U.S. foreign policy has moved away from leading the free world towards mimicking the strongman, autocratic behaviors of adversaries. By abandoning democratic allies and adopting aggressive, unilateral actions, the U.S. is now reacting to and copying other global powers rather than setting the international agenda.

The US has shifted from anchoring a liberal international order to signaling it stands for nothing beyond its own power and interests. This amoral, transactional stance has alienated democratic allies and eroded the nation's soft power on the world stage.

The United States' greatest strategic advantage over competitors like China is its vast ecosystem of over 50 wealthy, advanced, allied nations. China has only one treaty ally: North Korea. Weakening these alliances through punitive actions is a critical foreign policy error that erodes America's primary source of global strength.

A country's power on the world stage is not just military or economic might, but its belief in its own value system. When a nation ceases to indoctrinate its next generation with these values and loses the will to defend them, it cedes global influence to other powers with stronger ideological conviction.

National security requires a toolbox of military, economic, political, and cultural instruments. The Trump administration has focused almost exclusively on military power, degrading the capacity of other essential tools and leaving the U.S. more isolated on the world stage.

A nation that can no longer get cooperation through seduction and shared values must resort to coercion. Trump's proposed $1.5 trillion military budget is a symptom of this decline, reflecting an empire that must use force or the threat of it to enforce its will on the world stage.

Despite claims of being 'realist,' Trump's foreign policy is fundamentally anti-realist. By alienating allies, cutting R&D, and acting imprudently, it undermines the very sources of long-term American power—partnerships and technological superiority—that a true realist would seek to preserve.

Bill Burns argues that abandoning alliances and diplomacy for a narrow, hard-power-focused "self-interest" achieves for adversaries what they could not do themselves, describing it as a self-inflicted wound that undermines American power.

"Strength" is a limited capability (e.g., rockets), while "power" is the sum of all capabilities (diplomatic, economic, etc.). By focusing on demonstrating "strength," the U.S. depletes its finite military resources and erodes its diplomatic "power" and influence, ultimately making the nation weaker.