Kuala Lampur, Nov. 13 -- One year into Donald Trump's second term, the world is learning a brutal truth: America hasn't returned. America has turned inward, sideways, and unpredictably feral.

And for a small trading nation like Malaysia, sitting between the ambitions of Beijing and the insecurities of Washington, nothing is more dangerous than a superpower that no longer knows what it wants.

Because today, the United States is doing something far more destabilising than declining - it is misfiring.

1. Trump's America is now a domestic battlefield

Trump didn't just deploy troops.

He poured the American military into American cities in ways not seen in the modern era.

* 38,000+ National Guard troops sent into blue cities regardless of...