A fairytale is not reality

Since Trump returned to the White House, he and his enablers have created a fairytale 'jam tomorrow' narrative. A story in which the answer to 'Are we great again yet?' is always two weeks away.

Illustration - Peter Terrin (Peter Terrin Art)

For almost a century, the US has been projecting power across the globe to protect its interests. American exceptionalism is nothing new; its diplomats and foreign policy experts carved out America’s place in the world, leaving it sitting at the head of the table dictating the direction of travel. This has gone largely unchallenged because allies didn’t feel threatened by the world order it created.

After the Second World War, the US spotted the opportunity to take that leading role through soft power and the odd firm hand to set the agenda to become an empire in everything but name. It quietly established the dollar as the global reserve currency and, from there, firmly established itself as the world's leading economy. It used its manufacturing dominance to accumulate extraordinary wealth from the reconstruction of European nations ravaged by the Nazis to establish global dominance.

The US has around 750 overseas bases across the globe, focused in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. This force projection allows the US military the ability to quickly respond to a threat from anywhere in the world by having prepositioned assets where the US wants to make a statement of intent. This has been an accepted arrangement with US allies because it’s mutually convenient for ALL parties. It’s able to project power, and allies have used that force projection as a military shield to protect their own interests. This close relationship has led to close integration of assets and interoperability across allied militaries. It has fueled the profits of the US Military Industrial Complex and has led to the sharing of intelligence to protect all parties.

There’s no question that European allies have used the US defence budget as an excuse not to invest their fair share in defence. They did this on the assumption that the alliance gave them a free pass, leaving them to invest in other priorities. I agree with Trump on NOTHING, but on his demands that Europe step up to pay their fair share for the defence of Europe, he was absolutely right. Other presidents before him had complained that NATO allies should do more, but never followed through. When Trump came along, that changed, and he was right to insist that allies invest in their own security.

By the end of 2025, ALL NATO partners had met their 2% of GDP commitment, while members like Poland, Turkey, Sweden and Norway, to name but four, are now spending above, and in the case of Poland, well above the original target. All NATO members are now committed to 3%, rising to 5% by 2035, with the exception of Spain, which has been given an exemption. Despite all this, Trump still imposes tariffs at will and threatens to withdraw from NATO at every opportunity he has to apply economic leverage. The question you have to ask is whether this was all just pressure applied to gain leverage. I suspect that in reality he has no intention of honouring Article 5 should it be invoked. It is, of course, worthy of note that the only time it has been invoked was after 9/11, which led to an argument for war predicated on lies leading to the loss of thousands of allied troops who came to the aid of the US.

If you want to understand Trump’s gratitude for that, you need look no further than his disgusting lie that coalition troops did not fight on the front lines in Afghanistan and Iraq and made little contribution. Tell that to the families of the fallen whose graves a draft dodger spat on with his sickening statement. Trump shares no sense of loyalty to ANYONE, as evidenced by the number of people who have gone to jail to protect him from accountability.

The thing about bullies is that they are tolerated until they are not, and when they fall, everyone throws a log on their funeral pyre and raises a glass in celebration. He may think the world is hanging on his every word, but in reality, the world is rewiring itself to remove dependence on the US. From trade to military procurement, allies now recognise that the US can no longer be relied upon or trusted. In that situation, there is no alternative but to derisk. The same will apply to frontier AI models and US tech. The EU is already taking significant steps to decouple from reliance on US tech. Trump proved by withholding access to Anthropic’s Mythos that letting the US hold the kill switch is untenable.

The thing about rewiring is that it's like evolution; it happens without fanfare, quietly in the background. The only time it becomes evident is when there’s no turning back. This myth that the US has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to protect Europe is frankly ludicrous. US defence spending is for US defence; the fact that Europe benefits from it is simply value-added leverage resulting from its ability to project force across the world. It is a mutually beneficial investment that sees host nations not charge rent on the facilities holding vast US assets.

