Aside from disinformation by programmed negative Democrats, extremists of all kinds, and their always gloom-supporting media allies, the end of this year’s news is generally good.
If the latest economic signals continue, the Trump domestic strategy is working. If events in our hemisphere follow current trends, our neighborhood’s security will improve. And if diplomacy underway in troubled distant lands succeeds, a period of peace and prosperity will begin to replace current chronic violence, hostilities, and destruction.
Nothing in global affairs is certain, of course, but a persisting sense of drift and incoherency that has existed in recent years at home, nearby, and far away is evaporating as a more hopeful period of global geopolitics comes into view.
Changes of this magnitude are not accidental.
Long-term uncertainties remain as populous India and China further industrialize, and Iran and North Korea continue to spew aggression and threat. The Middle East remains a hotspot of potential trouble. Global technological advances like AI and Nature itself will also always supply us with challenges and surprises.
But the notion that the initiatives of the new federal government are failing is simply fake news. Prognostications of doom are the propaganda of those who oppose the Trump administration for self-serving partisan reasons.
At home, developments like control of our borders, deportations of criminal and terrorist-linked illegal aliens, elimination of massive economic fraud of federal resources, lower taxes, diminished inflation, significantly improved national economic conditions, elimination of counterproductive federal regulations, a turnaround in energy production, and a rise in new industries and jobs for American workers are all creating a renewed sense of hope and optimism.
Throughout South and Central America, voters are choosing conservative leaders and governments to replace leftist and socialist oligarchic leaders and chronically failed regimes. Attempts by distant autocratic superpowers to infiltrate and control smaller nations in the hemisphere are being repulsed by a renewed Monroe Doctrine.
Diplomatic settlements, serious negotiations, temporary ceasefires, and new regional alliances are also coming to fruition. President Trump has decided no conflict is too small, nor any hostility too large for warring parties to find some negotiated way to avoid ongoing violence and bloodshed. Less than one year into his second term, he has already brokered an end to more than a half-dozen conflicts.
While leaders of the various European nations indulged in empty and misdirected condemnations of Israel when it responded to murderous attacks on its civilians in a surprise invasion in October 2023, the U.S. stood by its ally and assisted in its efforts to eliminate the terrorism originating in Gaza and supported by Iran’s proxies throughout the region. When necessary, Trump also took decisive action to strike against Iran itself, eliminating its ability to quickly produce a nuclear weapon.
When the time came to end hostilities in Gaza, only the U.S. was able to impose a ceasefire that brought the hostages home and created a phased plan to bring some peace to the region and provide a framework for new alliances. The situation there today is far more stable than when Trump took office.
In Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of young soldiers as well as civilians were dying and more were being wounded and made homeless in a war with no end in sight, feckless Europe and China were unable to create an environment for negotiations. But President Trump is doing so.
In numerous local disputes between small nations and even some large ones, it was not the United Nations or any world leader who intervened before hostilities got out of hand. Instead, it was President Trump who got involved and brought about settlements. His business acumen for cutting deals has time and again proven instrumental in international diplomacy.
President Trump also has led efforts to create and enlarge the Abraham Accords, to make NATO more self-reliant, to rewrite better trade agreements with America’s North American neighbors and other allies around the world, and to block malign foreign infiltration in South America.
This is hardly a list of failures. It is instead a list of a remarkable number of achievements and movements in the right direction in less than the first year of a new administration in Washington, D.C. There is no telling what curveballs 2026 might bring, but there is no doubt that the country is now on strong footing to deal with them.
What a difference an election can make!
Barry Casselman is a contributor to AMAC Newsline.
