Poor Donald Trump. Imagine deciding one day that you were no longer happy with the friends you have and that you really, really wanted to be one of the cool kids. Only for the muscle-T-shirt jocks immediately to recognize you for the simpering poser that you are and come up with an endless series of promises, tricks and feints to string you along.
That, essentially, is the role the US president has carved out for himself on the global stage – on full display during his state visit to China this week. Despite his earlier hawkishness, including tariffs aimed at China that climbed to 145 percent at one point, Trump spent Thursday and Friday essentially – how to put this politely – groveling.
He and the slew of American business executives he brought along with him were there “to pay respects to you, China,” he said. He was silent in public on Taiwan. He claimed a huge sale of Boeing planes that Beijing declined to confirm. And he begged for Chinese help on the Iran stalemate – only for the Chinese Foreign Ministry to issue a statement on Friday that the war “should not have happened in the first place.”
One can be forgiven for having a strong sense of déjà vu. After all, we have already spent years watching Trump’s eager-beaver approach to Russian President Vladimir Putin – one which alternates between effusive professions of admiration and childlike tantrums of frustration when he doesn’t get what he wants. Not to mention the neediness he displayed when following Israel’s lead on Iran.
Which brings us to …
Trump’s Master Class in Imperial Overreach
Xi Jinping will no doubt have noticed Trump’s shift in tone during this week’s visit. Instead of tariffs, complaints of “job-stealing” and warnings about China’s threat to US national security, Trump opted for conciliatory public remarks and ceremony alongside Xi Jinping and emphasized that the two leaders were “settling” problems even as major disputes remained unresolved. It was almost certainly music to the Chinese leader’s ears – the kind of music that only an American president can compose who has maneuvered his country into isolation on the global stage and is currently in no position to confront China on Taiwan or anywhere else in the Western Pacific. Indeed, despite the supplications, China promised exactly nothing on Trump’s most pressing issue: Iran. As the New York Times writes: “On Air Force One, Mr. Trump did not name a single way in which Mr. Xi had agreed to change the situation on the ground – or whether it had agreed to stop giving Iran access to satellite imagery that helps it target US forces and Gulf states.”
DER SPIEGEL’s René Pfister found himself wondering what lessons Xi might draw from watching Trump squirm.
“It is hard to miss that Trump, 79, Putin, 73, and Xi, 72, have one thing in common: the dream of writing themselves into the history books before the end of their lives. America is a nation that expands its borders, Trump said in his inaugural address on Jan. 20, 2025. Putin dreams of the glory of the old Soviet superpower. Xi views Taiwan’s independence as an accident of Chinese history – one that must be corrected.”
“China’s ruler would do well, however, to take a close look at how the imperial adventures of his two peers are playing out. Trump may chalk up the commando operation to abduct Venezuela’s dictator Nicolás Maduro as a success; but the war in Iran could serve as the final proof of a superpower’s inability to deliver on its own promises.”
“Putin may regard the annexation of Crimea as a historic achievement. But now his troops have been bogged down for more than four years in a bloody war with a country far smaller than Russia – one which, with a blend of courage and intelligence, has shown that blind will and brute force do not lead to success.”
“Xi should take a close look at the precarious situation his two counterparts find themselves in before deciding how to deal with Taiwan. The regime in Beijing has always watched – with a mix of schadenfreude and disbelief – the naive recklessness with which Americans plunge into military adventures. It has carefully analyzed how, not least, economic incompetence contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
“If there is one man who paved the way for China’s rise to great-power status, it was Deng Xiaoping, who reformed the country and opened it to investment from the West. Xi should think carefully about whether he wants to follow Trump and Putin down the path of imperial folly – or whether he will exercise the prudence that made China a rival of the United States in the first place.”
Handing the World to Beijing
There was a time not all that long ago when the United States still produced the siren song the rest of the world was so eager to pursue. Generations of Europeans made the pilgrimage to America for a year of study abroad, an extended vacation through the country’s grand national parks, a well-paid tech job in California. Particularly for Germans, it was like a rite of passage. That era, though, has come to a screeching halt as Europe looks to MAGA America with increasing levels of disdain, disgust and discombobulation. Even German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Friday: “I would not encourage my children today to travel to the United States for an education or a job.” America, it would seem, has largely abandoned the role it once played on the world stage.
