America’s Global PR Crisis
Trump’s presidency has led to a lessening of confidence in U.S. leadership abroad that undermines U.S. foreign policy
By David Chmielewski
The Progressive Teen Staff Writer
IT HAS OFTEN BEEN OBSERVED that the Trump presidency has been a boon for American comedians and that observation holds true around the world. An Ethiopian comedian wears a blonde wig and delivers as speech as Donald Trump saying Trump would donate his hair to Africa. A Dutch show features a bit with a Trump impersonation explaining that Trump should place the Netherlands second. These examples are not just amusing anecdotes that show how comedians aboard have reacted to Trump. They point to a deeper Trump-caused problem that future presidents will have to grapple; the fact that much of the world no longer trusts or respects the United States.
Polling has made clear that since Trump’s election the world has continuously lost trust in the United States. According to a Gallup poll published in January of 2018 that asked people across the globe if they approved of American leadership, approval in American leadership decreased 18% from the last year of Obama’s presidency and disapproval increased by 15%. And as Julie Ray notes in a story about the poll for Gallup, America’s new 43% disapproval rating abroad “set a new record as well, not only for the U.S. but for any other major global power that Gallup has asked about in the past decade.”
Gallup’s results are supported by a slightly older Pew Research Center report from June of 2017 that also found significant declines in global trust in American leadership. In fact, the results of Pew’s polling are even more drastic than Gallup’s finding. Pew found that 74% of those polled from 37 countries expressed no confidence in American leadership under President Trump, compared to just 23% having no confidence under President Obama. This drastic drop was replicated across several key allies such as Germany (a 75% drop), the United Kingdom (a 57% drop), Japan (a 54% drop), and South Korea (a 71% drop). Confidence in American leadership only increased in 2 of the 37 countries analyzed: Russia and Israel. Equally alarming, Pew found that people have less confidence in Donald Trump, and the US by extension, to do the right than they do the leaders of China and Russia.
It is unsurprising to see this growing mistrust in the United States given the actions the Trump administration has taken. As Trump promised in his inauguration speech, his administration’s foreign policy would be centered around the principle of “only America first, America first.” But as evidenced by America’s plummeting approval ratings abroad, an America First agenda is very unpopular among the countries that Trump wants to relegate to number two. This actions taken on the basis of that rhetoric are even more unpopular, as can be seen by how many worlds leader condemned Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord. Things like castigating NATO allies for not spending enough on their military are additional examples of how Trump has weakened the United State’s standing abroad.
Polling suggests that many Republican’s are perfectly fine with this. According to a Pew Research poll published in advance of the 2018 State of the Union, a majority of Republicans think that the United States should only follow its own interests when it disagrees with allies. This view is shared by many Republican leaders in the realm of foreign policy such as Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton, who often rejects international cooperation as shown by his statement that if the United Nations’ headquarters “lost ten stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” To many Republicans, American interests come first regardless of how other nations view that focus.
However, this view is dangerous because reputation can often be just as important as military strength. Soft power is all the aspects aside from coercion and payment a nation uses to influence others and as Max Boot explains in Foreign Policy, “America’s success as a superpower has rested on our ‘soft power.’” A key component of soft power, as Harvard professor and coiner of the term Joseph S. Nye Jr. notes, is whether a nation’s foreign policy is “seen as legitimate and having moral authority”. So when Trump undercuts trust in American foreign policy abroad, he damages American soft power. This is a problem because as Nye also explains in a 2006 piece for Foreign Policy “Soft power is more relevant than ever,” and Nye’s words ring true to this day. Major breakthroughs such as the Iran Nuclear Deal were only achieved through soft power and in dealing with major crisis in the future (like the need for an international response to Russia’s increased belligerence), soft power will still be needed. By dragging America into a global PR Crisis, Trump simultaneously weakens America’s ability to achieve crucial national security objectives.
