David Brooks: Trump at Davos Was The Final Break In The Post-War International Order
PBS NEWSHOUR: New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart of MS NOW join Geoff Bennett to discuss the week in politics, including President Trump’s remarks in Davos forcing Western leaders to reevaluate their relationship with the U.S. and escalating tensions over the ongoing immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota.
GEOFF BENNETT, PBS NEWSHOUR: So, David, what did we learn this week from President Trump’s climb-down on acquiring Greenland about his instincts, his sense of leverage and the limits of his approach? DAVID BROOKS, NEW YORK TIMES: Well, he does have a method that he uses over and over again, which is to overreach, to offend everybody, and then back off. And he sort of did that. And that would be the nine explanation of what happened this week. The serious explanation is that this, I think, was probably the final break in the postwar international order, that we have taken it for granted that we in the West, as we call it, are democracies aligned and friends with each other. And what really struck me this week was how many European leaders, Mark Carney, from Canada, how much pleasure they took in being bitterly breaking, divorcing with America and that we’re never going back to that. And I asked Europeans, like, is it like that Taylor Swift song, we are never getting back together? And they said, yes, that’s what it’s like. We are never getting back together because they say, you might elect a sane person in 2028, but you’re always four years away from another one of these. And so they’re really rethinking the whole global architecture. And it should be concerning to Americans. As Robert Kagan wrote in “The Atlantic” this week, we’re going to look back on the Cold War with nostalgia. And we’re going to look back on the post-Cold War world as if it was paradise and that we’re just entering, as Kagan wrote, the most dangerous time in American foreign policy since World War II.
