America needs to be humbled- and that scares me

For background I study defense and geopolitics and report on it for a very large audience. I made a post a while ago that the mods didn't like so much, in hindsight I suppose they were technically right for banning it though it was obvious hyperbole. The post was titled something like "they should bring the lions back", and about how Christianity's biggest problem was that it was too successful. There's no need to be nice to your neighbor, because Christianity is in charge. Meanwhile back in the day, Christians had to be nice to their neighbors due to persecution.

That was when Christianity was best imo, when it was the underdog and had to be kind, understanding, and loving- things you absolutely cannot say about the conservative representation of Christianity to non-conservatives.

America is much the same way. Since Trump's re-election I've seen foreign policy swing 180 degrees towards transactionalism- we're no longer interested in values, only in value. What do we get out of every single thing that we do is the order of the day, this largely because like any dictator Trump is a megalomaniac who needs to tout personal successes to his cult of personality.

Americans have fallen under the illusion that they're so strong they don't need the allies we've had for decades- when any defense analyst outside of the Heritage Foundation will quickly tell you how extremely wrong this is. Our chief adversary, China, has closed the capability gap enough that the US cannot prosecute a war against China without our regional allies.

But for the first time since before the first world war, the US is intimidating and bullying allies, courting dictators, and even giving dictators like Putin cover against the best interests of the free world- the American president said live for the entire world to hear that Ukraine started this war.

Americans think we're so strong, we don't need anyone.

There's truth of course to things such as Europe not picking up the slack with its own defense (yet what no American politician will tell you is that we purposefully backed European politicians who didn't want sovereign defense capabilities in order to keep America as guarantor of European security and thus the most important political entity in the world). Yet all the chest pounding, transactionalism, bullying- it reminds me of the many times Israel fell due to their own pride.

To drive the point home of how much we've changed in just a month and a half- yesterday at the end of an Austrian military academy's presentation on the Ukraine war and possible endgames, the lecturer ended by asking the European audience members to consider where Europe fit in a world with three transactional powers that had territorial ambitions: Russia, China, and America. The question then shifted to how Europe could protect itself in the coming future.

Protect itself from Russia, China... and America.

Bonus: Unrelated but for anyone still reading, if you want a defense analyst's view on DOGE and government savings- ask any supporter of DOGE and Trump's cruel firings why, if the interest is in saving money, did Trump issue an executive order on an "iron dome" missile shield for America? An all-domain missile shield that even the original analysts from SDI back in the 80s said is impossible, too expensive, and destablizing to global security (due to neutralizing nuclear detente). But also ask who stands to financially gain from this- a program that will require hundreds of space launches to install a space-based network of defenses.

Maybe the guy with the largest commercial launch company in the world? Who is also running DOGE? And who just slashed the regulators who oversee his commercial operations?