There is an old proverb that says, wait by the river long enough, and you will see the body of your enemy float by.
Patience and time have always been China’s greatest allies. They don’t need to rush. They don’t need to invade. All they have to do is wait while we dismantle the system we built with our own hands.
For decades, the U.S. forged a global order grounded in stability, alliances, and open markets. We wrote the rules, and in doing so, we made ourselves indispensable. But that influence wasn’t guaranteed. It depended on trust and reliability. And now, piece by piece, that trust is being eroded — not by war or sabotage, but by our own elected leadership.
There has been no single event in recent history more strategically valuable to America’s adversaries than the election of a populist president. In electing a leader who questions alliances, mocks democratic norms, and fuels domestic hostility, we may have handed our rivals a blueprint for American decline.
Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy has always been transactional. During his first presidency, he repeatedly threatened to pull the U.S. out of NATO unless allies met spending targets. He treated Article 5, the cornerstone of collective defense, as a point of leverage, not a solemn pledge. Those threats didn’t fade after 2020; they’ve returned in his second term, undermining the very alliance that deters authoritarian expansion.
Under Trump, the U.S. abandoned the Paris Climate Accord, withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, cut funding to the United Nations and exited the World Health Organization at the height of a global pandemic. Although we can debate the effectiveness of these institutions, our participation was always about more than outcomes — it was about sending a signal that America valued the system it created and was willing to lead it.
Those withdrawals carry real-world consequences. The U.N. and WHO remain core infrastructure for diplomacy, crisis response and coordinated action. At the World Trade Organization, America’s refusal to appoint appellate judges has paralyzed its dispute resolution function. These may seem procedural, but they are foundational. Systems erode from disuse just as much as from attack.
China, for all its internal contradictions, knows how to seize an opening. Unlike Russia, it doesn’t advertise its ambitions through brute force. It’s methodical, with a long-term focus.
While we bicker about who insulted whom on cable news, China signs infrastructure deals, secures rare-earth mineral contracts and expands its digital and diplomatic reach across the Global South. It is building a world that quietly tilts toward its interests while we argue over our own reflection.
We are not losing because China is outthinking us. We’re losing because we are unlearning everything that once made us strong: trust in institutions, unity under pressure, and leadership that looks beyond a single term or tweet. American power has always come not just from might, but from model. Others wanted to work with us because we stood for something. That made the postwar order durable, the dollar reliable and NATO credible. It gave liberal democracy its global appeal.
The true threat to American power is internal. Populism may wear different faces, but its playbook is always the same: distrust the experts, mock the alliances, and declare the system rigged. It’s an aggressive cancer masquerading as patriotism.
And perhaps the greatest poison pill of all was placed not by force but by strategy. As our intelligence agencies have confirmed, our foreign adversaries sought to cripple the United States without ever firing a shot, through election interference and disinformation campaigns.
What if their goal wasn’t to conquer us outright, but to help us do it to ourselves? In many ways, they have succeeded. By turning us against ourselves, they forced us to lose the big picture and make mistakes that set us back decades.
We still have time, but it’s not infinite. The global order we built doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be led. And that means showing up, and making the hard compromises that leadership demands.
We’ve spent a century building a world that works in our favor. It is flawed, yes. But it is also ours. And once it’s gone, it won’t come back.
If America falls, it won’t be because others defeated us. It will be because we defeated ourselves.
Corey Kvasnick is an entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist, and a contributor to Common Ground Thinking.
