*** “War is not only destructive, it is sterile of positive result. The most that military victory can do is to provide opportunity to attempt anew the establishment of durable international peace.”
[ Dwight D. Eisenhower; World War II General; 34th U.S. President ]

This post is the 3rd in a series examining the conduct of one Donald John Trump, unfortunately president of the United States, as a wartime leader. Psychiatrists and others who closely watched him have said ‘unfit to be president.” He is the anti-Dwight D. Eisenhower.

This post presents excerpts from: “Pax Americana, Meet Lax Americana” [Carlos Lozada; New York Times; 3/29/26]:

8]. “We are not entering a post-American world, one in which the United States recedes from the stage or stops wielding its military might. Far from it. But we may be entering a post-America world, one in which the meaning of America, the principles and values the country has stood for. – sometimes in reality, sometimes in aspiration. – are fading. And the loss of that America may prove just as damaging, and far more lasting, than any harm Donald Trump’s excursions can inflict.” [NOTE; read this again, slowly, sentence by sentence. “…the meaning of America..” And what Trump and his Rasputins are doing to it…..]

4]. “It means that what we once called Pax Americana, that U.S.-led system of alliances and institutions that promoted American interests and values and helped avoid major conflicts in the decades after World War II, is gone, and irretrievably so. In place of the Pax Americana we are seeing a sort of Lax Americana, a world in which a careless and uninhibited and incurious U.S. superpower struts across the chess board, threatening old friends and enabling old rivals, seeking short-term gains, heedless of the dangers it is creating for itself and the world.” [NOTE: read this again, slowly. it says that the Trump DICTATORSHIP is making America. LESS. SAFE. Stupidity in action]

2]. “Under Trump, the idea of U.S. leadership has indeed been remade. – but from authority to domination, from persuasion to bullying, from nurturing alliances to wrecking them….”We don’t need anybody,’ a peeved Trump said..” [NOTE: we won WW II and the Cold War. BECAUSE. we had allies and friends. – we. NEEDED. other countries.]

***. “Ignorance, when voluntary, is criminal, and a man may be properly charged with that evil which he neglected or refused to learn how to prevent.” [ Samuel Johnson ]

1] “Rather than leading the free world, the United States is striding across the globe seemingly free of restraint, forethought or strategy, exerting its power because it can….Trump in his second term is like Michael Corleone in “The Godfather,” settling all the family business.”

3]. “Launching a war with only one ally and expecting everybody else to fall in line is a perfect example of the tensions inherent in America’s new approach. The United States wants the benefits of hegemony but without accepting the responsibilities. – ensuring collective security, promoting economic openness, nurturing vital alliances. – that come with it. Trump doesn’t care to be a superpower; he just likes to wield superpowers. He wants to operate in the world constrained only by “my own morality” and “my own mind”…” {NOTE: THE problem here IS his “mind”…]

5] “This is a historical aberration: a superpower that freely abdicates its leadership role, because it has concluded that leadership is for suckers; one that no longer promotes its values, because its decided those values are fake anyway; one that gives up on the rules and institutions it spent so long building, because it assumes they’re no longer worth the hassle.” [NOTE: this is an example of Trump’s STUPIDITY. and. IGNORANCE ]

6] “…Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, likewise invoked the common “heritage” of the Western world, but he based it explicitly on Christian faith, culture, language and ancestry. “We are part of one civilization. – Western civilization,” he said, specifying that Washington prefers “allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization.” This is the “civilizational West” rather than the “geopolitical West”…” ]

7]. “…an essential resource: international legitimacy. In “The End of the American Era,” Kupchan called it America’s “most precious asset,” and warned that the Bush administration was misspending it in Iraq, vastly overestimating “the autonomy that comes with military supremacy.” It is an appropriate warning for our time, when the Trump administration is likewise squandering America’s legitimacy and misjudging the freedom of action that comes with having the strongest military and as Trump brags, the “best equipment.” That legitimacy is part of what made Pax Americana possible. Lax Americana, by contrast, doesn’t just waste the nation’s legitimacy; it hardly recognizes its value.” [NOTE; read this again. He’s just told YOU that Trump is making YOU less secure; that Trump is actively, STUPIDLY, undermining much of what made America THE superpower, 1945-2016.]

*** “Donald Trump himself actually said during his campaign that he essentially thinks being unpredictable is a good thing. maybe that’s a good thing in domestic politics, but in foreign policy, that is really stupid.” [ Ted Lieu ]