Trump said that he brought peace to the world and asked for the Nobel Peace Prize; he also said that he was on track to complete all military goals, and the current goal is to destroy Iran.
Trump is a performer. In today's all-media era, an actor-president fully performs himself in the media, and at the same time forcefully represents the country of the United States without negotiation, causing the outside world's impression of the current United States to be extremely confusing. It is easy to point out all the mistakes and absurdities in an America that has been so deeply individualized, and to laugh at and criticize it. However, this does not solve the problem.
The United States has been a normal country for most of its 250-year history. 100 years ago, it represented progress and the future; 80 years ago, it represented a new world order; 30 years ago, it represented de facto unipolarity; it has played different positive roles in different historical periods. From the standpoint of all mankind, this basic fact must be acknowledged.
Looking deeper, the biggest problem of the young and energetic United States is that it is not good at introspection and does not understand history. The Chinese say, "Use copper as a mirror to correct your clothes; use ancient times as a mirror to know the ups and downs; use people as a mirror to understand gains and losses." The United States, which has only a quarter of a thousand years of history, and its successive presidents, cannot do it, and they don't understand why they have to do it.
On March 28, local time, "No King" protests broke out in Washington and other places in the United States.
Not good at introspection and ignorant of history, the United States often does not know who it is or what it is doing. For example, in the United States now under Trump's administration, all kinds of nonsense and misbehavior have turned the world upside down, and the United States itself has lost its direction.
The most popular criticism of the United States is that it is driven by hegemonism. Even if it objectively created the "Pan-American Peace", it subjectively intends to pursue unipolar hegemony. No matter what Trump's United States wants to do, in the final analysis, it still pursues some kind of hegemony, so it must oppose it. This kind of criticism is also simplistic and ignores the complexity of world politics.
What is the United States doing today? What is the relationship between Trump’s MAGA movement and the United States in history? Answers need to be sought from a larger historical perspective.
Imperial system and international system
A basic fact of human history is that most civilizations are the history of the rise and fall of empires, rather than the history of the coexistence of nations. Generally speaking, when the empire flourishes, the autonomous regions within the territory will maintain unified order under the central power, and there will be general peace and prosperity; but once the central power weakens, order will be difficult to maintain. Historical laws show that at this time there are usually uprisings or large-scale civil wars in border areas, and the old empire gradually collapses due to internal and external difficulties, poverty and weakness. The next new empire will be reborn in the long-term melee between states.
For ordinary people, no matter how central power is established or how the empire expands, orderly peace and prosperity are always good, and disorderly war and chaos, when the people are in dire straits, are always bad. In Chinese cultural tradition, the former is called the "Peaceful Age", the latter is called the "Troubled Age", and the transitional period from the latter to the former is called the "Peaceful Age". Traditional Chinese people believe that history is nothing more than the repeated reincarnation of these three "eras". The best hope is that the new "peaceful era" will be more lasting, more prosperous, and broader. The recently popular TV series "The Peaceful Years" tells a typical episode of reincarnation that occurred during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period between the two "peaceful ages" of the Tang and Song Dynasties. There are many similar episodes in Chinese history.
But the history of Europe is completely different. Since the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, the last "peaceful age" in this region has ended. Since then, there have been endless "turbulent times" and occasional "peaceful times", but it has never been able to create a more lasting, more prosperous and broader "peaceful age". It is this special history that finally forced out a new type of order from countless wars in Europe, in which countries that are independent in their own affairs maintain a situation of no war and no peace through the balance of power between them.
Since there is no major war for the time being, this situation is better than the "Troubled Times". Moreover, since it is not unified under the central power, the state of separate countries standing side by side has led to constant conflicts, and there is no prospect of a "peaceful era". In modern terminology, this particular situation is called the "international system," as opposed to the more general "imperial system."
The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 was the first realization of this "international system" in Europe. After the brutal and bloody "Thirty Years' War", Europe's "Thirty Years' War" came to the brink of mutual destruction, with a quarter of the total population lost. With the "halcyon" out of reach, the "international system" was established as a temporary armistice. Numerous independent political systems have explored a set of international rules to control themselves and mitigate conflicts by signing peace treaties. No one among them is strong enough to defeat all other opponents, thus forming a "balance of power."
In essence, this is not an invention, but a compromise with reality by all parties as a last resort. It is based on a system of independent states that do not interfere in each other's internal affairs and curb their ambitions through a general balance of power. In that world at that time, this "international system" was just a temporary arrangement made internally by European countries that were trapped in the quagmire of "the colonial times" and were unable to extricate themselves. In other parts of the world, the "imperial system" continues to operate on its own track, unaffected at all.
