Trump's war on everything will lead to his eventual downfall
Nobel Peace Prize he has long coveted despite the fact that his primary contribution to peace so far has been to
bomb people.
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The energy shown by the second Trump administration during the past six months has been extraordinary. The United States has never seen
a presidency so disruptive , but Trump has neglected the crucial lesson forgotten by French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in 1812 and the Germans in 1941. You can never be so strong that you can open up hostilities on too many fronts.
The year so far has largely been successful for Trump and his far-right
Project 2025 acolytes , but their dedication to doing too much too fast is an underlying weakness in their efforts to re-gild America in Trump's likeness. Things can break quickly, but fixing them takes much longer. Rather than bringing about any kind of reform, the result will be that Trump's only lasting accomplishment is political and economic damage to the US.
Far from being 'America first', many of Trump's initiatives – and certainly the way in which they have been imposed – are likely to undermine the prime position the US holds in geopolitics and geoeconomics. Abroad, he has roiled the global economic system with
a series of tariffs , made opponents of
America's friends and
threatened to annex Canada and Greenland and to take over the Panama Canal.
02:24
Trump dispatches National Guard to contain protesters in Los Angeles
Trump dispatches National Guard to contain protesters in Los Angeles
Trump is able to do this because his slight majority in the popular vote in the 2024 US presidential election is treated as sufficient to bully and strike when the other side is on the defensive. He pushes through executive orders, supported by loyalists who know that
one wrong word means the end of their position in high office. He
chickens out when faced with resistance and quickly pivots to attacking another target.
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AllAfrica
an hour ago
- AllAfrica
Trump slams door on Afghan asylum seekers fleeing Taliban
Thousands of Afghans living in the United States face an uncertain future after a federal appeals court ruled on July 21, 2025, that the Trump administration can end a humanitarian relief program that provided them work permits and protection from deportation. The program, temporary protected status, known as TPS, grants legal status to people from certain foreign countries who are already in the US and have fled armed conflict or natural disasters. It's usually granted for 18 months, with an option of an extension. About 8,000 Afghans and 7,900 Cameroonians benefiting from this humanitarian protection were affected by the May 2025 decision from the administration to terminate TPS. Afghans in the US first received TPS in 2022, after the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in late 2021. The Taliban enforces a repressive interpretation of Islamic law that includes banning women and girls from attending school or working outside their home. The Taliban emerged in the early 1990s and controlled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. They were overthrown after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, but regained control in 2021 after the withdrawal of US and NATO forces. In 2023, the Department of Homeland Security extended TPS for Afghans through 2025, as the conditions that triggered the initial designation – namely, armed conflict in Afghanistan – were deemed to be ongoing. In May 2025, however, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced the termination of TPS for Afghans, stating that Afghanistan no longer poses a threat to the safety of its nationals abroad and that Afghan nationals can safely return to their country. 'We've reviewed the conditions in Afghanistan with our interagency partners, and they do not meet the requirements for a TPS designation,' Noem said in May 2025. 'Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent them from returning to their home country.' Most Afghans who have arrived in the US since 2021 share a fear of persecution by the Taliban. That includes people who worked for the former government, advocated for women's rights or worked with the US military in Afghanistan. As a migration policy scholar, I believe the cancellation of TPS for these Afghans won't lead to voluntary repatriation, as the fear of persecution by the Taliban remains a serious concern for many. Instead, it will likely force thousands of people into unlawful residency in the US. That, in turn, would not only leave thousands at risk of deportation but limit their employment opportunities in the US and keep them from financially supporting the families they left behind in Afghanistan. Unlawful US residency can disqualify Afghans from accessing benefits such as Medicaid and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a federal program that provides cash assistance and support services to low-income families with children. For Afghan TPS holders without any other pending legal status – such as asylum claims, for example – the termination also means the loss of work authorization, as their employment authorization document was tied to having TPS. This can cut off thousands of Afghans from financial stability, according to the nonprofit group Global Refuge. Many Afghans are likely to seek alternative legal pathways to remain in the US, most commonly through the already underresourced asylum process. For these people, the outlook looks daunting. Filing an asylum application with US Citizenship and Immigration Services means joining an unprecedented backlog. Taliban security personnel stand guard as an Afghan woman walks along a street in the Baharak district of Badakhshan province on Feb. 26, 2024. Photo: Wakil Kohsar / AFP via Getty Images / The Conversation At the end of 2024, nearly 1.5 million asylum applications were pending with USCIS, according to the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit advocacy organization. Most applicants faced estimated wait times of up to six years for a decision. Asylum applicants are allowed to remain in the US while their application is pending. And they can apply for work authorization, but only after