A substantial congressional delegation—eight senators and Representative Mike Gallagher—tried to reassure those gathered that America still valued the countries that share its political creed and shoulder common burdens. But none of those members of Congress present are major political forces in the American legislature. John McCain, who had long led the congressional delegation to Halifax, was tearfully eulogized—but he had no clear heir.

The Forum awarded the inaugural McCain Prize for Leadership in Public Service to the people of Greece’s island of Lesbos for upholding the West’s values by tending to illegal immigrants teeming to their shores. Kevin Baron from Defense One challenged Dunford about the hypocrisy of celebrating Greek assistance to migrants while deploying U.S. forces to prevent migrants from coming to the United States. Dunford acquitted himself well, modeling textbook military subordination to civilian control by refusing to allow himself to be drawn into debating the president’s policies. But you could feel the discouragement of American allies in the room.

Richard Fontaine: Trump gets NATO backwards

The United States has never been as good as its billing and is—thankfully—almost always better than its government. United Nations Secretary General António Guterres previously announced that the first country to meet its Paris-climate-accord goals will likely be the United States of America—despite Trump withdrawing from the accords and the federal government acting in overt hostility to them. The golden state of California and mayors of 31 cities, as well as American businesses and consumers, are driving compliance irrespective of the federal government.

It’s not just that allies don’t believe the reassuring voices in the administration; they are tired of tuning in to the malicious circus of American politics and policies. They’re exhausted with our solipsism and drama, and disappointed with our indifference to anyone else’s problems and politics. They are resigning themselves to a world without American inspiration or partnership, to a post-American international order.

The Americans present at the conference pointed to policy successes, like the establishment of NATO’s 30-30-30 rapid-deployment forces, U.S. troops deploying to Poland, reconstituting the Second Fleet to patrol the Atlantic, and integral U.S. participation in NATO’s biggest military exercise since the end of the Cold War. But allies are getting tired of hearing it. Not only were those successes overshadowed by Trump’s offensive behavior, the incandescence of his public rage called into question whether the United States would come to the defense of its allies in a crisis.

Read: Has the Western world started shunning America?

The decibel level of mean-spiritedness coming from the highest levels of American government is deafening our friends to our better selves. Allies believe they are witnessing something they never expected to behold, and which endangers both their security and our own: the United States putting an end to the American order. Word came through during the Forum that NATO will not be holding a 70th-anniversary celebration, because the president of the United States cannot be trusted not to bring the temple down upon all our heads. That was the dirge played in Halifax.

* This article originally misstated the year the Olympics were held in Berlin.

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