As US President Donald Trump approaches the midpoint of his second term, mounting signs point to an erosion of American prestige and global influence. A growing body of assessments and analyses suggests that this decline has not been accidental. Rather, it reflects profound shifts in the way Washington has managed international crises and conducted diplomacy, compounded by the distinctive leadership style of the Trump presidency.
The war with Iran represents a particularly consequential turning point in this trajectory. Just days ago, a new US report estimated that Washington had spent $33.4bn on Operation Epic Fury in just four months, describing the expenditure as “epic losses”. This came as Congress voted in favour of a measure requiring Trump to end the war — a move that amounted to a significant political rebuke of the administration’s handling of the conflict, coming only weeks before the midterm elections.
American soft power has also suffered a substantial decline as funding for international institutions, humanitarian programmes, and foreign assistance has been dismantled or sharply reduced. In the process, Washington has weakened one of the traditional foundations of its global influence: its ability to attract partners, build flexible coalitions, and shape international alignments around shared political and institutional values.
The imposition of sweeping tariffs, repeated threats to withdraw from economic and security arrangements, and persistent questioning of the value of long-standing alliances — whether in Europe, the Middle East, or East Asia — have encouraged many US partners to reconsider their strategic calculations. Several countries have increasingly opted for more cautious positions or sought more diversified partnerships with regional and global powers in an effort to reduce their dependence on Washington.
These policies have contributed to what can increasingly be described as a form of American retrenchment, creating geopolitical openings that China and Russia have been quick to exploit. The resulting vacuum has been visible in the growing weight of alternative international groupings such as BRICS, as well as in the expanding role of emerging powers in conflicts and crises across Eurasia and Africa.
One of the most significant factors behind the erosion of American influence has been the heavy reliance on hard power without commensurate political results. The experience of the war with Iran illustrates the difficulty of translating overwhelming military and financial capabilities into durable political victories. Washington’s inability to compel even an economically and militarily weakened Iranian regime to fully comply with US demands or enter negotiations on American terms has exposed the limitations of traditional deterrence when military pressure is not matched by a sustainable political strategy.
China, meanwhile, is among the principal beneficiaries of some aspects of the changing balance of influence and has increasingly sought to capitalise on the strategic space created by these developments. Beijing has faced a complex dilemma over the course of the nearly seven-month conflict with Iran. On the one hand, the continuation of the war diverts a portion of US military resources and strategic attention away from the Indo-Pacific. On the other, China risks becoming the target of additional American economic sanctions because of its continued dealings with Tehran.
The sanctions come shortly before a summit between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, scheduled to take place at the White House on September 24. China’s Foreign Ministry has criticised the measures, pledging to “do whatever is necessary to firmly safeguard its rights and interests”.
Beijing maintains that its trade with Iran is legitimate commercial activity between sovereign states and rejects Washington’s sanctions as violations of the principles of the United Nations Charter. Yet despite the escalation in American threats, the continuation of the conflict serves some of China’s broader strategic interests by gradually consuming the weapons, financial resources, and strategic attention that Washington might otherwise have directed towards the Indo-Pacific.
Some American research institutions have even warned that, were the United States to enter a major conflict in the Western Pacific today, its stocks of precision-guided munitions might last less than a week. Such assessments raise serious questions about Washington’s ability to sustain a high-intensity conflict in close proximity to China, including a potential confrontation over Taiwan.
Yet the erosion of America’s international standing cannot be attributed solely to a series of political and military miscalculations. There is another dimension: the personal and behavioural factor associated with President Trump’s leadership style. This dimension highlights the extent to which presidential rhetoric — particularly when it is rapid, unpredictable, and highly contentious — can affect the credibility and strategic image of an administration.
Trump relies heavily on a stream of unexpected statements delivered through digital platforms and press conferences, many of which have at times appeared to diverge from the official positions communicated by the Departments of Defense and State. Such inconsistencies have diminished the predictability of American strategic policy and, in some circumstances, made US deterrence appear less stable and credible.
There is also an increasingly visible gap between political rhetoric and conditions on the ground. Trump frequently presents complex issues as having been decisively resolved or announces major achievements in sweeping terms, while developments on the ground continue to reflect unresolved conflicts, prolonged crises, and the depletion of resources. The result is an international perception of a widening gap between political messaging and actual implementation capacity.
At the same time, treating international political and strategic relationships primarily through the lens of direct commercial transactions has stripped American diplomacy of part of its traditional ideological and political dimension. US commitments to allies can consequently appear, at times, to be conditional on financial calculations and short-term material gains rather than anchored in a broader strategic or institutional framework.
Repeated confrontations between the White House and legislative and media institutions have further projected an image of a country deeply divided over the direction of its foreign policy. Such divisions can weaken the credibility that an administration derives from domestic political cohesion when confronting international competitors and adversaries.
When Donald Trump began his second term, he entered office with a number of legitimate grievances and a stated determination to address problems that had accumulated over decades of American policy. These included Washington’s financial, technological, and military contributions to NATO; trade and tariff disputes with the European Union; his stated ambition to bring the war in Ukraine to an end; the effort to secure more favourable terms in trade negotiations with China; and a range of other longstanding disputes and crises.
The central problem, however, has increasingly appeared to lie not in the identification of these challenges, but in the choice of instruments used to address them. Policies initially presented as mechanisms for correcting longstanding imbalances have, in several cases, evolved into increasingly complicated problems that may prove difficult to resolve during the remainder of Trump’s presidency.
The paradox of Trump’s second term, therefore, is not necessarily that he ignored the problems confronting the United States. On the contrary, he has confronted many of them directly and sought to challenge assumptions that had shaped American policy for decades. The deeper issue lies in the reliance on maximum-pressure tactics that have not always produced the political outcomes they were intended to achieve.
Trump’s stated objective has been to restore American leverage, strengthen Washington’s negotiating position, and secure more favourable terms for the United States. Yet some of the instruments deployed in pursuit of those goals have, directly or indirectly, increased uncertainty among allies and created additional strategic space for America’s competitors.
The fundamental question, then, is not whether the United States faces genuine structural imbalances or whether some of Trump’s diagnoses of those problems contain elements of validity. The more consequential question is whether the tools being used to correct those imbalances are strengthening American power — or gradually eroding the political confidence, alliances, credibility, and strategic flexibility on which that power ultimately depends.
Prof. Hatem Sadek, Helwan University
