America Cast Itself as the World’s Moral Leader. Not Anymore

Over the past century, US foreign policy has been guided by the notion that as a country we’d do well by doing good—that there are dividends, both moral and material, from helping our friends and neighbors. Now the administration of President Donald Trump is unraveling that philosophy with startling speed. How other branches of the American government, countries and multinational companies respond in the months and years ahead will be the defining question of at least the rest of our lives.

America’s practitioners of altruistic statecraft were famous for their high-minded ideals and soaring rhetoric. “I need not tell you gentlemen that the world situation is very serious,” said Secretary of State George Marshall in 1947 to students at Harvard University, in a speech still replete with historical resonance. He was introducing the Marshall Plan, the program to rebuild the war-torn countries of Western Europe. “It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.”