For most of the postwar period, American power rested on a paradox: the United States was strongest when it did not need to prove it. Credibility was built through restraint, predictability, and the slow accumulation of trust among allies who believed that, however imperfectly, Washington understood the difference between leverage and legitimacy. Force mattered, but reliability mattered more. The world learned to take American commitments seriously, not because they were loud, but because they were boring in their consistency.

That architecture is now being dismantled in public.

~ Dunneagin

Civics Unhinged: Dispatches from Trumpistan

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