I think people put too much emphasis on the US’ role in the West. I agree that we’ll likely end up with a multipolar world and that political instability in the US isn’t going to have a happy ending. However, while people think this multipolar world will be the US and China, I think we’ll see the West divide into 2 as well.

The EU, UK, and Canada are already getting much closer together and straying away from the US, and together they’re much stronger and wealthier than America. It’ll be interesting to see which way Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore goes though. China to us, is like Russia to Europe. They’re an existential threat to Taiwan and haven’t been shy about their ambitions there, their proxy in North Korea is also an existential threat to South Korea which they haven’t been shy about either. Japan doesn’t want to be alone against China there and fears being turned into a proxy if this happens. Singapore’s economy is largely based on us, so it’s a threat to them too, but they’ll have an easier time pivoting if they have to. Australia also doesn’t want to be alone, and China has been economically aggressive to us. New Zealand to Australia is like Scotland to England without the formal union, and they’ll likely base their decision on Australia. America has proven an unreliable ally to all of us and a bad friend, plus we also have very close ties to the rest of the West as well. However, I can see a world where we stick with America since you can always rely on them to be hard on China, which you can’t say for Europe and Canada where they aren’t a threat. So it’ll be interesting to see which way we go, and I suspect we’ll all go in the same direction together. For the Gulf States, I would’ve said the same (with Iran being the threat to them), but depending on how this war turns out, I can see them being a highly influential middle man instead. So I also expect a split between liberal Western nations and America. Together, the rest of the West is more powerful than America though, and will serve as a 3rd pole against China and America. How this multipolar world will look is another matter though, I don’t expect there to be any hot wars or cold wars between the West and America, but I do expect some tension and a lot of economic warfare. This seems to be the way things are heading now though, and there’s a lot that can change the path we go down.

The one good thing I’ll say about Trump though, is that he seemingly ended the rise in popularity for far-right parties elsewhere in the West. He didn’t kill their popularity, but they don’t seem to be gaining traction anymore.