Trump Could Turn Western Values Into a Facade

Note

Joseph Nye is one of America's top political scientists. He is the former dean of the Harvard Kennedy School and has been chair of the National Intelligence Council and assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. Alex Görlach, founding editor of the magazine The European, and Constantin Weiss interviewed Nye about his 2015 book, "Is The American Century Over?" and the election of Donald Trump as the next U.S. president.

This interview was originally published at Save Liberal Democracy.

In your book, you answer the question by saying, no, it isn't. Now that we have President-elect Donald Trump, would you like to revise that thesis?

Well, much depends on the definition. If one asks if the U.S. will remain the most powerful country in terms of resources, I still believe, in the next 25 years or so, we will still be the strongest country. The question that has changed is how we will use that power. With Trump headed to the White House, we have no guarantee that the policies set in place over the past 70 years will remain. The maintenance of alliances and institutions ― the liberal international order ― is not clear.

If we look at history, we see that after World War I, America was then also the world's most powerful country. But it did not use that power in the international realm and decided to focus on domestic policy, which incidentally led to the economic chaos in the 1930s. Since World War II, the U.S. has been the most significant international actor and whether that will continue under Trump is unclear....

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