Across the American political firmament, from far-left progressives to centrist Republicans and Democrats to far-right conservatives, a remarkable new consensus is forming and gathering strength: put “America First” once again. Out with the unwanted burdens of U.S. global hegemony in the guise of primus inter pares to prevent the emergence of rival regional hegemons outside the Americas, in with reaping the fruits of tending and cultivating the United States’s backyard: the homeland and the rest of the Americas.

President Donald Trump, in his first incarnation, gave voice to this emerging new political reality with the slogan “Make America Great Again” and resuscitated the core belief that the nation’s manifest destiny can only be realized by putting America First from sea to shining sea.

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Unfortunately, in his second incarnation, Trump seems to have lost his way and forgotten his promises. Instead of disengaging from foreign entanglements and setting a course to come home, he has been lured by the siren calls of continued U.S. global hegemony — the glittering fool’s gold of wielding American power on behalf of legacy client states and security dependencies spread across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

So, here we are with a losing Trump trifecta. First, the U.S. is enmeshed in a de facto, proxy war with Russia, via American........

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