At some level, it’s hard to even believe what’s happening on this planet. Sections of the island of Jamaica have just been devastated by an almost unimaginably powerful hurricane, thanks in part to the heating of the globe’s oceans. And that’s just the start of what’s clearly going to be a hell on earth when it comes to this world’s ever fiercer climate. Worse yet, when it comes to any form of international well-being, the president of the United States doesn’t even believe that climate change is happening. Who cares that this country just set a record in the first six months of 2025 for the costliest set of climate disasters in our history? And worse yet, only recently, Donald Trump moved to open Alaska’s pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and natural gas drilling — and that’s just the beginning when it comes to his urge to devastate this planet’s climate. Honestly, it’s as if a near majority of Americans in the last election decided to cast a ballot for destroying the very world we’re living on.
Meanwhile, the leader of Russia is eager to continue making war, war, war without end in Ukraine — always, in addition to every other nightmarish aspect of it, a huge dispenser of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. (Consider that just “routine military operations — separate from war fighting — account for an estimated 5.5 percent of the world’s annual CO2 emissions.”) And Gaza, already a human horror story, will sooner or later be considered a climate-change nightmare as well. Even the leaders of China, while eager to take control of the creation and distribution of green energy-producing equipment globally, are still building new coal-fired power plants in striking numbers. In 2024, in fact, that country’s construction of such power plants reached a 10-year high.
And with all of that (and so much more) in mind, you would think it might be the moment for a new-style internationalism. But if that crossed your mind, think again, or rather let TomDispatch regular John Feffer explore the ever-stranger multipolarism of our times for you. Tom
The multipolarism of fools
By JOHN FEFFER
The BRICS Are Not the Answer
Donald Trump hates Antifa. He hates late-night TV hosts, Democratic-controlled cities, and anyone who has ever challenged him in court. As of October, he officially hates the Nobel committee for not giving him a peace prize, despite his efforts to strong-arm its members into voting for him.
The president has gone after everyone he thinks has ever done him wrong. But there is a Venn diagram to his vendettas, an overlap in his circle of obsessions.
Map out his attacks, subtracting the purely personal and the primarily partisan, and you’ll see that they converge on a profound disgust for the liberal international order. That Trump has personally profited from that very global order — his portfolio of international real estate, his business’s reliance on global supply chains, the unacknowledged benefits he’s accrued from the international rule of law — makes no difference.
“Globalists” like Barack Obama, George Soros, and Emmanuel Macron have made fun of him, not fully accepting him into their ranks and refusing to acknowledge his brilliance with medals and awards. In the president’s skewed accounting ledger, the gatekeepers at the global country club who don’t want him as a member must be made to pay.
Trump has attacked the liberal international order in seemingly every conceivable way. He’s initiated a global trade war. He’s dismantled U.S. humanitarian assistance to impoverished lands and put pressure on allies to spend more money on war preparations, not welfare programs or foreign aid. He’s destroyed relationships with liberal allies like Canada and the non-Hungarian members of the European Union. He’s levied sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) in an effort to shut it down. He’s gleefully ignored international law by embracing ICC scofflaws like Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu. And he’s committed his own crimes, like the extrajudicial murder of the crews of nine boats near the Venezuelan coast and five in the Pacific Ocean.
The United States had long been a pillar of the liberal international order. So, when Trump takes a sledgehammer to its base, he causes potentially irreparable damage to the reputation, power, and global position of the United States. Many Americans, particularly those in the political center, are aghast at the self-inflicted wounds this country is now suffering.
In other quarters, however, there’s celebration.
America’s right wing has long hated everything that shimmers in the distance beyond the territorial waters of this country. The U.N. gives it indigestion. Ditto the European Union, the Third World, and anything connected to universal human rights. The most reactionary elements of the Republican Party have blocked Washington’s ratification of international treaties, undermined global efforts to address threats like climate change, and claimed to spot Communist (or Islamist or terrorist) conspiracies behind every international institution and many nationalist movements. Such right-wingers have pushed to eliminate all forms of soft power in favor of beefed-up hard power. The ascendancy of Trump has provided them with an opportunity to force conventional conservatives from their party, while consolidating an America First position.
Tom Dispatch for more