The live brawl between Donald Trump, flanked by his loyal follower J.D. Vance, and Volodymyr Zelensky speaks for itself. What is most striking here it is not the American president’s coarse and extortionist behaviour, nor the extent of his vindictive fury, but rather the fact that no one within the United States seems capable of curbing it – of containing that wrath and channelling it back into the once-solid institutional framework of what is still the world’s leading economic, military, and political power.

This is the most unsettling aspect in the literal sense of the word: it unsettles not only the international balance (never has the word “balance” felt so meaningless) but also the internal stability of the United States. One almost wonders whether this reckless, defiant, and rudderless course will succeed in destroying the United States before it does the rest of the world – knowing full well that America’s self-destruction would inevitably drag the rest of the world down with it.

On the international stage, Trump and his willing executioners are creating the conditions for the very scenarios the United States has spent the past eighty years trying to prevent. Among other things, they are pushing Europeans to unite – and to arm themselves – against a common threat that is increasingly, and unmistakably, not Russia but America itself. We will see what comes out of Sunday’s summit in London. If the outcome were to push the United Kingdom into the arms of the European Union, it would be yet another of Mr. Trump’s masterpieces – one that would discard decades of meticulous operations, including military ones, carefully put in place to drive a wedge between London and the Continent.

In recent days, someone must have given the president a brief history lesson on the European Union. And, as an artful communication master, he distilled it down to a crude summary: the EU was created to screw the United States. Things are, of course, a bit more complex – but in a way, there is some truth to it. After all, Charles de Gaulle’s original vision did include that idea – not so much out of hostility toward America (though in de Gaulle’s case, that was undeniable), but rather to position a Paris-led Europe as an alternative to the bipolar world order dominated by Washington and Moscow. In short, the third pole.

Let’s set aside the unrealistic nature of de Gaulle’s vision while also drawing two simple conclusions from it. First, by striking at and sinking the Atlanticism of the most Atlanticist player in the European project – Germany – de Gaulle’s idea now seems less far-fetched. Second, in politics – especially in international politics – every actor’s goal is to screw their competitors. The stronger one is, the better they can do it; which means that, for the past eighty years, the United States has been the screwer-in-chief of global politics. There’s nothing scandalous about it – that’s simply how politics works.But Trump, of course, neither understands politics nor has any interest in doing so.

On the Asian front, America’s sudden swerve can only unsettle Japan and South Korea, but also Vietnam, the Philippines, and likely Indonesia and Australia. And it certainly raises serious concerns in China, where the bromance between Trump and Putin is primarily seen as a manoeuvre to isolate Beijing. Tokyo and Seoul are increasingly considering the possibility of developing their own nuclear deterrent. At the same time, the idea of a Pacific – or even Euro-Pacific – front, including China, to shield against Washington’s unpredictable recklessness no longer seems so unrealistic.

Another consequence, that should concern more than a few in the United States, is that forcing Ukraine into unconditional surrender or deporting millions of Palestinians from their homeland is the shortest path to driving hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals toward terrorism. Terrorism, as we know, is the weapon of the defeated and the desperate: it always deepens their defeat and despair, but in the meantime, it leaves a trail of blood that fuels cycles of escalating vengeance – spilling much more blood in the process. This is something to prepare for. Instead, Donald Trump and his allies are actively working to dismantle the very security apparatus that, since 2001, has prevented further terrorist attacks on American soil.

The department tasked with purging disloyal civil servants is hollowing out the administrative machinery – the gears that keep the clock running – and replacing experienced and competent officials with, at best, inexperienced young recruits and, at worst, inexperienced racist ones. Meanwhile, the crackdown on immigration is draining the country’s coffers (it is costly, very costly) and leaving American jobs vacant. The fertility rates of those who remain will never be enough to fill the gaps being created, meaning that the productive engine of the world’s leading economy risks being doubly compromised – both by a labour shortage and by the breakdown of the administrative apparatus that is supposed to steer it.

Trump has explicitly invited foreign economic players to invest directly in America, taking advantage of tax cuts and thus bypassing tariffs. In itself, this could be a clever strategy; however, the turbulence created by the new administration discourages any such initiative. To play on the paradox, one might say that, today, the average investor perceives the political climate in Damascus as more stable than that of Washington.

Last but certainly not least: the trade war will claim more victims than the wars in Gaza, Ukraine, and terrorism combined. If, on top of all the incendiary fuel the Washington administration is spreading, the spark of a global economic crisis triggered by tariffs were to fall, the resulting conflagration would be terrifying.

History books are often forced to simplify. World War II is frequently described as Hitler’s war. For some time now, Trump has increasingly brought up the spectre of World War III in discussions. The causes of wars are far more complex than they appear when reduced to a single individual – when attributed to recklessness, sleepwalking, or even the madness of this or that leader. But if Trump wants to go down in history – and he certainly will – then World War III will be Trump’s war, if war comes and if there is still someone left to write history books.

Manlio Graziano, PhD, teaches Geopolitics and Geopolitics of Religions at Sciences Po Paris, at la Sorbonne, and at the Geneva Institute of Geopolitics. He collaborates with the Corriere della Sera and with the geopolitical journals Limes and Gnosis. He founded and directs the Nicholas Spykman International Center for Geopolitical Analysis. He published several books in the US, with Stanford UP, Columbia UP and Palgrave. His latest book is Disordine mondiale: Perché viviamo in un'epoca di crescente caos.

Article first appeared at https://www.spykmancenter.org/trumps-war