Anne Applebaum

create institutions with them who would voluntarily work with them, whether on defense projects or on economic projects.

They had countries that wanted to imitate and copy the American system.

They had systems of aid and cooperation in almost every country on the planet that people wanted to be part of.

That was the source of American power and influence.

We wrote the system.

The world as it was created after 1945, I mean, it went through different phases and, you know, Cold War and post-Cold War are different and so on.

But the operating system was largely one that the U.S.

designed or was at least a very large participant in.

And we were the primary beneficiaries of that system.

And that was part of why we became the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world.

And for reasons that you're right would take another podcast, full podcast to explain and debate, we have decided to give that up.

Or the Trump administration, I think in his first, Trump's first term, attempted to put it to an end, didn't really succeed.

And now really in only, you know, just over a year, have pretty much succeeded in undermining that system, maybe forever, but anyway, doing it an enormous amount of damage.

And what is the result?

We don't have allies who want to help us in Iran, not least because they don't understand why we're there and what we're doing.

We don't have people working with us to achieve the things that we want to achieve because we're not building, you know, we're not planning with others.

We're not building relationships.

international agreement to achieve our goals.

Instead, the idea is that we're going to simply impose our power on other countries using military strikes and guys who come out of the air, and that's how we're going to win.

And it's almost like a child's idea of how power works.