The world’s trust In the United States Is fading

Accountability is no longer expected from America.

By Brian O’Neill

The world still sees America as powerful. Increasingly, it no longer sees us as trustworthy.

According to a Pew Research Center survey across 24 countries released this month, majorities in most nations hold little or no confidence in the United States to handle major global issues—from climate change to the Russia-Ukraine war. Confidence in American leadership has dropped sharply in long-standing partner nations, including Canada, Mexico, Sweden, and Poland. Favorable views of the United States overall have fallen in 15 of the 24 countries. And when asked to describe Donald Trump, the president now representing the United States to the world, the most common words were “arrogant” and “dangerous.”

That perception is no longer shaped by foreign policy only. It now also includes how the United States handles dissent at home. The incident on this month when Sen. Alex Padilla of California was forcibly removed by federal agents from a Homeland Security press conference in Los Angeles after attempting to question Secretary Kristi Noem about immigration enforcement will be read abroad as a sign that America’s constitutional reflexes are fraying and that disagreement itself is now treated as criminal.

There is growing international recognition that the United States has entered a new phase of governance: one in which accountability is no longer expected and admission of error is treated not as honesty but as weakness. That shift did not begin with Trump. But he proved how quickly the habit of deflection could be turned into doctrine. What had once been a political instinct—to delay, to soften, to redirect—has now hardened into a governing principle: Never admit fault.

The impulse to deflect has been weaponized. Dissent is recast as insurgency. Protest is met with military deployment. What once required reflection now demands force. Trump didn’t invent that instinct, but, under his leadership, it has acquired the full weight of executive authority.

For decades, America’s strength was not only in its capabilities but in its capacity to self-correct. The power of our example rested on more than slogans. It was built on a belief—shared by allies and adversaries alike—that when we erred, institutions would push back. That the press would investigate. That courts would hold. That mistakes, though inevitable, would not be normalized.

The collapse of that expectation is not just visible. It is being measured. And the damage might not be reversible—even if the leadership changes.

We often speak of American exceptionalism as if it were a given. But what made the idea credible wasn’t power; it was restraint. Foreign observers might have bristled at American self-regard, but they noticed when U.S. courts ruled against their presidents, when journalists exposed flawed wars, when domestic outrage led to reforms abroad. The myth endured because, despite its contradictions, it included a capacity for self-judgment.

That model is eroding in full view. The United States no longer projects a commitment to accountability—it resists it as a matter of policy. The result is a version of leadership that treats legitimacy as self-evident and trust as a given, even as both are visibly in decline.

Soft power, once our competitive advantage, has become a casualty of that shift. The belief that humanitarian assistance pays long-term dividends—through trust, access, and influence—has been replaced by a doctrine that values only immediate return. A generation ago, U.S. aid after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami transformed regional attitudes overnight. Today, we no longer seem to expect nor desire that kind of return. If the public relations victory isn’t immediate, it’s not worth it.

The Myanmar earthquake response in March offered a stark example. China and India dispatched emergency teams and aircraft within 48 hours, but the United States—once a first responder in global crises—managed only a press release and three liaisons, later dismissed. The infrastructure for American disaster response had been dismantled under earlier executive orders, justified as cost-saving. But what was saved financially has been lost strategically. In the regions hit hardest, Chinese aid is visible. The American absence is noted.

That narrow calculus now applies across our entire foreign policy. Climate, migration, trade, alliances—every sphere is evaluated not by long-term stability but by short-term optics. Even gestures that once carried symbolic power—presidential visits to war zones, public acknowledgments of policy failure—have disappeared, replaced by messaging campaigns and algorithmic press cycles.

This reflex isn’t uniquely partisan. Presidents from both parties have ducked responsibility. John F. Kennedy’s famed “defeat is an orphan” remark after the Bay of Pigs was celebrated as accountability, but it never amounted to an actual reckoning. Ronald Reagan’s televised acknowledgment of Iran-Contra came only after months of stonewalling. Bill Clinton’s apologies came late and often hedged. George W. Bush defended the Iraq War long after admitting the intelligence was flawed. The pattern predates Trump. Trump fully converted it into operating principle: no apology, no retraction, no correction.

That change has consequences beyond reputation. It undermines the very idea that American leadership is adaptable. As Stephen Walt has argued, the most consistent failure in U.S. foreign policy is not strategic overreach. It’s the refusal to learn. The belief that mistakes can be rebranded, rather than addressed, has led to costly wars, failed interventions, and an erosion of legitimacy. And now that belief is being mirrored by institutions that once checked it.

What concerns our allies is not merely what America does—it’s what it no longer seems capable of doing. As the Pew data makes clear, the world now sees American democracy as compromised by internal division, with partisan conflict rated as “strong” or “very strong” by majorities in nearly every surveyed country.

That perception, already evident in diplomatic channels, will be reinforced by the images of Padilla, a sitting U.S. senator, being pushed to the ground and handcuffed. This episode might not register overseas as a headline, but it will be seen as pattern. The United States is deploying active-duty forces against domestic protests. Federal agencies are overriding state opposition. Courts are scrambling to clarify authority after executive actions are carried out, not before.

These are not signs of democratic confidence. They are signs of improvisation under duress. And they explain, more clearly than any analyst could, why global confidence in American leadership is collapsing—even in nations that once saw our disorder as temporary.

This has altered how partners engage with us. European states have begun accelerating defense coordination independently of NATO leadership. Asian allies speak more often of hedging strategies than shared values. The language of trust has been replaced by the language of contingency.

And still, the belief persists in Washington that this is all cyclical. That another administration—perhaps in 2028—will repair the breach. That the world will wait. But trust is not a contract; it is a relationship built through conduct. Trust breaks when pattern becomes expectation.

When the United States stops modeling self-correction, it stops being a model. It becomes just another powerful state, asking to be trusted for its past, not for its behavior. But the past does not compel loyalty. Only conduct does.

And if there is one lesson from the Pew survey, it is this: The world is no longer listening to what we say about ourselves. It is watching what we do—and it notices what we no longer even pretend to regret.

Brian O’Neill, a retired senior executive from the CIA and National Counterterrorism Center, is an instructor on strategic intelligence at Georgia Tech.

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