| Yes. There are many in the US who have a particular strand of thinking. It goes a bit like this: The US is meddling too much in other country's affairs. Only a handful of countries actually have agency - US, Russia, China mostly. All the wars out there are actually proxy wars, because the US is up to no good and interfering with one of the other countries with agency. It follows that all that is required for global peace is to withdraw US support for foreign adventuring. America looks after America, Russia looks after (extended) Russia. The more isolationist a country is, the better it is. Hungary is a better friend than the UK because it opposes American adventuring, just like us. There are other elements of the logic. America interferes abroad for cynical reasons. In Afghanistan, it was the poppies. In Iraq, it was the oil. They scratched their head a little over Ukraine, but then decided it was for rare earth minerals. I don't know if it's the end of the US as superpower, but what Musk is doing is destroying US state capacity from within, and what Trump's representatives are doing are destroying US influence abroad. If the goal is ending the US as a superpower, the actions are certainly shaped in a way that look like they're trying to end it. |