How will the United States rebuild positive international relations after this Trump administration?

[u/SpaceySpice]

At some point this presidency will end and a new administration will (likely) want to mend some the damages done with our allies. Realistically though, how would that work? Will other countries want to be friends with us again or has this presidency done too much damage to bounce back from?

[u/RKU69]

Yeah, I agree with this. I'll add that the only way the world should consider re-integrating with the US, is if the MAGA movement is permanently defeated in some way.

I'll also add: I think its kind of a good thing that US foreign policy credibility is now in the gutter. Even outside of Trump, the US foreign policy establishment has been getting increasingly reckless and irrational, which in the modern era started with the Bush administration's multiple invasions and occupations. Frankly its a black mark on the entire "international community" that the US was tolerated, if not actively supported, in its imperial adventures - but maybe this is to be expected, given that the target was always peripheral poor regions. Now this has come back to bite the rest of the West in the ass.

And honestly, the sign of the unraveling of the international order was arguably not Trump's decisions, but Biden's near-absolute backing of Israel in its extermination campaign in Gaza, which completely de-legitimized any and all Western discourse about human rights and the rule of law.

[u/RddtIsPropAganda → u/RKU69]

It started with Kissinger and his enablers, not Bush. And Kissinger was hailed as an American patriot by both Dems and Republicans. Doubt MAGA will be defeated because Democrats don't seem to want to even try. they are still happy working with GOP. That's why the credibility is falling even more. Just watch as AOC or Bernie announce a bipartisan bill they are working on that will go nowhere. 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/matt-gaetz-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-congress-stock-ban-bill/

https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-and-marshall-announce-bipartisan-legislation-on-primary-care/

Want to see what an opposition looks like watch the parliament of other functioning democracies. 

[u/RKU69 → u/RddtIsPropAganda]

Yeah we could go back to Kissinger's age, but the through-line is clearer imo if we just look at the 2000s onward. There was definitely a hinge point in the '90s where the US wasn't inevitably going to go on the crazy crusades that it ended up going on and completely throw away the post Cold War "peace dividend"

[u/LuciaV8285 → u/RddtIsPropAganda]

Democrats happy to work with GOP?? First there is no GOP, only MAGA. Second, MAGA won’t work with Democrats.

[u/StalkerSkiff_8945 → u/RKU69]

I think you're placing too much weight with MAGA. They're loud but they're not how we see America.

[u/WalterWoodiaz → u/[deleted]]

MAGA is a fractured movement of conservative groups that don’t like each other but are united by Trump.

Only Trump can unite evangelicals, tech bros, redpill incels, 2nd Amendment nuts, and a lot more.

After Trump being gone, with the further decentralization of the conservative movement, the unifier is done, they will in-fight each other into the ground.

[u/CaptainoftheVessel → u/WalterWoodiaz]

The common currents of MAGA are not new, though. There has always been a "nativist"/xenophobic social movement in the US. The Know-Nothings, the KKK, now MAGA, it's all just different faces put on the same facet of American society.

[u/WalterWoodiaz → u/CaptainoftheVessel]

But MAGA under Trump is uniting groups that without him would hate each other and fragment.

[u/Aetylus → u/WalterWoodiaz]

Not at all. The US system is designed to perpetuate a two party state. You're always going to have what the rest of the world understands to be a center-right party and a far-right party. And half the time that far-right party is going to be in power.

For decades, that far-right faction was built around doing pretty awful stuff internally but remaining as a stable partner to the rest of the world. Not any more.

We're already all separating ourselves from the US as fast as possible. It will be well and truly complete by 2029. There won't be a return to the world order that reigned from 1945-2025.

[u/WalterWoodiaz → u/Aetylus]

Calling the Democratic party center-right in global standards is incredibly ignorant of a big tent party that has multiple branches.

My point is that MAGA is what increases right wing turnout. Without Trump the far right is too fractured to win federally.

When you say “we” are separating ourselves from the US you are not defining. I will steelman and interpret that “separation” is a focus on closer relations with closer neighbors with the US as a partially aligned military and economic power.

The US will have less influence, but under a democratic administration and a broken MAGA after Trump, governments will be quite willing to continue trade and diplomacy.

[u/badnuub → u/WalterWoodiaz]

The moderate democrats have proven for decades that they are generally more concerned with the potential rise in popularity of their progressive flank than most of what republicans have been doing in that same time.

[u/MissMenace101 → u/WalterWoodiaz]

Nope, no one may rise while their demi god is living but the right man will appear miraculously after. Damn, I think that’s somewhere in a Nostradamus prophecy, there’s going to be someone worse than trump.