If the US withdraws from NATO, just as they did from Afghanistan and Iraq, the American people will never see any savings passed to them; they’ll just see, as they do now, an ever-expanding bill with no receipts or breakdowns of the spending. The Pentagon has not passed an audit of its expenditure on boondoggles EVER. In its most recent audit, it failed to account for almost half of its trillion-dollar spending. It’s the only one of the 24 government agencies to have failed every single audit. Now call me an old cynic if you like, but that’s how El Chapo operated. To add insult to injury, Trump is looking for a $1.5 trillion budget for fiscal year 2027. I have linked the budget here

If people are looking for waste, fraud, and abuse, can I respectfully suggest that the government employ the best forensic accountants in the country and send them into the Pentagon, because I’d bet my house that the level of corruption and self-dealing would be off the chart, and HUGE savings could be made. You will have noted no doubt that the DOGE inquisition gave the DOJ a pass, and that wasn’t by accident. It’s long overdue to open the books and provide transparency to the American people. It will never happen, of course, because you will never be able to see how much of YOUR money the rich have pocketed from what is essentially a slush fund for the asset class which is topped up each and every year.

The fairytale narrative is simply postponing the moment when reality comes crashing through the door, and the tsunami of corruption spills onto the floor for the whole world to see. We are now in a new round of tariff extortion that now amounts to a 13% sales tax on American consumers, according to the Yale Budget Lab. Trump was told ‘no’ by the Supreme Court, but rather than adhere to the ruling, he simply drove around it to extend the already illegal tariffs based on, would you believe, countries not taking action against ‘forced labour’. Coming from a country where child labour laws are being relaxed and even removed.

Trump is a man whose companies have profited from forced labour around the world forever. He knows this is a false pretext, but it perpetuates his extortion until the courts catch up with him again. It’s a tried-and-tested formula he will use again and again because he does not accept that the rule of law should apply to him. The only people who can stop this persistent abuse are Congress, and Republicans are terrified of their mob boss, so nothing will happen, and the American people will once again pick up the tab for his illegal and corrupt behaviour.

Speaking of corruption, where is the missing $13 billion from Venezuelan oil sales that seems to have disappeared from the government balance sheet? As reported by Malcolm Fugeson in the Wall Street Journal on July 22nd 2026:

The Financial Times reported Wednesday that there has been no evidence of oil money going back into the hands of the Venezuelans Trump claimed to care for, and that Venezuela’s first-quarter gross domestic product was the lowest it’s been in five years.

The problem with a lack of transparency is that it creates a vacuum in which suspicion incubates. Trump’s reputation for corruption in office simply leads people to think that something nefarious is at play. My thoughts on this are long-held, and given Trump’s endless deliberate obfuscation, none of them are good. I have long believed, and to be clear, this is just an opinion; I would not rule out that money goes on an investment vacation where it is used to earn money, then the original money is returned as if it were untouched. The only way we will ever know what Trump did is if there is a full forensic audit of his handling of funds while in office.

Trump is more than aware that if he loses power in November and Democrats regain the power of subpoena, the investigations will begin. It’s why he is looking once again to the Supreme Court to assist him in disenfranchising voters by using executive action to remove the option to vote by mail, despite his availing himself of the option in every recent election. There is, of course, an unwritten rule that states no action should be taken of this nature less than a hundred days before an election, but that’s not stopping him, because desperate times require desperate measures when accountability is sniffing around and prison time is on the agenda.

Unfortunately, we are now living in a world where the administration is hiding so much that we are left in the dark on critical issues. In these situations, we are forced to rely on what we have seen him be prepared to do in the past to avoid being held to account. The simple answer is, NOTHING is off the table.

I want to close this piece by saying I keep getting an irritating recurring comment on recent pieces suggesting that I do not offer solutions to the problems I document, which I have to say is a completely false assertion, as anyone who reads my work will already know. The assumption is that it’s easy to criticise but never easy to deliver solutions. With this in mind, I’m going to spend the entire next piece on the issue of solutions and why no solution can work when the population is averse to inconvenience and sacrifice. I’ve said many times that the American people could have stopped this months ago, if not a year ago. The problem is not the solution; it’s the inability to listen to it, and that’s not on me, I’m afraid.

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