President Donald Trump talks to reporters before he boards Air Force One, Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026, at Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) Former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, who I worked with at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, delivered a private talk about American power 40 years ago that Donald Trump should have heard.
“American leaders understand the power of the network,” he said, “and the Soviets don’t.”
Schlesinger pointed out that while the Soviet Union had always aimed for self-sufficiency, the United States put itself at the center of three global networks after World War II. The benefits, Schlesinger observed, far outweighed their costs. The U.S. ran trade deficits in exchange for a dollar-based global economy, invested heavily in defense to gain military and geopolitical leverage and prioritized basic research to lead the world in technological innovation.
The 47th president has taken a wrecking ball to all three networks in Schlesinger’s construct. According to Trump, the multilateral trading system has unfairly opened up the U.S. market to foreign predators. The alliance system has allowed partners to freeload on defense off of American taxpayers. Investments in basic research have subsidized a “woke” science establishment dominated by elite universities.
Trump’s one-sided view of these networks deeply discounts their value. The status of the dollar as the world’s main reserve currency puts the U.S. government at the center of global finance, lowering the cost of borrowing and creating wide leeway to finance budget and trade deficits. The U.S. security umbrella provides a wellspring of geopolitical influence in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Leadership in science drives U.S. technological competitiveness, underpins national security and attracts top talent from around the world.
The three networks that the Trump White House has repudiated share a common feature: All were established some 75 years ago by the United States in concert with a small group of West European partners and Canada. The president has broken these multilateral bonds with a vengeance by putting up a tariff wall, disengaging from NATO and backing off the U.S. commitment to global science.
Without networks, Trump has played America’s global hand unilaterally just as the Soviets once played theirs. He has made coercion the hallmark of “America First” diplomacy.
In the economic arena, the president has forced all trading partners to the negotiating table. In geopolitics, he has twice deployed military force against Iran without consultation with NATO allies. Likewise, he has expressed territorial interest in two historic partners — Canada and Greenland — and threatened U.S. withdrawal from NATO to compel increased European defense spending.
As for science, Trump has all but abandoned multilateral cooperation to focus on competition. To that end, he has poured billions of federal dollars into winning the artificial intelligence race while pushing for drastic cuts in basic research and squeezing America’s crown jewel research universities.
The costs of going it alone are piling up. Tariff barriers have fueled U.S. inflation and added to the volatility of international commerce. NATO-bashing has cost the Trump administration European support in the high-stakes conflict with Iran. The cutback in science has reduced the flow of international talent into U.S. research universities and could lead to a first-ever U.S. brain drain in such fields as climate science and infectious disease.
In parallel, America’s international standing has taken a serious hit. In June, a Pew Research Center survey across 36 countries measured the median level of confidence in the U.S. president to “do the right thing in foreign affairs” at 23 percent. In July, for the first time in two decades of polling, Pew found that respondents in a majority of countries had more favorable views of China than the United States.
It is beyond ironic that China, America’s main 21st-century competitor, has committed full force to international networks while the Trump administration discards them. Engagement in mainstream institutions, from the United Nations to the World Trade Organization to the Paris Agreement on climate change, has marked China’s political and economic ascendance. China also has financed its own global and regional economic development institutions. The power of the network is no mystery in Beijing.
As the president looks for a way out of the Iran war quagmire, his “America First” strategy has left the United States more isolated than at any time since the eve of World War II.
John Yochlson has worked with James Schlesinger, Henry Kissinger and Paul Volcker at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is the former president of the U.S. Council on Competitiveness and the author of “Loving and Leaving Washington: Reflections on Public Service.”
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