Ryan Crocker is a longtime diplomat who has served as the ambassador to several Middle Eastern countries, and John McLaughlin was the deputy director of the C.I.A. under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. As experts in the delicate business of international coöperation, they are both dubious of Trump’s nationalist pronouncements—and of his method of making them. “The world is a complicated place,” McLaughlin tells New Yorker contributor Robin Wright, “and it doesn’t yield well to tweets.” They believe that if the U.S. cedes its role in the world order, it may lead us back to the darkest days of the twentieth century.