smoot-Hawley. Trump appears because too many people forgot our past. MAGA is excited to tear down fences with no idea why they are up. Regretfully, the concentration of presidential power from the cold war combined with the U.S. economy’s connection to the world, that we forged, makes Trump’s fanciful “get even” tariffs a genuine threat to the world economy.

America’s end

So, with Trump’s Liberation Day upon us, we have South Korea, China and their World War II mortal enemy Japan assembling a joint response to Trump’s tariffs. Trump rails against the EU and Canada planning their joint response, probably revealing signals intelligence he should not have. Germany just broke the budget to start serious re-arming, historically never a good sign. France is expanding its nuclear deterrence capability and planning to work with other nations on weapon development. MAGA rejoices that tariffs will pull our country away from the world. And tariffs will do so, but the story will not unfold well.

The world does not see us today as a democracy beacon or free world leader. We are a 2nd amendment toddler with a loaded gun.

The world will realize the United States is unreliable. The fascists we kept quiet from World War II to the Berlin Wall’s destruction are now running the country for the second time. Allies can overlook one bad election. Trump did lose the 2016 popular vote, with only 60,000 ballots and a constitutional quirk putting him into office. But then the United States turns from the successful and engaged President Biden to give Trump the office again—with a popular vote win. Then, as Trump destroys our government, all We the People do is yell at some members of congress and picket Tesla dealerships. The world today does not see us as a democracy beacon or free world leader. We are a 2nd amendment toddler with a loaded gun.

April 2nd will be Liberation Day for the world. When this final realization that the United States is ultimately unreliable takes hold, we will quickly lose our privileged position. While always important due to our size and resources, the balance of the world will do its utmost to find ways around us and forge new political and economic connections. MAGA’s plan may be to make the United States so toxic the world passes us by, so they may call this change liberation. But Americans are not accustomed to what we will be seen as after Trump. How countries will refuse to help us. How much less regard the world will give us. How little the United States of America will matter over time.

So, Happy World Liberation Day! We will be attending our funeral.

Not a perfect world

As a progressive, I am contractually required to point out that the United States is not perfect and that we have acted internationally in abhorrent ways. The entire story of the post-war world is rife with contradiction, hypocrisy, ambiguity, absurdity and aggression. And this is not a blindly Eurocentric piece, just a conjecture on how we got here. Asia bore its share of devastation in World War II and the Cold War. However, as Asian economies recovered and developed, they did contend with a system the United States built to deal primarily with Europe and the Soviets.

Saying all this, I stand by my argument. While quite imperfect, the post war planning and its resulting structures worked to our advantage. This is what Trump will walk away from today, and he has no idea that he is doing so.