Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics

by Tim Marshall

The moral stature of the USA as the leader of the free world, and indeed the presidency, may have been damaged but that is more down to the ugly belligerence of Trump rather than the massive and sudden complete reversal of decades of policy. Trump plays with fire and risks the world burning, especially with his loose talk about not necessarily guaranteeing NATO’s policy that ‘an attack on one member state is an attack on all of them’, but how much fundamentally has changed? Yes, he’s pulled out of arms treaties with Russia regarding Europe, but he’s engaged in arms reduction talks on the nuclear issue. The ‘pivot to China’ had begun already, as had the loosening of ties with Europe. In the Middle East the USA has only ever focused when it thought its interests might be harmed – hence Obama’s casual treatment of the Syria crisis. Even the tearing up of the Iran nuclear deal is not a revolutionary change in American foreign policy but a return to their previous harder line.