One of the most distressing developments of the last month has been the unprovoked surrender by our country’s leaders of America’s position in the world. Much of this has not materially affected me (yet), since as usual the biggest victims are the poor and vulnerable. But I don’t think even affluent Americans should discount the loss and trauma we are experiencing. We grew up in a country that (imperfectly) stood for values and principles and generally elected leaders that tried to represent them. We took pride in the national conscience that led us to fight against dictators and warmongers around the world, even when they didn’t directly threaten our own borders.
Our motivations for this were not entirely altruistic, which is why it’s even more astonishing how quickly they’re being abandoned. USAID did a lot of good in the world and saved a lot of lives, which made it something for Americans to morally be proud of. But it was also a significant part of our strategic exercise of soft power to create a world that made America safer and more prosperous. Its dismantling is both a strategic and moral loss.
Our relationships with allies on our own continent and around the world was also central to our commitment to maintaining a world order that served America well. NATO and America’s projection of military strength with bases in friendly countries across the globe enabled us to project a stabilizing influence throughout the world. There are those who have criticized our role as “the world’s policeman,” some pointing to how this has at times had negative unintended consequences, and others seeing it as little more than a handout to other nations. There may be some truth to these, but what they miss is the bigger picture. These hard power investments must be seen as part of a larger strategy to prevent the world-threatening conflicts of the 20th century from repeating. Both because these were horrific human tragedies, but also because they endangered America.
These investments in global stability go hand-in-hand with international trade which is fair and not punitive. There is a lot to be said for the stabilizing influence of economic integration. The more economically isolated a country, the less skin in the game they have in this global order. A country that buys and sells from lots of other countries is not generally going to want to do something to upset that arrangement. This alone is not a perfect guarantee that nations will get along, and it also has limits (the belief that economic integration with China would naturally lead to its political liberalization has proven false). But it’s part of this larger system that has held since WWII, and these friendships and ties with other countries were instrumental to the West’s victory in the Cold War and the prosperity that followed.
All of this speaks to the importance of friendship and trust. Countries that see each other as adversaries or at least fair-weather “friends” whose loyalty is fragile, will seek to separate economically and militarily from those countries as a defense mechanism. This may bring some short-term benefits in the form of boosting certain domestic industries and saving some military costs. But it makes everyone weaker, including the countries that ostensibly need it the least. America may be strong on its own, but we should not ignore how much of our strength relies on our ability to work constructively with and influence other countries to pursue policies that are mutually beneficial.
This failure to grasp the power of mutual benefit is I think the fundamental weakness in Trump’s view of the world. As others have observed (especially Jonah Goldberg, who has an excellent podcast episode on this whole topic), Trump is probably best understood as a gangster. He sees the world through the lens of power imbalances, zero-sum competition and territorial zones of control. There are two kinds of interactions: those with weaker counterparties within their own “territory,” where they can exercise their power to bully and extract concessions, and those with the powerful bosses of other territories, where they agree not to compete and largely stay out of each other’s way.
Trump doesn’t seem to understand that America is in a stronger position when it is not one of several powers with influence over different parts of the world but rather part of a coalition of allies across the globe, and which uses those relationships to contain and sideline misbehaving powers like Russia and increasingly China. Rather, he seems willing to give that up in order to focus on our zone of influence and leave Europe and Asia to fend for themselves against the “bosses” of Putin and Xi. He seems happy to forgo global influence in order to play the mob boss over our weaker neighbors in North America and places like Greenland. He’s a bully that would rather dominate his playground than interfere with the bullies in the playground across the street, even if this lets them gain strength and potentially plan to gang up on him later. He may find that if and when they do so, the “friends” he was abusing abandon him rather than rally behind him.
Weak and insecure people find it more satisfying to feel the rush of dominance in easy conflicts, like threatening 25% tariffs against Canada or extorting Ukraine, than it is to stand up to true threats like Russia or China. Trump’s parroting of false Russian talking points on the issue of Ukraine, his willingness to overrule a bipartisan law against China’s TikTok, and to back down on issues like the de minimis exemption for Chinese imports all paint a picture of a weak man who acts tough around his friends but cowers in the face of those he fears. And who fails to realize those adversaries are beatable, especially if he were to build relationships with rather than alienate those friends.
Ultimately this shift in strategy and posture toward the rest of the world represents a massively short-sighted (and entirely self-inflicted) loss. Decades of careful investments have been seriously undermined almost overnight. And while the consequences may not be obvious right away, I see this as a truly frightening development. The world I thought my daughter would inherit may not exist, replaced by a poorer, less stable one in which her country is an instigator of unrest rather than an imperfect but well-intentioned promotor of global peace and prosperity. This is a traumatic thing to experience, and whether we are personally experiencing the consequences of this shift first-hand as many others are, or witnessing it through disheartening news reports, it is a national tragedy whose effects will ultimately touch us all. Our best hope remains that enough Americans do experience or witness these effects - and recognize them for what they are - to speak up and vote against it whenever we get the chance. Rebuilding will take time but is possible. But only if Americans understand the value of what we had and the reality of what is being done to it.