THE OBSERVER: By embracing self interest, the US is betraying its responsibilities and alienating allies
For most of the postwar years, America has been the rock upon which democracy prospered. Its influence was overwhelmingly benign when President Truman committed to “support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure”. So was it when, more than a decade later, President Kennedy committed to confront “the common enemies of man – tyranny, poverty, disease and war”.
The purpose behind these noble sentiments was to create a freer and safer world, in which the strong pledged their help to the weak. No price was asked for this. No deal demanded. No investment or payment expected. It was high politics in a harsh world, when to help others was not seen as a business opportunity.
This approach, it seems, is now out of fashion. Today, the United States has a less altruistic policy. The president’s ambition is to “Make America Great Again” – although it is puzzling that being the richest and most powerful nation in the world is not already seen as an indication of greatness.
In the Maga quest, the US has embraced national self-interest. Donald Trump, with the support of the world’s richest man, abruptly cut off aid to the poorest people in the world and those organisations whose role is to cure the diseases that most afflict them.
The long-term implications of this are dire. A report in the Lancet tells us that US aid alone prevented more than 4 million deaths – one third of them children – in every year of the first two decades of this century. That support has gone. » | John Major | Saturday, October 18, 2025
