Follow us on social

World leaders misdiagnose the US with a crisis of confidence

World leaders misdiagnose the US with a crisis of confidence

We don’t need psychoanalysis or self-serving cheerleading about how ‘indispensable’ America is. We need sober advice on how to responsibly back off


Analysis | Global Crises

Is America experiencing a crisis of confidence? That is the assessment of some world leaders from allied and partner nations in recent months.

Former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen criticized the U.S. at the start of the year, “Recent global events in the Taiwan Strait, in the Middle East, in Ukraine are all results of American hesitance to actually lead.”

As he addressed Congress earlier this month, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida chided his audience for what he called “an undercurrent of self-doubt among some Americans about what your role in the world should be.”

One implication of these complaints is that the world would supposedly become more stable and secure if the U.S. simply possessed and demonstrated greater resolve. Given the wreckage created by American hubris during the first part of this century, we know that this is not true.

Another implication is that the U.S. should never reconsider or question its “leadership” role, as if the arrangements that were made after 1945 or 1991 are immutable for all time. According to this view, adopting a different strategy, shifting burdens to allies, or reducing commitments are all beyond the pale and a sign of irresolution.

The critics are mistaken about all this, and Americans should have the confidence to ignore them.

One of the biggest problems with our foreign policy is that U.S. policymakers remain enthusiastic about a “leadership” role that is ill-suited to current realities. American power is in relative decline, but our foreign policy is still defined by the pursuit of dominance in every region. Our political leaders are eager to reaffirm and expand U.S. commitments without any real debate over the risks or the resources that will be needed to make good on those commitments.

Consider the last few years. NATO expands as if on autopilot. The president pledges to send U.S. forces to defend Taiwan when we have no treaty obligation to do so. Every commitment to every ally, partner, and client is said to be “ironclad” and therefore beyond serious scrutiny.

Is this the behavior of a government that is hesitant and unsure about its international role, or is it the record of one that can’t say no to new entanglements? Far from suffering from a crisis of confidence, the U.S. still seems far too sure of itself. The U.S. doesn’t need to hear self-serving cheerleading from allies about how “indispensable” it is. It needs sober advice on how it can responsibly unwind the many unnecessary commitments it has accumulated over generations.

Instead of cutting back, the U.S. keeps taking on new dependents as if its power and resources were unlimited. The reality of overstretch becomes harder to ignore with each new addition. To the extent that U.S. resolve is being questioned in other capitals, it is the result of spreading around so many promises of support that it becomes difficult to believe them all.

Americans absolutely should be questioning our country’s role in the world. Besides being an essential part of democratic self-government, a thorough reassessment of our foreign policy is long overdue. One of the reasons why U.S. foreign policy has been so dysfunctional and destructive in so many places is that core assumptions about the U.S. role in the world haven’t been challenged and interrogated often enough.

The U.S. would avoid a lot of pitfalls if it didn’t arrogate to itself the role of dictating terms to other states and policing their behavior. What Prime Minister Kishida calls self-doubt is a hard-earned sense of humility that some Americans have learned from decades of costly and bloody policy failures. U.S. foreign policy has been marred by misguided ideological zeal for so long that we could stand to have a lot more doubting and questioning.

A major flaw in our foreign policy debates is that our policymakers often fail to recognize policy failure and insist on plowing ahead with more of the same. The continued U.S. use of broad sanctions is one example of this. Despite considerable evidence over the decades that they achieve none of the government’s stated policy goals and cause significant harm to the civilian population of the targeted countries, the U.S. relies on the economic weapon more heavily now than ever before.

Waging economic war on recalcitrant states is one of the ways that Washington routinely exercises its “leadership,” and in practically every case that exercise of “leadership” has backfired and exacerbated the problem that the sanctions were supposed to ameliorate. The terrible results of the “maximum pressure” campaigns against Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea speak for themselves. If anything should cause people in Washington to doubt U.S. “leadership,” it is the repeated failure of sanctions, but nothing like that has happened.

Refusing to question the current U.S. role in the world is a path to stagnation and eventually exhaustion. An overcommitted U.S. cannot honor all the promises it makes. If nothing changes, that will set the U.S. up for humiliating climbdowns or dangerous conflicts in the future. It would be far wiser for Washington to begin shifting responsibilities to capable allies now instead of trying to shore up an unsustainable status quo.

The U.S. must be able to adapt its foreign policy to present-day realities, and that will necessarily involve reassessing the nature and extent of U.S. involvement in several regions. Clinging to tired dogmas about “leadership” that were created for a different world locks the U.S. into an overly ambitious and dangerous strategy whose costs far exceed the benefits.

The U.S. needs to have the confidence to reject a strategy that does such a poor job of advancing and securing American interests.


Wonder AI

Analysis | Global Crises
Eisenhower and Nasser
Top photo credit: President Eisenhower and Egyptian President Nasser on sidelines of UN General Assembly in Waldorf Astoria presidential suite, New York in 1960. (public domain)

If Israel goes it alone is it risking another 'Suez'?

Middle East

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to accelerate his war against Iran with direct, offensive assistance from Washington — at a moment when there is less support for it than ever among the American people.

Netanyahu must expect that Washington will be compelled to accommodate and, if necessary, implement Israel’s expansive war aims – notably the complete destruction of Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missile capabilities, and even regime change itself. U.S. assistance is widely considered to be critical to Israel’s success in this regard.

keep readingShow less
US Navy Taiwan Strait
TAIWAN STRAIT (August 23, 2019) – US Naval Officers scan the horizon from the bridge while standing watch, part of Commander, Amphibious Squadron 11, operating in the Indo-Pacific region to enhance interoperability with partners and serve as a ready-response force for any type of contingency. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Markus Castaneda)

Despite setbacks, trends still point to US foreign policy restraint

Military Industrial Complex

It’s been only a few days since Israel first struck Iranian nuclear and regime targets, but Washington’s remaining neoconservatives and long-time Iran hawks are already celebrating.

After more than a decade of calling for military action against Iran, they finally got their wish — sort of. The United States did not immediately join Israel’s campaign, but President Donald Trump acquiesced to Israel’s decision to use military force and has not meaningfully restrained Israel’s actions. For those hoping Trump would bring radical change to U.S. foreign policy, his failure to halt Israel’s preventative war is a disappointment and a betrayal of past promises.

keep readingShow less
iraqi protests iran israel
Top photo credit: Iraqi Shi'ite Muslims hold a cutout of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as they attend a protest against Israeli strikes on Iran, in Baghdad, Iraq, June 16, 2025. REUTERS/Ahmed Saad

Iraq on razor's edge between Iran and US interests in new war

Middle East

As Israeli jets and Iranian rockets streak across the Middle Eastern skies, Iraq finds itself caught squarely in the crossfire.

With regional titans clashing above its head, Iraq’s fragile and hard-won stability, painstakingly rebuilt over decades of conflict, now hangs precariously in the balance. Washington’s own tacit acknowledgement of Iraq’s vulnerable position was laid bare by its decision to partially evacuate embassy personnel in Iraq and allow military dependents to leave the region.

This withdrawal, prompted by intelligence indicating Israeli preparations for long-range strikes, highlighted that Iraq’s airspace would be an unwitting corridor for Israeli and Iranian operations.

Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani is now caught in a complicated bind, attempting to uphold Iraq’s security partnership with the United States while simultaneously facing intense domestic pressure from powerful, Iran-aligned Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) factions. These groups, emboldened by the Israel-Iran clash, have intensified their calls for American troop withdrawal and threaten renewed attacks against U.S. personnel, viewing them as legitimate targets and enablers of Israeli aggression.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.