Professional historians have tended to underplay the role of individuals in shaping the destinies of humankind. In his 1961 book, What is History?, E.H. Carr famously mocked what he called the “Bad King John and the Good Queen Bess” school of history-writing. Now it is true that, as Karl Marx once said, individuals make history not in the circumstances of their choosing. They are constrained in their actions by the economic and social conditions prevailing, and in particular (so Marx argued) by technology and class relations. Nonetheless, on occasion individuals can play a vital and even determining role in shaping history, for good and especially for ill. There might have been no Soviet State without Lenin; there certainly would have been no Nazi State without Hitler.
In the world we now live in, individuals who shape history loom large. And none more so than Donald Trump. Admittedly, his rise to power must be understood against the background of broader economic and technological changes. Without the disenchantment of the White working class due to globalisation, and without the use of the new media forms to amplify his image and his untruths, Trump may have never become president of the United States of America. Nonetheless, once he assumed office, he has, in turn, actively reshaped the lives and fortunes of millions of individuals apart from himself. For instance, had someone else been president of the US in 2026, the war against Iran on Israel’s instigation might never have happened, sparing the countries of West Asia from death and destruction, and countries outside the region from higher oil, gas, and fertiliser prices as well.
In this column, I wish to turn attention away from the damage done to the world by Trump’s Iran war, and focus instead on the damage he has done to his own country in the year and three months since he won a second term as president. In this time, there are at least seven important ways in which Trump has weakened a country he promised to ‘make great again’.
The first of Trump’s attacks on his country has been on the process of decision-making within government. Though an American president is technically more powerful than a prime minister under the Westminster system, he is nonetheless obliged to actively consult with others. Trump, however, has preferred to act unilaterally, bypassing Congress and often even his own cabinet. The declarations of war on Venezuela and Iran were only the most visible examples of this. Consider, for instance, that in the first year of his second term as president, Trump passed as many as two-hundred-and-twenty-five executive orders. Some of these orders have destructive consequences, such as the closing of important government departments and arbitrarily changing tariff rates. Others are merely farcical, such as one "Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government", and another on "Enforcing Commonsense Rules of the Road for America’s Truck Drivers".
The second of Trump’s attacks on America has been on the notion of an impartial executive. This is especially true of his weaponisation of the Department of Justice, and his attempts to use it to harass political opponents and even upright officials who acted according to the law and their own conscience. Meanwhile, he has sent ICE agents into states run by Democrats, seeking to bully and intimidate citizens who do not agree with his policies. Vengeance and vindictiveness, rather than fairness and justice, appear to be the animating forces here.
The third of Trump’s attacks has been on the American military. Though bound by law to take orders from the president, servicemen and servicewomen are not supposed to identify with any particular party, let alone a particular politician. Trump violated this convention last year by organising a military parade in the nation’s capital to coincide with his own birthday. More recently, during the war on Iran, he allowed his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, to dismiss a highly respected army chief of staff because that officer sought to keep promotions free of gender or racial bias. In terms of technological sophistication, the American military remains the most advanced in the world, yet its institutional capabilities have surely been adversely affected by these attempts to politicise its functioning.
The fourth of Trump’s attacks has been on the independence of the press. He has intimidated some media owners (most notoriously, Jeff Bezos of The Washington Post) to have their outlets take a more favourable line towards his administration and himself. In other cases, he has actively facilitated the takeover of media outlets (for example, CBS) by billionaires known to be close to him personally and, hence, likely to suppress critical coverage of his actions.
The fifth of Trump’s attacks has been on his country’s much-admired universities. The initial provocation here were student and faculty protests against Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza, peaceful protests which provoked such savage fury in the president that he threatened to cut federal funding and have university endowments taxed. Trump wants to bring America’s finest universities in line with his politics and his prejudices, even if that means abandoning the commitment to independent intellectual enquiry that has given these universities the high reputation they have commanded. (Trump’s attacks on universities are of a piece with his attacks on science more broadly. In his first term, he consistently undermined the efforts to contain the Covid-19 pandemic of Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the time. In his second term, he has appointed as his secretary of health the paranoid anti-vaxxer, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.)
A sixth of Trump’s attacks has been on his country’s most reliable and steadfast allies. Neighbouring Canada, with which the US always had excellent relations, has found itself subject to threats of trade wars, annexation, and its prime minister being redesignated the 51st governor of the US. Trump’s mockery of Canada has now temporarily ceased, while his mockery of the other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization continues. NATO had since its inception in 1949 been a cohesive and largely friction-free alliance. However, it has in the past year come under serious strain, after Trump’s threat to annex or buy Greenland and, more recently, by his anger at European allies not joining his war on Iran. His animus has tended to assume a personal form, with gratuitously insulting remarks against, among others, the prime ministers of the United Kingdom and Spain.
Finally, one must list Trump’s wilful undermining of the presidency itself. This is manifest in the abusive language of his social media posts, and in his readiness to misuse his office to enrich his family and friends. Admittedly, some past presidents (Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon come to mind) also used foul language, albeit in private, while other presidents leveraged their position to secure lucrative speaking and book deals after demitting office. But in his crudity and his corruption, Trump has exceeded them all. He has demeaned his office far more than any other president in living memory.
This list of Trump’s attacks on his own country in his second term is illustrative, not exhaustive. Yet they should give some indication of how much damage he has personally inflicted on a land he professes to love and promised to make great again. Altogether, he has made America weaker and less respected than at any time in living memory.
Allow me to make one last point. In his first term as president, Donald Trump often acted in wayward and whimsical ways. In his second term, his actions may more accurately be characterised as dangerous and malevolent. I believe the difference is that in the interim he — and his advisers — have closely studied and sought to more directly emulate the methods of other autocrats operating in previously democratic settings — such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Recep Erdogan in Turkey, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, and, not least, Narendra Modi in India, who, before Trump, worked assiduously to intimidate the press, weaponise the justice system, politicise the military, capture the universities and so on. All these individuals have weakened their country’s capacities for democratic self-renewal, as well as diminished their nation's standing in the world. But perhaps history will judge Trump to have done the greatest damage of all, if only because, as the richest, most powerful, most scientifically advanced, and most influential land on earth, the US had so much more to lose in the first place.
ramachandraguha@yahoo.in