the asylum application has been pending for at least 150 days. However, the work authorization is not issued until a minimum of 180 days has passed since filing for asylum. So Afghan nationals applying for asylum following the TPS termination face a mandatory six-month period without legal work authorization. This period can stretch even longer, depending on how long it takes applicants to retain an attorney and complete the complex application process. Like many forcibly displaced populations, Afghans often arrive in the US with extremely limited financial resources. Forced migration is typically abrupt and unplanned, leaving little opportunity to liquidate assets or withdraw funds. The small amount of cash or valuables that this population manages to carry is often just enough to reach immediate safety. Against this background, the ability to work is a critical issue for Afghans in the US. Most Afghans in the US are also supporting older parents and immediate or extended family members in Afghanistan, according to unpublished research I'm conducting with my colleagues, Proscovia Nabunya and Nhial Tutlam. This makes timely access to legal employment not only a matter of survival for themselves but also a lifeline for loved ones left behind. TPS was never intended as a long-term solution. And the number of Afghan nationals who held it as their sole legal status in the US was relatively small – estimated at around 8,000 – compared with the over 180,000 Afghans who have arrived in the US since 2021. What is more concerning for Afghans in the US, however, are the government's assertions surrounding the termination of TPS for this group. If the US government now maintains that Afghanistan is safe for return, it raises concerns about how this stance may influence the adjudication of Afghan asylum claims. Although most Afghan asylum applications are grounded in a combination of factors – fears based on nationality, ethnicity, religion and political opinion – labeling Afghanistan as safe for return could undermine claims that rely on nationality as a central basis for protection. Mitra Naseh is assistant professor of migration, Washington University in St. Louis This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
AllAfrica
an hour ago
- AllAfrica
After Alaska: What Ukraine peace looks like to Trump
For all the pomp and staged drama of the summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska, the substantive part of the spectacle – that is, the negotiations between two great powers over the grinding war in Ukraine – did not at first appear to yield much. There was no deal and little detail on purported areas of progress. The post-Alaska analysis, however, suggested the US had shifted away from Ukraine's position. Trump, it was reported, essentially agreed to Putin's call for territorial concessions by Ukraine and for efforts toward a conclusive peace agreement over an immediate ceasefire – the latter opposed by Putin as Russia makes gains on the battlefield. Those apparent concessions were enough to prompt alarm in the capitals of Europe. A hastily arranged follow-up meeting between Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky – and assorted European Union (EU) allies – and Trump in the White House on August 18 yielded vague promises of security guarantees for Ukraine. This is all very frustrating for those looking for some concrete foundations of a peace deal. Yet, as a longtime scholar of Russian and Soviet history, I believe that the diplomatic whirl has revealed glimpses of what a future peace deal may look like. Or, more precisely, what it looks like for Putin and Trump. It may be a bitter pill for Ukraine to swallow, but what it all suggests is a meeting of minds between the leaders of the two great powers involved: Russia and the United States. After all, as Trump told Fox News following the Alaska summit: 'It's good when two big powers get along, especially when they're nuclear powers. We're No. 1 and they're No. 2 in the world.' Some of what we already knew remains unchanged. First, the European powers – notably Germany, France and the UK – remain fully supportive of Ukraine and are prepared to back Kyiv in resisting the Russian invasion and occupation. Second, Zelensky opposes concessions to Russia, at least publicly. Rather, Ukraine's leader seemingly believes that with Western – and most importantly, American – arms, Ukraine can effectively resist Russia and secure a better end to the conflict than is evident at this moment. Meeting Trump again in the Oval Office after being ambushed by Trump and Vice President JD Vance in February, Zelensky was as deferential and grateful to the US president as his more formal dress indicated. All eyes were on Presidents Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office on Aug. 18, 2025. Photo: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images via The Conversation In contrast to Zelensky and the European powers, the aims and positions of the United States under Trump appear to be fluid. And while Putin talks of the need to address the 'primary causes' of the Ukraine conflict and publicly pushes a maximalist position, it isn't entirely clear what he will actually settle for in regard to the security and land arrangements he says he needs. I would argue that there are two ways of interpreting the aims of both the United States and Russia: 'imperial' and 'hegemonic.' The former stems from an understanding of those countries' long experience as empires. Countries that have descended from empires have memories of former greatness that many wish to repeat in the present. And while there is nothing fatalistic about such imperial fantasies that translate the past into the present, they often echo in the repertoire of the influential and powerful. There are signs in the rhetoric of both Trump and Putin of such grandiose imperial impulses. Both have talked of returning their country to a 'great' past and have harbored desires of annexing or dominating other countries. And many Western analysts of Russia are convinced that Putin dreams of becoming another Peter the Great, who expanded his empire into the Baltic region, or Catherine the Great, who sent her armies south into 'New Russia' – that is, what is today Ukraine. But there is also another way, short of empire, that explains