Why Does the World Feel More Dangerous in the Last 3 Years? Because It IS. Here's Why

In recent months I have had the opportunity to visit with Americans all across our country, from Dallas to Seattle, from Raleigh to Phoenix.  These were Americans from different backgrounds, viewpoints, and interests, but nearly every one of them had the same questions: Why does it seem like the world has become far more dangerous in recent years? And what does America need to do to right the ship?

The short answer is that the world is much more dangerous today than it was three-plus years ago, and it’s because smart, thoughtful policies from the Trump Administration have been replaced with the same old liberal ideology of weakness that has long ruled Washington.

Let’s start with the Middle East.  In the Trump Administration, we were clear about who were our friends and who were our enemies.  We supported Israel and opposed Iran, and we left no doubt about either.  This afforded the rest of the nations in the region the space to pick a side, and they chose to work with America and Israel.  This led to the Abraham Accords, a historic set of peace agreements between Israel and her Arab neighbors, where mutual respect and a desire for shared commerce trumped years of mistrust and war.

In Europe, we established clear and focused deterrents that kept Russia from invading its neighbors.  Putin took a fifth of Ukraine under the Obama Administration, none under the Trump Administration, and then decided to resume his invasion as soon as we left office.  What made our time in office different? We deterred Putin through strength.  We forced our European allies to step up and contribute more to their own defense, while reducing their reliance on Russian energy.  We sold the Ukrainians weapons systems that ultimately saved Kyiv from Russian forces.  And we were consistent and clear with Putin about the consequences of undermining our interests.  President Trump showed strength, not weakness – and that made the difference.

In Asia, we took the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the greatest external threat facing our nation, head on.  We labeled the CCP’s actions in Xinjiang as genocide and crimes against humanity.  We strengthened old alliances in the Indo-Pacific to deter the communist threat, and we built out new partnerships, like the Quad, that form the framework for economic and military cooperation. Closer to home, when we found that the CCP was running a major espionage operation out of a consulate in Houston, we shut it down, and we sought to rout out Chinese propaganda that was freely flowing across the country, particularly in our own universities.  These actions and many more sent a clear message to Xi Jinping and his apparatchiks in Beijing that the United States was serious about opposing their efforts to move on Taiwan, pressure Japan or South Korea, and undermine freedom of navigation in the Taiwan Strait or South China Sea. This kept China at bay and in check.

The legacy of President Trump and our Administration’s time in office was the construction of a model of deterrence – based on commonsense principles – that kept our enemies at bay.  We didn’t make ransom payments.  We didn’t send foreign aid to terrorists.  We enforced the law on our southern border.  We made crucial deals with Mexico to stem the flow of illegal immigrants.  We didn’t embrace green, globalist nonsense at the expense of the American people and understood that American energy dominance was key to American strength and deterrence.  At the end of our tenure, America’s enemies – from Moscow to Pyongyang to Beijing to Tehran – respected American strength, feared American reprisal, and understood that their best path forward was grudging cooperation rather than provocation or hostility.

Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Ayatollah Khamenei, Kim Jong Un, and Nicolas Maduro are all still around, and they are all still committed to building a world that is fundamentally opposed to the American way of life.  If you want evidence of that, just look at the last 3 1/2 years – President Biden has put America on its back foot and given our adversaries the advantage.  He has proven incapable of leading America amidst these rising threats.  If we want to reverse this trend, we need to support leaders in November who will put America back on its front foot, restore the deterrence that has been lost, and display the kind of American leadership we saw in the Trump Administration.

Support the work of the ACLJ as we continue to bring you expert analysis and legal action on the issues that matter most.