Will your former friends and allies ever trust you again?

I am writing this post with the hope that at least some of its readers will be American. Or to be honest, I hope anyone will read it, but if I manage to reach a few Americans it would be a very nice bonus. If you are American and have at least a rudimentary understanding of your own country as well as the world it exists in, you might know that you don't have that many allies or friends left by now. So much damage have been done by the Trump administration in less than a year and a half.

I'm going to start with the most important message I have:

When democracy is being taken for granted, it's on its way to its demise.

But let's sum up the first part of Trump's second term. During these 17 months, he have threatened to invade Greenland and Canada, countries/territories that are his allies. He's started trade wars with his own allies. He betrayed Ukraine. He's constantly trying to undermine NATO. He started a war with Iran. He sent his vice president to support the authoritarian leader of Hungary during their elections. Overall, he has put the whole world in a perilous situation.

He even had the audacity to demand that other NATO countries joined him in his war on Iran, treating us like vassals that he can order around!

And I haven't even touched on his domestic policies. Not that I need to. We all know what's happening, with rampant corruption and nepotism, political opponents being targeted by the government, inept mooks being put in charge of government agencies, and so on.

I've seen many Americans ask the question "how do we repair our relationships with our former friends and allies when Trump is gone?" A relevant question. But they don't understand the real problem.

The problem is that it's not about Trump. It's about the U.S. as a whole!

Yes, you read that correctly. Even though the "Trump era" will be remembered as a time of shame - if you manage to save your democracy - it's not about Trump. He's only a symptom. One of many.

The real problem is on a cultural level. It lies in the mindset. Trump didn't cheat his way into office. He lost one election, but won two. Fair and square. By the book. No rules broken. And that's what makes many on this side of the pond distrustful of the U.S. - Because without fundamental changes to the U.S. it is only a matter of time before you end up with a new "strongman" like Trump.

A few years ago the EU started focusing on the scenario where the U.S. would turn into a full-fledged dictatorship, and it's not hypothetical. We see it as very likely within a few years.

This is far more real to the people in Europe than the U.S. Even though the U.S. have always been close to the border between a hybrid regime and flawed democracy, it has been a democracy for long. Perhaps too long. So long that few Americans understand that is has to be protected and cared for.
People on this side of the pond saw the Iron Curtain fall three decades ago, allowing Eastern Europe to finally join the exclusive club of Western democracies. Four or five decades earlier Western Europe was liberated by among others you, the UK and Canada, augmented by forces from occupied countries that had managed to keep on fighting.

These were the people known as the greatest generation. And there are still people alive here that saw the horrors of WWII up close, although most of them were children back then. That teaches you see the value of freedom and democracy. Unfortunately, only those who served in the U.S. military share the experience, since the U.S. haven't seen war on its own soil since the American Civil War, 160 years ago. (And no, Pearl Harbour doesn't really count, it was an attack on a military target.)

But I shouldn't digress. The point here is that this ignorance about the true value of freedom and democracy is what have paved the way for the worst generation. Trump and his cronies.

This is in part due to so few Americans understanding that what's normal to them is by no way normal - or even acceptable - in a true democracy. I'll go through some of the issues with the American system and society, and why they make it impossible to trust the country in the long run.

• Gerrymandering? No, that is not normal. In a true democracy you use voting districts only to make counting the votes easier. It doesn't change the "value" of a vote. Most democracies have districts, even though we use different names for them. And they affect the elections in different ways in different countries. But only in a flawed democracy or hybrid regime will the size or "shape" of a district affect the outcome of an election because it changes the impact of the votes. This is voter suppression, nothing else.
  
  
• Electoral College? No. Hell no! No other democracy that other democracies consider a true democracy would allow an institution that can overrule the popular vote. Unfortunately, we have turned a blind eye to the situation in the U.S. where you can win a presidential election with only 25% of the popular vote.
  
  
• Voter registration? Absolutely not. Voter registration is along with gerrymandering a form of voter suppression. In a true democracy every citizen gets to vote when they reach the legal age for voting or become citizens (and are of legal age, of course). They don't need to "register". And they don't lose their right to vote unless they cease to be citizens of the country (i.e. upon transferring citizenship or dying). Yes, even criminals gets to vote, so that society won't rig elections by framing people for different crimes.

These three problems put together are what I see as the greatest threat to democracy in the U.S. But there are other issues as well, that amplifies the "big three". I'll go through a few of them.

• Litigious culture. This is mostly about the U.S. having a flawed judicial system, allowing for frivolous lawsuits and other forms of lawfare. The core of this problem is the so called "American rule", which regulates attorneys fees. In general, each side in a legal process pays for their own expenses, as opposed to the so called "English rule", stating that the loser pays for all. About every recognised democracy use the English rule.
  
  But why is this a threat to democracy? It's quite simple, actually. It benefits the rich. You can essentially sue your opponents into submission if you have money. You want land owned by your poor neighbour while they don't want to sell? Just sue. Even if you lose the legal process, your neighbour would go bankrupt from the legal expenses, and be forced to sell. You want to silence a critic or opponent? If you're rich and they're not, just sue and drive them into bankruptcy unless they agrees to shut up.
  
  That's how the American system works. In other democracies this lawfare wouldn't work since losing the opponents mentioned above wouldn't have to pay a dime for their defence. You'd pay both for your own and for their legal expenses.
  
  
• A flawed educational system. Well, perhaps this isn't a nation-wide issue, but the fact that many Americans know so little about the world is a problem. Un- or undereducated people tend to be easy to manipulate, and authoritarians love the poorly educated. This goes with the notion that schools teach "opinions", and with the point above, schools can be sued into submission in certain states. Often in states that tend to vote red, for some reason.
  
  
• Complacency. This is perhaps the greatest threat of the minor ones, and it's the "we're a democracy that has stood for 250 years and will remain a democracy until the end of days" mindset that will probably end democracy once and for all in the U.S.
  
  Let's be frank here. The American voters have voted an authoritarian into office twice the last twelve years. And very few Americans seem to understand the dynamics of democracy. That it can always be voted out, but it can never be voted back in. Because once you let go of it you don't get to vote in elections that matter again.
  
  This is what makes me utterly incapable of trusting the U.S. in the long run - The fact that so many Democratic voters didn't vote in 2024 because they had issues with Harris, and thought that their democracy would survive another term with Trump in office. Because of "checks and balances" and all that. "And there will always be midterm elections" some say. Or perhaps not? When Trump was elected the second time, my first thought was that the American voters had failed for their last time, because they just threw away their last chance to vote in an election that mattered, and that the Trump admin would find a way to rig every future election.
  I hope I will be proven wrong this year. 

I could go on forever about this, but I'll leave it at this. I'd put it as that the problem isn't these issues by themselves, but rather that most Americans are just fine with this, without understanding that they don't live in a true democracy. If more Americans realised how serious this is, there would be hope for the democracy in the U.S. in the long run.

Anyway, this is a sentiment shared by many other. We don't trust the U.S. because we don't trust the American people. It's not that we don't trust Trump. There are many like him, but only the U.S. has a system and a population that works to enable him.

And this leads us back to the first question. Will your former friends and allies ever trust you again? No, not unless there are fundamental changes to the U.S. bringing it into the 21st century. Oh, and you need to get rid of that old constitution. 237 years ago we (Sweden) had a constitution too. And 500 years ago. I think the oldest of ours was written during the 12th century. Those were not the same, nor were any of them the same as our current one.

You see, a constitution must reflect a contemporary world, and that's why we have revised or replaced ours many times throughout history. Like every other country. Except the U.S.