So on sort of left social media, it's quite common to see people downplaying the significance of what happened at the White House and more generally arguing that the novelty of the second Trump presidency is massively overstated and that we see plenty of continuity with Biden and earlier administrations and that Trump and Vance are merely saying the quiet parts out loud and that what we're witnessing

is just a more unvarnished articulation of actually quite conventional US foreign policy.

And, you know, obviously there's reason to have some sympathy for that perspective because

it is indeed pretty enraging to see liberal commentators suddenly discover that the United

States bullies weaker actors in the world

system or to see them claim that there's something hugely novel in the US allying with

repressive authoritarian regimes. And all of this, of course, is in the context of Biden's support

for an enabling of the Gaza genocide. But at the same time, it does seem a bit obtuse to watch

what happened at the White House or to see the US openly

allying with Russia against Ukraine at the UN or to see J.D. Vance's speech at the Munich Security

Conference and respond with, you know, same as it ever was, nothing new to see here. You know,

what's your view on what's truly novel here and what isn't? Well, in terms of this stuff about saying quite a part out loud and all the rest of it,

there's an element of truth in that, obviously.

Do you remember Hitchin's book about Cyprus,

where it describes an interaction between Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Greek ambassador

over proposals for the island, and Greeks have said no. Johnson says, well,

fuck your parliament and your constitution. He says, America is an elephant. Cyprus is a plea.

Greece is a flea. If these two fellows continue itching the elephant, they may just get

whacked by the elephant's trunk, whack good. And he goes on in that vein. So, I mean, I think it's

partly a matter of style how one presents the threat or the humiliation, but it's always there.

That's what it is to be an empire. But as to this idea that this is just continuity imperialism,

I think that's rubbish. First, this is transparently part of a pivot away from a desiccating global liberalism,

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