Together or Alone? That is the question.

If you are building a house, and you have a lot of friends with different skills – bricklayers, plasterers, carpenters, electricians, architects and plumbers etc – you can all work together efficiently to build each other homes. If you have to do it all yourself it becomes an expensive nightmare.

We built the world on cooperation. We opened free trade with various countries to exchange goods and materials, services and skills. It enabled us to do things cheaply and efficiently. By doing things at scale and moving in bulk everything was easy.

We know that in the world there are always megalomaniacs who want to invade steal and exploit. We have to defend ourselves against these violent lunatics. We forged alliances for mutual protection. If one of us is attacked the others come to their aid. By pooling our knowledge, intelligence, innovations and resources we could produce a defence network that was cheaper and more effective.

The world worked fairly smoothly. The vicious megalomaniacs were largely held in check. Trade worked efficiently.

Of course there were problems. We had a number of proxy wars in far off lands. We had lunatic leaders, fanatical religious fundamentalists, terrorism, mass migration and pollution/global warming to contend with. But we were prosperous and improving.

Cooperation is built on trust.

If you can’t trust your partners then trade and defence goes out the window.

Then came the idiocy of Trump who threw a spanner in the works. Out of greed and some lunatic idea that he and the USA could screw other countries for more he set about using the mechanisms of cooperation against everyone. He used the cross-fertilisation of trade against his friends – bunging tariffs on to goods, threatening to overturn the whole system in order to screw more money out of the world. He sided with our enemies – Putin and Kin Jung Un against his allies – only supporting Ukraine if he could extract money out of it.

Trump has actively undermined all the institutions underpinning international law – UN, International court of justice, WTO, NATO and the EU. He has backed genocide in Israel, invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its leader, blown up ships in international waters and threatened Greenland, the Panama Canal and Canada. He flouts laws. Even internally he has deployed state thugs ICE to punish opposition areas and threaten civilians, he uses the courts against the media and opponents and rules like a petulant tyrant. Iran couldn’t do much better. He lies, vacillates and threatens like a gangster from the thirties. He enriches himself at the expense of the world.

Under Trump we have moved to a world in which laws do not count; might is right, greed prevails, selfish short-term interests override long term goals, the truth a lie, everything is a tool and weapon, friendships and alliances count for nothing.

It’s a hard, barbaric world that seems based more on Mad Max than any cooperative vision. We are isolated islands standing up against the schoolyard bully.

Trust has gone.

The USA is now our number one enemy!

We can no longer deal with the USA. Trade is impossible. The whole system of cooperation has been undermined.

We can no longer count on the USA being part of the alliance we put together to keep our enemies at bay. Putin in knocking at the door. Xi is watching. Kim Jung Un is waiting and Iran is still there.

Trump has used this instability to personally cream off billions for himself and his family at the expense of the whole world.

We are looking at a future in which our enemies are emboldened, our alliances are crumbling, trade is going to be far more expensive and every country is going to have to become an isolated fortress.

What a waste of money.

Is it just ignorance and idiocy? Is it something more sinister? Is Trump merely motivated by greed and lust for power and recognition? Is he a complete fool?

One we have cut a thread in the complex global system of trust that has evolved over the course of eighty years the whole system unravels.