Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Martin de Caro
“In his second inaugural address, Trump claimed he wanted to be remembered as a peacemaker. Instead, he’s practicing what the scholar Alex de Waal calls ‘global mafia politics,’ the new rules of an unraveling order that render familiar debates between realists and idealists, or restrainers versus primacists, somewhat stale. To better understand this dynamic, I spoke to de Waal about his thesis that the ‘political marketplace’ now dominates international relations.” (02/02/26)