America Must Win Back Its Global Standing

“From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land,” President Donald Trump declared in his inaugural address in January 2017. “From this moment on, it’s going to be America First.” An insular, populist nationalism, coupled with an antipathy toward globalist ideas and institutions, became the central theme and the clarion call of both his terms in the White House. President Trump has spent considerable energy lambasting the United Nations, an institution the United States helped create 80 years ago and has shaped ever since. He has derided it as an “unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy,” and little more than “a talking shop.” A majority of Americans no longer agree with their president. In a Sept. 2025 global poll commissioned by The Rockefeller Foundation, 61% of American respondents agreed that their country should cooperate with others to solve global challenges, even if doing so meant compromising on some national interests. Only 16% responded with a no. Such American support for international cooperation has only increased. When the same question was posed in the 2026 iteration of the poll, which surveyed more than 35,000 people across 34 countries, support in t...