Trump Is America’s Gorbachev—and the System Is Cracking – Alessandro Rocco Pietrocola

When Gorbachev came to power in the 1980s, he introduced perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) in an attempt to revive a decaying Soviet system. But instead of renewal, those reforms accelerated the collapse. Not because they were inherently bad, but because they exposed contradictions, inefficiencies, and illusions that could no longer be maintained. Trump, knowingly or not, is doing something strikingly similar. His policies are not business-as-usual—they’re structural shocks. Whether you call it disruption or demolition depends on your view, but the consequences are the same: America, as we knew it, is being unmade and remade in real time. One of the clearest signs of this shift is how the U.S. now engages with the world. For decades, American foreign policy—flawed as it may have been—was anchored in diplomacy, strategic alliances, and economic influence. But today, it’s no longer about talking or even negotiating. It’s about sending weapons. There is a clear, consistent move away from soft power and toward hard power. The image of the diplomat is fading. In its place stands the arms dealer. Ukraine, Taiwan, the Middle East—the U.S. no longer leads through consensus, but through confrontation. No country in history has survived by relying solely on its military might. The Roman Empire tried. The Third Reich tried. The Soviet Union tried. Empires collapse not when they are defeated in one battle, but when they abandon the art of balance—between strength and diplomacy, force and persuasion. Today, the United States seems dangerously close to crossing that threshold. Military spending soars, while diplomacy fades into irrelevance. Statecraft has become stagecraft. Global influence is measured not in treaties, but in arms shipments. Meanwhile, China watches—patient, disciplined, strategic. While the U.S. withdraws from global leadership and descends into internal polarization, China is consolidating influence through long-term planning, infrastructure, trade deals, and diplomacy. The Belt and Road Initiative is not just a development project; it’s a blueprint for global presence. Where America drops bombs, China builds ports. Where the U.S. issues ultimatums, China offers loans. Their control is quieter—but more enduring. Even the so-called tariff war, once seen as a test of economic dominance, has revealed that there are no victors in economic isolation. Global supply chains, markets, and trade agreements are reshaping without U.S. leadership. Regional blocks are forming. Nations are no longer waiting for Washington to set the rules—they’re writing their own. The result is not a world that revolves around one power, but a world of multipolar complexity. This is the true legacy of the Trump era—not just in policies, but in mindset. Whether intentionally or not, he is fast-forwarding America into a future where its dominance is no longer assured, and where the instruments of the post-WWII era—like the United Nations, NATO, and the Bretton Woods system—are becoming obsolete relics of a fading unipolar moment. We’re entering uncharted territory. The global order we’ve known since 1945 is dissolving, and a new one is emerging—one not built on consensus, but on competition among powers with fundamentally different visions of governance, economics, and global influence. To be clear, this is not a moral judgment. I’m not here to label Trump as good or bad, just as I wouldn’t label Gorbachev that way. Their actions may be driven by vastly different motivations, but the consequence is eerily similar: a superpower destabilizing itself from within by attempting to “reform” systems that no longer function. America is no longer what it was five years ago—and it will not return to what it was twenty years ago. The old center is gone. What replaces it is still forming, and that is perhaps the most dangerous and fascinating part of all. We’re standing at the edge of something historic. And whether this is a rebirth or a collapse—that remains to be seen.