IN THE SPAN OF JUST TWO MONTHS, the Trump administration has aligned the United States with Russia against Ukraine, undermined American soft power, and torpedoed relationships with America’s oldest and closest allies. President Donald Trump is intent on abandoning the global economic, political, and security order that has been the foundation of U.S. foreign policy for eighty years, a shift that America’s enemies are openly celebrating. “The new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov recently said. “This largely coincides with our vision.”

Trump and his defenders have a long list of rationalizations for their approach to foreign policy. Trump administration officials say it’s necessary to abandon Europe because the United States is overextended. For example, Vice President JD Vance argues that America has “provided a blanket of security to Europe for far too long.” He has argued that one reason to retreat from Ukraine is to help defend Taiwan from China. The idea that the United States must redirect resources to where they will do the most good sounds plausible enough to most Americans, even if it’s just as difficult to imagine Trump defending Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion or blockade as it is to imagine him protecting one of the Baltic states from Russian aggression.

The Trump administration is attempting to justify the tilt toward Moscow as the only way to bring to an end the bloodshed in Ukraine. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently said: “I think both sides need to come to an understanding that there’s no military solution to this situation” (a recent and convenient revelation for Rubio). The Trump administration caved to many of Vladimir Putin’s demands before he even showed up at the negotiating table—with assurances that Ukraine will never join NATO, for instance. While administration officials like Rubio present the capitulation to Putin as the only way to stop the bleeding in Ukraine, this is just a cynical excuse for abandoning Kyiv. Vance summarized the administration’s true attitude toward the war when he declared, years before Trump chose him as his running mate, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”

Trump’s defenders argue that withdrawing U.S. support for Europe was the only way to convince NATO countries to get serious about defense spending. For starters, this ignores the demonstrable fact that NATO’s European members are already doing so. But it will take many years for Europe to replace the American security umbrella over the continent, and Trump has already permanently undermined NATO deterrence by urging the Russians to “do whatever the hell they want” to allies and expressing skepticism toward collective defense. Trump describes nuclear weapons as the “greatest existential threat” humanity faces, but his plan to desert Europe will make it far more likely that European countries will pursue their own nuclear deterrent. (Contra the administration’s China-firsters, Trump’s vacillating commitment to America’s East Asian allies—which he has likened to the relationship between an insurance company and a customer—could have similar consequences.)

Trump is preparing to abandon America’s NATO allies when they’re years away from being able to effectively protect themselves. The Trump administration could have taken a tough line on Europe without weakening Article 5 deterrence and intentionally detonating the United States’ relations with its closest democratic allies. For example, just as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was telling European governments that they “must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and nonlethal aid to Ukraine,” the Trump administration was simultaneously dismissing the idea that Europe should be part of negotiations over the war. Meanwhile, Trump is threatening Europe with a disastrous trade war while Rubio touts the “incredible opportunities” that a partnership with Russia could bring.

One reason Trump despises international institutions like NATO is that he regards them as constraints on his power. If Russia invades Estonia or Latvia, Trump doesn’t want to be bound by the Article 5 commitment to come to these countries’ defense. He has claimed that he respects Article 5, but he has also openly questioned it and told aides that he wants out of NATO altogether. In the event of further Russian aggression, Trump would rather negotiate directly with Putin on some kind of deal, which would likely sell out the threatened country in the name of maintaining harmonious relations with Moscow. This is why Trump has been so abusive toward Volodymyr Zelensky in negotiations over the Ukraine war—he regards Zelensky as a junior player compared to Putin, which is why he recently told him: “You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards.” Trump apparently believes that powerful countries like Russia and China should be able to bully the countries in their neighborhood—and that includes the United States, which is why he has been threatening Greenland and Panama.

From the Trump administration’s disingenuous arguments for pivoting to Asia to even more disingenuous arguments about stopping the suffering in Ukraine, there’s no good case to be made for a MAGA foreign policy. But the least you can say for these arguments is that they aren’t entirely indefensible: America can’t do everything, so it must scale back its ambitions and focus on more urgent threats like China. The risk of war with Russia is too great, so Washington should make accommodations with Putin. It’s time for Europe to make long-overdue investments in its own defense. Whether you agree with these arguments or not, Americans can have good-faith disagreements about them. The same can’t be said for other elements of the Trump administration’s foreign policy.

