Not only is the emperor wearing no clothes, but he is standing alone in front of a world that is laughing at him.
President Donald Trump addressed top political leaders from around the world at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting 2026 in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 21. During the speech, Trump revisited his old, grievance-filled hits, such as “Sleepy Joe Biden” and the 2020 election being stolen. He was tilting at windmills, both literally and figuratively. He also appeared confused, mixing up Greenland with Iceland on more than one occasion.
But perhaps the most damaging part of his speech was the way Trump spoke of our North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies. The casualties of his words and recent actions may be irreparable in the world’s eyes.
America needs allies to stay safe, but Trump’s narcissistic foreign policy tactics will never admit that. Trump’s foreign policy views are based on what he wants or what he thinks might benefit him, and rather than true isolationism, he treats security guarantees as protection rackets rather than as mutual interests.
This vision of solitary strength appeals to those who see alliances as burdens, foreign entanglements as traps, and international cooperation as weakness. But this thinking fundamentally misunderstands how power works in the modern world and ignores the hard experiences of history.
Alliances are not charity. They are investments in American security that return dividends far exceeding their costs. Consider the global network of military bases that enables American strength. From Ramstein in Germany to Japan, Qatar to Australia, these installations exist because host nations permit them.
Without allied cooperation, the United States would lose its ability to respond rapidly to threats, collect critical intelligence, and maintain credible deterrence against adversaries.
The intelligence sharing among Five Eyes partners, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, provides capabilities no single nation could replicate alone. This cooperation depends on decades of trust. Treating allies as transactional partners erodes that trust and the unique access it provides.
Maintaining the United States' technological advantage also depends on allied cooperation. The most advanced semiconductors powering everything from smartphones to weapons systems come from Taiwan and South Korea. Leading-edge research happens in partnerships spanning allied universities and laboratories. Supply chains for critical technologies stretch across friendly nations. Alienating these partners doesn't make America more independent; it makes the country more vulnerable to disruption and weakness.
Trump seems incapable of recognizing the ultimate, and non-quantifiable sacrifice that our NATO partners made. When the United States invoked NATO Article 5 after Sept. 11, allied nations answered. They fought and died in Afghanistan and Iraq, with over 1,000 non-American NATO troops giving their lives in that conflict.
Denmark, which has sovereignty over Greenland, suffered 43 fatalities in the war in Afghanistan, the highest loss per capita within the coalition forces.
It is particularly repulsive when Trump said, “The United States is treated very unfairly by NATO. I want to tell you that. And when you think about it, nobody can dispute it. We give so much, and we get so little in return. And I've been a critic of NATO for many years. And yet I've done more to help NATO than any other president by far than any other person.”
Trump is no student of history because if he were, he would understand that it can provide a strong warning. In the 1930s, democratic nations failed to maintain their alliances and stand together against rising authoritarianism. The result was the most destructive war in human history. The postwar alliance system was built on that painful lesson: collective security prevents conflicts that cost far more than alliance maintenance ever could.
America standing alone isn't a strength; it's strategic suicide. In a dangerous world, allies fortify American power, extend its reach, share its obligations, and provide the partnerships necessary for addressing threats no nation can face successfully in isolation. The choice isn't between independence and entanglement; it's between security through cooperation and vulnerability through isolation.
So, the big cheese stands alone, and Americans are less safe because of it.
Lynn Schmidt is a columnist and Editorial Board member with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She holds a master's of science in political science as well as a bachelor's of science in nursing.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.