Gallup dropped its latest global leadership survey this week. The headline: China has edged past the United States in worldwide approval, 36% to 31%. This will be a favorite stat for antagonists, and fuel for editorials warning that the “global order is shifting.”
Two thoughts. First: let it shift. Second: look at who's doing the disapproving.
For decades, the United States has underwritten the security of Europe and Asia. The Fifth Fleet has patrolled the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which 20% of the world's oil flows, so that economies in Berlin, Tokyo, and Seoul could run without interruption. American taxpayers footed the bill.
Now that President Trump has said plainly that Hormuz is Europe and Asia's “problem,” the nations that enjoyed this security subsidy for generations are reacting like tenants who just found out the landlord expects rent.
In 2017, only four NATO members met the alliance's own 2% of GDP defense-spending target: the US, Greece, the UK, and Poland. Four out of 29. The rest were happy to let Washington carry the load. It took Russia's invasion of Ukraine and relentless pressure from President Trump to drag allies to the table. Only this year did every NATO member finally hit 2% — a target they agreed to over a decade ago.
The Hormuz crisis is a perfect time for the rest of the world to step up. Since Operation Epic Fury began, tanker traffic through the Strait is down 90%. Europe, which lacks the naval assets to reopen the corridor on its own, is learning that decades of defense underinvestment have real consequences. But countries like Poland, the UK, and France actually have more mine-clearing ships than we do. They just won't send them.
So when Gallup says foreign approval of US leadership is falling, ask yourself: falling among whom? The same nations that have benefited from American security spending since we sent hundreds of thousands of our people to fight and die for their liberation in World War II? Nations that, for eighty years, enjoyed American protection while spending their money on other things?
US taxpayers — the ones looking at a national debt north of $39 trillion — are the only approval rating that should concern Washington policymakers. Interest payments alone will top $1 trillion this fiscal year. We now spend more servicing debt than we do on national defense. And every dollar spent securing someone else's oil is a dollar borrowed against our kids' future.
I think President Trump gets this better than any president in my lifetime, including those who ran on fiscal discipline and then spent like it was someone else's money. If we don't stop the bleeding, the debt trajectory will eventually sink our economy. The Davos crowd lecturing us about “global responsibility” from private jets has no answers for the family in Ohio trying to put food on the table.
Is the US losing a popularity contest among nations that have been riding free on our defense budget? Great. We'll gladly own that change.
George Washington saw this coming before NATO existed or a single barrel of oil moved through the Persian Gulf. His Farewell Address is still relevant today:
Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?
Europe and Asia paying their own way? American resources going toward benefitting the American people? U.S. is “down” in global approval ratings?
Bring it on.