What a wonderful world it won’t be Noah Smith (Noahpinion) published a grim picture of what the world might look like if Donald Trump regains the U.S. presidency. He’s admittedly not an expert on geoplitics. Neither am I. But you should read it. It’s compelling. So much of our focus is captured by concerns closer to home: to women’s reproductive freedoms in our country, to our economy, to the threat Trump and Project 2025 pose to the future of our adolescent republic, to the horse-race dynamics of our presidential contest, etc. Smith asks us to pull back and consider the global implications of a second Trump presidency on a world threatened by what he calls the New Axis: North Korea, Russia, and China. Smith warns, “The free world is teetering on the edge of a knife.” The United States since World War II has been the indispensable nation, the anchor for the western alliance that held the Soviet bloc in check during the Cold War. That was our pride. That was the problem: But the U.S.’ importance to the democratic alliance system always represented a single point of failure. If America’s political will ever collapsed, it would leave Europe and Asia abruptly vulnerable to the might of a rising China or a resurgent Russia. During the 2000s and 2010s, there were ominous signs that such a collapse might happen. Political polarization increased alarmingly, the legislature became increasingly dysfunctional, government shutdowns and debt ceiling fights became routine, and progressives and conservatives developed their…