Award-winning journalist Alan Friedman has plenty to say about why America’s global influence is fading – and how Trump’s return to the White House could accelerate it. In this behind-the-scenes chat about his new book The End of America, Friedman explores the US’s failed foreign policy, some historical parallels to the 1930s and what the future holds for a world in turmoil.
With Donald Trump back in the White House, how do you see his early leadership choices reflecting the theme of declining American influence?
Donald Trump is a threat to US national security. He is deeply tied to dictators, oligarchs and various despots through his business dealings. He is a deeply conflicted individual. The choice of a pro-Putin propagandist as Director of National Intelligence is troubling. The naming of an alleged alcoholic former Fox News journalist who is accused of sexual assault to head the Pentagon is worrying. The talk about invading Greenland, Canada and Panama is madness. Trump’s time in power will ultimately accelerate the decline of America because he agrees with Putin that the liberal world order is obsolete and should be dismantled.
What motivated you to write The End of America? And how does the book speak to the global shifts we’re witnessing today?
I was motivated to write this book because I firmly believe that our world today has much in common with the 1930s and because America’s slow-motion failure as a great power makes the world a more dangerous place. I also wanted to write the ‘counter-history’ of the rise and fall of American imperialism from the 1800s through to the twenty-first century.
What key historical moments connect to the unravelling of America’s global dominance and why?
This book is about the failure of US foreign policy since 1945. It is especially focused on the period over the last few decades. Successive US administrations squandered the post-Cold War period between 1989 and 2001. The 9/11 attacks and the disastrous wars of George W. Bush represented imperial overreach. Obama’s bungled and erratic responses to the Arab Spring and to Syria showed American weakness. Trump’s first term was all about dismantling the multilateral world. Biden will be remembered for the Kabul debacle. The failure of American foreign policy is the failure of successive presidencies since the 1990s.
Can the US reclaim its role as a global leader or has the shift to a ‘New World Disorder’, as you term it, become irreversible?
The return of Trump guarantees that the post-1945 liberal world order will give way to more illiberal democracies in the Viktor Orbán style and to the rise of more neo-fascism in European politics. Trump will embolden and legitimise bad actors everywhere. ‘Might makes right’ and ‘the law of the jungle’ – these will be the mantras of the New World Disorder, in which the world will be neither bipolar (US–China) nor multipolar but in a transformative state of uncertainty, a shifting period of increased conflict and power politics with echoes of the 1930s.
If you could have lunch with three people mentioned in the book (dead or alive), who would they be and why?
Well, I have already met Trump, Putin, Berlusconi, Erdogan, Carter and a few others mentioned in the book. But I would love to have lunch with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to see how stylish he really was, and with his cousin Teddy Roosevelt, to see how crude he really was. Perhaps also with Xi Jinping, because he appears to me to be the world’s most cynical dictator. I would be curious to see if my perception is accurate.
The End of America? A Guide to the New World Disorder is out now.
Catch up with some of our other authors here:
- Ian Acheson: 9 fixes for Britain’s failing prison system
- David Lee unveils the complex story of SS officer Konrad Morgen
- David Laws on a century of Liberal–Labour relations
For more book ideas, try:
- 2025 political must-reads
- Alan Friedman’s other publications