{"id":683937,"date":"2026-01-09T07:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T07:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/683937\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T07:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T07:02:10","slug":"friday-briefing-trump-tactics-could-leave-office-with-him-or-the-us-could-descend-into-a-rogue-state-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/683937\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday briefing: Trump tactics could leave office with him \u2013 or the US could descend into a rogue state | Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Paramilitary-style troops deployed on the streets of major <\/a>cities fatally shooting citizens<\/a>; vessels seized in international waters<\/a>; a foreign head of state captured<\/a>; cherished cultural institutions dismantled<\/a>; a judiciary installed and seemingly in thrall to the regime<\/a>; and the mooted breaching of presidential term limits<\/a>. It sounds like the background to a spy thriller about a rogue state.<\/p>\n

Yet some argue that the Trump administration in the US has done all of these things \u2013 and more \u2013 in the space of just a year in office. The question is whether these developments are merely episodic flashes of the chaos we have come to associate with Donald Trump<\/a>, or signs of a deeper, longer-term transformation in the character of American power.<\/p>\n

For today\u2019s newsletter, I spoke to Peter Trubowitz<\/strong>, professor of international relations and director of the Phelan United States Centre at the London School of Economics and associate fellow at Chatham House, to ask whether the US is genuinely descending into something that can be described as a rogue state \u2013 with failing institutions at home and a might-is-right policy abroad that threatens foes and allies alike. Before that, the news headlines.<\/p>\n

Five big stories<\/p>\n

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  1. \n

    UK politics<\/strong> | Thirty-four school contemporaries of Nigel Farage have now come forward to claim they saw him behave in a racist or antisemitic manner<\/a>, raising fresh questions over the Reform leader\u2019s evolving denials.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  2. \n

    Minneapolis<\/strong> | The FBI has taken full control of the investigation<\/a> into the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency officer in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  3. \n

    Health<\/strong> | Scientists say they have \u201crejuvenated\u201d human eggs for the first time<\/a> in an advance that they predict could revolutionise IVF success rates for older women.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  4. \n

    Venezuela<\/strong> | The US is receiving full cooperation from Venezuela\u2019s regime and will control the country and its vast oil reserves<\/a> for years, Donald Trump has claimed.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  5. \n

    Greenland<\/strong> | Peter Mandelson has accused European leaders including Keir Starmer of a \u201chistrionic\u201d reaction to Donald Trump\u2019s plan to take over Greenland<\/a>, arguing that without \u201chard power and hard cash\u201d they will continue to slide into unimportance in the \u201cage of Trump\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In depth: \u2018Trump\u2019s not bothering to justify his actions legally \u2013 for him, this is about power\u2019Protesters marching in Caracas, Venezuela, on Wednesday, after the US captured and deposed Venezuelan president Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores. Photograph: Javier Campos\/NurPhoto\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

    Taking the Trump administration\u2019s decisions together, the issue many commentators are now grappling with is not simply whether individual actions by the US are controversial \u2013 or even legal \u2013 but whether they point to a broader erosion of democratic norms. Does the country\u2019s domestic and international posture now look less like that of a \u201crespectable western democracy\u201d, and more like something that would be labelled rogue or dysfunctional were it not a nuclear-armed superpower with unparalleled global influence?<\/p>\n

    Is this a permanent shift<\/strong>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Peter Trubowitz is cautious about declaring that a settled doctrine is already in place. \u201cI don\u2019t think there is one clear, overarching grand strategy informing the administration\u2019s foreign policy,\u201d he tells me, describing competing agendas jostling for control within Trump\u2019s orbit.<\/p>\n

    One strand, he says, is a renewed focus on asserting US dominance in the western hemisphere \u2013 something that helps explain the dramatic intervention in Venezuela. But it sits alongside other, sometimes contradictory, impulses: Wall Street figures seeking to reshape the global order through tariffs and the dollar, and powerful tech interests pushing for a world of weakened states and open borders for capital. That is leaving US policy volatile rather than coherent.<\/p>\n

    Trump himself, Trubowitz argues, has yet to commit fully to any one of these paths. \u201cI don\u2019t think he\u2019s planted his flag permanently in one camp or the other,\u201d he says, adding that for now the administration\u2019s emphasis appears firmly regional. Whether that hardens into a coherent worldview remains, in his words, \u201cTBD\u201d.<\/p>\n

