Historian Timothy Snyder, author of "On Tyranny" — the 2017 bestseller that distilled twenty lessons from twentieth-century European history into a compact guide to recognizing and resisting authoritarianism — warned in a conversation with former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich late Tuesday that the United States is dismantling its own global standing under President Donald Trump, a process he has begun calling "superpower suicide."

The exchange, published by Reich — who served as labor secretary from 1993 to 1997 under President Bill Clinton — on his Substack as In Conversation with Timothy Snyder: On Tyranny, Trump, and the Midterms, focused on what Snyder described as the destruction of every international relationship the United States has built over the past century.
Snyder opened with an anecdote about addressing the Council on Foreign Relations, the New York-based foreign policy think tank, where he concluded that the standard terms used to describe a world in which American dominance is fading had become "a bit mendacious." The vocabulary in circulation, he argued, fails to capture the moment.

"I think we're failing to grasp the essence of what's going on with the Trump regime. And so I wanted to use a term which would actually get to the heart of things," Snyder said.

"What I mean by superpower suicide is that we are reducing our own power dramatically, both in the short term and the long term by carrying out foreign policy which destroys alliances, by fighting wars that make no sense and then losing them. But, then also, in the long term, by destroying the actual economic and even more fundamentally research and intellectual basis of power," he explained.

In Snyder's view, Trump's "messing up the economy" will fundamentally destroy public education, while the administration's refusal to fund research at institutions that employ vocal anti-Trump professors is "wrecking research." Federal agencies are the largest single source of funding for basic research at American universities.

"I use the term, which might seem dramatic, because as a historian I can't actually think of any examples where a leader has deflated the power of his own country so quickly," Snyder said. "It's not the only thing happening under Trump, but it's a way of talking about what's happening under Trump, which gets to power rather than to ethics, which, of course, is another very important subject."

Reich observed that the pace at which the United States is carrying out this "superpower suicide" is "extraordinary." Snyder acknowledged that he had expected many American institutions to be more resilient than they have proven.

He also argued that those at the top of the administration operate from a fundamentally different premise. "As see these guys — they do not accept something that you and I would accept, which is that the United States of America is a meaningful entity," Snyder said of senior officials. "I just don't think that Trump and the people around him see the world that way. I think for him, the United States of America is just one more grift. It's just one more stick."

That approach, in his assessment, has proven effective for Trump both politically and financially. However much the president may wrap himself in the flag, Snyder said, "I don't think he has any notion of or any empathy for patriotism or respect for sovereignty or living inside the law."

Snyder added that he was not surprised to see Trump surround himself with like-minded people who make him feel comfortable operating that way.

The Substack conversation carries the subtitle "What the author of 'On Tyranny' told me about the next five weeks." The midterms named in its title are the November congressional elections in which all 435 House seats and roughly one-third of Senate seats are contested, with the outcome determining which party sets the agenda and leads oversight on Capitol Hill.

Source: Alternet