Donald Trump has won the US election. After serving as the 45th president between 2017 and 2021, he will now be the 47th. Trump has not merely defeated but trounced his opponent Kamala Harris. She was crushed so badly, she even failed to address her supporters at the traditional election party and instead - there's really no nicer word for it - slunk away.
Claiming his victory, meanwhile, Trump told his voters that they - and he, of course - had "made history." He is very likely to be right about that.
While rhetoric about "the most important election in our lifetime" has been badly overused for campaigning purposes, in this case, Trump's second victory really is special. The fact that he is the first president since the 1880s to win a second term after being out of office is the least of it. Such trivia will make for good game-show questions. But what turns the return of the Donald - as he used to be called semi-affectionately when still generally mistaken for a buffoon - into a historic event is that it is occurring at a very peculiar moment.
We are witnessing the decline and fall of, at least, American supremacy, and, possibly, of the American polity as we know it. At the same time, a multipolar world order is emerging. It is against that background of historic change that we have to understand the Trump Phenomenon...<<<Read More>>>...