The United States Is No Longer the Leader of the Free World

This is what happens when you govern as if global support and democratic approval are afterthoughts. The Trump administration failed to make the case for war in Iran — not just to Congress, and not just to foreign allies, but to its own citizens. This universal indifference is, in fact, a natural outgrowth of American domestic politics: If the administration feels no need to explain itself to a reliably subservient Congress, and if the president assumes that whatever he does in office enjoys legal sanction and limited oversight, what need will he feel to explain himself to the American people, let alone to people beyond our borders? Politics at home is enabling, rather than constraining, adventurism abroad.