Dickson C. Igwe. Photo: VINO/File

Make America Great Again and its leader Donald Trump have started a highly unstable international order. This new order sees the USA at loggerheads with its old ally Western Europe. 

The old order based on the international rule of law and international agreements is ending. The world of a liberal order based on the cocktail round, tea with the King, and affluent forums of global organizations is over. International order, settled on the fields of war, and not the conference hall, may be the new order. Donald Trump is offering encouragement to despots and dictators everywhere. 

Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again culture is only interested in what benefits the USA, not the world. The politics of transaction is the new international culture. For Make America Great Again, MAGA, every move on the chessboard of world politics has a price. ‘What is in it for me?’ 

The decades of diplomacy based on the notion of justice may no longer exist. America first views the world in terms of transactions and American interests, singularly.   

The Caribbean is learning this lesson. There is nervousness in the region’s corridors of power. The USA projects raw power over the Western Hemisphere. It has always had this ability. It simply has been subtle in harnessing that power. Trump is ‘’in your face’’ with the enormous power the USA possesses over the West. 

We are back in the early 1900s. A Caribbean nation going against the USA can expect the worst: visa restrictions, economic blockades, Dollar sanctions, isolation, and even invasion by the US military.

What is ominous is that Trump is demolishing the guardrails that hold the executive to account in the USA. The judiciary is ignored and the President is going after his ‘’enemies’’ with impunity. The USA is becoming a dictatorship. 

For these Virgin Islands, the best approach is to keep a low profile and stay off the radar. The Caribbean environment has become stormy and unpredictable, with the autocrat in the White House.  

Will internal politics in the USA return to normalcy? The only way that happens is in the hands of US citizens themselves. Protest and action are the way the oligarchs who rule the USA will pay attention. It will take riots and even civil war to return the USA to constitutional normalcy. 

The only way the USA escapes the dictator is if US citizens rescue themselves. It takes an aggressive movement to defeat a system hijacked by another aggressive movement. A violent militia alone will defeat a violent militia. MAGA is a violent militia in charge of the USA.