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THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HAS HANDED America’s authoritarian enemies huge surprise victories, such as the dismantling of the major institutions of American soft power. First, there was the assault on USAID, which Elon Musk boasted had been fed into the “wood chipper.” Musk describes USAID as an “evil,” “criminal organization” that deserves to “die.” He also says “No one has died as a result of a brief pause to do a sanity check on foreign aid funding.” Beyond the absurdity of describing the demolition of USAID as a “brief pause,” Musk has no clue what the impact of the DOGE blitzkrieg on foreign aid has been. Nicholas Kristof recently reported on multiple deaths already attributable to the cessation of aid. He cited research from the Center for Global Development that found that millions of lives are at risk due to the sudden elimination of American support for HIV prevention and treatment, vaccinations, food aid, and malaria and tuberculosis prevention.

The destruction of USAID isn’t just a moral disgrace—it also terminates one of the greatest sources of global goodwill toward the United States. America has an integral role to play in a vast range of humanitarian programs around the world, from vaccination campaigns to disease outbreak monitoring. The United States accounts for 40 percent of all humanitarian aid tracked by the UN in 2024. Other countries (like China) won’t just attempt to fill this vacuum—they will also exploit a gigantic reservoir of resentment toward America, which will become even larger and deeper once people realize how they were abandoned by the U.S. government. Future programs will be more difficult to start because so much trust has evaporated.

It isn’t just humanitarian aid that Trump has slashed—the administration has done the same with organizations and programs designed to counter authoritarianism and strengthen democracy around the globe. Ninety percent of the democracy aid provided by the United States was managed by the State Department and USAID, and that has all been frozen. The Treasury has also stopped funding the National Endowment for Democracy. These cuts are already having a devastating impact on organizations that monitor elections, deliver development aid and consulting, expose human rights abuses and corruption, provide civic education, and fund media outlets. Every preceding administration—Republican and Democratic—recognized that a more democratic world benefits the United States and decreases the influence of its adversaries. That consensus has been broken. This couldn’t have come at a worse time, as Freedom House reports that “freedom declined around the world for the 19th consecutive year in 2024.”

Perhaps the most visible example of the United States’ turn away from democracy promotion is the defunding of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. On March 14, Trump signed an executive order to shut down all operations of the U.S. Agency for Global Media—which funds RFE/RL and VOA—that aren’t mandated by law. VOA Director Michael Abramowitz said “virtually the entire staff” has been placed on administrative leave, while RFE/RL lost the grants that fund its global operations. Many VOA broadcasts were immediately replaced by music. RFE/RL is still broadcasting, though it’s unclear how long the organization can last.

This may be the greatest single blow ever inflicted on American soft power. VOA started broadcasting less than two months after Pearl Harbor to counter Nazi propaganda—its first broadcast could be heard in German on February 1, 1942. By early 1943, 27 language services were on air. RFE/RL was founded in 1950 to broadcast news behind the Iron Curtain (often from Soviet and Eastern European emigres), including information about listeners’ own countries. Both organizations have been active ever since, broadcasting in fifty languages and reaching hundreds of millions of people each week. After the invasion of Ukraine, RFE/RL journalists risked their lives to cover the conflict and documented war crimes in places like Bucha. Both organizations are a vital source of information for millions of listeners in closed societies.

In early 1953, Sen. Joseph McCarthy accused VOA of subversive activity. The agency’s budget was cut, transmitter construction was halted, and there was a wave of firings and resignations. But VOA survived and continued to broadcast for the next 72 years, helping to end the Soviet Empire, win the Cold War, and bring freedom to millions—until Trump decided that the only voice America needed was his.

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WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF DESTROYING the organs of American soft power? It certainly isn’t to save money—foreign aid accounted for between 0.7 and 1.4 percent of the federal budget since 2001. Trump could cover that by making his proposed tax cuts a little less extensive. If Trump and Musk wanted to make the United States’ engagement with the world more effective, they would have a plan to replace the agencies they’re eliminating, or give these agencies a chance to implement cost-cutting measures of their own. Instead, the Trump administration is taking a chainsaw to the traditional conception of American leadership in the world because it is ideologically opposed to this leadership. There’s no reason to improve democracy promotion if you think the United States has no business promoting democracy in the first place. There’s no need to undermine authoritarian governments if you want to partner with them—or to be one.

