Regime Change

 

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Regime Change, Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, Simon and Schuster, 2026

New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan have written an account of the first 13 months of Donald Trump’s second term, January 2025 to February 2026.

The title, Regime Change, is ambiguous, and the authors don’t land on an exact definition. I think there are at least four possible meanings. The most straightforward is simply the change in presidential regime from Joe Biden to Donald Trump. They don’t spend a lot of time on that. They are more interested in a second meaning, the change from Trump’s first term, 2017-2021, to his second, beginning in 2025. In Trump 1.0, the President was surrounded by many appointees who had independent standing, who were not totally beholden to him, and who sometimes stood up to him and prevented him from carrying out his zaniest fantasies. Not so in Trump 2.0. The authors show that, having learned from his earlier experience, Trump appointed advisors, lawyers and cabinet secretaries many of whom had no relevant expertise but who had the essential attribute, total loyalty to him. That, plus his domination of the Republican Party, means that during his second presidency, he has encountered hardly anyone within his circle even to question, let alone oppose, him.

My friend and former colleague Alan Richards, who has been reading the book at the same time as I have, says that what strikes him is how closely Trump resembles an old-time Mafia don.   Haberman and Swan show that what captures Trump’s emotions, far more than anything else, is revenge. Those who investigated him, those who prosecuted and at times convicted him, those who asserted that the 2020 election was fair, those who opposed him politically, all are fair game to be attacked, vilified and if possible destroyed. At the very least, they are to be fired.

A third possible meaning of regime change is the change in the regimes of the world that Trump has wrought: the changes within the US and the changes in international relations. In these realms, what I mean by regime change is not the replacement of one government by another, but an overturning of the fundamental norms that almost everyone accepts. Trump 2.0 has been largely unconstrained by the traditions that have developed over decades, in some cases over centuries. A central question is whether those traditions can be restored in a post-Trump world, or whether at least some of them are gone for good. The authors don’t put it this way, but my sense after reading the book is that much of the domestic damage could be repaired in the future if we had the political will to do so (we may not). They are clear, however, that Trump has destroyed the post-World-War-Two international order, and that it is not coming back.

We already knew it, but the authors demonstrate in detail the damage at home. After running on a platform of not only taming inflation but actually reducing prices, he took two major measures that raised inflation—the tariffs and the war against Iran—and then said he was unconcerned if people faced higher prices. He bullied the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve System. In strengthening immigration restrictions, he and his evil apostle Stephen Miller militarized ICE and let it loose, often trampling over the rights and lives of immigrants and residents alike.  He attacked major universities and cut research funding, thereby weakening technological and health advances. He did his best to stack the courts in his favor (although, to his frustration, they have sometimes proven less than fully compliant). He destroyed government agencies that served important public purposes, he weakened environmental rules as far as he could, he attacked sustainable energy projects, and on and on. What has been broken is not just multiple institutions, but the basic understanding of how the country operates, an understanding that people thought they could depend upon. The damage is done, but it is possible that a future government could change the policies so that further damage is prevented.

The authors make it clear that the changes in international affairs are not reversable. Trump 2.0 has viciously—I don’t think viciously is too strong a word—attacked the post-war international order. He has nothing but scorn for NATO and its members. He raised no protest against the destruction of Gaza. He went to war against Iran without seeking the approval of other countries (except Israel) or even consulting with them, then loudly criticized them for failing to support the war. He reduced US funding for the UN and its agencies. He eliminated US foreign aid for humanitarian purposes, an act that has resulted in thousands of preventable deaths. He nullified trade treaties. He imposed high tariffs on most countries, then varied them almost randomly. At different times he threatened to annex Greenland, Venezuela and Canada. He extracted the Venezuelan president and deposited him in a jail in New York. He ordered the destruction of boats and the killing of crew members off the coasts of Central America. In contrast to his disdain for leaders of democratic countries, he has cozied up to authoritarian leaders. None of this is consistent with the post-war international structure we thought we understood.

The authors argue that this change is definitive. The international system will be reconstituted somehow, but it will not resemble what came before. Most foreign leaders and foreign political structures are not beholden to Donald Trump. They have their own interests to protect. For years they protected those interests in what appeared to be, and sometimes was, a rules-based system, with US economic and military power as its enforcer. That system has now been shown to be a fiction, and the other countries have to face reality.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney gave eloquent and influential expression to the possible new regime in a speech in Davos, Switzerland on January 21, 2026 (not cited by Haberman and Swan). At the end, he said:

“We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn't mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture, we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just. This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and most to gain from genuine cooperation.

“The powerful have their power.

“But we have something too – the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together.”

Canada and many other countries are doing just that. They are constructing trade and investment pacts that avoid the US. They are replacing the US as the guarantor of Ukrainian independence. Canada is expanding investment funds, and building pipelines to export oil, not south to the US, but east and west.

Similar trends have been in the works for years, and are accelerating now because of Trump’s heavy hand in foreign affairs. I think that Haberman and Swan may place too much emphasis on Trump alone, and not enough on the earlier evolution of international relations.

In particular, they do not talk about the decline in US power. In the first posting in this series (entitled Military Superiority) I argued that the US is losing its role as world hegemon. It emerged from World War II as unquestionably the strongest country, but it gradually lost that position over eight decades. The clearest way of seeing this is that it failed to win five successive major wars—it fought to a draw in Korea, then lost in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. It has the world’s most powerful military force, but it cannot win wars. Its economic performance is now outstripped by China.

The US no longer dominates the world, but American leaders have not yet come to terms with this. Certainly, President Trump has not come to terms with it. It is likely that the next world hegemon will be China, with the other countries trying to follow Carney’s prescription and establishing relationships among themselves to protect against the excesses of the new imperialist.

Haberman and Swan show that, rather than consolidating and defending American power, Trump has accelerated the country’s decline. All of this has happened in the first year of Trump.2. He still has more than half of his term to go. We can only guess what lies ahead.

There is a great deal more in the book, and if you read it you will likely come away with other lessons. You will certainly come away with the conviction that Trump’s disastrous reign can’t end soon enough. That is the fourth meaning of regime change. 

John Isbister

July 11, 2026