how great powers act in the world: as hegemons, either regionally or globally. Instead of the colonizing of other territories and peoples, hegemons act to dominate other countries economically and militarily – and perhaps ideologically and politically, as well. They do so without taking over the smaller country. The United States, through its dominant position in NATO, is a hegemon whose sway is paramount among the members of the alliance, which can hardly operate effectively without the agreement of Washington. Putin's interests, I would contend, are short of fully imperial – which would require complete control of Ukraine's domestic and foreign policy. But they are flagrantly hegemonic. In this reading, Putin may well be satisfied to get what the Soviets achieved in Finland during the Cold War: a compliant state that did not threaten Moscow, but remained independent in other ways. Putin has such an arrangement with Belarus and might be satisfied with a Ukraine that's not fully sovereign, militarily weak and outside of NATO. At the Alaska summit, Putin not only mentioned Ukraine as a 'brotherly nation,' but also emphasized that 'the situation in Ukraine has to do with fundamental threats to Russian security.' One can read Putin's words in many ways, but his public comments in Alaska framed the Ukraine conflict in Russian security terms, rather than in imperialist language. The problem for Putin is that Russia does not have the economic and military power, or the reputational soft power attraction, to become a stable, influential hegemon in its neighborhood. Because it cannot achieve what the US has accomplished through a mix of hard and soft power since the fall of the Soviet Union – that is, global hegemony – it has turned to physical force. That move has proved disastrous in terms of casualties, domestic economic distress, the mass migration of hundreds of thousands of Russians opposed to the war, and isolation from the global capitalist economy. What Putin desires is something that shows his people that the war was worth the sacrifices. And that may mean territorial expansion in the annexation of four contested provinces of Ukraine – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – as well as Crimea, taken in 2014. That goal certainly seems imperial. And while the distinctions between an imperial foreign policy and a hegemonic one may seem semantic or academic, they are crucial when looking at the prospects of peace. Imperialism is always about conquest and total subordination of one regime to another. If indeed Putin is an imperialist who wants full control of Ukraine – or, as is often claimed, its elimination as a sovereign state and the recreation of a polity akin to the Soviet Union – then negotiation and compromise with Russia become impossible. My sense is that to solidify his relations with Trump and his territorial gains in Ukraine, Putin will be satisfied with accepting the rest of Ukraine as a nation-state that remains outside of NATO and is neither a base for Western powers nor a perceived military threat to Russia. The problem here, of course, is that such a solution may be unacceptable to Zelensky and would have to be imposed on Kyiv. That would be anathema to the major European powers, though not necessarily for Trump. And here we find another obstacle to peace in Ukraine: Europe and the US do not have a united position on the final solution to the war. Even if both accept the view that Russia's aims are primarily about its own idea of security rather than conquest or elimination of Ukraine, would Europe accept Putin's demands for a major overhaul of the military balance in east-central Europe. Trump appears less concerned about the prospect of a truncated Ukraine subordinated to Russia. His major concerns seem to lie elsewhere, perhaps in the Nobel Peace Prize he covets. But the US may have to guarantee the security of Ukraine against future Russian attacks, something that Trump has hinted at, even as he abhors the idea of sending American troops into foreign conflicts. While leaders talk peace, Russian drone strikes continue in Ukraine. Photo: Serhii Masin / Anadolu via Getty Images / The Conversation Wars have consequences, both for the victorious and the defeated. And the longer this war goes on, the more likely the grinding advance of Russia further into Ukraine becomes, given the military might of Russia and Trump's ambivalent support of Ukraine. With those realities in mind, the solution to the Russia-Ukraine war appears to be closer to what Russia is willing to accept than Ukraine. Ukraine, as Trump so brutally put it, does not have cards to play in this tragic game where great powers decide the fate of other countries. We are back to Thucydides, the ancient Greek founder of political science, who wrote: 'Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.' Not surprisingly, this is what international relations theorists call 'realism.' Ronald Suny is professor of history and political science, University of Michigan This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
South China Morning Post
2 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
Trump White House debuts TikTok account ahead of possible ban: ‘I am your voice'
The White House launched an official TikTok account on Tuesday, taking advantage of the short video app's more than 170 million US users to spread the messages of President Donald Trump Advertisement Trump has a soft spot for the popular app, crediting it with helping him gain support among young voters when he defeated Democrat Kamala Harris in the November 2024 presidential election The White House's official account comes as a new deadline approaches for its parent company ByteDance to divest from its US operations or face a nationwide blackout in the country. TikTok's algorithm, which decides which videos users see next, is a key point of contention. Critics warn that the Chinese government could use the algorithm to influence public opinion in the US, which TikTok and ByteDance have always denied. Trump has been working on a deal for US investors to buy the app from ByteDance. US President Donald Trump speaks to journalists about TikTok. Photo: TNS The new account, @whitehouse, went live on Tuesday evening with an initial video showing footage of Trump as he declared: 'I am your voice.'
