After me, the deluge

When Louis XV became the king of France, he remained indifferent to the affairs of the state until his death. Once, when asked about the future of France, he uttered his famous phrase, “After me, the deluge.” This implied his lack of concern for the future scenarios of then France. Although this nihilistic attitude can’t be attributed to just Louis XV, it was found in the nature of many leaders who came after him. Many American leaders of the current and previous centuries emulated the king of France, leaving the upcoming leaders of their country and the world at the mercy of their fate.

The incumbent president of the US, Donald Trump, is not new to the list. This is his second term as the sole sovereign of the United States. In his first term, his actions were not out of his whimsical and capricious nature. He received a high mandate in the elections with the help of his much-celebrated mantra, “Make America Great Again.” His idea was to focus on American internal matters rather than external ones. But soon after his election to the presidential office, he mishandled internal as well as external matters so recklessly that he did not manage to win the next election, leaving his successor, Joe Biden, to deal with the mess he had created.

The number of blunders he made during his first tenure requires a voluminous write-up; it cannot be concluded in just an article. However, we can superficially touch on them to have an idea of it.

Trump, soon after his anointment to the post, started a tariff war with China, Canada, and the European Union and saw their retaliatory response within no time. It seems that he has learned nothing from his past mistakes because he has repeated this action fairly recently. He also messed up his relationship with his neighbors, namely Mexico, by shutting down the border with it. His recent ambition to buy Greenland is not a new idea, but he tried its fulfilment in his first term, which led to frosty relations with Denmark.

Next came his unilateral decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement in 2017, despite being the largest contributor to carbon emissions, which result in climate change and global warming. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, he announced that the US would withdraw from the membership of the WHO. He also disregarded the precautionary regulations designed by WHO and other countries in utter defiance. He also accused China of spreading the novel disease on purpose.

At the external and diplomatic level, too, he did not care much about the future implications and repercussions. In 2018, he withdrew from the JCPOA, better known as the Iran nuclear deal, signed by the Obama administration, and imposed a large number of sanctions on Iran. In response, Iran refused to comply with the deal and started enriching uranium to a level almost equal to the weapon-grade fissile requirement by 2020. This event’s repercussions were so severe that today’s developments in US-Iran relations have direct linkages to it.

Moreover, in 2017, the US officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and decided to establish its embassy there. Through this move, Trump out rightly ignored the disputed status of Jerusalem under the United Nations. However, the act was denounced by the Palestinian Authority and other Arab countries. In the same vein, to appease the Zionists, he brokered a deal between Israel and Arab countries, better known as the Abraham Accord. The accord was primarily signed by the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco. It was in a quest to keep away Russia, China, and Iran from forging economic and diplomatic relations with the Arab states.

On the South Asian front, the United States under President Trump decided to leave Afghanistan for good, leaving millions of Afghan people at the mercy of the Taliban. This act also endangered the whole region, especially Pakistan, which had been battling ever-increasing terrorism at home.

All these events contributed to his failure to win the 2021 elections. Joe Biden, in his place, held sway for the next four years. He had to bear the brunt of Trump’s mishandling of internal and external matters. However, he failed to make it through the elections held recently in 2025, which led to Trump’s return to power.

He won this election too by dint of his sharp rhetoric. His infamous mantra of “Making America Great Again” did the magic this time around, too. He pledged that the United States would not be taking part in others’ wars and would stop the Russia-Ukraine war within a week of his power takeover. He also gave an ultimatum to Hamas and Israel to reach an agreement before he took charge. He promised to impose high tariffs on countries like China, Canada, and the European Union.

Later on, after taking charge of the presidential office, he reneged on many promises he had made during his electoral campaign. He failed to stop the war in Ukraine and Gaza. His trade war, through imposing high tariffs, was met with the same retaliatory response from China, Canada, and the European Union. Trump’s expansionist nature tried to include Canada as the 51st state of the United States. He also aggravated the already fraught relationship with Mexico by changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. His irredentism did not stop here; he also tried to make Greenland a part of the US by buying it from the Danish government.

More recently, he engaged in talks with Iran on the nuclear issue at the behest of Israel, but after many rounds, the negotiations failed sine die. Israel, deeming nuclear Iran a threat to its existence, asked Trump to help it destroy Iranian nuclear facilities. There is no denying the fact that the Trump administration was complicit in Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, which led to tit-for-tat attacks from Iran. Trump, while this piece is being written, has insinuated that the US may join the war officially sooner rather than later. In the upcoming days, the US will surely be part of the war, as Tehran is in no mood to go to the negotiation table after being attacked by Israel. If such a thing happens, one question may arise: can the US afford another prolonged war of others being waged with its financial and military help?

For the believers of the ‘America First doctrine’ who voted for Trump in the presidential election, this will be the most urgent of the questions. For now, how long the war will last is out of anyone’s surmise, but surely it will go to the extent that many upcoming presidents of the US will have to face its repercussions. As far as Trump is concerned, he believes in the adage, “After me, the deluge.”