Donald Trump
President Obama on Wednesday warned Europeans against a rising tide of nationalist politics that appears to be sweeping the Western world. In a speech in Greece during his last foreign trip as president, Obama called for a rejection of the trend that last week helped sweep President-elect Donald Trump to power and has empowered archconservatives and isolationists across Europe.
American soft power - a facet of foreign relations that relies on attraction rather than coercion - has been severely damaged, and this will have a devastating effect on the role of the United States in the world. Even when their country was engaged in foreign misadventures such as the Iraq War, the American people remained widely admired for their freedom, imagination, and ingenuity.
Lawmakers and U.S. officials who have championed foreign aid, democracy and human rights fear that President-elect Donald Trump will financially and rhetorically cripple America's non-military influence around the world — damage that could prove harder to repair than the kind inflicted by George W. Bush's use of torture. [...] His victory was so shocking that some stakeholders now wonder if the Trump era will mark the end of America's "soft power."
Hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid that helps prevent child and maternal deaths and reduces unintended pregnancies worldwide could be at risk under a Donald Trump administration, campaigners and thinktanks have warned. Citing “worrisome” indicators, such as Trump’s U-turn against abortion, his pledge to appoint pro-life justices to the Supreme Court and his choice of Mike Pence, an anti-abortion activist, as vice-presidential running mate...
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry didn’t comment on President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory on Friday while visiting Antarctica, but did say that citizens who care about limiting emissions might have to march in the streets to push for more aggressive action. Kerry became the highest-ranking American official to visit Antarctica when he landed for a two-day trip.
One major casualty of Donald Trump’s victory in the bruising US presidential election is, without a doubt, America’s soft power around the world. It is a development that will be difficult – perhaps even impossible – to reverse, especially for Trump. [...] America’s domestic narrative soon overcame its foreign-policy setbacks, thanks partly to today’s unprecedented connectivity.
Sounds of rage and sorrow on social media.
The networks that primarily seek to establish, protect and expand US primacy in Asia are driven by corporate and financial special interests including banks, the energy industry, defence contractors, agricultural and pharmaceutical giants, the US entertainment industry and media as well as tech giants.