Who has taken up the mantle? In many parts of the world, it’s China. Even as it has continued to ramp up the military posturing on Taiwan, Beijing has sought to expand its influence in the Global South on the back of deepening economic dependencies. In contrast to the dream of freedom that once emanated from the US, China is seeking to sell the dream of prosperity.
And, as DER SPIEGEL’s China correspondent Maria Stöhr writes, it is working.
“For years, the Communist Party has been trying to present itself as a reliable power—in contrast to what it never tires of portraying as an imperially acting Washington. Xi casts China as the guardian of the rules-based international order, and it comes easily to him. Ironically, it is the United States – the very country that once built that order—that is now in the process of undermining it.”
“’The world is a dangerous place,’ Chinese state propaganda tells its citizens—also as a way of distracting the public from the country’s faltering economy, poor job prospects, a lack of opportunity, and high levels of government debt. Far from everything in China being rosy. But given the chaos in the United States, it has never been easier to claim: in the West, with all its promises of freedom, things are even more in turmoil right now.”
“In the Global South, China’s appeals have long found traction. But now Trump is also picking fights with NATO allies, alienating once-loyal partners in Europe so deeply that they can scarcely afford to confront China anymore.”
“These days, the impression is hard to shake that Xi doesn’t have to conquer the world at all – Trump is handing it to him. Since Obama, US administrations have talked about a renewed American focus on the Pacific, meant to counter China’s growing influence. Trump turned that into a retreat from Asia: he is burning through munitions in the Persian Gulf that can barely be replaced quickly enough. The war has dangerously depleted America’s stockpiles. That gives China room to maneuver.”
Confronting the Past
Germany, it is often said, is the example that all nations should follow when it comes to confronting a dark past. And that’s not wrong. The level generations of Germans have gone to in an effort to understand what went wrong in the first half of the 20th century and to ensure that such an orgy of horrific violence never happens again is truly admirable. Recently, though, it has become clear that this reckoning with the past took place largely at the national level – and this peering into the past may not have been quite as enthusiastically pursued on the familial level. That shortcoming has been highlighted in recent months following the decision by the US National Archives to begin making the NSDAP membership archives freely available on the internet in late 2025. That move prompted DER SPIEGEL and other media outlets in Germany to produce tools allowing Germans to easily search through the index to see if grandpa or great-grandpa had actually been a member of the Nazi Party. And those tools, it is safe to say, have been the talk of the town in recent weeks as family after family in Germany has suddenly been faced with an acute need for a bit of historical introspection.
It is, as DER SPIEGEL’s Felix Bohr writes, a prime example of the power of digitalization.
“The US National Archives has done what German federal authorities have still been unable to bring themselves to do to this day: it has put the NSDAP membership card index online. Millions of documents, freely accessible to everyone. DER SPIEGEL – like other organizations and newsrooms – built a digital research tool from it. To do so, the files covering roughly 12 million index cards were downloaded from the US National Archives, read using artificial intelligence, and transferred into a database. Since publication, about 2.3 million searches have been carried out by logged-in subscribers.”
“This makes it possible to research in seconds what previously could only be accessed with great effort. For every hit, we provide background information and historical context in automatically generated dossiers that can be shared with friends and acquaintances. In fact, that should be the job of the German Federal Archives. Instead, Germans must still file requests with the Federal Archives and wait for a response – or search in Washington themselves.”
“In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, Federal Archives President Michael Hollmann rightly points out that his institution does digitize Nazi-era files and then make them available online. These include records from the Reich Chancellery, the Nazi ministries, and the Gestapo. These are important governmental holdings. But of all things, the large personal card indexes remain hidden behind application procedures. Besides the NSDAP files, the Federal Archives also keeps other extensive personal records under wraps – for example on members of the SS and the SA.”
“In this way, the authority continues to decide on its own what is visible online and what, despite significant public interest, remains closed off.”
Good: Such is the state of Germany’s government: The fact that Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s fractured coalition was able to agree this week on a “framework for cooperation” is cause for relief. The conservatives and the SPD are still willing to work with each other. Maybe we can even hope for results at some point.
Bad: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is wobbling in the UK. Since the Brexit referendum, which took place 10 years ago, the country has churned through five prime ministers. This kind of instability used to be associated with Italy. These days, though, it has come to be seen as quite British.
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Compiled, edited and translated by Charles Hawley with a helping hand from AI 🤖.