I understand you had a striking exchange in conversation with a senior African diplomat recently. What happened?

The exchange was with a former foreign minister of an East African country. We spoke several months ago while I was in his country to meet with army officers for my research on civil - military relations. Well read and well informed, he expressed distress over what he saw as the Trump Administration's attack on the foundations of American power in the world. He compared Trump to Gorbachev. I was curious about this comparison, given that most Americans generally view Gorbachev in a positive light.

He explained that Russians know Gorbachev as the man who destroyed a superpower. He said that "Trump is your Gorbachev" because he is also destroying his country's global power. He noted that Trump was systematically undermining the architecture of American power, such as NATO and all sorts of other arenas of cooperation that make America essential in the calculations of other countries. He pointed to people like Sebastian Gorka and took the time to find out who he and some of the other advisors actually are. His country, he explained, prefers to get advice from "reality-based professionals" and wondered how others in the American political establishment could tolerate people who are so harmful to American power.