The essence of President Donald Trump’s America First approach on the world stage is national sovereignty and self-determination. It is a firm rejection of the globalist, supranationalist approach of his Democratic predecessors, Joe Biden and Barack Obama. The United Nations and the European Union are increasingly perceived in Washington today as relics of globalism that have actively worked against the interests of the United States and seek to constrain the world’s superpower.
The United States is not abandoning the fight for human rights, but rather realigning it with the original vision of America’s Founding Fathers. The American people do not depend upon international courts or conventions to protect their civil liberties. They are defined by the U.S. Constitution.
In the Trump era, the United States clearly does retain a vital national interest in defending human rights on the international stage. The key difference today is that it is not couched within meaningless global treaties, useless UN bodies infiltrated by dictatorial regimes, or supranational courts, which all too often are dominated by the enemies of freedom. Nor does it pander to the woke cultural elites of the West, who seek to advance a radical LGBT agenda at the expense of traditional American values.
It is clear that under Trump’s approach, the United States will never subject itself to the rulings of an international criminal court or a pan-American version of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The American people are sovereign, and their borders should be secure from foreign power or control.
The U.N.’s broken human rights apparatus is largely irrelevant to the new administration. The United States withdrew from the hugely discredited U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), cut American funding for the United Nations, and condemned the U.N.-backed International Criminal Court (ICC) over its ludicrous arrest warrant for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
There is a growing recognition in the United States that the United Nations has become a vehicle for targeting Israel and advancing antisemitism. The Trump administration has made the fight against global antisemitism a priority, both abroad and at home, as we have seen with the federal campaign against the pro-Hamas movement on American university campuses, including Harvard.
Trump’s robust approach has already had a significant impact on America’s foreign aid policy, too. The United States should expect that international assistance will be given only to those nations that share America’s principles. This is why the administration is dismantling the Agency for International Development (USAID) altogether and overhauling America’s development aid programs. Foreign assistance to countries such as South Africa, which is embarking upon land appropriation policies and has refused to act against racially motivated killings of farmers, has seen its development aid completely cut off.
The America First human rights focus is primarily based on protecting freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of thought and conscience, and freedom of expression, as well as respect for democratic elections and property rights. Strikingly, a priority for the Trump administration has been to advance this approach in Europe, where some of these key freedoms have come under threat in recent years, including in much of the 27-member European Union.
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There is now an expectation from Washington that its allies across the Atlantic share America’s approach to human rights, especially as the United States invests a significant amount of resources in defending Europe through the NATO alliance.
In his landmark speech to the Munich Security Conference in February this year, Vice President JD Vance warned his European audience of the “threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values—values shared with the United States of America.” In the wake of Vance’s address, which sent shockwaves throughout Europe, the Trump administration has called for stronger defenses of free speech from the UK to Germany and has been sharply critical of the arrest of individuals for silent prayer near abortion clinics or for their statements on social media.
This is the first American presidency to focus on basic freedoms in allied Western democracies. It is a radically different approach to that taken by Democratic administrations, which had been silent in the face of the erosion of fundamental freedoms in Europe. This is prompting much-needed public debate across the Atlantic, especially in the United Kingdom, America’s closest friend and ally. Under the Labour government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, thousands of British citizens have been arrested for posting “offensive” messages on social media.
The goal of this strategy is to strengthen Western civilization and the values that have underpinned it for centuries. This is an admirable and vitally important goal, which will ultimately give the West far more power in standing up to totalitarian regimes such as China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran that threaten the security and freedoms that we cherish.
This piece originally appeared in The National Interest
