Feared or Loved (USA from the Outside)

April 2

1h 35m

Episode Description

S2 E3 Feared or Loved by Brian Smyers. Interviewed by Julius Knapp.

National and World events have been moving at a very fast clip, seemingly accelerating every day. As a result, Stories that 10 years ago would have garnered large print headlines have become buried by war and threats of war. This essay is an attempt to take a step outside of my experience and my view as a citizen the United States and look at how the world might see us from the outside. Ironically though, if you want to be outside, you have to be inside first. So I will start with some background of how my world view formed.

I have never been one for nostalgia. I have never been a “back in my day” guy. However, at the risk of being Bart Simpson’s grandfather shaking his fist at a cloud, I have to go back to a time when the world was more stable. That time was after World War II.

The Past is Prologue: Cold War World Order

“I was born into this world. It was a world where unaligned countries would be used as pawns. The West looked to the United States for leadership.”

World War II had been so devastating to Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa that it was decided that institutions should be put in place to prevent massive war at all costs. Depleted economic and military power had caused Europe to give up its colonies. As a result, African colonies and protectorates would become nations in their own right with borders left over from the European empires. All the world powers and economic powerhouses were in shambles in 1945 and a new world order was born. America was the sole standing undamaged economic and military superpower in the world.

The United Nations was created, with the permanent members of the Security Council would be the winners of World War II. United States, Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China. Other nations would take their term on the Security Council as a means of giving smaller nations a voice in world affairs. The United States would help the United Nations craft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is considered a foundational document of the United Nations.

As the Soviet Union was recovering from their 27 million casualties, their troops remained deployed in the nations they had occupied fighting Nazi Germany. These nations would form the Eastern Bloc as they feared the West– with good reason too. During World War I, Russia had dropped out because of the Russian Revolution. Only 25 years earlier, The United States and Britain had sent troops, invading Russia on the side of the White Russian Movement. The Bolsheviks won, and Soviet Russia was set up. The Soviets never forgot, although most Americans were never taught this.

This distrust between the West and the USSR would lead to a stable, albeit very tense, world order. NATO would protect the West. The Warsaw Pact would protect the USSR’s interests.

I was born into this world. It was a world where unaligned countries would be used as pawns. The West looked to the United States for leadership. Boomers and Xer’s grew up knowing that any international incident on the Korean Border, or on the Berlin Wall could very easily spiral into nuclear war. Both the USSR and the United States of America had policies of Mutually Assured Destruction which meant that it was in nobody’s interest to fight each other. It remains an underlying thread of the conflicts of today. As a result, these alliances were sacred, even when they were flawed.

Foreign Policy Missteps During the Cold War

During the Cold War, The United States foreign policy was not without its flaws. The Cold War influenced every decision, sometimes at the expense of ideology. The CIA overthrew regimes. After Iran nationalized the oil industry, the CIA overthrew its democracy and installed the Shaw as its head of state. This Iranian government had an oppressive secret police and ruled with an Iron Hand. When the Iranian Revolution occurred in 1979, the new government remembered this oppression (even instituting their own oppressive system) and never trusted the West.

The CIA also overthrew socialist democracies in Guatemala in 1954, and Chile in 1973. Whether or not a nation was a democratic republic or not was second to whether or not they bought arms and were influenced by the United States or the Soviet Union. In all these actions by the CIA the United States acted alone and fostered distrust that would last generations. The writer read a report this morning (3/4/26) that the CIA is currently arming Kurds to take over Iran.

In the case of Apartheid in South Africa, Ronald Regan backed the white minority government while calling Nelson Mandela a terrorist and a communist. Reagan also labeled the African National Congress a terrorist organization. Although Reagan would eventually call for Mandela’s release, South Africa is positioned in a strategically important spot on the globe, and as a result the United States wanted its government on its side.

NATO and Soft Power

The NATO Alliance has a requirement that all nations use 2% of their GDP for national defense. This 2% is not a “fee” as Trump would call it, but rather a target for their own military production. The reason was so the United States would eventually not be the sole defender of their territory. Rather as these nations recovered from the devastation of World War II, they would become stronger and the collective defense of NATO nations would be strong enough to repel and counter any Soviet attack. For a while they did meet these targets, but especially once the Cold War ended in 1989, the nations of Europe would consistently not meet the NATO requirement. This in combination of NATO expanding after the fall of the Berlin Wall to the point of open talk of Ukraine joining the treaty organization led to multiple presidents speaking to NATO nations about their commitments to mutual defense in the form of defense spending as a percent of GDP.

Despite defense spending goals not being fully met, NATO became a very effective fighting force. The first offensive operations by NATO was during the Bosnian war, first by enforcing a no fly zone, and then by airstrikes. NATO would bomb Serbia during the Kosovo War. When America was attacked on 9/11, NATO answered their article V obligations. NATO nations sent troops to Afghanistan and fought the Taliban. Europe and the United States had benefited from NATO.

