America’s global influence is on the decline; arrogant perceptions of the modern isolationist republican party—and its king, Donald Trump—have put America on the backfoot for global competition, allowing other countries, such as communist China, to establish their own spheres of influence. America is boxing itself out from the world and losing its strong advantage of ‘soft power’ (influence instead of military power). Moreover, this isn’t some abstract idea that we ‘may’ see; instead, we are actively watching the crumbling of US influence across the globe. Along with the gutting of USAID, the humanitarian administration created in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy which helped dozens of struggling nations and populations, there is a more fundamental shift in the perception of the US’ role and allies among Republicans. This is challenging the traditional view that the US is here to support a free world. This active “crumbling” through an alignment of Trump with dictatorships is seen in the recent developments in the Russian-Ukrainian War.
Earlier this week on Feb. 18, Russia and the US sent their state representatives to meet in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. At this meeting, Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State, and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, discussed a potential peace between Russia and Ukraine. However, one issue with the Riyadh meeting is blatantly obvious—Ukraine wasn’t invited. And while at first, this may seem like a clever tactic to discuss peace in the Russia-Ukrainian War by talking to each actor, Trump’s comments afterward paint a grisly picture of what’s to come. Instead of supporting global democracy, Trump took a 180 from the Biden administration and actually began insulting the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine, the belligerents in the war. This is just absurd. Trump, from his resort in Mar-a-Lago, said to reporters regarding the concern of Ukrainians for not being invited to Riyadh, “Today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years,” he continued, putting the blame on Ukraine, “You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.” As everyone knows the Russian-Ukrainian War was started by the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and the Ukrainians were forced to scrape together a defense to protect their way of life and prevent utter annexation. When President Zelensky criticized Trump’s comments, Trump responded on Feb. 19, 2025, by saying that Zelensky was a “dictator,” which is baseless and completely false, all while supporting the Russians for trying to “stop the savage barbarianism” in Ukraine.
The reinforcement of the wrong actions of autocratic leaders goes directly against everything the US stands for and everything our allies have come to respect us for. The shift from Biden to Trump—exacerbated by the growing political radicalization in the US– is what is shaking the faith that allies across the world once had in us. By pulling away from the world, we are practically handing China and Russia free strategic footholds from Africa to Asia and Europe to South America. This is a foreign policy disaster since among the US’ tools for maintaining stability are our reach and strength of our diplomatic skills. And if the U.S. continues down this path, we risk a future where authoritarian regimes shape the world order, not democracy. It’s time for Trump to reevaluate our foreign policy priorities to preserve the values and influence that have long made America a global leader.