Musk describes USAID as a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America” and a “radical-left political psy op.” When one X user described the agency as the “most gigantic global terror organization in history,” Musk responded with a dart-hitting-the-target emoji. This mirrors the propaganda authoritarian states have been spreading for years, which is why they cheered the administration’s attacks on USAID, RFE/RL, VOA, and other pro-democracy organizations within or supported by the U.S. government. The Global Times, a Chinese state media outlet, gleefully declared that VOA has been “discarded like a dirty rag.” The editor of Russia’s global propaganda network, RT, announced: “This is an awesome decision by Trump! We couldn’t shut them down, unfortunately, but America did so itself.”

People in Trump’s orbit don’t just regard democracy aid as a waste of money—they argue that it is part of a sinister effort to destabilize governments and foment regime change around the world. Authoritarian leaders have heard the message loud and clear. Serbian strongman Aleksandar Vučić (in power since 2014) has been facing mass protests against his regime, and he responded by launching an assault against pro-democracy NGOs. Because some of these organizations received a small proportion of their funding from USAID, the Serbian government has justified its actions by referring to Musk’s declaration that the agency is a “criminal organization.” State prosecutor Nenad Stefanović even suggested that the NGOs are guilty of money laundering, as they deployed funds provided by an organization accused of criminal activity. On a recent episode of his podcast, Donald Trump Jr. asked Vučić whether the protests against him were “manufactured,” and the Serbian president blamed USAID.

This example of an authoritarian leader cynically exploiting Trump’s attack on American democracy aid is a blueprint for other illiberal governments around the world. The success of USAID and American pro-democracy programs will now be weaponized against the courageous journalists and activists who benefited from these programs everywhere. When a Serbian journalist recently asked Vučić about accusations that his son has links to organized crime, he snapped back: “How much money have you received from USAID?” Some of the most engaged members of civil resistance movements across the authoritarian world—people whom the United States supported until two months ago—will now have targets on their backs. Dictators will feel emboldened to clamp down on pro-democracy groups like never before, especially if they have any connections to the United States.

The authoritarian world has noticed that Trump feels greater solidarity with dictators like Putin than democratic leaders. During the Oval Office meeting when he and Vance attacked Zelensky, Trump said: “Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt.” You’ll never hear him speak that warmly about Zelensky or any of the United States’ other democratic allies. This is because Trump and Putin share a geopolitical vision—they want a world in which powerful countries are free to do as they please without worrying about human rights, democracy, or the rule of law. It’s no wonder that Trump is hostile toward international laws and institutions—he doesn’t even respect the laws and institutions of the United States, declaring that “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law” and demanding the removal of judges who issue rulings he dislikes.

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THERE’S NO GREAT MYSTERY behind Trump’s dismantling of the agencies responsible for spreading democracy and American values around the world. Corrupt politicians are natural foes of anti-corruption NGOs. Authoritarians are hostile to pro-democracy activists. A president who wants to do business with authoritarian leaders and who doesn’t want to be constrained by democratic allies and institutions is doing everything in his power to sideline those allies and destroy those institutions.

The Trump administration and its defenders will continue to deliver lectures about the hard realities of geopolitics and the need to accommodate and befriend the world’s most vicious dictators. They will continue to lie about organizations like USAID, whose legacy is a standing reproach to their authoritarianism and corruption. Trump can’t tell the truth about his foreign policy vision because he wants to sacrifice the real source of American power—the liberal international order that has been maintained by every postwar U.S. president—to increase his own personal power.

This is why it’s so important to understand the implications of Trump’s attacks on the rapidly shrinking pro-democracy faction of the U.S. government. These attacks aren’t born of geopolitical or financial necessity. They do nothing except harm America’s friends and benefit our adversaries. The dictatorships in Moscow and Beijing celebrated the shuttering of America’s great civil society organizations because Trump has dragged the United States down to their level. He has turned the “arsenal of democracy” into just another marauding, transactional authoritarian power. The purpose of Trump’s assault on the defenders of democracy in America and abroad is as vivid as it is terrifying: He sees no reason why democracy should restrain any leader, because he sees no reason why it should restrain him.

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