One of the biggest problems with Donald Trump is his abdication of America’s position as a global leader by having withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accords, attempting to withdraw from numerous trade deals, slapping enormous tariffs on our strongest allies, attempting to withdraw from areas that need American aid and ignoring, in many ways, the plight of migrants and refugees. The next President needs to remedy this distrust of America that Trump has spawned and return the nation to a position of global leadership. 

Unfortunately, many of the frontrunners hold similar views to the President on foreign policy and fail to offer a true alternative to the President’s imbecilic foreign policy. Many of the progressive democrats running for President distrust trade deals, with Bernie Sanders going a step further and outright declaring himself a socialist, an ideology inherently opposed to trade. These candidates also support tariffs, as the President does, with likely candidate Sherrod Brown attacking the way Trump implemented tariffs for not putting them on foreign countries in the first place. They support American withdrawal from war-stricken nations and support lessening funds for foreign aid. Ultimately, they have the same vision for America’s role as a global leader as Donald Trump. 

I understand why they hold these positions; they may recall recent failures of American leadership such as the Iraq War debacle or the CIA coups. These are fair things to criticize America’s foreign policy on, but they and the President have decided that American leadership is inherently a threat to global security, which is far from the truth.  

The main problem with abdicating America’s role as leader is not because it would be bad for security or cause destabilization, which it will, but because if America is not the leader, then it will fall to the other emerging superpower, China. China is what we like to call “evil.” The People’s Republic has built massive “Re-Education Centers” (concentration camps) to imprison millions of the Muslim minority group, the Uighurs. The crimes of America are nothing compared to the communist regime in China. You can bet China would spread their ideology to every other nation if they were to become the global leader; more and more nations will fall to authoritarianism and free press will cease throughout the world.  

The United States needs to elect someone to ensure that it remains in a leadership position to prevent China from becoming the global leader. If it abdicates its role, as the Berniecrats and Donald Trump have proposed, then the world will fall to authoritarian dictatorial regimes.