“The DANGER is that he would be MORE EFFECTIVE in his second term”

… will be a referendum … on the future of America’s role in the world

… Other U.S. troops stand guard from Poland to South Korea

… some 171,000 U.S. military personnel

… across 750 bases

in at least 80 countries

… Along with being the world’s policeman

… is also the world’s chief diplomat

… spearheading efforts to address vital concerns

… public health, climate change and human rights

… Every president but one since Franklin D. Roosevelt has believed that the United States should exercise preeminent international influence for its own good and that of the world

… Trump is the lone exception

… In Trump’s first term, he did not manage to overturn more than 70 years of American global leadership, but he certainly undermined it

… He pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords

… He tried to pull all U.S. forces out of Syria

… about a third of them out of Germany

… had a few isolated successes — e.g., the Abraham Accords in the Middle East

… with North Korea … “love letters” with Kim Jong Un

… in 2020 told E.U. leaders: “NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO.”     [ Politico ]

… would almost certainly cut off U.S. aid to Ukraine

… his followers in Congress are already attempting to do, at his behest

… by telling Zelensky that Ukraine would have “to make a deal.”

… Such a deal would presumably turn over at least 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory to Russian occupation

… is far more interested in courting Putin than Zelensky

… “I was the apple of his eye,” Trump recently boasted about his Kremlin pal.

… The danger is that he would be more effective in his second term … could be the end of the Pax Americana