Leadership is not option

I seemed apparently insulting President Trump from Ukrainian President Folodimir Zelinski with sick memories of what she felt at the age of 22, and he stopped an office on the basement in Heidelberg, Germany-always a desktop staircase, like America’s understanding of its authority. My view of the world, which was formed through my experience that originated in a town less than 1000 collapses during my federal service in Germany.

As a child, other countries were places on maps or in textbooks. Our problems were real, and it was theoretical. Our hunger was urgent, and it was far away. Our needs were American, and their purposes were foreign.

Rwanda turned my understanding of America in the world, and how geopolitical power works. I was tracking rice shipments through the vast logistical systems and budget. A writer taught me with a neck cutting clip how $ 400 million of supplies via cables passed while I thought about all people who are struggling at home and asked how to understand these resources that we just give up.

It was not the data that changed my understanding – it was a human testimony.

Colonel Umm Rwanda received me, through seven levels of clearance before reaching my office. Then the soldiers returned from the publication – the children of the farm who shared my background and the first doubts.

“I didn’t want to go,” a specialist from Nebraska told me, “I didn’t want to go,” his hands are still raw from the rice bags. “Keep thinking about my grandmother’s medical bills and schools in my city without any heat.” Temporary, long eyes. “Then these mothers – I have never seen the skin stretched out this way on the bones – gave me their children. Two hours were waiting. When we emptied those platforms, the entire villages appeared from anywhere.”

Description of the employee sergeant, with Mississippi, the voice chasing him: “America”, whisper, “America, America”. The only English word they knew, and ranked by mothers carrying hungry children as our helicopters appeared on the mountains. Not because we are heroes, tell me. Because we appeared.

The eyes of the sergeant found the models he was making. He said in a voice like the spring ice: “I thought I knew what it means, being an American.” “I thought it was about my city, my family and about me. But my lady, when they say” America “, are not talking about somewhere. They are talking about whether their children are Siron Al -Sabah. They are talking like that we are the only important and only one who care.”

This is the invisible hand of America that holds worlds. Good stories feel only the front half of the equation. This is the geopolitical attraction with the economic bloc that affects the salary of every American, including those who believe that global leadership is a burden on another person. The emotional reality proves a strategic reality: the American global leadership directly affects the American prosperity in measurable ways:

• In the areas where China expanded its influence through the Belt and Roads Initiative, American exports decreased significantly, which led to great losses in working in American industries.
• After America reduced its leadership role in some international organizations (2017-2021), we lost the impact of decision-making on more than $ 428 billion in international development contracts. American companies were excluded from 42 percent of these opportunities.
• The areas in which America maintains strong diplomatic, economic and humanitarian leadership has witnessed faster growth in American job opportunities over the past decade compared to the regions in which our influence has declined.
• Every billion dollars in the United States supports about 6000 American jobs. Our global leadership enabled $ 3.2 trillion of exports last year – that is, 18.6 million jobs dependent on the American global influence.
• The security umbrella that we provide through NATO and other alliances save us in the additional defensive spending that we will need without these partnerships.

Global leadership is not charitable – it is a strategic investment with measurable returns. When we give up leadership positions, we do not save money; We lose economic opportunities, security benefits and influence regimes that govern global trade.

This reality makes President Trump’s treatment of Ukrainian President Folodimir Zelinski regarding. When Zelinski left the White House, he appears to be positions after criticizing because of his unofficial clothes and insufficient gratitude, the damage was not just a symbolic.

Within 48 hours, Zelinski was meeting with European leaders to discuss how to continue, or win, and may have made the United States outdated, or at least shrink in this global conflict. European allies have expressed their concerns about adhering to joint projects with America, the partners are treated as conservative.

What is at stake is a basic principle of American strategy after World War II: leads America or is replaced. Driving is not eternal or guaranteed. It requires a fixed investment of resources, respect and strategic participation.

In global affairs, there is no “America first” that does not eventually become “America alone” – and therefore, “America has diminished.” The US prosperity infrastructure depends on global leadership that cannot be preserved through the demands of gratitude or general insult to the allies.

If you do not think that America can bear the efforts of soft power or should be concerned with global leadership, think that we are not only doing it to be charitable. This is because the alternative costs much more – in dollars, in jobs and in the American way of life we ​​all want to protect.

Sherrill Kelly is a former government official and has experience in five American cabinet agencies, including work as a manager for planning, management and budget. She is an assistant colleague at the Bell Center at the University of Salvi Regeina and author of “An enlightened citizen: How the modern federal government works” and an American love story. “