    The timing of the Venezuela operation also mattered. It came at a politically convenient moment for Trump, pushing coverage of the Epstein files off the front pages \u2013 even if just 1% of those documents<\/a> have been released so far. Domestically, the administration has also faced accusations of \u201cvindictive\u201d and \u201ccruel\u201d decision-making<\/a> after moves to halt more than $10bn in childcare and family assistance funding.<\/p>\n

    Saying the quiet part out loud<\/strong><\/p>\n

    In an opinion piece for us earlier this week, Jan-Werner M\u00fcller argued that the Trump doctrine had exposed the US as a mafia state<\/a>. And for those old enough to remember decades of American military and economic interventions, there is an obvious counter-argument: hasn\u2019t Washington always thrown its weight around \u2013 just with nicer rhetoric?<\/p>\n

    Trubowitz largely agrees with that premise, with one important caveat. What marks this moment out is not simply what the administration is doing, but how nakedly it is doing it.<\/p>\n

    \u201cTrump\u2019s not even bothering to try to justify them legally,\u201d he says. \u201cFor him, this is about power.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Where previous administrations wrapped interventions in the language of democracy or security \u2013 the Bush administration\u2019s case for Iraq, as cynical as it might have been, being the clearest example \u2013 Trump is far more explicit. \u201cHe knows America has the power and the leverage to get Venezuela\u2019s resources, full stop,\u201d Trubowitz says. \u201cThat\u2019s what Trumpism is about.\u201d<\/p>\n

    That bluntness, he argues, is shocking not because it is unprecedented, but because it strips away the diplomatic fictions that once allowed allies to look the other way.<\/p>\n

    A post-Trump future<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Trump will not be in power for ever \u2013 even if term limits were abolished, one assumes that nature will eventually take its course \u2013 but Trubowitz warns against assuming that US institutions will simply \u201csnap back\u201d once he is gone. Some of the damage, he argues, is likely to be permanent.<\/p>\n

    The gutting of USAID is one example he cites of an institution that may not recover, even if Democrats regain control of Congress or the White House in future elections and increase spending on foreign aid. More broadly, he sees Trump pursuing at home what he practises abroad: the leveraging of power to reshape the system in his favour.<\/p>\n

    (It is, incidentally, well worth having a dig into Charlotte Higgins\u2019s Long read from yesterday, where she looked at Trump\u2019s assault on the Smithsonian<\/a> as part of his aim to kill off so-called \u201cwoke\u201d by tackling art institutions.)<\/p>\n

    \u201cWhat Trump is really pursuing is the idea of the unitary executive,\u201d Trubowitz says \u2013 the belief that the president should enjoy unconstrained authority over domestic and foreign policy alike. The idea itself is not new, having been explored during the Reagan era, but the political conditions now are radically different.<\/p>\n

    The US is far more polarised, making it easier for a president to force party discipline and neutralise internal dissent. Trump, Trubowitz argues, is both a product of that polarisation and an accelerant of it.<\/p>\n

    The consequences extend well beyond the state. Universities, cultural institutions and the corporate US have all shown a willingness to bend the knee, he says \u2013 while much of big tech has embraced an agenda of deregulation and a weaker central state. In that context, the spectacle of even prominent Republicans such as Marjorie Taylor Greene briefly standing up to Trump \u2013 and then retreating \u2013 has only underlined how narrow the space for resistance has become.<\/p>\n

    How <\/strong>could the world deal with a rogue US state?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    I wrote a First Edition featuring our diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour<\/a> earlier this week, discussing why European leaders are so reluctant to go on record with criticism of Trump\u2019s actions \u2013 essentially for fear it will jeopardise US support over Ukraine.<\/p>\n

    That caution looks increasingly understandable. US participation in international institutions is no longer a given. In a presidential memorandum issued this week, Trump withdrew<\/a> from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, along with 65 other organisations, agencies and commissions, calling them \u201ccontrary to the interests\u201d of his country \u2013 a move that cements Washington\u2019s isolation from global efforts to tackle accelerating climate breakdown.<\/p>\n

    Trubowitz, who was at the University of Texas in Austin before joining the LSE in 2013, tells me he has always taught international and domestic policy because to him the two are closely intertwined: \u201cDonald Trump has made that much clearer than previous presidents.\u201d<\/p>\n

    The rest of the world, he suggests, may now have to reckon with a US whose behaviour abroad increasingly mirrors the political logic reshaping it at home.<\/p>\n

    What else we\u2019ve been readingA garden in Gaza \u2026 Illustration: Narmeen Hamadeh\/The Guardian<\/p>\n