When the nation of Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the United States went to the United Nations. It leveraged diplomatic power and passed Resolutions that authorized the Persian Gulf War. Forty-Three countries participated in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm to liberate Kuwait from Saddam’s Republican Guard.

The United States leadership in the world wasn’t just in the form of NATO or United Nations Resolutions. It projected leadership in the form of soft power. John F Kennedy formed the Peace Corp to help develop nations and promote good will. The Agency for International Development was created by the State Department. It would be rebranded as USAID and spun off as an independent agency by the time of Bill Clinton. It is estimated that between 2001 and 2021 somewhere between 4.1 million and 4.7 million lives were saved by USAID programs per year.

Ronald Reagan in his farewell address spoke of “A City on a Hill”. It was his vision of how he saw America. Here is a paragraph from that speech:

I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.

Reagan’s vision was one of peace, one of welcoming borders and welcoming people. The metaphor has roots in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:14-16). In Jesus’s teachings it was about living what you believe and influencing the world with your life. A cynic may call Reagan’s “City on a Hill” propaganda. A skeptic might call it hypocrisy. An optimist may call it a vision to aspire to. A realist may say it is all of the above.

Donald Trump era

Trump campaigned in 2016, 2020, and 2024 on the premise that America was screwed over this whole time by the NATO alliance and almost every other international agreement and organization. He campaigned against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). His administrations pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement, and the Iranian Nuclear Deal that Obama negotiated. The Trump administration also pulled out of the UN Framework Convention on Climate change, the World Health Organization, the 1951 Refugee Convention, Global Counterterrorism Forum, and the UN Human Rights Council.

The Trump Administration has widespread vacancies in its diplomatic corp. Over 80 countries do not have a US ambassador, including Germany, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Ecuador, Iraq, and Kuwait. Many of these nations are being attacked today by Iran.

Trump is actively working to replace the United Nations with a Board of Peace. Donald Trump has been named chairman for life. The United Nations has tasked the Board of Peace with rebuilding Gaza and instituting the Gaza Peace Plan. Currently 22 Nations have joined it, 6 nations have expressed an intent to join. The European Union and 10 other nations are observing. 14 Nations have declined, and Trump rescinded the invitation to Canada. All these actions represent a withdrawl by the United States from world diplomacy and influence.

Three days into Trump’s second term, he cut 83% of USAID’s contracts. A little over two months later he dissolved USAID and its remaining work was absorbed by the State Department. America’s soft power had evaporated. Trump would replace it with hard kinetic power.

At the time of this writing (3/3/26), the United States has attacked Iran killing its head of state, kidnapped the Venezuelan President, and threatened to invade Greenland just within in the last 3 months. Greenland is a self ruled territory of Denmark, a NATO country. This resulted in the NATO nations of France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands sending troops to Greenland to defend the world’s largest island from a potential United States invasion.

Although NATO still exists, the trust and leadership provided to it by the United States is gone. Ironically enough, it has motivated NATO nations to meet their 2% obligations with some nations setting goals of 5% of GDP on defense spending as Europe feels caught in a vice between multiple world powers looking to expand their respective spheres of influence by military might.

“Remember the Government argued in court – and won – that the President could order the assassination of a political rival and could not be charged unless impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate.”

This strained relationship can be seen in the current US-Israeli-Iran War with Britain and Spain refusing to let the United States use their bases to land fighters. Britain also refused to provide intelligence on Venezuela leading up to and during Operation Absolute Resolve.

But the World doesn’t just see the United States actions through the world stage. It pays attention to our domestic politics as well. It sees how the Trump Administration has handled the immigration issue. The killings of Renee Goode and Alex Pretti by ICE are interpreted by the world as actions of an increasingly authoritarian government. Remember the Government argued in court – and won – that the President could order the assassination of a political rival and could not be charged unless impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate.

In contrast to Reagan’s “City on a Hill”, our borders are closed and the US Government no longer welcomes people. ICE now arrests people who have been in this country decades, even deporting some American citizens. Our moral leadership in the world no longer exists.

Finally, it also needs noted how the Epstein files are figuring into how the world sees us. There has been accountability for a Prince in Britain but not for people in the Trump administration including the President himself despite evidence that warrants further investigation.

Conclusion

I am reminded of a scene in the movie “A Bronx Tale” where a mob boss tells his protege that it is better to be feared than loved. The breaking of treaties, alliances, withdrawing from organizations, diving approval ratings and his recent penchant for military action tells this writer that Trump wants America to be feared, not loved. His Homeland Security Advisor Steven Miller’s theory of the Unitary Executive leaves little doubt for this conclusion. Our impulsive military actions and the questions of justice domestically very well could lead an outsider to fear America instead of aspire to emulate it. It is a question this superpower has wrestled with since dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sometimes it seems like America forgets the responsibility of knowing that today’s present is tomorrow’s history and that world never forgets.

Brian Smyers

Owner and Editor of the Ascendant Project

Biography

Corrections, clarifications, and addendums

Article: