As was mentioned in previous columns here, international developments are tumbling along in such a syncopated way that it is difficult to see the underlying trend. Trump has effectively eliminated Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran as functioning Russo-Chinese allies, has prepared conditions to make Ukraine an unaffordable war for Russia, has put great strain on China’s oil supply, and has ended the post-Cold War NATO hibernation of the free-riding “alliance of the willing.” He has effectively ended American oil imports, substantially reduced the trade deficit, nearly stopped the free flow of migrants with no particular attachment to the United States flooding into it (including large numbers of violent criminals), and drastically reduced violent crime rates and the flow of lethal narcotic into the country. He has also cranked up economic growth, deregulated, lowered taxes, ended the nonsensical green obsession, and broken the stranglehold of the teachers’ unions which had transformed American schools into disorderly daycare centres and most of higher education into an unemployment deferment program in which lazy tenured and often subversive faculty qualified America’s youth to do things that could not possibly earn them a living in adult life. (How many professors of gender studies does America need?) He has also sharpened up American armed forces and the extraordinary precision and efficiency with which they’ve carried out their missions in his second term, including the substantial deconstruction of Iran without widespread civilian or significant American casualties and the clockwork deployment of very large number of people and aircraft to rescue a downed pilot in Iran, are a stark contrast with the Russian and Chinese equipment that Iran has used to try to defend itself. It is also an amazing contrast with the four years of floundering and heavy casualties of Russia in its failed aggression in Ukraine.