US News Metro Long Island Politics

Sports NFL MLB Olympics NBA NHL College Football College Basketball WNBA

Business Personal Finance

Entertainment TV Movies Music Celebrities Awards Theater

Lifestyle Weird But True Sex & Relationships Viral Trends Human Interest Parenting Fashion & Beauty Food & Drink Travel

Health Wellness Fitness Health Care Medicine Men’s Health Women’s Health Mental Health Nutrition

Science Space Environment Wildlife Archaeology

Today’s Paper Covers Columnists Horoscopes Crosswords & Games Sports Odds Podcasts Careers

Email Newsletters Official Store Home Delivery Tips

Switch between CA and NY editions here.

Trump’s global endeavors upend the world of impotent elites — and there’s no going back

At the start of his second term, President Trump surveyed the slowly rotting swamp that was the post-Cold War landscape, and he did not like what he saw.

He has determined to scour it clean of dangerous attachments, conditions, and — as we now know — regimes the president considers to be a legacy of past American weakness.

His ultimate objective? A world open for business that realistically reflects the preponderance of American economic and military power.

Towards this goal he has stormed with the disruptive force of a Category 5 hurricane.

The war with Iran is only a moment in Trump’s geopolitical pilgrim’s progress. It was preceded by aggressive moves against China, Panama, Greenland, Gaza, Mexico and Venezuela.

It will be followed by a settling of the family business with Cuba.

America’s global priorities have been radically rebalanced. NATO allies have been told to pick up their burden if they wish to see the US stick around.

Meanwhile, Latin America, long treated like a poor relation, looms large in the administration’s thinking.

The recent Shield of the Americas summit held in Doral, Fla., brought together a dozen elected leaders from this hemisphere who have defied history by openly proclaiming themselves pro-American.

Some, like Argentina’s Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, sound decidedly pro-Trump.

I have no idea whether the president’s hard-charging strategy will succeed.

But I can say this with confidence: the world will never be the same.

An avalanche of events has been set loose that will not easily be stopped.

Relations that were based on the pretense of order have been swept away and replaced by a chaotic scramble for security.

The consequences will either dramatically favor the US or wreak severe retribution upon us for our overreach.

Either way, history is on the move.

Already, the global chessboard looks unrecognizable.

And if the winners in this great reshuffling are not yet known, it’s easy to identify the losers.

That would be the national and transnational grandees who had pictured themselves as pillars of a “rules-based world order.”

These are elite types who worship at the altar of process: every crisis must be papered over with consultations, negotiations and proclamations, until the public’s attention wanders and the trouble is decently shoved offstage.

Trump’s rage for change, for an........

© New York Post