Since the end of World War II, the United States worked to establish a rules-based international order built on cooperation, multilateralism, and free trade.

These efforts, across many presidencies, created a world of nations committed to liberal policies, freedom, shared prosperity, and global peace. The United States and its allies forged a more democratic world, an American world, with the United States as a clear hegemon, often revered for its culture, civil society, and economic strength.

As the Trump administration pulls back, devoted to an “America First” ideology, it becomes evident that we are living in an American world without an American hegemon. As China and other countries rise, America’s relative power inevitably declines, but an American president trying to shrink back to his national borders is a new sight in modern history.

Pulling back from the world creates a two-pronged issue.

First, the United States gives latitude to rising, undemocratic countries such as China and Russia to enact illiberal policies at home and shift international norms.

Second, the United States’ democratic allies — who bolstered U.S. hegemony through the second half of the 20th and early 21st century with blood, treasure, and political support — are signaling a willingness to go their own way. Both factors harm the United States and its standing in the world.

Russia and China

Following the end of the Cold War, the United States engaged with Russia and China, aiming to integrate both countries into the global economy and international community.

In regard to China, according to Daniel Williams, the U.S.

hoped that a richer China would eventually become a more democratic China, as the growth of the middle class produced pressures for political reform. America’s integration policy would simultaneously give Beijing an equity stake in the existing, U.S.-led liberal order and thereby deprive Chinese leaders of reasons for challenging it.

In regard to Russia, according to Angela Stent, the U.S. had two main policy goals:

The first was integrating the new Russia into Euro-Atlantic and global institutions; the second, if that did not work out, was ensuring that Russia not thwart America’s commitment to create a peaceful, rules-based post-Cold War order.

Today, China and Russia are the primary challengers to American hegemony — the State Department named China and Russia “forces of instability” — but President Trump seldom criticizes his counterparts in Beijing and Moscow. Despite Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, and hostile annexation of Crimea, Trump calls for Russia to be allowed back into the G-8.

On May 13, the president announced he would help ZTE, a Chinese telecom company, which had been banned from the United States. ZTE violated U.S. law by helping Iran and North Korea get around sanctions, and the U.S. intelligence community believes Chinese intelligence could use ZTE devices to spy on Americans and steal intellectual property.

Even more troubling: Trump revealed this move following a state-owned Chinese construction company’s announcement that it would invest $500 million in a Trump-linked development project in Indonesia.

China is working furiously to fill the power vacuum left by American withdrawal. A prime method is foreign investments, most notably as part of the ambitious Belt and Road initiative. Chinese President Xi Jinping put forth this project — formerly known as “One Belt One Road” — as a response to the Obama administration’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), from which the Trump administration withdrew.

This emulates America’s rise through diplomacy, economic investment, and military investment, but China has an advantage with non-democratic countries due to foreign aid political conditionality.

Whereas the United States and other wealthy democracies often criticize human-rights violations and withhold aid, China champions non-interference in domestic affairs. Chinese investments are thus turning some nations in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa away from the U.S. and E.U., and from democracy.

Democratic Allies

Since the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump has worried American allies, questioning the value of the NATO and frequently construing European and East Asian partners as a burden. America’s democratic alliances are essential to its status as “first among equals” in a multipolar world, but Europeans and the American government are moving apart.

The Pew Research Center’s 2017 Global Attitudes survey found a significant decline in the “confidence of the U.S. president to do the right thing regarding world affairs.” Many of the U.S.’ closest allies shifted dramatically downward. Americans’ trust in the government is also collapsing, making it more difficult to lead abroad.

President Trump has made it clear he has little interest in a multilateral approach to global governance, and continues to claim the U.S. has been taken advantage of by its partners. Trump appears more willing to accommodate bad actors like Kim Jung-un, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Vladimir Putin, than the United States’ long-standing allies. He is willing to make dramatic moves like pulling out of the Iran Deal and moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, undeterred by the pleas of America’s friends.

The president’s recent public spats with the leaders of France and Canada, and his decision to impose tariffs on trade partners, strain the United States’ relationship with the democratic world.

President Macron of France said the group is happy to be “G-6 plus one.” Trump left the G-7 summit in a fit, tweeting that President Trudeau is dishonest and weak. And Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, accused Trudeau of backstabbing, condemning the Canadian Prime Minister to a “special place in hell.”

The World Without American Hegemony

Free trade and the rules-based international order have taken hold, and many nations are capitalizing on globalization. But there’s a troubling shift toward authoritarianism, and the U.S. cannot shy away from advocating for human rights and democratic norms abroad. Trump is weakening the democratic alliance that sets the norms for international relations.

Collaboration and civil society are key to healthy markets, and international trade is based in mutually-beneficial norms. However, if the United States continues to pull back from its role in the world, the paradigm may shift toward a more transactional and zero-sum approach, without regard for freedom, shared prosperity, and peace.

For the benefit of the United States and the world, American leaders must stand up to the president and work to preserve American leadership on the global stage.