A Rupture and Betrayal of U.S. Ideals

Three Speeches    

Churchill   Three speeches stand out for me today. Each shaped our role in the world. The third exposed our betrayal. In 1946 Winston Churchill warned that “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent…Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case.” It was the sobering articulation that Communist evil was subjugating the countries of Europe. He went on to say, “The United States stands at this time at the pinnacle of world power. It is a solemn moment for the American Democracy. For with primacy in power is also joined an awe-inspiring accountability to the future.” 

We chose to defend democracy against nationalism and build an international system supported by a rules-based order and international institutions. The system prevented a third world war and built peace and prosperity fostered by mutual assistance and trust. We were the symbol of freedom and hope, however imperfect the foundations. 

Reagan   In 1987 President Reagan stood at the Berlin Wall that represented fear, police state, and the Cold War and issued a challenge to the Soviet leader, rooted in confidence and hope, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Democracy, with all its flaws, offered hope while the Soviets represented subjugation, oligarchical cruelty, political repression, incompetence, and corruption. Again, the U.S. was a symbol of hope for humankind. 

U.S. as Pariah   And now, the betrayal. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2026 our president threatened, attempted to humiliate, lied to, and dishonored the very nations that had stood with us and sacrificed for democracy and hope. With Greenland verbiage threatening to undermine NATO and the bizarre pay to play “Board of Peace” full of dictators and autocrats, the U.S. had become a pariah while the murderous Putin smiled. 

We now represent destabilization, nationalism, disregard of the international system, oligarchical corruption, tyrants over allies, violence, incompetence, arrogance, and intimidation. We have committed potential war crimes on the high seas and have begun to sanction the murder of our own people to benefit and enrich those in power. We have violated sovereignty at home and abroad. We have become the new threat to world order by undermining what had been established through the sacrifices of World War II and the Cold War. We are a threat to peace and hope. 

We have accepted the weak position of the bully that “might makes right”. There is a social-Darwinist justification (the Nazis also accepted Spencer’s self-justifying “survival of the fittest” as well) that asserts there are no limits or constraints beyond our own greed. From the beginning of the Republic, we knew this was self-destructive and defeating nonsense. Until now. 

Prime Minister Carney   His speech at Davos was as honest, concise, direct, and clear as Churchill and Reagan. It was not so much a warning as an acknowledgement of the catastrophic shift of the U.S. place/role in the world. We have rejected our responsibility.

PM Carney stated, “This bargain [rules-based order] no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition…more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination. For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection. We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes. So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.” 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnE2HTfDivQ

My Turn   We are faced with the challenge of our lifetime. To resist this self-destructive trend for short-term power and reassert our hard-won values. We can, as the PM stated, “build a new order that encompasses our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the various states.” If we accept a world with growing gaps between poverty and wealth, limited access to goods and services, reliant of race-based or religious nationalism, territorial expansion, and a rejection of sovereignty, we accept a future of Thirty Years’ Wars, World War I, and World War II. 

Society functions by recognizing that we are in a social contract with one another. We cannot simply do whatever we want. We accept laws as reasonable. We obey traffic lights or push our shopping cart on the right side of the aisle. We navigate life together because we live together. The argument of the Trump administration that grabbing what you want because you can is fool’s gold. Our Republic was established to interfere with the mentality of exploitation and tyranny that caused so much suffering. The Bill of Rights is meant to protect the weak and vulnerable not the powerful.

And so, knowing we are called to pick up the mantle of all those who have sacrificed and offered hope before. Collectively we can defend the Republic and our role in the world. We must follow the legal process and when possible hold fair trails that judge the guilt of of our leaders and those who followed their orders. We must remain confident and resolute. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stated, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."  We must be the ones who make that happen.