“The cemeteries are full of indispensable people.” In one form or another, this observation has been made many times over the last century or more.
What is true of people is true of nations. In the past 25 years or so it was often claimed (and , admittedly, often denied) that, in the modern world, the United States was the “indispensable nation”. Whatever the rights and wrong of this claim, it has become obvious that, whether we like it or not, the rest of the world will now have to dispense with the US as a defender of democracy, guarantor of global order, or even (as in Margaret Thatcher’s words about Gorbachev) a state we can do business with.
Anyone whose experience of the US began in the last eleven days would have no trouble recognising an archetypal kleptocracy, like Putin’s Russia or Mobutu’s Zaire (with a touch of Mao madness). The boss rakes off billions in tribute while his cronies scramble to please him, put each other down and collect their share of the loot. Regime supporters commit all sorts of crimes with impunity, while opponents are subject to both legal victimisation and threats of extra-legal terror against which they can expect no protection.
In dealing with such a regime, the only strategy is to buy off the boss, or a powerful underling, and hope that they stay bought long enough to deliver on their side of the bargain This approach is politely described as “transactional”, but without the implication that the transaction will necessarily be honoured. Dealing with kleptocrats can be highly profitable, as long as you get in and out quickly enough, but there’s no possibility of “doing business”, either commercial or political, in the ordinary sense of the word.
The problem is that for nearly everyone who matters, the last eleven days seem like an aberration. For decades, the US has been seen as the central pillar of a “rules-based order”, on which assumptions about the world were largely based. That’as true even for critics who pointed out that the rules were drawn up to favor the US, and that the US often breached them without any real consequences. And it’s true even though you can point to precedents for everything Trump had done.
But all that is over, and can’t be restored.